Chapter II: The True Giorgione (1)

A superficial study of the lists which have been given suffices to show that the various critics have very different standards by which to judge Giorgione and his works. I much doubt whether entire order can be brought out of the chaos that now rules, but a sounder basis for future study can be derived from a combination of the best points of the work of these very differently endowed critics than any one of them by himself offers.

So far as Crowe and Cavalcaselle go, they are, I believe, entirely right. Among the twelve pictures which they unhesitatingly ascribe to Giorgione, only three have been questioned by any one. These three are, the Judgment of Solomon, at Kingston Lacy, the Epiphany, in the National Gallery, and the Beaumont Shepherd’s Offering. The only possible explanation of the fact that Morelli does not mention the picture at Kingston Lacy is that he did not see it.[51] It is one of those works that in every touch show the author. Even if we did not have Ridolfi’s evidence for the existence of such a work, it is difficult to understand how hesitation could arise in the mind of any one undisturbed by theories as to the author of the picture. The figure of the executioner is, as Ridolfi says, unfinished. So, too, is practically the whole picture (Plate LXII).

What strikes one at first sight is the similarity to Bellini’s work at the same time that one realises a development of dramatic power greater than he ever attained. The fine restraint of composition is his, the serious and painstaking technique is his, but the dramatic energy displayed in the action of the several figures is a step beyond anything which Bellini ever accomplished. And the few undoubted works show that Giorgione was great enough to compose with the same grandeur, and work with a similar perfection to Bellini, and yet give more dramatic intensity to his figures. But if any one is blind to the spirit that permeates this wonderful bit of poetry, let him study the details. The head of the youth standing upright on Solomon’s right hand is most closely allied to that of the seated figure in the Three Philosophers. The old man on the left of Solomon is in his turn very similar to the oldest of the Three Philosophers. Compare the hand of the second figure from the right with the left hand of the last-mentioned Philosopher: it is the same.

The tight drawn hair of the women is the same as that of the Castelfranco Madonna and the Gypsy in the Giovanelli Palace picture. The strong, broad, full-toed, carefully drawn feet are what we see in the Three Philosophers, and the St. Francis of the Castelfranco picture. The full-lipped, small, quietly closed but expressive mouths of the figures are such as distinguish Giorgione’s other unquestioned works and show a master’s touch. The draperies massed in grand, simple style, broken only by folds that truly show the quality of the stuff or its arrangement—that are not merely put in out of pure fancy—are like those that characterise the Castelfranco Madonna and the Three Philosophers. There is no refuting the judgment passed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle. This is a true Giorgione and in certain ways the finest of them all.

I have refrained from comparing it with the Dresden Venus for the reason that this discovery of Morelli’s has been, though I believe on insufficient grounds, disputed, and some critics question whether the Venus is not a work of Titian. The evidence with which Morelli maintained the Giorgionesque origin of the work is very convincing, but there is a quality of the work upon which he did not lay sufficient stress. I refer to the lack of sensuousness in the figure. It is the lack of this mundane quality, the abstractness of the figure, that renders it ideal, which allies this work with the finest Greek sculpture, with figures of the Periclean epoch. The nude female figure is thought of not from a sexual standpoint, but from that of pure beauty of form. To represent such feeling was unlike Titian even in the most earnestly ideal of his youthful days. His work in almost every case has a glow of passion; Giorgione’s, on the contrary, suggests loveliness that deserves the deepest admiration, but does not suggest actual human life and action. The two ideals are the poles asunder. Titian’s is that of the man, Giorgione’s that of the woman. As Coleridge said, “Man loves the woman, but woman loves the love of the man,” and when one looks at Titian’s Venuses or his other female figures, one is inevitably more vigorously self-conscious and one’s attention is more indissolubly bound to the body than when one’s eyes rest on the statuesque beauties of the Castelfranco painter’s imaginings.

The method by which these effects are depicted is unmistakable and clear. In Titian’s figures of nude women the glance of the eye is often distinctly and sharply focussed in the eye of the beholder, and the action of the figure is motived by the presence of the beholder. The painted image is the corollary of the being that looks upon her. It is not so in Giorgione’s work. His Venus is self-contained, self-centred and thoughtless of the outer world. The eyes (cf. the Giovanelli picture) do not strongly draw yours to themselves, and the action does not imply a realisation of the presence of any interested gazer. For exactly these reasons, plain simple reasons, but of deepest import, the Venus of Praxiteles is of inestimably greater worth than that later impersonation of female vigour and physical delight, the Venus de’ Medici. And in similar manner Giorgione proves himself a man and an artist who attained to the adequate presentation of an ideal of beauty of the female figure far more elevated and uplifting than that held by his more famous contemporary Titian. The Venus may, as Morelli said, be safely considered as a true Giorgione.

The case is not so clear, though I believe it is not less unquestionable, when we consider the Epiphany[52] of the National Gallery (Plate LXIII). The criticism passed by Crowe and Cavalcaselle on this picture and the Shepherd’s Offering in the Beaumont Collection is, so far as it goes, sound. They say of these pictures “that the style coincides with that which historians attribute to Giorgione; that most of the characteristics which predominate recur in canvases registered by the oldest authorities as those of Barbarelli; and that the landscapes in every case resemble each other and recall the country of Castelfranco.” There is much more proof, however, that can be adduced to show that only Giorgione could have painted these works. But first the attribution of them both to Catena[53] must be shown to be groundless.

