f beauty in colour and form, in
nature as in man, had a less finely attuned artistic temperament than
Giorgione, Titian, or Lotto. Morelli has called attention to that
element of downright energy in his mountain nature which in a way
counteracts the marked sensuousness of his art, save when he interprets
the charms of the full-blown Venetian woman. The great Milanese critic
attributes this to the Bergamasque origin of the artist, showing itself
beneath Venetian training. Is it not possible that a little of this
frank unquestioning sensuousness on the one hand, of this _terre a
terre_ energy on the other, may have been reflected in the early work of
Titian, though it be conceded that he influenced far more than he was
influenced?[6] There is undoubtedly in his personal development of the
Giorgionesque a superadded element of something much nearer to the
everyday world than is to be found in the work of his prototype, and
this not easily definable element is peculiar also to Palma's art, in
which, indeed, it endures to the end. Thus there is a singular
resemblance between the type of his fairly fashioned Eve in the
important _Adam and Eve_ of his earlier time in the Brunswick
Gallery--once, like so many other things, attributed to Giorgione--and
the preferred type of youthful female loveliness as it is to be found in
Titian's _Three Ages_ at Bridgewater House, in his so-called _Sacred and
Profane Love (Medea and Venus)_ of the Borghese Gallery, in such sacred
pieces as the _Madonna and Child with SS. Ulfo and Brigida_ at the Prado
Gallery of Madrid, and the large _Madonna and Child with four Saints_ at
Dresden. In both instances we have the Giorgionesque conception stripped
of a little of its poetic glamour, but retaining unabashed its splendid
sensuousness, which is thus made the more markedly to stand out. We
notice, too, in Titian's works belonging to this particular group
another characteristic which may be styled Palmesque, if only because
Palma indulged in it in a great number of his Sacred Conversations and
similar pieces. This is the contrasting of the rich brown skin, the
muscular form, of some male saint, or it may be some shepherd of the
uplands, with the dazzling fairness, set off with hair of pale or ruddy
gold, of a female saint, or a fair Venetian doing duty as a shepherdess
or a heroine of antiquity. Are we to look upon such distinguishing
characteristics as these--and others that could easily be singled
ou