Old Woman

Giorgione's Old Woman ("Col Tempo"—"With Time"), painted around 1506 and now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice, is one of the most striking paintings of the Venetian Renaissance. The elderly woman holds a scroll reading "Col Tempo" (With Time), making the painting a meditation on aging and mortality. The unflinching depiction of aged flesh was revolutionary in an era when female figures were typically idealized, and the work may represent a deliberate counterpart to Giorgione's beautiful young women.

Giorgione renders aged flesh with unprecedented naturalism, using his characteristic atmospheric technique to create a portrait of devastating honesty that transforms the traditional vanitas theme into a profoundly human meditation.