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If the repaint covering the surface were removed we should, I think, find that it is an early work by Titian." Where Morelli hesitated his followers have decided, and accordingly, in Mr. Berenson's list, in Mr. Claude Phillips' "Life of Titian," and in the latest biography on that master, published by Dr. Gronau, we find the "Concert" put down to Titian. On the other hand, Dr.
Berenson's very valuable monograph on Lotto, a most curious instance in point. A wonderful picture: a marvellous imaginative mind, with marvellous imaginative means at his command. Yet, let us ask ourselves, what is the value of the result?
The grip of reality is shown in such plates as Tourelle, Rue de la Tisseranderie, and La Pompe, Notre Dame. Here are hallucinations translated into the actual terms of art, suggesting, nevertheless, a solidity, a sharpness of definition, withal a sense of fluctuating sky, air, clouds that make you realise the justesse of Berenson's phrase tactile values.
Berenson's doctrine of "tactile values," assumes that the only character of objects which is of importance to the artist is their bulk and solidity what he calls their "volumes." Now the form in which volume is most easily apprehended is the cube; do we not measure by it and speak of the cubic contents of anything?
Berenson's phrase about "that which in art ... is so unimportant as what ... we call beauty." One might point out that the greatest artists, from Phidias to Rembrandt, have occupied themselves with illustration, and that to formulate the ideals of a race and an epoch is no mean task.
He read few books, and the chief among them was the Bible. Mr. Berenson has written an exhaustive and learned work on Lorenzo Lotto, analysing his pictures year by year, and exhuming the various painters who influenced Lotto at the different periods of his life. Mr. Berenson's book extends to nearly three hundred pages.
1895 Catalogue. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. 142, and note. Giorgione painted in fresco in the portico of this palace. Zanetti has preserved the record of a figure said to be "Diligence," in his print published in 1760. See Byron's Life and Letters, by Thomas Moore, p. 705. See Berenson's Venetian Painters, illustrated edition. Morelli, ii. 219.
Berenson's the words 'politics, 'business, and 'society, for the word 'art' and the sentences will be no less true: "... unless years devoted to the study of all schools of art have taught us also to see with our own eyes, we soon fall into the habit of moulding whatever we look at into the forms borrowed from the one art with which we are acquainted. There is our standard of artistic reality.
As to which of these two artists it is, opinions so far as any have been published are divided. Yet Dr. Gronau, who claims it for Titian, admits in the same breath that the hand is the same as that which painted the Cobham Hall picture and the Pitti "Concert," a judgment in which I fully concur. Dr. Bode labels it "Art des Giorgione." Finally, Mr. Berenson, with rare insight proclaimed the conception and the spirit of the picture to be Giorgione's. But he asserts that the execution is not fine enough to be the master's own, and would rank it with the "Judith" at St. Petersburg in the category of contemporary copies after lost originals. This view is apparently based on the dangerous maxim that where the execution of a picture is inferior to the conception, the work is presumably a copy. But two points must be borne in mind, the actual condition of the picture, and the character of the artist who painted it. Mr. Berenson has himself pointed out elsewhere that Giorgione, "while always supreme in his conceptions, did not live long enough to acquire a perfection of draughtsmanship and chiaroscuro equally supreme, and that, consequently, there is not a single universally accepted work of his which is absolutely free from the reproaches of the academic pedant." Secondly, the surface of this portrait has lost its original glow through cleaning, and has suffered other damage, which actually debarred Crowe and Cavalcaselle (who saw the picture in 1877) from pronouncing definitely upon the authorship. The eyes and flesh, they say, were daubed over, the hair was new, the colour modern. A good deal of this "restoration" has since been removed, but the present appearance of the panel bears witness to the harsh treatment suffered years ago. Nevertheless, the original work is before us, and not a copy of a lost original, and Mr. Berenson's enthusiastic praise ought to be lavished on the actual picture as it must have appeared in all its freshness and purity. "Je n'hésiterais pas," he declares, "
For many highly ingenious interpretations of Lotto's portraits and a sustained analysis of his art generally, Mr. Bernard Berenson's Lorenzo Lotto should be consulted. See also M. Emile Michel's article, "Les Portraits de Lorenzo Lotto," in the Gazette des Beaux Arts, 1896, vol. i. Life and Times of Titian, vol. i. p. 29. Die Galerien zu München und Dresden, p. 75.
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