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.
[Illustration: PLATE LXVII.]
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.
[Illustration: PLATE LXVIII.]
1. Vienna—David (copy).