its beautiful curves, its majestic and dignified postures, its charming sunset background, to him is certainly due the splendid chiaroscuro and magic colour-chord; but it becomes a question whether some of the detail was not actually finished by Giorgione’s pupil, Sebastiano del Piombo.[136] The drawing, for instance, of the hands vividly suggests his help, the type of S. Joseph in the background reminds us of the figure of S. Chrysostom in Sebastiano’s Venice altar-piece, while the S. Catherine recalls the Angel in Sebastiano’s “Holy Family” at Naples.  If this be the case, we here have another instance of the pupil finishing his master’s work, and this time probably after his death, for, as already pointed out, the “Evander and Aeneas” (at Vienna) must have been left by Giorgione well-nigh complete at an earlier stage than the year of his death.

That Sebastiano stood in close relation to his master, Giorgione, is evidenced not only by Vasari’s statement, but by the obvious dependence of the S. Giovanni Crisostomo altar-piece at Venice on Giorgionesque models.  Moreover, the “Violin Player,” formerly in the Sciarra Palace, at once reminds us of the “Barberigo” portrait at Cobham, while the “Herodias with the Head of John Baptist,” dated 1510, now in the collection of Mr. George Salting, shows conclusively how closely related were the two painters in the last year of Giorgione’s life.  Sebastiano was twenty-five years of age in 1510, and appears to have worked under Giorgione for some time before removing to Rome, which he did on, or shortly before, his master’s death.  His departure left Titian, his associate under Giorgione, master of the field; he, too, had a hand in finishing some of the work left incomplete in the atelier, and his privilege it became to continue the Giorgionesque tradition, and to realise in utmost perfection in after years the aspirations and ideals so brilliantly anticipated by the young genius of Castelfranco.[137]

NOTES: 

[113] The Doges Agostino Barberigo, and Leonardo Loredano, Consalvo of Cordova, Giovanni Borgherini and his tutor, Luigi Crasso, and others, are mentioned as having sat to Giorgione for their portraits.  Modern criticism has recently distributed several “Giorgionesque” portraits in English collections among Licinio, Lotto, and even Polidoro!  But this disintegrating process may be, and has been, carried too far.

[114] Two more small works may be mentioned which may tentatively be ascribed to Giorgione.  “The Two Musicians,” in the Glasgow Gallery (recently transferred to Campagnola), and a “Sta.  Justina” (known to me only from a photograph), which has passed lately into the collection of Herr von Kauffmann at Berlin.

Signor Venturi (L’Arte, 1900) has just acquired for the National Gallery in Rome a “St. George slaying the Dragon.”  Judging only from the photograph, I should say he is correct in his identification of this as Giorgione’s work.  It seems to be akin to the “Apollo and Daphne,” and “Orpheus and Eurydice.”