ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



in Costa's own transcripts of Nature. The painter's 

 own emotion and delight in the scene, his intimate 

 sympathy with the subject, is always present in his 

 work and becomes part of the picture. In such 

 little paintings as Lord Leighton's " Winter Evening in 

 the Woods of Fajola," with the sheep feeding under the 

 bare trees and the yellow light breaking over the low 

 wooded hills, or in that other study of " Autumn in the 

 Forests of Albano," he seems to summarise the peculiar 

 scenery of the Alban hills, and makes us feel the innate 

 spirit of the place and hour " the intense tranquillity 

 of silent hills and more than silent sky." Costa was, 

 in fact, as Mr. Henley was fond of saying, " a thorough 

 Words worthian." Nature had for him the same 

 subtle attraction that it had for poets such as Shelley 

 and Wordsworth, and deep at the root of all his 

 renderings of her changeful moods we feel the same 

 dim glimmerings of the truth that lies at the heart 

 of things, the same mysterious sense of a Love which 

 " impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought." 

 These are some of the different elements that help 

 to make up the rare and indefinable charm of Costa's 

 work. The range of his art, of course, is narrow. 

 He confines himself almost entirely to one style of 

 subject, and returns by preference to the same 

 subjects. But within these limitations his art is 



very perfect and exquisite. " There is, however," as 



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