true that Giorgione spent time and energy over fresco painting, and from the very publicity of such work as the frescoes on the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi, he came to be widely known in this direction, but it is infinitely probable that his output in other branches was enormous.  The twenty-six pictures we have already accepted, plus the lost frescoes, cannot possibly represent the sum-total of his artistic activities, and to say that everything else has disappeared is, as I shall try to show, not correct.  We know, moreover, from the Anonimo (who was almost Giorgione’s contemporary) that many pictures existed in his day which cannot now be traced,[75] and if we add these and some of the others cited by Vasari and Ridolfi (without assuming that every one was a genuine example), it goes to prove that Giorgione did paint a good number of easel pictures.  But the evidence of the twenty-six themselves is conclusive.  They illustrate so many different phases, they stand sometimes so widely apart, that intermediate links are necessarily implied.  Moreover, as Giorgione’s influence on succeeding artists is allowed by all writers, a considerable number of his easel pictures must have been in circulation, from which these imitators drew inspiration, for he certainly never kept, as Bellini did, a body of assistants and pupils to hand on his teaching, and disseminate his style.

Productiveness must then have been a feature of his art, and as so few pictures have as yet come to be accepted as genuine, the majority must have perished or been lost to sight for the time.  That much yet remains hidden away in private possession I am fully persuaded, especially in England and in Italy, and one day we may yet find the originals of the several old copies after Giorgione which I enumerate elsewhere.[76] In some cases I believe I have been fortunate enough to detect actually missing originals, and occasionally restore to Giorgione pieces that parade under Titian’s name.  Much, however, yet remains to be done, and the research work now being systematically conducted in the Venetian archives by Dr. Gustav Ludwig and Signor Pietro Paoletti may yield rich results in the discovery of documents relating to the master himself, which may help us to identify his productions, and possibly confirm some of the conjectures I venture to make in the following chapters.[77]

But before proceeding to examine other pictures which I am persuaded really emanate from Giorgione himself, let us attempt to place in approximate chronological order the twenty-six works already accepted as genuine, for, once their sequence is established, we shall the more readily detect the lacunae in the artist’s evolution, and so the more easily recognise any missing transitional pieces which may yet exist.