alace either from the water, or on foot at the
Salizzada Santa Fosca, No. 2292. A massive custodian greets you and
points to a winding stair. This you ascend and are met by a typical
Venetian man-servant. Of the palace itself, which has been recently
modernized, I have nothing to say. There are both magnificent and pretty
rooms in it, and a little boudoir has a quite charming floor, and
furniture covered in ivory silk. But everything is in my mind
subordinated to the Giorgione: so much so that I have difficulty in
writing that word Giovanelli at all. The pen will trace only the letters
of the painter's name: it is to me the Palazzo Giorgione.

The picture, which I reproduce on the opposite page, is on an easel just
inside a door and you come upon it suddenly. Not that any one could ever
be completely ready for it; but you pass from one room to the next, and
there it is--all green and blue and glory. Remember that Giorgione was
not only a Venetian painter but in some ways the most remarkable and
powerful of them all; remember that his fellow-pupil Titian himself
worshipped his genius and profited by it, and that he even influenced
his master Bellini; and then remember that all the time you have been in
Venice you have seen nothing that was unquestionably authentic and at
the most only three pictures that might be his. It is as though Florence
had but one Botticelli, or London but one Turner, or Madrid but one
Velasquez. And then you turn the corner and find this!

[Illustration: THE TEMPEST
FROM THE PAINTING BY GIORGIONE
_In the Giovanelli Palace_]

The Venetian art that we have hitherto seen has been almost exclusively
the handmaid of religion or the State. At the Ducal Palace we found the
great painters exalting the Doges and the Republic; even the other
picture in Venice which I associate with this for its pure
beauty--Tintoretto's "Bacchus and Ariadne"--was probably an allegory of
Venetian success. In the churches and at the Accademia we have seen the
masters illustrating the Testaments Old and New. All their work has
been for altars or church walls or large public places. We have seen
nothing for a domestic wall but little mannered Longhis, without any
imagination, or topographical Canalettos and Guardis. And then we turn a
corner and are confronted by this!--not only a beautiful picture and a
non-religious picture but a picture painted to hang on a wall.

That was one of Giorgione's innovations: to paint pi