th what a spirit
of romance Giorgione has invested his picture! So exquisitely personal
is the mood, that the subject itself has taken his biographers nearly
four centuries to decipher! For the artist, it must be noted, does not
attempt to illustrate a passage of an ancient writer; very probably,
nay, almost certainly, he had never read the _Thebaid_ of Statius,
whence comes the story of Adrastus and Hypsipyle; the subject would have
been suggested to him by some friend, a student of the Classics, and
Giorgione thereupon dressed the old Greek myth in Venetian garb, just as
Statius had done in the Latin.[16] The story is known to us only at
second hand, and we are at liberty to choose Giorgione's version in
preference to that of the Roman poet; each is an independent translation
of a common original, and certainly Giorgione's is not the less
poetical. He has created a painted lyric which is not an illustration
of, but a parallel presentation to the written poem of Statius.

Technically, the workmanship points to an earlier period than the
Castelfranco Madonna, and there is an exuberance of fancy which points
to a youthful origin. The figures are of slight and graceful build, the
composition easy and unstudied, with a tendency to adopt a triangular
arrangement in the grouping, the apex being formed by the storm scene,
to which the eye thus naturally reverts. The figures and the landscape
are brought into close relation by this subtle scheme, and the picture
becomes, not figures with landscape background, but landscape with
figures.

The reproduction unduly exaggerates the contrasts of light and shade,
and conveys little of the mellowness and richness of atmospheric effect
which characterise the original. Unlike the brilliance of colouring in
the Castelfranco picture, dark reds, browns, and greens here give a
sombre tone which is accentuated by the dullness of surface due to old
varnishes.

[Illustration: _Hanfstaengl photo. Vienna Gallery_

AENEAS, EVANDER, AND PALLAS]

"The Three Philosophers," or "The Chaldean Sages," as the picture at
Vienna has long been strangely named, shows the artist again treating a
classical story in his own fantastic way. Virgil has enshrined in verse
the legend of the arrival of the Trojan Aeneas in Italy,[17] and
Giorgione depicts the moment when Evander, the aged seer-king, and his
son Pallas point out to the wanderer the site of the future Capitol.
Again we find the same poetical pres