BOOK VI.

CHAPTER I.

Of all departments of the pictorial art, none has so great a power to charm the lover of Nature, as the landscape. For though he is willing to give all due applause to portrait and historic painting, and would allow appropriate praise, even to the lodges of Raphael, the drolleries of Brewer, and the grotesque pieces of Mortuus Feltrensis and Leonardo de Vinci, he is far less charmed with any efforts of the painter, than with a full, a clear, and well delineated landscape. In this department of his art, the painter's subjects are unlimited. Every object having its varied and appropriate blending of colour, each tree, flower, and plant, give scope for his talents; his rocks are green with the living moss, and peopled with the bounding goat; his forests are clothed in the shade of summer, or in the varied foliage of autumn; his hills are capt with snow, and his vineyards bend beneath their purple wealth. An artist being of every country,-he translates the temples, theatres, and aqueducts of Rome, the pyramids of Egypt, and the pillars of Heliopolis and Palmyra, on an English wall. The Pays de Vaud glows with its soft and enchanting perspectives;-Engelberg frowns with its masses of rocks;-St. Gothard bends be

neath the weight of its snows;-the bird of paradise hovers in enjoyment, far from her native Gilolo ;-and the sensitive Melissa blooms upon a northern canvas. The vales of Savoy; the glens of Media; the savannahs of Africa; the rocks of Norway; the groves of Italy; the mountains of the west;-all quit their native soils, and hang suspended in a British palace'.

II.

The landscapes of BLOEMEN of Antwerp were generally decorated with mutilated statues and basso-relievos; with ruins; and light and elegant specimens of architecture: objects, which contributed to give additional interest to figures, habited after oriental fashions, and remarkable for spirited lightness, and graceful inflection. MOLYN, in a peculiar manner, delighted in exhibiting the ocean, in all its sublime and terrible forms. In this he was imitated by APPEL. From this passion for tempests and shipwrecks Molyn acquired the appellation of Tempesta. In poetical delineation of marine landscape, Homer (Odyssey) among the Greeks, Virgil among the Latins, Camoens among the Portuguese, and Falconer among the English, bear the palm from all competitors.

1

Ancient painters were not so rich in natural objects with which to exercise their genius as the modern. They knew nothing of China, of Japan, the Asiatic islands; Polynesia, Austral Asia, or America: and not much of the northern parts of Europe. They knew no flowers so beautiful as those of the Cape; no trees so magnificent as those of South America; nor any insects so splendid as the diamond beetle. They were almost entirely insensible also to the melancholy pleasure, derivable from the study of ruins: though Servius Sulpitius, Cicero, and Pliny the younger, seem, in some degree, to have been susceptible of that " divine sensation."

In every instance landscape painters should tell a striking history; and not only ought they to select a fine landscape for their study and admiration, but a proper time for exhibiting it: for man scarcely differs more from man, than one scene differs from itself. What is lovely in the morning is frequently dull and uninteresting, when the sun is in its meridian. For in the morning and evening the shades of separate objects act upon each other, as contrasts: whereas at noon, the sun shooting its rays perpendicularly rather than horizontally, even the shadow of Etna, which at intervals throws itself to the distance of two hundred and twenty miles, is a comparative dwarf.

III.

This taste for selection characterised LORENESSE; who, attending to the varied phenomena of the heavens, and aided by an Italian climate, produced the richest and most beautifully fringed horizons, it is possible to conceive. BERGHEM of Haerlem had the faculty of exhibiting great variety in his landscapes. With variety he united beauty, compass, and grandeur. Mathematically correct in his proportions, he was no less faithful in the essential requisites of light and shade, proximity and distance. His trees wave; his colours are luminous, almost to transparency; while his clouds suspend in so natural a manner, that they seem to float at the discretion of the winds.

CASTIGLIONE excelled principally in the drawing of castles, and abbeys; in which no master has surpassed him. His sketches of rural scenery are agreeable and faithful; but in real merit they are far inferior to the

bolder efforts of his pencil. SNEYDERS of Antwerp excelled every artist in the delineation of hunting pieces. He may be styled the Somerville of painting. EDEMA of Antwerp painted precipices and cataracts; and even voyaged to Norway and Newfoundland to collect subjects for his pencil. BAMBOCCIO studied at Rome; but derived more from the environs of that celebrated city, than from the works of its greatest masters. He was so minute an observer, that no scene, which struck him, was ever lost to his memory. His imagination was in the highest degree elastic; and, like Jordaens, his faculty in delineating was nearly as active, as his powers of combination. In looking at Bamboccio's pieces, the eye is completely deluded; for the distances being well preserved, each has its appropriate relief, and every shade its characteristic tint.

IV.

GIOVANNI DELLA VITE delighted, after the manner of Bamboccio, to diversify his pictures with hordes of beggars, groups of gypsies and hunters; and in exhibiting the agreeable variety of pastoral life. This painter is said to have once drawn the outlines of a picture in his sleep. The muse of Milton, in the same manner, dictated to him slumbering; while Maignanus of Toulouse perfected theorems; and Cædmon, the Saxon poet, wrote verses, while they slept. HOBBIMA of Antwerp may be styled the "painter of solitude;" since he introduces but few figures into his landscapes. Like Claude, Nature was his mistress; and he copied her with precision. A perfect master of perspective, whether he exhibits the

head of a river or a lake, a temple, a grotto, or a ruin, the eye is deceived in a very agreeable manner.

In the knowledge of perspective, the Chinese, and the ancient masters, are said to have been strikingly deficient ; and yet, though the knowledge of perspective is almost unknown in China, it has been asserted, by several intelligent travellers, that the art of delineating landscape is in higher perfection than that of history or of portrait painting. On the contrary, though many treatises on the subject were extant in the time of Tully, particularly those written by Agatharcus, Anaxagoras, Heliodorus, and Germinus of Rhodes, the Roman artists had made such little comparative progress, that their landscapes were greatly inferior to their portrait and historical designs. It has, however, been observed, that perspective was consulted in the coins of Tarsus. Quintilian, too, says, that Zeuxis understood light and shade; and Pliny mentions various subjects, which it would have been impossible to have delineated, had the ancient painters been so entirely ignorant of lineal and aerial perspective, as some writers suppose.

LOTEN painted in England and in Switzerland: his genius led to the delineation of storms and waterfalls.

1 La Chausse, speaking of the perspective of the Thermæ of Titus, says, "Da questa pittura si cognosce che gli Antichi sono stati alfretanto infelici nella prospettiva, ch' eruditi nel disegno.”—Pittur. Antich. p. 13.

Several pictures, found at Herculaneum, place the knowledge of Roman artists in the science of perspective beyond a doubt. The curious reader may, however, consult with advantage Kircher's Ars magna Lucis et Umbræ. Rom. 1646, folio.