A word, however, in regard to logical reasoning about pictures, the lack of which constitutes a great weakness in Morelli and some of his followers, may perhaps be deemed not inappropriate here. Circumstantial evidence is at best only partially conclusive. Morelli did some brilliant work by its means in correcting the names under which many pictures had masqueraded. Such work must, it is self-evident, be founded on the signed works of the masters or on works whose authorship is proved by literary evidence of the strongest character. But he and his followers seem to forget that others may refuse adherence to the belief in one or more of these attributions and yet not be utterly foolish. Many minds are convinced by evidence which to other equally capable and well-trained intelligences does not carry the force of conviction, or may even seem to be based on a misapprehension of fundamental facts. Grant, however, that a given attribution of an unsigned work seems reasonable, still there are in most such cases parts of it that are to a certain extent dissimilar to the certified works of the master to whom it is attributed—otherwise it would never have been falsely named.

Were this not true, how had doubt ever arisen in men’s minds as to who wrote the Rhesus, or when the Apollo Belvedere was made? Suppose now that in studying a picture and attributing it to an artist one finds a second or a third or a fourth picture that seems to be by the same painter. One sees that each has certain points in common with the signed works and others common only to the unsigned work which was the first of our new attributions. To deduce from the similarity which any two of the unsigned works bear to each other in their _differences_ from the signed works of the author to whom it is desired to attribute them, that they must be by this author, is an absolutely illogical and unreasonable method of argument. One can ‘prove’ anything in this way, which could without difficulty enable one to show that the Two Loves of the Borghese Gallery was painted by Perugino. All that is needed is a sufficiently large list of works each differing slightly from Perugino’s true masterpieces. It is but another form of the old game of turning one word into another by adding and subtracting syllables. Thus one turns _drama_ into _odious_: drama, melodrama, melodious, odious.

Unfortunately Morelli did not realise the weakness of this system. Had he done so, he would never have attributed to Catena the Epiphany of the National Gallery, and his followers would not consider the same artist as the painter of the Benson Holy Family and the Beaumont Shepherd’s Offering.[54] I do not mean to imply that he would have considered Giorgione as their author, but, it is only by strained and extravagant reasoning that they can be claimed for Catena. They bear no resemblance in either composition, colour or idea to any of the unquestioned works by this second-rate pupil of Bellini, the imitator, _par excellence_, of the work of his greater contemporaries.

So far as a careful analysis enables one to make out from the context of the whole passage in which Morelli speaks of these works,[55] he seems to have convinced himself that Catena was the painter of the Epiphany because of the similarities that exist between it and the Knight adoring the Infant Christ and the St. Jerome in his Study in the same Gallery. The first thing to notice is that the likeness which the Epiphany bears to the St. Jerome is almost entirely imaginary. The chief difference between the two works is that the Epiphany is not only painted in a very different manner technically, but it is much less laboured. It shows vastly greater facility of draughtsmanship; the execution is very much more easy; the colour is fuller and purer; the chiaroscuro is more varied, and, finally, it is much more imaginatively conceived. It gives one, in fact, the impression of being by a master, whereas the St. Jerome seems nothing more either in imagination or in technique than the work of a careful, serious, arid-minded student.

The St. Jerome in fact may well be by Catena, for these are the qualities with which we know he was endowed. The similarity between the Epiphany and the Knight adoring the Infant Christ is greater, but still not very great.[56] But here too we must remember that the attribution of the Knight to Catena is based not so much even on good circumstantial evidence as on the fairly unanimous belief among those capable of judging what certain phases of Catena’s changing style probably resembled. But the points wherein the Epiphany surpassed the St. Jerome are just those in which it shows greater mastery than is exhibited in the Knight. The same stiffness and awkwardness of drawing mark the Knight as by an artist of much less capacity than him of the Epiphany.

So too does the clumsy, empty composition. The small-featured faces, the lack of appearance of real substance in the bodies, the dull and uninteresting chiaroscuro, the laboured technique are characteristic of Catena, but not one of them shows in the Epiphany. Catena may well have painted the beast like a hobby horse which the Knight’s page holds, but it was an abler hand than his which drew the horses from which the Magi have dismounted. The crinkly, crushed draperies in the Knight are similar to Catena’s work, but there is nothing like them in the Epiphany, where the glowing coloured garments are cast in simpler and grander and at the same time more natural lines. Can any one really imagine that the same man painted the dull, hard, conventional head of St. Joseph in the Knight and the much more thoughtful and original face of the same figure in the Epiphany? or how can any one believe that the same artist designed heads of such different shape, eyes and noses and mouths so unlike in the one and the other work; hands in the Knight so like turtles’ feet, and so vigorous and human in the Epiphany? It is surely improbable, and Crowe and Cavalcaselle were right when they recognised a great difference between the two works and saw in the smaller, richer one the hand of Giorgione. The reasoner who is calm and unpolemically minded must agree with them.

