Venice at the start of the sixteenth century was Europe's undisputed capital of culture: home to some of the finest artists of the Italian Renaissance, whose importance stretched far beyond the region. The first great painter to emerge was also the most mysterious: little is known about Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, known as Giorgione (1478-1510), and few works have been attributed to him with any certainty, yet he painted what is considered to be the first landscape in Western art history, and his influence was profoundly felt by contemporaries including Lorenzo Lotto and Titian. This volume brings together many of the works attributed to Giorgione, along with other masterpieces of the Venetian School, demonstrating the extraordinary richness of colour and mood for which these artists were famed.