, with his
romantic, idealizing temperament, genre[18] pictures took this form,
while he is known to have painted from Ovid and from the Italian tales
of his time. He was employed frequently to paint scenes on panels, for
the richly ornamented Venetian furniture. Giorgione was not without a
bent to realism in his very idealism, and is said to have been the first
Italian painter who 'imitated the real texture of stuffs and painted
draperies from the actual material.'

Giorgione died at the early age of thirty-three years, in 1511. One
account represents him as dying of the plague, others attribute his
death to a sadder cause. He is said to have had a friend and
fellow-painter who betrayed their friendship, and carried off the girl
whom Giorgione loved. Stung to the quick by the double falsehood, the
tradition goes on to state that Giorgione fell into despair with life
and all it held, and so died.

A portrait of Giorgione is in the Munich Gallery; it is that of a very
handsome beardless lad, 'with a peculiar melancholy in the dark glowing
eyes.'

Giorgione was, like Titian, grand and free in drawing and composition,
and superb in colour.[19] Mrs Jameson has drawn a nice distinction
between the two painters as colourists. That the colours of Giorgione
'appear as if lighted from within, and those of Titian from without;'
that 'the epithet glowing applies best to Giorgione, that of golden to
Titian.'

Giorgione's historic pictures are rare, his sacred pictures rarer still;
among the last is a 'Finding of Moses,' now in Milan, thus described by
Mrs Jameson: 'In the centre sits the princess under a tree; she looks
with surprise and tenderness on the child, which is brought to her by
one of her attendants; the squire, or seneschal, of the princess, with
knights and ladies, stand around; on one side two lovers are seated on
the grass; on the other are musicians and singers, pages with dogs. All
the figures are in the Venetian costume; the colouring is splendid, and
the grace and harmony of the whole composition is even the more
enchanting from the naivete of the conception. This picture, like many
others of the same age and style, reminds us of those poems and tales
of the middle ages, in which David and Jonathan figure as _preux
chevaliers_, and Sir Alexander of Macedon and Sir Paris of Troy fight
tournaments in honour of ladies' eyes and the "blessed Virgin." They
must be tried by their own aim and standard, not by the s