The next picture for us to consider is the Beaumont Shepherd’s Offering which Crowe and Cavalcaselle give to Giorgione, but which is by Berenson and others considered a Catena.[57] If the Epiphany were a Catena, then the Shepherd’s Offering would be also, for not only the treatment and colour as a whole, but the details, more particularly the group of the Holy Family, is distinctly alike in both. The same reasons that show that it is impossible that Catena ever painted the Epiphany apply with even greater force to the Shepherd’s Offering. Both pictures are utterly unlike Catena’s work in all essential points, all those, that is to say, which are the expression of character. Certain Giorgionesque qualities show more strongly in the Shepherd’s Offering than in the smaller work. I will not analyse the details of form, substantiality of masses and richness of colour, for every unprejudiced eye will see that they are the same in each of these two works as they are in the unquestioned works by Giorgione. But there is a quality more difficult to analyse and to express in fixed terms, that stamps the Shepherd’s Offering not only as a work by Giorgione, but as a very characteristic expression of his genius. I refer to the impression given by the quietness of the scene, by the slight vagueness of it all, and to the colour and chiaroscuro that remind one of an evening landscape (Plate LXIV). All these points taken together make the scene seem mysterious and dreamlike.

Now, clearly enough, this romantic quality occurs to a greater or less extent in all the unquestioned Giorgiones. It is the deep religious ardour of Bellini turned to a broader field. It is the sharp focussed passion of Titian transmuted into an abiding love for all things beautiful. In the Giovanelli Landscape (Plate LXV) you see it in the strange combination of soldier and nude woman under the lightning-riven skies and the trees heavy and white with the storm. In the Three Philosophers you see it in the contrast of the three men of different ages and the quiet forest where they sit with the city in the distance that seems to be asleep (Plate LXVI). In the Virgin of Castelfranco you see it in the throne placed in the open meadows peopled by visionlike figures, in the deeply impressive silence and contrast of the monk and warrior, and in the still blue sea lapping the templed shores beyond. You see it in the Venus,—not any one woman so much as the presentation of everlasting feminine beauty—sleeping under the open sky across which roll great summer clouds rising from the distant sea. It is present almost invariably in his work and forms the chief richness of the Beaumont picture, in which the strangely silent group under the trees, the empty shepherd’s hut beyond and the deep distance of rolling, castelled hills and meadows, golden in the light of the low sun, is like a vision that one sees in those rare moments when one’s eyes pierce the husk of this world and we seem for one treasured instant to have passed the borders and be wandering in El Dorado.

In none of Catena’s authentic works does he attain to such a height of imaginative presentation of daily phenomena. He could appreciate it, as is shown by his attempt in the Knight to paint in the manner of Giorgione, but that picture alone would be sufficient to show his incapacity to attain the goal at which he aimed. Nor is this feeling which we derive from Giorgione’s works imaginary and based on preconceived ideas. It is distinctly due to certain indubitable facts. No one questions the mystery and inexpressible beauty of the light of early dawn or evening, and it is this rather than the full, hard, mid-day glare that is the light of all Giorgione’s pictures. Nor is there doubt of the impressiveness of gloom, be it of forest or of storm, and such mystery as this was dear to the hill-born artist. Nor, further, can one hesitate to admit the visionary, mirage-like appearance of vigorous action that takes place in silence and of which the anatomical details are suppressed. Such is the action of Giorgione’s figures. They are plainly deeply interested in the scene of which they form part, but their faces (even in the Judgment of Solomon at Kingston Lacy) show their interest rather by the eyes than by the lips. They look, but do not speak. Like Greek Gods they act, but with terrible great silence.

And so, too, though the bodies of his figures are full of life and action, yet they rarely show the tense and emphasised muscles appropriate to such action, but appear rather, having acted, to be now at rest. A similar peculiarity is to be observed in the draperies which, just as I have tried to show in regard to the figure of the Venus, are of the same nature as the best Greek work. They are completely motived, that is, by the bodies beneath them. They are a positive component part of the figure, not merely an accidental addition, and they rest and move with it. Thus, as the bodies seem to be resting after motion, so the draperies seem to be also. They show none of the little, trifling, momentary folds that express actual motion, but merely those larger, more essential lines and masses that are truly expressive of the vitality and movement of the figures, whose beauty they enhance, so far as such life and activity can be expressed by woven stuffs.

Let us turn now to Catena, his Sta. Caterina, or his Virgin Enthroned, in Venice, and we see draperies that are in large measure as merely studio studies of cloth as any to which Albert Dürer ever attached hands and feet and a head and called it a human being. The folds do not carry out the action of the figure, but crinkle and ripple and break in meaningless profusion from shoulder to ankle. Giorgione was a richly imaginative, deeply thoughtful genius, and such a personality as this is indelibly stamped in the Epiphany, the Shepherd’s Offering, and the Benson Holy Family. Catena was a fashionable plagiarist and moderately successful imitator of the manner of his master Bellini and of his great contemporaries; such a character as his is completely foreign to the spirit of these three pictures.

The Holy Family,[58] one of the many treasures of Mr. Benson’s collection, is also given by Berenson, and by others, to Catena. The Virgin and Joseph are, as one sees at first sight, the same figures as in the two preceding works. I will not unfold the argument again. The picture is to be attributed to Giorgione for the same reasons that show the two other pictures to be his. One proof may be added to those adduced before, and this is the pebbly surface of the ground. The same treatment is to be seen in the Judgment of Solomon, and the Trial of Moses, in the Uffizi, in the Three Philosophers, in the Giovanelli Landscape; and in this last picture the painting of the brick work below the column is the same as that of the building beside which the Holy Family are seated in Mr. Benson’s picture. Catena could as easily have painted Bellini’s Loredano as this head of St. Joseph, as fine a head in its grandeur of mould and simple earnestness of expression as was ever given to this too often maligned Saint. It is a Giorgione, and a fine one.

