The Three Ages in the Bridgewater Gallery and the so-called Sacred and Profane Love in the Borghese Gallery represent the apogee of Titian’s Giorgionesque style.  Glowing through and through with the spirit of the master-poet among Venetian painters, yet falling short a little, it may be, of that subtle charm of his, compounded indefinably of sensuous delight and spiritual yearning, these two masterpieces carry the Giorgionesque technically a pretty wide step farther than the inventor of the style took it.  Barbarelli never absolutely threw off the trammels of the Quattrocento, except in his portraits, but retained to the last—­not as a drawback, but rather as an added charm—­the naivete, the hardly perceptible hesitation proper to art not absolutely full-fledged.

The Three Ages, from its analogies of type and manner with the Baptism of the Capitol, would appear to be the earlier of the two imaginative works here grouped together, but to date later than that picture.[18] The tonality of the picture is of an exquisite silveriness—­that of clear, moderate daylight, though this relative paleness may have been somewhat increased by time.  It may a little disconcert at first sight those who have known the lovely pastoral only from hot, brown copies, such as the one which, under the name of Giorgione, was formerly in the Dudley House Collection, and now belongs to Sir William Farrer.  It is still so difficult to battle with the deeply-rooted notion that there can be no Giorgione, no painting of his school, without the accompaniment of a rich brown sauce!  The shepherdess has a robe of fairest crimson, and her flower-crowned locks in tint more nearly approach to the blond cendre which distinguishes so many of Palma’s donne than to the ruddier gold that Titian himself generally affects.  The more passionate of the two, she gazes straight into the eyes of her strong-limbed rustic lover, who half-reclining rests his hand upon her shoulder.  On the twin reed-pipes, which she still holds in her hands, she has just breathed forth a strain of music, and to it, as it still lingers in their ears, they yield themselves entranced.  Here the youth is naked, the maid clothed and adorned—­a reversal, this, of Giorgione’s Fete Champetre in the Salon Carre of the Louvre, where the women are undraped, and the amorous young cavaliers appear in complete and rich attire.  To the right are a group of thoroughly Titianesque amorini—­the winged one, dominating the others, being perhaps Amor himself; while in the distance an old man contemplates skulls ranged round him on the ground—­obvious reminders of the last stage of all, at which he has so nearly arrived.  There is here a wonderful unity between the even, unaccented harmony of the delicate tonality and the mood of the personages—­the one aiding the other to express the moment of pause in nature and in love, which in itself is a delight more deep than all that the very whirlwind of passion can give.  Near at hand may be pitfalls, the smiling love-god may prove less innocent than he looks, and in the distance Fate may be foreshadowed by the figure of weary Age awaiting Death.  Yet this one moment is all the lovers’ own, and they profane it not by speech, but stir their happy languor only with faint notes of music borne on the still, warm air.