lvator, and the Poussins.

Though, however, at this period the general grasp of the schools was
perpetually contracting, a gift was given to the world by Claude, for
which we are perhaps hardly enough grateful, owing to the very frequency
of our after enjoyment of it. He set the sun in heaven, and was, I
suppose, the first who attempted anything like the realization of actual
sunshine in misty air. He gives the first example of the study of nature
for her own sake, and allowing for the unfortunate circumstances of his
education, and for his evident inferiority of intellect, more could
hardly have been expected from him. His false taste, forced composition,
and ignorant rendering of detail have perhaps been of more detriment to
art than the gift he gave was of advantage. The character of his own
mind is singular; I know of no other instance of a man's working from
nature continually with the desire of being true, and never attaining
the power of drawing so much as a bough of a tree rightly. Salvator, a
man originally endowed with far higher power of mind than Claude, was
altogether unfaithful to his mission, and has left us, I believe, no
gift. Everything that he did is evidently for the sake of exhibiting his
own dexterity; there is no love of any kind for anything; his choice of
landscape features is dictated by no delight in the sublime, but by mere
animal restlessness or ferocity, guided by an imaginative power of which
he could not altogether deprive himself. He has done nothing which
others have not done better, or which it would not have been better not
to have done; in nature, he mistakes distortion for energy, and
savageness for sublimity; in man, mendicity for sanctity, and conspiracy
for heroism.

The landscape of Nicolo Poussin shows much power, and is usually
composed and elaborated on right principles, (compare preface to second
edition,) but I am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or
peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found
in other masters in higher degrees. In finish it is inferior to
Leonardo's, in invention to Giorgione's, in truth to Titian's, in grace
to Raffaelle's. The landscapes of Gaspar have serious feeling and often
valuable and solemn color; virtueless otherwise, they are full of the
most degraded mannerism, and I believe the admiration of them to have
been productive of extensive evil among recent schools.

Sec. 15. German and Flemish landscape.