III. TURNER AND HIS WORKS 113

clouds were perfect in transparency and softness. But still there is no real advance in knowledge of natural objects. The leaves and flowers are, indeed, admirably painted, and thrown into various intricate groupings, such as Giotto could not have attempted, but the rocks and water are still as conventional and imperfect as ever, except only in colour: the forms of rock in Leonardo’s celebrated “Vierge aux Rochers”¹ are literally no better than those on a china plate. Fig. 22 shows a portion of them in mere outline, with one cluster of the leaves above, and the distant “ideal” mountains. On the whole, the most satisfactory work of the period is that which most resembles missal painting, that is to say, which is fullest of beautiful flowers and animals scattered among the landscape, in the old independent way, like the birds upon a screen. The landscape of Benozzo Gozzoli is exquisitely rich in incident of this kind.²

87. The first man who entirely broke through the conventionality of his time, and painted pure landscape, was Masaccio,³ but he died too young to effect the revolution of which his genius was capable. It was left for other men to accomplish, namely, for Correggio and Titian. These two painters were the first who relieved the foregrounds of their landscape from the grotesque, quaint, and crowded formalism of the early painters; and gave a close approximation to the forms of nature in all things; retaining, however, thus much of the old system, that the distances were for the most part painted in deep ultramarine blue, the foregrounds in rich green and brown; there were no effects of sunshine and shadow, but a generally quiet glow over the whole scene; and the clouds, though now rolling in irregular masses, and

¹ [In the Louvre (see below, p. 460); another version was acquired for the National Gallery (No. 1093) in 1880. Recent researches make it appear probable that Leonardo’s landscape was studied from fantastic rocks actually seen and noted by him in his explorations among the mountains: see passages cited in E. T. Cook’s Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, 6th ed., i. 521.]

² [See the descriptions from Ruskin’s notebook of 1845, given in Vol. IV. p. 321 n.]

³ [Masaccio, 1401-1428. See Modern Painters, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § 11; the summary sketch of Italian landscape given here should be compared with the longer notices there (Vol. III. pp. 174-184).]

XII. H

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