And when people are happy in this thirsty land water will not be far
off; and in the school of Giorgione, the presence of water--the well, or
marble-rimmed pool, the drawing or pouring of water, as the woman pours
it from a pitcher with her jewelled hand in the Fete Champetre,
listening, perhaps, to the cool sound as it falls, blent with the music
of the pipes--is as characteristic, and almost as suggestive, as that of
music itself. And the landscape feels, and is glad of it also--a
landscape full of clearness, of the effects of water, of fresh rain
newly passed through the air, and collected into the grassy channels;
the air, too, in the school of Giorgione, seeming as vivid as the people
who breathe it, and literally empyrean, all impurities being burnt out
of it, and no taint, no floating particle of anything but its own proper
elements allowed to subsist within it.
Its scenery is such as in England we call "park scenery," with some
elusive refinement felt about the rustic buildings, the choice grass,
the grouped trees, the undulations deftly economised for graceful
effect.
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