's
great men? Is he intellectually to be ranked with the Great Thinkers of
all time? Can he aspire to the position which Titian occupies? I fear
not Beethoven is infinitely greater than Schubert, Shakespeare than
Keats, and so, though in lesser degree, is Titian than Giorgione. I say
in lesser degree, because the young poet-painter had something of that
profound insight into human nature, something of that wide outlook on
life, something of that universal sympathy, and something of that vast
influence which distinguishes the greatest intellects of all, and this
it is which lessens the distance between him and Titian. Yet Titian is
the greater man, for he is "the highest and completest expression of his
own age."[147]

Nevertheless, in that narrower sphere of the great painters, who
proclaimed the glad tidings of Liberty when the Spirit of Man awoke from
Mediaevalism, may we not add yet a fifth voice to the four-part harmony
of Raphael, Correggio, Leonardo, and Michel Angelo, the voice of
Giorgione, the wondrous youth, "the George of Georges," who heralded the
Renaissance of which we are the heirs?

NOTES:

[138] In the Church of San Rocco, Venice, and in Mrs. Gardner's
Collection in America.

[139] Keats died at the age of twenty-five; Schubert was thirty-one;
Giorgione thirty-three.

[140] The ruined condition of the Borghese "Lady" prevents any just
appreciation of the interpretative qualities.

[141] _Venetian Painters_, p. 30.

[142] Leonardo, 1452-1519; Michel Angelo, 1475-1564; Giorgione,
1477-1510; Raphael, 1483-1520; Correggio, 1494-1534. Correggio, Raphael,
and Giorgione died at the ages of forty, thirty-seven, and thirty-three
years respectively. Those whom the gods love die young!

[143] Berenson: _Venetian Painters_, p. 29. I should prefer to
substitute "ripening" for "ripened."

[144] Fry: _Giovanni Bellini_, p. 44.

[145] In S. Giovanni Crisostomo, Venice. It dates from 1513.

[146] Mary Logan: _Guide to the Italian Pictures at Hampton Court_, p.
13.

[147] Berenson: _Venetian Painters_, p. 48.

APPENDIX I

DOCUMENTS

The following correspondence between Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of
Mantua, and her agent Albano in Venice, is reprinted from the _Archivio
Storico dell' Arte_, 1888, p. 47 (article by Sig. Alessandro Luzio):--

"Sp. Amice noster charissime; Intendemo che in le cose et heredita
de Zorzo da Castelfrancho pictore se ritrova una pictura de una
noc