GIOVANNI COSTA 



How may we define the special note that lends his 

 art a permanent and enduring value ? In the first 

 place, it possesses the rare quality of distinction. 

 There is no trace of formality or artificiality about his 

 work. It bears the stamp of undeniable originality, 

 of long and patient research, and is at the same time 

 distinguished by unerring obedience to the great and 

 abiding laws of design. When Costa began to study 

 painting seriously, in the middle of the last century, 

 Italian art had sunk to a very low ebb. The Roman 

 artists who flourished in the forties and fifties seldom 

 painted landscape except as a background for historical 

 or mythological subjects. They revelled in theatrical 

 effects and sensational colouring, and sought to attain 

 popularity by aping the cheap mannerisms and worst 

 defects of the French and Spanish school. Costa 

 boldly broke with these false ideals and academic 

 conventions, and went straight to Nature for his 

 teaching, maintaining, with his great fellow country- 

 man, Leonardo, that " if you do not build on this 

 good foundation, you will labour with little honour 

 and less profit." This close study and accurate ob- 

 servation of natural fact is the leading characteristic of 

 all Costa's work. The Italy that he paints is not the 

 conventional Italy of Claude and Poussin. His know- 

 ledge of his native land is of a deeper and more inti- 

 mate kind. When he painted the picture of the 



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