of material, and tormented by multiplying resemblances, unless disguised by some artifice of light and shade or other forced difference; and with all the differences he can imagine, his tree will yet show a sameness and sickening repetition in all its parts, and all his trees will be like one another, except so far as one leans east and another west, one is broadest at the top and another at the bottom: while through all this insipid repetition, the means by which he forces contrast, dark boughs opposed to light, rugged to smooth, etc., will be painfully evident, to the utter destruction of all dignity and repose. The imaginative work is necessarily the absolute opposite of all this. As all its parts are imperfect, § 15. Imaginaand as there is an unlimited supply of imperfection tion never re(for the ways in which things may be wrong are peats itself. infinite), the imagination is never at a loss, nor ever likely to repeat itself; nothing comes amiss to it; but whatever rude matter it receives, it instantly so arranges that it comes right; all things fall into their place, and appear in that place perfect, useful, and evidently not to be spared; so that of its combinations there is endless variety, and every intractable and seemingly unavailable fragment that we give to it, is instantly turned to some brilliant use, and made the nucleus of a new group of glory; however poor or common the gift, it will be thankful for it, treasure it up, and pay in gold; and it has that life in it, and fire, that wherever it passes, among the dead bones and dust of things, behold! a shaking, and the bones come together bone to his bone.

the Theoretic.

And now we find what noble sympathy and unity there are between the Imaginative and Theoretic facul§ 16. Relation ties. Both agree in this, that they reject nothing, of the Imaginaand are thankful for all; but the Theoretic faculty tive faculty to takes out of everything that which is beautiful, while the Imaginative faculty takes hold of the very imperfections which the Theoretic rejects; and, by means of these angles and roughnesses, it joints and bolts the separate stones into a mighty temple, wherein the Theoretic faculty, in its turn, does deepest homage. Thus sympathetic in their desires,

harmoniously diverse in their operation, each working for the other with what the other needs not, all things external to man are by one or other turned to good.

§ 17. Modifications of its

Now we have hitherto, for the sake of clearness, opposed the total absence of imagination to the perfect presence of it, in order to make the difference manifestation. between composition and imagination thoroughly understood. But if we are to give examples of either the want or the presence of the Power, it is necessary to note the circumstances by which both are modified. In the first place, few artists of any standing are totally devoid of this faculty: some small measure of it most of them possess, though of all the forms of intellect, this, and its sister, penetrative imagination, are the rarest and most precious; but few painters have reached eminence without some leaven of it; whether it can be increased by practice I doubt. On the other hand, fewer still are possessed of it in very high degree; and even with the men of most gigantic power in this respect, of whom, I think, Tintoret stands far the head, there are evident limits to its exercise, and portions to be found in their works that have not been included in the original grasp of them, but have been suggested and incorporated during their progress, or added in decoration; and, with the great mass of painters, there are frequent flaws and failures in the conception, so that when they intend to produce a perfect work, they throw their thought into different experimental forms, and decorate it and discipline it long before realizing it, so that there is a certain amount of mere composition in the most imaginative works; and a grain or two of imagination commonly in the most artificial. And again, whatever portions of a picture are taken honestly and without alteration from nature, have, so far as they go, the look of imagination, because all that nature does is imaginative,* that is, perfect as a whole, and made up of imperfect features; so that the painter of the meanest

* Nonsense, again. Imagination is the name of a human faculty, not of inanimate power: if we compare them on equal terms, there is plenty of natural scenery which is stupid and ugly, just as there are plenty of pictures See the note farther on at page 246. [1883.]

that are so.

imaginative power may yet do grand things, if he will keep to strict portraiture; and it would be well if all artists were to endeavour to do so, for if they have imagination, it will force its way in spite of them, and show itself in their every stroke; and if not, they will not get it by leaving nature, but only sink into nothingness.

2

Poussin.

Keeping these points in view, it is interesting to observe the different degrees and relations of the imagina- § 18. Instance tion, as accompanied with more or less feeling or of absence of Imagination.desire of harmony, vigour of conception, or con- Claude, Gaspar stancy of reference to truth. Of men of name, perhaps Claude1 is the best instance of a want of imagination, nearly total, borne out by painful but untaught study of nature, and much feeling for abstract beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of expression. In Gaspar Poussin, we have the same want of imagination disguised by more masculine qualities of mind, and grander reachings after sympathy. Thus, in the Sacrifice of Isaac, in our own Gallery, the spirit of the composition is solemn and unbroken; it would have been a grand picture if the forms of the mass of foliage on the right, and of the clouds in the centre, had not been hopelessly unimaginative. The stormy wind of the picture of Dido and Æneas blows loudly through its leaves; but the total want of invention in the cloud forms bears it down beyond redemption. The foreground tree of the La Riccia (compare Part II. Sec. VI. Chap. I. § 6) is another characteristic instance of absolute nullity of imagination.* In Salvator, the imagination is vigorous, the § 19. Its pre- v composition dexterous and clever, as in the St. sence.-SalvaJerome of the Brera Gallery, the Diogenes of the tor, Nicolo Pitti, and the pictures of the Guadagni Palace; Titian, while all are rendered valueless by coarseness of feeling and habitual non-reference to nature.

