que
effect he produces; the superior merit of Titian is in the appearance of
being above seeking after any such "artificial excellence."

The most important artist besides Titian who was a pupil of Giorgione
was SEBASTIANO DEL PIOMBO, as he was called--his father's name was
LUCIANI. But as two other notable influences determined his career, he
is not to be taken as typical of the Venetian School in general or that
of Giorgione in particular. Born in Venice about the year 1485, he first
studied under Giovanni Bellini, as appears from the signature as well as
from the style of a _Pieta_ by him in the Layard collection, which we
may hope soon to see in the National Gallery. Of his Giorgionesque
period there is only one important picture known to us, the beautiful
altar-piece in S. Giovanni Crisostomo in Venice, which is not far
removed from the richness of Titian's earlier work. The picture
represents the mild and dignified S. Chrysostom seated, reading aloud at
a desk in an open hall; S. John the Baptist leaning on his cross is
looking attentively at him; behind him are two male and on the left two
female saints listening devoutly, and in the foreground the Virgin
looking majestically out of the picture at the spectator--a splendid
type of the full and grand Venetian ideal of female beauty of that time.
The true expression of a _Santa Conversazione_ could not be more
worthily given than in the relation in which the listeners stand to the
reader, and in glow of colour this work is not inferior to the best of
Giorgione's or Titian's.

As early as 1510, however, he not only left Venice, but also his
Venetian manner. He was invited to Rome by the rich banker and patron of
the arts, Agostino Chigi, where he met Raphael, and with astonishing
versatility succeeded as well in emulating the excellences of that
master as he had those of Bellini and Giorgione. The half-length
_Daughter of Herodias_ bequeathed to the National Gallery by George
Salting is dated 1510, and in 1512 he painted the famous _Fornarina_ in
the Uffizi, which until the middle of the last century was supposed to
be a _chef d'oeuvre_ of Raphael. To this period also belongs the _S.
John in the Desert_, at the Louvre.

Within the next seven years a still mightier influence found him, that
of Michelangelo, and how far he was capable of responding to it may be
judged by our great _Raising of Lazarus_, painted at Rome in 1517-19 for
Giulio de'Medici, afterwards Pop