GIOVANNI COSTA 
How may we define the special note that lends his 
I 
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 u 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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