t a simple Madonna and Child, and afterwards extended the scheme.
The composition of three figures, practically in a row, is moreover most
unusual, and contrary to that triangular scheme particularly favoured by
the master, whereas the lovely sweep of Madonna's dress by itself
creates a perfect design on a triangular basis. A great artist is here
revealed, one whose feeling for line is so intense that he wilfully
casts the drapery in unnatural folds in order to secure an artistic
triumph. The working out of the dress within this line has yet to be
done, the folds being merely suggested, and this task has been left
whilst forwarding other parts. The freedom of touch and thinness of
paint indicates how rapidly the artist worked. There is little
deliberation apparent: indeed, the effect is that of hasty
improvisation. Velasquez could not have painted the stone on which S.
Roch rests his foot with greater precision or more consummate mastery;
the delicacy of flesh tints is amazing. The bit of landscape behind S.
Roch (invisible in the reproduction), with its stately tree trunk rising
solitary beside the hanging curtain, strikes a note of romance, fit
accompaniment to the bizarre figure of the saint in his orange jerkin
and blue leggings. How mysterious, too, is S. Francis!--rapt in his own
thoughts, yet strangely human.

[Illustration: _Buda-Pesth Gallery_

COPY OF A PORTION OF GIORGIONE'S "BIRTH OF PARIS"]

We have now examined ten of the twelve pictures added, on Morelli's
initiative, to the list of genuine works, and we have found very little,
if any, serious opposition on the part of later writers to his views.
Not so, however, with regard to the remaining two pictures. The first of
these is a fragment in the gallery of Buda-Pesth, representing two
figures in a landscape. All modern critics are agreed that Morelli has
here mistaken an old copy after Giorgione for an original, a mistake we
may readily pardon in consideration of the successful identification he
has made of these figures with the Shepherds, in the composition seen
and described by the Anonimo in 1525 as the "Birth of Paris," by
Giorgione. This identification is fully confirmed by the engraving made
by Th. von Kessel for the _Theatrum Pictorium_, which shows how these
two figures are placed in the composition. Where, as in the present
case, the original is missing, even a partial copy is of great value,
for in it we can see the mind, if not the hand, of t