has deliberately emphasised this line by the curious posture of the legs.  The figure, indeed, does not sit at all, but the balance of the composition is the better assured.  What exquisite curves the standing woman presents! how cleverly the drapery continues the beautiful line, which Giorgione takes care not to break by placing the left leg and foot out of sight.  How marvellously expressive, nay, how inevitable is the hand of the youth who is playing.  Surely neither Campagnola nor any other second-rate artist was capable of such things!

[Illustration:  Alinari photo.  Pitti Gallery, Florence

THE THREE AGES OF MAN]

The eighth picture cited by Morelli as, in his opinion, a genuine Giorgione, is the so-called “Three Ages of Man,” in the Pitti at Florence—­a damaged picture, but parts of which, as he says, “are still so splendid and so thoroughly Giorgionesque that I venture to ascribe it without hesitation to Giorgione."[51] The three figures are grouped naturally, and are probably portraits from life.  The youth in the centre we have already met in the Kingston Lacy “Judgment of Solomon”; the man on the right recurs in the “Family Concert” at Hampton Court, and is strangely like the S. Maurice in the signed altar-piece at Berlin by Luzzi da Feltre.[52] But like though they be in type, in quality the heads in the “Three Ages” are immensely superior to those in the Berlin picture.  The same models may well have served Giorgione and his friend and pupil Luzzi, or, as he is generally called, Morto da Feltre.  A recent study of the few authenticated works by this feeble artist still at Feltre, his native place, forces me to dissent from the opinion that the Pitti “Three Ages” is the work of his hand.[53] Still less do I hold with the view that Lotto is the author.[54] Here, again, I believe Morelli saw further than other critics, and that his attribution is the right one.  The simplicity, the apparently unstudied grouping, the refinement of type, the powerful expression, are worthy of the master; the play of light on the faces, especially on that of the youth, is most characteristic, and the peculiar chord of colour reveals a sense of originality such as no imitator would command.  Unless I am mistaken, the man on the right is none other than the Aeneas in the Vienna picture, and his hand with the pointing forefinger is such as we see two or three times over in the “Judgment of Solomon” and elsewhere.  Certainly here it is awkwardly introduced, obviously to bring the figure into direct relation with the others; but Giorgione is by no means always supreme master of natural expression, as the hands in the “Adrastus and Hypsipyle” and Vienna pictures clearly show.