Chapter VI

, p. 313.

GIORGIONE—LEONARDO ON RURAL AND PASTORAL DELIGHTS

“What moves thee, O man, to quit thy city habitations and leave thy friends and kin, and go in places wild by reason of mountains and valleys, if not the natural beauty of the world, the which, if thou well considerest, thou enjoyest only through the sense of sight? And if the poet wishes to call himself also a painter in such matters, why do you not take such sites as described by the poet and stay at home without feeling the excessive heat of the sun? And would not this be more useful and less wearisome since it is done in coolness and without moving about and risk of illness?

“But the mind cannot enjoy the benefit of the eyes, windows of its habitation, and cannot receive the varieties of delightful spots, cannot see the shady valleys furrowed by the play of winding streams, cannot see the various flowers which with their colors make a harmony for the eye—and so with all the things which can be represented to that eye.”

“But if the painter in the cold and harsh winter time sets before thee those same places painted, and others, in which thou mayest have experienced thy pleasures beside some fountain, thou canst see again thyself as a lover, with thy loved one in blossoming meadows, under the sweet shadow of verdurous trees—wilt thou not receive quite an other pleasure than from hearing such an effect described by the poet?”

Leonardo, _Trattato_, Wien, 1882, p. 44.

This is so fully in the mood of Giorgione’s idyllism that one likes to think that he may have talked over such themes with Leonardo when they met in Venice in 1500.

[Illustration:

FIG. 260. Titian. Bacchus and Ariadne.—_London._ ]

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