Part 15
To decide the question of the Concert in the Pitti is by no means easy. 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!”