YALE UNIVERSITY UBRARY

I !!!!!!3 9002 04462 3974

THE APPRECIATION
OF SCULPTURE

RUSSELL STURGIS

YALE UNIVERSITY
ART LIBRARY

MONUMENT TO JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY,
BY DANIEL C. FRENCH:
ERECTED IX THE FEXWAY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

The Appreciation
of Sculpture

A HANDBOOK

By
RUSSELL STURGIS, A.M., Ph.D.
Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Member ef
The Architectural League of New York, The National
Sculpture Society, The National Society of Mural
Painters, etc., etc. Author of "How to fudge
Architecture," "Dictionary of Architec
ture and Building," "European
Architecture," etc., etc.

NEW YORK: THE BAKER & TAYLOR CO.
3y~yi East Seventeenth St., Union Sq., North

Copyright, 1904, By The Baker & Tayixjr Ca

FuiUshed, Septemier, igo^

greekwich printing company
HBW TOEK

Contents
I. The Geeek Standaed of Ex
cellence .... 11
II. Geeek Culmination and De
cline ....

III. The Koman Empiee and Eaelt
Egypt ....
IV. The Eueopean Middle Ages
V. The Italian Kevival
VI. Italian Decadence — Feenoh
Teansition
VII. Eecent Aet, Paet I, Foem
VIII. Kecent Aet, Paet II, Senti

MENT

IX. Eecent Aet, Paet III, Monti
MENTAL Effect
X. Recent Aet Compaeed with
Geeek Standaed .
Index 

29 51
71 89
115133151 182
207227

[5]

Illustrations

Monument to John Boyle O'Reilly,
by Daniel C. French . . Frontispiece
I. Two Slabs of the Cella Frieze
of Parthenon . . . Facing Page \^
II. A. Grave Stele m Central Mu- ^
seum at Athens . . . " "I
II. B. Relief, a dancer, found in | *
Theatre of Dionysos, Athens " " J
III. Statue from East Pediment of
Parthenon, called Theseus . " " i6
IV. Statue from West Pediment of
Parthenon, called Ilissos . " " 17
V. Draped Statues from East Pedi
ment of Parthenon . . " " 26
VI. One Caryatid of the Erechtheion,
on the Acropolis at Athens . " " 27
VII. Hermes of Praxiteles at Olympia, " " 30
VIII. A. So-called Antinous of the
Belvedere; Vatican Museum,
Rome . . . . "
VIII. B. So-called Mercury; British
Museum . . , . "
IX. So-called Niobide, in the Vati
can Museum . . . " " 36
X. So-called Venus of Milo, in the
Louvre . . . . " " 37
XI. So-called Venus of the Capitol
in the Capitoline Museum,
Rome . . . . " " 50
XII. A. So-called Junius Brutus in the
Louvre . . . . "
XII. B. So-called Germanicus in the
Lateran Museum, Rome . "
^11, Portrait statue of a Roman youth
in the Louvre . . „ •' •• 58
m

r 31

51

64

Illustrations
XIV. Relief Sculpture : Marcus Aure
lius offering sacrifice . . Facing Page 59
XV. A. Terminal Figure, Flute
Player . . . . "
XV. B. Terminal Figure, Satyr, of
Roman Epoch . . . "
XVI. Statue of Cheferen . . . " " ' 65
XVII. Wooden Statue, found in a tomb
in the Necropolis of Memphis " " 68
XVIII. Pylon of Temple of Horus at
Edfoo . . . . " " 69
XIX. Statues of Chartres Cathedral,
west front . , . " " 76
XX. A and B. Statues of Chartres
Cathedral, west front . " " 77
XXI. Statues of Reims Cathedral,
middle doorway of west
front . . . €€ i, go
XXII. Sculptures in Abbey Church at
Solesmes . . . . " " 81
XXIII. The Visitation, by Luca della
Robbia, at Pistoja . . " "92
XXIV. Relief Sculpture by Mino da
Fiesole, at Florence . . " "93
XXV. The Pieta, by Michelangelo, in
the Church of St. Peter,
Rome . . . . " ¦? 98
XXVI. Tomb of Lorenzo dei Medici,
by Michelangelo . <« «« gg
XXVII. Two Statues, by Sansovino :
Minerva and Apollo, at
Venice . . . . " "no
XXVIII. Statues by Giovanni da Bologna
in Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, " " ill
XXIX. Statue of Daniel the Prophet, by
Bernini . . . . " "122
XXX. Tomb of Cardinal Mazarin, by
Coysevox . . _ «« s« i^j
XXXI. A. Statue of Mercury, by
Pigalle . . . . «
XXXI. B. Statue called Despair, by
Perrault . . . , « «
[8]

i?,8

Illustrations

XXXII.

A. Statue of Diana, By

1

Houdon . . . Facing Page

XXXII.
B. Statue of Philopcemen, by
• 129
David d'Angers
C(
<€
XXXIII.
Statue, A la Terre, by Alfred
Boucher
€€
£€
138
XXXIV.
The Driller, Statue by Chas.
H. Niehaus, from Drake
Monument at Titus ville.
Penna. ....
*.€
ft
>39
XXXV.
Group, " Au But," by Alfred
Boucher ....
€t
if
144
XXXVI.
A and B. Small Statue, " une
Danaide," by Auguste Rodin,
€€
€€
14s
XXXVII.
Half-length group. The Grac
chi, by J. B. C. E. Guil
laume ....
€t
«
146
XXXVIII.
Group of Lions, by A. N.
Cain ....
(t
CC
•47
XXXIX.
Decorative Figure, The Bull,
by Jacquemart .
tt
tt
150
XL.
Portrait Statue of the Prince of
Conde, by Caniez .
tt
tt
»Si
XLI.
Monument to Gaspard de
Coligny, by Crauk .
tt
tt
152
XLII.
Bronze Statue of Michelangelo,
by Paul Wayland Bartlett .
tt
tt
«S3
XT,m.
Alto Relief, called " La Mar-
jellaise," by Rude .
tt
tt
.56
xuv.
A and B. The Four Quarters
of the World, by J. B.
Carpeaux
tt
tt
XLIV.
A. The Plaster cast as ex
¦^S7
hibited ....
tt
tt
xuv.
B. The Bronze in Luxembourg
Garden ....
tt
€t
XLV.
Group, Apres le Travail, by
Lefeuvre
tt
tt
164
XLVI.
Statue or group, Dans la Rue,
by Camille Lefevre .
tt
«
165
XLVII.
Group, The Readers of Dumas,
by Gustave Dore
«(
«<
166
[9]
Illustrations

XLVIII. Relief, The Army, by Frederick
MacMonnies . . Facing
XLIX. Statue, Military Courage, by
Paul Dubois . . . "
L. Le Monument des Morts, by
Albert Bartholome . . "
LI. Group, Saint Veronica, by Carli, "
LII. Portrait Statue of the Physician
Phillipe Ricord, by Barrias . "
LIII. Portrait Statue of Horace Greeley,
by J. Q. A. Ward . . "
LIV. Portrait of the Painter Jean Leon
Gerome, by Carpeaux . "
LV. Relief, by Jules Dalou; Mirabeau
answering Dreux-Breze . "
LVI. Monument to the Empress
Augusta, Berlin, by Schaper, "
LVII. Relief forming memorial of
Robert Gould Shaw, by Saint
Gaudens . . . . "
LVIII. Fontaine Moliere, Paris . . "
LIX. Monument to the Empress Maria
Theresia, Vienna . . "
LX. Monument to Admiral Farragut,
by Saint Gaudens . . "
LXI. Corning Fountain at Hartford,
Connecticut, by Masaey
Rhind . . . . "
LXII. Statue, Athlete and Serpent, by
Lord Leighton . . . "
LXIII. Statue, called the Borghese
Gladiator, Louvre Museum, "
LXIV. A and B. Torso of the Belve
dere, Vatican Museum . '«

Page 167
" 172
«73176
177 178
179 182
183 192
193194 19s198
199
2l8 219

[10]

THE APPRECIATION OF SCULPTURE

The Appreciation of Sculpture

CHAPTER I
THE GEEEK STANDAED OF EXCELLENCE
Following the method used in another
hand-book of this series, it will be well to
take as our starting-point that sculpture
which is the most generally recognized as
without fault, humanly speaking, and even
without serious short-coming. All works
of art lack something of perfection, obeying
in this the common law that you cannot
get this without losing that : but the sculp
ture of the Greeks in the works of greatest
importance, as produced between the ex
pulsion of the Persians from Greece in 479
B. c. to the death of Praxiteles, which we
may put at 350 b. c, has been accepted as
more nearly faultless than any other class
of works of fine art. Within those 130 years
were produced sculptures which the world
[llj

The Appreciation of Sculpture
of artists has recognized with what amounts
almost to unanimity as works admitting of
no unfavorable criticism.
And yet at this very moment of our in
quiry the difiiculty of forming positive
and final opinions and the necessity of
holding our judgment plastic, as it were,
and free to be modified, is seen in this ; that
it is quite well known that all these works of
sculpture were elaborately painted, except
when executed in the first place in material
of some chromatic interest. If they were
of bronze they had eyes of another material,
of glass or natural semi-precious stone, and
the hair and jewelry at least were gilded ; if
they were of marble they were painted in
brilliant colors. Hermes was made nearly
red as to his fiesh and vari-colored as to his
scant drapery ; Bacchus was still more
brilliantly colored, with a flesh-tint of more
positive red ; the female statues were painted
a paler color, and that with a purpose as
deliberate and a conventionalism as uni
form as are seen in the polychromatic wood
cuts of the Japanese. Drapery was not
[12]

The Greek Standard of Excellence
left to the simple effect of the folds as
carved, but the painted pattern of the sur
face, or at least of the border, was carried in
and out of the folds to emphasize their hol
lows and projections, and, to that extent
at least, to produce a nearly realistic effect.
These things being so, it is clear that the pure
white statue of our times hardly existed for
the Greek of the time of Pericles, or for him
of the time of Demosthenes : and therefore
it appears to us clear that our own concep
tion of the perfect human work in sculpture
is not altogether that which the Greeks,
our recognized masters, had of their own
work. It does not follow from this that the
modern world is wrong in setting up as its
own standard these early Grecian works as
we have them. The modern world has no
conception of what the full effect of poly
chromatic statuary and relief was, in an
cient times, or of what it might be. A few
nineteenth century and twentieth century
works exist, in which applied color is
used : and a few in which beautifully col-
[13]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
ored natural material has been em
ployed : — onyx and chalcedony, ivory, gold
and bronze ; but these are looked upon as
vagaries, as pleasant whims of an able man
taking his pleasure, and they do not weigh
with our generally accepted views about
sculpture. The modern world, then, the
world of people who have cared about fine
art and have discussed it with one another
since, let us say, the time of Eugene Dela
croix, who, three quarters of a century
since, was arguing questions of form and of
the treatment of form with his brother art
ists — the modern world is not wrong in re
ceiving, as its standard for the present and
future, the now uncolored statuary and re
lief which it has treasured up, and which
it finds on the whole superior to anything
which has been done since in the same di
rection. Indeed it is inevitable that this
art upon which all European arts of form
have been based, should remain the ac
cepted model of all perfection. We do not
know all that a Greek artist had in his
mind ; be it so ! That which we still have
[14]

Plate I. — SLABS OF THE CELLA FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON; WORK OF ABOUT 430 B.C. EAST FRONT, NO. 0,
DIVINITIES; A GODDESS AND PERHAPS POSEIDON, AND DIONYSOS. NORTH FRONT, NO. 6, YOUTHS CARRY
ING WATER JARS, AND ONE STOOPING TO RAISE HIS JAR. ACROPOLIS MUSEUM AT ATHENS.

