On Landscape
The Eighth Chapter
(1) Youthful painters, having long sat hunched [over your work],*
Tangled up in Art, constantly cramming,
Ever desirous of learning more, until half blind,
You’ve worn out your dulled senses,
Stop for now, you’ve been pulling the plough long enough;
From labor allow yourselves duly to be unyoked,
For even strong men crave rest,
No bow may always be pulled taut.
(2) As soon as you espy Hesperus bringing from afar,
For the Father of Morpheus the dreamer,
The black mantle, let your eyes at once
Be sprinkled with Lethe’s water.423
Now, in floriferous Summer, when the nights are short,*
Having dined temperately, fortify
Your tired memory, your senses restive,
Through sweet sleep, making them cheerful.
(3) And come, let’s open the gate early,
Together shorten the hours, lighten the spirits,
And go look at the beauty out there,
Where the beaks of the wild Music-makers pipe;
There shall we see many sights,
That serve us to compose Landscapes
On linen canvas or hard oaken planks from the North.
Come, you shall (I trust) thank yourself for having journeyed.
(4) First of all, observe over there how the Bride of old Tithonus*
Climbs up out of her saffron bed,424
Announcing the advent of day’s torchlight,
And soaked in the Ocean’s wash,**
Four multicolored horses climb panting,***
And behold, how the hems of the purple cloudlets
Bloom rosily; how the glittering house of Eurus
Is beautifully bedecked, to receive Phoebus.425
(5) Aye, see indeed how up above is painted*
A greater beauty of varied colors,
And so many mixtures: one might believe
That molten Gold thus glistens in the Furnace,
Like the cloudlets, which spread abroad;
The distant blue mountains ready themselves, too,
To bear the hallmark of the new Sun,
Which comes racing with bejeweled wheels.
(6) See, on the other side, early Morning427 has already covered over
With the fine azure of lake pigments428
The great vault of heaven and, concealed beneath,
The lamps that illuminate the night;
Moreover, the visage of the bringer of day, fiery in its glow,
Has come to bedew the tresses of Tellus,429*
And, bepearled with droplets,
The tufted grassy garment of the green World.
(7) See there the fiery yellow ball of the Sun,*
Already risen, having raced aloft
While we stood turning to look elsewhere;430
See over there the hunters and hunting dogs
Passing through the green dewy fields:
Aye, see what the trodden dew tells us,
Giving away with a greener green,
Whither they’ve gone, by the spoor of their footsteps.431
(8) See, the whole of the distant Landscape takes on
The form of the Air, seeming almost to subside into it.432*
Stationary mountains appear to be moving clouds,
On either side of the vanishing point, like floor tiles.433
All that we see on the plain—
Ditches, furrows—narrows as it recedes.
Take note of this, be not vexed,
For it will make your backgrounds retreat into the distance.
(9) Pay attention to recession and diminution:*
I speak of what one sees in life
Even if the matter at hand isn’t masonry, for [the depiction of] which
Strict Rules are required; yet must you know
How rightly to set on the Horizon your eye’s vantage point and the vanishing point;434**
That is, on the high-water line:
Everything below, one sees from above,
And conversely, what is shifted, one sees from below.
(10) Refrain from executing your backgrounds too dimly
And distribute your darks less generously than your lights,
Giving thought to the density of the blue-bodied Air,
Which permeates vision,
And quite obscures the effort clear-sightedly to apprehend.
On occasion, one shall here and there make it seem
As if the Sun were shining through clouds,
Casting its light down upon Cities, and Mountains.435
(11) Besides, one shall obscure*
The cities, sometimes wholly, sometimes partially,
Shadowing them with clouds; further shall one be mindful
Not to omit the colorful countenance of the sky
In the mirrorlike water;
And well it stands to follow the old custom,
Letting the zones of sky blend skillfully, from above to below,
And sometimes, too, [allowing] the Sun to shine.
(12) But here let blustery weather be debarred,
When the sea and gushing streams are roiled:
Now, on occasion I wonder at the thought,*
Of how the colors of Apelles, being so few [in number],
Did thunder and flash with lightning,436
[Colors] that we now have in such abundance and purity,
Ready at hand for the portrayal of rare things.
