Immediately after these, turn to Plate 57, opposite. The branch at the
top is facsimiled from that in the hand of Adam, in Durer's Adam and
Eve.[3] It is full of the most exquisite vitality and spring in every
line. Look at it for five minutes carefully. Then turn back to
Salvator's, Fig. 57. Are you as well satisfied with it? You ought to
feel that it is not strong enough at the origin to sustain the leaves;
and that if it were, those leaves themselves are in broken or forced
relations with each other. Such relations might, indeed, exist in a
partially withered tree, and one of these branches is intended to be
partially withered, but the other is not; and if it were, Salvator's
choice of the withered tree is precisely the sign of his preferring
ugliness to beauty, decrepitude and disorganization to life and youth.
The leaves on the spray, by Durer, hold themselves as the girl holds
herself in dancing; those on Salvator's as an old man, partially
palsied, totters along with broken motion, and loose deflection of limb.
§ 8. Next, let us take a spray by Paul Veronese[4]--the lower figure in
Plate 57. It is just as if we had gathered one out of the garden. Though
every line and leaf in the quadruple group is necessary to join with
other parts of the composition of the noble picture, every line and leaf
is also as free and true as if it were growing. None are confused, yet
none are loose; all are individual, yet none separate, in tender poise
of pliant strength and fair order of accomplished grace, each, by due
force of the indulgent bough, set and sustained.
§ 9. Observe, however, that in all these instances from earlier masters,
the expression of the universal botanical law of poise is independent of
accuracy in rendering of species. As before noticed, the neglect of
specific distinction long restrained the advance of landscape, and even
hindered Turner himself in many respects. The sprays of Veronese are a
conventional type of laurel; Albert Durer's an imaginary branch of
paradisaical vegetation; Salvator's, a rude reminiscence of sweet
chestnut; Turner's only is a faithful rendering of the Scotch fir.
[Illustration: 58. Branch Curvature.]
[Illustration: FIG. 59.]
[Illustration: FIG. 60.]
[Illustration: FIG. 61 _To face page 69._]
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