the renowned _Madonna di Casa Pesaro_, painted twenty-three
years later for the family chapel in the great Church of the Frari. It
is the first in order of a great series, including the _Ariosto_ of
Cobham, the _Jeune Homme au Gant_, the _Portrait of a Man_ in the Alte
Pinakothek of Munich, and perhaps the famous _Concert_ of the Pitti,
ascribed to Giorgione. Both Crowe and Cavalcaselle and M. Georges
Lafenestre[12] have called attention to the fact that the detested
Borgia Pope died on the 18th of August 1503, and that the work cannot
well have been executed after that time. He would have been a bold man
who should have attempted to introduce the portrait of Alexander VI.
into a votive picture painted immediately after his death! How is it
possible to assume, as the eminent critics do nevertheless assume, that
the _Sacred and Profane Love_, one of the masterpieces of Venetian art,
was painted one or two years earlier still, that is, in 1501 or, at the
latest, in 1502? Let it be remembered that at that moment Giorgione
himself had not fully developed the Giorgionesque. He had not painted
his Castelfranco altar-piece, his _Venus_, or his _Three Philosophers
(Aeneas, Evander, and Pallas)_. Old Gian Bellino himself had not entered
upon that ultimate phase of his art which dates from the great S.
Zaccaria altar-piece finished in 1505.[13]

It is impossible on the present occasion to give any detailed account
of the fresco decorations painted by Giorgione and Titian on the facades
of the new Fondaco de' Tedeschi, erected to replace that burnt down on
the 28th of January 1505. Full particulars will be found in Crowe and
Cavalcaselle's often-quoted work. Vasari's many manifest errors and
disconcerting transpositions in the biography of Titian do not
predispose us to give unlimited credence to his account of the strained
relations between Giorgione and our painter, to which this particular
business is supposed to have given rise. That they together decorated
with a series of frescoes which acquired considerable celebrity the
exterior of the Fondaco is all that is known for certain, Titian being
apparently employed as the subordinate of his friend and master. Of
these frescoes only one figure, doubtfully assigned to Titian, and
facing the Grand Canal, has been preserved, in a much-damaged
condition--the few fragments that remained of those facing the side
canal having been destroyed in 1884.[14] Vasari shows us a Giorgione
angry