[Illustration: _The Louvre, Paris_
MADONNA AND SAINTS]
Comparisons of detail may be noted, such as the resemblance in posture
and type of the Accuser with the S. Roch of the Madrid picture, the
figure of the Adulteress with that of the False Mother in the Kingston
Lacy picture, the pointing forefingers, the typical landscape, the cast
of the draperies, details which the reader can find often repeated
elsewhere. But it is in the treatment of the subject that the most
characteristic features are revealed. The artist was required--we know
not why--to paint this dramatic scene; he had to produce a "set piece,"
where action and graphic representation was urgently needed. How little
to his taste! How uncongenial the task! The case is exactly paralleled
by the "Judgment of Solomon," the only other dramatic episode Giorgione
appears to have attempted, and the result in each case is the same--no
real dramatic unity, but an accidental arrangement of the figures, with
rhetorical action. The want of repose in the Christ offends, the
stageyness of the whole repels. How different when Giorgione worked _con
amore_! For it seems this composition gave him much trouble. Of this we
have a most interesting proof in an almost contemporary Venetian version
of the same subject, where the scheme has been recast. This picture
belongs to Sir Charles Turner, in London, and, so far as
intelligibleness of composition goes, may be said to be an improvement
on the Glasgow version.
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