Landscapes E-Book

Emile Michel

• Herausgeber: Parkstone International
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 354

Beschreibung

Although considered a minor genre for a long time, the art of landscape has risen above its forebears - religious and historic painting - to become a genre of its own. Giorgione in Italy, the Brueghels of the Flemish School, Claude Lorrain and Poussain of the French School, the Dutch landscape painters and Turner and Constable of England are just a few of the great landscapists who have left their indelible mark on the history of landscape and the art of painting as a whole. After serving for a long time as a backdrop for paintings and as a skill-practising exercise for artists, nature came to be observed for its own sake and was incorporated into works of art as an illustration of an enlightened and scientific study of the world. Through continual change, it has inspired the greatest painters and has allowed some others, like Turner, to transcend the relentless search for mere realism in pictorial representation. Through this study, Émile Michel offers an exceptional panorama, from the 15th century to the present, of art and the way artists portray the world in all its splendour.

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Author: Émile Michel

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Michel, Emile, 1828-1909.

[Mantres du paysage. English]

Landscapes / Emile Michel.

p. cm.

Originally published: Les mantres du paysage. Paris : Hachette, 1906.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Landscape painting, European. 2. Landscapes in art. I. Title.

ND1353.M5313 2011

758’.1094--dc23

                    2011028285

© Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA

© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA

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All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers, artists, heirs or estates. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification.

Émile Michel

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 The Masters of Landscape Painting in Italy

Chapter 2 Landscape in the Flemish and German Schools

The Flemish School

The Miniaturists

The Bruegels, Rubens, and Teniers

German Landscape

Chapter 3 Dutch Landscapists

The School of Utrecht and the “Italianisers”

The Landscapists of Haarlem

Painters of the sea, beaches, and towns of Holland

Rembrandt’s Landscapes

Chapter 4 Landscape in the Spanish and French Schools

The Spanish School

A Late Blooming

French School

‘Le Lorrain’, Claude Gellée

Chapter 5 Landscapists of the English School

Art, Nature, and Turner

John Constable

Chapter 6 The Masters of Modern Landscape Painting

Théodore Rousseau and the Barbizon painters

The Schism of 1820

Landscapists born prior to 1820

Landscapists born after 1820

Conclusion

Index

Notes

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Magpie on the Gallows(Peasants“dancing under the gallows”) (detail), 1568. Oil on panel, 45.6 x 50.8 cm.

Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany.

Preface

This book does not claim to be a complete history of landscape painting. The length of such a history would considerably exceed the proportions of this volume, but I have nevertheless endeavoured to give some idea of the order in which the different masters appeared, and of the relative importance of each. Having only to speak here of those who excelled, I have tried to show, in some sort of sequence, whence these artists came, the special merit of each, and his influence on the development of art.

This chronological order was imposed by the subject itself. It is also helpful for the explanation of certain facts. The development of landscape painting did not take place simultaneously, but by turns in the various schools according to the preoccupations of the various regions, and the genius of the great artists distinguished as its exponents.

Our study begins with the Renaissance. As the imitation of nature played but a minor part in antiquity, we need not look for masters in landscape painting there. In Greece, the anthropomorphism of religion prevailed in art as in literature, and among the statuary of the great epoch there is scarcely a fragment of rock or a tree trunk with ivy or vine leaves clinging to it to be found. Although landscape painting occupies a fairly important place in the villas of Rome and the Campagna, it always remains purely decorative, and the pictorial elements to be found in it seem to be merely accidental. Such work, too, was anonymous, and of a secondary order whose facile execution denoted a certain skill: but it does not compare with that close interpretation of nature in which all details are used to enhance the general effect.

We shall not attempt to discuss, in this volume, the way in which landscape painting has been understood and practised in the Far East. In Japanese albums, particularly in those of Hokusaï, the varied subjects are rendered with a lifelike and piquant conciseness. Except for degrees of dexterity, these somewhat summary sketches, aced with a clever lightness of touch and drawn without models, are a result of very similar formulæ. Charming though they are, they lack the individual originality and that rich diversity of feeling that can be appreciated in the European masters. It is to the latter, therefore, that we shall confine our study.

