LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 88 



than that of its representation of the physiognomy and char- 

 acter of different portions of the earth, and as it increases the 

 desire for the prosecution of distant travels, and thus incites 

 rneri in an equally instructive and charming manner to a free 

 communion with nature. 



In that portion of antiquity which we specially designate 

 as classical, landscape painting, as well as poetic delineations 

 of places, could not, from the direction of the Greek and Ro- 

 man mind, be regarded as an independent branch of art. Both 

 were considered merely as accessories ; landscape painting 

 being for a long time used only as the back-ground of historical 

 compositions, or as an accidental decoration for painted walls. 

 In a similar mariner, the epic poet delineated the locality of 

 some historical occurrence by a picturesque description of the 

 landscape, or of the back-ground, I would say, if I may be 

 permitted here again to use the term, in front of which the 

 acting personages move. The history of art teaches us how 

 gradually the accessory parts have been converted into the 

 main subject of description, and how landscape painting has 

 been separated from historical painting, and gradually estab- 

 lished as a distinct form ; and, lastly, how human figures were 

 employed as mere secondary parts to some mountain or forest 

 scene, or in some sea or garden view. The separation of these 

 two species historical and landscape painting has been thus 

 effected by gradual stages, which have tended to favor the 

 advance of art through all the various phases of its develop- 

 ment. It has been justly remarked, that painting generally 

 remained subordinate to sculpture among the ancients, and 

 that the feeling for the picturesque beauty of scenery which 

 the artist endeavors to reproduce from his canvas was un- 

 known to antiquity, and is exclusively of modern origin. 



Graphic indications of the peculiar characteristics of a lo- 

 cality must, however, have been discernible in the most an- 

 cient paintings of the Greeks, as instances of which we may 

 mention (if the testimony of Herodotus be correct)* that Man- 

 drocles of Samos caused a large painting of the passage of the 

 army over the Bosporus to be executed for the Persian king,t 

 and that Polygnotus painted the fall of Troy in the Lesche at 



* Herod., iv., 88. 



t A portion of the works of Polygnotus and Mikon (the painting of 

 the battle of Marathon in the Pokile at Athens) was. according to the 

 testimony of Himerius, still to be seen at the end of tiie fourth century 

 (of our em), consequently when they had been executed 8.)0 years. 

 (Letroune, Lettres sur la Peinturg Historians Murale, 1835, p. 202 and 

 453.} 