Plate II A. — GRAVE STELE IN THE CENTRAL MU
SEUM AT ATHENS; WORK OF ABOUT 375 B. C.

Plate II B. — RELIEF, A DANCER, FOUND IN THEA
TRE OF DIONYSOS, ATHENS, NOW IN CENTRAL
MUSEUM there; WORK OF ABOUT 350 B. C.

The Greek Standard of Excellence
of his workmanship remains superior in
pure form to that which we find else
where. These statues and reliefs are not so numer
ous as one is apt to suppose ; for our mu
seums are so full of much admired classical
sculpture that we hardly stop to reckon up
the very small number of pieces of supreme
excellence. And these are, for relief sculp
ture, first, the bas-reliefs from the Parthe
non (see Plate I) of which some are in the
British Museum, unfortunately under glass
(as indeed the climate and the smoke make
it necessary that they should be), some in
the Museum on the Acropolis at Athens
and some still in the building ; second, the
alto-reliefs from the Parthenon, the famous
Metopes, of which a dozen are in such con
dition that they still tell for what their
sculptor meant by them ; third, some of
the grave-stelai found in the famous burial
ground outside the walls of Athens, which
are now for the most part removed to the
Central Museum of that favored town ;
fourth, a few pieces to be found here and
[15]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
there — two in the Museum at Naples, one
in the long Chiaramonti Gallery in the
Vatican, one or two in the Villa Albani ;
fifth, the more perfect slabs of the frieze
of Phigalia now preserved in the British
Museum ; and, sixth, the reliefs of the tem
ple and parapet of Athena-Nike, on the
Athenian Acropolis. There are, of course,
some pieces of approximately perfect work
— of work only one degree less precious
than the few. There is the long frieze of
Trysa, found near the modern town of Asia
Minor called Gjolbaschi ; there are four or
five still intelligible of the high reliefs in
the metopes of the Theseion at Athens ;
there are the slabs from the Nereid Monu
ment at Xanthos, and a morsel or two from
Epidauros ; there are many votive reliefs
and a collection of sculptured archives — of
documents inscribed on marble, with sig
nificant relief sculpture at top ; nor is it
easy in the case of any given comparison
that might be set up, as in the fine Stele
of Mynno in the Museum of Berlin or
either of those shown in Plate II, to say
[16]

I— I ^

Plate IV. — STATUE FROM AVF.ST PEDIMENT OF PARTHENON,
ILISSOS. WORK OF ABOUT 430 B. C.

NOW IN BRITISH museum; CALLED GENERALLY

The Greek Standard of Excellence
that it is inferior to some of the pieces
named in the first instance. Whether of
the highest or of a possibly secondary merit,
there are relatively but few of these price
less relics of the sacred period, 480-350 b. c.
So as for statuary and sculpture " in the
round," we have not such an excessive
amount of unmistakably perfect work in
recognizable condition : nor even very much
of secondary work of the great period.
There are, first, the statues from the pedi
ments of the Parthenon, the two reclining
male figures, one from the eastern, one from
the western pediment, in common nomen
clature " Theseus " and " Ilissos " (see Plates
III and IV), and several draped female fig
ures grouped or single (see Plate V) ; sec
ond, the caryatides of the Erechtheion (see
Plate VI) ; third, the " standing " or " rest
ing " Discobolos of the Vatican ; fourth, the
helmed statue at the Louvre called the Mars
Borghese ; fifth, the Victory of Paionios
found at Olympia ; sixth, one or two of the
draped marine divinities (so called) which
sit between the columns of the Nereid Mon-
[17]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
ument ; and seventh, the Hermes of Prax
iteles (see Plate VII). Those are all of the
highest order of art : and a few original
pieces of less dignity or less importance to
us moderns, remain : such as the six draped
women {danseuses f) of the Naples Museum,
all found arranged in stately order in the
peristyle of that famous villa at Hercu
laneum. Such an original we may have,
also, in the Amazon of the Berlin Museum :
but the existence in the Capitoline Museum
and in the Vatican of two other statues,
diflfering but slightly in character, and of
nearly equal merit, tends to a conclusion
that all three are copies, or studies, of a lost
original, perhaps the wounded Amazon of
Polykleitos, made famous by Pliny. The
lovely draped female statue recently set
up in the Berlin museum, and published
by Collignon, belongs in this list — unless
it should be placed among the master
pieces. There is still a whole class of sculpture of
the time of Phidias which is undoubtedly
original, and Greek, but not of supreme
[18]

The Greek Standard of Excellence
excellence. This is the archaic, the visibly
and admittedly archaic work : for it is the
great glory of Phidias that he and his school
brought early sculpture out of archaism to
faultless excellence. The pediment statues
of the temple of Zeus at Olympia are of this
still archaic style. There are other pieces
which, as to their original conception, are
undoubtedly of this period and of first-rate
masters too, but which are known to us by
statues which are not surely the originals.
It is easy to see how a splendid and famous
original work, if a statue of life size or
larger, would be copied accurately, now and
then, and followed rather closely a hundred
times, in a period which found sculpture its
foremost means of expression. Also it is
easy to understand that a type like that of
the wounded Amazon, sure to be popular,
would be studied again and again by artists
of different epochs — different lands — dif
ferent traditions — and presented anew, in a
changed attitude ; a new rendering of the
theme. Such a piece is each one of the
good copies (supposed) of Myron's famous
[19]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
Disk-thrower, — that in the Vatican, wrongly
restored, or that in the Palazzo Lancellotti
(formerly Massimi). Again, the Athlete
dropping oil, — he of the Munich Glypto-
thek ; the Pallas- Athene of the Dresden
collection ; the spear bearer (Doryphoros)
of the Naples Museum ; the fillet-binder
(Diadumenos) of the British Museum ; each
one is apparently such a copy of a very
great original of Phidian time. Then, of
the time of Praxiteles, closing the epoch
which we have taken (480-350), there are
copies of what must have been grand sculp
tures. The bronze " Apollino " of the Uffizi
is such a statue ; the " Sophocles " of the
Lateran Museum is one, if it is not an
original, and the same may be said of the
" Euripides " of the Villa Albani and the
" Demosthenes " of the Vatican. The statue
of Bacchus in the Museo delle Terme is also
such a copy : a very excellent one, never
quite finished. Those are not the pieces to
which we can refer with entire confidence
as to their actual merit ; as to the supreme
excellence of the marble figure before us.
[20]

The Greek Standard of Excellence
The most nearly perfect copy of a perfect
statue is not necessarily endued with all
the charm of its original ; indeed it is nearly
certain to lose something in refinement of
modelling. In a history of sculpture men
tion of such pieces is in order, and pic
tures of them may also be given as illus
trating the style of the epoch : but a history
of sculpture allows for difference of quality
— for degrees of merit — and records merely
the facts, which are sometimes unfavorable
to the piece of work under consideration.
For our present purpose, which is the col
lating of the pieces which have in nearly
faultless completeness all the merit of the
art of the epoch we are considering, there
are but few busts, even fewer statues, and
many magnificent reliefs. The reliefs, at
least, cannot be copies : they were made
for and remained in the temple, the ceme
tery, the market-place. The slabs of the
Parthenon frieze in the British Museum
make up a length of 240 feet, out of about
523 feet which was the length of the frieze
when intact. One beautiful slab, seven
[21]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
feet long and filled with exquisite, draped
female figures, is in the Louvre. All
but one of the slabs of the western face
are still in the building. In the Acropolis
Museum at Athens are a few noble slabs
from the east and south frieze ; among
them the two shown in our Plate I, a photo
graph made when they were first discovered
and cleaned, and before the little museum
building had been finished.
The metopes of the Parthenon are in
very high relief — the highest relief — that
which involves the total separation of cer
tain parts from the background. There
were ninety-two of them once, and even
now there remain fifty -seven, most of them
still in the building. Indeed, there are
only sixteen of these slabs preserved out
side of Athens. The votive reliefs on the
Acropolis and those of the Central Museum
on the road to Patissia, the famous tombal
slabs from the cemetery at the Dipylon,
most of which have been removed to the
Central Museum, and those which still
remain in the Theseion, or in the ceme-
[22]

The Greek Standard of Excellence
tery ; all these, added to the Parthenon
sculptures and the Nike sculptures, go to
make of Athens the capital of Europe for
original Greek reliefs of the best time. The
London display, in spite of its superb show
of nearly half the frieze of the Parthenon,
is still inferior in variety, in amount, in
the dim light of the badly ordered gallery,
and in the necessity already alluded to, of
covering the reliefs with glass ; while Paris,
Rome, Berlin and Munich have but a bit
here and a bit there of this characteris
tically perfect sculpture. And really we
must learn to study the reliefs ! The writer
of this, on his way back from Athens to
the north, met in Rome an artist and
well known writer on art : and the answer
made to the enthusiasms of the newcomer
from Greece was, " Why, there are no
statues there ! " No, indeed ! the Roman
conquerors took care of that ; they also,
like our modern critic, who had lived for
months in Athens, not knowing that the
earlier Greek spirit is chiefly to be found
in its relief-sculpture. [23]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
It seems necessary to insist upon the
rarity of this Central work, because our
ideas of antique, or as we call it, classical
sculpture, are so often derived from the
great collections of the Louvre and the Vati
can, collections of such marked inferiority
as to relief sculpture that a piece of pure
Greek work in one of those long galleries
may strike one with astonishment as he
passes rapidly by the great array of Greco-
Roman copies. Taking, then, these few
pieces — the Parthenon statues, the Hermes
of Praxiteles, the Victory of Paionios, and
the reliefs named above, we are able to see
in them the first coming out of masterly
work from an epoch of experiment.
The interesting thing to note is the free
use of convention. The sculptor was an ob
serving and thoughtful man, whether he had
learned his art technically or not ; and see
what he thought was the right way to treat
a male figure ! Note in the two statues
shown in Plate VIII the extraordinary de
velopment of the muscular formation above
the hip : surely that is not copied from life,
[24]

The Greek Standard of Excellence
but we find it accepted at a very early time
as a mark of the heroic development of the
body. Note in the draped female statues
(Plate V) the casting of the drapery : surely
that was not copied from the folds which
the garment made as it was worn in daily
life. It was studied for its ultimate effect
in the marble or the bronze, and especially
for the sense of the strong and living body
beneath the clinging stuff". It is indifferent
to our inquiry whether that study was made
in part by wetting or otherwise stiffening
the thin material and casting it in folds,
or whether the sculptor working in clay
devised his folds in that material, casting
merely a glance from time to time at the
draped living model standing by him. The
interesting thing to note is the early devel
opment of the artistic feeling. It comes
before the careful study of nature ; it is not
too much to say that it comes before any
true study of nature at all. It does not
come without some observation of nature,
but that observation is a lifelong business
and began when the artist was a child ; it
[25]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
continued in his advanced state of pupilage,
until, with his mind full of natural facts as
he had seen them for twenty years, he
modeled what he thought was an attractive
ideal. Realizing the fact that he could not
copy nature accurately, he was also not fully
desirous of copying nature at all, but ac
cepted with pleasure the other standard, the
conventional standard, the hierarchic stand
ard, if you please : he was ready to believe
that it was in this way, the traditional way
with slight improvements, that the human
body and the drapery which covers it should
be represented.
Out of this primitive desire for effect and
expression rather than for close resemblance
to nature, comes the great sculpture of the
noblest time. The drapery cast about those
seated figures of the Parthenon pediment
(see Plate V) is as much a matter of conven
tion as the drapery of the most archaic votive
statue or as the nude forms of the earlier
time. The effect upon the artist's work,
of his constant observation of the human
body in great and beautiful development
[26]

Plate v. — statues from east pediment of Parthenon, now in British museum; work of about
430 B. c.