Among these we shall notice many artists who were not exclusively landscapists, and side by side with Claude, J. van Ruisdael, Constable, Corot, Rousseau, and Daubigny, several great masters, such as Van Eyck, Titian, Dürer, Poussin, Rubens, Rembrandt and Velázquez, who practised all branches of art, have their place in this volume by virtue of the skill with which they interpreted nature and expressed her beauties. In order to better understand them, I have studied these artists both in their works and in the countries in which they lived, and have endeavoured to point out any special features peculiar to them and to judge the sincerity of their interpretations. It is impossible to thoroughly appreciate Claude and Poussin without having seen Italy, when, different as was their style, it becomes evident that the same scenery inspired them both. It is the same in Holland; at every step one discovers the humble subjects of which Van Goyen, J. van Ruisdael, and Van de Velde have given us such faithful and poetical representations. By living again with them in the countries where their talent was formed, I have more than once come across their favourite haunts, and even the very spot at which they halted.

As regards modern times, it is the uniquely enviable privilege of my age to have come in contact with most of the landscapists who have been the glory of the nineteenth century school. Some of the details which I give concerning them, their careers and their ideas, I have had either from their own lips or from their friends and acquaintances. But to criticise impartially the artists of one’s own day, one must not be too near them, and it is for this reason that this volume deals only with those who are no longer with us.

Having made frequent comparisons of very dissimilar works, I have developed the faculty of admiring the most diverse styles and of recognising talent wherever it is to be found.

Chapter 1 The Masters of Landscape Painting in Italy

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal),The Porta Portello, Padua (detail), c.1741-1742.

Oil on canvas, 62x109cm.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (Portrait of Lisa Gherardini,wife of Francesco del Giocondo), 1503-1506.

Oil on poplar, 77x53cm.Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Raphael (Raffaello Santi), La Belle Jardinière,also known as Madonna and Child with Saint John theBaptist in a Landscape, 1507-1508. Oil on wood,

122x80cm.Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Landscape painting made its appearance very late in Christian art, and for a long time it played but a minor part. It is not our intention here to treat its humble origins: a few words will suffice to show the clumsiness of its first attempts and the slowness with which it developed. In the mosaics, as in the primitive miniatures, picturesque elements borrowed from nature held a considerable place from an early date, but these purely decorative elements were reproduced in so rudimentary a fashion, that those who depicted them considered it prudent to add the names of the objects which they meant to portray.

In the long and profound obscurity which enveloped Western Europe during the Middle Ages, the first symptoms of revival are so rare and so faint that it is difficult to distinguish them from the ruins left by vanished civilisations.

During the sanguinary struggles that marked those centuries of cultural atrophy, it seems as though art had been on the verge of foundering completely, until beliefs more elevated and more humane finally supplanted the narrow and savage formalism that had been enforced by a myriad of despotic landlords and religious authorities.

Nature, for a long time considered as an enemy, disclosed her beauties to the tender and ardent soul of St. Francis (1182-1226). In the depth of the solitude to which he is attracted, God speaks to him, and in the most insignificant creatures he recognises the work of the Creator, which he celebrated in impassioned accents such as Europe had not yet heard.

As Frederic Ozanam says, the Basilica of Assisi, the venerated tomb of the saint, was destined to be the cradle of a new art. It was at Assisi that Giotto (1267-1337) opened up hitherto unexplored paths for painting. True, landscape painting plays a very secondary part in his works, and a return to the direct observation of nature is manifested more particularly by a closer study of the human figure. But his desire for truth urged him on to represent with greater exactness the various spots where he placed his compositions, to introduce into them picturesque details which his predecessors had neglected: some semblance of architecture, rocks of strange forms and colours, with shrubs or trees growing in their crevices. His perspective was childish; the proportions of objects were scarcely respected at all; the houses were too small to shelter the persons near them; the colouring was dull and monotonous, and the forms were rudimentary and simplified to excess.

Sculptors, and particularly Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), drew largely from nature in their works, reproducing minor details with grace and exactness; whilst Giotto di Bondone’s successors for a long time copied one another. But just as the study of the forms and proportions of the human body was developed by the observance of anatomy, that of the representation of landscape gradually gained in breadth and precision from a more correct knowledge of the laws of perspective. A delicate and careful observation of the hidden beauties of nature led to its being gradually brought into the composition of the sacred subjects treated by the Umbrian painters.

