The examination in detail of all those pictures best entitled, on internal evidence, to rank as genuine productions of Giorgione has incidentally revealed to us much that is characteristic of the man himself.  We started with the axiom that a man’s work is his best autobiography, and where, as in Giorgione’s case, so little historical or documentary record exists, such indications of character as may be gleaned from a study of his life’s work become of the utmost value. Le style c’est l’homme is a saying eminently applicable in cases where, as with Giorgione, the personal element is strongly marked.  The subject, as we have seen over and over again, is so highly charged with the artist’s mood, with his individual feelings and emotions, that it becomes unrecognisable as mere illustration, and the work passes by virtue of sheer inspiration into the higher realms of creative art.  Such fusion of personality and subject is the characteristic of lyrical art, and in this domain Giorgione is a supreme master.  His genius, as Morelli rightly pointed out, is essentially lyrical in contradistinction to Titian’s, which is essentially dramatic.  Take the epithets that we have constantly applied to his pictures in the course of our survey, and see how they bear out this statement—­epithets such as romantic, fantastic, picturesque, gay, or again, delicate, refined, sensitive, serene, and the like; these bear witness to qualities of mind where the keynote is invariably exquisite feeling.  Giorgione was, in fact, what is commonly called a poet-painter, gifted with the artistic temperament to an extraordinary degree, essentially impulsive, a man of moods.  It is inevitable that such a man produces work of varying merit; inequality must be a characteristic feature of his art.  In less fortunate circumstances than those in which Giorgione was placed, such temperaments as his become peevish, morose, morbid; but his lines were cast in pleasant places, and his moods were healthy, joyous, and serene.  He does not concern himself with the tragedy of life, with its pathos or its disappointments.  In his two renderings of “Christ bearing the Cross"[138]—­the only instances we have of his portrayal of the Man of Sorrows—­he appeals more to our sense of the dignity of humanity, and to the nobility of the Christ, than to our tenderer sympathies.  How different from the pathetic Pietas of his master, Giambellini!  This shrinking from pain and sorrow, this dislike to the representation of suffering is, however, as much due to the natural gaiety and elasticity of youth as to the happy accident of his surroundings.  We must never forget that Giorgione’s whole achievement was over at an age when some men’s life-work has hardly begun.  The eighteen years of his activity were what we sometimes call the years of promise, and he must not be judged as we judge a Titian or a Michel Angelo.  He is the wonderful youth, full of joyous aspirations, gilding all he touches with the radiance of his spirit.  His pictures, suffused with a golden glow, are the reflection of his sunny life; the vividness and intensity of his passion are expressed in the gorgeousness of his colours.