An interdisciplinary research project on the collection of 15th- and 16th-century Venetian paintings at the Alte Pinakothek in Munich gave rise to art-historical and art-technological research into a hitherto little-noticed double portrait of a scholar with his young pupil. With the aid of stereomicroscopic examination as well as imaging and material-analytical methods - in particular macro X-ray fluorescence scans of the front and back - three further compositions were discovered beneath the visible painting: first a multi-figure drawing of the biblical scene of the 12-year-old Christ among the Doctors, followed by an Arcadian landscape and, directly beneath the current double portrait, the single portrait of a sumptuously dressed figure. As evidenced by cross-section analyses, all four compositions were created in close succession. A notably intricate pattern on the sleeve of the sitter in the single portrait was initially integrated into the subsequent composition before it was discarded. Various aspects - the identification of the two sitters in the double portrait as the Venetian humanist Trifone Gabriele and his pupil Giovanni Borgherini, the innovative portrait type of a figure looking over his shoulder, the similitude of the Arcadian landscape and Giorgione's Tempesta, the composition of the drawing recalling works created in early Cinquecento Venice and, last but not least, archival and textual sources on the historical context and possible provenance of the painting - together support an attribution of the work to the Venetian painter Giorgio da Castelfranco, called Giorgione.