The picture of Christ carrying the Cross in the Church of San Rocco in Venice is by Morelli[59] said to be “gewiss ein ganz frühes Werk” of Titian. Considering that he does not give a single proof of this assertion, we may be forgiven if we fail to see the _Gewissheit_ of the attribution. It is true that Vasari was not sure whether Giorgione or Titian was the author, but tradition, as can be traced by guide books, certainly leads us to consider the former as the author. The condition of the picture is such that it gives one no help in solving the problem, but so far as the drawing of details goes we meet no contradiction of the traditional authorship. The shape of the head of the Christ and the drawing of the eyes and brow are met with in the certain works. In believing this ruined picture to be by our master, I am following the opinion held by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and in more recent days by Berenson.

The difficulties that are met in trying to discover a decisive proof of the origin of the Knight of Malta are similar to those which confuse the argument about the ‘Christ’ of San Rocco. The picture has been so maltreated that there is little left to study but the shadow of the original. A magnificent original it must have been, one of those rare works, commoner in Venice than elsewhere, that truly make the corporal substance conform to the nature of the hidden soul, so that one thinks not so much of the person shown to us as of his manner of thought and life. There is much about the portrait that makes its attribution to any one but Giorgione next to impossible, and nothing, I believe, that throws any doubt in the way of our considering him the author. He was capable of such a portrait, and in its earlier days it was unquestionably worthy of him. This is, of course, the usual opinion, though Crowe and Cavalcaselle felt that the repainting had so altered the work as to destroy its character.

The Head of Christ bearing the Cross, formerly in Vicenza, and now, fortunately for our country, in Boston, is another of the works the authorship of which cannot be absolutely proved, but of which the character is so marked that there is little or no diversity of opinion about it.[60] It is one of the pictures that Crowe and Cavalcaselle thought worthy of Giorgione, and which since their day Morelli and others have not hesitated to regard as his. Still strongly tinged with the influence of Bellini, it contains the promise of a freer, broader treatment of religious subjects than even Bellini had attained, and shows us unquestionably the young Giorgione. The hand and eye of Bellini guide him as he works, but his own genius cannot be utterly suppressed, and he adds to his master’s style something that marks the picture, when it leaves his easel, as the true expression of a great genius and not as that of a merely facile and unoriginal pupil (Plate LXVII).

Closely connected with the Madonna of Castelfranco is the study for the figure of San Liberale in the National Gallery. It is true that such studies by the fifteenth-century Italian masters are extremely uncommon, but the differences between this study and the large picture are such as we can hardly imagine being introduced by a copyist, and the painting, considered solely from the technical point of view, is so masterly that we are, I believe, justified in considering the figure as the product of Giorgione’s brush.

Of the six pictures (Pitti, Concert, and Nymph with Satyr; Louvre, Fête Champêtre, and Madonna and Saints; Hampton Court, Shepherd; Madrid, Madonna with Sta. Brigida) which, though traditionally ascribed to Giorgione, Crowe and Cavalcaselle refused to consider as his, the Madonna and Sta. Brigida and the Madonna and Saints in the Louvre are now less often thought of in connection with his name.[61]

Of the Madonna and Saints in the Louvre it is interesting to note that even a century ago there were those who judged the work at its true value. It is of this work, I believe, that J. B. P. Lebrun[62] says: (p. 71) “Attribué au Giorgion. Un Concert de figures vues à mi-crops et de grandeur naturelle, très-mauvais ouvrage dans le genre de cette école, d’environ 4 pieds et demi de hauteur, sur 6 de largeur, sur toile. Je tairai ce qu’en dit Lalande. Vient de Milan, bibliothèque Ambrosienne.”

Concerning the four other pictures there is considerable diversity of opinion. The Head of a Boy at Hampton Court is thought by Morelli to be an original Giorgione, but as the light was bad when he saw the work, he is not sure. Berenson, however, does not doubt the genuineness of the picture. Considering the fact that the head is a copy of the Vienna David, we may very seriously question whether it is by Giorgione. One can scarcely suppose that he would have repeated his pictures and made the head of his David answer for a Shepherd. Morelli was right in recognising the Giorgionesque spirit of the work, but it is only a copy of the head of the original David, with certain details altered.

The Nymph and Satyr[63] in the Pitti, which used to be called a Giorgione and which Crowe and Cavalcaselle thought to be by some imitator of him and of Titian, bears now, I believe, the name of Dosso Dossi. Morelli considered it a youthful work of Giorgione, though it certainly shows few signs of youth, and the Giorgionesque details which he enumerates are exactly those which an imitator would easily acquire. The idea and the energetic freedom of composition are more like the work of men who came after Giorgione, and the colouring is unlike his. We have no reason to believe that he ever painted subjects embodying just such trivially sensual and commonplace ideas, and as there is no marked and characteristic likeness in the figures to any of his known works, it is safer to consider it the product of a would-be imitator, such as we know Dosso Dossi to have been.

