2i6 TREES IN NATURE, MYTH & ART 



have trees seen against a similar sky sufficed 

 for the sole motive of a picture ! 



In the earlier years of the sixteenth century, 

 Raphael, and his Florentine contemporaries, 

 were not as far advanced as Giovanni Bellini 

 in the rendering of landscape, and it is to 

 Bellini's great pupil, the Venetian, Titian, that 

 we go for further advance in the rendering of 

 trees. The Venetians were better qualified 

 than the painters of the schools of Central 

 Italy, than the men of Umbria and Tuscany, 

 truthfully and sympathetically to interpret 

 nature. Their spirit was essentially positive 

 and worldly, not contemplative, mystical-idealist. 

 They handle religious subjects in the spirit of 

 the pageants, and lavish hospitalities proper to 

 the city that held "the gorgeous East in fee". 

 Their natural surroundings, as often observed 

 in connexion with their art, were remarkable 

 for glorious light and colour, for light and 

 colour in one, rather than for form. There 

 were the long reaches of the lagoons, across 

 which, when, on clear calm days, sky and sea 

 are almost of one palpitating blue, the islands 

 seem as if they were suspended in mid air. 

 And far away the mountains gleam like precious 