Plate VI.  ONE OF THE CARYATIDES OF THE ERECHTHEION, ON THE ACROPOLIS
AT ATHENS. WORK OF ABOUT 380 a. C. THIS ONE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM;
ITS PLACE IN THE BUILDING FILLED BY A TERRA COTTA COPY.

The Greek Standard of Excellence
is so very strong that even insensibly the
figures would come continually more and
more close to the natural standard. And
yet the fact that they never reached it
is shown by an easy and swift recognition
on the part of us moderns, of the epoch to
which each piece belonged. This recogni
tion may not always be accurate ; we may
be misinformed and we may misinterpret
the evidence ; but we are always ready, after
a short consideration of the facts, to say that
such a piece is of the time of Phidias, such
another of the time of Skopas, such another
of the Greco-Roman period. None of them
are very closely like nature : all of them are
closely studied from nature : all of them are
good art, and each differs from all the others
in certain qualities of art which are as
nearly as possible inexpressible in words.
That is to say, the difference between the
work of the time of Phidias and Polykleitos
and that of the time of Praxiteles and
Skopas results, not from any change of the
natural human type — it is entirely a chang
ing of tradition — each great sculptor in-
[27]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
fluencing his contemporaries and his follow
ers as to the way in which the human body
should be treated in the arts of form.

[28]

CHAPTER II
GREEK CULMINATION AND DECLINE
Inasmuch as the interest of antique sculp
ture is, for us, wholly artistic — as we can
not know or closely guess what was the
personal or emotional or non-artistic feel
ing behind it — it is of the very highest im
portance to distinguish between the most
perfect work and that which, though fine,
is inferior. And it is this very thing, this
discrimination, which was the special work
of the years 1860 to 1900. Distinctions
formerly suspected were put to proof dur
ing those busy years. New distinctions
were made and established. Things long
supposed one were put apart, each into its
own category. And so it was that the dif
ference between a fine copy and the lost
original was made clear.
It will be necessary to compare the un
disputed original statue, the Hermes found
at Olympia (Plate VII), with statues of the
same epoch which are not thought to be
[29]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
originals, however trustworthy they may
be as copies — however fine in their indi
vidual capacity. There is a famous statue
in the Vatican, occupying one of the four
corner tribunes of the Belvedere and almost
as famous as the other statue, the Apollo
which takes its name from the same court
and gallery. The Apollo Belvedere stands
diagonally opposite to the statue which we
are considering here, and which is called
in some of the guide-books " Mercury," in
others " Antinous " (an absurd ascription),
and now more commonly a " Hermes."
That statue, the praises of which have been
sounded by generations of enthusiasts, owes
its celebrity in great part to its having been
discovered a good many years ago (in the
sixteenth century), and to its having been
placed in the most admired corner of the
most famous museum of Europe. There is
a statue in the British Museum labelled
" Mercury," which was not found until long
afterwards, and which then passed to the
Farnese family, from whose palace in Rome
it was transferred to the Museum in our
[30]

/>€?

-P

¦¦¦¦:¦, \

:\,,>^(s,;

.-¦"^iie-'-

, ^ t ^> '-v

Plate VII.  HERMES OF PRAXITELES, FOUND IN THE RUINS OF OLYMPIA AND
NOW IN THE MUSEUM THERE. WORK OF ABOUT 360 ±>. C.

Plate VIII A. — SO-CALLED antinous of belve
dere; VATICAN MUSEUM, ROME.

Plate VIII B. — SO-CALLED MERCURY; BRITISH
MUSEUM.

Greek Culmination and Decline
own time. There is also a statue in the
Athens Museum, found in the Island of
Andros in our own time ; and these three
pieces are so nearly alike in pose, in treat
ment, that they give the strongest testimony
to the character of the original from which
all three have been copied. The palm of
superiority is no longer given with una
nimity to the Vatican statue, but by some
authors to that in London, by others to
that in Greece ; but all three are statues of
such uninjured condition and of such finish
and technical quality that only the delicate
analysis of the highly trained eye and mind
of the student of art could decide between
them, or could say whether one or another
may possibly be the original work from
which the others were taken. In one re
spect at least, the Vatican statue seems the
finer conception. The trunk — the torso —
is more nobly modelled, while the Lon
don statue has a waist given to it, as if
the sculptor approved of laced-up corsets.
Plate VIII shows these two side by side
and from very nearly the same point of
[31]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
view, and it is evident how closely they
resemble the Hermes of Olympia, although
that statue has the additional detail of the
infant Bacchus supported on the left shoul
der. The interesting subject of the treat
ment of the nude body may be followed in
this connection by any one who will pro
cure photographs of nude models and com
pare them, detail by detail, with these
statues. An eminent living sculptor tells
the writer that as for the great develop
ment of the hip muscles, that strange ridge
which partly bounds the abdomen below
and projects above the hip-joint on either
side (see Plates VIII and XII), he has seen
it developed to the full in a man who in
a foundry has for years helped carry the
heavy ladles of molten iron to the moulds ;
and yet he would not say that this muscular
development, rare in living examples, takes
anything like the form shown in this view
of the Hermes of the British Museum (Plate
VIII B). This, however, is only the most
prominent and the most easily described of
many peculiarities. The whole question of
[32]

Greek Culmination and Decline
the proportion of thigh to trunk and to the
leg below the knee, the question of the set
ting on of the arm on either side, its
growth from the shoulder and its position
when it hangs somewhat freely, the propor
tion of the trunk itself as to the difference
between the measurement around the body
where it is largest — under the arms — and
the measurement below, at what might be
called the waist, and every separate round
ing and flattening of the whole muscular
system of the breast and abdomen, are all
of them open to the student's question
much less as to what they show or may be
thought to show of the living model, than
in respect to the conventions deliberately
adopted by the sculptor. Again the com
parison of the modelling of these figures in
the whole and in the details with the un
questioned original statue, the Hermes of
Olympia, is the best possible lesson as to
artistic excellence, for it is a matter of
course that words cannot express the ad
mitted superiority of the resulting forms in
the marble of Olympia, and in that of the
[33]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
British Museum, or of the Vatican. Even
if we were to adopt the theory of those who
hold that the Hermes of Andros is nearer
to its lost original than is either one of the
pieces shown in Plate VIII, we have still
to compare it with the undoubted original,
the Hermes of Olympia, with the probable
result that it will seem inferior to that
splendid statue. If, then, we go a step far
ther, and compare with these erect statues
the majestic seated figures of the Parthenon
pediments (Plates III and IV), we shall find
in them two claimants of the first and high
est rank, — even as against the Hermes of
Olympia. They, also, are undoubted orig
inals : and their beauty and dignity have
never been excelled in art.
It is the plague of all attempts to write
critically about the plastic arts, that when
an important question comes, words are not
found by which that question can be stated
— much less answered. In a matter of archi
tecture or of another decorative art, the
differences seen or felt by the critic may
sometimes be expressed in words, or it may
[34]

Greek Culmination and Decline
be asked of the reader or suggested to him
that he think for himself how far he is
prepared to go with certain opinions set
forth in the text which he is reading ; but
with regard to such pieces of sculpture as
these, it is impracticable to show them
aright by means of illustration in the book,
— and even if a dozen photographs of each
statue could be given and all these taken
from correlative points of view there would
still remain the hopelessness of expressing
in words the thoughts which they call into
being. How are words to express that
minute increase in the projecting rotundity
here, or there, its greater or less flattening ?
And yet it is upon such differences as these
that there depends the greatness or the in
feriority of sculpture. When we pronounce
upon the approximate date of a relief, how
are we to state in words what it is that we see
in the refined modelling of the surface, which
ineffable something marks the distinction
between the work of master and master ?
Take now one of the finest draped statues
of antiquity, the magnificent moving figure
[35]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
of the Vatican, the Niobide of the Chiara
monti Museum (Plate IX). It is immeas
urably superior to any figure of the Niobide
group as seen in Florence ; and indeed there
is no reason to call it a Niobide at all ex
cept for its vigorous action. It is a most
valuable study to compare this drapery
with that of the moving figure shown in
Plate V, a figure which is undoubtedly three
quarters of a century earlier, and of pure
Athenian type, whereas the Niobide of the
Vatican may well be of a later and of a
freer and more independent school. The
system adopted for casting the drapery is
singularly realistic. There can be no doubt
that with a little care and watchfulness that
very disposition of the upper garment which
is shown, could be reproduced on the living
model to-day ; while the undergarment is
the simplest chiton, and is perfectly well
understood. This argues no superiority,
but only the presence of that realism which
we do not associate with the work of the
Phidian epoch, closing about 400 b. c. but
which belongs, as we think, to the time of
[36]

Plate IX. — SO-CALLED NIOBIDE, IN THE VATICAN MUSEUM. WORK OF ABOUT
350 B.C.

Plate X. — STATUE CALLED APHRODITE .AND ALSO A VICTORY: IN THE LOUVRE
.MLbEUM; POPULARLY THE VENUS OF .MILO. PHOTOGRAPH OF 1876.

Greek Culmination and Decline
Praxiteles and Skopas, that is to say, to
the half century after Phidias' death, about
430 B. c. Indeed a student of the two
figures would admit at once the greater
mastery shown in the Athenian figure.
The body is entirely traceable and has
been perfectly well put within the loose
and floating garment ; while in the Vatican
statue it is not quite so clearly expressed,
as indeed, the floating himation seems to
conceal its action at the waist and pelvis.
A further comparison with the two seated
figures would seem to conflrm the impres
sion that the earlier work was the better,
at least from the artistic standpoint. What
is the curious difference in touch which
makes the drapery of the Niobide seem of a
thicker material than that in the Parthenon
statue? Whatever it is, it seems to imply
a willing abandonment by the sculptor of
the more essential facts of the human body
for the sake of the minor facts of the folds
of cloth.
If now we enter the next succeeding
epoch, the Alexandrian time, which lasts for
[37]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
two hundred years (say, 340-140 b. c.) and
is a time of decline, we find all the charac
teristics of a decadence ; we find magnificent
work closely associated with pieces showing
a decline of taste and a loss of power. We
have of original statues the Nike (Victory)
of Samothrace, now in the Louvre, a statue
which we can date, very closely, at 305 b. c,
and which almost rivals the earlier Nike of
Olympia ; the Apoxyomenos of the Vati
can ; the seated Dionysos from Athens in
the British Museum — all originals or of the
first rank ; the sleeping Satyr called the
" Barberini Faun," and the very inferior,
the unattractive, the debased pieces which
we associate with the memorial set up by
King Attalos on the Acropolis of Athens
— the Gauls which are now in the Naples
Museum; the "Dying Gladiator" of the
Capitoline Museum ; and the group, the
Barbarian killing his wife, in the Villa
Ludovisi. Those pieces are all of second
ary importance ; because they are deliberate
studies of the form and features of less cul
tivated races than the Greeks. It is exactly
[38]

