Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

194
HAMPTON COURT
is difficult to resist the feeling that in the Shepherd,1
in white shirt and grey cloak, holding a flute in his
hand, we have a genuine and exquisite Giorgione.
It is a picture full of a real and unspoiled delight
in life, pastoral, human, simple, pure. The sympathetic
writer whose charming brochure should be in
the hand of every visitor to the gallery, says: " The
face is so radiantly beautiful, that even retouching and
blackening have not been able to hide the fine oval,
the exquisite proportions, the lovely brow, the warm
eyes, the sweet mouth, the soft waving hair, and the
easy poise of the head." 2 This enthusiastic writer,
following Mr. Bernhard Berenson, will allow no other
picture in England to be by the hand of Giorgione,
dismissing not only the National Gallery "Knight " as a
" poor copy " of the figure in the famous altarpiece
that Mr. Ruskin has so loftily praised, but also all the
others at Hampton Court — 60 and 183, as by Dosso
Dossi, 87 "from the workshop of Bonifazio," 158 as
of the school of Paris Bordone, and the rest as " an
insult to the name of any master."
" TheConcert " (No. 144), a rather sly damsel singing,
and three male faces, which Mr. Berenson 3 will
not admit to be a Lotto, still less a Giorgione, is
assigned to the little-known Morto da Feltre. Its
chief interest " lies in its mystery."
From Giorgione we pass toTitian, whose magnificent
1 No. 101.
2 Mary Logan, "The ItalianPictures at Hampton Court,"p. 13.
3 " Lorenzo Lotto," preface.