LANDSCAPE PAINTING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 443 



judge from the many specimens preserved to us in the exca- 

 vations of Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae, these pictures of 

 nature were frequently nothing more than bird's-eye views of 

 the country, similar to maps, and more like a delineation of 

 seaport towns, villas, and artificially arranged gardens, than 

 the representation, of free nature. That which may have been 

 regarded as the habitably comfortable element in a landscape 

 seems to have alone attracted the Greeks and Romans, and 

 not that which we term the wild and romantic. Their imita- 

 tions might be so far accurate as frequent disregard of per- 

 spective and a taste for artificial and conventional arrangement 

 permitted, and their arabesque-like compositions, to which the 

 critical Vitruvius was averse, often exhibited a rhythmically 

 recurring and well- conceived representation of animal and 

 vegetable forms ; but yet, to borrow an expression of Otfried 

 Miiller,* " the vague and mysterious reflection of the mind, 

 which seems to appeal to us from the landscape, appeared 

 to the ancients, from the peculiar bent of their feelings, as 

 incapable of artistic development, and their delineations were 

 sketched with more of sportiveness than earnestness and 

 sentiment." 



We have thus indicated the analogy which existed in the 

 process of development of the two means descriptive diction, 

 and graphical representations by which the attempt to render 

 the impressions produced by the aspect of nature appreciable 

 to the sensuous faculties, has gradually attained a certain degree 

 of independence. 



The specimens of ancient landscape painting in the manner 

 of Ludius, which have been recovered from the excavations at 

 Pompeii (lately renewed with so happy a result), belong most 

 probably to a single and very short period ; viz., that intervening 



* Otfried Miiller, Archdologie der Kunst, 1830, s. 609. Having 

 already spoken in the text of the paintings found in Pompeii and 

 Herculaneum as being compositions but little allied to the freedom of 

 nature, I must here notice some exceptions, which may be considered 

 as landscapes in the strict modern sense of the word. See Pitture 

 d' Ercolano, vol. ii. tab. 45, vol. iii. tab. 53 ; and, as backgrounds in. 

 charming historical compositions, vol. iv. tab. 61, 62, and 63. I do- 

 not refer to the remarkable representation in the Monumenti dell' 

 Institute di Corrispondenza archeologica, vol. iii. tab. 9, since its 

 genuine antiquity has already been called in question by Eaoal Rochette, 

 an archaeologist of much acuteness of observation. 