How could they not incite in us the desire to imitate?
(13) Then occasionally let raging waves wetly be portrayed,*
Stirred by the messengers of Eolus,438
The work of black thunderclouds,439 ill-favored and spectral,
And crooked lightning bolts, which come flying
Through the dark air of thunderstorms,
From out of the hand of the highest of the Gods,
Whose rule every mortal creature endowed with a Soul
Appears to fear.
(14) Furthermore, one must explore how with color[s]*
To depict snow, hail, squalls,
Glazed frost, hoarfrost, and suffocating, oppressive mists,
All of which are necessary,
For the portrayal of gloomy winter days,
When the eyes can hardly manage
To see towers, houses, or into Cities, Villages,
Or farther than a stone’s throw.
(15) Some folks reproach us,*
For never portraying fair weather,
For always making the air stormy and overcast,
Ceding to Apollo the merest little hole440
Wherethrough to cast his gaze earthward
Toward his Mother, albeit to his discontent,441
And wherefrom in vain, his besotted flowers,
Turn, to lay hold of his beautiful countenance.442
(16) Consequently, in order to avoid all these missteps,
Let us now disencumber the sky from clouds,
From time to time laying it totally bare,*
Spread over with purest blue of azure and smalt,443
But with clean implements, to ensure that everything remains unsullied,
And set [the blues] down sweetly, the lightest lowest,
So that next to the heaviness of the Element Earth
The greatest brightness be always joined.
(17) If we wish there to show the yellow sun,*
We will flowingly wreath it
Round about with red lakes and a somewhat purplish tint.444
But a substance so pure and brilliant will never be ours,
We are powerless to command it.
Our Art, howsoever great or glorious, is remiss in this respect.
On this account, we may ourselves well fault our work,
For our Torches fail to shine so splendidly.
(18) Would that we knew (after the Poet’s words)
How to fashion up above, at the four-horse chariot,
The secret theft of Prometheus:445
Still enduring punishment, on our behalf.
Let us now descend to the earthly depths,*
Nimbly sallying forth to the Landscape-grounds,
Which men are wont to subdivide on canvases and panels
For the most part into thirds and fourths.
(19) Above all, it shall befit our foreground*
Always to be forceful, in order to make everything else recede,446
And to place up front something large,
As did Bruegel, and others of great name,
On whom men confer the victor’s palm for Landscape:
For in the work of these worthy Persons,
Forceful tree trunks are much to be found in the foreground.
Let us burn with zeal to imitate such as these.447
(20) Now must I mention something essential,
Which greatly enhances the well-being [of our landscapes]:448
Namely, that starting from the foreground,*
One should bind each thing fast to the next,
As Neptune, in his domains, does with the waves,
Which observe how they roll, one into the other;
And thus shall you let the ground undulate,449
Rather than piling it heap upon heap.
(21) If we weave together our [fore-, middle-, and back-] grounds,*
Letting the one issue from the other
In the manner that twisting serpents creep,
Then will our hopes for a good effect of distance be met;450
For the backgrounds must recede forcefully.
We will avoid pushing Mountains, Hills, Dikes,**
Up against each other, a hard brown next to a sweet light,
But instead avail ourselves of half-tints.451
(22) Set no Buildings in the foreground,*
Unless you have there something story-like,
Composed half of Landscape, half of figures;452
Proceed as necessity dictates, but otherwise avoid
An oppressive state of affairs, and do not smother the place;
Rather, as befits the situation,
Cultivate your [fore-]ground, though not too copiously,
By growing [there] a few fine plants.
(23) Much variety, both of color and form,
Must be what we imitate, wisely and sensibly;453
For that brings with it a great and much-prized beauty:
But in addition to this, let us refrain*
From [portraying] Cities, Buildings, Mountains, or any other thing,
Without circumspection, too copiously;454
For an all-too-muchness greatly detracts from pleasurable consonance,455
Be it nothing more than too many distant views.
