scene; he had to produce a "set piece,"
where action and graphic representation was urgently needed. How little
to his taste! How uncongenial the task! The case is exactly paralleled
by the "Judgment of Solomon," the only other dramatic episode Giorgione
appears to have attempted, and the result in each case is the same--no
real dramatic unity, but an accidental arrangement of the figures, with
rhetorical action. The want of repose in the Christ offends, the
stageyness of the whole repels. How different when Giorgione worked _con
amore_! For it seems this composition gave him much trouble. Of this we
have a most interesting proof in an almost contemporary Venetian version
of the same subject, where the scheme has been recast. This picture
belongs to Sir Charles Turner, in London, and, so far as
intelligibleness of composition goes, may be said to be an improvement
on the Glasgow version. It is highly probable that this painting derives
from some alternative drawing for the original picture. That the Glasgow
version acquired some celebrity we have further proof in an almost exact
copy (with one more figure added on the right), which hangs in the
Bergamo Gallery under Cariani's name, a painting which, in all respects,
is utterly inferior to the original.[134]

The "Christ and the Adulteress," then, becomes for us a revelation of
the painter's nature, of his methods and aims; but, with all its
technical excellences, shall we not also frankly recognise the
limitations of his art?[135]

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