_Gaspard Poussin_ (French: 1613-1675). _See 31._
A very impressive picture in spite of the somewhat grotesque angel who
accosts Abraham and points him to the Almighty seated in the clouds
above (Genesis xii.). And indeed it is in his skies that Gaspard
points us to the Infinite--in the open sky, stretching far away into
that yellow horizon. To what does this strange distant space owe its
attractive power?
"There is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no
other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that
is--Infinity.... For the sky of night, though we may know it
boundless, is dark; it is a studded vault, a roof that seems to
shut us in and down; but the bright distance has no limit--we
feel its infinity, as we rejoice in its purity of light....
Of the value of this mode of treatment (_i.e._ the rendering
of open sky) there is a farther and more convincing proof
than its adoption either by the innocence of the Florentine
or the ardour of the Venetian, namely, that when retained or
imitated from them by the landscape painters of the seventeenth
century, when appearing in isolation from all other good, among
the weaknesses and paltrinesses of Claude, the mannerisms of
Gaspar, and the caricatures and brutalities of Salvator, it
yet redeems and upholds all three, conquers all foulness by
its purity, vindicates all folly by its dignity, and puts an
uncomprehended power of permanent address to the human heart
upon the lips of the senseless and the profane"[228] (_Modern
Painters_, vol. ii. pt. iii. sec. i. ch. v. §§ 5, 12).