The unfinished figure of the executioner evidently caused the artist much trouble, for pentimenti are frequent, and other outlines can be distinctly traced through the nude body.  The effect of this clumsy figure is far from satisfactory; the limbs are not articulated distinctly; moreover, the balance of the whole composition is seriously threatened by the tragedy being enacted at the side instead of in the middle.  The artist appears to have felt this difficulty so much that he stopped short at this point; at any rate, the living child remains unrepresented, nor is there any second child such as is required to illustrate the story.  It looks as though the scheme was not carefully worked out before commencing, and that the artist found himself in difficulties at the last, when he had to introduce the dramatic motive, which apparently was not to his taste.

Now, all this fits in exactly with what we know of Giorgione’s temperament; lyrical by nature, he would shrink from handling a great dramatic scene, and if such a task were imposed upon him he would naturally treat three-fourths of the subject in his own fantastic way, and do his best to illustrate the action required in the remaining part.  The result would be (what might be expected) forced or stagey, and the action rhetorical, and that is exactly what has happened in this “Judgment of Solomon.”

It is a natural inference that, supposing Giorgione to be the painter, he would never have selected such a subject of his own free will to be treated, as this is, on so large a scale.  There may be, therefore, something in the suggestion which Crowe and Cavalcaselle make that this may be the large canvas ordered of Giorgione for the audience chamber of the Council, “for which purpose,” they add, “the advances made to him in the summer of 1507 and in January 1508 show that the work he had undertaken was of the highest consequence."[30]

Be this as it may, the picture was in Venice, in the Casa Grimani di Santo Ermagora,[31] in Ridolfi’s day (1646), and that writer specially mentions the unfinished executioner.  It passed later into the Marescalchi Gallery at Bologna, where it was seen by Lord Byron (1820), and purchased at his suggestion by his friend Mr. Bankes, in whose family it still remains.[32]

It will be gathered from what I have written that Giorgione and no other is, in my opinion, the author of this remarkable work.  Certain of the figures are reminiscent of those by him elsewhere—­e.g. the old man with the beard is like the Evander in the Vienna picture, the young man next the executioner resembles the Adrastus in the Giovanelli figures, and the young man stooping forward next to Solomon recurs in the “Three Ages,” in the Pitti, which Morelli considered to be by Giorgione.  The most obvious resemblances, however, are to be found in the Glasgow “Adulteress before Christ,” a work which several modern critics assign to Cariani, although Dr. Bode, Sir Walter Armstrong, and others,