[Illustration:  Anderson photo.  Crespi Collection, Milan

PORTRAIT OF CATERINA CORNARO]

To my eyes, we have the same lady in the Crespi portrait.  Mr. Berenson, unaware of the identity, thus describes her:[97] “Une grande dame italienne est devant nous, eclatante de sante et de magnificence, energique, debordante, pleine d’une chaude sympathie, source de vie et de joie pour tous ceux qui l’entourent, et cependant reflechie, penetrante, un peu ironique bien qu’indulgente.”

Could a better description be given to fit the character of Caterina Cornaro, as she is known to us in history?  How little likely, moreover, that tradition should have dubbed this homely person the ex-Queen of Cyprus had it not been the truth!

Now, if my contention is correct, chronology determines a further point.  Caterina died in 1510, so that this likeness of her (which is clearly taken from life) must have been done in or before the first decade of the sixteenth century.[98] This excludes Licinio and Schiavone (both of whom have been suggested as the artist), for the latter was not even born, and the former—­whose earliest known picture is dated 1520—­must have been far too young in 1510 to have already achieved so splendid a result.  Palma is likewise excluded, so that we are driven to choose between Titian and Giorgione, the only two Venetian artists capable of such a masterpiece before 1510.

As to which of these two artists it is, opinions—­so far as any have been published—­are divided.  Yet Dr. Gronau, who claims it for Titian, admits in the same breath that the hand is the same as that which painted the Cobham Hall picture and the Pitti “Concert,” a judgment in which I fully concur.  Dr. Bode[99] labels it “Art des Giorgione.”  Finally, Mr. Berenson, with rare insight proclaimed the conception and the spirit of the picture to be Giorgione’s.[100] But he asserts that the execution is not fine enough to be the master’s own, and would rank it—­with the “Judith” at St. Petersburg—­in the category of contemporary copies after lost originals.  This view is apparently based on the dangerous maxim that where the execution of a picture is inferior to the conception, the work is presumably a copy.  But two points must be borne in mind, the actual condition of the picture, and the character of the artist who painted it.  Mr. Berenson has himself pointed out elsewhere[101] that Giorgione, “while always supreme in his conceptions, did not live long enough to acquire a perfection of draughtsmanship and chiaroscuro equally supreme, and that, consequently, there is not a single universally accepted work of his which is absolutely free from the reproaches of the academic pedant.”  Secondly, the surface of this portrait has lost its original glow through cleaning, and has suffered other damage, which actually debarred Crowe and Cavalcaselle (who saw the picture in 1877) from pronouncing definitely upon the authorship.