and the similarity in style between this portrait and the Cobham Hall one is accounted for on chronological grounds.  All things considered, it is very probable that this portrait was his earliest real success, and proved a passport to the favourable notice of the fashionable society of Venice, leading to the commission to paint the Doge, and the Gran Signori, who visited the capital in the year 1500.  That Giorgione was capable of such an achievement before his twenty-fourth year constitutes, we may surely admit, his strongest right to the title of Genius.[106]

The Barberigo gentleman and the Caterina Cornaro are comparatively unfamiliar, owing to their seclusion in private galleries.  Not so the third portrait, which hangs in the National Gallery, and which, in my opinion, should be included among Giorgione’s authentic productions.  This is No. 636, “Portrait of a Poet,” attributed to Palma Vecchio; and the catalogue continues:  “This portrait of an unknown personage was formerly ascribed to Titian, and supposed to represent Ariosto; it has long since been recognised as a fine work by Palma.”  I certainly do not know by whom this portrait was first recognised as such, but as the transformation was suddenly effected one day under the late Sir Frederic Burton’s regime, it is natural to suppose he initiated it.  No one to-day would be found, I suppose, to support the older view, and the rechristening certainly received the approval of Morelli;[107] modern critics apparently acquiesce without demur, so that it requires no little courage to dissent from so unanimous an opinion.  I confess, therefore, it was no small satisfaction to me to find the question had been raised by an independent inquirer, Mr. Dickes, who published in the Magazine of Art, 1893, the results of his investigations, the conclusion at which he arrived being that this is the portrait of Prospero Colonna, Liberator of Italy, painted by Giorgione in the year 1500.

Briefly stated, the argument is as follows:—­

I. (1) The person represented closely resembles
       Prospero Colonna (1464-1523), whose authentic
       likeness is to be seen—­

(a) In an engraving in Pompilio Totti’s
“Ritratti et Elogie di Capitani illustri. 
Rome, 1635.”

(b) In a bust in the Colonna Gallery, Rome.

(c) In an engraving in the “Columnensium
Procerum” of the Abbas Domenicus
de Santis.  Rome, 1675.

(All three are reproduced in the article in question.)

[Illustration:  Hanfstaengl photo.  National Gallery, London.

PORTRAIT OF A MAN]

(2) The description of Prospero Colonna, given
by Pompilio Totti (in the above book)
tallies with our portrait.