Giorgione (c.1477-1510)
Tre filosofi (Three Philosophers)
1508–1509
Oil on canvas, 125.5 × 146.2 × 3.5 cm
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
“The oil painting with the three philosophers in a landscape, two standing and one sitting looking at the sun’s rays, with this rock painted so wonderfully …” According to new research, the three men identified as “philosophers” in this note, written in 1525, are Pythagoras (sitting) and his two teachers Pherecydes and Thales, who were considered the first philosophers of the West in the Renaissance. The rock with the spring is probably the Apollo oracle of Didyma. (KHM)