(24) The Italians paint Landscapes*
Seldom but artfully, almost without peer,
And usually let one see
But one view into the distance, and very solidly construct
The Grounds and Cities, yea, whatsoever they lay out:456
Besides Tintoretto,457 the specially great
Titian, whose woodcuts are here our lessons,458
And in addition, the things to be seen by that Painter of Brescia.459
(25) Beside these I should wish proudly to celebrate460
The fine coloring and artful disposition
Of ingenious Bruegel’s works and prints,*
In which, as in the rocky-horned Alps,
He teaches us to make, without great vexation,
Deep distant views into dizzying valleys,
Steep cliffs, cloud-kissing Pines,
Far distances and rushing streams.461
(26) On rising, hilly, barren ground
Let no beautiful bluish greens be coaxed [into view],*
As appear in low-lying Meadowed Dales,
Which damp places, Cynthian Apollo with his radiant arrows,
Even under the signs of the Crab, Lion, and Maiden,462
Can do little or nothing to fade,
Nor diminish their beautiful green color,
Like unto the precious stone of the Medes.463
(27) But in the joyful season of Spring,
It behooves us to attend to the noble
Adornments of jewel-like colors, and to be diligent
In producing that Emerald and Sapphire green464
Pavement with its variegated squares,
And, coiling their way amidst them, the flourishes*
Of murmuring, Crystal-clear streams
Flowing between green, grassy banks.
(28) With tender rushes, reeds, and sword-like irises,*
We shall plant both sides
Of these winding watercourses, places of comfort to Fishes,
And the standing Pools as well, we shall enliven
By mirroring in them their shrub-strewn banks,465
Where the gentlest of Eolus’s messengers466
Romps with his beloved friend, and they take their delight,
On the beauteous tapestry of the Hinniden.467**
(29) Rushing streams with swelling curves,
One shall give leave to wander through these marshlands,
And allow water ever to search for hollows,*
And beside them build (in order boldly to display one’s Art)
Cities reaching for higher ground,
With Fortresses on Clifftops, fallen into ruin:
Now climbing a bit higher, let us attend
To ample fields subdivided into bounded zones.
(30) To one side, Ceres, with blonde ears of corn,469*
On the other a field still full of unripe oats,
Whither Eurus, to bide his time, comes sailing in,
Making of the farmland a sea of green waves
With a gentle, murmuring roar;470
Here blooming vetch, there buckwheat and clover,
Red and blue flowers amongst the corn and wheat,
And bountiful flax with its Heavenly color.
(31) Ploughed Farmlands, too, cut through with furrows,*
Or sometimes fields, their harvests reaped,
Now Grasslands and Greenswards, just as they should be,
With canals, hedges, or winding roads:
Then I know not what curious fancies
Of Herders’ huts and Peasants’ hamlets,**
Built into cliffside grottoes, hollowed out trees, or on staves;
Thus we shall construct them, [adding] walls and roofs,
(32) Not with fine red tiles, but with rocks,*
With earth, reed, and straw, remnants and oddments,
Curiously plastered, and covered with moss;
And behind and beyond, blue-tinted woodlands,
On grounds of ash, brushed with white,471
Applied on dry blue, so that they stand out,
And finely rendered light tree trunks,
Clustering thickly as they recede.
(33) The smallest Trees, one shall simply stipple,
But before rushing to the foreground trees,
Let us climb the steep cliffs,*
Which the driving clouds dampen with their wet lips,
Washing the topmost summits.
In general, their color is much like light ash,473
And sometimes their bare horns protrude
From the midst of a dense pine forest.
(34) Yes, indeed, the fearful rocks, that fill full*
The Swiss lands, and divide the French from the Italians,474
The North Wind’s port of call, brimming with white lightning;
From here betimes arise peaks so high
They resemble clouds, with Castles just below:
Here give Echo her due, and imitate as well, O, you Brushes,
The water’s rushing noise, as it comes tumbling down,
Raging amongst shattered stones.475
(35) See there the stones, like ferrous icicles,
Hanging from the waterfall’s rocks,
Green with moss, and the drunken flood,
Entirely unloosed, rambling circuitously,
Until it reaches the bottommost point, where, all higgledy-piggledy,
It cuts sinuous waterways: now imitating the likeness of Serpents.
