The "Knight of Malta" is a grand magisterial figure, majestic, yet full of ardent warmth lying behind the grave, indifferent nobility. The face is bisected with shadow, in the way which Michelangelo and Andrea del Sarto affected, and the cone-shaped head with parted hair is of the type which seems particularly to have pleased the painter. To Giorgione, too, belongs the honour of having created a Venus as pure as the Aphrodite of Cnidos and as beautiful as a courtesan of Titian. [Illustration: _Giorgione._ FÊTE CHAMPÊTRE. _Louvre._ (_Photo, Alinari._)] The death of Giorgione from plague in 1511 is registered by all the oldest authorities. His body was conveyed to Castelfranco by members of the Barbarelli family and buried in the Church of San Liberale. In 1638 an epitaph was placed over his tomb by Matteo and Ercole Barbarelli. Allowing that he was hardly more than twenty when his new manner began to gain a following, he had only some twelve years in which to establish his deep and lasting influence. We divine that he was a man of strong personality, such a one as warms and stimulates his companions. Even his nickname tells us something,--Great George, the Chief, the George of Georges,--it seems to express him as a leader. And we have no lack of proof that he was admired and looked up to. His style became the only one that found favour in Venice, and the painters of the day did their best to conform to it. Few authentic examples are left from his own hand, but out of his conscious and devoted and more or less successful imitators, there grew up a school, "out of all those fascinating works, rightly or wrongly attributed to him; out of many copies from, or variations on him, by unknown or uncertain workmen, whose drawings and designs were, for various reasons, prized as his; out of the immediate impression he made upon his contemporaries and with which he continued in men's minds; out of many traditions of subject and treatment which really descend from him to our own time, and by retracing which we fill out the original image."