of assistants and
pupils to hand on his teaching, and disseminate his style.

Productiveness must then have been a feature of his art, and as so few
pictures have as yet come to be accepted as genuine, the majority must
have perished or been lost to sight for the time. That much yet remains
hidden away in private possession I am fully persuaded, especially in
England and in Italy, and one day we may yet find the originals of the
several old copies after Giorgione which I enumerate elsewhere.[76] In
some cases I believe I have been fortunate enough to detect actually
missing originals, and occasionally restore to Giorgione pieces that
parade under Titian's name. Much, however, yet remains to be done, and
the research work now being systematically conducted in the Venetian
archives by Dr. Gustav Ludwig and Signor Pietro Paoletti may yield rich
results in the discovery of documents relating to the master himself,
which may help us to identify his productions, and possibly confirm some
of the conjectures I venture to make in the following chapters.[77]

But before proceeding to examine other pictures which I am persuaded
really emanate from Giorgione himself, let us attempt to place in
approximate chronological order the twenty-six works already accepted as
genuine, for, once their sequence is established, we shall the more
readily detect the lacunae in the artist's evolution, and so the more
easily recognise any missing transitional pieces which may yet exist.

The earliest stage in Giorgione's career is naturally marked by
adherence to the teaching and example of his immediate predecessors.
However precocious he may have been, however free from academic
training, however independent of the tradition of the schools, he
nevertheless clearly betrays an artistic dependence, above all, on
Giovanni Bellini. The "Christ bearing the Cross" and the two little
pictures in the Uffizi are direct evidence of this, and these,
therefore, must be placed quite early in his career. We should not be
far wrong in dating them 1493-5. Carpaccio's influence is also apparent,
as we have already noticed, and through this channel Giorgione's art
connects with the more archaic style of Gentile Bellini, Giovanni's
elder brother. Thus in him are united the quattrocentist tradition and
the fresher ideals of the cinquecento, which found earliest expression
in Giambellini's Allegories of about 1486-90. The poetic element in
these works strongly appeal