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Such, then, very briefly, are the facts of Giorgione's life recorded by the older biographers, or known by contemporary documents. Now let us turn to his artistic remains, the disjecta membra, out of which we may reconstruct something of the man himself; for, to those who can interpret it aright, a man's work is his best autobiography.

This is especially true in the case of an artist of Giorgione's temperament, for his expression is so peculiarly personal, so highly charged with individuality, that every product of mental activity becomes a revelation of the man himself. People like Giorgione must express themselves in certain ways, and these ways are therefore characteristic. Some people regard a work of art as something external; a great artist, they say, can vary his productions at will, he can paint in any style he chooses. But the exact contrary is the truth. The greater the artist, the less he can divest himself of his own personality; his work may vary in degree of excellence, but not in kind. The real reason, therefore, why it is impossible for certain pictures to be by Giorgione is, not that they are not good enough for him, but that they are not characteristic. I insist on this point, because in the matter of genuineness the touchstone of authenticity is so often to be looked for in an answer to the question: Is this or that characteristic? The personal equation is the all-important factor to be recognised; it is the connecting link which often unites apparently diverse phenomena, and explains what would otherwise appear to be irreconcilable.

There is an intimate relation then between the artist and his work, and, rightly interpreted, the latter can tell us much about the former.

Let us turn to Giorgione's work. Here we are brought face to face with an initial difficulty, the great difficulty, in fact, which has stood so much in the way of a more comprehensive understanding of the master, I mean, that scarcely anything of his work is authenticated. Three pictures alone have never been called in question by contending critics; outside this inner ring is more or less debatable ground, and on this wider arena the battle has raged until scarcely a shred of the painter's work has emerged unscathed. The result has been to reduce the figure of Giorgione to a shadowy myth, whose very existence, at the present rate at which negative criticism progresses, will assuredly be called in question.

If Bacon wrote Shakespeare, then Giorgione can be divided up between a dozen Venetian artists, who "painted Giorgione." Fortunately three pictures survive which refuse to be fitted in anywhere else except under "Giorgione." This is the irreducible minimum, ο αναγκαιοτατος Giorgione, with which we must start.

Of the three universally accepted pictures, first and foremost comes the Castelfranco altar-piece, according to Mr. Ruskin "one of the two most perfect pictures in existence; alone in the world as an imaginative representation of Christianity, with a monk and a soldier on either side … "^[11] This great picture was painted before 1504, when the artist was only twenty-seven years of age,^[12] a fact which clearly proves that his genius must have developed early. For not even a Giorgione can produce such a masterpiece without a long antecedent course of training and accomplishment. This is not the place to inquire into the nature and character of the works which lead up to this altar-piece, for a chronological survey ought to follow, not precede, an examination of all available material; it is important, nevertheless, to bear in mind that quite ten years had been passed in active work ere Giorgione produced this masterpiece.

If no other evidence were forthcoming as to the sort of man the painter was, this one production of his would for ever stamp him as a person of exquisite feeling. There is a reserve, almost a reticence, in the way the subject is presented, which indicates a refined mind. An atmosphere of serenity pervades the scene, which conveys a sense of personal tranquillity and calm. The figures are absorbed in their own thoughts; they stand isolated apart, as though the painter wishes to intensify the mood of dreamy abstraction. Nothing disquieting disturbs the scene, which is one of profound reverie. All this points to Giorgione being a man of moods, as we say; a lyric poet, whose expression is highly charged with personal feeling, who appeals to the imagination rather than to the intellect. And so, as we might expect, landscape plays an important part in the composition; it heightens the pictorial effect, not merely by providing a picturesque background, but by enhancing the mood of serenity and solemn calm. Giorgione uses it as an instrument of expression, blending nature and human nature into happy unison. The effect of the early morning sun rising over the distant sea is of indescribable charm, and invests the scene with a poetic glamour which, as Morelli truly remarks, awakens devotional feelings. What must have been the effect when it was first painted! for even five modern restorations, under which the original work has been buried, have not succeeded in destroying the hallowing charm. To enjoy similar effects we must turn to the central Italian painters, to Perugino and Raphael; certainly in Venetian art of pre-Giorgionesque times the like cannot be found, and herein Giorgione is an innovator. Bellini, indeed, before him had studied nature and introduced landscape backgrounds into his pictures, but more for picturesqueness of setting than as an integral part of the whole; they are far less suggestive of the mood appropriate to the moment, less calculated to stir the imagination than to please the eye. Nowhere, in short, in Venetian art up to this date is a lyrical treatment of the conventional altar-piece so fully realised as in the Castelfranco Madonna.

Technically, Giorgione proclaims himself no less an innovator. The composition is on the lines of a perfect equilateral triangle, a scheme which Bellini and the older Venetian artists never adopted.^[13] So simple a scheme required naturally large and spacious treatment; flat surfaces would be in place, and the draperies cast in ample folds. Dignity of bearing, and majestic sweep of dress are appropriately introduced; the colour is rich and harmonious, the preponderance of various shades of green having a soothing effect on the eye. The golden glow which doubtless once suffused the whole, has, alas! disappeared under cruel restorations, and flatness of tone has inevitably resulted, but we may still admire the play of light on horizontal surfaces, and the chiaroscuro giving solidity and relief to the figures.

