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]

[Illustration:  Braun photo.  Hermitage Gallery, St. Petersburg

JUDITH]

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.

The next picture on Morelli’s list is the “Fete Champetre” of the Louvre, or, as it is often called, the “Concert.”  This lovely “Pastoral Symphony” (which appears to me a more suitable English title) is by no means universally regarded as a creation of Giorgione’s hand and brain, and several modern critics have been at pains to show that Campagnola, or some other Venetian imitator