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whose blue, clear as crystal, and though deep in tone bright as the open air, is gradated to the horizon with a cautiousness and finish almost inconceivable; and to obtain light at the horizon without contradicting the system of chiaroscuro adopted in the figures which are lighted from the right hand, it is barred across with some glowing white cirri which, in their turn, are opposed by a single dark horizontal line of lower cloud; and to throw the whole farther back, there is a wreath of rain cloud of warmer color floating above the mountains, lighted on its under edge, whose faithfulness to nature, both in hue and in its light and shattering form, is altogether exemplary; the wandering of the light among the hills is equally studied, and the whole is crowned by the grand realization of the leaves of the fig-tree alluded to (Vol. II. Part III. Chap. 5,) as well as of the herbage upon the rocks. Considering that with all this care and completeness in the background, there is nothing that is not of meaning and necessity in reference to the figures, and that in the figures themselves the dignity and heavenliness of the highest religious painters are combined with a force and purity of color, greater I think than Titian's, it is a work which may be set before the young artist as in every respect a nearly faultless guide. Giorgione's landscape is inventive and solemn, but owing to the rarity even of his nominal works I dare not speak of it in general terms. It is certainly conventional, and is rather, I imagine, to be studied for its color and its motives than its details.

Tintoret.

Of Titian and Tintoret I have spoken already. § 12. Landscape of Titian and The latter is every way the greater master, never indulging in the exaggerated color of Titian, and attaining far more perfect light; his grasp of nature is more extensive, and his view of her more imaginative, (incidental notices of his landscape will be found in the chapter on Imagination penetrative, of the second volume,) but he is usually too impatient to carry his thoughts as far out, or to realize with as much substantiality as Titian. In the St. Jerome of the latter in the gallery of the Brera, there is a superb example of the modes in which the objects of landscape may be either suggested or elaborated according to their place and claim. The larger features of the ground, foliage, and drapery, as well as the lion in the lower angle, are executed with a slightness which admits

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close examination, and which, if not in shade, would be ive to the generality of observers. But on the rock above n, where it turns towards the light, and where the eye is led to dwell, there is a wreath of ivy of which every leaf is tely drawn with the greatest accuracy and care, and bea lizard, studied with equal earnestness, yet always with ight grandeur of manner to which I have alluded in the e. Tintoret seldom reaches or attempts the elaboration ostance and color of these objects, but he is even more telling and certain in his rendering of all the great characspecific form, and as the painter of Space he stands altoalone among dead masters; being the first who introthe slightness and confusion of touch which are expressive effects of luminous objects seen through large spaces of nd the principles of aerial color which have been since d out in other fields by Turner. I conceive him to be the powerful painter whom the world has seen, and that he revented from being also the most perfect, partly by untocircumstances in his position and education, partly by ry fulness and impetuosity of his own mind, partly by the of religious feeling and its accompanying perception of y; for his noble treatment of religious subject, of which I given several examples in the third part, appears to be the only of that grasp which a great and well-toned intellect sarily takes of any subject submitted to it, and is wanting - signs of the more withdrawn and sacred sympathies. at whatever advances were made by Tintoret in modes of cal treatment, he cannot be considered as having enlarged phere of landscape conception. He took no cognizance of the materials and motives, so singularly rich in color, were forever around him in his own Venice. All porof Venetian scenery introduced by him are treated con-nally and carelessly; the architectural characters lost ther, the sea distinguished from the sky only by a darker while of the sky itself only those forms were employed n which had been repeated again and again for centuhough in less tangibility and completion. Of mountain y he has left, I believe, no example so far carried as that of Bellini above instanced.

The Florentine and Ambrian schools supply us Florence, Milan, with no examples of landscape, except that introduced by their earliest masters, gradually over

13. Schools of

and Bologna.

whelmed under renaissance architecture.

Leonardo's landscape has been of unfortunate effect on art, so far as it has had effect at all. In realization of detail he verges on the ornamental, in his rock outlines he has all the deficiencies and little of the feeling of the earlier men. Behind the "Sacrifice for the Friends" of Giotto at Pisa, there is a sweet piece of rock incident, a little fountain breaking out at the mountain foot, and trickling away, its course marked by branches of reeds, the latter formal enough certainly, and always in triplets, but still with a sense of nature pervading the whole which is utterly wanting to the rocks of Leonardo in the Holy Family in the Louvre. The latter are grotesque without being ideal, and extraordinary without being impressive. The sketch in the Uffizii of Florence has some fine foliage, and there is of course a certain virtue in all the work of a man like Leonardo which I would not depreciate, but our admiration of it in this particular field must be qualified, and our following cautious.

