We have already, in the course of our survey of Giorgione’s pictures, noted the points wherein he was an initiator.  “Genre subjects,” and “Landscape with figures,” as we should say nowadays, found in him their earliest exponent.  Before him artists had, indeed, painted figures with a landscape background, but the perfect blend of Nature and human nature was his achievement.  This was accomplished by artistic means of the simplest, yet irresistibly subtle in their appeal.  The quality of line and the sensuousness of colour nowhere cast their spells over us more strangely than in Giorgione’s pictures, and by these means he wrought “effects” such as no artist has surpassed.  In these purely pictorial qualities he is supreme, and claims place with the few quintessential artists of the world; to him may be applied by analogy the phrase that Liszt applied to Schubert, “Le musicien le plus poete que jamais.”

As an instrument of expression, then, colour is used by Giorgione more naturally and effectively than it is by any of the Venetian painters.  It appeals directly to our senses, like rare old stained glass, and seems to be of the very essence of the object itself.  An engraving or photograph after such a picture as the Louvre “Pastoral Symphony” fails utterly to convey the sense of exhilaration one feels in presence of the actual painting, simply because the tonic effect of the colour is wholly wanting.  The golden shimmer of light, the vibration of the air, the saturation of atmosphere with pure colour are not only ingredients in, but are of the very essence of the creation.  It has been well said that almost literally the chief colour on Giorgione’s palette was sunlight.[146] His masterly treatment of light and shadow, in which he was scarcely Leonardo’s inferior, enabled him to make use of rich and full-bodied colours, which are never gaudy, as sometimes with Bonifazio, or pretty, as with Catena and lesser artists.  Nor is he decorative in the way that Veronese excels, or lurid like Tintoretto.  Compared with Titian it is as though his colour-chord sounded in seven sharps, whilst the former strikes the key of C natural.  A full rich green frequently occurs, as in the Castelfranco “Madonna” and the Louvre picture, and a deep crimson, contrasting with pure white drapery, or with golden flesh-tints, is also characteristic.  In the painting of the nude he gives us real flesh and blood; his “Venus” has not the supernatural radiance that Correggio can give his ethereal beings (Giorgione, by the way, never painted an angel, so far as we know), but she glows with actual life, the blood is pulsing through the veins, she is very real.  And in this connection we may notice the extraordinary skill with which Giorgione conveys a sense of texture; his painting of rich brocades, and more especially quilted stuffs and satiny folds, cannot be surpassed even by a Terburg.