anyone who
understands them, for in one place there is a woman, in another a
man, in diverse attitudes, while one has the head of a lion near
him, and another an angel in the guise of a Cupid, nor can one tell
what it may all mean. There is, indeed, over the principal door,
which opens into the Merceria, a woman seated who has at her feet
the severed head of a giant, almost in the form of a Judith; she is
raising the head with her sword, and speaking with a German, who is
below her; but I have not been able to determine for what he
intended her to stand, unless, indeed, he may have meant her to
represent Germany. However, it may be seen that his figures are well
grouped, and that he was ever making progress; and there are in it
heads and parts of figures very well painted, and most vivacious in
colouring. In all that he did there he aimed at being faithful to
nature, without any imitation of another's manner; and the work is
celebrated and famous in Venice, no less for what he painted therein
than through its convenience for commerce and its utility to the
commonwealth.

He executed a picture of Christ bearing the Cross, with a Jew
dragging him along, which in time was placed in the Church of S.
Rocco, and which now, through the veneration that many feel for it,
works miracles, as all may see. He worked in various places, such as
Castelfranco, and throughout the territory of Treviso, and he made
many portraits for Italian Princes; and many of his works were sent
out of Italy, as things truly worthy to bear testimony that if
Tuscany had a superabundance of craftsmen in every age, the region
beyond, near the mountains, was not always abandoned and forgotten
by Heaven.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG MAN

(_After the painting by =Giorgione da Castelfranco=. Berlin: Kaiser
Friedrich Museum, 12A_)

_Bruckmann_]

It is related that Giorgione, at the time when Andrea Verrocchio was
making his bronze horse, fell into an argument with certain
sculptors, who maintained, since sculpture showed various attitudes
and aspects in one single figure to one walking round it, that for
this reason it surpassed painting, which only showed one side
of a figure. Giorgione was of the opinion that there could be shown
in a painted scene, without any necessity for walking round, at one
single glance, all the various aspects that a man can present in
many gestures--a thing which sculpture cannot do without a change of
position and po