[] Pausanias, vii.
[NOTE 60. PAGE 192]
The attempt of Ruskin to raise landscape to a high level in the art of the painter[a] need scarcely be referred to here, so completely have his arguments been refuted elsewhere.
The authority of Alexander Humboldt has been sometimes quoted in support of the assertion that landscape can appeal to the higher attributes, the passage relied upon affirming that descriptive poetry and landscape painting "are alike capable in a greater or lesser degree of combining the visible and invisible in our contemplation of nature." But it is clear from the whole references of the writer to these arts, that he means nothing more by his statement than that a painting or descriptive poem may, like an actual landscape, induce a feeling of wonder at the powers of the original Cause of nature. The opinion of Humboldt upon the position of landscape painting may be gathered from his definite observation that it has "a more material origin and a more earthly limitation than the art which deals with the human form."[]
[a] Modern Painters, vols i. and ii., and the preface to the second edition of the work.
[] Cosmos, vol. ii.
[NOTE 61. PAGE 194]
It is doubtful whether an artist can invent a form of tree which does not exist in nature, without producing something of the character of a monstrosity. From the point of view of dimensions, the two extreme forms of trees used in painting, are represented in Raphael's Madonna with the Goldfinch[a] as to the slender forms, and as to the giant trunks, in two or three of Claude's pictures. The very beautiful trees of Raphael have been often regarded as pure inventions, and Ruskin was actually surprised that the artist did not delineate the "true form of the trees and the true thickness of the boughs";[] but as a matter of fact precisely similar trees (a variety of ash) are to be found in the valleys of the Apennines to this day. All the change that Raphael made was to transport the trees from a sheltered spot to an open position. Very similar trees are introduced in the same master's Apollo and Marsyas.[c] Perugino was the first painter to use them, and in some of his earlier works he made them of great height,[d] but he gradually modified the form till he approached the perfect symmetry and delicacy of Raphael's examples.[e] Marco Basaiti introduced them into at least three of his pictures, and they are also to be found in works by Timoteo della Viti and Francia.[f] Higher and equally slender trees have been appropriately used by Antonio della Ceraiuolo,[g] and even by so late a painter as Nicholas Poussin.[h]
[a] Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
[] Modern Painters, vol. iv.