lation. And now, in the "new Vasari,"* the
great traditional reputation, woven with so profuse demand on men's
admiration, has been scrutinised thread by thread; and what remains of
the most vivid and stimulating of Venetian masters, a live flame, as it
seemed, in those old shadowy times, has been reduced almost to a name by
his most recent critics.

*Crowe and Cavalcaselle: History of Painting in North Italy.

Yet enough remains to explain why the legend grew up, above the name,
why the name attached itself, in many instances, to the bravest work of
other men. The Concert in the Pitti Palace, in which a monk, with cowl
and tonsure, touches the keys of a harpsichord, while a clerk, placed
behind him, grasps the handle of the viol, and a third, with hat and
plume, seems to wait upon the true interval for beginning to sing, is
undoubtedly Giorgione's. The outline of the lifted finger, the trace of
the plume, the very threads of the fine linen, which fasten themselves
on the memory, in the moment before they are lost altogether in that
calm unearthly glow, the skill which has caught the waves of wandering
sound, and fixed them for ever on the lips and hands--these are indeed
the master's own; and the criticism which, while dismissing so much
hitherto believed to be Giorgione's, has established the claims of this
one picture, has left it among the most precious things in the world of
art.

It is noticeable that the "distinction" of this Concert, its sustained
evenness of perfection, alike in design, in execution, and in choice of
personal type, becomes for the "new Vasari" the standard of Giorgione's
genuine work. Finding here enough to explain his influence, and the true
seal of mastery, its authors assign to Pellegrino da San Daniele the
Holy Family in the Louvre, for certain points in which it comes short of
that standard, but which will hardly diminish the spectator's enjoyment
of a singular charm of liquid air, with which the whole picture seems
instinct, filling the eyes and lips, the very garments, of its sacred
personages, with some wind-searched brightness and energy; of which fine
air the blue peak, clearly defined in the distance, is, as it were, the
visible pledge. Similarly, another favourite picture in the Louvre, the
subject of a Sonnet by a poet whose own painted work often comes to mind
as one ponders over these precious things--the Fete Champetre, is
assigned to an imitator of Sebastian del Piombo; and t