angels, hand joined with hand, and wing with wing, glide and float through the glades of the unentangled forest. But behind the human figures, behind the pomp and turbulence of the kingly procession descending from the distant hills, the spirit of the landscape is changed. Severer mountains rise in the distance, ruder prominences and less flowery vary the nearer ground, and gloomy shadows remain unbroken beneath the forest branches.1

The landscape of Perugino, for grace, purity, and as much of nature as is consistent with the above-named conditions, is unrivalled; and the more interesting scape of Peru§ 11. Landbecause in him, certainly, whatever limits are set gino and Raffaelle. to the rendering of nature proceed not from incapability. The sea is in the distance almost always, then some blue promontories and undulating dewy park ground, studded with glittering trees. In the landscape of the fresco in St. Maria Maddalena at Florence there is more variety than is usual with him: a gentle river winds round the bases of rocky hills, a river like our own Wye or Tees in their

1 [The following is a portion of Ruskin's account of these frescoes in the note-book (1845) so frequently quoted. The frescoes, which are especially well preserved, represent the journey of the Magi to Jerusalem :

"All the angels have broad golden glories with "Gloria in excelsis" written on them, their wings are superbly gilded, and are, allowing for the deadness of the fresco colour, nearly as beautiful as Angelico's. The landscape in which they are placed is nearly the model of a pure ideal. The grasses in the foreground are rich to excess, but all drawn completely and symmetrically, with scarlet and other flowers occurring among them, all drawn with botanical accuracy. Behind the angels come hedges of roses (one supported by a cross trellis work), of which every leaf and flower is drawn with the most perfect accuracy and symmetry; there is no confusion, no interrupting of one leaf by another, no obscurity nor incompleteness, all is in angelic order, the only variety being obtained by the various positions into which the five-leaved spray of the rose is thrown, its foreshortened curves given with great precision. The rays of all the leaves are drawn. Then come winding paths among clipped hedges, and rich meadows, and tall trees, chiefly palm and cypress, scattered among them, and red-roofed houses and cities with multitudinous machicolated towers. The way in which the shadows are given is very arbitrary, the trees in the middle distance cast them from their trunks very forcibly, but the tufts of grass in the foreground cast none, and the figures little, while again a pergola in the distance casts its full broad shadow clearly down the walls, and the towers of the city have all their light and shade fairly marked. Among the fields rise brown rocks, of the type seen in my study of Abraham, and high green Fiesole-like hills, and lakes, and in the distance. Note particularly blue mountains, though these become suddenly so, and there is no gradual difference or retiring in the green. In this respect it is like a wall paper."]

loveliest reaches; level meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, and a small village with its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley; it is remarkable that, in architecture thus employed, neither Perugino, nor any other of the ideal painters, ever use Italian forms, but always Transalpine, both of church and castle.' The little landscape which forms the background of his own portrait in the Uffizii2 is another highly finished and characteristic example. The landscape of Raffaelle was learned from his father, and continued for some time little modified, though expressed with greater refinement. It became afterwards conventional and poor, and in some cases altogether meaningless. The haystacks and vulgar trees behind the St. Cecilia at Bologna form a painful contrast to the pure space of mountain country in the Perugino opposite.* 3

* I have not thought it necessary to give farther instances at present, since I purpose hereafter to give numerous examples of this kind of ideal

[The following is part of the account of this fresco in the note-book. The fresco, often considered the finest by the master, is in the former chapter-house of the monastery attached to the church. It is in three compartments: in the centre, Christ on the Cross; on the right, SS. John and Benedict; on the left, the Virgin and St. Bernard. It is the centre which is here described :

