PORTRAIT OF A MAN]

Signor Venturi ("La Galleria Crespi”) ascribes this portrait to Licinio.  This is one of those inexplicable perversions of judgment to which even the best critics are at times liable.  In L’Arte, 1900, p. 24, the same writer mentions that a certain Antonio Broccardo, son of Marino, made his will in 1527, and that the same name occurs among those who frequented the University of Bologna in 1525.  There is nothing to prevent Giorgione having painted this man’s portrait when younger.

[Illustration:  Anderson photo.  Borghese Gallery, Rome

PORTRAIT OF A LADY]

The third portrait in Morelli’s list has not had the same friendly reception at the hands of later critics as the preceding two have had.  This is the “Portrait of a Lady” in the Borghese Gallery at Rome, whose discovery by Morelli is so graphically described in a well-known passage.[38] And in truth it must be confessed that the authorship of this portrait is not at first sight quite so evident as in the other cases; nevertheless I am firmly convinced that Morelli saw further than his critics, and that his intuitive judgment was in this instance perfectly correct.[39] The simplicity of conception, the intensity of expression, the pose of the figure alike proclaim the master, whose characteristic touch is to be seen in the stone ledge, the fancy head-dress, the arrangement of hair, and the modelling of the features.  The presence of the hands is characteristically explained by the handkerchief stretched tight between them, the action being expressive of suppressed excitement:  “She stands at a window ... gazing out with a dreamy, yearning expression, as if seeking to descry one whom she awaits.”

Licinio, whose name has been proposed as the painter, did indeed follow out this particular vein of Giorgione’s portraiture, so that “Style of Licinio” is not an altogether inapt attribution; but there is just that difference of quality between the one man’s work and the other, which distinguishes any great man from his followers, whether in literature or in art.  How near (and yet how far!) Licinio came to his great prototype is best seen in Lady Ashburton’s “Portrait of a Young Man,"[40] but that he could have produced the Borghese “Lady” presupposes qualities he never possessed.  “To Giorgione alone was it given to produce portraits of such astonishing simplicity, yet so deeply significant, and capable, by their mystic charm, of appealing to our imagination in the highest degree."[41]

The actual condition of this portrait is highly unsatisfactory, and is adduced by some as a reason for condemning it.  Yet the spirit of the master seems still to breathe through the ruin, and to justify Morelli’s ascription, if not the enthusiastic language in which he writes.

[Illustration:  Anderson photo.  Seminario, Venice

APOLLO AND DAPHNE]