latante de sante et de magnificence,
energique, debordante, pleine d'une chaude sympathie, source de vie et
de joie pour tous ceux qui l'entourent, et cependant reflechie,
penetrante, un peu ironique bien qu'indulgente."

Could a better description be given to fit the character of Caterina
Cornaro, as she is known to us in history? How little likely, moreover,
that tradition should have dubbed this homely person the ex-Queen of
Cyprus had it not been the truth!

Now, if my contention is correct, chronology determines a further point.
Caterina died in 1510, so that this likeness of her (which is clearly
taken from life) must have been done in or before the first decade of
the sixteenth century.[98] This excludes Licinio and Schiavone (both of
whom have been suggested as the artist), for the latter was not even
born, and the former--whose earliest known picture is dated 1520--must
have been far too young in 1510 to have already achieved so splendid a
result. Palma is likewise excluded, so that we are driven to choose
between Titian and Giorgione, the only two Venetian artists capable of
such a masterpiece before 1510.

As to which of these two artists it is, opinions--so far as any have
been published--are divided. Yet Dr. Gronau, who claims it for Titian,
admits in the same breath that the hand is the same as that which
painted the Cobham Hall picture and the Pitti "Concert," a judgment in
which I fully concur. Dr. Bode[99] labels it "Art des Giorgione."
Finally, Mr. Berenson, with rare insight proclaimed the conception and
the spirit of the picture to be Giorgione's.[100] But he asserts that
the execution is not fine enough to be the master's own, and would rank
it--with the "Judith" at St. Petersburg--in the category of contemporary
copies after lost originals. This view is apparently based on the
dangerous maxim that where the execution of a picture is inferior to the
conception, the work is presumably a copy. But two points must be borne
in mind, the actual condition of the picture, and the character of the
artist who painted it. Mr. Berenson has himself pointed out
elsewhere[101] that Giorgione, "while always supreme in his conceptions,
did not live long enough to acquire a perfection of draughtsmanship and
chiaroscuro equally supreme, and that, consequently, there is not a
single universally accepted work of his which is absolutely free from
the reproaches of the academic pedant." Secondly, the surface of this
p