206 THE STONES OF VENICE

art, to the central cupola of St. Mark’s. On that cupola, as has been already stated,¹ there is a mosaic representing the apostles on the Mount of Olives, with an olive-tree separating each from the other; and we shall easily arrive at our purpose, by comparing the means which would have been adopted by a modern artist bred in the Renaissance schools,-that is to say, under the influence of Claude and Poussin, and of the common teaching of the present day,-with those adopted by the Byzantine mosaicist to express the nature of these trees.

§ 11. The reader is doubtless aware that the olive is one of the most characteristic and beautiful features of all Southern scenery. On the slopes of the northern Apennines, olives are the usual forest timber; the whole of the Val d’ Arno is wooded with them, every one of its gardens is filled with them, and they grow in orchard-like ranks out of its fields of maize, or corn, or vine; so that it is physically impossible, in most parts of the neighbourhood of Florence, Pistoja, Lucca, or Pisa, to choose any site of landscape which shall not owe its leading character to the foliage of these trees. What the elm and oak are to England, the olive is to Italy; nay, more than this, its presence is so constant, that, in the case of at least four-fifths of the drawings made by any artist in North Italy, he must have been somewhat impeded by branches of olive coming between him and the landscape. Its classical associations double its importance in Greece;² and in the Holy Land the remembrances connected with it are of course more touching than can ever belong to any other tree of the field. Now, for many years back, at least one-third out of all the landscapes painted by English artists have been chosen from Italian scenery; sketches in Greece and in the Holy Land have become as common as sketches on

¹ [See in the preceding volume, pp. 136, 137, and compare St. Mark’s Rest, §§ 107, 126-131.]

² [Ruskin cherished the association in the title of his book, The Crown of Wild Olive; and, in connexion with his reference below (§ 12) to the association of the olive with the helmed wisdom of Athena, see The Queen of the Air, § 38.]

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