It would be presumptuous for anyone not familiar with
the picture to decide the point, but I have no hesitation in following
the judgment of two competent modern critics, both of whom have recently
visited St. Petersburg, and both of whom have decided unhesitatingly in
favour of its being an original by Giorgione. Dr. Harck has written
enthusiastically of its beauty. "Once seen," he says, "it can never be
forgotten; the same mystic charm, so characteristic of the other great
works of Giorgione, pervades it; ... it bears on the face of it the
stamp of a great master."[44] Even more decisive is the verdict of Mr.
Claude Phillips.[45] "All doubts," he says, "vanish like sun-drawn mist
in the presence of the work itself; the first glance carries with it
conviction, swift and permanent. In no extant Giorgione is the golden
glow so well preserved, in none does the mysterious glamour from which
the world has never shaken itself free, assert itself in more
irresistible fashion.... The colouring is not so much Giorgionesque as
Giorgione's own--a widely different thing.... Wonderful touches which
the imitative Giorgionesque painter would not have thought of are the
girdle, a mauve-purple now, with a sharply emphasised golden fringe, and
the sapphire-blue jewel in the brooch. Triumphs of execution, too, but
not in the broad style of Venetian art in its fullest expansion, are the
gleaming sword held in so dainty and feminine a fashion, and the flowers
which enamel the ground at the feet of the Jewish heroine.
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