And this brings us to the question: What was Giorgione's
relation to that great awakening of the human spirit which we call the
Renaissance? Mr. Berenson answers the question thus: "His pictures are
the perfect reflex of the Renaissance at its height."[141] If this be
taken to mean that Giorgione _anticipated_ the aspirations and ideals of
the riper Renaissance, I think we may acquiesce in the phrase; but that
the onward movement of this great revival coincided only with the
artist's years, and culminated at his death, is not historically
correct. The wave had not reached its highest point by the year 1510,
and Titian was yet to rise to a fuller and grander expression of the
human soul. But Giorgione may rightly be called the Herald of the
Renaissance, not only by virtue of the position he holds in Venetian
painting, but by priority of appearance on the wider horizon of Italian
Art.
Let us take the four great representative exponents of Italian Art at
its best, Raphael, Correggio, Leonardo, and Michel Angelo.
Chronologically, Giorgione precedes Raphael and Correggio, though
Leonardo and Michel Angelo were born before him.[142] But had either of
the latter proclaimed a new order of things as early as 1495? Michel
Angelo was just twenty years old, and he had not yet carved his "Pieta"
for S. Peter's. Leonardo, a man of forty-three, had not completed his
"Cenacolo," and the "Mona Lisa" would not be created for another five or
six years.
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