This kind of thing is not necessarily servile imitation—­it is only admiration tipped to t’ other side.  It is found everywhere in aspiring youth and in every budding artist.

As in the animal kingdom, genius has its prototype.  In the National Gallery at London you will see in the Turner Room a “Claude Lorraine” and a “Turner” hung side by side, as provided for in Turner’s will.  You would swear, were the pictures not labeled, that one hand did them both.  When thirty, Turner admired Claude to a slavish degree; but we know there came a time when he bravely set sail on a chartless sea, and left the great Claude Lorraine far astern.

Titian loved Giorgione so well that he even imitated his faults.  At first this high compliment was pleasing to Giorgione; then he became indifferent, and finally disgusted.  The very sight of Titian gave him a pain.

He avoided his society.  He ceased to speak to him when they met, and forbade his friends to mention the name “Titian” in his presence.

It was about this time that Giorgione’s ladylove won fame by discarding him in that foolish, fishwife fashion.  He called his attendants and instructed them thus:  “Do not allow that painter from Cadore—­never mind his name—­to attend my funeral—­you understand?”

Then he turned his face to the wall and died.

In his studio were various pictures partly completed, for it seems to have been his habit to get rest by turning from one piece of work to another.  His executors looked at these unfinished canvases in despair.  There was only one man in all Venice who could complete them, and that was Titian.

Titian was sent for.

He came, completed the pictures, signed them with the dead man’s name, and gave them to the world.

“And,” says the veracious Vasari, “they were done just as well, if not better than Giorgione himself could have done them, had he been alive!”

It was absurd of Giorgione to die of a broken heart and let Titian come in, making free with everything in his studio, and complete his work.  It was very absurd.

Time is the great avenger—­let us wait.  Morta del Feltri, the perfidious friend, grew tired of his mistress:  their love was so warm it shortly burned itself to ashes—­ashes of roses.

Morta deserted the girl, fled from Venice, joined the army, and a javelin plunged through his liver at the battle of Zara ended his career.

The unhappy young woman, twice a widow, fought off hungry wolves by finding work in a glass-factory, making mosaics at fourteen cents a day.  When she was seventy, Titian, aged seventy-five, painted her picture as a beggar-woman.

* * * * *

The quality of sentiment that clings about the life of Giorgione seems to forbid a cool, critical view of his work.  Byron indited a fine poem to him; and poetic criticism seems for him the proper kind.  The glamour of sentiment conceals the real man from our sight.  And anyway, it is hardly good manners to approach a saint closely and examine his halo to see whether it be genuine or not.  Halos are much more beautiful when seen through the soft, mellow light of distance.