To decide the question of the Concert in the Pitti is by no means easy. Crowe and Cavalcaselle felt sure it could not be by Giorgione, or else that “he did not execute what we are fond of attributing to him,” for it seemed to them more advanced and to surpass his true works. Morelli, too, did not regard Giorgione as the author, but the youthful Titian,[64] and to this Berenson agrees. The interrelation of the complex sensations expressed in the deeply moved but quiet faces is certainly more like the work of the painter of the Two Loves than that of him of the Three Philosophers. The likeness, too, of the middle figure in the Concert to the Man with the Glove in the Louvre—a likeness found not only in the expression of the two heads, but also in the wonderfully wrought modelling of them—is most noticeable. How the same artist can have accomplished so dull and stupid a face as the one to the left is a question only to be answered by the vandals who have repainted and thereby ruined this very splendid work. It certainly does remind one of Giorgione, but so does the Two Loves. Titian we know well was, in his early days, much influenced by his fellow-worker, but we know also that he became the more accomplished artist of the two and attained a power of technique and of representation of facial expression beyond that of his too early dead contemporary. As just such an artist is shown us in the Concert, one can but agree with Morelli in regarding it as the work of Titian—as one of his finest, for he rarely reached such mastery of subtle expression as shown in the central figure.

I come now to the discussion of a picture so well known that I feel scarcely justified in doing more than simply express my opinion of it, but the picture is so important that I must be excused for arguing about it in close detail. It is the Fête Champêtre in the Louvre; a picture which almost every one unhesitatingly attributes to Giorgione, but which I cannot believe to be by him and think can have been painted only some years after his death. As in regard to other true or false Giorgiones, the opinion held by Crowe and Cavalcaselle is worthy of more attention than later writers have seen fit to give it. What the former say about the picture is this:

“We cannot say that Giorgione would not have painted such a scene; but, as far as we know, he would have treated it with more nobleness of sentiment, without defects of form or neglect of nature’s finenesses, without the pasty surface and sombre glow of tone which here is all pervading: he would have given more brightness and variety to his landscape.”

They were surely not far wrong when they suggested some imitator of Sebastiano del Piombo as the painter. There is certainly a Giorgionesque quality in the scene, but that only means that the painter puts before our eyes the varied and mingled charms of green fields enlivened with the faint murmur of shepherds tending their distant flocks, of woods and rivers, and of strong men and lovely women making music beside a fountain overhung by trees. It used to be the fashion[65] to call every portrait of a dark-eyed man with long abundant locks by Giorgione’s name, and those who believed in such things also thought that he was the only painter of Fêtes Champêtres.

We may freely concede that Giorgione did do much to introduce and skilfully display a class of subjects that had been little cared for until this day. But he was not the only artist to feel the charm of such scenes. Sedate Bellini himself showed in such a picture as the Bacchanal in Alnwick Castle that he too felt them, and rapidly they became more and more common. But in the earlier years of this development such scenes were generally given on a small scale or else were intended to illustrate, even though in many cases the clue is lost to us, some more distinct and concisely expressable idea than mere Arcadian life among the trees. It is not alone the emptiness of thought that forces us to decide upon some later author than Giorgione for this work. Forms of details, manner of design and method of painting, all are different from his certain works.

The first thing that strikes the attention is that the soft, dull drawing of the figures, and the clumsy, baggy modelling of the women, is unlike anything found in any of the undoubted Giorgiones.[66] Compare the delicate shape and clear drawing of the figures in the Uffizi panels, or the Venus or the Gypsy, with these heavy, ill-proportioned, clumsily posed figures, and then say if you think Giorgione could have sunk so low. Or, if you will seek proof in fingers and toes, hands and feet, where in Giorgione’s work are such a shapeless leathery ear, so thick-lipped a mouth, so short-toed and thick a foot, or such spidery hands to be found? Nowhere. Look at the landscape. The trees are much more massy and less flat and feathery, their surface is more broken by flickering spots of light, they show, in fact, a more advanced stage in the rendering of the appearance of Nature, than is shown in Giorgione’s work.

It is instructive to notice, too, the way that the grass is painted in the foreground, the thick mat of it, and the long bright blades and tufts. Giorgione never reached such realism as that, as you can see by the primitive way in which he seeks to render the effect in the picture of the Gypsy. Consider further the treatment of the sunlight as it floats over the hillsides and glows among the trees. In the Castelfranco Madonna, in the Three Philosophers, in the Gypsy, in the Beaumont Shepherd’s Offering, large, smooth, unbroken surfaces of light and shade, seeming almost more like some woven stuff than rough earth, are contrasted, but here all is broken, enriched perhaps, but less simple and less telling.

In and out by the river and over the hill, Nature’s wrinkles are embossed by the soft light, and nowhere is there restful certainty of sun or shadow. In among the trees behind the shepherd, the hot, misty light that one sees only in the forest is radiant with summer colour and seems to murmur with the voice of the woods. Such effects were unknown to Giorgione, but they were not unknown to Titian, for he was the first great landscapist, and in the Vierge au Lapin and the other Virgin seated under the trees, which used to hang opposite in the Long Gallery of the Louvre, we see exactly these technical peculiarities and these effects of nature done with the sure stroke of the master. Not only has the author of the Fête Champêtre followed Titian in these ways, but his thick pasty colour is taken from him. Not a stroke of this picture displays original talent, there is not one that resembles Giorgione, not one that does not betray the skilful imitator of ideas and manner of other well-known men, chiefly of Titian.

