In fact, Art, says Goethe, is called Art simply because it is not Nature.
It is not sufficient for the artist to choose beautiful scenery, and
delineate it with accuracy. He must not be a mere copyist. Something
higher and more subtle is required. He must create, or at any rate
interpret, as well as copy.
Turner was never satisfied merely to reach to even the most glorious
scenery. He moved, and even suppressed, mountains.
A certain nobleman, we are told, was very anxious to see the model from
whom Guido painted his lovely female faces. Guido placed his
color-grinder, a big coarse man, in an attitude, and then drew a beautiful
Magdalen. "My dear Count," he said, "the beautiful and pure idea must be
in the mind, and then it is no matter what the model is."
Guido Reni, who painted St. Michael for the Church of the Capuchins at
Rome, wished that he "had the wings of an angel, to have ascended unto
Paradise, and there to have beheld the forms of those beautiful spirits,
from which I might have copied my Archangel.
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