Earlier painters than Giorgione[77] had essayed these pastoral themes. Botticelli, Signorelli; in a sardonic way, Piero di Cosimo; Giovanni Bellini and even Andrea Mantegna had variously attempted this sort of painted poesy. But the flavor of the Giorgionesque poesy is fuller and richer. His beauty is that of languor, revery, dream. Whatever the ostensible theme may be, his painting is Arcadian. His people have not merely no relation to our world, but slight and ambiguous relations to each other within the picture. They are isolated in their own musings, rarely look at each other, never suggest an action, but only a mood. Even the portraits suggest rather temperament than character or will. The proud youth, at Berlin, Figure 249, withdraws himself from purpose and deed. It is an early Giorgione. The Shepherd with a Flute, at Hampton Court, is bemused with his own fancy. It is of the later years. The fastidious patrician, at New York, reveals an almost worried and sickly detachment. If indeed a Giorgione, which I cannot doubt, it is of his latest manner. [Illustration: FIG. 251. Giorgione. Fire Ordeal of Infant Moses.—_Uffizi._ ] [Illustration: FIG. 252. Giorgione. “Soldier and Gipsy.”—_Giovanelli Palace._ ] Take the little Carpaccian idyls at Florence which cannot be much later than 1500. How far we are from real narrative! In the Ordeal of Moses, Figure 251, a child is thrusting his tender fingers among live coals. Ladies and gentlemen stand languidly about and bask in the pleasantness of their own thoughts. There is a similar nonchalance in the Judgment of Solomon where a newborn babe is threatened with the sword. The horror is treated as a negligible incident of an _al fresco_ party. [Illustration: FIG. 253. Giorgione. The Three Philosophers.—_Vienna._ ]