Giorgione | Page 5

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]

[Illustration: Anderson photo. Giovanelli Palace, Venice
ADRASTUS AND HYPSIPYLE]
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,