"The distance of this compartment is exquisite. First a grassy knoll, covered with park trees of the most lovely grace, tall as ship-masts, their trunks as straight as arrows, and then softly rounded, their leaved branches mixing with each other, horizontally. Beyond this a river winds between low pastures on one side, and steep German-like rocks on the other, crowned with a hermitage, the woods richly scattered at their feet, and among them a steep roofed white village with a Gothic spire. In fact, this landscape altogether is anything but Italian; it is a fine ideal of English woods in Herefordshire or Yorkshire, with the Wye or the Greta winding in the distance, and the simple pointed spire in the distance instead of any rich architecture or palace lines, adds singularly to the sweetness and simplicity of the effect. It is a landscape that must go to any English or German heart The distant hills too are less peaked and precipitous, and are the very counterpart of those that terminate the view at Bolton Abbey. The soft knolls of the grassy ground are most delicate, the grouping of the trees like Nature's own, their retiring in the distance as true and aerial as Turner; the river winds sweetly among them, their reflections falling on it while it keeps under the bases of the rocks. The reflections usually indicated only by a rapid zig-zag stroke of the brush."

at once.

For the circumstances of Ruskin obtaining permission to study the fresco, see Præterita, ii. ch. vii. § 129.]

2 [See above, p. 212 n.]

3

The Virgin in Glory" : figured at p. 64 of G. C. Williamson's Perugino, 1900. For Raphael's St. Cecilia, see above, p. 212, and Vol. II. p. 167.]

imitated.

In all these cases, while I would uphold the landscape thus employed and treated, as worthy of all § 12. Such admiration, I should be sorry to advance it for landscape is imitation. What is right in its mannerism arose not to be from keen feeling in the painter: imitated without the same feeling it would be painful; the only safe mode of following in such steps is to attain perfect knowledge of Nature herself, and then to suffer our own feelings to guide us in the selection of what is fitting for any particular purpose. Every painter ought to paint what he himself loves, not what others have loved; if his mind be pure and sweetly toned, what he loves will be lovely; if otherwise, no example can guide his selection, no precept govern his hand; and farther, let it be distinctly observed, that all this mannered landscape is only right under the supposition of its being a background to some supernatural presence; behind mortal beings it would be wrong, and by itself, as landscape, ridiculous; and farther, the chief virtue of it results from the exquisite refinement of those natural details consistent with its character; from the botanical drawing of the flowers, and the clearness and brightness of the sky.1

tion, their use

Another mode of attaining supernatural char§ 13. Colour acter is by purity of colour almost shadowless, no and decora more darkness being allowed than is absolutely in representanecessary for the explanation of the forms and the tions of the Supernatural. vividness of the effect, enhanced, as far as may be, by use of gilding, enamel, and other jewellery. I think the

landscape. Of true and noble landscape, as such, I am aware of no instances except where least they might have been expected, among the sea-bred Venetians.3 Ghirlandajo shows keen, though prosaic, sense of nature in that view of Venice behind an adoration of the Magi in the Uffizii, but he at last walled himself up among gilded entablatures. Masaccio indeed has given one grand example in the fresco of the Tribute Money, but its colour is now nearly lost.

[With §§ 9-12 here, compare what is said, in partial correction, in the next volume, ch. xviii. §§ 11, 12.] "Latest

2 [See vol. iii. of Modern Painters, ch. xviii. §§ 10 seq., and Plate 11, Purism."]

3 [See Vol. III. p. 181, and above, p. 126. For Masaccio's "Tribute Money" cf. Vol. III. pp. 179, 192; and next volume, ch. xviii. § 14.]

smaller works of Angelico are perfect models in this respect; the glories about the heads being of beaten rays of gold, on which the light plays and changes as the spectator moves' (and which therefore throw the purest flesh colour out in dark relief); and such colour and light being obtained by the enamelling of the angel wings as, of course, is utterly unattainable by any other expedient of art; the colours of the draperies always pure and pale, blue, rose, or tender green, or brown, but never dark or gloomy; the faces of the most celestial fairness, brightly flushed; the height and glow of this flush are noticed by Constantin 2 as reserved by the older painters for spiritual beings, as if expressive of light seen through the body.

