324 



ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Part II. 



as in the case of the gods : " i. e. as ideal beings. Nor in 

 copying from nature is it sufficient to make a " dead like- 

 ness" of any object; and we do not require a fac-simile or a 

 portrait of it. " Very rarely," says Professor Hart, " in the 

 chiefest of these (Italian) masters do we observe the imitative 

 capacities of art occupy any prominent or undue share of 

 attention. Such imitation was by them regarded only in the 

 nature of a language. By these great artists it was considered 

 as a means — rarely as an end. In few of their works is our 

 attention divided by the consideration of the degree to which 

 special truth has been imitated ; rarely in their works do the 

 representations of facts divide our attention, or distract it from 

 the theme. Neither are there to be discerned those egotis- 

 tical displays made to court our admiration for the artist's 

 own personal ability. It is to the introduction of these 

 lower elements of the painter's craft that are to be assigned 

 some of the reasons for the decline of powers that long had 

 almost the exclusive privilege of instructing and improving 

 the minds, as well as of increasing the religious devotion of 

 the then most civilised portion of the human race." 



89. Another sign of deterioration in the condition of art 

 was the undue importance attached to landscape, and to 

 scenes from common life ; for which, though great observa- 

 tion and a considerable poetry of treatment were necessary, 

 the same imagination and power of mind were not required. 

 The greatest masters rarely, and never exclusively, occupied 

 themselves upon landscape ; and though Titian could treat it 

 so admirably, and others occasionally painted landscapes (not 

 always very successfully), they never allowed their talents to 

 be devoted to it in preference to the higher branches of art. 



I do not, however, mean to detract from the merit of those 

 artists who have excelled in landscape, or in any other branch 

 of painting, We have indeed many most eminent landscape 

 painters, .whose talents have shed a lustre on the English 



