All the landscape of Nicolo Poussin is imaginative,1 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 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. It 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 note book: "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.] [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.1 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.2 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. [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.] other works of Turner, in which he will always find the associative imagination developed in the most profuse and marvellous modes; especially in the drawing of foliage and skies, in both of which the presence or absence of the associative power may best be tested in all artists. I have, however, confined my present illustrations chiefly to foliage, because other operations of the imagination, besides the associative, interfere extensively in the treatment of sky. There remains but one question to be determined relating to this faculty; what operation, namely, supposing § 21. The due function of associative imagination with respect to nature. it possessed in high degree, it has or ought to have in the artist's treatment of natural scenery? * I have just said that nature is always imaginative, but it does not follow that her imagination is always of high subject, or that the imagination of all the parts is of a like and sympathetic kind; the boughs of every bramble bush are imaginatively arranged, so are those of every oak and cedar; but it does not follow that there is imaginative sympathy between bramble and cedar. There are few natural scenes whose harmonies are not conceivably improvable either by banishment of some discordant point, or by addition of some sympathetic one; it constantly happens that there is a profuseness too great to be comprehended, or an inequality in the pitch, meaning, and intensity of different parts. The imagination will banish all that is extraneous ; it will seize out of the many threads of different feeling which nature has suffered to become entangled, one only; and where that seems thin and likely to break, it will spin it stouter, and in doing this, it never knots, but weaves in the new thread; so that all its work looks as pure and true as nature itself, and cannot be guessed from it but by its exceeding simplicity, (known from it, it cannot be); so that herein we * What I meant by this twice repeated bit of nonsense, was a fact of some interest, had it been better explained,—namely, that almost any honest study of natural grouping will look intellectually, if not always agreeably, composed,1 provided it be honest throughout. [1883.] 1 [See Vol. III. p. xxi.] find another test of the imaginative work, that it looks always as if it had been gathered straight from nature, whereas the unimaginative shows its joints and knots, and is visibly composition. work is its And here, then, we arrive at an important conclusion (though one somewhat contrary to the positions § 22. The sign commonly held on the subject), namely, that if of imaginative anything looks unnatural, there can be no imagina- appearance of tion in it (at least not associative). We frequently absolute truth. hear works that have no truth in them justified or elevated on the score of being imaginative. Let it be understood once for all, that imagination never deigns to touch anything but truth; and though it does not follow that where there is the appearance of truth, there has been imaginative operation, of this we may be assured, that where there is appearance of falsehood, the imagination has had no hand.* For instance, the landscape above mentioned of Titian's St. Jerome' may, for aught I know, be a pure transcript of a rocky slope covered with chestnuts among his native mountains. It has all the look of a sketch from nature; if it be not, the imagination developed in it is of the highest order; if it be, the imagination has only acted in the suggestion of the dark sky, of the shape of the flakes of solemn cloud, and of the gleam of russet light along the distant ground. † * Compare Chap. III. § 30.** ** Untrue again, in the sweeping negation: right only in the general connection of wisely inventive with closely observant faculty. [1883.] It is said at Venice that Titian took the trees of the S. Pietro Martire out of his garden opposite Murano.2 I think this unlikely; there is something about the lower trunks that has a taint of composition: the thought of the whole, however, is thoroughly fine. The backgrounds of the frescoes at Padua are also very characteristic, and the well-known woodcut of St. Francis receiving the stigmata 3 one of the mightiest of existing landscape thoughts; and yet it is pure portraiture of pine and Spanish chestnut. 1 [§ 19 above, p. 244.] Again, it is impossible to tell whether the two nearest trunks of the Esacus and Hesperie of the Liber Studiorum,1 especially the large one on the right with the ivy, have been invented, or taken straight from nature; they have all the look of accurate portraiture. I can hardly imagine anything so perfect to have been obtained except from the real thing; but we know that the imagination must have begun to operate somewhere, we cannot tell where, since the multitudinous harmonies of the rest of the picture could hardly in any real scene have continued so inviolately sweet. The final tests, therefore, of the work of associative imagination are, its intense simplicity, its perfect harmony, and its absolute truth. It may be a harmony, majestic or humble, abrupt or prolonged, but it is always a governed and perfect whole; evidencing in all its relations the weight, prevalence, and universal dominion of an awful inexplicable Power; a chastising, animating, and disposing Mind.2 1 [Engraved and further described in Lectures on Landscape, § 93; and see preceding volume, pp. 240, 586, and Modern Painters, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. xi. § 29.] 2 [The MS. reading of this last sentence may be given as an instance of Ruskin's careful revision, which was also in most cases compression: "It may be a harmony of majesty or of humility, of sorrow or of cheerfulness, but it is always a governed and perfect whole; and in its government, whether it be a work of art, or a scene of nature, there is felt the weight, prevalence, and universal dominion of an awful and inexplicable Power; a chastising, animating, and all-absorbing mind."] |