At this period it is most probable we must place the “Judgment of Solomon” (at Kingston Lacy), possibly, as I have already pointed out, the very work commissioned by the State for the audience chamber of the Council, on which, as we know from documents, Giorgione was engaged in 1507 and 1508.  It was never finished, and the altogether exceptional character of the work places it outside the regular course of the artist’s development.  It was an ambitious venture in an unwonted direction, and is naturally marked and marred by unsatisfactory features.  Giorgione’s real powers are shown by the “Pastoral Symphony” (in the Louvre), and the “Portrait of the Young Man” (at Buda-Pesth), productions dating from the later years 1508-10.  The “Three Ages” (in the Pitti) may also be included, and if Giorgione conceived and even partly executed the “Storm calmed by S. Mark” (Venice Academy), this also must be numbered among his last works.

Morelli states:  “It was only in the last six years of his short life (from about 1505-11) that Giorgione’s power and greatness became fully developed."[83] I think this is true in the sense that Giorgione was ever steadily advancing towards a fuller and riper understanding of the world, that his art was expanding into a magnificence which found expression in larger forms and richer colour, that he was acquiring greater freedom of touch, and more perfect command of the technical resources of his art.  But sufficient stress is not laid, I think, upon the masterly achievement of the earlier times; the tendency is to refer too much to later years, and not recognise sufficiently the prodigious precocity before 1500.  One is tempted at times to question the accuracy of Vasari’s statement that Giorgione died in his thirty-fourth year, which throws his birth back only to 1477.  Some modern writers disregard this statement altogether, and place his birth “before 1477."[84] Be this as it may, it does not alter the fact that by 1500 Giorgione had already attained in portraiture to the highest honours, and in this sphere, I believe, he won his earliest successes.  My object in the following chapter will be to endeavour to point out some of the very portraits, as yet unidentified, which I am persuaded were produced by Giorgione chiefly in these earlier years, and thus partly to fill some of the lacunae we have found in tracing his artistic evolution.

NOTES: 

[75] A list of these is given at p. 138.

[76] Vide List of Works, pp. 124-137.

[77] The results of these archivistic researches are being published in the Repertorium fuer Kunstwissenschaft.

[78] For the evidence, see Magazine of Art, April 1893.

[79] Meravig, i. 126.

[80] Vasari saw Giorgione’s portrait of the succeeding Doge Leonardo Loredano (1501-1521).

[81] See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. 141.

[82] Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ibid.