Ursula."[21] Common to both painters is a gaiety and love of beauty
and colour. There is also in both a freedom and ease, even a homeliness
of conception, which distinguishes their work from the pageant pictures
of Gentile Bellini, whose "Corpus Christi Procession" was produced two
or three years later, in 1496.[21] But Giorgione's art is instinct with
a lyrical fancy all his own, the story is subordinated to the mood of
the moment, and he is much more concerned with the beauty of the scene
than with its dramatic import.
The repainted condition of "The Judgment of Solomon" has led some good
judges to pronounce it a copy. It certainly lacks the delicacy that
distinguishes its companion piece, but may we not--with Crowe and
Cavalcaselle and Morelli--register it rather as a much defaced original?
So far as we have at present examined Giorgione's pictures, the trend of
thought they display has been mostly in the direction of secular
subjects. The two early examples just described show that even where the
subject is quasi-religious, the revolutionary spirit made itself felt;
but it would be perfectly natural to find the young artist also
following his master Giambellini in the painting of strictly sacred
subjects. No better example could be found than the "Christ bearing the
Cross," the small work which has recently left Italy for America. We are
told by the Anonimo that there was in his day (1525) a picture by
Bellini of this subject, and it is remarkable that four separate
versions exist to-day which, without being copies of one another, are so
closely related that the existence of a common original is a legitimate
inference.
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