Correggio (Antonio Allegri),Jupiter and Io, c.1531.

Oil on canvas, 162x73.5cm.Gemäldegalerie,

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna.

But landscape was usually treated merely as an accessory. It might serve to help or complete the expression, the principal theme of which was the figure. Such was the doctrine of the great masters of the Renaissance, practised by them with the differences which were the result of the diversity of their genius. Landscape is quite absent in the work of Michelangelo. There is scarcely a vestige of sky, a bush or a rock in the superb compositions on the arches or walls of the Sistine Chapel. There man is the sole theme.

It was impossible, on the other hand, that Leonardo, curious as he was about everything, could be indifferent to the study of nature. He observed it with the mind of a savant and loved it with the soul of an artist. The laws of light and of perspective, the formation of the clouds, the flowing of water, the various plants and trees, all interested him. With the arrival of spring we find him drawing flowers, gathered during his walks, and using these sketches for enriching the foregrounds of his Bacchus, his St. John, and his Holy Family. But these graceful plants were not for his Gioconda. Behind her he painted rocky defiles, winding paths, threatening peaks which rise up on all sides as if to shut out the horizon, all this wild scenery serving as a background for the beauty of that strange creature with her feline mouth and gaze.

Raphael (1483-1520) went further than Leonardo, giving to the extremely varied subjects that he treated the picturesque framework best suited to them. For him the accompanying landscape was not, as with his master, a scrap of nature taken haphazard without relation to the episodes to which it served as a background. Raphael would never have been satisfied with the backgrounds Perugino gives to his Madonnas. He was always careful to have correct proportions, and he makes them interesting by a choice of details, at the same time clearly showing their meaning. Everything is soft and chaste around the Virgin, in the Louvre known as La Belle Jardinière. Her fair hair and fresh face stand out in relief against the clear morning sky; a bluish horizon bounds the peaceful plain, there is limpid water to animate the scene, and a carpet of verdure under her bare feet; the air is perfumed with spring plants, strawberry blossoms, wild geraniums and columbine. The happy harmony of landscape which suits the general characteristics of the compositions as in Parnassus, The Dispute of the Sacrament, The Deliverance of St. Peter, and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, is amazing.

Raphael (Raffaello Santi), The Miraculous Draught of Fishes(Luke 5: 1-11), c.1515-1516. Gouache on paper laid onto canvas,

32x39cm.Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

After Raphael, the Umbrian School, having reached its zenith, was destined to degenerate rapidly. But in that privileged land art was not exhausted. Its creative activity, confined at first to the centre of Italy, advanced gradually towards the North, where, whilst prolonging the era of the great artists, it was destined to produce fresh masterpieces. Andrea Mantegna (1431-1506), one of the most original of the precursors and perhaps the one who was destined to exercise the greatest influence over his contemporaries, was born at Isola di Carturo. Attracted equally by nature and by antiquity, he endeavoured with great individuality to unite all that could be learnt from the old masters and from a persistent study of reality. He was, in this respect, the living incarnation of the many and various aspirations of the Renaissance. In this synthesis of the universality of things at which he was aiming, force was to be seen rather than grace, and, side by side with his magnificent divinations and his wonderful inspirations, his powerful and austere style has something indescribably rough and terrible. He had his moments of relaxation, however, and then communed sincerely with nature. Behind his stiff, solemn Madonnas, he loved to weave heavy garlands of leaves, flowers and fruits; or, as in the Parnassus, to depict a rich country with scattered towns and castles between the weird fissures in overhanging rocks.

This mass of somewhat incoherent detail, and the minute finish which we notice in the works of Mantegna’s maturity, were allied to a sense of the picturesque. And yet, although a comparatively short interval separates him from Correggio (1489-1534), the latter gives a very much freer, larger, and truer interpretation of nature. Mantegna is as hard, harsh, violent, and complex as the Parma master is simple, graceful, and restrained. Correggio shows us kindly nature, blossoming under clement skies. There are undulating outlines delicately softened, a delicious lingering light in place of the crude, hard daylight and the stiff, angular lines of primitive style. Chiaroscuro had been attempted by Leonardo, but with Correggio it became an element of expression, which was destined to increase the resources of painting.

