reduced almost to a name by his most recent critics.
Yet enough remains to explain why the legend grew up above the
name, why the name attached itself, in many instances, to the
bravest work of other men. The Concert in the Pitti Palace, in
which a monk, with cowl and tonsure, touches the keys of a
harpsichord, while a clerk, placed behind him, grasps the handle
of the viol, and a third, with cap and plume, seems to wait upon
the true interval for beginning to sing, is undoubtedly
Giorgione's. The outline of the lifted finger, the trace of the
plume, the very threads of the fine linen, which fasten themselves
on the memory, in the moment before they are lost altogether in
that calm unearthly glow, the skill which has caught the waves of
wandering sound, and fixed them for ever on the lips and hands--
these are indeed the master's own; and the criticism which, while
dismissing so much hitherto believed to be Giorgione's, has
established the claims of this one picture, has left it among the
most precious things in the world of art.
It is noticeable that the "distinction" of this [145] Concert, its
sustained evenness of perfection, alike in design, in execution,
and in choice of personal type, becomes for the "new Vasari" the
standard of Giorgione's genuine work. Finding here sufficient to
explain his influence, and the true seal of mastery, its authors
assign to Pellegrino da San Daniele the Holy Family in the
Louvre, in consideration of certain points where it comes short of
this standard. Such shortcoming, however, will hardly diminish
the spectator's enjoyment of a singular charm of liquid air, with
which the whole picture seems instinct, filling the eyes and lips,
the very garments, of its sacred personages, with some wind-
searched brightness and energy; of which fine air the blue peak,
clearly defined in the distance, is, as it were, the visible pledge.
Similarly, another favourite picture in the Louvre, the subject of a
delightful sonnet by a poet* whose own painted work often comes
to mind as one ponders over these precious things--the Fête
Champêtre, is assigned to an imitator of Sebastian del Piombo;
and the Tempest, in the Academy at Venice, to Paris Bordone, or
perhaps to "some advanced craftsman of the sixteenth century."
From the gallery at Dresden, the Knight embracing a Lady, where
the knight's broken gauntlets seem to mark some well-known
pause in a story we would willingly hear the rest of, is conceded
to "a Brescian hand," and Jacob meeting Rachel to [146] a pupil
of Palma. And then, whatever their charm, we are called on to
give up the Ordeal, and the Finding of Moses with its jewel-like
pools of water, perhaps to Bellini.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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