In all of them you seem to feel the interposition of the
air between you and the distant horizon at which you are looking. What
else is there? At each point in the picture the air modifies the
distinctness with which you can see the objects. This consciousness
of air in a picture of low horizon is a very difficult thing to describe
and explain. We know when it is there and when it is not. It has to
be seen, to be enjoyed, and recorded. Holbein painted Edward VI.
standing, so to speak, in a vacuum. Every line of his face is sharply
defined. In real life air softens all lines, so that even the edge
of a nose in profile is not actually seen as a sharp outline. The figures
in Richard II.'s picture stand in the most exhausted vacuum, but Hubert
van Eyck had already begun to render the vision or illusion of air
in his 'Three Maries.' In this respect he had learnt more than the
early painters of the Italian Renaissance; but Raphael and the
Venetians, especially Giorgione and Titian, sometimes bathed their
figures in a luminous golden atmosphere with the sun shining through
it.
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