436 APPENDIX, 12

Turner. Tintoret.

Masaccio.

John Bellini.

Albert Durer.

Giorgione.

Paul Veronese.

Titian.

Rubens.

Correggio.

Orcagna.

Benozzo Gozzoli.

Giotto.

Raffaelle.

Perugino.

The landscape of the great figure painters is often majestic in the highest degree, and Tintoret’s¹ especially shows exactly the same power and feeling as Turner’s. If with Turner I were to rank the historical painters as landscapists, estimating rather the power they show than the actual value of the landscape they produced, I should class those whose landscapes I have studied in some such order as this at the side of the page; associating with the landscape of Perugino that of Francia and Angelico, and the other severe painters of religious subject. I have put Turner and Tintoret side by side, not knowing which is, in landscape, the greater; I had nearly associated in the same manner the noble names of John Bellini and Albert Durer; but Bellini must be put first, for his profound religious peace, yet not separated from the other, if but that we might remember his kindness to him in Venice: and it is well we should take note of it here, for it furnishes us with the most interesting confirmation of what was said in the text respecting the position of Bellini as the last of the religious painters of Venice. The following passage is quoted in Jackson’s “Essay on Wood-engraving,”² from Albert Durer’s Diary:-

“I have many good friends among the Italians, who warn me not to eat or drink with their painters, of whom several are my enemies, and copy my picture in the church, and others of mine, wherever they can find them, and yet they blame them, and say they are not according to ancient art, and therefore not good. Giovanni Bellini, however, has praised me highly to several gentlemen, and wishes to have something of my doing: he called on me himself, and requested that I would paint a picture for him, for which, he said, he would pay me well. People are all surprised that I should be so much thought of by a person of his reputation: he is very old, but is still the best painter of them all.”³

A choice little piece of description this, of the Renaissance painters, side by side with the good old Venetian, who was soon to leave them to their own ways. The Renaissance men are seen in perfection, envying, stealing, and lying, but without wit enough to lie to purpose.

12. P. 58.-ROMANIST MODERN ART

It is of the highest importance, in these days, that Romanism should be deprived of the miserable influence which its pomp and picturesqueness have given it over the weak sentimentalism of the English people; I call it a miserable influence, for of all motives to sympathy with the Church of Rome, this I unhesitatingly class as the basest: I can, in some measure, respect the other feelings which have been the beginnings of apostasy; I can respect the desire for unity which would reclaim the Romanist by love, and the distrust of his own heart which subjects the proselyte to priestly power: I say I can respect

¹ [Cf. Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 12 (Vol. III. p. 181).]

² [A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical. [By W. Chatto.] With ... illustrations by John Jackson, 1839, p. 293.]

³ [This passage (from a letter, not diary, of Dürer) is given more accurately in Ruskin’s Catalogue of the Standard Series (Oxford), under No. 5. See the same catalogue, under No. 36, for further particulars of Dürer’s intercourse with Bellini.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]