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hich worthily used will be a gift also to his race for

'ool not," says George Herbert,

"For all may have,

If they dare choose, a glorious life or grave."

on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness ed, if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, an envious or powerless imitation of other men's labors, e a display of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacr if in any other mode it show itself as having its origin ity,-Cast it out. It matters not what powers of mind ave been concerned or corrupted in it, all have lost their it is worse than worthless ;-perilous-Cast it out.

orks of art are indeed always of mixed kind, their honesty more or less corrupted by the various weaknesses of the r, by his vanity, his idleness, or his cowardice; (the fear ng right has far more influence on art than is commonly nt,) that only is altogether to be rejected which is alto- vain, idle, and cowardly. Of the rest the rank is to be ated rather by the purity of their metal than the coined of it.

igious e of 'he adness of letion.

Keeping these principles in view, let us endeavor to obtain something like a general view of the assistance which has been rendered to our study of nature by the various occurrences of landscape er art, and by the more exclusively. directed labors of in schools.

the ideal landscape of the early religious painters of I have alluded in the concluding chapter of the second volIt is absolutely right and beautiful in its peculiar apion; but its grasp of nature is narrow and its treatment st respects too severe and conventional to form a profitaxample when the landscape is to be alone the subject of ht. The great virtue of it is its entire, exquisite, and humalization of those objects it selects; in this respect differom such German imitations of it as I have met with, that is no effort of any fanciful or ornamental modifications, oving fidelity to the thing studied. The foreground plants

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are usually neither exaggerated nor stiffened; they do not form arches or frames or borders; their grace is unconfined, their simplicity undestroyed. Cima da Conegliano, in his picture in the church of the Madonna dell' Orto at Venice, has given us the oak, the fig, the beautiful "Erba della Madonna" on the wall, precisely such a bunch of it as may be seen growing at this day on the marble steps of that very church; ivy and other creepers, and a strawberry plant in the foreground, with a blossom and a berry just set, and one half ripe and one ripe, all patiently and innocently painted from the real thing, and therefore most divine. Fra Angelico's use of the oxalis acetosella is as faithful in representation as touching in feeling.* The ferns that grow on the walls of Fiesole may be seen in their simple verity on the architecture of Ghirlandajo. The rose, the myrtle, and the lily, the olive and orange, pomegranate and vine, have received their fairest portraiture where they bear a sacred character; even the common plantains and mallows of the waysides are touched with deep reverence by Raffaelle; and indeed for the perfect treatment of details of this kind, treatment as delicate and affectionate as it is elevated and manly, it is to the works of these schools alone that we can refer. And on this their peculiar excellence I should the more earnestly insist, because it is of a kind altogether neglected by the English school, and with most unfortunate result, many of our best painters missing their deserved rank solely from the want of it, as Gainsborough; and all being more or less checked in their progress or vulgarized in their aim.

§ 10. Finish, and the want of it. how right and how wrong.

It is a misfortune for all honest critics, that hardly any quality of art is independently to be praised, and without reference to the motive from which it resulted, and the place in which it appears; so that no principle can be simply enforced but it shall seem to countenance a vice; while the work of qualification and explanation both weakens the force of what is said, and is not perhaps always likely to be with patience received: so also those who de

*The triple leaf of this plant, and white flower, stained purple, probably gave it strange typical interest among the Christian painters. Angelico, in using its leaves mixed with daisies in the foreground of his Crucifixion had, I imagine, a view also to its chemical property.

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misunderstand or to oppose have it always in their power come obtuse listeners or specious opponents. Thus I dare insist upon the virtue of completion, lest I should posed a defender of Wouvermans or Gerard Dow; neither adequately praise the power of Tintoret, without fearing thought adverse to Holbein or Perugino. The fact is, that inish and impetuosity, specific minuteness, or large abstracmay be the signs of passion, or of its reverse; may result affection or indifference, intellect or dulness. Some men from intense love of the beautiful in the smallest parts of they do; others in pure incapability of comprehending ing but parts; others to show their dexterity with the , and prove expenditure of time. Some are impetuous and in their handling, from having great thoughts to express are independent of detail; others because they have bad or have been badly taught; others from vanity, and others indolence. (Compare Vol. II. Chap. IX. § 8.) Now both nish and incompletion are right where they are the signs. ssion or of thought, and both are wrong, and I think the the more contemptible of the two, when they cease to be The modern Italians will paint every leaf of a laurel or ›ush without the slightest feeling of their beauty or char; and without showing one spark of intellect or affection. beginning to end. Anything is better than this; and yet ery highest schools do the same thing, or nearly so, but totally different motives and perceptions, and the result is e. On the whole, I conceive that the extremes of good and ie with the finishers, and that whatever glorious power ay admit in men like Tintoret, whatever attractiveness of od to Rubens, Rembrandt, or, though in far less degree, wn Reynolds, still the thoroughly great men are those have done everything thoroughly, and who, in a word, have despised anything, however small, of God's making. And s the chief fault of our English landscapists, that they not the intense all-observing penetration of well-balanced ; they have not, except in one or two instances, anything at feeling which Wordsworth shows in the following

