LANDSCAPE. In painting, a picture repre senting natural scenery, with or without acces sories of men and animals. which must be sub sidiary. The modern feeling for landscape was un known to Greek art, the human figure absorbing all attention. It was not awakened until Alex andrine times, and in the Roman epoch both landscapes and marines were common. The prin cipal surviving examples are the Odyssey land scapes (Vatican), found upon the Esquiline Hill, and some of the mural decorations at Pompeii and flerculameum. In Byzantine art and during the Middle Ages there was no sense of landscape, gold backgrounds being used for the religions pictures.
The first effective use of landscapes as back grounds was made in Flanders by the brothers Van Eyck (c.1400), who, through the medium of their oil technique, rendered admirably the ef fects of light and atmosphere. (See EYex.) This practice was continued by their followers, and by the German school of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Direr achieving especial suc cess in drawings and engravings of landscapes. The Florentine and Venetian painters of the fif teenth century made delightful use of landscape as backgrounds, as is especially seen in the works of Filippo Lippi. Perugino. Leonardo. and Ra phael. Correggio lent it a subtle charm. hut the most important contributions were made by the Venetians. who showed the effects of sunlight and atmosphere. This was especially done by Bellini and by Gio•gione. with whom the land scape assumes equal importance with the figures painted. Titian used it even more independently, treating landscape in such a way as to give it an ideal and heroic character. The Carraeci and the Eclectics developed this phase even further, paint ing landscapes independent of figures. This so called classic landscape found its culmination in the seventeenth century at Rome, under the hand of Nicolas and Gaspar Poussin, and especially Claude Gekle (Lorraine), who mastered color and light effects. Equally heroic, but more nat uralistic, was the contemporary work of Salvator Rosa in the South. The classic landscape. which represented Italian scenes only, had representa tives of ability in all European countries.
Meanwhile landscape art of quite a different character had arisen during the seventeenth cen tury in the Netherlands, not so much in Flanders as in Holland. It sought to portray nature as
it was, without classic reminiscences, delighting especially in the woodland scenes of Holland, and used sad rather than brilliant colors. One of the earliest representatives was Van Goyen, and the school culminated in Ruvsdael and Ilobbema. Rembrandt, too, was equally important in land scape, which he rendered with emphasis of great central truths. There were important marine painters, and with the chief animal painters like Paul Potter. Aelbert Cuvp, and Wouverman, the landscape was of equal importance with the ani mals. In the eighteenth century landscape paint ing declined in Europe, although in France Wat teau and Laneret used it with success in their idyllic scenes; in the Far East, the .Japanese (Hokusai, Outaniaro, Hiroshighel painted fine decorative representations of nature simplified.
The impetus to the modern development of landscape painting came from England. A great forerunner was Gainsborough in the eighteenth century, but the two chief representatives were Turner and Constable in the early nineteenth. The former, influenced by Claude, represented the classical side, and in his treatment of light ef fects anticipated the Impressionists. The latter's great innovation was the use of fresh natural colors and the selection of English scenes. His work and that of Bonington gave rise to the galaxy of French painters of the Fontainebleau Barbizon group. Just before this the Roman ticists had somewhat improved classic tradition in France, making the landscapes glad or sad, according to the figures and action represented. The great contribution of the Barbizon painters (Rousseau. Corot. Dupre. Diaz. Daubigny, Millet, and Troyon) was the portrayal of the sentiment of color and light. By his absolutely realistic portrayal of nature Courhet prepared the way for Impressionism; a further impulse toward bright er color came from the Orientalists (Decamp, Fromentin, Ziem). The latest manifestation of the landscape is that of the Impressionist school (q.v.), which has obtained the greatest results in light effects (Raffaelli. Pissaro, Claude Monet, etc.).