The two small companion pictures in the Uffizi, The “Judgment of Solomon” and the “Trial of Moses,” or “Ordeal by Fire,” as it is also called, connect in style closely with the “Adrastus and Hypsipyle.”  They are conceived in the same romantic strain, and carried out with scarcely less brilliance and charm.  The story, as in the previous pictures, is not insisted upon; the biblical episode and the rabbinical legend are treated in the same fantastic way as the classic myth.  Giovanni Bellini had first introduced this lyric conception in his treatment of the mediaeval allegory, as we see it in his picture, also in the Uffizi, hanging near the Giorgiones; all three works were originally together in the Medici residence of Poggio Imperiale, and there can be little doubt are intimately related in origin to one another.  Bellini’s latest biographer, Mr. Roger Fry, places this Allegory about the years 1486-8, a date which points to a very early origin for the other two.[18] For it is extremely likely that the young Giorgione was inspired by his master’s example, and that he may have produced his companion pieces as early as 1493.  With this deduction Morelli is in accord:  “In character they belong to the fifteenth century, and may have been painted by Giorgione in his sixteenth or eighteenth year."[19]

Here, then, is a clue to the young artist’s earliest predilections.  He fastens eagerly upon that phase of Bellini’s art to which his own poetic temperament most readily responds.  But he goes a step further than his master.  He takes his subjects not from mediaeval romances, but from the Bible or rabbinical writings, and actually interprets them also in this new and unorthodox way.  So bold a departure from traditional usage proves the independence and originality of the young painter.  These two little pictures thus become historically the first-fruits of the neo-pagan spirit which was gradually supplanting the older ecclesiastical thought, and Giorgione, once having cast conventionalism aside, readily turns to classical mythology to find subjects for the free play of fancy.  The “Adrastus and Hypsipyle” thus follows naturally upon “The Judgment of Solomon” and “Trial of Moses,” and the pages of Virgil, Ovid, Statius, and Valerius Flaccus—­all treasure-houses of golden legend—­yield subjects suggestive of romance.  The titles of some of these poesie, as they were called, are preserved in the pages of Ridolfi.[20]

[Illustration:  Alinari photo.  Uffizi Gallery, Florence

THE TRIAL OF MOSES]

The tall and slender figures, the attitudes, and the general mise-en-scene vividly recall the earlier style of Carpaccio, who was at this very time composing his delightful fairy tales of the “Legend of S. Ursula."[21] Common to both painters is a gaiety and love of beauty and colour.  There is also in both a freedom and ease, even a homeliness of conception, which distinguishes their work from the pageant pictures of Gentile Bellini, whose “Corpus Christi Procession” was produced two or three years later, in 1496.[21] But Giorgione’s art is instinct with a lyrical fancy all his own, the story is subordinated to the mood of the moment, and he is much more concerned with the beauty of the scene than with its dramatic import.