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 naïveté,
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 cendré_ 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