The episodes taken from fable appealed, more than religious subjects, to the characteristics of his talent. For instance, Io swooning is enwrapped by the cloud; Leda and a gay band of companions are pursued by the swans when sporting in the water. Antiope is one of his masterpieces. The nymph, whose beautiful form Jupiter discovers, is sleeping; the white cloud passing above, and the leaves of the oak tree, stirred by the wind, throw their changing shadows and reflections over her, thus lending an additional charm to the picture. Owing to this harmonious union of humanity and nature, the master gives us such an ensemble of rich colours and forms that one sees the harmony at a glance and cannot fail to be fascinated by it.

Great as it was, Correggio allotted a portion of his work to nature; however, it was with the masters of the Venetian School that landscape painting was to find its full development. With the exception of portrait painting, which held its own by its direct imitation of nature, and thus for some time maintained a certain superiority, the other branches of art, after their period of splendour, rapidly declined everywhere else in Italy. It was on account of this decadence, that the Carracci endeavoured to bring about a reaction in Bologna by its revival. Far from not appreciating the worth of the great masters who had preceded them, the innovators proclaimed their admiration for them and, without pretending to surpass them in the various points in which they excelled, their ambition was to blend the special qualities of each into a harmonious whole.

The human figure remained the principal object of their study, but the Carracci understood what additional interest landscape would lend to their compositions. They therefore gave an important place to it in large decorative paintings. Annibale (1560-1609), the younger of the two brothers, who was alone entrusted with the execution of the latter work in Bologna and the Farnese Palace, Rome, was not, at that time, sufficiently skilled in this special branch to be able to treat landscape in a very individual manner. He was working with an abstract ideal, and he put the most incongruous details into this work, with deplorable facility. Lacking fresh ideas, he inevitably fell back upon the same forms and colour schemes. His pictures suggest a mass of confused memories; so much so, that upon coming across one of these pictures for the first time we are apt to think we have seen it before. In the Louvre, however, there are two large paintings, Hunting and Fishing, which are worthy of special mention. In the latter picture the artist, impressed no doubt by a similar sight which he had witnessed, has grouped the various figures very cleverly. A deep sense of nature is lacking in these works, but they are very decorative on account of the breadth, the sureness, and the ease of their execution.

Venice must be considered as the true cradle of landscape. This privilege seemed to be reserved for this city by its very topography. The other Italian cities in the Middle Ages, had only a narrow horizon before them. From Venice, on the contrary, the view extended on all sides over the sea, and, in the distance, over vast plains of land dominated by the Alpine peaks. The city itself is a joy to the eye.

Nevertheless, art was slow in responding to the call of nature.

Absorbed for a long time by various difficulties which it was necessary to overcome in order to secure its existence in so exceptional a location, Venice had held back aloof from the great movement of artistic revival which had begun in the centre of Italy. But when, with the prosperity which was the result of its daring enterprises, Venice realised that art was destined to be the supreme luxury of her wealth, it very quickly assimilated the learning acquired by the other schools at the price of continual effort.

Freer from the hieratic formulas which weighed so heavily on their fellow Italian artists, the Venetian masters brought more original aims into their painting. Frequent interaction with the artists of the North had made them more attentive to the beauties of nature. The new process of oil-painting supplied them with the technical resources which enabled them to express themselves with more brilliancy.

Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), the younger son of Jacopo, had talent and an open mind and was destined to exercise great influence over the tendency of this school. His early works have more than once been mistaken for those of Mantegna, his brother-in-law. It seems, too, as though, like the latter, he was trying at that time to establish a more or less strict relationship between the characteristics of the scenes he was representing and the landscape which served him for the setting.

In The Agony in the Garden, the picturesque scenery lends great force to the expression of this pitiable subject. The artist, it is true, does not attempt to localise the episode he is treating, but the impression of sadness suggested by this rugged country is increased by one of those twilight effects which Italian painters had not hitherto attempted. In the sky, all empurpled by the setting sun, a few light clouds are just tinged with the last rays and with the dark shadows that are stealing over the country. The figure of Christ absorbed in prayer, not far away from the sleeping apostles, appears still more pitiable, deserted as he is by men, and seen with the silence falling around him.

