The house where seminal High Renaissance painter Giorgione lived and worked is set to open next month as a museum in his home town here near Venice.
The home will exhibit two of only six works by Giorgione (Giorgio Zorzi da Castelfranco, 1477/8-1510) which have been conclusively established as his.
One is his celebrated Madonna and Child Between St Francis and St Nicasius, also known as the Castelfranco Madonna (c. 1503).
The other is a frieze symbolising ''the liberal and mechanical arts''.
Giorgio Zorzi was first called simply Giorgio da Castelfranco but was later dubbed Giorgione (Big, Great George) because of his physical stature and artistic gifts.
He came to Venice as a youth and received his first schooling in the studio of the Bellinis.
Giorgione became one of Italy's most famous painters and had friends among the Venetian aristocracy and artists from around Italy and northern Europe.
Though he died in his 30s, Giorgione left a legacy that was developed by his pupil Titian and the Venetian School.
No signed works by Giorgione exist. His Tempest in the Academy gallery in Venice is one of the first Venetian paintings where landscape and atmospheric effects play a major part.
The new house and museum, to be opened on May 9, will ''also give a flavour of the artist's time,'' officials said.