Greek Culmination and Decline
as if we were to speak of the relative im
portance of the red Indians modelled by
Carpeaux, Ward and Massey Rhind ; the
statue may have been treated with equal
nobility of purpose, but the subject is less
dignified than the studies by the same
artists of a more developed race of men.
With the above-named pieces is to be associ
ated historically the famous Laokoon in the
Belvedere of the Vatican, a piece in which
the consummate mastery of the human
form is only equalled by the violent and un
measured action of all three figures and the
feeble and unintelligent use of the serpents.
This deprecatory opinion, generally held to
day by those writers on Greek art who per
ceive and love its highest characteristics, is
that of the time of special study of Greek
art from 1875 on, as distinguished from the
earlier general acceptance of the group as
a masterpiece. But another most famous
statue of this time, the Torso of the Bel
vedere may possibly have formed part of
another group also offensive to us in its de
sign ; we can only take this as what it is, the
[39]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
most masterly if not the most beautiful
presentation which is known to us of the
idealized male body. Plate LXV gives two
views of this magnificent Hercules, the
piece which Michelangelo, as we are told,
considered his best master in art, and which
is fortunately uninjured as to its surface
in those parts which are not broken away.
The statue found in 1820 in the Island of
Milo, the ancient Melos, and which is now
in the Louvre, the Venus of Milo, must also
be classed with the pieces of this time (see
Plate X) and so must the splendid bronze
at Brescia, the winged Victory kept there ;
and also the Aphrodite of Capua, in the
Naples Museum. These three statues vaay
well be assumed to be each an original, bu^
all to be studies and re-studies of the same
type. Even the Aphrodite or Venus of
Capua, though probably of the Roman
period, may well be rather a reminiscence
and a re-study than a copy. The type is
that of the Nike writing on a shield the
names of those whom she delights to honor
or the record of their deeds.
[40]

Greek Culmination and Decline
As regards the Aphrodite of Melos, it
must be stated that there have been several
different opinions held and urged strongly
by competent judges as to the probable
state and purpose of the statue in its orig
inal condition. Even the epoch is dis
puted, for at least one most accepted ar
chaeologist and fearless critic of our own time
claims for it an antiquity as great as that
of the Phidian age itself — the fifth century
B. c. It has even been proposed that the
statue be taken really as an Aphrodite
( Venus ) and as such grouped with perhaps
Ares (Mars), from whose shoulders she may
be thought to be lifting the sword-belt — or
else as " Venus Victrix " holding out the ap
ple just received in the " Judgment of Paris."
The placid, unsuggestive expression of face
and the undisturbed attitude allow of this
diversity of opinion ; and yet it seems to
the writer that a person who has studied
the other two statues named above, and es
pecially the Victory of Brescia, would feel
the close relation between this piece and
the triumphant masterpiece of the Louvre.
[41]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
Ever since the placing of the statue in
its gallery by the Seine, it has received a
worship as general and immeasurably more
intelligent, because coming from a more
critical epoch, than the outcry of an earlier
time which greeted the Apollo Belvedere
and the Venus of the Medici in Florence.
It seems odd to read in " The Newcomes "
the greeting given to this statue which
seems to us so modern a discovery, and one
has to look up the date and to realize that
it was placed in the gallery eighty years
ago, before one can grasp the full signifi
cance of the long continued and constantly
increasing chorus of admiration.
It is a curious fact that in the case of a
statue of such unmatched fame and of rec
ognized supremacy there should be so
much doubt, not merely as to the original
significance of the work but also as to its
complete character as a work of sculpture —
as a mere piece of modelling, of deliberately
chosen pose, of the marble cutting. Thus
the well known fact that the body of the
statue consists of two blocks of marble, the
[42]

Greek Culmination and Decline
joint coming at the hip, and the further
fact that it has always been set up with cer
tain wedges inserted between the two
blocks of marble, giving to the figure a tilt
or inclination of undecided amount, illus
trates the uncertainty which hangs over
every ancient piece. The Venus of Milo
was removed from its place at the time
of the siege of Paris in 1871, and when it
was replaced the amount of inclination was
diminished — at least this was the general
statement made by the authorities and ac
cepted as true by students of art previously
familiar with the statue. Those who re
member it in its earlier pose, and those who
have by them casts or carefully made pho
tographs of a period before 1871, know how
great was the slant, as if of a body carried so
far from the ordinary vertical position of a
person standing firmly on her feet, that this
position could not be maintained for more
than an instant. It was in a sense an in
jury to the statue ; that is to say the exag
gerated pose certainly contradicted the in
tention of the great artist who imagined the
[43]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
work of art, and of him who finished it
according to the original conception. As
we have it now it is more reasonably
posed — there can be no doubt about that —
and yet neither that curious misconception
of the statue as first received by its custo
dians, nor the serious injuries which the sur
face has undergone, nor the uncertainty as
to the action of the arms — an uncertainty
carrying with it an equal doubt as to the
general purpose of the statue as a figure
standing alone or as one of a group — none
of these can be thought to injure the
piece in any essential particular. It could
not have been admired more heartily, nor
could it have given to the enlightened
people of the European races greater ar
tistic pleasure, were it complete and in
its undoubted original condition. In
that original condition it would have
given more instruction to the sculptor
of modern times ; unquestionably a perfect
knowledge of what the Venus of Milo was
meant to be would be a most valuable ad
dition to the technician's stock of knowl-
[44]

Greek Culmination and Decline
edge and a new stimulus to his thought, but
it is hardly to be supposed that the artistic
charm would be enhanced. All of which
is another form of words for the same state
ment, that what we are concerned with in a
work of art is the artistic aspect of it ; and
also that this artistic merit of the piece is
not so very much enhanced by any other
significance than that contained within its
own superfices. You are curious to know
whether the " Venus of Milo " is a Venus
Victrix or a Venus grouped with Mars, or a
Victory, or, as some one has suggested, a
Venus grouped with her winged son, the
little god of Love, to whom she is supposed
to be giving instruction. That is well
enough ; your curiosity is a respectable one :
but it is not to be forgotten that it is a histor
ical, or literary, or mythological, or senti
mental question that you raise. If, indeed,
we had reason to suppose that any figure
grouped with the female figure which we
see, or any shield or other attribute held by
the Venus, would affect the general aspect
of the piece — would alter in appearance the
[45]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
pose of the female figure as it stands resting
on the right leg with the left knee much
bent and apparently supported on an object
of some sort — if in that way the character
of the statue were to be changed for us —
but indeed we have no possible reason to
suppose that those conditions existed.
A marked contrast to that severe and re
served conception is the very surprising
statue shown in Plate XI and known to the
world as the Venus of the Capitol. It is in
the Capitoline Museum at Rome, and is one
of the most perfect and uninjured pieces
which have come down to us from an
tiquity, for when found in the eighteenth
century in the city of Rome, carefully
built up in a crypt or cell of masonry as if
to preserve it at a time of terror, there were
no injuries recorded except the tip of the
nose and the forefinger of each hand. Al
though these fingers are named as restora
tions it still remains doubtful whether they
are not the old pieces of marble found in
the vault and replaced. When the pres
ent writer first saw this statue it was in
[46]

Greek Culmination and Decline
company with a first-rate archseologist, one
who has become famous since that time
in large explorations, and who has a sin
gular insight into the delicate distinctions
between the styles and epochs of Greek
sculpture ; and that brilliant man expressed
his surprise that his companion should care
for " that piece of decadent art." But it is
one of the peculiarities of decadent art —
that is, of the art of the Decadence at any
period of the world's history, — that ex
quisite work exists side by side with the
evidences of decline and even of corruption,
not merely in pieces of the same epoch and
the same land, but even in the same work
of art. It is odd, by the way, that the most
critical students who look over the whole
field, class this statue with the Medician
Venus and the Venus of Aries in the
Louvre, and place, chronologically, each of
these important works of a declining artistic
spirit close to the Venus of Milo in their
categorical description of antiquity. There
is this distinction to be made, that while
we know of no other work closely resem-
[47]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
bling that shown in our Plate XI which
is assumed to be an original work, no one
would now claim that the Medician Venus
is other than a late copy of a lost original,
that is, of one of those modifications of the
famous Aphrodite of Knidos, with which
antiquity seems to have been abundantly
supplied. The Venus of the Capitol is the
study of a more mature person than the
Venus of Milo, and this choice was evi
dently made with the very purpose of in
sisting upon the surface forms resulting
from much greater plumpness of body.
.A-Ccordingly the view given in Plate XI has
been chosen from among several different
views, that the half-tone print may preserve
the singular elaboration of the statue, as in
the flattened surface of the lumbar region,
and the singularly delicate gradations of
roundings and flattings which pass one
into another over the whole surface of the
body from shoulders to thighs and again
over the limbs from hip to ankle. The
statue is placed (as every statue ought to be)
on a revolving stand which turns with a
[48]

Greek Culmination and Decline
touch of the finger applied to a strong cop
per knob. Standing in a chosen position
with the light which has been found the
purest and strongest, the student can place
his statue at will, and there is infinitely
great artistic pleasure to be got from the
study of its carefully wrought forms, how
ever much one might prefer to have in the
same situation a statue with the virginal
grace of a piece of the time of Phidias, or a
piece which might be thought the work of
Praxiteles or Skopas. Unfortunately the
nude form was hardly studied in those days
of early refinement. The female figures of
the Parthenon pediment are not even partly
nude, nor is it certainly known that any
statue of this character exists of a period
earlier than the one which we are now con
sidering. We have seen reason to believe
that if it is drapery we are thinking of, the
Phidian type, as seen in the statues of the
Parthenon, and the Praxitelean type, if we
may call it so, seen in the Niobide (Plate
IX), must be compared — and we must also
study the drapery of the Roman figures of
[49]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
the Augustan age as shown in Chapter III.
But for the female form, studied for itself
and because of its self-contained beauty and
importance to art, we have nothing earlier
than the somewhat indefinite period which
we are treating now and which we have
found it necessary to limit by the years
340-140 B. c.

[50]

Plate XI.  STATUE IN THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, CALLED GENERALLY "VE.XDS
r'T' THE CAPITAL."