But to make assurance doubly sure, something remains to be pointed out that even if all the rest could be accommodated to what we know of Giorgione, would render it incredible that he should be the author. Morelli and others have noted the curious similarity between the two musicians and certain figures in one of Titian’s frescoes in Padua. One cannot say that Titian would not have taken hints from Giorgione, but he was scarcely the man to need any one’s suggestions, especially if it was in the shape of such commonplace figures as these. There are those, however, who think he did. But now let me add that the two women bear the most striking and unquestionable likeness to the two women in Tintoretto’s (?) Rescue in Dresden, though they have lost the purity of Tintoretto’s figures. Surely no one will maintain that this at best only fanciful and pretty, but in no way striking, Fête Champêtre was the source of inspiration to the two greatest Venetian painters in their days of prime and finished power? It is impossible. The idea must be given up, and though there is no denying the charm of the musicians under the trees, let us cast the scales from our eyes and recognise its complete dissimilarity to the work of the Master of Castelfranco, and that it is merely a perfectly charming _pasticcio_.

I have now discussed the pictures spoken of by Crowe and Cavalcaselle, and there are left for us to consider those to which Morelli first drew marked attention. Such are the Madonna with Sts. Antony and Roch in Madrid, Daphne and Apollo in Venice, Three Ages of Man in the Uffizi, Birth of Paris and Portrait of a Man in Buda-Pesth, Portrait of a Woman in the Borghese Gallery, Portrait of a Youth in Berlin, Allegory in Dresden, and Judith in St. Petersburg. I have already spoken of the Venus, Nymph and Satyr, and the Shepherd at Hampton Court.

The Madonna in Madrid has generally been called by the name of Pordenone, while Crowe and Cavalcaselle thought it by Francesco Vecelli. It is certainly not a Giorgione, but a mere _pasticcio_ like the Fête Champêtre. We cannot be blamed for asking some more decisive evidence of its Giorgionesque origin than Morelli gives before we agree with him. He satisfies himself with saying[67] “Doch ich muss gestehen, dass es für mich keine geringe Freude war, bei meinem Besuche von Madrid dieses Wunderwerk venetianischer Malerkunst sogleich als Schöpfung unsers Giorgione erkannt zu haben.”

This, on the surface, is too rapid and absolute a statement to be admitted without question, and as there are excellent reasons why Giorgione could not have painted the work, we may confidently strike it from the list. The composition in the main is borrowed from the picture at Castelfranco. Giorgione was hardly the man to repeat his own works. The heavy, thick, coarse painting is absolutely different from Giorgione’s work. The clumsy draperies show none of his fine feeling. The thick-set figures of the Saints do not exhibit his elegance and refinement of form. The infant, more like a Hercules than a Christ, is quite unlike his poetic and dreamy-looking children. The manner in which the foot of St. Roch is raised is awkward and unmeaning, while the fat hands, thick ears and coarse features bear no resemblance to Giorgione’s work. The work is not only crude, it is unintelligent. The wall behind the Virgin cannot be explained, the chiaroscuro is harsh, the attitude of St. Anthony, turning as he does from the main group, is senseless, and the flowers are scattered about in a childish way. It is based on Giorgione’s work, but must have been painted by an inferior artist many years after his death.

The Daphne and Apollo in Venice has been injured by repainting and by having lost the left-hand end, but one can easily see that it will take much more than a mere assertion by Morelli[68] to convince anyone that Giorgione painted it. Crowe and Cavalcaselle think the painter was probably Andrea Schiavoni. If it was not Schiavoni, it was someone of an almost precisely similar nature and talent. The generally loose drawing and painting remind one of him. The bad drawing and perspective, the proportions and shapes of the figures (note the chunky Apollo drawing his bow and the head of the woman in the middle distance), the clawlike hands and clumsy feet, and the stupid confusion of scale in which the figures are drawn, all show without any possibility of question, that neither Giorgione nor any other artist of the first rank painted the picture.

There are in Padua two other cassone pictures representing the fables of Myrrha and of Erysichthon as told by Ovid in the “Metamorphoses” (VIII fab. 7 and X fab. 9). They are Giorgionesque in feeling, but are plainly derived from the woodcuts in the 1497 Venice edition of Ovid (Cf. Justi, _Giorgione_ p. 191 f). It is possible that these are two of the pictures referred to by Ridolfi (see above, No. 19).

Of the Three Ages it is perhaps sufficient to say that Morelli’s attribution has not found general acceptance.

The Allegory in Dresden in times gone by has been and by some still is considered, as Morelli thought, a copy of a work by Giorgione. There is, I believe, no real evidence in favour of this theory, which seems to me to depend solely on personal feeling.

The Judith in St. Petersburg, where it goes by the name of Moretto, presents a more difficult problem. Morelli, though he seems to have had no doubt that Giorgione was the painter, was not sure whether the picture was a copy or not. That it is a copy is Berenson’s opinion.[69] The lack of modelling and the bad drawing of parts are the reasons why Berenson and others think it a copy, and Berenson finds a trace of copyist’s work in the fact that the head is better done than the rest of the figure. Personally, I do not recognise this superiority of the head, and considering the numerous faults which he points out, I do not understand his last sentence: “En somme, la _Judith_ de l’Ermitage me parait une bonne copie, mais après tout, ce n’est qu’une copie.” If one believes these numerous faults to be due to the copyist, I should say that they proved it to be a pretty poor copy. Study of the work itself will, however, convince anyone that it is not a copy, but the original picture, and the artist can be no other than Giorgione. The panel on which it was painted was originally broader on the right side.[70] The uncertain drawing is what one would expect to find in an early work. The drapery is not so simple as usual in its folds, and at first sight the way it is drawn aside, leaving one leg bare, seems affected. But when one thinks of the bleeding head on the ground, this action is seen to be natural and the contrast of nude and draped parts is of the same unexpected and original character as one sees in the woman of the Giovanelli picture.

