Giorgione, The Tempest, 1508

I sat in my friend's kitchen, restlessly glancing about the room from a dining room chair. I felt uncomfortable and restless as this was my first visit to this particular acquaintance's home, and I now found myself left to my own devices as he talked to his parents about family matters. Not the show, mind you, as I would gladly have joined in on that conversation. I had already occupied myself with admiring from afar the various collections of pottery, fine china, and contemporary paintings about the room, and nothing seemed to take my mind away from the inherent awkwardness of my situation.

With few options left, I turned to a nearby collection of pocket-sized books - the kind that line the check-out lines of Barnes & Noble - and stumbled upon a volume frankly titled The Art Book. I promptly began flipping through the pages, nodding at this painting or that in approval until I came upon one that caught me in a way that others hadn't. It held my attention in a way I was not yet accustomed to, and I couldn't put my finger on why.

The painting that so captivated me was Giorgione's The Tempest, a work that has divided art historians, educators, and uppity bloggers in regards to its interpretation for decades. Some insist that the painting depicts Adam and Eve with a newborn Cain shortly following their banishment from Eden. Others evoke the story of Mary and Joseph and their escape to Egypt. These interpretations rely on the presence of the male figure to hold under scrutiny, however, scrutiny reveals that the male figure did not exist early in the painting's development.

This X-ray of The Tempest taken in the 1930s reveals that a nude woman was originally in the place of the soldier that graces the final painting. The discovery of the image beneath the surface may have shattered all attempts to crack the symbolism of the piece, but that wouldn't do the determination of art critics justice at all. Instead, the discovery only added to the mystery of the piece already present in its dissident symbols of the broken column, the bridge that spans the stream, and the suckling baby cradled in the woman's arms. But the mystery of the piece is what keeps me coming back after all, the fun of a puzzle is in the challenge, not the solution.

Besides, the painting has a kind of quiet majesty to it. Though a storm looms in the background, alive with lightning and roaring thunder, the characters seem not to care. They do not look back, they do not look worried. They simply look at one another, and at the viewer. In their gaze lies all the peace of the landscape: The soft glow of the stormy skies, the calm water of the stream, the majestic bird atop the tower. It grabs you, and holds you there firmly. So firmly, that you may not notice a friend in the doorway, motioning that he's ready to go.