This is the description of a valley in the Decameron:  ’After a walk of nearly a mile, they came to the Ladies’ Valley, which they entered by a straight path, whence there issued forth a fine crystal current, and they found it so extremely beautiful and pleasant, especially at that sultry season, that nothing could exceed it, and, as some of them told me afterwards, the plain in the valley was so exact a circle, as if it had been described by a pair of compasses, though it seemed rather the work of Nature than of art, and was about half a mile in circumference, surrounded by six hills of moderate height, on each of which was a palace built in the form of a little castle....  The part that looks toward the south was planted as thick as they could stand together with vines, olives, almonds, cherries, figs, and most other kinds of fruit trees, and on the northern side were fine plantations of oak, ash, etc., so tall and regular that nothing could be more beautiful.  The vale, which had only that one entrance, was full of firs, cypress trees, laurels, and pines, all placed in such order as if it had been done by the direction of some exquisite artist, and through which little or no sun could penetrate to the ground, which was covered with a thousand different flowers....  But what gave no less delight than any of the rest was a rivulet that came through a valley which divided two of the mountains, and running through the vein of a rock, made a most agreeable murmur with its fall, appealing, as it was dashed and sprinkled into drops, like so much quicksilver.’

Description of scenery for its own sake is scarcely more than attempted here, nor do Petrarch’s lyrics, with their free thought of passion and overpowering consciousness of the joys and sorrows of love, reach the level of Hellenism in this respect.  Yet it advanced with the Renaissance.  Pope Pius II. (AEneas Sylvius) was the first to describe actual landscape (Italian), not merely in a few subjective lines, but with genuine modern enjoyment.  He was one of those figures in the world’s history in whom all the intellectual life and feeling of a time come to a focus.

He had a heart for everything, and an all-round enthusiasm for Nature unique in his day.  Antiquity and Nature were his two passions, and the most beautiful descriptions of Nature before Rousseau and Goethe are contained in his Commentaries.

Writing of the country round his home, he says: 

’The sweet spring time had begun, and round about Siena the smiling hills were clothed with leaves and flowers, and the crops were rising in plenty in the fields.  Even the pasture land quite close to the town affords an unspeakably lovely view; gently sloping hills, either planted with homely trees or vines, or ploughed for corn, look down on pleasant valleys in which grow crops, or green fields are to be seen, and brooks are even flowing.  There are, too, many plantations, either natural or artificial, in which the birds sing with wondrous sweetness.  Nor is there a mound on which the citizens have not built a magnificent estate; they are thus a little way out of the town.  Through this district the Pope walked with joyous head.’