Palma Vecchio[81] is a more considerable figure. Born at Serinalta amid the Bergamesque hills, in 1480, we find him at Venice, by 1505 among the pupils of Giovanni Bellini. Like the rest, he is touched by Giogione’s poetry, but on the whole he merely intensifies and refines upon simpler methods. He follows Titian in the conversation piece, and does many Arcadian Holy Families which are beautifully lighted, radiantly colored and felt with a warmth and simplicity that just misses sentimentality. Among the best is the Adoration of the Shepherds, Figure 278, in the Louvre. With Titian, he loves women of generous build and he sets off their impressive charms by careful posing, employing all the new devices of counterpoise. One may see him at his grandest in the altar-piece of St. Barbara, Figure 279, painted after 1561. The saint is worthy to be the patroness of artillerymen. She holds her martyr’s palm like a field marshal’s baton, she is imperiously confident and yet gentle—a lovely Amazon of the Christian pantheon. [Illustration: FIG. 279. Palma Vecchio.—_S.M. Formosa._ ] In the Arcadian nude Palma has delicacy and refinement of workmanship, but the mood is obvious. For him beauty is literally skin deep, and he gives himself to the impossible competition of paint with nature’s nacreous shades and ineffable carnations. But he so nearly succeeds that just as a painter of lovely surfaces no Venetian painter quite equalled him, not even Titian, and with this single talent Palma almost made himself a great portraitist. Indeed if painting surfaces were all of portraiture, he would be the greatest portraitist of the Renaissance. But his big, blond models lose condition in his hands. Charming as is such a group as the Three Graces at Dresden, or the dozen or more single portraits of men and women, they lack the last quality of distinction. He tries to gain it by adopting rather overtly the pathos and wistfulness of Giorgione, but it doesn’t suit his exquisitely groomed cavaliers nor yet their even more exquisitely groomed and most ample light o’loves. Indeed, despite a handful of superb portraits, Palma has ever the air rather of a consummate beauty doctor than that of a great artist. However that be, his influence was widespread throughout Northern Italy, and especially around his native Bergamo. He died in 1528, leaving a Veronese pupil, Bonifazio, to complete his unfinished canvases and to carry on to the middle of the century his brilliant and gentle style. Within his narrow range Palma is admirable, never uneasy, never below himself. In his unperturbed Arcadianism and even in his harmless sentimentalism, in his delicacy and robustness, he seems more Venetian than the Venetians themselves.