No advances were made in landscape, so far as I know, after the time of Tintoret; the power of art ebbed gradually away from the derivative schools; various degrees of cleverness or feeling being manifested in more or less brilliant conventionalism. I once supposed there was some life in the landscape of Domenichino, but in this I must have been wrong. The man who painted the Madonna del Rosario and Martyrdom of St. Agnes in the gallery of Bologna, is palpably incapable of doing anything good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind, whatso

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* This is no rash method of judgment, sweeping and hasty as it may appear. From the weaknesses of an artist, or failures, however numerous, we have no right to conjecture his total inability; a time may come when he may rise into sudden strength, or an instance occur when his efforts shall be successful. But there are some pictures which rank not under the head of failures, but of perpetrations or commissions; some things which a man cannot do nor say without sealing forever his character and capacity. The angel holding the cross with his finger in his eye, the roaring red-faced chil

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Though, however, at this period the general grasp of the schools was perpetually contracting, a gift was given to the world by Claude, for which perhaps hardly enough grateful, owing to the very freof our after enjoyment of it. He set the sun in heaven, , I suppose, the first who attempted anything like the on of actual sunshine in misty air. He gives the first of the study of nature for her own sake, and allowing infortunate circumstances of his education, and for his inferiority of intellect, more could hardly have been I from him. His false taste, forced composition, and rendering of detail have perhaps been of more detriart than the gift he gave was of advantage. The charhis own mind is singular; I know of no other instance 's working from nature comtinually with the desire of ue, and never attaining the power of drawing so much as of a tree rightly. Salvator, a man originally endowed higher power of mind than Claude, was altogether unto his mission, and has left us, I believe, no gift. Everyat he did is evidently for the sake of exhibiting his own. y; there is no love of any kind for anything; his choice scape features is dictated by no delight in the sublime, mere animal restlessness or ferocity, guided by an imagipower of which he could not altogether deprive himself. done nothing which others have not done better, or it would not have been better not to have done; in

it the crown of thorns, the blasphemous (I speak deliberately and edly) head of Christ upon the handkerchief, and the mode in which rdom of the saint is exhibited (I do not choose to use the expresich alone could characterize it) are perfect, sufficient, incontrovertis that whatever appears good in any of the doings of such a painter deceptive, and that we may be assured that our taste is corrupted whenever we feel disposed to admire him. I am prepared to supposition, however uncharitable it may seem; a man may be into a gross sin by passion, and forgiven; and yet there are some sins into which only men of a certain kind can be tempted, and nnot be forgiven. It should be added, however, that the artistical of these pictures are in every way worthy of the conceptions they I do not recollect any instances of color or execution so coarse and

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nature, he mistakes distortion for energy, and savageness for sublimity; in man, mendicity for sanctity, and conspiracy for heroism.

The landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows much power, and is usually composed and elaborated on right principles, (compare preface to second edition,) but I am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found in other masters in higher degrees. In finish it is inferior to Leonardo's, in invention to Giorgione's, in truth to Titian's, in grace to Raffaelle's. The landscapes of Gaspar have serious feeling and often valuable and solemn color; virtueless otherwise, they are full of the most degraded mannerism, and I believe the admiration of them to have been productive of extensive evil among recent schools.

$ 15. German and Flemish landscape.

The development of landscape north of the Alps, presents us with the same general phases under modifications dependent partly on less intensity of feeling, partly on diminished availableness of landscape material. That of the religious painters is treated with the same affectionate completion; but exuberance of fancy sometimes diminishes the influence of the imagination, and the absence of the Italian force of passion admits of more patient and somewhat less intellectual elaboration. A morbid habit of mind is evident in many, seeming to lose sight of the balance and relations of things, so as to become intense in trifles, gloomily minute, as in Albert Durer; and this mingled with a feverish operation of the fancy, which appears to result from certain habitual conditions of bodily health rather than of mental culture, (and of which the sickness without the power is eminently characteristic of the modern Germans ;) but with all this there are virtues of the very highest order in those schools, and I regret that my knowledge is insufficient to admit of my giving any detailed account of them.

In the landscape of Rembrandt and Rubens, we have the northern parallel to the power of the Venetians. Among the etchings and drawings of Rembrandt, landscape thoughts may be found not unworthy of Titian, and studies from nature of sublime fidelity; but his system of chiaroscuro was inconsistent with the gladness, and his peculiar modes of feeling with the

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