An interesting link with Bellini is seen in the S. Francis, for the figure is borrowed from that master's altar-piece of S. Giobbe (now in the Venice Academy). Bellini's S. Francis had been painted seventeen or eighteen years before, and now we find Giorgione having recourse to the older master for a pictorial motive. But, as though to assert his independence, he has created in the S. Liberale a type of youthful beauty and manliness which in turn became the prototype of subsequent knightly figures. Palma Vecchio, Mareschalco, and Pennacchi all borrowed it for their own use, a proof that Giorgione's altar-piece acquired an early celebrity.^[14]

Exquisite feeling is equally conspicuous in the other two works universally ascribed to Giorgione. These are the "Adrastus and Hypsipyle," in the collection of Prince Giovanelli, in Venice, and the "Aeneas, Evander, and Pallas," in the gallery at Vienna.^[15]

"The Giovanelli Figures," or "The Stormy Landscape, with the Soldier and the Gipsy," as the picture has been commonly called since the days of the Anonimo, who so described it in 1530, is totally unlike anything that Venetian art of the pre-Giorgionesque era has to show. The painted myth is a new departure, the creation of Giorgione's own brain, and as such, is treated in a wholly unconventional manner. His peculiarly poetical nature here finds full scope for display, his delicacy, his refinement, his sensitiveness to the beauties of the outside world, find fitting channels through which to express themselves. With what a spirit of romance Giorgione has invested his picture! So exquisitely personal is the mood, that the subject itself has taken his biographers nearly four centuries to decipher! For the artist, it must be noted, does not attempt to illustrate a passage of an ancient writer; very probably, nay, almost certainly, he had never read the Thebaid of Statius, whence comes the story of Adrastus and Hypsipyle; the subject would have been suggested to him by some friend, a student of the Classics, and Giorgione thereupon dressed the old Greek myth in Venetian garb, just as Statius had done in the Latin.^[16] The story is known to us only at second hand, and we are at liberty to choose Giorgione's version in preference to that of the Roman poet; each is an independent translation of a common original, and certainly Giorgione's is not the less poetical. He has created a painted lyric which is not an illustration of, but a parallel presentation to the written poem of Statius.

Technically, the workmanship points to an earlier period than the Castelfranco Madonna, and there is an exuberance of fancy which points to a youthful origin. The figures are of slight and graceful build, the composition easy and unstudied, with a tendency to adopt a triangular arrangement in the grouping, the apex being formed by the storm scene, to which the eye thus naturally reverts. The figures and the landscape are brought into close relation by this subtle scheme, and the picture becomes, not figures with landscape background, but landscape with figures.

The reproduction unduly exaggerates the contrasts of light and shade, and conveys little of the mellowness and richness of atmospheric effect which characterise the original. Unlike the brilliance of colouring in the Castelfranco picture, dark reds, browns, and greens here give a sombre tone which is accentuated by the dullness of surface due to old varnishes.

"The Three Philosophers," or "The Chaldean Sages," as the picture at Vienna has long been strangely named, shows the artist again treating a classical story in his own fantastic way. Virgil has enshrined in verse the legend of the arrival of the Trojan Aeneas in Italy,^[17] and Giorgione depicts the moment when Evander, the aged seer-king, and his son Pallas point out to the wanderer the site of the future Capitol. Again we find the same poetical presentation, not representation, of a legendary subject, again the same feeling for the beauties of nature. How Giorgione has revelled in the glories of the setting sun, the long shadows of the evening twilight, the tall-stemmed trees, the moss-grown rock! The figures are but a pretext, we feel, for an idyllic scene, where the story is subordinated to the expression of sensuous charm.

This work was seen by the Anonimo in 1525, in the house of Taddeo Contarini at Venice. It was then believed to have been completed by Sebastiano del Piombo, Giorgione's pupil. If so—and there is no valid reason to doubt the statement—Giorgione left unfinished a picture on which he was at work some years before his death, for the style clearly indicates that the artist had not yet reached the maturity of his later period. The figures still recall those of Bellini, the modelling is close and careful, the forms compact, and reminiscent of the quattrocento. It is noticeable that the type of the Pallas is identical with that of S. John Baptist in Sebastiano's early altar-piece in S. Giovanni Crisostomo at Venice, but it would be unwise to dramatise on the share (if any) which the pupil had in completing the work of his master. The credit of invention must indubitably rest with Giorgione, but the damage which the picture has sustained through neglect and repainting in years gone by, renders certainty of discrimination between the two hands a matter of impossibility.

The colouring is rich and varied; the orange horizon, the distant blue hill, and the pale, clear evening light, with violet-tinted clouds, give a wonderful depth behind the dark tree-trunks. The effect of the delicate leaves and feathery trees at the edge of the rock, relieved against the pale sky, is superb. A spirit of solemnity broods over the scene, fit feeling at so eventful a moment in the history of the past.

The composition, which looks so unstudied, is really arranged on the usual triangular basis. The group of figures on the right is balanced on the left by the great rock—the future Capitol—(which is thus brought prominently into notice), and the landscape background again forms the apex. The added depth and feeling for space shows how Giorgione had learnt to compose in three dimensions, the technical advance over the "Adrastus and Hypsipyle" indicating a period subsequent to that picture, though probably anterior to the Castelfranco altar-piece.

We have now taken the three universally accepted Giorgiones; how are we to proceed in our investigations? The simplest course will be to take the pictures acknowledged by those modern writers who have devoted most study to the question, and examine them in the light of the results to which we have attained. Those writers are Crowe and Cavalcaselle, who published their account of Giorgione in 1871, and Morelli, who wrote in 1877. Now it is notorious that the results at which these critics arrived are often widely divergent, but a great deal too much has been made of the differences and not enough of the points of agreement.