Giorgione | Page 5

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, 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