The extraordinary beauty and subtlety of the master's "line" is admirably shown. He has deliberately forgone anatomical precision in order to accentuate artistic effect. The splendour of curve, the beauty of unbroken contour, the rhythm and balance of composition is attained at a cost of academic correctness; but the long-drawn horizontal lines heighten the sense of repose, and the eye is soothed by the sinuous undulations of landscape and figure. The artistic effect is further enhanced by the relief of exquisite flesh tones against the rich crimson drapery, and although the atmospheric glow has been sadly destroyed by abrasion and repainting, we may still feel something of the magic charm which Giorgione knew so well how to impart.
This "Venus" is the prototype of all other Venetian versions; it is in painting what the "Aphrodite" of Praxiteles was in sculpture, a perfect creation of a master mind.
Scarcely less wonderful than the "Venus," and even surpassing it in solemn grandeur of conception, is the "Judith" at St. Petersburg. Morelli himself had never seen the original, and includes it in his list with the reservation that it might be an old copy after Giorgione, and not the original. It would be presumptuous for anyone not familiar with the picture to decide the point, but I have no hesitation in following the judgment of two competent modern critics, both of whom have recently visited St. Petersburg, and both of whom have decided unhesitatingly in favour of its being an original by Giorgione. Dr. Harck has written enthusiastically of its beauty. "Once seen," he says, "it can never be forgotten; the same mystic charm, so characteristic of the other great works of Giorgione, pervades it; ... it bears on the face of it the stamp of a great master."[[44]] Even more decisive is the verdict of Mr. Claude Phillips.[[45]] "All doubts," he says, "vanish like sun-drawn mist in the presence of the work itself; the first glance carries with it conviction, swift and permanent. In no extant Giorgione is the golden glow so well preserved, in none does the mysterious glamour from which the world has never shaken itself free, assert itself in more irresistible fashion.... The colouring is not so much Giorgionesque as Giorgione's own—a widely different thing.... Wonderful touches which the imitative Giorgionesque painter would not have thought of are the girdle, a mauve-purple now, with a sharply emphasised golden fringe, and the sapphire-blue jewel in the brooch. Triumphs of execution, too, but not in the broad style of Venetian art in its fullest expansion, are the gleaming sword held in so dainty and feminine a fashion, and the flowers which enamel the ground at the feet of the Jewish heroine." This "Judith," after passing for many years under the names of Raphael and Moretto,[[46]] is now officially recognised as Giorgione's work, an identification first made by the late Herr Penther, the keeper of the Vienna Academy, whom Morelli quotes.
The conception is wholly Giorgionesque, the mood one of calm contemplation, as this lovely figure stands lost in reverie, with eyes cast down, gazing on the head on which her foot is lightly laid. The head and sword proclaim her story, they are symbols of her mission, else she had been taken for an embodiment of feminine modesty and gentle submissiveness.[[47]]
Characteristic of the master is the introduction of the great tree-trunk, conveying a sense of grandeur and solemn mystery to the scene; characteristic, too, is the distant landscape, the splendid glow of which evokes special praise from the writers just mentioned. Again we find the parapet, or ledge, with its flat surface on which the play of light can be caught, and again the same curious folds, broken and crumpled, such as are seen on Solomon's robe in the Kingston Lacy picture, and somewhat less emphatically in the Castelfranco "Madonna."
Consistent, moreover, with that weakness we have already noticed elsewhere, is the design of the leg and foot, the drawing of which is far from impeccable. That the execution in this respect is not equal to the supreme conception of the whole, is no valid reason for the belief that this "Judith" is only a copy of a lost original, a belief that could apparently only be held by those who have never stood before the picture itself.[[48]] But even in the reproduction this "Judith" stands confessed as the most impressive of all Giorgione's single figures, and it may well rank as the masterpiece of the earlier period immediately preceding the Castelfranco picture of about 1504, to which in style it closely approximates.