Later on, in the works of Bellini, landscape was to have a more important place. The artist then copied nature with more scrupulous exactness, but he no longer sought in it such harmony with the character of his composition.

Andrea Mantegna, Le Parnasse (Mars and Venus), 1497.

Tempera on canvas, 159x192cm.Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Annibale Carracci, The Fishing, c.1585-1588.

Oil on canvas, 136x255cm.Musée du Louvre, Paris.

One would like to linger on these precursors and to breathe the first perfumes of nature emanating from their works, but we must carry on to the complete expansion of an art for which Bellini had prepared the way. Towards the end of his long career, the great artist, in his turn, was destined to be influenced by his two most illustrious pupils, and to follow them in paths which he had opened out to their genius.

With regards to dates, the first of these pupils was Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (1478-1510), celebrated as Giorgione. It is known that towards 1505, Giorgione, after frequenting the studio of Giovanni Bellini, painted, according to the fashion of the time, the façades of several buildings in Venice. These works prove the facility of his talent, but it is most probable that neither his taste nor his turn of mind fitted him for such tasks. It was to nature that he went from an early date for instruction, and to the last it was from nature alone that he drew his best inspirations.

The town in which he was born, Castelfranco Veneto, situated in the valley of the Musone, at about an equal distance from the Alps and from the Adriatic, adjoins one of the most picturesque parts of Italy.

The master has given exact and poetical expression to all the various beauties of this delightful country.

Giorgione was no sooner ensconced at Venice than his precocious maturity at once won public favour. There were plenty of churches to be decorated, and for a long time the walls of public buildings offered artists huge spaces on which to celebrate the glory of the city. Religious belief had lost some of its fervour, and great military feats were becoming rarer. Among literary people, those somewhat subtle pastorals, in which refined civilisations delight, had come into fashion again. The texts of the old writers, Virgil, Ovid, Theocritus and Longus, were the subject of those publications of poets like Sannazaro, who celebrated the graces of an imaginary Arcadia.

Giorgione, who was never a great scholar, was better inspired, for he went directly to nature for his subjects, and, for his own satisfaction, he gave it an ever-increasing importance in his works. He lived in Venice, but he loved to revisit the little spot where he had passed his childhood, and whenever he could spare the time he returned to his beloved horizons. He knew his native country well enough to be able to choose the subjects that were most characteristic of it. Everything there interested him. He delighted in the trees, the gaiety of the villages perched on the slopes, and the clear, rapid streamlets descending from the mountains in cascades. The painter had a special liking for these running waters. Light seemed to him, as to Leonardo, the very soul of a landscape.

Correggio (Antonio Allegri), Allegory of Vices, c.1530.

Tempera on canvas, 142x85.5cm.Musée du Louvre, Paris.

Giovanni Bellini, The Agony in the Garden, c.1465.

Egg tempera on wood, 81.3x127cm.

The National Gallery, London.

Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco),The Three Philosophers, 1508-1509.

Oil on canvas, 123.8x144.5cm.Gemäldegalerie,

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna.

Usually it was the full light of day which was to be seen shining brightly in the pictures of this master. The general tone is powerful, and the breadth of execution, the richness of colour, and the splendour of all the harmonies are in accordance with the dignified rhythm of line and the beautiful proportions of the whole.

This nature exudes an impression of happiness and of poetic rusticity. Simple though they seemed, his compositions contain enigmas which have frequently exercised the intelligence of the critic and called forth the most far-fetched explanations. Let us take, for instance, the picture known as The Tempest. There is a young woman almost naked, crouching down in the grass, at the edge of a stream, giving the breast to her child. To the left, in the foreground, on the other bank of the stream, a young man is leaning on his stick. In the centre, surrounded by tall trees, is another little stream, over which is a wooden bridge, and, farther away, standing out clearly against a sombre sky, in which is the zigzag of a flash of lightning, are houses and the towers and walls of a castle. The likelihood of thunder, the two lonely human beings, one dressed and the other naked, have given rise to innumerable hypotheses, most people seeing in this composition a symbol of human life and of the unforeseen misfortunes which at any moment may burst upon it. It has also been suggested that the explanation of the subject is probably quite simple and much less subtle. If the title of the picture is correct and by comparing it with a photograph or Castelfranco, as it now is, it will be seen that the picture certainly resembles the entrance to this town. This proud-looking youth is the artist himself watching over his wife who on a sultry, stormy day, has come to retire at this spot to take a cool bath. Her little one, who has been lying on the grass, has roused up, and the mother at once appeases the child’s hunger. Charmed by this homely ideal, the artist has wished to immortalise it in this picture.

