ity. The sea is in the
distance almost always, then some blue promontories and undulating dewy
park ground, studded with glittering trees; in the landscape of the
fresco in St^a. Maria Maddalena at Florence there is more variety than
is usual with him; a gentle river winds round the bases of rocky hills,
a river like our own Wye or Tees in their loveliest reaches; level
meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with
slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, a small village with
its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley, and it
is remarkable that in architecture thus employed neither Perugino nor
any other of the ideal painters ever use Italian forms but always
Transalpine, both of church and castle. The little landscape which forms
the background of his own portrait in the Uffizii is another highly
finished and characteristic example. The landscape of Raffaelle was
learned from his father, and continued for some time little modified,
though expressed with greater refinement. It became afterwards
conventional and poor, and in some cases altogether meaningless. The
haystacks and vulgar trees behind the St. Cecilia at Bologna form a
painful contrast to the pure space of mountain country in the Perugino
opposite.[76]

Sec. 12. Such Landscape is not to be imitated.

In all these cases, while I would uphold the landscape thus employed and
treated, as worthy of all admiration, I should be sorry to advance it
for imitation. What is right in its mannerism arose from keen feeling in
the painter: imitated without the same feeling, it would be painful; the
only safe mode of following in such steps is to attain perfect knowledge
of nature herself, and then to suffer our own feelings to guide us in
the selection of what is fitting for any particular purpose. Every
painter ought to paint what he himself loves, not what others have
loved; if his mind be pure and sweetly toned, what he loves will be
lovely; if otherwise, no example can guide his selection, no precept
govern his hand; and farther let it be distinctly observed, that all
this mannered landscape is only right under the supposition of its being
a background to some supernatural presence; behind mortal beings it
would be wrong, and by itself, as landscape, ridiculous; and farther,
the chief virtue of it results from the exquisite refinement of those
natural details consistent with its character from the botanical drawing
of the f