3 S
01 o

M <

-5fe

o S

2 H
3 <
«^i. OS
o o
a <
5 Q
¦^ ?J?J .
iioS rt ^J >-i

CHAPTER III
THE KOMAN EMPIEE AND EARLY EGYPT
It is notable to a modern student who
spends much time in the museums of Eu
rope, that the evidence before him points
unmistakably to a very great production of
sculpture during the centuries of classical
civilization. There must have been an
enormous amount of it produced, relatively
to other industries, and relatively to the pop
ulation, even in poor and unsettled Greece ;
but under the vast administration of the
Roman Empire the relative proportion was
perhaps increased, while the actual amount
became at once incalculably great. What
we see in the long galleries of the Vatican
are mainly Roman copies of secondary
merit, and such imitative pieces as were
sculptured by thousands to adorn gardens
and public promenades, where they count
for littlg more than do the statues set upon
the pinnacles of Milan Cathedral — well out
of sight unless you climb to the roof,
[51]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
and even then marred for the student by
the brilliant sky behind them. The evi
dent and, indeed, natural indifference to
the merit of these thousands of decorative
pieces is a thing to keep in mind. Writers
have said that there was a larger popula
tion of statues in the Rome of Trajan's
time than there was a living population :
but we will note that the examples which
we have by the thousand, either in the
Chiaramonti Museum or the cold white
galleries of Naples, such as were set about
the forums and under the roofed porticoes,
are works which we do not care very much
about. The effect of such a prodigious pro
duction of inferior work was not, however,
bad for the contemporaneous production of
the finest work. It is not an evil, but a
good, that ten thousand marble-cutters in
the Mediterranean world were turning out,
each ten statues a year : that was clear gain,
because it gave the artist of purpose and
of great powers of design a field to work
in of which we, in our time, can have no
conception. It is the fashion to say that
[52]

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
the Roman sculpture was all Greek ; that
is to say, that it was done by Greeks in
the employ of Roman officials. But that
statement is not absolutely true except in
this way — the certain fact that it is Greek
instinct which inspired the Roman world.
This was not in fine art alone ; it was the
mission of the Roman Empire to hand down,
to the world of Europe which was to fol
low, the Greek tradition kept whole and
pure by the long, peaceful control of the
Empire over all the Mediterranean lands.
But as to the assertion that each important
piece of sculpture was Greek in its incep
tion — not only can it not be maintained,
but the contrary is rather easy to dem
onstrate. If, for instance, we look at the
reliefs from the lost arch of Trajan in Rome,
we shall find a dignity and a certain tech
nical handling of drapery which it is not
easy to surpass even in the art of the fifth
century b. c. The folds of the toga are not
those of the himation ; and what is more
important, the touch of the Italian of 100
A. D. is not that of the Athenian of 420 b. c.
[53]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
But (and here is a good comparison to start
with) which of the two will you prefer ?
Even if you begin with the admission
that the Greek art of the fifth century b. c.
was the most perfect known to us (and we
have begun by that admission), we have still
to certify to ourselves that we find each
separate piece better than the corresponding
piece which we may choose out of the later
epoch. One is reminded of the opinion
sometimes expressed by architectural de
signers of first-rate ability and taste — the
opinion that as a whole Roman architecture
is more attractive. It has so much more in
it — so much greater variety, so much larger
knowledge, it aspires to so much more, it is
so immeasurably more vast and wide, that
even the mastery of the Greek of his
delicate details and refined proportion can
not carry it against the ordered majesty of
the Roman structure. So to a certain extent
it is with sculpture. To take Plate XII,
the figure of " Junius Brutus " in the
Louvre, or that of the so-called Germanicus
in the Lateran Museum, which are not
[54]

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
necessarily the finest, but only two of many
of the interesting portrait statues of the
first century A. d. — there is in them a close
study of nature, an admirable thing to
watch, showing itself in contrast with and,
as it were, refusing to be subdued by the
Greek tradition. It is indeed uncertain
how far the details of the personality were
considered by the Roman or Greco-Roman
sculptor in his working of portrait statues.
The face, the form of the head, the placing
of the ears, the neck in its comparative
thickness and length, in its peculiar build
and setting on (always an interesting sub
ject in portrait art) these may indeed be as
sumed to be close studies from the living
model, which in this case is of necessity a
thing to be copied closely, not a mere sub
ject of general study on the part of the
artist. The hands may be thought to have
been very closely studied from life ; and
with the hands go the arms or at least the
forearms. But who shall say how far this
close following of nature, of the individual
nature, was carried ? When a portrait artist
[55]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
is engaged with the setting on of the nose
to the forehead he has a most difficult but
interesting task in hand, for no two faces
are alike in that characteristic, and the dif
ference is one easy to identify, to carry in
the mind, to insist upon. Is the setting on
of the arm to the shoulder and the relation
of the point of the shoulder to the collar
bone very much less individual? Would
not the sculptor be much influenced at once
by the opposing wishes to produce an
heroic figure and to stick close to nature
in this detail, which must have seemed
to him a matter of importance in por
traiture? There is a story of a very great
and famous personage of the eighteenth
century whose portrait a contemporary
sculptor wished to render in the grand
style and who was the first to laugh at
the incongruous aspect of the strongly
marked old face, wrinkled with thought,
expressing knowledge beyond that of his
time and a satirical interest in the world as
he saw it around him, placed upon an
athletic frame as of a man thirty years
[56]

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
younger and one who had developed his
muscles rather than his thinking machin
ery. The Roman would not have done that,
because to a Roman the form of age, the
form even of partial decrepitude, was
not a thing to abhor or to avoid. We have
statues of antiquity representing even de
formed persons, which therefore we call
" ^sop," and we have statues of old and
feeble and decaying vitality, which we call
Epictetus or Seneca for want of a name.
The Roman was not unaccustomed to the
nude, even when the nude was no longer
brilliant with the first charm of youth, even
when it had passed far on the downward
grade. And therefore when we see a
statue as completely ideal as the " Germani
cus " shown in Plate XII, we are compelled
to suppose that this piece was intended as one
of those entirely ceremonial portraits which
stood for the young military hero, the
nephew of the imperial master of the time,
the favorite commander of a Legionary
army, the powerful governor of a province
or of a group of provinces, in fact the per-
[57]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
son whom we represent to-day shrouded in
a uniform coat of ugly fashion, bedizened
with dangling crosses. The Roman glori
fied such a young dignitary by showing
him in an ideal perfection of bodily frame
treated as the principal subject and draped
only in part, with the also much idealized
garment of the time allowed to fall loosely
over the hips and the forearm. We are
to take these statues as the highest mark of
honor and favor which could be done to
a celebrity of the time.
It may be well to pursue this subject a
little further and to consider the statue,
Plate XIII. This marble is in the Louvre,
representing a Roman who has not yet
reached his full stature, indeed, and who
still wears the bulla or hanging locket in
which (or in its contents) there lay some
superstition of good luck, but who has
assumed the toga. Now it is uncertain
whether this garment is the toga prsetexta
(the toga with the purple border), or the full
toga of manhood which was not assumed,
as we are told by Pliny, until the time
[58]

Plate XIII.  PORTRAIT STATUE OF A ROMAN YOUTH. LOUVRE MUSEUM.

Plate XIV. — RELIEF SCULPTURE: MARCUS AURELIUS OFFERING SACRIFICE, AT
TENDED BY THE FLAMEN DIALIS, A BOY HOLDING A BOX (OF INCENSE?) AND
OTHER SERVANTS OF THE RITE. SCULPTURE OF ABOUT l8o A. D. MUSEUM
OF THE PALACE OF THE CONSERVATORS, ROME.

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
when the bulla was abandoned and the
young man was thought to have reached
the age of discretion. Of course it is en
tirely unknown who is the person rep
resented. We are concerned only with the
strong evidence in the piece itself that it is
a portrait, and that it is of an excellent time
of Greco-Roman art, that is to say, of the
time between the accession of Augustus and
the death of Nero, about 25 b. c. to 65 a. d.
This statue has always been interesting to
students of costume, because the extremely
complicated and for us only half under
stood wearing of that voluminous garment
needs every contemporary illustration
which we can bring to bear upon the sub
ject. It is, however, more than that, it is
an interesting specimen of the way in
which a portrait statue may become a beau
tiful and permanently valuable work of
art, in the days of graceful and unchang
ing costume. A sculptor of our own time
would be obliged to study the fashion
plates that he might render the portrait of
a man twenty years dead without commit-
[ ?9 ]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
ting some disagreeable solecism in the cut
of the trousers ; and even with the greatest
care he is absolutely certain that his statue,
offending no one when it is accepted, will
be a monstrosity to the people of only half
a century later when the fashion he has
been compelled to represent shall have be
come obsolete, with the result inevitable in
modern costume, of being also hideous.
But the Roman dress has never become
ugly to us, and whether it is studied thor
oughly and realistically, as in Plate XIII, or
as a more decorative adjunct, as in the two
statues shown in Plate XII, it is equally a
help to the design, enabling us to receive
without special regret, this substitution for
the still more admirable treatment of the
nude. Plate XIV is a Roman relief of a later
time, a relic of the lost arch dedicated to
Marcus Aurelius, and therefore erected and
the sculptures wrought probably after the
death of that Emperor, 180 A. d. Decadence
is obvious enough in the work of that reign
and of the time that was to follow. The re-
[60]

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
lief is indeed imperfectly preserved, for some
modern disfigurement does surely exist in
parts of the group ; but the conception can
be perfectly understood and the desire of
the Roman artist of the second century
A. D. to tell the story which he had to re
late, is as visibly strong as his inferiority in
all technical and even in all artistic ways.
It is curious to see what pains have been
taken to force the heads all into profile,
and how awkwardly the composer has
done his work. The drapery, too, has
lost its charm ; it is too obviously copied
from copies, too evidently the result of
the artist's memories of other reliefs, ex
cluding, as it seems, the study of the men
around him and their garments. It is a
first step in the direction of that modern
characteristic in fine art which leads on
towards relation and description — things
often incompatible with a lofty artistic con
ception. The greatness of Roman art is
lost in this as completely as the purity and
delicacy of that Grecian sculpture which
was of Grecian lands alone.
[61]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
In what has been said above there is
no attempt to assert any superiority of first
century Roman art over the splendid art of
the Greeks : we are comparing the later
with the earlier work as we compare the
work of the pupil with that of the master :
but it is open to any one to find a charm
in the work of the younger men different
to that which he found in the work of the
Periclean day. Or, to take the very im
portant matter of decorative sculpture
which is not of human subject; consider
the reliefs of the time of Augustus, the
study of the leaf forms, and indeed of plant
form in general, and note that nothing
done by the Greeks in their day of greatest
artistic achievement could be compared
with this for a moment for variety, for
realistic sense of what natural objects have
signified to the artist for the purposes of
ornamentation. This newly gained sense
of architectural purpose in the sculpture of
plant form, animal form and even human
ity would naturally tell upon that sculp
ture which has no immediate decorative
[62]

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
purpose. Or again, consider the human
and the partly human figures, " garden
statues " if you choose to call them so,
terms and the like. The figure of unques
tionably Roman epoch (Plate XV B) which
we compare with one as certainly Greek in
origin (Plate XV A) and Greek of a good
time, is not necessarily inferior to it. We
must give up the child on the faun's shoul
der — he looks like a restoration ; it would
surprise no one to learn that that wretched
little figure was put there in the time of
Constantine — but apart from this the ter
minal figure is fine and well conceived.
The truth seems to be that the whole Med
iterranean world was filled with the artis-
tical sense which had manifested itself most
strongly in Egypt four thousand years be
fore ; in Assyria, for a moment, at a much
later period ; probably in Babylonia and
other parts of western Asia, at different and
not easily fixed periods ; and at last, in its
highest development known to us, in Attica
and Central Greece, about the middle of
the fifth century b. c. — that this artistic
[63]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
sense, slowly fading, if you please, and los
ing some of its childlike vigor and inten
sity of purpose, had broadened and grown
sympathetic. The cup found in the
trenches at Alesia (where Caesar lay en
camped before the stronghold of Vercinget-
orix) is a good specimen of what we have
learned to call the Augustan art of Rome.
Plant form did not interest the Greek
sculptor very much, nor, so far as we
can infer from vases and the like, did
it interest the Greek draughtsman very
much, except as he took the changing cur
vature of the edge of a leaf or the ramifica
tions from a common centre of a sprig of
leaves ; satisfied with that one suggestion
received from nature and then going on to
compose his own sculpture, moulding his
anthemion in color or in low relief. But
the Roman working fifty years before
the commencement of our era, as near
as we can judge, loves his laurel leaves as
well as ever a Greek loved the torso of a
youthful athlete, enjoys it beyond measure,
revels in casting his leafage in graceful
[64]

Plate XV A. — terminal figure, flute player.
LATE GREEK WORK. BRITISH MUSEUM.