"So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive ;

Would that the little flowers were born to live
Conscious of half the pleasure which they give.
That to this mountain daisy's self were known
The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown

On the smooth surface of this naked stone.”

That is a little bit of good, downright, foreground painting -no mistake about it; daisy, and shadow, and stone texture and all. Our painters must come to this before they have done their duty; and yet, on the other hand, let them beware of finishing, for the sake of finish, all over their picture. The ground is not to be all over daisies, nor is every daisy to have its star-shaped shadow; there is as much finish in the right concealment of things as in the right exhbition of them; and while I demand this amount of specific character where nature shows it, I demand equal fidelity to her where she conceals it. To paint mist rightly, space rightly, and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else rightly, but the rule is simple for all that; if the artist is painting something that he knows and loves, as he knows it because he loves it, whether it be the fair strawberry of Cima, or the clear sky of Francia, or the blazing incomprehensible mist of Turner, he is all right; but the moment he does anything as he thinks it ought to be, because he does not care about it, he is all wrong. He has only to ask himself whether he cares for anything except himself; so far as he does he will make a good picture; so far as he thinks of himself a vile one. This is the root of the viciousness of the whole French school. Industry they have, learning they have, power they have, feeling they have, yet not so much feeling as ever to force them to forget themselves even for a moment; the ruling motive is invariably vanity, and the picture therefore an abortion.

$ 11. The open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. Mountain draw

Returning to the pictures of the religious schools, we find that their open skies are also of the highest value. Their preciousness is such that no ing of Masaccio. subsequent schools can by comparison be said to have painted sky at all, but only clouds, or mist, or blue canopies. The golden sky of Marco Basaiti in the Academy of Venice altogether overpowers and renders value

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hat of Titian beside it. Those of Francia in the gallery of na are even more wonderful, because cooler in tone and d figures in full light. The touches of white light in the on of Angelico's Last Judgment are felt and wrought with truth. The dignified and simple forms of cloud in repose ten by these painters sublimely expressed, but of changeful form they show no examples. The architecture, mounand water of these distances are commonly conventional; es are to be found in them of the highest beauty, and esly remarkable for quantity and meaning of incident; but can only be studied or accepted in the particular feeling ›roduced them. It may generally be observed that whathas been the result of strong emotion is ill seen unless gh the medium of such emotion, and will lead to concluutterly false and perilous, if it be made a subject of colded observance, or an object of systematic imitation. One of genuine mountain drawing, however, occurs in the cape of Masaccio's Tribute Money. It is impossible to say strange results might have taken place in this particular of art, or how suddenly a great school of landscape might arisen, had the life of this great painter been prolonged. is particular fresco I shall have much to say hereafter. two brothers Bellini gave a marked and vigorous impulse e landscape of Venice, of Gentile's architecture I shall presently. Giovanni's, though in style less interesting n place less prominent, occurring chiefly as a kind of frame s pictures, connecting them with the architecture of the hes for which they were intended, is in refinement of realn, I suppose, quite unrivalled, especially in passages requirure gradation, as the hollows of vaultings. That of Verwould look ghostly beside it; that of Titian lightless. andscape is occasionally quaint and strange like Gior's, and as fine in color, as that behind the Madonna in rera gallery at Milan; but a more truthful fragment occurs e picture in San Francesco della Vigna at Venice; and in icture of St. Jerome in the church of San Grisostomo, ndscape is as perfect and beautiful as any background may mately be, and finer, as far as it goes, than anything of It is remarkable for the absolute truth of its sky,

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