446 COSMOS. 



artists at this epoch directed their efforts to a careful, 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 Domi- 

 nican monk.* The form of the forest-trees, and their foliage, 

 the mountainous and blue distance, the tone of colouring, 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 background 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 

 Pietro Aretino, he painted the surrounding landscape and 

 sky in harmony with the individual character of the sub- 

 ject. Annibal Caracci and Domenichino, in the Bolog- 



Pinturiccliio 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 impression 

 on travellers and artists from the constant intercourse, existing between 

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

 in the earliest Italian landscapes are either very old conventional modes 

 of representing mountain forms, in antique bas-reliefs and mosaic works, or 

 that they must be regarded as unskilfully foreshortened views of Soracte 

 and similarly isolated mountains in the Campagna 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 fanciful landscape which 

 forms the background 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, Herry de Bles, named Civetta from his animal monogram, 

 and subsequently the brothers Matthew and Paul Bril, who excited a 

 strong taste in favour of this particular branch of art during their 

 Bojourn in Rome. In Germany, Albrecht Altdorfer, Durer's pupil, 

 practised landscape painting even somewhat earlier and with greater 

 success than Patenier. 



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



