LANDSCAPE EFFECTS 



79 



might be, in extreme terms, the landscape of shattered crag and wind- 

 distorted trees of the smuggler's pass in Carmen or of the Wolf's Glen in 

 Der Freischutz; or of the Matterhorn, or Mont St. Michel, or the 

 great structure with its giant Hercules crowning the hillside vista at 

 Wilhelmshohe ; or, in less striking manifestation, a little rocky glen 

 with a tumbling waterfall, or a hilltop ledge with a single gnarled pine.* 



Just as these two large and fundamentally diiferent effects have Examples of 

 been recognized by critics and designers, so out of the multitude of ^^^^'' Effects 

 effects an indefinite number of others, of varjang distinctness and of 

 varying importance, have also been recognized. In this chapter we 

 shall discuss a few of these effects, which on account of their common 

 appeal to all observers have more or less definite names and values. 



Sublimity, grandeur, in landscape is commonly the result of the Sublimity 

 perception of the vast size or power or duration of the manifestations 

 of nature in comparison with the insignificance of man. It is most 

 commonly produced therefore by the extent of the landscape, or the 

 size of some object in it, — a great cliff or a range of mountains, or 

 a vast plain or the sea, or perhaps a forest of giant trees. (See Frontis- 

 piece and Plates 7, 13, and 23.) It will be enhanced by, indeed it will 

 not be effected without, some means of measuring the actual size of 



* "The different effects which art is able to produce, however various and incom- 

 mensurable they may radically be, are commensurable at least in this : that each in 

 some degree makes a demand on our attention. Some works of art affect us, as it were, 

 by infiltration, and are calculated to produce an impression that is slow, pervasive and 

 profound. These seek neither to capture the attention nor to retain it, yet they satisfy 

 it when it is given. Other works arrest us, and by a sharp attack upon the senses or 

 the curiosity insist on our surrender. Their function is to stimulate and excite. But 

 since, as is well known, we cannot long react to a stimulus of this type, it is essential that 

 the attention should, in these cases, be soon enough released. Otherwise, held captive 

 and provoked, we are confronted with an insistent appeal which, since we can no longer 

 respond to it, must become in time fatiguing or contemptible. 



"Of these two types of esthetic appeal, each commands its own dominion; 

 neither is essentially superior to the other, although, since men tend to set a higher 

 value on that which satisfies them longest, it is art of the former kind which has most 

 often been called great. But they do both possess an essential fitness to different 

 occasions." 



Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism : a Study in the History of Taste, 

 1914, p. 83-84. 



