Lorenzo Lotto, with its unique combination of the strongest subjective
and objective elements, the one serving to poetise and accentuate the
other. Yet another will cite the lofty melancholy, the aristocratic
charm of the Brescian Moretto, or the marvellous power of the
Bergamasque Moroni to present in their natural union, with no
indiscretion of over-emphasis, the spiritual and physical elements which
go to make up that mystery of mysteries, the human individuality. There
is, however, no advocate of any of these great masters who, having
vaunted the peculiar perfections in portraiture of his own favourite,
will not end--with a sigh perhaps--by according the palm to Titian.

In landscape his pre-eminence is even more absolute and unquestioned. He
had great precursors here, but no equal; and until Claude Lorrain long
afterwards arose, there appeared no successor capable, like himself, of
expressing the quintessence of Nature's most significant beauties
without a too slavish adherence to any special set of natural facts.
Giovanni Bellini from his earliest Mantegnesque or Paduan days had,
unlike his great brother-in-law, unlike the true Squarcionesques, and
the Ferrarese who more or less remotely came within the Squarcionesque
influence, the true gift of the landscape-painter. Atmospheric
conditions formed invariably an important element of his conceptions;
and to see that this is so we need only remember the chilly solemnity of
the landscape in the great _Pietà_ of the Brera, the ominous sunset in
our own _Agony in the Garden_ of the National Gallery, the cheerful
all-pervading glow of the beautiful little _Sacred Conversation_ at the
Uffizi, the mysterious illumination of the late _Baptism of Christ_ in
the Church of S. Corona at Vicenza. To attempt a discussion of the
landscape of Giorgione would be to enter upon the most perilous, as well
as the most fascinating of subjects--so various is it even in the few
well-established examples of his art, so exquisite an instrument of