However, in this immitigable dislike of clouds

§ 21. However, in this immitigable dislike of clouds, Dante goes somewhat beyond the general temper of his age. For although the calm sky was alone loved, and storm and rain were dreaded by all men, yet the white horizontal clouds of serene summer were regarded with great affection by all early painters, and considered as one of the accompaniments of the manifestation of spiritual power; sometimes, for theological reasons which we shall soon have to examine, being received, even without any other sign, as the types of blessing or Divine acceptance: and in almost every representation of the heavenly paradise, these level clouds are set by the early painters for its floor, or for thrones of its angels; whereas Dante retains steadily, through circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and concludes his painting of heaven, as he began it upon the purgatorial mountain, with the image of shadowless morning: oil paintings for sale

"I raised my eyes, and as at morn is seen
The horizon's eastern quarter to excel,
So likewise, that pacific Oriflamb
Glowed in the midmost, and toward every part,
With like gradation paled away its flame."

But the best way of regarding this feeling of Dante's is as the ultimate and most intense expression of the love of light, color, and clearness, which, as we saw above, distinguished the mediæval from the Greek on one side, and, as we shall presently see, distinguished him from the modern on the other. For it is evident that precisely in the degree in which the Greek was agriculturally inclined, in that degree the sight of clouds would become to him more acceptable than to the mediæval knight, who only looked for the fine afternoons in which he might gather the flowers in his garden, and in no wise shared or imagined the previous anxieties of his gardener. Thus, when we find Ulysses comforted about Ithaca, by being told it had "plenty of rain," and the maids of Colonos boasting of their country for the same reason, we may be sure that they had some regard for clouds; and accordingly, except Aristophanes,cheap oil paintings for sale, of whom more presently, all the Greek poets speak fondly of the clouds, and consider them the fitting resting-places of the gods; including in their idea of clouds not merely the thin clear cirrus, but the rolling and changing volume of the thunder-cloud; nor even these only, but also the dusty whirlwind cloud of the earth, as in that noble chapter of Herodotus which tells us of the cloud, full of mystic voices, that rose out of the dust of Eleusis, and went down to Salamis. Clouds and rain were of course regarded with a like gratitude by the eastern and southern nations—Jews and Egyptians; and it is only among the northern mediævals, with whom fine weather was rarely so prolonged as to occasion painful drought, or dangerous famine, and over whom the clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came, that the love of serene light assumes its intense character, and the fear of tempest is gloomiest; so that the powers of the clouds which to the Greek foretold his conquest at Salamis, and with whom he fought in alliance,where to buy oil paintings, side by side with their lightnings, under the crest of Parnassus, seemed, in the heart of the Middle Ages, to be only under the dominion of the spirit of evil. I have reserved, for our last example of the landscape of Dante, the passage in which this conviction is expressed; a passage not less notable for its close description of what the writer feared and disliked, than for the ineffable tenderness, in which Dante is always raised as much above all other poets, as in softness the rose above all other flowers. It is the spirit of Buonconte da Montefeltro who speaks:

"Then said another: 'Ah, so may thy wish,
That takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfilled,
As thou shalt graciously give aid to mine!
Of Montefeltro I; Buonconte I:
Giovanna, nor none else, have care for me;
Sorrowing with these I therefore go.' I thus:
From Campaldino's field what force or chance
Drew thee, that ne'er thy sepulchre was known?'
'Oh!' answered he, 'at Casentino's foot
A stream there courseth, named Archiano, sprung
In Apennine, above the hermit's seat.
E'en where its name is cancelled, there came I,
Pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot,
And bloodying the plain. Here sight and speech
failed me; and finishing with Mary's name,
I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.
...
That evil will, which in his intellect
Still follows evil, came;
... the valley, soon
As day was spent, he covered o'er with cloud. reproduction oil paintings uk
From Pratomagno to the mountain range,
And stretched the sky above; so that the air,
Impregnate, changed to water. Fell the rain;
And to the fosses came all that the land
Contained not; and as mightiest streams are wont.
To the great river, with such headlong sweep,
Rushed, that nought stayed its course. My stiffened frame,
Laid at his mouth, the fell Archiano found,
And dashed it into Arno; from my breast
Loosening the cross, that of myself I made
When overcome with pain. He hurled me on,
Along the banks and bottom of his course;
Then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.'"

Observe, Buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his breast, pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in prayer. His body thus lies by the river shore, as on a sepulchral monument, the arms folded into a cross. The rage of the river, under the influence of the evil demon, unlooses this cross, dashing the body supinely away, and rolling it over and over by bank and bottom. Nothing can be truer to the action of a stream in fury than these lines. And how desolate is it all! The lonely flight,—the grisly wound, "pierced in the throat,"—the death, without help or pity,—only the name of Mary on the lips,-and the cross folded over the heart. Then the rage of the demon and the river,—the noteless grave,—and, at last, even she who had been most trusted forgetting him,—

"Giovanna, none else have care for me." paintings reproductions

There is, I feel assured, nothing else like it in all the range of poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one Scottish ballad, "The Twa Corbies."

Here, then, I think, we may close our inquiry into the nature of the mediæval landscape; not but that many details yet require to be worked out; but these will be best observed by recurrence to them, for comparison with similar details in modern landscape,—our principal purpose, the getting at the governing tones and temper of conception, being, I believe, now sufficiently accomplished. And I think that our subject may be best pursued by immediately turning from the mediæval to the perfectly modern landscape; for although I have much to say respecting the transitional state of mind exhibited in the six teenth and seventeenth centuries, I believe the transitions may be more easily explained after we have got clear sight of the extremes; and that by getting perfect and separate hold of the three great phases of art,—Greek, mediæval, and modern,—we shall be enabled to trace, with least chance of error, those curious vacillations which brought us to the modern temper while vainly endeavoring to resuscitate the Greek. I propose, therefore, in the next chapter, to examine the spirit of modern landscape, as seen generally in modern painting, and especially in the poetry of Scott. abstract art oil paintings