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.
[Illustration: PLATE LXIV.]
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.
[Illustration: PLATE LXV.]
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]
[Illustration: PLATE LXVI.]
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.