ly occupied men's attention, lie beyond, and must supplement,
the narrower range of the strictly ascertained facts about it. In this,
Giorgione is but an illustration of a valuable general caution we may
abide by in all criticism. As regards Giorgione himself, we have indeed
to take note of all those negations and exceptions, by which, at first
sight, a "new Vasari" seems merely to have confused our apprehension of
a delightful object, to have explained away out of our inheritance from
past time what seemed of high value there. Yet it is not with a full
understanding even of those exceptions that one can leave off just at
this point. Properly qualified, such exceptions are but a salt of
genuineness in our knowledge; and beyond all those strictly ascertained
facts, we must take note of that indirect influence by which one like
Giorgione, for instance, enlarges his permanent efficacy and really
makes himself felt in our culture. In a just impression of that, is the
essential truth, the vraie verite concerning him.

1877.

JOACHIM DU BELLAY

In the middle of the sixteenth century, when the spirit of the
Renaissance was everywhere, and people had begun to look back with
distaste on the works of the middle age, the old Gothic manner had still
one chance more, in borrowing something from the rival which was about
to supplant it. In this way there was produced, chiefly in France, a new
and peculiar phase of taste with qualities and a charm of its own,
blending the somewhat attenuated grace of Italian ornament with the
general outlines of Northern design. It produced the Chateau de Gaillon,
as you may still see it in the delicate engravings of Israel
Silvestre--a Gothic donjon veiled faintly by a surface of dainty Italian
traceries--Chenonceaux, Blois, Chambord, and the church of Brou. In
painting, there came from Italy workmen like Maitre Roux and the masters
of the school of Fontainebleau, to have their later Italian
voluptuousness attempered by the naive and silvery qualities of the
native style; and it was characteristic of these painters that they were
most successful in painting on glass, an art so essentially medieval.
Taking it up where the middle age had left it, they found their whole
work among the last subtleties of colour and line; and keeping within
the true limits of their material, they got quite a new order of effects
from it, and felt their way to refinements on colour never dreamed of by
those older wo