The earliest stage in Giorgione’s career is naturally marked by adherence to the teaching and example of his immediate predecessors.  However precocious he may have been, however free from academic training, however independent of the tradition of the schools, he nevertheless clearly betrays an artistic dependence, above all, on Giovanni Bellini.  The “Christ bearing the Cross” and the two little pictures in the Uffizi are direct evidence of this, and these, therefore, must be placed quite early in his career.  We should not be far wrong in dating them 1493-5.  Carpaccio’s influence is also apparent, as we have already noticed, and through this channel Giorgione’s art connects with the more archaic style of Gentile Bellini, Giovanni’s elder brother.  Thus in him are united the quattrocentist tradition and the fresher ideals of the cinquecento, which found earliest expression in Giambellini’s Allegories of about 1486-90.  The poetic element in these works strongly appealed to Giorgione’s sensitive nature, and we find him developing this side of his art in the Beaumont “Adoration,” and the National Gallery “Epiphany,” both of which are clearly early productions.  But there is a gap of a few years between the Uffizi pictures and the London ones, for the latter are maturer in every way, and it is clear that the interval must have been spent in constant practice.  Yet we cannot point with certainty to any of the other pictures in our list as standing midway in development, and here it is that a lacuna exists in the artist’s career.  Two or three years, possibly more, remain unaccounted for, just at a period, too, when the young artist would be most impressionable.  I am inclined to think that he may have painted the “Birth of Paris” during these years, but we have only the copy of a part of the composition to go by, and the statement of the Anonimo that the picture was one of Giorgione’s early works.

The “Adrastus and Hypsipyle” must also be a youthful production prior to 1500, and in the direction of portraiture we have the Berlin “Young Man,” which, for reasons already given, must be placed quite early.  It is not possible to assign exact dates to any of these works, all that can be said with any certainty is that they fall within the last decade of the fifteenth century, and illustrate the rapid development of Giorgione’s art up to his twenty-fourth year.

A further stage in his evolution is reached in the Castelfranco “Madonna,” the first important undertaking of which we have some record.  Tradition connects the painting of this altar-piece with an event of the year 1504, the death of the young Matteo Costanzo, whose family, so it is said, commissioned Giorgione to paint a memorial altar-piece, and decorate the family chapel at Castelfranco with frescoes.  Certain it is that the arms of the Costanzi appear in the picture, but the evidence which connects the commission with the death of Matteo seems to rest mainly on his