Observe, how the Resinous Pines grow here,
And how strangely they lie about: who could dream up such a thing?
(36) And now, to drive away sadness, have we come
To the shadowy realm of the Hamadryads;476*
That is, to the Trees, which grace and adorn
The whole of one’s work, if they are well done,
But if [poorly done], disgrace it, and thus is it expedient,
To acquire a subtle, fine manner,**
A good stroke, for the leaves;477
For therein lies their power, one must agree.478
(37) But were you to test every manner,
After the life or after [another master’s] pleasant handling,
Constantly practicing on paper prepared [with a colored ground],
Fashioning leaves with swirls of ink wash,
Hoping in time to reach a good outcome:
Yet ‘twould not seem, like [drawing] the muscular body, a teachable art:
For leaves, hair, the sky, and drapery,*
That is all spirit, and the spirit teaches how to fashion them.480
(38) One may well make use of various [species of] leaves,*
And may, in particular, enkindle various colors:
The yellow-green of oaken foliage, the pale leaves of pollarded willows.
One will not round the treetops into a ball,**
As if they had been trimmed with a comb.
And on all sides of the tree trunks,
One will let the branches grow out,
The stoutest ones beneath, the weaker ones above.481
(39) Well-fashioned tree trunks must likewise be found,*
Thick underneath, and thinning as they rise;
On occasion, distinguish amongst bare white birches,
Chestnuts,482 and lindens, and also twist
The wrinkled bark of the oak, and the green ivy;483
And the straight trunks as well, good for spanning
Sails, into which the wind may blow,
Clothe them all in their green foliage.
(40) Well contrived trees conduce to the best advantage:*
Whether they be great in height, or form part of spindly woodlands,
Whether they be yellower, or greener, make the foliage to turn
From the underside over, but in order to avoid [an effect of] dryness,484
Don’t make the leaves too delicate or small,
And in fashioning them, expend your every effort
To intersperse forking little branches,
Some supplely bending upward, others downward.
(41) It were good to know your little stories in advance,*
Whether from Prose, or Poetry, as you please,
All the better to arrange your Landscape with respect to them,
But above all forget not
To place small Figures beside large Trees,485**
And, having constructed your little World,486 place some figures here ploughing,
Others there harvesting, over there loading wagons,
Yet others fishing, sailing, bird-catching, and hunting.
(42) Here, along the green coasts, let the hands of Peasant Maids*
Draw Milk from the lactating little fountains,
There let Tityrus amuse Amaryllis, his much beloved sweetheart,487
By playing a tune on his little flute,
While, seated at rest beneath the beech tree,
He diverts his flocks with sweet melody;
Yea, activate your Countryside, City, and Waterways,
Populate your houses, and make your roadways trafficked.
(43) Here it seems entirely fitting to mention Ludius,488*
Who lived at the time of the Emperor Augustus,
And was the first to discover how to paint ably and artfully**
On outer Walls or inner chambers:
Peasants’ Houses, Farmsteads, Vineyards, country roads,
Also, dense Woodlands, and high Hillsides,
Ponds, Brooks, Streams, Harbors, and seashores.
What you will, he fashioned with skillful hands.
(44) Here he placed people at leisure,*
Wandering about and strolling;
Others who, to pass the time, set out
On the water, taking their pleasure,
In shoreside Landscapes, wagons fully loaded;
And he placed donkeys in fields and on paths,
Next to the peasant houses and yards,
As well as other things that touch upon agriculture.
(45) Sometimes, here and there he’d place folks catching fish,
With angling rods, baited deceptively;
Others who satisfied their craving to hunt game birds,
Or to capture fleet hares,
Harts, boars, or who gathered in the vintage:
To furnish Landscape with such things, cleverly distributed,
Answered to his desire.
The spirit that delights in Art produces wondrous contrivances.