The fragment in Buda-Pesth which Morelli thought was part of the picture representing the Birth of Paris is, as Berenson points out in the article already referred to, only a copy, and a poor one at that. But even poor copies of lost Giorgiones are works to be carefully cherished.

Morelli also thought he knew of three portraits by Giorgione. Of these three (the Woman in the Borghese, the Man in the Buda-Pesth Gallery, and the Youth in Berlin), the first two may be seriously questioned. To my eye the Borghese portrait is by no means so strikingly Giorgionesque as Morelli considered it. While it is true that a brow here and a mouth there can be found scattered among the figures in the true Giorgiones that resemble the features of this woman, the type of face shows little likeness to Giorgione’s work. Nor does the muddy colour indicate the palette of an artist of more than mediocre ability. Who will look at Giorgione’s masterpieces and then say he thinks the same artist produced two such shapeless hands holding such a formless swab of cloth? Have we any reason to think Giorgione had so poor an understanding of perspective as to be unable to draw correctly the line of the parting of the hair? Such sloping shoulders were never natural and the fashion of drawing them so is not characteristic of Giorgione’s work. Could not Giorgione paint better drapery, or would he ever have been satisfied with such a shoelace-like ribbon round the waist? Finally, were such gauze caps known in Giorgione’s day? It is the purest fancy that discovers a shadow of greatness in this dull work. Drawing, colour, design, all proclaim it the product of a commonplace artist. The work is unlike Giorgione’s in every particular except the shape of the brow.

Morelli’s judgment about the portrait in Buda-Pesth is a perfectly sound one. It occurs only in the English translation and not in the original German.[71] “The picture,” he says, “has suffered much, and the master is not to be recognised in the technical qualities of the painting, but the whole feeling ... and the conception seem to point to Giorgione. The impression which it made upon me ten years ago was that of a thoroughly Giorgionesque work, but one executed by a later hand rather than by the master himself. Competent critics who have examined the picture in the meantime insist, however, that it is a true original by Giorgione. I must leave the final decision of the point to others.” Unfortunately it is next to impossible to arrive at final decisions in such matters. For one, I believe that Morelli’s idea, that the work was executed by a follower of Giorgione, is borne out by its main characteristics, particularly by the self-conscious pose of the head, and by the gesture of the hand—both much like what is found in portraits by the men of the generation after Giorgione.

Then, too, the cold ashen colour is very unlike Giorgione’s palette, but I would not lay great weight on this fact as the picture has been much repainted. The picture is of further interest because it shows the fallacy of one of Morelli’s most firm statements. In the Introduction[72] to his chapters on the Borghese Gallery he says: “Ich erlaube mir bei dieser Gelegenheit sogar zu bemerken, dass die den _grossen Meistern_ eigenthümliche _Grundform_ der Hand und des Ohres nicht nur auf ihren Bildern, sondern selbst auf den von ihnen nach dem Leben gemalten Porträts sich vorfindet.” With these words in one’s mind one looks at the Buda-Pesth portrait and finds neither hand, ear, eye, nose or mouth exhibiting the _Grundform_ shown in the unquestioned pictures. Morelli was carried away by his theories in this point, for while every one will readily admit that many cases, especially among the works of the primitive and early masters, can be found to fit his rule, yet the numberless exceptions to this rule, particularly among the fully developed masters, make it quite plain that, at best, its application requires to be strictly limited.[73]

The Portrait of a Youth at Berlin is the last of the Morellian Giorgiones to be studied. As was too often the case, Morelli speaks off-hand of this work as “ein glänzendes Porträt des Giorgione,” as though it was so manifestly by him that he was absolved from the labour of adducing proof; but the matter is not so simple. It is surely enough Giorgionesque, but do the details bear out the general impression so strongly as to make the attribution beyond all reasonable doubt? Not one of the master’s certain works shows a head like this. It is sharper and harder than anything of his except the Uffizi panels, but between these, sharp and hard as they seem to have been, and the Berlin portrait, there is an important and essential difference. The figures on the panels are not only hard, they are stiff; that is, they show one of the chief characteristics of youthful work.[74] If now the portrait be by Giorgione, it is self-evidently an early work. That is, there are among his undoubted works some that show vastly greater ease than this. But this portrait does not show any stiffness.

The attitude is easy, and the painting, particularly of the drapery, is distinctly free, one might even say sketchy. The work shows, perhaps, not so much the characteristics of a young artist of great power as those of one who has attained some facility but not the complete and all-round ease of the greatest masters. Then what do the letters V. V. mean, painted on the shelf behind which the figure stands? Is it not possible they are the initial letters of the artist’s name? Can they stand for an as yet unknown imitator, another _Vincentius Venezianus_? As Morelli said of the Portrait in Buda-Pesth, “I must leave the final decision of the point to others”—others better qualified than myself. Whoever the artist, the picture is a splendid one, and may well be regarded as showing the Giorgione point of view in portraiture, which, however, is a very different matter from being a work by him.

