art, the comparative method of study is no less suggestive. It is one of the most curious points of interest in any large collection of pictures to notice the different impressions that the same elements of natural scenery make upon different painters. As figure painting came to be perfected, some adequate suggestion of landscape background was required. Giotto and Orcagna first attempted to give resemblance to nature in this respect. Subsequent painters carried the attempt to greater success, but it was long before landscape for its own sake obtained attention. When it did, the preferences of individual painters, now freed from conventionalism, found abundant scope, as we may see by pausing in succession before the flowery meadows of the "primitives," the "fiery woodlands of Titian," the savage crags of Salvator Rosa, the "saffron skies of Claude."[14] These are some of the incidental points of interest upon which additional notes have been supplied in recent editions. Many others will be discovered by the patient reader of the following pages. =Notices of Painters.=--Lastly, the _biographical and critical notices_ of the painters have been revised and expanded since the first appearance of the book. Many have been re-written throughout, nearly all have been re-cast, and a good many references to pictures in other galleries and countries have been introduced. The important accession to the National Gallery of the Arundel Society's unique collection of copies from the old masters affords an opportunity even to the untraveled visitor to become acquainted, in some sort, with the most famous wall-paintings of Italy. Mr. Ruskin, by whose death the National Gallery lost one of its best and oldest friends, once expressed a hope to me that the notices of the painters given in this Handbook would be found useful by some readers not only as a companion in Trafalgar Square, but also for other galleries, at home and abroad. Nobody can know better than the compiler how far Mr. Ruskin's kindness led him in the direction of over-indulgence. I can only hope that the later editions have been made--largely owing to the suggestions of critics and private correspondents--a little more deserving of the kind reception which, now for a period of nearly twenty-five years, has been given by the public to my Handbook. E. T. C. _May 1912._ [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [1] The Tate Gallery is ten minutes' drive or twenty minutes' walk from Trafalgar Square. It is reached in a straight line by Whitehall, Parliament Street, past the Houses of Parliament, Millbank Street, and Grosvenor Road.