things Giorgione's art is, and must be, uneven, that
whilst at times it reaches sublime heights, at other times it attains to
a level of only average excellence.

And so the criticism which condemns a picture claiming to be Giorgione's
because "it is not _good_ enough for him," does not recognise the truth
that for all that it may be _characteristic_, and, consequently,
perfectly authentic. Modern criticism has been apt to condemn because
it has expected too much; let us not blind our eyes to the weaknesses,
even to the failures of great men, who, if they lose somewhat of the
hero in our eyes, win our sympathy and our love the more for being
human.

I have spoken of Giorgione's versatility, his precocity, and the natural
inequality of his work. There is another characteristic which commonly
exists when these qualities are found united, and that is
Productiveness. Giorgione, according to all analogy, must have produced
a mass of work. It is idle to assert, as some modern writers have done,
that at the utmost his easel pictures could have been but few, because
most of his short life was devoted to painting frescoes, which have
perished. It is true that Giorgione spent time and energy over fresco
painting, and from the very publicity of such work as the frescoes on
the Fondaco de' Tedeschi, he came to be widely known in this direction,
but it is infinitely probable that his output in other branches was
enormous. The twenty-six pictures we have already accepted, plus the
lost frescoes, cannot possibly represent the sum-total of his artistic
activities, and to say that everything else has disappeared is, as I
shall try to show, not correct. We know, moreover, from the Anonimo (who
was almost Giorgione's contemporary) that many pictures existed in his
day which cannot now be traced,[75] and if we add these and some of the
others cited by Vasari and Ridolfi (without assuming that every one was
a genuine example), it goes to prove that Giorgione did paint a good
number of easel pictures. But the evidence of the twenty-six themselves
is conclusive. They illustrate so many different phases, they stand
sometimes so widely apart, that intermediate links are necessarily
implied. Moreover, as Giorgione's influence on succeeding artists is
allowed by all writers, a considerable number of his easel pictures must
have been in circulation, from which these imitators drew inspiration,
for he certainly never kept, as Bellini did, a body