Nor am I at all sure how far the delight which we take

§ 12. Nor am I at all sure how far the delight which we take (when I say we, I mean, in general, lovers of old sacred art) in such quaint landscape, arises from its peculiar falsehood, and how far from its peculiar truth. For as it falls into certain errors more boldly, so, also, what truth it states, it states more firmly than subsequent work. No engravings, that I know, render the backgrounds of sacred pictures with sufficient care to enable the reader to judge of this matter unless before the works themselves. I have, therefore, engraved, on the opposite page, a bit of the background of Raphael's Holy Family, in the Tribune of the Uffizii, at Florence. I copied the trees leaf for leaf,art oil paintings online, and the rest of the work with the best care I could; the engraver, Mr. Armytage, has admirably rendered the delicate atmosphere which partly veils the distance. Now I do not know how far it is necessary to such pleasure as we receive from this landscape, that the trees should be both so straight and formal in stem, and should have branches no thicker than threads; or that the outlines of the distant hills should approximate so closely to those on any ordinary Wedgewood's china pattern. I know that, on the contrary,abstract oil paintings on canvas, a great part of the pleasure arises from the sweet expression of air and sunshine; from the traceable resemblance of the city and tower to Florence and Fésole; from the fact that, though the boughs are too thin, the lines of ramification are true and beautiful; and from the expression of continually varied form in the clusters of leafage. And although all lovers of sacred art would shrink in horror from the idea of substituting for such a landscape a bit of Cuyp or Rubens, I do not think that the horror they feel is because Cuyp and Rubens's landscape is truer, but because it is coarser and more vulgar in associated idea than Raphael's; and I think it possible that the true forms of hills, and true thicknesses of boughs, might be tenderly stolen into this background of Raphael's without giving offence to any one. oil paintings for sale