Laura Cumming reviews In the Age of Giorgione at The Royal Academy of Arts, London, on view through June 5, 2016.

Cumming writes that Giorgione, "this short-lived and nearly mythical figure had such a colossal influence over Italian art – his name translates as the great George – that the early works of Titian, no less, would not look as they do without him. He is the poet of living minds and palpable thoughts, of inner dramas and outer beauty, of enigmatic figures in landscapes where the sun’s dying rays glimmer gold above distant blue towns, all painted with extraordinary softness and mystery."