This, the Giovanelli Giorgione, which in 1817 was in the Manfrini palace and was known as the “Famiglia di Giorgione,” was the picture in all Venice—­indeed the picture in all the world—­which most delighted Byron.  “To me,” he wrote, “there are none like the Venetian—­above all, Giorgione.” Beppo has some stanzas on it.  Thus:—­

    They’ve pretty faces yet, those same Venetians,
      Black eyes, arched brows, and sweet expressions still
    Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
      In ancient arts by moderns mimicked ill;
    And like so many Venuses of Titian’s
      (The best’s at Florence—­see it, if ye will),
    They look when leaning over the balcony,
    Or stepped from out a picture by Giorgione,

    Whose tints are Truth and Beauty at their best;
      And when you to Manfrini’s palace go,
    That picture (howsoever fine the rest)
      Is loveliest to my mind of all the show;
    It may perhaps be also to your zest
      And that’s the cause I rhyme upon it so,
    ’Tis but a portrait of his Son and Wife,
    And self, but such a Woman!  Love in life;

    Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
      No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,
    But something better still, so very real,
      That the sweet Model must have been the same;
    A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
      Wer’t not impossible, besides a shame;
    The face recalls some face, as ’twere with pain. 
    You once have seen, but ne’er will see again;

    One of those forms which flit by us, when we
      Are young, and fix our eyes on every face: 
    And, oh! the Loveliness at times we see
      In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
    The Youth, the Bloom, the Beauty which agree,
      In many a nameless being we retrace
    Whose course and home we knew not nor shall know. 
    Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below.

The Giovanelli picture is one of the paintings which all the critics agree to give to Giorgione, from Sir Sidney Colvin in the Encyclopaedia Britannica to the very latest monographer, Signor Lionello Venturi, whose work, Giorgione Giorgionismo, is a monument to the diversity of expert opinion.  Giorgione, short as was his life, lived at any rate for thirty years and was known near and far as a great painter, and it is to be presumed that the work that he produced is still somewhere.  But Signor Lionello Venturi reduces his output to the most meagre dimensions; the conclusion being that wherever his work may be, it is anywhere but in the pictures that bear his name.  The result of this critic’s heavy labours is to reduce the certain Giorgiones to thirteen, among which is the S. Rocco altar-piece.  With great daring he goes on to say who painted all the others:  Sebastian del Piombo this, Andrea Schiavone that, Romanino another, Titian another, and so forth.