Plate XV B. — terminal figure, satyr, of RO
MAN EPOCH. lateran museum.

Plate XVI.  STATUE of DIORITE, identified AS A PORTRAIT OF KING CHEF
EREN, OR KAFRA, OF THE FOURTH DYNASTY. BOULAK (NOW GIZEH)
museum.

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
combinations and interspersing it with
berries in the highest possible relief — in
more than relief, in solid projection from
the surface of the vase. And note how
purely decorative he is in his treatment
of it. As compared with modern work of
the sort this is not " realistic " at all, for
the distribution of the fillets which bind
the laurel branches together, and the fact
that the branches are cut and hung up
with their butts uppermost, shows that they
are selected to adorn a triumphal or a
memorial composition. The designer is a
true decorative artist ; he has not worried
himself about the treatment of his vegeta
tion, nor has he spent much thought about
its growth ; he has laid the twigs and the
branches, the leaves and the berries, in im
agination at least, upon the rounded form
of his cup in such a way as to produce a
beautiful result. Or study the relief sculp
ture of leafage exhibited here and there in
the museums of Rome, some part of which
we have learned to trace to that famous
Altar of Peace which Augustus saw inaug-
[65]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
urated. We might go farther afield and in
clude in our examination the exquisite re
liefs in stucco of the first century a. d. ; but
it is impossible to carry the consideration
of ornamental use of sculpture very far —
that is not the purpose of this book — we
have only to enquire how far such a dec
orative tendency existing in full strength
and applied alike to the colossal buildings
of the Imperial City and to the portable
playthings of the nobles, might influence
the character of the human sculpture itself.
At least it seems a necessary conclusion
that the freedom given to the treatment of
costume is akin to the interest shown in
leaf form and in purely ornamental slabs
and panels. Moreover if that is true, is it
not also true that these tendencies are ex
pressed in part in the stateliest sculpture
of the time ?
In comparison with this work of the last
great epoch of antiquity, let us consider
that of the earliest epoch known to us ;
that is to say, as far as artistic matters go,
the early Empire of Egypt. The statues
[66]

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
which we are considering may be dated
3500 b. c. : that will do as well as another
date : it is earlier than any date even ap
proximately associated with any other king
dom or race, except always the newly-fixed
facts concerning the peoples of the Meso-
potamian Plain. The statues of Prince Ra
Hotep and his wife, Nefert, in the Gizeh
Museum show as much ignorance, if it is
ignorance, about the facts of the feet and
the hands, as would a carving of a South
African savage : but the facts that the
pose of the body is well understood, the
head well set on the torso, powerful, well
marked, and correct in its main mass,
are all the evidence of a strong sculptur
esque tradition already in existence, and of
a strong sculpturesque feeling in the artist
who composed the statue. We are inclined,
therefore, to ascribe the clumsy fingers
and toes and the very poor articulation of
the wrists and ankles to the awkwardness
which we might expect in men designing
statues which are to be worked by igno
rant chisel-men toiling in hard material.
[67]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
The statue of Cheferen (see Plate XVI)
is much more developed in the way of
knowledge : and in both these figures it is
well to note the extraordinary characteriza
tion of the head. In each case it is a por
trait. The archaic feeling for the human
body, nude and semi-nude, is always that
it is to be represented in a certain delib
erately adopted way : but whatever the
priestly rule may have been for the head,
it is evident that the artist broke away from
it in both of these instances, and in the very
seat of human expression found the most
play for his refined art. As for the wooden
statue (see Plate XVII), which may almost
certainly be dated as early as either of the
two stone ones mentioned, it is on record
that when it came out of the dry sand
which had preserved it for centuries there
was a general shout from the Arabic work
men employed — " the Sheik-El-Beled ! " —
that is to say, the head man of the village.
The poor fellows saw in this statue, six
thousand years old when they took it up,
the very image of the masterful official who
[68]

The Roman Empire and Early Egypt
controls each hamlet along the Nile ; with
his businesslike, selfish straightforwardness
he was there incarnate, or nearly so, visible
to the eyes of all.
There is another interesting thing about
the Egyptian sculpture, and that is the ex
treme boldness of its architectural adorn
ment in relief. The work of Edfoo (see
Plate XVIII) is not very ancient ; but it is
of the same character as much earlier struc
ture, and there is no other building in such
good preservation, for Edfoo was covered
deep in dry sand until Mariette cleared it
away in our own time. That it is still of
that form of relief which we call ccelana-
glyphic is not to deter any one from recog
nizing in it all the characteristics of true
relief sculpture. If you were to mould and
cast one of those figures in plaster and were
then to work with a chisel, planing and
scraping away all the material until the
figure was left projecting from a flat back
ground, you would have bas-relief of an ap
proved form. This same way of carving
the surface is common in the arts of many
[69]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
nations and times ; the Japanese use it with
great effect in ivory and on a smaller scale ;
it lends itself extremely well to architec
tural use, because the round column can be-
thickly covered with such ornamentation,
without losing its roundness and its aspect
as a supporting member — a fact easily to
be noted in this very temple of Edfoo, as in
others of much earlier time. Whether in
this form or in the more familiar bas-relief
with the background cleared away, the
Egyptian wall-sculpture was elaborately
painted in brilliant colors of most marvel
lous architectural effect. And this chapter
may close with this suggestion to the reader,
that although it cannot be maintained for
a moment that sculpture is chiefly con
cerned with the adornment of architecture,
it is also true that some of its greatest
flights, its most swift and notable advances
from a lower to a higher plane, have been
in close connection with architectural mon
uments.

[70]

CHAPTER IV
THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES
Sculpture is always the most sensitive
of the arts. It is the most easily lost and
the most difficult to recover. Throughout
the long centuries of slow evolution in artistic
design, there remains for the people even of
a lower civilization, of a depressed national
character, of a lowered prosperity, much
sense of the value of color and of decorative
patterns. Hence it comes that while paint
ing in one form or another, mosaic, inlay,
the use of varied materials in combination
and the application of painting by hand,
are all more or less prosperous, at no time
do they disappear. When a community is
well-to-do and at peace sufficiently to allow
its members to think of building or of
making utensils, the decoration of those
pieces goes with their structure ; and this
decoration, when it is a matter of surface
adornment in color or what is equivalent to
color, is never without interest. When.
LTl]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
however, it consists of solid form, the
whole disability of the epoch becomes
evident, and the modern student finds
himself in the presence of an art which
has gone to pieces. A strong instance
of this is seen in the third and fourth
centuries A. d., when the great Empire was
gradually losing its military and intellec
tual strength, in a way very hard for us
to understand. Years of peace for the
whole Mediterranean world had brought in
their train not prosperity and life, but
universal decline, a decreasing population,
a fading municipal and racial strength in
every quarter of that world. And for our
purpose this decay is most visible in the de
cline of sculpture considered as a fine art.
Considered merely as a record, sculpture
existed very late. The reliefs of Trajan's
column, representing the march of his
triumphant army in the lands which we now
call Hungary and Transylvania, and those
on the Antonine column of similar subject,
tell the story of Roman frontier wars and as
historical documents are of singular value.
[72]

The European Middle Ages
They have lost what is for us the real
essence of sculpture, its charm as an appeal
to our eyes, accustomed to compare the
arts of many epochs. The sarcophagi of
the time show the same decline of the
artistic spirit. The sculptures on the arch
of Constantine erected about 315 a. d. are
either taken from earlier buildings, not of
the Augustan age but furnishing sculptures
immeasurably superior to those that are put
beside them ; or are of Constantine's time
and singularly base and trivial. Greco-
Roman art was dead when they were
wrought ; and for six hundred years there
after sculpture was destined to sleep in all
the western lands. The Greek impetus, so
long carried on by Roman admiration and
Roman energy, had faded out of the world,
and there was as yet nothing to replace it.
Now, the revival of sculpture in the tenth
century is one of the most curious things in
history. What were the influences at work
to cause a decided advance in this art at a
time when Europe was still sunk in bar
barism? The country was thinly settled,
[73]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
the populace destitute of comforts and of
the commonest education, the feudal system
with all its abuses remaining the one pro
tection against anarchy, and the monastic
system with all its degradation affording the
one shelter for learning and thought. And
yet as early as the ninth century there is a
marked advance in the fine arts, the arts of
mere adornment giving place to those which
combine thought of some importance and
some subtlety with the decorative principle.
If our business were with historical
sequence as a principal subject, we should
have difficulty here in tracing the connec
tion between the decaying Roman spirit and
the growing modern energy. For our pur
pose of comparative study it is well to skip
at once to the twelfth century and to look
at the sculpture of a great Romanesque
church. The Romanesque church conceived by
the builders of the old Cathedral of Chartres
(Eure-et-Loir), has wholly disappeared ; but
when, about 1130, the two towers of the
west front were built, the gable was ad-
[74]

The European Middle Ages
vanced between them in such a way as to
lengthen the nav3 by two bays. At that
time the statues which adorn the west por
tal of three doorways were either wholly
new, completed for this very rebuilding, or
else they were so recently completed that
the enterprising and vigorous bishop and
his most able helpers, the master builders
of the work, were entirely content with
them, and were proud to set them up in
their new place. There are over 700 stat
ues on that front, but we are concerned
at present with two or three individ
uals among them, idealized portraits of
two kings, a queen and a prelate. The
photograph, Plate XIX, is taken from the
southern jamb of the middle or " royal "
doorway — from the church itself. There
are four of those statues in the splayed
jamb of the doorway, each backed up by a
round, engaged column, and then outside
of those columns is a fourth column with
out an added statue, but this is a piece of
repair, the director of the works having
very properly preferred to leave that angle
[T5J

The Appreciation of Sculpture
unsymmetrical — without the statue which
it should have received — rather than to
replace the lost ancient piece by a modern
solecism. Plate XX shows two statues which adorn
the lowermost part of the arched roof of
this porch ; that is, they are two out of the
six which stand on the same level as the
figures sculptured on the lintel over the
doorway itself. XX A is the left-hand or
northernmost figure on the northern side,
XX B is the middle figure on the southern
side. These are two of the four-and-twenty
Elders of the Apocalypse, only that, as the
ancient version speaks of the " stringed in
struments " (citharas) instead of harps as
in the English Bible, so these two Elders
carry, the one a curious instrument of
strings drawn upon a frame, the other a
violin or rather a viola of ancient form.
These heads are, then, ideal altogether,
which means that the artist was not obliged
to give the facial character of any living
person, but studied his model or models as
far as he pleased, creating the heads and
[76]

Plate XIX. — CHARTRES CATHEDRAL, WEST FRONT. PART OF THE SOUTH
JAMB OF THE MIDDLE DOORWAY.

fdp'-s>=s^i;^K

A B
Plate XX. — CHARTRES cathedral, middle DOORWAY OF WEST FRONT:
STATUES IN THE ARCHED HEAD OF THE PORCH.

