That he felt dissatisfied with this portion of
the work, the drawing at Windsor plainly shows, for the figures appear
here in a different position, as if he had tried to recast his scheme.
Some may object that the drawing of the shepherd is atrocious, and that
the figures are of disproportionate sizes. Such failings, they say,
cannot be laid to a great master's charge. This is an appeal to the old
argument that it is not _good_ enough, whereas the true test lies in the
question, Is it _characteristic_? Of Giorgione it certainly is a
characteristic to treat each figure in a composition more or less by
itself; he isolates them, and this conception is often emphasised by an
outward disparity of size. The relative disproportion of the figures in
the Castelfranco altar-piece, and of those of Aeneas and Evander in the
Vienna picture can hardly be denied, yet no one has ever pleaded this as
a bar to their authenticity. Instances of this want of cohesion, both in
conception and execution, between the various figures in a scene could
be multiplied in Giorgione's work, no more striking instance being found
than in the great undertaking he left unfinished--the large "Judgment of
Solomon," next to be discussed. Moreover, eccentricities of drawing are
not uncommon in his work, as a reference to the "Adrastus and
Hypsipyle," and later works, like the "Fete Champetre" (of the Louvre),
will show.
I have no hesitation, therefore, in recognising this "Adoration of the
Shepherds" as a genuine work of Giorgione, and, moreover, it appears to
be the masterpiece of that early period when Bellini's influence was
still strong upon him.
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