he Tempest, in the
Academy at Venice (a slighter loss, perhaps, though not without its
pleasant effect of clearing weather, towards the left, its one untouched
morsel), to Paris Bordone, or perhaps to "some advanced craftsman of the
sixteenth century." From the gallery at Dresden, the Knight embracing a
Lady, where the knight's broken gauntlets seem to mark some well-known
pause in a story we would willingly hear the rest of; is conceded to "a
Brescian hand," and Jacob meeting Rachel to a pupil of Palma; and,
whatever their charm, we are called on to give up the Ordeal and the
Finding of Moses with its jewel-like pools of water, perhaps to Bellini.

Nor has the criticism, which thus so freely diminishes the number of his
authentic works, added anything important to the well-known outline of
the life and personality of the man: only, it has fixed one or two
dates, one or two circumstances, a little more exactly. Giorgione was
born before the year 1477, and spent his childhood at Castelfranco,
where the last crags of the Venetian Alps break down romantically, with
something of parklike grace, to the plain. A natural child of the family
of the Barbarelli by a peasant-girl of Vedelago, he finds his way early
into the circle of notable persons--people of courtesy; and becomes
initiated into those differences of personal type, manner, and even of
dress, which are best understood there--that "distinction" of the
Concert of the Pitti Palace. Not far from his home lives Catherine of
Cornara, formerly Queen of Cyprus; and, up in the towers which still
remain, Tuzio Costanzo, the famous condottiere--a picturesque remnant of
medieval manners, amid a civilisation rapidly changing. Giorgione paints
their portraits; and when Tuzio's son, Matteo, dies in early youth,
adorns in his memory a chapel in the church of Castelfranco, painting on
this occasion, perhaps, the altar-piece, foremost among his authentic
works, still to be seen there, with the figure of the warrior-saint,
Liberale, of which the original little study in oil, with the delicately
gleaming, silver-grey armour, is one of the greater treasures of the
National Gallery, and in which, as in some other knightly personages
attributed to him, people have supposed the likeness of his own
presumably gracious presence. Thither, at last, he is himself brought
home from Venice, early dead, but celebrated. It happened, about his
thirty-fourth year, that in one of those parties at whic