installed as a helper at Gian Bellini's studio, with an easel and box of
paints all his own.

* * * * *

The brightest scholar in the studio of Gian Bellini was a young man by
the name of Giorgio, but they called him Giorgione, which being
interpreted means George the Great. He was about the age of Titian, and
the two became firm friends.

Giorgione was nearly twenty when we first hear of him. He was a handsome
fellow--tall, slender, with an olive complexion and dreamy brown eyes.
There was a becoming flavor of melancholy in his manner, and more than
one gracious dame sought to lure him back to earth, away from his
sadness, out of the dream-world in which he lived.

Giorgione was a musician and a poet. He sang his own pieces, playing the
accompaniment on a harp. Vasari says he sang his songs, playing his own
accompaniment on a flute, but I think this is a mistake.

Into all his work Giorgione infused his own soul--and do you know what
the power to do that is? It is genius. To be able to make a statue is
little, but to breathe into its nostrils the breath of life--ah! that is
something else! The last elusive, undefinable stroke of the brush, that
something uniting the spirit of the beholder with the spirit of the
artist, so that you feel as he felt when he wrought--that is art.
Burne-Jones is the avatar of Giorgione. He subdues you into silence, and
you wait, expecting that one of his tall, soulful dream-women will speak,
if you are but worthy--holding your soul in tune.