power they have, feeling they
have, yet not so much feeling as ever to force them to forget themselves
even for a moment; the ruling motive is invariably vanity, and the
picture therefore an abortion.

Sec. 11. The open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. Mountain
drawing of Masaccio. Landscape of the Bellinis and Giorgione.

Returning to the pictures of the religious schools, we find that their
open skies are also of the highest value. Their preciousness is such
that no subsequent schools can by comparison be said to have painted sky
at all, but only clouds, or mist, or blue canopies. The golden sky of
Marco Basaiti in the Academy of Venice altogether overpowers and renders
valueless that of Titian beside it. Those of Francia in the gallery of
Bologna are even more wonderful, because cooler in tone and behind
figures in full light. The touches of white light in the horizon of
Angelico's Last Judgment are felt and wrought with equal truth. The
dignified and simple forms of cloud in repose are often by these
painters sublimely expressed, but of changeful cloud form they show no
examples. The architecture, mountains, and water of these distances are
commonly conventional; motives are to be found in them of the highest
beauty, and especially remarkable for quantity and meaning of incident;
but they can only be studied or accepted in the particular feeling that
produced them. It may generally be observed that whatever has been the
result of strong emotion is ill seen unless through the medium of such
emotion, and will lead to conclusions utterly false and perilous, if it
be made a subject of cold-hearted observance, or an object of systematic
imitation. One piece of genuine mountain drawing, however, occurs in the
landscape of Masaccio's Tribute Money. It is impossible to say what
strange results might have taken place in this particular field of art,
or how suddenly a great school of landscape might have arisen, had the
life of this great painter been prolonged. Of this particular fresco I
shall have much to say hereafter. The two brothers Bellini gave a marked
and vigorous impulse to the landscape of Venice, of Gentile's
architecture I shall speak presently. Giovanni's, though in style less
interesting and in place less prominent, occurring chiefly as a kind of
frame to his pictures, connecting them with the architecture of the
churches for which they were intended, is in refinement of realization,
I