The "Madonna and Saints" of the Louvre, which persistently bears Giorgione's name, in spite of modern negative criticism, is marked by a lurid splendour of colour and a certain rough grandeur of expression, well calculated to jar with any preconceived notion of Giorgionesque sobriety or reserve. Yet here, if anywhere, we get that _fuoco Giorgionesco_ of which Vasari speaks, that intensity of feeling, rendered with a vivacity and power to which the artist could only have attained in his latest days. In this splendid group there is a masculine energy, a fulness of life, and a grandeur of representation which carries _le grand style_ to its furthest limits, and if Giorgione actually completed the picture before his death, he anticipated the full splendour of the riper Renaissance. To him is certainly due the general composition, with its superb lines, its beautiful curves, its majestic and dignified postures, its charming sunset background, to him is certainly due the splendid chiaroscuro and magic colour-chord; but it becomes a question whether some of the detail was not actually finished by Giorgione's pupil, Sebastiano del Piombo.[136] The drawing, for instance, of the hands vividly suggests his help, the type of S. Joseph in the background reminds us of the figure of S. Chrysostom in Sebastiano's Venice altar-piece, while the S. Catherine recalls the Angel in Sebastiano's "Holy Family" at Naples. If this be the case, we here have another instance of the pupil finishing his master's work, and this time probably after his death, for, as already pointed out, the "Evander and Aeneas" (at Vienna) must have been left by Giorgione well-nigh complete at an earlier stage than the year of his death. That Sebastiano stood in close relation to his master, Giorgione, is evidenced not only by Vasari's statement, but by the obvious dependence of the S. Giovanni Crisostomo altar-piece at Venice on Giorgionesque models. Moreover, the "Violin Player," formerly in the Sciarra Palace, at once reminds us of the "Barberigo" portrait at Cobham, while the "Herodias with the Head of John Baptist," dated 1510, now in the collection of Mr. George Salting, shows conclusively how closely related were the two painters in the last year of Giorgione's life. Sebastiano was twenty-five years of age in 1510, and appears to have worked under Giorgione for some time before removing to Rome, which he did on, or shortly before, his master's death. His departure left Titian, his associate under Giorgione, master of the field; he, too, had a hand in finishing some of the work left incomplete in the atelier, and his privilege it became to continue the Giorgionesque tradition, and to realise in utmost perfection in after years the aspirations and ideals so brilliantly anticipated by the young genius of Castelfranco.[137] NOTES: