88 ' COSMOS. 



ful but almost timid imitation of nature, and the master- works 

 of Titian afford the earliest evidence of freedom and grandeur 

 in the representation of natural scenes ; but in this respect, 

 also, Giorgione seems to have served as a model for that great 

 painter. I had the opportunity for many years of admiring 

 in the gallery of the Louvre at Paris that picture of Titian 

 which represents the death of Peter Martyr, overpowered in 

 a forest by an Albigense, in the presence of another Domini- 

 can monk.* The form of the forest-trees, and their fohage, 

 the mountainous and blue distance, the tone of coloring, and 

 the lights glowing through the whole, leave a solemn impres- 

 sion of the earnestness, grandeur, and depth of feelings which 

 pervade this simple landscape composition. So vivid was 

 Titian's admiration of nature, that not only in the pictures of 

 beautiful women, as in the back -ground of his exquisitely- 

 formed Venus in the Dresden Gallery, but also in those of a 

 graver nature, as, for instance, in his picture of the poet Pie- 

 tro Aretino, he painted the surrounding landscape and sky in 

 harmony with the individual character of the subject. Anni- 

 bal Caracci and Domenichino, in the Bolognese school, adhered 

 faithfully to this elevation of style. If, however, the great 

 epoch of historical painting belong to the sixteenth century, 



pendent decorations, in the Belvidere of the Vatican. He appears to 

 have exercised an influence on Raphael, in whose paintings there are 

 many landscape peculiarities which can not be traced to Perugino. In 

 Pinturicchio and his friends we also already meet with those singular, 

 pointed forms of mountains which, in your lectures, you were disposed 

 to derive from the Tyrolese dolomitic cones which Leopold von Buch 

 has rendered so celebrated, and which may have produced an impres- 

 sion on travelers and artists from the constant intercourse existing be- 

 tween Italy and Germany. I am more inclined to believe that these 

 conical forms in the earliest Italian landscapes are either very old con- 

 ventional modes of representing mountain forms in antique bass-reliefs 

 and mosaic works, or that they must be regarded as unskillfully fore- 

 shortened views of Soracte and similarly isolated mountains in the Cam- 

 pagna di Roma." (From a letter addressed to me by Carl Friedrich 

 von Rumohr, in October, 1832.) In order to indicate more precisely 

 the conical and pointed mountains in question, I would refer to the fon- 

 ciful landscape which forms the back-ground in Leonardo da Vinci's 

 universally admired picture of Mona Lisa (the consort of Francesco del 

 Giocondo). Among the artists of the Flemish school who have more 

 particularly developed landscape painting as a separate branch of art, 

 we must name Patenier's successor, Henry de Bles, named Civetta from 

 his animal monogram, and subsequently the brothers Matthew and Paul 

 Bril, who excited a strong taste in favor of this particular branch ot art 

 during their sojourn in Rome. In Germany, Albrecht Altdorfer, Durer'a 

 pupil, practiced landscape painting even somewhat earlier and with 

 greater success than Patenier. 



* Painted for the Church of San Giovann? e Paolo at Venice. 