I cannot think it necessary, while I insist on the value of all these seemingly childish means when in the hands of a noble painter, to assert also their futility, and even absurdity, if employed by no exalted power. I think the error has commonly been on the side of scorn, and that we reject much in our foolish vanity, which, if wiser and more earnest, we should delight in. But two points it is very necessary to note in the use of such accessaries.

The first, that the ornaments used by Angelico, Giotto,

§ 14. Decoration so used must be Generic,

and Perugino, but especially by Angelico, are always of a generic and abstract character. They are not diamonds, nor brocades, nor velvets, nor gold embroideries; they are mere spots of gold or of colour, simple patterns upon textureless draperies; the angel wings burn with transparent crimson and purple and amber, but they are not set forth with peacocks' plumes; the golden circlets gleam with changeful light, but they are not beaded with pearls, nor set with sapphires.

In the works of Filippino Lippi, Mantegna, and many other painters following, interesting examples may be found of the opposite treatment; and as in Lippi the heads are usually very sweet, and the composition severe, the degrading

1 [Cf. the description of Angelico's "Annunciation," above, p. 263 n.]

2 [Perhaps Costantino Costantini, the author of a local guide to Perugia frequently quoted by Rio in his Poetry of Christian Art.]

effect of the realized decorations and imitated dress may be seen in him simply, and without any addition of painfulness from other deficiencies of feeling. The larger of the two pictures in the Tuscan room of the Uffizii,' but for this defect, would have been a very noble ideal work.

2

The second point to be observed is that brightness of colour is altogether inadmissible without purity § 15. And and harmony; and that the sacred painters must Colour pure. not be followed in their frankness of unshadowed colour, unless we can also follow them in its clearness. As far as I am acquainted with the modern schools of Germany, they seem to be entirely ignorant of the value of colour as an assistant of feeling, and to think that hardness, dryness, and opacity are its virtues as employed in religious art; whereas I hesitate not to affirm that in such art, more than in any other, clearness, luminousness, and intensity of hue are essential to right impression; and from the walls of the Arena chapel in their rainbow play of brilliant harmonies, to the solemn purple tones of Perugino's fresco in the Albizzi Palace,3 I know not 1 [In the second of the Tuscan rooms: No. 1268, "Madonna and Saints."] [Cf. preceding volume, p. 351.]

[This fresco, which is not now known to be accessible, is described at length in Ruskin's note-book of 1845, where, in dealing with Perugino's pictures in the Uffizi, he notes "a kind of thus-far-shalt-thou-go-and-no-further expression that in some degree checks and chills me" :

66

And this I felt also in a most heavenly work which I saw to-day, June 18th, in the palace of the Albizzi, a fresco of the Entombment. The Madonna on the left, wearing, as in the convent one, a purple robe, with white veil over forehead, but in this picture a most heavenly type, the eyes soft, clear, and full of pensive under-light, the face of fine type, the very ideal of a lovely countenance at the age, subdued and resigned in habitual suffering, and the stamp of pain on the face without emaciation, paleness or contortion. The colour should be especially noticed as singularly glowing. The Christ is very beautiful and simple in type of features; it did not enrapture me, but I liked it better every time I looked. The mouth looks out of drawing from the want of the touch of light on the upper lip. The body and limbs are beautifully shaded, but the latter are much too small and give great meanness and unpleasantness to the composition. Note this in speaking of Elgins and Bandinelli.

"The Christ is supported by a St. Joseph of the very highest perfection; as a study of a head grand, and simple, and tender, and manly, full of gentle emotion, but without passion; the red cap, with its triple projection, is a beautiful bit of costume. The hair is exquisite, touched with perfect freedom and mastery and yet not curled nor heavy in flow, but restrained and light. The rich russet complexion comes dark against the sky.

"The last figure is the Magdalen, which has suffered grievously but is still very fine. The figures are all awkwardly foreshortened or cut off at the