Th ^>''*opean Middle Ages
faces from c . of his memory or from the
examples b^+ure him, or from the combina
tion of hp^i. So with the drapery ; we are
not to araime that in these figures or in the
portra;j' /statues of the great jambs below,
there (^.^as been any specially careful copying
of j te dress of the times. On the other
^'\nd, as the dress of the higher clergy was
jj,i a way comely, grave and dignified, giv
ing fine forms and much gracefulness of
bearing to a well-built man so draped, and
as the robes of nobles and noble ladies when
in their " weeds of peace " were also ample
and dignified, so the artist was surrounded
by sufficiently good material and in suffi
cient quantity.
All these figures alike are treated with
special reference to their purpose as archi
tectural decoration. That is not to be lost
sight of for a moment, because, in order to
understand the point of view of the artist
(always the first and chief thing to observe),
we must keep constantly in touch with that
controlling influence of the arts of France
in the twelfth century. The greatest school
[77]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
of decorative sculpture which the world
has ever seen was in process of evolution.
As compared with the Romanesque sculp
ture of which these Chartres statues are
good, though not the best specimens, and
with the Gothic sculpture which succeeded
this, nothing else which the world of art
knows is of equal value when considered
as a part of architectural display. The
Greeks in their greatest time did not turn
their attention to that scheme of enriching
buildings by sculpture closely fitted to its
purpose ; the Greeks of later times did not,
so far as we know, conduct the study far
enough, though pursuing it in such monu
ments as the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus,
the bounding wall of Trysa, the Lion
Tombs of Lycia ; the Romans, though they
tried it seriously (see Chapters III and X),
had not at their command sufficient talent,
sufficiently trained, to do the work aright.
It was left for the Frenchmen of the twelfth
century to teach the world what sculpture
might be when affiliated closely with archi
tecture, and what architecture might be-
[78]

The European Middle Ages
come when supplied with an unlimited
decoration of excellent sculpture ; and the
thirteenth century was destined to empha
size and to urge anew that noble lesson.
Even the work of two centuries later, the
flamboyant sculpture, was but an enlarge
ment, even a refinement (though refine
ment may often be too sophisticated to re
tain its full strength) of the same artistic
truth. Consider that Gothic sculpture to which
allusion has been made ; let us look at its
very finest examples — at least those ex
amples which are the most faultless, the
nearest in their sculpturesque qualities to
the plastic art of the Greeks. We will not
look for the same spirit in the French work
of 1250 as in the Greek work of seventeen
centuries before ; but a similar longing for
great achievements in the modelling of fig
ures, the truthfulness of pose, the gesture,
the characteristic forms as seen through
and beneath the drapery, this, combined
with the drapery itself treated in the no
blest and most sculpturesque way, we have
[79]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
a right to expect of the thirteenth century
Frenchman, and we shall not be disap
pointed in our search for it.
Plate XXI shows a part of the middle door
way in the west front of Reims Cathedral,
four of the statues of the north jamb. The
extremely elongated character of the Char
tres statues is not seen here ; these figures
are hardly more slender and tall than a
modern sculptor would think appropriate
to his purpose. Even the modern sculptor
of the academic teaching now in fashion,
would think himself free to increase the
relative height of his figures for a definite
purpose. He would think himself free to
do so — it does not follow that he would
always use the privilege. For let this
be considered : when a certain equestrian
statue was exhibited about the last year of
the nineteenth century and it was noted
that the rider, seated upon his war saddle,
had such a length of limb that the whole
foot and some inches of the ankle (or the
boot thereunto corresponding) were to be
seen projecting downwards beneath the
[80]

y.X

The European Middle Ages
belly of the horse, this wholly untruthful
representation of the facts of nature was
defended by the sculptor and by his
friends, on the ground of the unusually
great stature of the officer whose portrait
was in hand, and the supposed necessity
of insisting on the fact of the relative
height of his figure ; also on the ground
that the pedestal was to be extremely high
and that the figure would appear foreshort
ened. But that question, as to whether such
a device was justifiable in art, was carried
up to a tribunal of two or three sculptors
having the best French academic teaching,
and they said with one voice that their
schooling had been the other way, that
they had been told to avoid such tricks,
" for, of course, the eye of the spectator al
lows for such foreshortening as would be
found in even a much higher placing of the
statue, as upon a high wall ; and, as for the
unusual height of the man — it was not the
horse that should be dwarfed to produce that
effect." The Greek warriors of the Parthe
non frieze are represented astride of horses
[81]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
not bigger than ponies, but this is evidently
done with the deliberate purpose of bring
ing the heads of the mounted men down to
a level with the heads of those who stand
erect — the Isocephalic Principle, as it is
called — for this piece of convention is so
far recognized as to receive a Greek name.
Indeed in Slab 23 in the west frieze, a
youth stands beside his horse, and as he
stands his raised right arm allows daylight
to show between the elbow and the hori
zontal line of his horse's back — so diminu
tive are the steeds of those gallant Greeks.
Statuary would hardly allow such a devia
tion of fact as the Greek of the Phidian
time thought he had control of, when it
concerned the matter of a low relief of
great extent and elaboration. But indeed
these various opinions set forth in the prac
tice of sculptors of many periods merely
point to a freedom enjoyed by the artist,
and which we have no right to refuse to the
twelfth century workman with his strongly
felt need of making his figures look like
the columns which accompany and support
[82]

The European Middle Ages
them, or to the thirteenth century work
man with his greater freedom, his wider
knowledge, his more ample means of ex
pressing his thought in sculpture without
injury to the architectural background.
For two hundred years the school of
mediaeval art retained its individuality, and
its power, when checked in its advance by
war and public distress to recover itself
rapidly and begin a new life. Thus, while
France was struggling with civil war aided
by the invasion of the English kings,
other nations of northern Europe went on
with the development of sculpture, and the
dominions of the French sovereign were
themselves ready for a swift and brilliant
blossoming out of the art of the fifteenth
century when peace was restored. With
the year 1450 we may mark the full dis
play in France of architecture which we call
flamboyant, and this brought with it a very
splendid sculpture with characteristics all its
own. We consider Michel Colomb as the
master of that art, but there lived at the
same time and worked in harmony with
[83]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
him admirable sculptors in France, in
Flanders, in those countries of the Upper
Rhine where the Dukes of Burgundy held
sway, and notably in Germany. This is
the art whose disappearance one regrets so
sincerely, and has such frequent occasion to
regret. The sculpture of the North died in
its young development, swept away by the
invading spirit of the classical Renaissance
coming over the mountains from Italy.
There had been, since the beginning of the
century, the marked disposition in Italy to
study the works of Greco-Roman antiquity
as the only true art of form, but this proc
ess of thought and this labor was little
known to the people of the North, who
went on with their own natural evolution
in fine art, influenced on the one side by
Flemish and on the other side by ancient
national traditions, and occasionally but only
occasionally, invasions from Italy bringing
with them rather an earlier (or semi-
mediaeval) influence than that of classical
revival. So in France we have of the
years between 1450 and 1500 such sculp-
[84]

The European Middle Ages
tures as those of the Abbey of Solesmes, of
the famous Church of Saint Riquier near
Abbeville in the far north of France, and
in the Cathedral of Abbeville itself, and in
such statues as those couched upon the
tombs of the princes who lie at rest in the
Church of Brou in the far southeast of
France. Plate XXII shows a group of the sculp
tures of the Abbey of Solesmes, showing what
French sculpture was seeking during the
last quarter of the fifteenth century. The
figure on the right is a celebrated piece of
realism, the Joseph of Arimathea who holds
the foot of the shroud in the group repre
senting the burial of Christ ; the figure
seated and with clasped hands at his left is
the lamenting Magdalen and the female
figures beyond are two of the women who
attend the Mother of Christ — the right-
hand figure of the two holding a box of
ointment. The author of these pieces can
not be absolutely identified. There can be
little doubt that they were all wrought, this
whole elaborate composition together with
[85]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
the other groups which make of that chapel
so marvellous a place of pilgrimage, before
the close of the fifteenth century. The char
acteristic of them all is; no doubt, realism —
a close study of the human form in its at
titudes of exertion and of self-centred grief
— and of costume as the sculptor saw it
around him, but subdued and convention
alized into drapery. The last and highest
merit of the art of form, beautiful and in
telligent modelling, whether of the whole
person or of the separate parts of the body,
the ankles, the wrists, the neck, the cheek
— this indeed is not as yet attained. The
need of further development, decades of
study, a half century of constant, diligent,
loving study of nature and translation of
nature into the terms of art, is all as obvious
as the intrinsic merit of the pieces them
selves. But it is something that every lover
of sculpture must regret — the denial to this
splendid fifteenth century art of the North
of its due ; of that which the world owes
every good school of art, a chance to
develop itself free from foreign influences.
[86]

The European Middle Ages
But it was not to be ; the Italian influence
was already strong in France by the year
1500 ; and this was the influence of a cen
tury-long study of Greco-Roman art. Then
with 1515 came the reign of Francis I,
" The great king of the Renaissance " and
the school of realism disappeared before the
school of classical refinement.
The reader should not forget that the
study of the technical workman, the pro
fessional, the man who is to spend his life
in achievement, must be very largely
directed towards those practical matters of
hand-work which constitute, indeed, his
daily needs. The sculptor must, first of all,
know how to produce in soft material which
he moulds, or in hard material which he
cuts, whatever forms he may perceive even
dimly in his mind. Therefore it is that the
close daily and hourly study of the sculptor
will be generally directed towards that form
of art which promises the most to him as
its pupil. He sees what the new invading
school has to offer in the way of technical
achievement, and forgets his earlier tradi-
[87]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
tions in the joy of the new discovery. The
learned, the scientific, the highly organized
art will always carry it over the more un
trained and more unconscious art, because
each separate workman feels that there is so
much to be gained for him in studying
minutely these more faultless and, as he
thinks, more intelligent processes. No
sculptor can be expected to pursue uninter
ruptedly the work which he had begun,
when he sees at his side other work which
is certainly more full of knowledge, even
if an occasional doubt comes to him
whether this new art is wiser, or expresses
thought better, or has better thought to ex
press, than that on which he has been
brought up.

