Note (return) — Chapter VI

He had no school, and his love of music and society—the last taste found not seldom, an apparent anomaly, in silent, brooding natures—might tend to withdraw him from his art. He has left a trace of his love for music in his pictures of 'Concerts' and of 'Pastorals,' in which musical performances are made prominent. In Giorgione, with his romantic, idealizing temperament, genre 18 pictures took this form, while he is known to have painted from Ovid and from the Italian tales of his time. He was employed frequently to paint scenes on panels, for the richly ornamented Venetian furniture. Giorgione was not without a bent to realism in his very idealism, and is said to have been the first Italian painter who 'imitated the real texture of stuffs and painted draperies from the actual material.'