I have already had occasion to refer to an article by Berenson in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ in which he speaks of pictures he considers as copies of lost Giorgiones. These are:

The David in Vienna.
The Judith in St. Petersburg.
The Birth of Paris in Buda-Pesth.
Orpheus and Eurydice, a cassone at Bergamo.
Portrait of a Man, formerly in the Doetsch collection.
Portrait of a Lady, belonging to Signor Crespi at Milan.

Of the first three I have already spoken. To maintain his thesis about the Orpheus and Eurydice, Berenson mentions only vague sentiments such as “Qui donc, autre que lui, a su traduire, comme nous le voyons ici, un mythe grec dans l’esprit de la Renaissance?” We might reply that Bellini, Titian, Tintoret, to mention merely Venetians, all showed a rather marked ability to do this very thing, so it was not a personal peculiarity of Giorgione. “Qui donc, autre que lui, avait le don de fondre le paysage et les figures dans une aussi charmante harmonie?” Again the ability to do this was possessed by many artists, and so vague a phrase as _aussi charmante_ proves nothing whatever. Continuing, he finds many details which betray very certainly the work of Cariani (an undoubted imitator of Giorgione), and decides that the work is a copy by Cariani of a lost Giorgione. But when much is admittedly unlike Giorgione and everything suits Cariani, why not consider Cariani the artist? Apparently because “si nous étions nous-même des artistes très doués, nous pourrions remplacer chaque détail _carianesque_ par un détail _giorgionesque_, emprunté aux œuvres du maître les plus voisines.” This has no force. We might as well “remplacer chaque détail _carianesque_ par un détail _michelangelesque_,” and what would be shown thereby? Nothing.

The reasons given for believing the Portrait from the Doetsch collection[75] to be a copy of a Giorgione are quite as vague and undefinable as those for the Orpheus and Eurydice. The consideration of details is no more convincing than the sentiments and fanciful writing that precede. “Si l’auteur de l’original en question n’était pas Giorgione, ce devrait être quelque imitateur servile du maître, comme Licinio ou Beccaruzzi. Mais ces peintres de second ordre ne pouvaient qu’imiter et non créer, et le portrait de la collection Doetsch est bien une création,” and yet he has just said that this portrait “est le même type que celui du jeune homme de Buda-Pesth,”—the picture mentioned by Morelli. Berenson’s definition of ‘création’ must differ from that ordinarily employed; and Licinio at his best was not so uncreative as Berenson would have us believe. He gives one, however, further surprises in asserting that this portrait agrees in all details with the one in Berlin! Not only the same head and brow, but “le même sentiment dans la bouche!”

Even were this all so, and I cannot see that it is in the least, what would be proved? To compare one doubtful work to another of a similar nature does not, as I have said above, prove the authorship of either. Furthermore, though one can find strong likenesses to the Berlin head in the true works by Giorgione, in these same works one cannot find any likeness whatever to the Doetsch portrait. To compare this overemphasised portrait, this person who seems half brigand and half Shylock, to the sad, poetical-looking man at Buda-Pesth, or to the clean, vigorous, manly youth in Berlin, is going pretty far, and the limit is plainly over-stepped in the endeavour to attach to the picture a value it does not possess by giving to it the name of one of the greatest artists.

For the painter of the Crespi Portrait of a Lady we shall do better to look in the direction of Titian than Giorgione. The owner, Signor Crespi, believes, according to Berenson, that Titian was the author, and certainly the likeness which the figure bears to other women by Titian, and the initials T. V. make it difficult to admit any other origin. Neither ecstasies nor comparisons serve to show any likeness to Giorgione’s work.

Of all the portraits attributed to Giorgione the finest by far is the one owned by the Hon. Edward Wood of Temple Newsam. Attention was first drawn to this by Cook and his attribution has been accepted by every one. It is a masterpiece of the greatest beauty (Plate LXVIII).

We have now reviewed the most important criticisms that have been passed on Giorgione’s work; and though it is only too evident that as yet there is no really sound common standard by which to govern our judgments, we can come very near to forming one if we accept the more sober part of the work of these criticisms and disregard their more extravagant and hypothetical attributions.[76] The following list, I venture to think, embraces works differing much less among themselves in regard to style than the lists of the critics that I have discussed.

1. Vienna—David (copy).

2. Venice—Fondaco dei Tedeschi (fragment still visible, but compare
Zanetti’s engraving).

3. Venice—Chiesa di San Rocco, Christ carrying the Cross (much
damaged).

4. Venice, Giovanelli Palace, Soldier and Woman, known as The
Tempest.

5. Castelfranco, Madonna Enthroned.

6. Dresden, Venus.

7. Kingston Lacy, Judgment of Solomon (unfinished).

8. Vienna, Three Philosophers.

9. Buda-Pesth, Birth of Paris (fragment of a copy).

10. Florence, Uffizi, Judgment of Solomon.

11. Florence, Uffizi, Fire-test of Moses.

12. Florence, Uffizi, Knight of Malta.

13. Boston, Mass., Mrs. Gardner’s Collection (formerly Vicenza),
Head of Christ.

14. London, National Gallery, Study for the San Liberale of the
Castelfranco picture.

15. London, National Gallery, Epiphany.

16. London, Mr. Benson, Holy Family.

17. London, Lord Allandale, Shepherd’s Offering.

18. Temple Newsam, Hon. Mr. Wood. Portrait of a Man.

19. St. Petersburg, Judith.

20. Berlin, Portrait of a Youth (?).