The accomplished science of the subject has come
at last, and, as in other instances, has not made the past more real for
us, but assured us that we possess of it less than we seemed to possess.
Much of the work on which Giorgione's immediate fame depended, work done
for instantaneous effect, in all probability passed away almost within
his own age, like the frescoes on the facade of the fondaco dei Tedeschi
at Venice, some crimson traces of which, however, still give a strange
additional touch of splendour to the scene of the Rialto. And then there
is a barrier or borderland, a period about the middle of the sixteenth
century, in passing through which the tradition miscarries, and the true
outlines of Giorgione's work and person become obscured. It became
fashionable for wealthy lovers of art, with no critical standard of
authenticity, to collect so-called works of Giorgione, and a multitude
of imitations came into circulation. And now, in the "new Vasari,"* the
great traditional reputation, woven with so profuse demand on men's
admiration, has been scrutinised thread by thread; and what remains of
the most vivid and stimulating of Venetian masters, a live flame, as it
seemed, in those old shadowy times, has been reduced almost to a name by
his most recent critics.
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