(46) Amongst his works, the one
Most admired by his contemporaries,
Was the one that he had specially made,
In this wise: a marshy dale,*
And a cluster of yards, wherein the adjacent paths
Were slippery, difficult to traverse without sliding;
All these things, worthy of perusal, he portrayed,
And there he depicted women slipping and falling.
(47) One of them he made to move gingerly,
Trembling and fearful of falling down with a bang,
And another hunched over, standing crookedly,
As if carrying on her head or shoulders
A very heavy burden: yes, indeed, to sum up in closing,
He knew how to shower his work from within
With ten thousand pleasant little things.491
And just so many I now leave it to you to think up.
End of Landscape.
Footnotes
*
Youthful painters ought likewise to familiarize themselves with Landscape, and accordingly, as circumstances permit, they should leave the city in order to observe nature, and at the same time refresh themselves by drawing [what they see].
*
In the summer, it is advisable to go early to bed, and to rise early and listen to birdsong.
*
Tithonus’s Bride is Aurora, the Dawn.
**
“Ghewat” is a downspout for the watering of cattle.
***
“Schillede” is multicolored.426
*
Pay heed to the form of the early morning.
*
Tellus is the Earth; the Hair, the plants and grasses that are bedewed.
*
Observe how the fields appear blue-green when seen in the raking light of the Sun, and descry therein the footsteps of the hunters and hunting dogs that have passed through.
*
To let the distant landscape fade away into the air, or to effect it sweetly.
*
It behooves us to take note of foreshortening.
**
The “Orisont” is where Sky and water part, or alternatively, where Earth and air part.
*
On shadowing mountains and cities with clouds, and letting clouds be seen in the water.
*
Apelles painted with no more than four colors, so Pliny says, and produced lightning, thunder, and other such things: we who have so many colors must likewise desire to follow nature in everything.437
*
On painting stormy weather, sea storms, thunder, and lightning.
*
On painting winters, snow, hail, gloomy weather, and mists.
*
Painters are called to task for never painting good weather, but instead always [filling] the sky with clouds.
*
Make the skies a very pure blue, fading into a lighter shade below.
*
Paint the sun, although its clarity cannot be emulated.
*
On the subdivision of Landscape-grounds.
*
Sharply defined foregrounds, and within them, something large.
*
On interlayering grounds, one upon the other.
*
When the grounds interpenetrate well, the landscape will recede well.
**
Do not place strong dark grounds against light ones.
*
Large buildings will not look good in the foreground, just a few fine plants, but not too many.
*
Too many Mountains, Cities, Buildings, or distances miscarry.
*
The Italian Landscapists, few in number but skillful, for the most part fashion but one view into the distance, and are adept at the construction of fine, solid [fore- and middle-]grounds.
*
The Landscapes and prints of Bruegel as examples.
*
On differentiating mountains and valleys with color.
*
Brooks that wind through the meadows.
*
On embellishing waterways and banks and shores with irises and greenery.
**
Hinniden are Goddesses of meadows, or of marshy pasturelands, as Tommaso Porcacchi attests.468
*
Water in the lowlands always, fortresses on clifftops.
*
Fields with their ripe fruits, wherein the wind gambols.
*
On occasion, ploughed fields, and pathways, but one must see where the paths begin and end.
**
On peasants’ curious houses and herdsmen’s huts.
*
Paint no bright, sharply defined roofs with vermilion or red lead, rather, everything as it appears in life.472
*
Give to rocky cliffs and everything else their proper colors.
*
On boulders, rocky substrates, and waterfalls.
*
On Trees and dark woodlands.
**
Search for a fine stroke for the leaves.479
*
Leaves, hair, the sky, and drapery are difficult to learn, being things of the spirit.
*
Various leaves and colors of trees.
**
Treetops must not be clipped [like a topiary].
*
On tree trunks and branches.
*
On devising trees well.
*
It is good to know one’s History in advance.
**
Small figures beside large Trees.
*
On little figures in the Landscape.
*
Here the example of Ludius. Pliny, book 35, chapter 10.489
**
Read about this in his life.490
*
An example of Landscapes adorned with little figures.
*
A fine geegaw: slippery paths, and folks slipping and tumbling down.