82 LANDSCAPE PAINTING. 



surface of the earth, in the arid desert and rocky plateau 

 on which the Escurial is built ( 123 ). 



The . department of art to which we are now referring 

 might be expected to advance in variety and exactness as 

 the geographical horizon became enlarged, and as voyages 

 to distant climates facilitated the perception of the rela- 

 tive beauty of different vegetable forms, and their con- 

 nection in groups of natural families. The discoveries 

 of Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Alvarez Cabral in Cen- 

 tral America, Southern Asia, and Brazil, the extensive com- 

 merce in spices and drugs carried on by the Spaniards, Por- 

 tuguese, Italians, Dutch, and Flemings, and the establish- 

 ment, between 1544 and 1568, of botanic gardens (not 

 yet however furnished with regular hothouses), at Pisa, 

 Padua, and Bologna, did indeed afford to painters the opportu- 

 nity of becoming acquainted with many remarkable exotic pro- 

 ductions even of the tropical world; and single fruits, flowers, 

 and branches, were represented with the utmost fidelity 

 and grace by John Breughel, whose celebrity had com- 

 menced before the close of the sixteenth century ; but until 

 near the middle of the seventeenth century there were no 

 landscapes which reproduced the peculiar aspect of the 

 torrid zone from actual impressions received by the artist 

 himself on the spot. The first merit of such representation 

 probably belongs (as I learn from Waagen), to a painter of 

 the Netherlands, Franz Post of Haarlem, who accompanied 

 Prince Maurice of Nassau to Brazil, where that prince, who 

 took great interest in tropical productions, was the Stat- 

 holder for Holland in the conquered Portuguese possessions 

 from 1637 to 1644. Post made many studies from nature 

 near Cape St. Augustine, in the bay of All Saints, on the 



