lin by
Luzzi da Feltre.[52] But like though they be in type, in quality the
heads in the "Three Ages" are immensely superior to those in the Berlin
picture. The same models may well have served Giorgione and his friend
and pupil Luzzi, or, as he is generally called, Morto da Feltre. A
recent study of the few authenticated works by this feeble artist still
at Feltre, his native place, forces me to dissent from the opinion that
the Pitti "Three Ages" is the work of his hand.[53] Still less do I
hold with the view that Lotto is the author.[54] Here, again, I believe
Morelli saw further than other critics, and that his attribution is the
right one. The simplicity, the apparently unstudied grouping, the
refinement of type, the powerful expression, are worthy of the master;
the play of light on the faces, especially on that of the youth, is most
characteristic, and the peculiar chord of colour reveals a sense of
originality such as no imitator would command. Unless I am mistaken, the
man on the right is none other than the Aeneas in the Vienna picture,
and his hand with the pointing forefinger is such as we see two or three
times over in the "Judgment of Solomon" and elsewhere. Certainly here it
is awkwardly introduced, obviously to bring the figure into direct
relation with the others; but Giorgione is by no means always supreme
master of natural expression, as the hands in the "Adrastus and
Hypsipyle" and Vienna pictures clearly show.

Here, for the first time, we meet Giorgione in those studies of human
nature which are commonly called "conversation pieces," or
"concerts"--natural groups of generally three people knit together by
some common bond, which is usually music in one form or another. It is
not the idyll of the "Pastoral Symphony," but akin to it as an
expression of some exquisite moment of thought or feeling, an ideal
instant "in which, arrested thus, we seem to be spectators of all the
fulness of existence, and which is like some consummate extract or
quintessence of life."[55] No one before Giorgione's time had painted
such ideas, such poems without articulated story; and to have reached
this stage of development presupposes a familiarity with set subjects
such as a classic myth or mediaeval romance would offer for treatment.
And so this "Three Ages" dates from his later years.

[Illustration: _Anderson photo. Pitti Gallery, Florence_

NYMPH AND SATYR]

Another picture in the Pitti was also recognised by Mo