In the same category must be ranked two very small panels in the Gallery at Padua (Nos. 42 and 43), attributed with a query to Giorgione.  These are apparently fragments of some decorative series, of which the other parts are missing.  The one represents “Leda and the Swan,” the other a mythological subject, where a woman is seated holding a child, and a man, also seated, holds flowers.  The latter recalls one of the figures in the National Gallery “Epiphany.”  The charm of these fragments lies in the exquisite landscapes, which, in minuteness of finish and loving care, Giorgione has nowhere surpassed.  The gallery at Padua is thus, in my opinion, the possessor of four genuine examples of Giorgione’s skill as a decorator, for we have already mentioned the larger cassone pieces[114] (Nos. 416 and 417).

Of greater importance is the “Unknown Subject,” in the National Gallery (No. 1173), a picture which, like so many others, has recently been taken from Giorgione, its author, and vaguely put down to his “School.”  But it is time to protest against such needless depreciation!

In spite of abrasion, in spite of the loss of glow, in spite of much that disfigures, nay disguises, the master’s own touch, I feel confident that Giorgione and no other produced this beautiful picture.[115] Surely if this be only school work, we are vainly seeking a mythical master, an ideal who never could have existed.  What more dainty figures, what more delicate hues, what more exquisite feeling could one look for than is here to be found?  True, the landscape has been renovated, true, the Giorgionesque depth and richness is gone, the mellow glow of the “Epiphany,” which hangs just below, is sadly wanting, but who can deny the charm of the picturesque scenery, which vividly recalls the landscape backgrounds elsewhere in the master’s own work, who can fail to admire the natural and unstudied grouping of the figures, the artlessness of the whole, the loving simplicity with which the painter has done his work?  All is spontaneous; the spirit is not that of a laborious imitator, painfully seeking “effects” from another’s inspiration; sincerity and naivete are too apparent for this to be the work of any but a quite young artist, and one whose style is so thoroughly “Giorgionesque” as to be none other than the young Giorgione himself.  In my opinion this is one of his earliest essays into the region of romance, painted probably before his twenty-first year, betraying, like the little legendary pictures in the Uffizi, a strong affinity with Carpaccio.[116]

[Illustration:  Hanfstaengl photo.  Na. nal Gallery, London

? THE GOLDEN AGE]