Tempest, The

Romantic drama by William Shakespeare, first performed 1611–12, in London. Prospero, usurped as Duke of Milan by his brother Antonio, lives on a remote island with his daughter Miranda and Caliban, a deformed creature. Prospero uses magic to shipwreck Antonio and his party on the island and, with the help of the spirit Ariel, regains his dukedom.

Tempest, The

Painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Giorgione 1504 (Accademia, Venice). The subject is not clear: the picture shows a standing soldier and a naked woman nursing a child; behind them a storm is raging. What makes the picture significant is that it is one of the first to be concerned with creating a poetic mood.

The strange feeling of tension and drama makes the detail and sumptuous quality of paint and colour more vividly appreciable. The art historian Giorgio Vasari, though he does not mention The Tempest, confessed himself puzzled by Giorgione's absence of ‘meaning’ in other works, but it is possible to regard this lack of apparent meaning as a deliberate sacrifice to attain the gentle air of mystery that characterizes his works.

The painting is one of the very few fully authenticated works by Giorgione, and is described as his by a contemporary. It has never been restored and is presumably as it left the artist's hand, though radioscopic examination indicates that he substituted the figure of a soldier for that of a second nude girl washing her feet in the brook.