LANDSCAPE PAINTING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 85 



In the charming drama of Sakuntala, the image of his belov- 

 ed is shown to King Dushmanta, who is not satisfied with 

 that alone, as he desires that " the artist should depict the 

 places which were most dear to his beloved the Malini Riv- 

 er, with a sand-bank on which the red flamingoes are stand- 

 ing ; a chain of hills skirting on the Himalaya, and gazelles 

 resting on these hills." These requirements are not easy to 

 comply with, and they at least indicate a belief in the practi- 

 cability of executing such an intricate composition. 



In Rome, landscape painting was developed into a separate 

 branch of art from the time of the Caesars ; but, if we may 

 judge from the many specimens preserved to us in the exca- 

 vations of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae, these pictures 

 of nature were frequently nothing more than bird's-eye views 

 of the country, similar to maps, and more like a delineation 

 of sea-port towns, villas, and artificially-arranged gardens, 

 than the representation of free nature. That wh^ch may 

 have been regarded as the habitably comfortable element in 

 a landscape seems to have alone attracted the Greeks and 

 Romans, and not that which we term the wild and romantic. 

 Their imitations might be so far accurate as frequent disre- 

 gard of perspective and a taste for artificial and conventional 

 arrangement permitted, and their arabesque-like compositions, 

 to which the critical Vitruvius was averse, often exhibited a 

 rhythmically-recurring and well-conceived representation of 

 animal and vegetable forms ; but yet, to borrow an expression 

 of Otfried Muller,* " the vague and mysterious reflection of 

 the mind, which seems to appeal to us from the landscape, 

 appeared to the ancients, from the peculiar bent of their feel- 

 ings, as incapable of artistic development, and their delinea- 

 tions were sketched with more of sportiveness than earnest- 

 ness and sentiment." 



We have thus indicated the analogy which existed in the 

 process of development of the two means descriptive diction 



* Otfried Miiller, Archdologie der Kunst, 1830, s. 609. Having al- 

 ready spoken in the text of the paintings found in Pompeii and Herca- 

 laneum as being compositions but little allied to the freedom of nature, 

 I must here notice some exceptions, which may be considered as land- 

 scapes in the strict modern sense of the word. See Pitture d'Ercotano, 

 vol. ii., tab. 45; vol. iii., tab. 53; and, as back-grounds in charming 

 historical compositions, vol. iv., tab. 61, 62, and 63. I do not refer to 

 the remarkable representation in the Monumenti delV Institute di Cor- 

 rispondenza Archeologica, vol. iii., tab. 9, since its genuine antiquity 

 has already been called in question by Raoal Rochette, an archaeologist 

 of much acuteness of observation. 



