alleged likeness to the S. Liberale in the picture, a theory, we may remark, which is quite consistent with Matteo being still alive.  Considering the extraordinary rapidity of the artist’s development, it would be more natural to place the execution of this work a year or two earlier than 1504, but, in any case, we may accept it as typical of Giorgione’s style in the first years of the century.  The “Judith” (at St. Petersburg), as we have already seen, probably immediately precedes it, so that we get two masterpieces approximately dated.

In the field of portraiture Giorgione must have made rapid strides from the very first.  Vasari states that he painted the portraits of the great Consalvo Ferrante, and of one of his captains, on the occasion of their visit to the Doge Agostino Barberigo.  Now this event presumably took place in 1500,[78] so that, at that early date, he seems already to have been a portrait painter of repute.  Confirmatory evidence of this is furnished by the statement of Ridolfi, that Giorgione took the portrait of Agostino Barberigo himself.[79] Now the Doge died in 1500, so that if Giorgione really painted him, he could not have been more than twenty-three years of age at the time, an extraordinarily early age to have been honoured with so important a commission; this fact certainly presupposes successes with other patrons, whose portraits Giorgione must have taken during the years 1495-1500.  I hope to be able to identify two or three of these, but for the moment we may note that by 1500 Giorgione was a recognised master of portraiture.  The only picture on our list likely to date from the period 1500-1504 is the “Knight of Malta,” the “Young Man” (at Buda-Pesth) being later in execution.[80]

From 1504 on, the rapid rate of progress is more than fully maintained.  Only six years remain of the artist’s short life, yet in that time he rose to full power, and anticipated the splendid achievements of Titian’s maturity some forty years later.  First in order, probably, come the “Venus” (Dresden) and the “Concert” (Pitti), both showing originality of conception and mastery of handling.  The date of the frescoes on the Fondaco de’ Tedeschi is known to be 1507-8,[81] but, as nothing remains but a few patches of colour in one spot high up over the Grand Canal, we have no visible clue to guide us in our estimate of their artistic worth.  Vasari’s description, and Zanetti’s engraving of a few fragments (done in 1760, when the frescoes were already in decay), go to prove that Giorgione at this period studied the antique, “commingling statuesque classicism and the flesh and blood of real life."[82]