d more sensuous region, Giorgione, by the variety and
inventiveness of his conception, proved himself a painter of the calibre
of Titian. Sacred subjects he seems to have but rarely treated, unless
such purely idyllic pictures as the "Finding of Moses" in the Uffizzi, and
the "Meeting of Jacob and Rachel" at Dresden deserve the name. Allegories
of deep and problematic meaning, the key whereof has to be found in states
of the emotion rather than, in thoughts, delighted him. He may be said to
have invented the Venetian species of romance picture, where an episode in
a novella forms the motive of the painting.[278] Nor was he deficient in
tragic power, as the tremendous study for a Lucrece in the Uffizzi
collection sufficiently proves. In his drawings he models the form without
outline by massive distribution of light and dark. In style they are the
very opposite of Lionardo's clearly defined studies touched with the metal
point upon prepared paper. They suggest colouring, and are indeed the
designs of a great colourist, who saw things under the conditions of their
tints and tone.

Of the undisputed pictures by Giorgione, the grandest is the "Monk at the
Clavichord," in the Pitti Palace at Florence.[279] The young man has his
fingers on the keys; he is modulating in a mood of grave and sustained
emotion; his head is turned away towards an old man standing near him. On
the other side of the instrument is a boy. These two figures are but foils
and adjuncts to the musician in the middle; and the whole interest of his
face lies in its concentrated feeling--the very soul of music, as
expressed in Mr. Robert Browning's "Abt Vogler," passing through his eyes.
This power of painting the portrait of an emotion, of depicting by the
features a deep and powerful but tranquil moment of the inner life, must
have been possessed by Giorgione in an eminent degree. We find it again in
the so-called "Begruessung" of the Dresden Gallery.[280] The picture is a
large landscape, Jacob and Rachel meet and salute each other with a kiss.
But the shepherd lying beneath the shadow of a chestnut tree beside a well
has a whole Arcadia of intense yearning in the eyes of sympathy he fixes
on the lovers. Something of this faculty, it may be said in passing,
descended to Bonifazio, whose romance pictures are among the most charming
products of Venetian art, and one of whose singing women in the feast of
Dives has the Giorgionesque fulness of inner feeling.