In a wide, heavily wooded country, the sojourning-place of that happiness sung by the poets, some peasants have discovered a tomb hidden by a thicket of trees, and bearing this brief inscription:  “Et in Arcadia ego” (I too lived in Arcadia).  These words, issuing from the tomb, sadden their faces, and the smiles die upon their lips.  A young girl, carelessly leaning upon the shoulder of her lover, seems to listen, mute and pensive, to this salutation from the dead.  The thought of death has also plunged into reverie a youth who leans over the tomb with bowed head, while the oldest shepherd points out the inscription he has just discovered.  The landscape that completes this quiet picture shows reddened leaves upon arid rocks; hillocks that melt in the vague horizon, and in the distance, something ill-defined that resembles the sea.  The sublime in this painting is that which we cannot see; it is the thought that hovers over it, the unexpected emotion that fills the soul of the spectator, transported suddenly beyond the tomb into the infinite unknown.

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LANDSCAPE

From ‘Grammar of Painting and Engraving’

The poetry of the fields and forests is inseparable from truth.  But the painter must idealize this truth by making it express some sentiment; faithfulness of imitation alone would not suffice.  The artist, master of reality, enlightens it with his eyes, transfigures it according to his heart, and makes it utter what is not in it—­sentiment; and that which it neither possesses nor understands—­thought.

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STYLE

From ‘Grammar of Painting and Engraving’

Drawing is a work of the mind; every drawing is the expression of a thought or sentiment, and is charged with showing us something superior to the apparent truth when that reveals neither sentiment nor thought.  But what is this superior truth?  It is sometimes the character of the object drawn, sometimes the character of the designer, and in high art is what we call style.

The artist sees in the creations of nature what he himself carries in the depth of his soul, tints them with the colors of his imagination, lends them the witchery of his genius.  The temperament of the artist modifies the character of objects, and even that of living figures.  But this power of taking possession is the appanage of great hearts, of great artists, of those whom we call masters,—­who, instead of being the slaves of reality, dominate it.  These have a style; their imitators have only a manner.

Aside from the style peculiar to every great master, there is in art something still superior and impersonal, which is style proper.  Style is truth aggrandized, simplified, freed from all insignificant details, restored to its original essence, its typical aspect.  This “style” par excellence, in which instead of recognizing the soul of an artist we feel the breath of the universal soul, was realized in the Greek sculpture of the time of Pericles.