GIORGIONE (continued 2)

To close this necessarily unsatisfactory part of my subject, there is the etching by H. van der Borcht which quite possibly is copied from a lost Giorgione. It represents a woman 210seated upon a dead warrior, and below the figures are the words Giorgione inv.^[80] It seems not unlikely that it preserves for us one of the frescoes long since faded from some palace wall in Venice. It is but the echo of a voice that is still, but even as such it means much.

If now my arguments, in the foregoing discussion, are based upon sound reason rather than upon theory, it results that the following are the works by which we must judge Giorgione’s genius, and that these must serve as a standard for further study of his work:

1. Vienna, David (copy).

2. Vienna, Three Philosophers.

3. Vienna, Gypsy Madonna.

4. Vienna, Portrait of a Youth (copy?).

5. Venice, Fondaco dei Tedeschi. (The engravings can be used in giving suggestions of Giorgione’s methods of composition.)

6. Venice, Chiesa di San Rocco, Christ carrying the Cross.

7. Venice, Giovanelli Palace, Soldier and Woman.

8. Venice, Correr Museum, Pietà (copy?).

9. Castelfranco, Madonna Enthroned.

10. Dresden, Venus.

11. Kingston Lacy, Judgment of Solomon.

12. Buda Pesth, Birth of Paris (copy).

13. Florence, Uffizi, Judgment of Solomon.

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

15. Florence, Uffizi, Knight of Malta.

16. Boston, Mrs. Gardner, Head of Christ.

17. London, National Gallery, Study for figure of San Liberale.

18. London, National Gallery, Epiphany.

19. London, National Gallery, David and Solomon.

20. London, Mr. Beaumont (Lord Allandale), Shepherd’s Offering.

21. London, Mr. Benson, Holy Family.

22. St. Petersburg, Hermitage, Judith.

At first sight it may seem that there is more variety of style in these pictures than the works of any one artist would 211show, especially one who died young. There are, however, certain general considerations to be clearly remembered. Giorgione was born and grew up in a time of great discovery, when long-established thoughts and habits were rapidly changing, so that we should commit a serious error were we to expect him to paint the same subjects, or in the same manner, as his predecessors. His works would necessarily be different from theirs. He would naturally show greater variety and, owing to his youth, his style would not have become fixed. What is certain is that his contemporaries regarded him with the greatest admiration, so the best way to fit ourselves to judge him is to study the life of Venice in his day.

It is not much that is left us of the great man’s life work, but it suffices to show what he was, not only as a painter, but as a man; and why his influence was so great on his contemporaries, and why so long as the human heart stays young his spirit will continue to call loudly to it. That he was a perfect colourist, that is to say, that he understood how to juxtapose the rich oriental colours of the Venetian palette in such wise that each tint emphasised the effect of all the others, or that as a draughtsman he could adequately portray the images in his brain, does not explain the effect he has on those who care for him. These are merely technical qualities that are not difficult to acquire, and that many a man has possessed.

It is the spirit of Giorgione’s work that makes him what he is. He spoke in the simplest, broadest way to the deeper side of our nature. Not so imbued with the ceremonies of religion as his master Bellini, nor so given over to the full-blooded joy in the beauties of this world as his comrade Titian, 212he recognised that fanaticism or sensuality are equally spiritual death, and that the whole and perfect soul must be tempered in the fires of the heart, and cooled in the breezes of Nature. No such loveable Madonna had been painted as she of Castelfranco,—no purer presentation exists of the compelling beauty of the human figure than his Venus. Unabashed “he held both hands before the fire of life,” not warming first one and then the other, but with true poetic feeling combining every beauty that he perceived in one harmonious song.

Always steadily reaching for the same goal, this even-poised master did not one day paint such exalted figures as Bellini’s Virgin and Companion Saints in the Frari, and on another such heathen festivities as the same master’s Bacchanal. But, as he loved music and pleasant company and such pleasantnesses of life, so in his painting he shows us grace and harmony and good breeding. And as these things are hard to find in our daily course and harder still to fix long enough to paint their semblance, he fashioned for himself a world, an Arcadia, where men and women, surrounded by beautiful Nature, lived together, enjoying a life where there was both work and play. In all temperate reason they employ their energies now on problems of deep thought, and now in the satisfaction of health and natural bodily enjoyment, and it is just because of the reasonableness of this balance of mind and body that his pictures seem poetic, dreamlike and difficult to explain. As Keats, more than any scientist or idle dreamer, tells how the nightingale entrances the soul, so Giorgione depicts the Virgin and her Child guarded by attendant Saints, or adored by kings and slaves, with greater 213persuasiveness than any theologian. But he does this neither as one diverted only by the pageantry, nor as an historian. Endowed with a poet’s instinct, he saw the deeper meaning of the scene and depicted those parts that truly illustrate it.

Other artists there have been endowed with this same instinct, but their works do not obtain from us of to-day as full response as from our forefathers who lived when they were painted, and this because they do not give visual form to matters of lasting import, but to those fleeting affairs that constitute fashion. This is not so of Giorgione. The glory of his work will never fade, for his appeal is to the spirit of youth—that spirit which is compounded of a pure and natural love in all things beautiful, be they physical or spiritual, natural or divine, and with energy sufficient to urge it forward to the acquisition of, and the becoming part of, each and all of these various perfections. Such was Giorgione: neither utterly pagan, nor completely christian, but absolutely human in the finest sense, in that his perceptions were clear enough to see the special value of all things beautiful and his technical powers adequate to give due expression to that which he perceived.

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