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But it is time to protest against such needless depreciation! In spite of abrasion, in spite of the loss of glow, in spite of much that disfigures, nay disguises, the master's own touch, I feel confident that Giorgione and no other produced this beautiful picture. Surely if this be only school work, we are vainly seeking a mythical master, an ideal who never could have existed.
I shall be able to show that another instance of this double V exists on yet another portrait by Giorgione. Finally, the expressiveness of the human hand is here fully realised. This feature alone points to a later date than the "Knight of Malta," and considerably after the still earlier Berlin portrait.
He ran a hand across his forehead and looked at Titian vaguely. "What is it?" he repeated. Titian fell back a step. "That's what I came to find out," he said frankly. He was more startled than he cared to show. "What has happened, Giorgione?" His tone was gentle, as if speaking to a child, and he took him by the shoulder to lead him to a seat. For a moment the man resisted.
The consummate mastery of technique, moreover, indicates that Giorgione has here reached full maturity, so that it would be safe to place this portrait about the year 1508. This is one of those inexplicable perversions of judgment to which even the best critics are at times liable.
Like Raphael, Giorgione was precocious, but unlike him he painted in a style of his own that from the very beginning owed little to any one else. He saw beauty in his own way, and was not impelled to see it differently by coming into contact with other artists, however great. Unlike Raphael, he was not a great master of the art of composition.
"Like no other," he repeated the words with satisfaction. "They will not call it like Palma, this time nor like Giorgione, nor Signor Somebody Else." He spoke with mild irritation. His eyes travelled over the lines of glowing canvas that covered the walls. The young man's glance followed them. "No," he assented, "you have outstepped them all.... You used them but to climb on."
"Is there no portrait here of Caesar Borgia?" asked Caesar. "No. Here I have a photograph of the one by Giorgione," said Kennedy, showing a postal card. "What sort of man was he? What did he do?" Kennedy seated himself on a bench near the window and Caesar sat beside him.
You may see the influence at work in our National Gallery: Nos. 41, 270, 35, and 635 by Titian would probably have been far different but for Giorgione.
The great Italian painting had ended with the gorgeous magnificence of the Venetian school, with Giorgione and Titian and Tintoretto, and its mastery passed for a few years to Flanders, to Rubens and Vandyck; but in the painting of Spain and of the Low Countries in the later seventeenth century we find ourselves in another world.
The young man looked at him gratefully. "You take this risk for me?" he said humbly. "For you and Giorgione and for her." They sat silent. "He will never paint again," said the young man, looking up quickly with the thought. Titian shook his head. "Never again," he said slowly. The young man looked at him. "There are a dozen pictures begun," he said, "a dozen and more." "Yes."
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