Fig. 253. Giorgione. The Three Philosophers.—Vienna.
Again what is the meaning of the mysterious idyl in Prince Giovanelli’s gallery? Figure [252]. In view of the picturesque walls and moat of Castelfranco, a half nude mother, oblivious of a coming thunder shower, nurses her child. Equally oblivious of her and the weather, a fashionably dressed youth turns away. Ruins reflect the ominous lightning flashes. Old records call this (one of the few certain Giorgiones) The Soldier and the Gipsy—evidently a bad guess. A learned Viennese professor chooses to think that this is Prince Adrastus finding the forsaken Princess Hypsiphile. Nobody can prevent such conjectures or disprove them. It is safer to imagine that coming rain and thunder at Venice recalls some old memory of similar weather and state of mind at Castelfranco, evokes some old desire of which this richly fanciful masterpiece is the enigmatic symbol. Some story of loving and parting surely underlies the poesy, it would be foolish to be more specific than Giorgione himself has chosen to be. The Three Philosophers, at Vienna, Figure [253], again has been explained as Aeneas surveying the future site of Rome. What we actually have is a glowing nook at eventide in which three grave men of different ages go separately about some task requiring thought and mathematical calculation. And even this duty is yielding to the spell and mystery of the evening hour. These pictures are probably a little earlier than the altar-piece of 1504 at Castelfranco.
Fig. 254. Giorgione. Madonna with St. George and St. Francis.—Castelfranco.
Fig. 255. Giorgione. Landscape by Titian. Sleeping Venus.—Dresden.
That lovely work, Figure [254], has much of the intimacy of Bellini’s altar-piece at S. Zaccaria, in formal arrangement it is rather monumental. The mood, however, is one of revery. St. Francis of Assisi makes his gesture only for himself, and St. George, exponent of the active life, broods moodily beneath his slackly held pennon. The Arcadian landscape quietly reinforces the idyllic feeling. Externally the thing is splendid in color, and as saturated with atmosphere as it is with mood.
From now on the question of chronology becomes at once difficult, and, since we are dealing only with five years or so, relatively unimportant. The sleeping Venus at Dresden, Figure [255], may have been designed about 1505. A Cupid slumbering at the Goddess’s feet has been painted out, and the landscape was finished by Titian. The noble sleeping body, to use a word of Lucretius which Montaigne commends, seems “poured out” on the receptive earth—so grandly and easily it lies. The gestures are unconscious caresses. The Goddess dreams of old joys. What faun or sylvan even would not respect that dream? Not with passion, then, though himself knowing all its sting, does Giorgione deal, but with ardors sublimated in memory. The marvellous lines of this Venus, as sweeping as the curves of hills or river currents, were imitated again and again, but neither Titian, Palma Vecchio, nor the rest ever recaptured the evasive poetry of their model.
