Then, if you showed curiosity and wanted to know further, the
gondolier would have told you more about this strange man.

The canals of Venice are the highways, and the gondoliers are like
’bus-drivers in Piccadilly—they know everybody and are in close touch
with all the Secrets of State. When you get to the Gindecca and tie up
for lunch, over a bottle of Chianti, your gondolier will tell you
this:

The hunchback there in the gondola, rowed by the Master, is the Devil,
who has taken that form just to be with and guard the greatest artist
the world has ever seen. Yes, Signor, that clean-faced man with his
frank, wide-open, brown eyes is in league with the Evil One. He is the
man who took young Tiziano from Cadore into his shop, right out of a
glass-factory, and made him a great artist, getting him commissions
and introducing him everywhere! And how about the divine Giorgione who
called him father? Oho!

And who is Giorgione? The son of some unknown peasant woman. And if
Bellini wanted to adopt him, treat him as his son indeed, kissing him
on the cheek when he came back just from a day’s visit to Mestre,
whose business was it! Oho!

Beside that, his name isn’t Giorgione—it is Giorgio Barbarelli. And
didn’t this Giorgio Barbarelli, and Tiziano from Cadore, and Espero
Carbonne, and that Gustavo from Nuremberg, and the others paint most
of Gian’s pictures? Surely they did. The old man simply washes in the
backgrounds and the boys do the work. About all old Gian does is to
sign the picture, sell it and pocket the proceeds. Carpaccio helps
him, too—Carpaccio who painted the loveliest little angel sitting