of the great master, really produced it.[49] In this endeavour Crowe and Cavalcaselle led the way by suggesting the author was probably an imitator of Sebastiano del Piombo.  But all this must surely seem to be heresy when we stand before the picture itself, thrilled by the gorgeousness of its colour, by the richness of the paradise” in which the air is balmy, and the landscape ever green; where life is a pastime, and music the only labour; where groves are interspersed with meadows and fountains; where nymphs sit playfully on the grass, or drink at cool springs."[50] Was ever such a gorgeous idyll?  In the whole range of painted poetry can the like be found?

[Illustration:  Braun photo.  Louvre, Paris

A PASTORAL SYMPHONY]

Yet let us be more precise in our analysis.  Granted that the scene is one eminently adapted to Giorgione’s poetic temperament, is the execution analogous to that which we have found in the preceding examples?  No one will deny, I suppose, that there is a difference between the intensely refined forms of the Venus, or the earlier Hypsipyle, or the Daphne, and the coarser nudes in the Louvre picture.  No one will deny a certain carelessness marks the delineation of form, no one will gainsay a frankly sensuous charm pervades the scene, a feeling which seems at first sight inconsistent with that reticence and modesty so conspicuous elsewhere.  Yet I think all this is perfectly explicable on the basis of natural evolution.  Exuberance of feeling is the logical outcome of a lifetime spent in an atmosphere of lyrical thought, and certainly Giorgione was not the sort of man to control those natural impulses, which grew stronger with advancing years.  Both traditions of his death point in this direction; and, unless I am mistaken, the quality of his art, as well as its character, reflects this tendency.  In his later years, 1508-10, he attains indeed a magnificence and splendour which dazzles the eye, but it is at the cost of that feeling of restraint which gives the earlier work such exquisite charm.  In such a work as the Louvre “Concert,” Giorgio has become Giorgione; he is riper in experience and richer in feeling, and his art assumes a corresponding exuberance of style, his forms become larger, his execution grows freer.  Nay, more, that strain of carelessness is not wanting which so commonly accompanies such evolutions of character.  And so this “Pastoral Symphony” becomes a characteristic production—­that is, one which a man of Giorgione’s temperament would naturally produce in the course of his developing.  Peculiar, however, to an artist of genius is the subtlety of composition, which is held together by invisible threads, for nowhere else, perhaps, has Giorgione shown a greater mastery of line.  The diagonal line running from behind the nude figure on the left down to the foot so cunningly extended of the seated youth, is beautifully balanced by the line which is formed by the seated figure of the woman.  The artist