hase
is exhibited by Italian painting at its period of maturity. The great
Florentines drew their figures against a background of decorative
line, the great Venetians against a background of decorative color.
But even in the work of the greatest of them the background exists
usually to fulfil a purpose merely decorative,--a purpose with
immediate reference to art but without immediate reference to life.
There is no real reason, with reference to life itself, why the Mona
Lisa of Leonardo should smile inscrutably upon us before a background
of jagged rocks and cloudy sky; and the curtains in Raphael's Sistine
Madonna are introduced merely as a detail of composition, and are not
intended as a literal statement that curtains hung upon a rod exist in
heaven.

In the third stage, which is exhibited by later painting, the
background is brought into living relation with the figures of the
foreground,--a relation suggested not merely by the exigencies of
art but rather by the conditions of life itself. Thus the great Dutch
_genre_ painters, like the younger Teniers, show their characters in
immediate human relation to a carefully detailed interior; or if, like
Adrian van Ostade, they take them out of doors, it is to show them
entirely at home in an accustomed landscape.

This stage, in its most modern development, exhibits an absolutely
essential relation between the foreground and the background--the
figures and the setting--so that neither could be imagined exactly as
it is without the presence of the other. Such an essential harmony is
shown in the "Angelus" of Jean-Francois Millet. The people exist for
the sake of giving meaning to the landscape; and the landscape exists
for the sake of giving meaning to the people. The "Angelus" is neither
figure painting nor landscape painting merely; it is both.

In the history of fiction we may note a similar evolution in the
element of setting. The earliest folk-tales of every nation happen
"once upon a time," and without any definite localization. In the
"Gesta Romanorum," that medieval repository of accumulated narratives,
the element of setting is nearly as non-existent as the element of
background in the frescoes of Pompeii. Even in the "Decameron"
of Boccaccio the stories are seldom localized: they happen almost
anywhere at almost any time. The interest in Boccaccio's narrative,
like the interest in Giotto's painting, is centered first of all in
the element of action, and seco