y
Pacchiarotto (1477-1535). This has good colour and twilight beauty,
but it does not touch one and is not too felicitously composed. Over
the door to the Venetian room is a Cosimo Rosselli with a prettily
affectionate Madonna and Child.

From this miscellaneous Tuscan room we pass to the two rooms which
contain the Venetian pictures, of which I shall say less than might
perhaps be expected, not because I do not intensely admire them but
because I feel that the chief space in a Florentine book should be
given to Florentine or Tuscan things. As a matter of fact, I find
myself when in the Uffizi continually drawn to revisit these walls. The
chief treasures are the Titians, the Giorgiones, the Mantegnas,
the Carpaccio, and the Bellini allegory. These alone would make
the Uffizi a Mecca of connoisseurs. Giorgione is to be found in his
richest perfection at the Pitti, in his one unforgettable work that
is preserved there, but here he is wonderful too, with his Cavalier
of Malta, black and golden, and the two rich scenes, Nos. 621 and
630, nominally from Scripture, but really from romantic Italy. To me
these three pictures are the jewels of the Venetian collection. To
describe them is impossible: enough to say that some glowing genius
produced them; and whatever the experts admit, personally I prefer
to consider that genius Giorgione. Giorgione, who was born in 1477
and died young--at thirty-three--was, like Titian, the pupil of
Bellini, but was greatly influenced by Leonardo da Vinci. Later he
became Titian's master. He was passionately devoted to music and to
ladies, and it was indeed from a lady that he had his early death,
for he continued to kiss her after she had taken the plague. (No bad
way to die, either; for to be in the power of an emotion that sways
one to such foolishness is surely better than to live the lukewarm
calculating lives of most of us.) Giorgione's claim to distinction
is that not only was he a glorious colourist and master of light and
shade, but may be said to have invented small genre pictures that
could be earned about and hung in this or that room at pleasure--such
pictures as many of the best Dutch painters were to bend their genius
to almost exclusively--his favourite subjects being music parties
and picnics. These Moses and Solomon pictures in the Uffizi are of
course only a pretext for gloriously coloured arrangements of people
with rich scenic backgrounds. No.621 is the finer. The way in whi