Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/437

 In Venice. 407 School. Seeking beauty for its own sake, they found it, so to speak, by transfiguring common nature, — by treating the events and objects of familiar life in a grand and lofty manner, which was the fitting expression of the love of splendour characteristic of the proud citizens of the Mistress of the Sea. The masterpieces of Giorgione, Titian, and others are a reflexion of the magnificence of Venice at this time ; but a reflexion idealized and stamped with the impress of eternal beauty. The Venetian painters culti- vated the sensuous rather than the intellectual side of human nature ; and in their works faithfulness of pictorial representation is ever of greater moment that the moral lesson to be conveyed; with wonderful mastery over all the technical processes of their art, they rendered ac- curately the warm colouring of flesh — one of the painter's most difficult tasks — and the effects of light on different materials, in a manner never surpassed. Giorgio Barbarelli, called Giorgione (ab. 1476 — 1511), was the first to break free from the trammels of the Early Venetian School. The fellow-pupil of Titian, in the school of the Bellini, he soon proved his superiority to his masters, his paintings being distinguished for a luminous glow, a depth of colouring, and a purity of outline never before attained. He was one of the first of the Venetians to give prominence to landscape, and he was also famous for his portraits. Many celebrated personages sat to him. He worked much in fresco — but there is but little left to show us what we have lost by the destruction of his works. Few of his easel-pictures now remain ; and many works commonly ascribed to him are said by competent critics to be by Sebastiano del Piombo, Palma, Pellegrino Lotto, Romanino, Moretto, and others.