The composition of The Astronomers has given rise to interpretations still more far-fetched and complex. The various titles of The Philosophers, The Geometricians, and The Three Magi, etc., show that the subject of it has never been very clear. Nothing can be said with regard to The Pastoral Concert, one of the masterpieces of the Louvre, as this beautiful work is beyond all criticism and beyond all comprehension. How can the presence of these two nude women in the open country be explained, in company with the fine-looking, well-dressed young noble, playing his guitar whilst talking to his rustic blond-haired neighbour? With the most open effrontery, the two maidens, the one plump and massive, the other elegant and superbly beautiful, display their charms to all eyes, whilst a young herdsman, a few paces away, leads his flock along and does not appear at all astonished at so strange a sight. What chance could have brought together persons of such different rank, costume, and appearance? Mythology has nothing to do with this, and, certainly, even in those far distant times of less scrupulous morality, such outdoor exhibitions would not have been tolerated without scandal. Nevertheless the picture is decent and has no suggestion of vulgarity. We are here in a dream country, and, with realism as powerful as it is poetic, the great artist has allowed us to share the vision of a beautiful autumn afternoon as pictured by his imagination. It is no use trying to find out who these people are. The only thing to do is to revel with them in the charms of this fascinating country, and to enjoy the exquisite harmony of these human figures with the grace of a landscape specially composed for them.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), Sacred and Profane Love, c.1514.

Oil on canvas, 118x279cm.Galleria Borghese, Rome.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), The Pastoral Concert, c.1509.

Oil on canvas, 105x137cm.Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The Pastoral Concert gives us the idea that we should retain of this master better than any of his other works. It gives us an idea, too, of his gentle, innocent soul and of his powerful, yet delicate, style.

Titian was destined to surpass his predecessors, including, even, Giorgione, and to realise their noblest aspirations. He was born around 1490 and died in 1576 and, during his long career saw the commencement of the Venetian school and its decline. He himself marks the zenith of its glory, being the most complete and brilliant.

Owing to his universality, he was able to express himself in all branches of art, and to all of them he added something new. On account of the place he gave to nature in his works, he may be considered the veritable creator of modern landscape painting, and on this account he commands our special attention.

The little town of Pieve di Cadore, his birthplace, is built against one of the lesser chains of the Carnic Alps. The highest peaks of the mountains rise in the form of a majestic amphitheatre above the little town, whilst the turbulent, foamy Piave makes its way with great difficulty through the sunken rocks.

Brought up amid such rugged scenes, the young man’s precocious vocation was encouraged by his family, and, at an early age, he was sent to Venice to serve his apprenticeship as a painter. Sebastiano Zuccato taught him the elements of the art of mosaics, and he adopted a certain breadth of style, which is evident in his frescoes and can be seen in all his work. The teaching which he subsequently received from Gentile and Giovanni Bellini enabled him to soon add to it the wonderful finish of execution which distinguishes his early pictures. But the influence of Giorgione, his young comrade and rival, was destined to do more towards his development than that of these two masters. Like Giorgione, he loved nature passionately and, while understanding the grandeur of it, also admired it in its smallest details. One of his early works, known as Sacred and Profane Love, proves both his love of nature and the great influence exercised over him by Giorgione. In this charming work, everything, including the very indecision of the title, reveals the similarities that the talent and taste of these two artists offered at the commencement of their careers. But this was only a momentary period in the long existence of the painter. His starting-point was always the direct study of reality. He soon discovered how to choose from the most characteristic features, those which appealed most to him and to the character of the episode he intended to paint. It is by his sense of life and the picturesque that his originality is especially striking, and it is in consequence of this that he imparts freshness to every subject he touches. With Titian, not only is the role of the scenery important, but it is a striking commentary on the dramatic setting to which it serves. Religious subjects supplied Titian with peaceful and dramatic idylls.

Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco),The Tempest, c.1507. Oil on canvas, 82 x 73 cm.

Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice.

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio), Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520-1523.

Oil on canvas, 176.5x191cm.The National Gallery, London.

Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti),The Baptism of the Christ, c. 1585.

Oil on canvas, 137x105cm.

Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.

Mythological subjects gave this great artist more scope for manifesting his originality as such subjects were more in accordance with his own temperament. For a long time the school of central Italy had been addicted to portraying the legends of fable. Instead of the set compositions in which his predecessors introduced the pieces of information they had been able to collect, Titian went to the very source of these old legends in order to revive them. To him they were eternally fresh, because they appeared to him as ever existing emblems of the energies, the splendours or the graces of nature. It was nature itself that inspired him, and its forms, colours, and harmonies, studied directly, and then depicted and idealised by his genius, give more truth and poetry still to his interpretations. Taking, in this way, subjects that were real, his vivid imagination transposed them freely and intelligently. But it was all nature that supplied him with his subjects, and he would never have been satisfied to take from his own country alone the picturesque elements that he introduces so lavishly in his compositions.

Some occasional resemblance between a certain landscape of Titian’s and some aspects of his natural locality were always very vague. We found reminiscences rather than portraits. This district, shut in by high mountains, has rather a wild Alpine look, such as one never sees in Titian’s pictures. He has never given us the weird aspect of some of these peaks, with their jagged summits and the snow with which they are crowned. We see these sometimes in his drawings, particularly in the Rape of Europa. These are scenes that he probably noticed when travelling, and remembered; but he does not introduce them into his paintings. Throughout his whole life he never failed to return, at short intervals, to his native town. On returning from Venice, Titian saw other districts with more varied scenery, richer and more suitable for human habitation, and consequently more likely pleasing to him. When about half-way, near Ceneda and Serravalle, he could see, looking towards the Alps, the most picturesque of perspectives, with cultivated valleys, beautiful trees and the sea. This must have seemed an ideal district, as here was everything that is needed to lend charm to a landscape.

Giovanni Bellini, Sacred Allegory, 1490-1499.

Oil on wood, 73x119cm.Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

One of Titian’s merits, one of the signs of his genius and of the sureness of his taste, was that he avoided the extreme peculiarities, and eccentricities of nature; the Dolomites, for instance, or the fantastic rocks which tempted his predecessors, even Leonardo da Vinci himself. His great preoccupation was with order and harmony instead of the rare or curious things that would immediately attract the eye and detract from what he considered the essential, preferring subjects more suitable to the episodes he was treating and to the impression he wished to produce.

From Jupiter and Antiope, Bacchanals, The Worship of Venus, and from many of Titian’s other works, we can judge the variety and the breadth of his mythological compositions. The details are all so natural and so exact, that it seems as though the artist must have been a witness of the scene, and that, with his usual skill and spirit, he had just taken a sketch of it with his ready pencil. The magnificence of Titian’s invention has never been more evident than in the famous Bacchus and Ariadne. In this picture he has accumulated around the principal group all the splendours of nature suggested by his powerful imagination. In this radiant country everything seems to tell of the joyful exuberance of life. Under a deep blue sky can be seen vast perspectives of distant shores, with rocks here and there, shady trees, and winding creeks, where, as they die away, the idle waves leave a silvery band of foam. There are bluebells, anemones, and wild irises growing among the grass, and, in the foreground, we see the vine clinging lovingly to the trunks of the slender trees. Wherever we look everything is gay and harmonious. The gilding of the chariot and the golden colouring of the animals bring out the blues of the sky, mountains, and sea. A note of pale pink and of rich purple is given by the drapery floating in the breeze. The execution, always so lifelike and sure, lends an added charm of spontaneity to the beauty of this masterpiece.

Veronese (Paolo Veronese),The Wedding Feast at Cana (Noces de Cana) (detail of Titian as cello player), c.1562-1563.

Oil on canvas, 677x994cm.Musée du Louvre, Paris.

