III. TURNER AND HIS WORKS 109

relate, but nothing to imitate-belong to this century. I should only confuse you by giving you the names of marvellous artists, most of them little familiar to British ears, who adorned this century in Italy; but you will easily remember it as the age of Dante and Giotto¹-the age of Thought.

The men of the succeeding century (the fifteenth) felt that they could not rival their predecessors in invention, but might excel them in execution. Original thoughts belonging to this century are comparatively rare; even Raphael and Michael Angelo themselves borrowed all their principal ideas and plans of pictures from their predecessors; but they executed them with a precision up to that time unseen. You must understand by the word “drawing,” the perfect rendering of forms, whether in sculpture or painting; and then remember the fifteenth century as the age of Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Raphael²-pre-eminently the age of Drawing.

The sixteenth century produced the four greatest Painters, that is to say, managers of colour, whom the world has seen; namely, Tintoret, Paul Veronese, Titian, and Correggio.³ I need not say more to justify my calling it the age of Painting.

84. This, then, being the state of things respecting art in general, let us next trace the career of landscape through these centuries.

It was only towards the close of the thirteenth century that figure painting began to assume so perfect a condition as to require some elaborate suggestion of landscape background. Up to that time, if any natural object had to be represented, it was done in an entirely conventional way, as you see it upon Greek vases, or in a Chinese porcelain

¹ [Dante, 1265-1321; Giotto, 1276-1336.]

² [Leonardo, 1452-1519; Michael Angelo, 1475-1564; Raphael, 1483-1520. Ghiberti was earlier, 1378-1455.]

³ [Tintoret, 1519-1594; Veronese, 1528-1588; Titian, 1477-1576; Correggio, 1494- 1534. For a note on Ruskin’s other lists of the greatest painters, see Vol. IV. p. xxxv. For Ruskin’s diagram showing the dates of the principal Italian artists, arranged in centuries, see Ariadne Florentina, Lecture ii.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]