Fondaco dei Tedeschi

This guide to the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice returns to 1508, when the German merchants' trading post and dormitory got a brand-new facade after a fire, and the Venetian state handed it to a rising young painter named Giorgione. His younger rival, barely twenty and named Titian, ended up sharing the wall too. You'll hear about the fragments people could make out on the finished facade, nude figures and a woman gripping a sword, and the argument over who painted which part. Listen while looking up at the pale stone, imagining the color that once covered every side.