3

1 [For Ruskin on Claude, see Vol. III. p. xxxiv.] 2 No. 31. See Vol. III. pp. 282, 332, 348, 376.]

3 No. 95. See Vol. III. pp. 396, 409.]

4 No.98. See Vol. III. pp. 277, 577, 588 n.]

5

Poussin,

Tintoret,

5 [There is no picture of St. Jerome by Salvator Rosa in the Brera; the reference is presumably to his "St. Paul the Hermit" there. The "Diogenes of the Pitti" is

All the landscape of Nicolo Poussin is imaginative,' but the development of the power in Tintoret and Titian is so unapproachably intense that the mind unwillingly rests elsewhere. The four landscapes which occur to me as the most magnificently characteristic are: first, the Flight into Egypt, of the Scuola di San Rocco (Tintoret); secondly, the Titian of the Camuccini collection at Rome, with the figures by John Bellini; thirdly, Titian's St. Jerome, in the Brera Gallery at Milan; and fourthly, the S. Pietro Martire, which I name last in spite of its importance, because there is something unmeaning and unworthy of Titian about the undulation of the trunks, and the upper part of it is destroyed by the intrusion of some dramatic clouds of that species which I have enough described in our former examination of the Central Cloud Region, § 13.3

2

It

I do not mean to set these four works above the rest of the landscape of these masters; I name them only because the landscape is in them prominent and characteristic. would be well to compare with them the other backgrounds of Tintoret in the Scuola, especially that of the Temptation

No. 475, commonly known as "The School of Philosophers"-a landscape with Diogenes throwing away his drinking-cup. Ruskin thus describes it in his 1845 notebook:

Although this picture wants breadth, it would yet be an interesting and valuable one if we could get rid of the philosophers, but these would pollute the loveliest landscape. (Diogenes is a true Salvator conception: St. Giles's all over). It is, however, on the whole, perhaps the best Salvator in the Pitti; the distance is more inventive than usual-city on hill, winding lake and bold mountains-the colour glowing, and the trees well studied." For the Salvators in the Guadagni Palace, see preceding volume, p. 582, and below, ch. iii. § 18 n.]

[See Vol. III. p. 263.]

2 Tintoret's "Flight into Egypt" is described below, ch. iii. § 22, p. 274. "The Titian of the Camuccini collection, etc.," is the "Feast of the Gods" (or "Bacchanal "), now in the possession of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle. It forms one of the series of four mythological landscapes painted for Duke Alfonso of Ferrara, of which the "Bacchus and Ariadne" in the National Gallery is another. It is supposed to have been left incomplete by Bellini and finished by Titian with a landscape borrowed from his native Cadore. The share of Bellini and Titian respectively in the work is, however, a subject of much debate (see, e.g., The Earlier Work of Titian, by Claude Phillips, 1897, pp. 66-69). An outline of the picture will be found at vol. i. p. 313 (ed. 1887) of Kugler's Italian Schools of Painting. For the St. Jerome, cf. preceding volume, pp. 181-182; below, § 19; and Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. xx. § 16, vol. v. pt. vi. ch. viii. § 13. For the S. Pietro Martire, see preceding volume, p. 28.]

3

[Vol. i. pt. ii. sec. iii. ch. iii. Vol. III. p. 379, of this edition.]

and the Agony in the Garden, and the landscape of the two large pictures in the Church of La Madonna dell' Orto.'

But for immediate and close illustration, it is perhaps best to refer to a work more accessible, the Cephalus § 20. And and Procris of Turner in the Liber Studiorum. Turner. I know of no landscape more purely or magnificently imaginative, or bearing more distinct evidence of the relative and simultaneous conception of the parts. Let the reader first cover with his hand the two trunks that rise against the sky on the right, and ask himself how any termination of the central mass so ugly as the straight trunk which he will then painfully see, could have been conceived or admitted without simultaneous conception of the trunks he has taken away on the right? Let him again conceal the whole central mass, and leave these two only, and again ask himself whether anything so ugly as that bare trunk in the shape of a Y, could have been admitted without reference to the central mass? Then let him remove from this trunk its two arms, and try the effect; let him again remove the single trunk on the extreme right; then let him try the third trunk without the excrescence at the bottom of it; finally, let him conceal the fourth trunk from the right, with the slender boughs at the top: he will find, in each case, that he has destroyed a feature on which everything else depends; and if proof be required of the vital power of still smaller features, let him remove the sunbeam that comes through beneath the faint mass of trees on the hill in the distance.*

It is useless to enter into farther particulars; the reader may be left to his own close examination of this and of the

* This ray of light, however, has an imaginative power of another kind, presently to be spoken of. Compare Chap. IV. § 18.

1 [For the "Temptation," see below, ch. iii. § 28 n., ch. v. § 7 n., pp. 285, 319. The two large pictures in S. Maria dell' Orto are "The Last Judgment" (see below, ch. iii. § 23-24) and "The Worship of the Golden Calf" (see below, ch. iv. § 17, and Modern Painters, vol. iv. ch. iv. § 2 n.) See also above, Introduction, p. xxxvi.]

2 [Engraved and further discussed in Lectures on Landscape, §§ 94-96. See also preceding volume, pp. 586, 595 n.; below, ch. iv. § 18, and Epilogue, § 9; and Modern Painters, vol. iii. ch. xviii. § 19, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 29.]