LANDSCAPE 281 



difficult to deal with than the real things they symbolised, 

 and also of possessing the passport of classical tradition. This 

 way of representing nature in figurative art harmonised with 

 the intellectual conditions of the Renaissance. Accordingly, 

 landscape, or the portraiture of Nature as she is, remained in 

 a subordinate position. 



This fact ought not to be attributed to the Revival of 

 Learning only. There is profound truth in the saying that 

 1 the proper study of mankind is man.' Man awakening to 

 free consciousness at the end of the Middle Ages seized first 

 upon himself as the subject of the highest art. Nature had 

 to wait her turn. And her turn carne when the cycle of 

 purely human motives, within the sphere of that period's 

 ideality, had been exhausted. It was at the close of the 

 Italian Renaissance, after Europe had been saturated with the 

 new learning, when science too was born, and men were 

 gazing with purged eyes upon the heavens of Copernicus and 

 ' thy clear stars, Galileo,' that landscape attained to inde- 

 pendence. Five great painters initiated this new departure in 

 the arts. These were Peter Paul Rubens, Nicholas Poussin, 

 Claude Lorraine, Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator Rosa a 

 Fleming strongly influenced by Italian ideas, three Italianated 

 Frenchmen, and a Neapolitan. 1 



Before their appearance on the scene, landscape-painting 

 had here and there been practised with great ability and sense 

 of beauty on both sides of the Alps. Nothing can surpass 

 the refined fidelity to detail with which John van Eyck drew 

 and coloured that airy prospect over river, city, and snow- clad 

 mountains, seen from the quiet mediaeval loggia, in his picture 

 of La Vierge au Donateur. Few transcripts from external 

 nature are more impressive in their map-like, patiently 

 symbolic style than Diirer's Fortune, S. Hubert, and Knight 

 on Horseback in the sombre forest. Gentile da Fabriano's 

 sunrise upon Tuscan hills is like the dawn of life in its quaint 

 childish naivete. It would be peevish to demand more con- 

 centrated poetry in the delineation of blue crags and sun- 



1 Eubens, 1577-1640. N. Poussin, 1594-1665. Claude, 1600-1682. 

 G. Poussin, 1613-1675. S. Kosa, 1615-1673. 



