In what a very
different manner from that of Calame was this same Swiss scenery treated
by the numerous artists who painted Alpine views at the beginning of
this century! They tried almost everywhere to depress the high mountains
into hilly country, and they furnish a lanscape commentary to Gessner's
Idyls rather than to the gigantic scenery of the Alps as we conceive it
at present. Nature, however, has remained the same, and also the outer
eye of man; it is the inner eye which has changed.
The older masters, as well as those of today, liked to place themselves
below the landscape which they wished to construct, where all the
outlines stand out most clearly defined. It had almost grown to be a
rule that the foreground should be placed sharply in profile and often
so deep in shadow that it contrasted like a silhouette with the more
distant grounds. On the other hand, it is a favorite whim of the genuine
pigtail age to draw bird's-eye landscapes and views of cities, in which
every elevation of the earth seems flattened out as much as possible,
every distinct division of the separate grounds as much as possible
obliterated.
When Goethe was on his return trip from Messina to Naples he wrote at
the sight of Scylla and Charybdis: "These two natural curiosities,
standing so far apart in reality and placed so close together by the
poet, have furnished men with an opportunity to abuse the fables of the
bards, not remembering that the human imaginative faculty when it would
represent objects as important always imagines them to be higher than
they are broad, and thus lends more character, seriousness, and dignity
to the picture.
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