A gigantic canvas of this order is, or rather was, the famous Storm of the Venetian Accademia, which has for many years past been dubitatively assigned to Giorgione. Vasari described it as by Palma Vecchio, stating that it was painted for the Scuola di S. Marco in the Piazza SS. Giovanni e Paolo, in rivalry with Gian Bellino(!) and Mansueti, and referring to it in great detail and with a more fervent enthusiasm than he accords to any other Venetian picture. To the writer, judging from the parts of the original which have survived, it has long appeared that this may indeed be after all the right attribution. The ascription to Giorgione is mainly based on the romantic character of the invention, which certainly does not answer to anything that we know from the hand or brain of Palma. But then the learned men who helped Giorgione and Titian may well have helped him; and the structure of the thick-set figures in the foreground is absolutely his, as is also the sunset light on the horizon.
This is an arrangement analogous to that with the aid of which Tintoretto later on, in the Crucifixion of San Cassiano at Venice, attains to so sublime an effect. There the spears—not brandished but steadily held aloft in rigid and inflexible regularity—strangely heighten the solemn tragedy of the scene.
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Life of Titian, vol. vi. p. 59.