[124] A reaction in this respect is observable in the latest writer on Giorgione (Mr. Herbert Cook in the "Great Masters" Series), who shows good cause for restoring many pictures to the master. The National Gallery, he says (p. 95), affords unrivalled opportunity for studying the various phases of Giorgione at different stages of his career. Nos. 1160 and 1173 represent his earliest style; No. 1123, his later; Nos. 269 and 636 are intermediate.
[125] A contemporary document, recently discovered, proves that the artist died of the plague. (See appendix to Mr. Herbert Cook's Giorgione, 1900).
[126] Lecture at Oxford 1884 (reported in Cook's Studies in Ruskin, p. 251). See also the "Traveller's edition" of the Stones of Venice, vol. ii. ch. vi., where the picture is described as "one which unites every artistic quality for which the painting of Venice has become renowned with a depth of symbolism and nobleness of manner exemplary of all that in any age of art has characterised its highest masters." A copy of this masterpiece is in the collection of the Arundel Society, now to be seen in the National Gallery.
[127] In an interesting discussion with Sir J. E. Millais, R.A., Mr. Watts, R.A., refers to the colours in this picture. Sir J. Millais had said that time and age are the greatest old masters, and that old Venetian colours were crude. Mr. Watts replied: "The colour of the best-preserved pictures by Titian shows a marked distinction between light flesh tones and white drapery. This is most distinctly seen in the small 'Noli me Tangere' in our National Gallery, in the so-called 'Venus' of the Tribune, and in the 'Flora' of the Uffizi, both in Florence, and in Bronzino's 'All is Vanity,' also in the National Gallery (651). In the last-named picture, for example, the colour is as crude and the surface as bare of mystery as if it had been painted yesterday. As a matter of fact, white unquestionably tones down, but never becomes colour; indeed, under favourable conditions, and having due regard to what is underneath, it changes very little. In the 'Noli me Tangere,' to which I have referred, the white sleeve of the Magdalen is still a beautiful white, quite different from the white of the fairest of Titian's flesh—proving that Titian never painted his flesh white" (Magazine of Art, January 1889).
[128] Or possibly at Vicenza. See Layard, i. 283 n. The words in the document relied upon to establish his birth at Vicenza are ambiguous, and may refer to his father.
[129] Its ascription to Botticelli's own hand is, however, questioned by many critics. Thus Dr. Richter says, "I know of no authentic picture by Botticelli in which the drawing of the hands and feet is so poor and coarse as are here, for instance, those of the Infant Saviour; the type of the child is positively repulsive, whereas in Botticelli's own works it is pre-eminently in the representation of the Infant Christ that his great merits are strikingly apparent" (Lectures on the National Gallery, p. 62). The child, whether painted by Botticelli or by another hand, is undeniably ugly; but the expression of the Madonna, and the figures of the Baptist and the Angel seem to me to show certainly the work of the master himself. Moreover, the critics who dispute the authenticity of this picture admit that of No. 915. Yet, as "D. S. M." says, "the mother here is the same person as the Venus, looking out of the picture with the same effect of gentle detachment, circumscribed with the same draughtsman's lines; the infant, whose type Dr. Richter finds 'positively repulsive,' is the same infant as the Satyrs of the other picture, and so all through" (Saturday Review, Feb. 18, 1899). On the back of the panel is written in the style of the 16th century the name of Giuliano da San Gallo, the celebrated architect, who was also a painter. There are drawings from his hand in the British Museum, which show that he came from Botticelli's school. His name on the back of this picture proves, it is argued, that it is by him. It may, however, very probably only signify that the picture formerly belonged to him.
[130] Mr. Pater, in a well-known passage, gives a different explanation of the peculiar sentiment in Botticelli's Madonnas. "Perhaps you have sometimes wondered why they attract you more and more, and often come—although conformed to no obvious type of beauty—back to you when the Madonnas of Raphael and the Virgins of Fra Angelico are forgotten. At first, contrasting them with those, you may have thought that there was something even mean or abject in them, for the lines of the face have little nobleness, and the colour is wan. For with Botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the 'Desire of all Nations,' is one of those who are neither for God nor for his enemies (see under III. 1126), and her choice is on her face. She shrinks from the presence of the Divine Child, and pleads in unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity" (W. H. Pater: Studies of the Renaissance).
You promise heavens free from strife,
Pure truth and perfect change of will;
But sweet, sweet is this human life,
So sweet I fain would breathe it still.
Your chilly stars I can forgo:
This warm, kind world is all I know.
Ionica: Mimnermus in Church.