Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/68

 The Country. 47 compare and measure their distance ; it thus acquires precision of sight and a fine feeling for the exact relation in which the different parts stand to each other. These are qualities which, when they shall be applied to the interpretation and reproduction of the living form, will make the Hellenes the greatest artists the world has ever seen. Unconsciously they will introduce into their future plastic works the natural characteristics which the radiant light diffused in space renders visible even from afar. Here and there, these landscapes are not wanting in charms and beauties of a different nature, in well-watered dales for example, or some sheltered nook where luxuriant and delicate foliage fringes the very water-edge ; but even when they lack such graces as are inherent, to vegetation, stateliness and nobility of form is never absent from them. The dearth of trees on many a spot causes the foreground to be confessedly dreary and dull ; for it is only broken by a stunted growth or a grey, calcined, stony, broad expanse ; in this pictorial scene, however, the far distance is always admirable. Behind the near mountains are seen others, and behind these again others still, rising on the opposite banks of bays and arms of the sea, which is ever in sight, no matter on what point of the coast or even inland, in the clear space which passes opening on the plains have hollowed out for themselves, we take up our position ; the number of mountain lines will further increase if we ascend a hill of any height. Their contour is not smooth and rounded, as is the case of mountains covered with grass and timber up to their very tops, the Vosges for example. Here, on the contrary, the limestone everywhere comes to the surface ; the mass has been wrought by time into distinct sharp crests, needle- like peaks, and indented summits. Generally, the lines of this terrestrial architecture are so fine and harmonious, that one is tempted to think them traced by the hand of an Ictinos or Mnesicles. Here masses are set on either side of the plain in almost symmetrical fashion ; mere differences and contrasts are productive of a no less happy result. This is true of the Attic plain. It opens to the southward on the iEginetan bay, with the incomparable vista of its varied islands and the distant hills of Peloponnesus, whilst to the northward it is bounded by Pen- telicus, whose triangular shape might seem an exact copy of the frontels with which classic art adorned its temples. To make the