Page "Giorgione" Paragraph 28

At an earlier period in Giorgione's short career, a group of paintings is sometimes described as the " Allendale group ", after the Allendale Nativity ( or Allendale Adoration of the Shepherds, rather more correctly ) in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

This group includes another Washington painting, the Holy Family, and an Adoration of the Magi predella panel in the National Gallery, London.

This group, now often expanded to include a very similar Adoration of the Shepherds in Vienna, and sometimes further, are usually included ( increasingly ) or excluded together from Giorgione's oeuvre.

Ironically, the Allendale Nativity caused the rupture in the 1930s between Lord Duveen, who sold it to Andrew Mellon as a Giorgione, and his expert Bernard Berenson, who insisted it was an early Titian.

Berenson had played a significant part in reducing the Giorgione catalogue, recognising fewer than twenty paintings.