yes of the learned. As if the artist would naturally expend as
much care on a trifle of this kind as on the Castelfranco altar-piece,
or the Dresden "Venus"! Yet what greater beauty of conception, what more
poetic fancy is there in the "Apollo and Daphne" (which is generally
accepted as genuine) than in this little "Orpheus and Eurydice"? Nay,
the execution, which is the point contested, appears to me every whit as
brilliant, and in preservation the latter piece has the advantage. Not a
touch but what can be paralleled in a dozen other works--the feathery
trees against the luminous sky, the glow of the horizon, the splendid
effects of light and shadow, the impressive grandeur of the wild
scenery, the small figures in mid-distance, even the cast of drapery and
shape of limbs are repeated elsewhere. Let anyone contrast the delicacy
and the glow of this little panel with several similar productions of
the Venetian school hanging in the same gallery, and the gulf that
separates Giorgione from his imitators will, I think, be apparent.

[Illustration: _Taramelli photo. Bergamo Gallery_ ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE]

In the same category must be ranked two very small panels in the Gallery
at Padua (Nos. 42 and 43), attributed with a query to Giorgione. These
are apparently fragments of some decorative series, of which the other
parts are missing. The one represents "Leda and the Swan," the other a
mythological subject, where a woman is seated holding a child, and a
man, also seated, holds flowers. The latter recalls one of the figures
in the National Gallery "Epiphany." The charm of these fragments lies in
the exquisite landscapes, which, in minuteness of finish and loving
care, Giorgione has nowhere surpassed. The gallery at Padua is thus, in
my opinion, the possessor of four genuine examples of Giorgione's skill
as a decorator, for we have already mentioned the larger _cassone_
pieces[114] (Nos. 416 and 417).

Of greater importance is the "Unknown Subject," in the National Gallery
(No. 1173), a picture which, like so many others, has recently been
taken from Giorgione, its author, and vaguely put down to his "School."
But it is time to protest against such needless depreciation!

In spite of abrasion, in spite of the loss of glow, in spite of much
that disfigures, nay disguises, the master's own touch, I feel confident
that Giorgione and no other produced this beautiful picture.[115] Surely
if this be only school work, we are vain