_School of Giorgione_ (Venetian: 16th Century). _See 269._
Another picture of the golden age (_cf._ 1123) such as Giorgione,
we are told, loved to paint,--"men and women enjoying the golden
tranquillity; here is seen the haughty lion, there the humble lamb;
in another part we behold the swift flying hart, with many other
terrestrial animals." The picture before us precisely agrees with this
general description, but the particular subject of it is unknown.[234]
A child, it would seem, is being initiated into some order of the
golden age--he is being dedicated, perhaps, to a life of song, for the
stately personage on the throne wears the poet's crown of wild olive,
whilst the young man on the steps below him lightly touches a lute,
and has books by his side. The page bears a rich dish of fruits and
herbs, for the golden age is vegetarian; whilst fawns and a leopard,
with a peacock and other birds, attend the court of the king of song.
When in the Bohn Collection, this picture was ascribed to Giorgione.
For some interesting remarks on its possible authorship and subject,
see the _Times_, December 22, 1885, where resemblances in this picture
to pictures of Carpaccio and Pordenone, as well as of Giorgione,
are pointed out. Sir Edward Poynter says that the picture "has
considerable affinity with the two pictures attributed to Giorgione
in the Uffizzi Gallery at Florence, but is weaker in execution and
effect, especially in the landscape" (_The National Gallery_, i. 26).
"True," says Mr. Herbert Cook, "the landscape has been renovated;
true, the Giorgionesque depth and richness is gone, the mellow glow
of the 'Epiphany' (1160) is sadly wanting; but who can deny the charm
of the picturesque scenery, which vividly recalls the landscape
background elsewhere in the master's own work? who can fail to admire
the natural and unstudied grouping of the figures, the artlessness of
the whole, the loving simplicity with which the painter has done his
work? Sincerity and naïveté are too apparent for this to be the work
of any but a quite young artist, and one whose style is so thoroughly
'Giorgionesque' as to be none other than the young Giorgione himself.
In my opinion, this is one of his earliest essays into the region of
romance, painted probably before his twenty-first year" (_Giorgione_,
p. 92).