Laura

Giorgione's Laura, painted in 1506 and now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, is one of his few securely attributed and dated works. The portrait shows a young woman with bared breast framed by laurel branches, possibly referencing Petrarch's beloved Laura. The painting carries an inscription on its back dating it to June 1, 1506, making it a crucial point of reference for Giorgione's chronology. The soft, atmospheric rendering of the figure was revolutionary in Venetian portraiture.

Giorgione achieves a new softness and atmospheric quality in portraiture through blended oil glazing, with the figure emerging from shadow into warm light in a manner that breaks decisively from the precise contours of earlier Venetian painting.