CHAPTER XXVIII
GIORGIONE
The Palazzo Giovanelli—A lovely picture—A superb innovator—Pictures for houses—The Tempest—Byron's criticism—Giorgione and the experts—Vasari's estimate—Leonardo da Vinci—The Giorgionesque fire—A visit to Castel Franco—The besieging children—The Sacristan—A beautiful altar-piece—Pictures at Padua—Giorgiones still to be discovered.
It will happen now and then that you will be in your gondola, with the afternoon before you, and will not have made up your mind where to go. It is then that I would have you remember the Palazzo Giovanelli. "The Palazzo Giovanelli, Rio di Noale," say to your gondolier; because this palace is not only open to the public but it contains the most sensuously beautiful picture in Venice—Giorgione's "Tempest". Giorgione, as I have said, is the one transcendentally great Venetian painter whom it is impossible, for certain, to find in any public gallery or church in the city of his adoption. There is a romantic scene at the Seminario next the Salute, an altar-piece in S. Rocco, another altar-piece in S. Giovanni Crisostomo, in each of which he may have had a hand. But none of these is Giorgione essential. For the one true work of this wistful beauty-adoring master we must seek the Palazzo Giovanelli.
You can enter the palace either from the water, or on foot at the Salizzada Santa Fosca, No. 2292. A massive custodian greets you and points to a winding stair. This you ascend and are met by a typical Venetian man-servant. Of the palace itself, which has been recently modernized, I have nothing to say. There are both magnificent and pretty rooms in it, and a little boudoir has a quite charming floor, and furniture covered in ivory silk. But everything is in my mind subordinated to the Giorgione: so much so that I have difficulty in writing that word Giovanelli at all. The pen will trace only the letters of the painter's name: it is to me the Palazzo Giorgione.
The picture, which I reproduce on the opposite page, is on an easel just inside a door and you come upon it suddenly. Not that any one could ever be completely ready for it; but you pass from one room to the next, and there it is—all green and blue and glory. Remember that Giorgione was not only a Venetian painter but in some ways the most remarkable and powerful of them all; remember that his fellow-pupil Titian himself worshipped his genius and profited by it, and that he even influenced his master Bellini; and then remember that all the time you have been in Venice you have seen nothing that was unquestionably authentic and at the most only three pictures that might be his. It is as though Florence had but one Botticelli, or London but one Turner, or Madrid but one Velasquez. And then you turn the corner and find this!
THE TEMPEST
from the painting by giorgione
In the Giovanelli Palace