St5 i:usM03. 



ami graphical representations — by which the attempt to ren« 

 der the impressions produced by the aspect of nature appre- 

 ciable to the sensuous faculties has gradually attained a cer 

 tain degree of independence. 



The specimens of ancient landscape painting in the mannei 

 of Ludius, which have been recovered from the excavations at 

 Pompeii (lately renewed with so happy a result), belong most 

 probably to a single and very short period, viz., that interven- 

 ing between Nero and Titus,* for the city had been entirely 

 destroyed by an earthquake only sixteen years before the cele- 

 brated eruption of Vesuvius. 



The character of the subsequent style of painting practiced 

 by the early Christians remained nearly allied to that of the 

 true Greek and Pwoman schools of art from, the time of Con- 

 stantine the Great to the beginning of the Middle Ages. A 

 rich mine of old memorials is opened to us in the miniatures 

 which adorn splendid and well-preserved manuscripts, and in 

 the rarer mosaics of the same period. t Rumohr makes men- 

 tion of a Psalter in the Barberina Library at Rome, where, 

 in a miniature, David is represented " playing the harp, and 

 surrounded by a pleasant grove, from the branches of which 

 nymphs look forth to listen. This personification testifies to 

 the antique nature of the whole picture." Since the middle 

 )f the sixth century, when Italy was impoverished and polit- 

 ically disturbed, the Byzantine art in the Eastern empire still 

 preserved the lingering echoes and types of a better epoch. 

 Such memorials as these form the transition to the creations 



* In refutation of the supposition of Du Theil ( Voyage en Italie, par 

 I' Abbe Barthelemy, p. 284) that Pompeii still existed in splendor un- 

 der Adrian, and was not completely destroyed till toward the close of 

 the fifth century, see Adolph von Hoff, Geschichte der Vevdnderungcn 

 der Erdobsrfldche, th. ii., 1824, s. 195-199. 



t See Waagen, Kunstwerhe raid Kiinstler in England und Paris, th. 

 iii., 1839, s. 195-201 ; and particularly s. 217-224, where he describes 

 the celebrated Psalter of the tenth century (in the Paris Library), which 

 proves how long the " antique mode of composition" maintained itself 

 in Constantinople. I was indebted to the kind and valuable communi- 

 cations of this profound connoisseur of art CProfessor Waagen, director 

 of the Gallery of Paintings of my native city), at the time of my public 

 lectures in 1828, for interesting notices on the history of art after the 

 period of the Roman empire. What I afterward wrote on the gradual 

 development of landscape painting, I communicated in Dresden, in 

 the winter of 1835, to Bai'on von Rumohr, the distinguished and too 

 early deceased author of the Italienische Forschungen. I received 

 from this excellent man a great number of historica 1 illustrations, whicb 

 hi even permitted me to publish if the foiTn of my work should reudei 

 It exoedient. 



