The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12)Hazlitt, William
General
The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 01 (of 12)
Hazlitt, William
English essays -- 19th century
Again, Titian’s landscapes have a prodigious gusto, both in the
colouring and forms. We shall never forget one that we saw many years
ago in the Orleans Gallery of Acteon hunting. It had a brown, mellow,
autumnal look. The sky was of the colour of stone. The winds seemed to
sing through the rustling branches of the trees, and already you might
hear the twanging of bows resound through the tangled mazes of the wood.
Mr. West, we understand, has this landscape. He will know if this
description of it is just. The landscape back-ground of the St. Peter
Martyr is another well known instance of the power of this great painter
to give a romantic interest and an appropriate character to the objects
of his pencil, where every circumstance adds to the effect of the
scene,—the bold trunks of the tall forest trees, the trailing ground
plants, with that tall convent spire rising in the distance, amidst the
blue sapphire mountains and the golden sky.
Rubens has a great deal of gusto in his Fauns and Satyrs, and in all
that expresses motion, but in nothing else. Rembrandt has it in
everything; everything in his pictures has a tangible character. If he
puts a diamond in the ear of a burgomaster’s wife, it is of the first
water; and his furs and stuffs are proof against a Russian winter.
Raphael’s gusto was only in expression; he had no idea of the character
of anything but the human form. The dryness and poverty of his style in
other respects is a phenomenon in the art. His trees are like sprigs of
grass stuck in a book of botanical specimens. Was it that Raphael never
had time to go beyond the walls of Rome? That he was always in the
streets, at church, or in the bath? He was not one of the Society of
Arcadians.[52]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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