In spite of Titian’s ever-increasing fame, he always reserved his best time for work. Charles V conferred a title upon him, and, as time passed, he was in great favour with Philip II, Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, the Duke of Mantua, and even Pope Paul III. All tried to keep him at their Court, but he preferred his independence, his home and his work, to all such grandeur. Like Giorgione and many other great painters, he delighted in music. It was, perhaps, only by chance that Paolo Veronese represented him playing a violoncello in the foreground of the Marriage at Cana.

The portraits painted by Titian would form a complete gallery of the celebrities of his times. In most of them a considerable place is given to nature. He has painted pictures in all styles and with equal ability, but in them all he assigns the chief place to nature. The old memoires mention his landscapes, which cannot be discovered anywhere, and Titian himself, in a letter to Philip II in 1552, informs the King that he has sent him one of these landscapes. In any case, on account of his great love of nature and his skilful interpretation of it, Titian deserves to be considered as the creator, or, as several historians of art have styled him, the Homer of landscape painting. In his immense number of pictures he has shown the infinite variety of nature. He has depicted the ever-changing aspects of every season, of every hour of the day, of all effects of light and shade, and of the various phenomena of atmosphere.

Titian’s glory has only increased with time. His influence has been felt through the ages and by a variety of artists. Rubens, not content with admiring him and collecting his works, was never tired of copying him. The Carracci, Poussin, Watteau, and Gainsborough, were all greatly influenced by him. No other artist of the Venetian school has had either his universality or his ability. Important as he considered it, landscape painting was only one phase of his genius. With one of his disciples, Domenico Campagnola, whose drawings, though very inferior, have sometimes been mistaken for Titan’s, landscape became a special branch.

Canaletto (Giovanni Antonio Canal),View of the Grand Canal. Oil on canvas.

The Barnes Foundation, Merion (Pennsylvania).

Some of the pupils and imitators of Titian gave a large place to landscape in their pictures.

Two other masters deserve special mention, as, after Titian, they kept up the fame of the Venetian school. Jacopo Robusti, called Tintoretto (c.1518-1594), a pupil of Titian’s, was one of these, and Paolo Caliari (1528-1588), who took the name of Veronese from his birthplace, was the other.

Tintoretto’s originality is to be seen in that wonderful masterpiece entitled the Miracle of St. Mark. The scenery lends additional charm to the prodigious wealth of the colouring. A bolder and more harmonious unison can scarcely be imagined than that of this sky of intense and luminous blue, with the architecture lit up by the sunshine and serving as a background for the dazzling apparition of the saint.

Tintoretto’s execution is usually just as rough and spirited as the whole treatment of Veronese is quiet and sober, with light colour and delicate gradation of tones. Following the traditions of Carpaccio, but with a better knowledge of art, Veronese transposed religious subjects according to his Venetian taste. He paid so little regard to orthodoxy that the Inquisition, usually somewhat lax in Venice, called him to account.

His smaller pictures are perhaps superior to his large compositions. In the former he has given some of the most characteristic aspects of Venice in the most charmingly poetic manner. Not only did the city itself supply him with elements for the most decorative subjects imaginable, but he also found a way of evoking memories of Venice and of its brilliant past. Leaning over a balustrade, or against a marble pillar, we see, in his pictures, beautiful Venetians. Quite apart from the other schools of Italy, the Venetian school kept its distinct existence and its own peculiar characteristics to the very end.

Its perfection was reached with Bellini, Giorgione, and Titian, and its traditions were continued by such masters as Tintoretto and Veronese. The decorative sense, derived from nature itself, was a tradition in this school, and was kept up, until the fall of the Republic, by the marvellous compositions of Tiepolo (1696-1770). At the same time, and as though to complete the cycle of its transformations, the Venetian school, before disappearing, produced two landscapists, Canal and Guardi, almost the only ones to whom Italy has given birth. Antonio Canal (1697-1768) did not follow the example of his predecessors in their free interpretation of nature. In his pictures he gives us aspects which are either quite true to nature, or where he has modified the arrangement, the elements themselves have been taken from reality. After her inspired poets and singers, Venice found in him her portraitist. In his numerous pictures, we see Venice as it was. The works of this able artist are easily recognised by their well-drawn architecture, their full, bold colouring, the faultlessness of the handling and the sureness of the technique.