[88]

CHAPTER V
THE ITALIAN REVIVAL
For the art of the neo-classic period it is to
Italy that we must go first — to the work of
the fifteenth century Italians. The Southern
contemporaries of those artists in the north
whose names we associate with the flam
boyant architecture of France and the florid
style in Germany, are men of a different
stripe. There is no longing for the ultra-
picturesque, no love of the fantastic and
over-strenuous, in their work. On the
other hand there is to be seen the most
beautiful mingling of a gentle, almost
effeminate grace with a wider knowledge of
sculptural possibilities than had been
possessed by the men of Europe since the
second century. The Italians had been
studying what they could find easily of
Greco-Roman remains ; but it is wonderful
to note how little they possessed : and also
how poor was that little, in comparison with
what was still underground, or hidden in
[89]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
distant Greece, and which has become
known to the modern world. The modern
world has but a few fragments of the vast
treasures which Pausanias saw, or might
have seen : but even those fragments were
nearly all unknown to the men of the
Risorgimento. If we search in the records
of the fourteenth century and again in
the fuller history of the fifteenth century
it will become evident to us that the
student living in a small Italian city,
and with only horseback travelling at his
command, had within reach only two or
three pieces of genuine antique work, and
those two or three pieces very often inferior
— even debased — in artistic style. The tra
dition is that the first of all modern sculptors,
Niccol^ Pisano, studied, especially, a Roman
sarcophagus ; and the identical piece is
pointed out in the Campo Santo of Pisa, its
front covered with a double composition in
high relief. This is indeed a very fine
piece : Vasari says that the Pisans brought
such trophies from afar in their ships ; but
there were few such relics above ground in
[90]

The Italian Revival
the thirteenth century. The marbles with
which are filled the long galleries of the
Vatican, of Naples, of the Uffizi, and the
smaller museums scattered over Italy, had
not seen the light for a thousand years,
when the artists of the early revival were
trying to steady their minds by ancient
examples ; the statues and reliefs were
covered up with debris, the ruins made by
war, tumult and neglect. It is a subject
which has not been studied to the bottom —
the spirit in which those early men went to
the Roman remains at hand for anatomical
knowledge and for sculptural and work
manlike modelling and cutting. They
took, too often, Roman work of the second
century A. d. for fine Greek sculpture : and
their modelling was, to the end of the
Risorgimento, injured by this fact, — that is
to say we can explain in this way a certain
lack of skilled technique ; but still they got
from their examples the grand style of
modelling, while they rejected the narrow
and inconsequent thought which alone
those sculptures represent. [91]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
Luca della Robbia is one of the earliest
of the great men and one of the most indi
vidual among them. With less strength,
at least with less robustness than Donatello,
he is probably a more refined artist, and
that quality of refinement is shown in his
group. The Visitation, which stands in the
little church of St. John in Pistoja. This,
which is shown in our Plate XXIII, is a
work of his maturity. It is one of his not
very numerous groups " in the round " and
it is wrought in his own favorite material,
that glazed, hard pottery which is named
from him. It is curious to see how, in his
evident desire to impart Sentiment to Form
— to seek the expression of sentiment in
form alone — he has eschewed for this one
occasion the brilliant and solid coloring of
his glaze, and has left the piece, except
for slight decorative adjuncts, in that ivory
white which is not only the color natural
to the make and composition of the ware,
but also the nearest akin to the tint of
white marble after a short exposure. If,
then, we regret the denial to the flam-
[92]

Plate XXIII.  THE VISITATION, BY LUCA DELLA ROBBIA, IN CHURCH OF
S. GIOVANNI FOURCIVITAS AT PISTOJA. WORK OF ABOUT 1435.

Plate XXIV. — RELIEF INTENDED FOR ALTAR-BACK: THE MADONNA BETWEEN S, LORENZO AND S. LEONARDO;
BY MINO DA FIESOLE, ABOUT I465.

The Italian Revival
boyant school of the North of any chance
to develop its own realistic methods tending
towards picturesque vivacity, we are not the
less delighted with the Italian practice of
rendering simple thought and feeling, the
thought and feeling of all men, in this re
fined and unexaggerated manner.
A later sculptor, Mino di Giovanni da
Fiesole, has, in his delicate fancy, even
more of the taste and the inspiration of an
earlier time than Luca della Robbia ; very
much more than the famous, the energetic,
the forceful Donatello, who yet was almost
of a previous generation — so early in the
fifteenth century were his years of strength
and of great production. The charm of
Mine's work is not to be explained by any
words which the language supplies, nor has
that grace ever found expression or explana
tion apart from its own chosen medium.
Ruskin says of this workman that his chisel
seems to cut life and to carve breath, and
even the rushing eloquence, the too ample
verbiage of Ruskin must have been found
unequal to the attempt to explain to others
[93]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
what a lover of sculpture sees in those sim
ple conceptions. It is not known what
were the peculiarities of Mine's training
which helped him to be the singularly per
fect sculptor of sentiment which he became.
In the great churches of Central Italy, his
wall-tombs and his admirable altar-pieces
appeal, more strongly than any work of the
times, to that general sentiment, that non-
artistic feeling for what is delicate and re
fined, which persons not artists but gifted
with the inquisitive and searching eye, feel
to an extent greater than sculptors. Thus
in the Church of the Badia {i. e., ahhadia
or conventual church) of Florence there is,
in addition to several most important and
charming wall-tombs, a ceremonial altar-
piece with three panels representing the
Madonna, San Lorenzo on her right (the
spectator's left) and San Leonardo (see Plate
XXIV). These altar-backs were provided
in case of their possible need. It seems to
have been felt that sooner or later an altar
would be erected here in accordance with
that easy-going Italian way of handling
[94]

The Italian Revival
sacred appliances, disregarding boldly the
tradition about orientation so dearly loved
in the north ; and that, at all events, the
wall needed the beautiful relief in that par
ticular place. Similar pieces by Mino him
self exist in the Cathedral at Fiesole, in the
Church of Saint Ambrogio at Milan, in one
of the great basilicas at Rome. In Santa
Maria del Popolo are two magnificent reta-
hles by unknown hands ; and in the Church
of Santa Croce, the special gathering place
for noble tombs, there is also by the mighty
hand of Donatello a relief of The Annuncia
tion, unique among his works and unsur
passed in beauty and dignity by anything
since the time of the Greeks.
The same delicate human interest which
inspires the three figures shown in Plate
XXIV, which are treated almost as if they
were statues " in the round " is to be found
also in the beautiful Justice carved on the
smooth wall back of the sarcophagus of
Bernardo Giugni, and the still more at
tractive Charity adorning in like manner
the tomb of Hugo, Marquis of Tuscany.
[95]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
These two monuments, also the work of
Mino, are among the most important of the
lovely wall-tombs of Central Italy. Each
contains a recumbent figure, laid on the
bier above the sarcophagus in which the
body is supposed to be (and probably is)
inurned. Each tomb has, carved upon the
wall above, the portrait of the dead, that
emblematic relief of which there has been
mention, and above that again, in the
lunette of the arched fronton, a delicate
piece of relief sculpture — in the one case a
Madonna and Child, in the other a medal
lion portrait of the dead man. Each tomb
has an exquisite architectural setting with
pilasters and a delicately wrought basement,
and upon this basement an inscription,
with angels in relief which seem to support
its tablet, is in each case a most refined
composition. It is from such work as this by Rossel-
lino, Benedetto da Rovezzano, Jacopo della
Querela and Mino that the famous and
magnificent works of Michelangelo, those
well-known tombs of the princes of the
[96]

The Italian Revival
House of the Medici, took their origin : but
they are the work of the^ sculptor's later
life, when the spirit of the Renaissance had
grown feeble in Italy, and when the per
sonality of the man, Buonarroti, had come
to the front, for better and for worse.
The Pieta of St. Peter's Church in Rome
was completed when Michelangelo was a
very young man (see Plate XXV). It is
Florentine fifteenth century sculpture of
exquisite grouping and faultless modelling,
but filled with a new and very individual
power over the surfaces both of the nude
and of the draped figure. The Mother of
Christ holds the dead body across her
knees : and it has often been noted that the
female form is shown as carrying easily the
great weight, while the mother's face is
youthful, impossibly so, for a natural
woman. But Michelangelo himself ex
plained this as the expression of a pure and
holy life, apart from all supernal influence ;
and indeed the face has but little decided
expression, no bitter grief, no ardent love ;
the face is contemplative and no more.
[97]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
And the lover of pure sculpture, of the art
of form for its own sake, may love this
most of all the master's works : for it is free
from that striving after the violent and the
strange of which there is said below what
has to be said.
As a sculptor, Michelangelo's life was
a series of disappointments. He was in his
own thought a worker in marble ; but his
greatest achievements are in fresco paint
ing. The great Moses of the tomb of Julius
II, the Madonna in a church at Bruges in
Belgium, the Risen Christ of the Church of
S. Maria Sopra Minerva are almost the
only completed pieces of importance, other
than those we have been considering and
have now to consider. Much as the
special student of art or the worshipper of
genius may love the Bacchus and the
Saint John Baptist of the Bargello, the
David with its curious history, the reliefs,
and the unfinished pieces like the Saint
Matthew and the very late Piet^ of Flor
ence ; that affection is given to the inferior
though still characteristic work of one of
[98]

Plate XXV, — THE PIETA, BY MICHELANGELO, IN THE CHURCH OF S. PIETRO
IN VATICANO, ROME, IN FIRST (EASTERNMOST) CHAPEL OF SOUTH AISLE.

Plate XXVI. — TOMB OF LORENZO DEI MEDICI, BY MICHELANGELO; IN SO-CALLED
NEW SACRISTY, CHURCH OF S. LORENZO, FLORENCE.

The Italian Revival
the most powerful and original artists who
have lived.
The Medicean monuments were under
taken as wall-tombs (after an earlier at
tempt of another sort had been abandoned),
but the abounding energy of the artist,
striving always for wider scope, attempting
more and ever more ample means of ex
pression, forced upon the wealthy family
which governed the republic of those days
the more grandiose scheme which we now
see fully realized. It is a square room, not
large when considered as the sacristy of a
great church, but still spacious : and its in
terior ordonnance is of quite surprising
dignity and simple grandeur. This, the so-
called Nuova Sagrestia was built expressly
for the tomb, and indeed has received an
architectural treatment which makes it a
single design, embracing and combining
into one the two separate tombs of Giuliano,
the Duke of Nemours, and Lorenzo, the
Duke of Urbino. These two princes died
in 1516 and 1519, but Michelangelo was
not a patient subject to this encroaching
[99]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
family which had destroyed the liberties of
his beloved Florence, and the sculpture
was never completed. We may imagine
that after his final abandonment of it,
any unfinished details of the architecture
could be and would have been carried out
in strict accordance with that which al
ready existed. We know and we see that
no one has dared to touch the sculptures
which had been left almost from the hand
and chisel of the great sculptor whose im
pressive personality seems to have filled up
the Italy of his time. Plate XXVI gives
the tomb of Lorenzo with its immediate ar
chitectural setting.
The monuments include, each two gigan
tic recumbent figures, those set upon the
cover of the sarcophagus in which the body
is laid, and the seated portrait statue, how
completely idealized we do not know, of
the prince in whose name the tomb was set
up. The reclining figures are known by
names which were affixed to them even in
the sculptor's lifetime, and which were cer
tainly recognized and accepted in a way by
[100]

The Italian Revival
Michelangelo himself. Those of the tomb
of Lorenzo shown in Plate XXVI, are al
ways called Twilight and Dawn, and we are
to accept the female statue as Dawn chiefly
because the Aurora of antiquity is recog
nized as a goddess ; while the marble giant
who reclines on the opposite side of the
sarcophagus is, by exclusion, the Evening
Twilight. It is a pity, perhaps, that these
names have become so firmly fixed upon
our tradition, upon our historical and ar
tistic associations with the monument.
Aurora and Evening for Lorenzo's tomb,
Day and Night for Giuliano's tomb — what
are those names to this inquiry? What
have those names to do with the magnificent
sculpture which Michelangelo thought, as
sculpture, were the proper appendages of
his portrait statues ? The female figure,
Night, is complete and has received a high
polish, Michelangelo's practice in this set
ting, as many will think, a worthy example
to those lovers of art who dislike polish as
giving an effect supposedly " unnatural " —
as if it were the business of a statue in
[101]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
veined or in pure white marble to look like
nature ! The other statue, the great colos
sus called Day, has never been completed,
the head at least is most rudely blocked
out, showing the chisel marks in every
part and affording an excellent suggestion
of the essential character of noble sculpture
in marble. It is one reason why one loves
the polish, that it suggests the hard and en
during material — it is one reason why one
loves to see the half wrought head, that the
slow evolution of the sculptor's thought is
more clearly seen when surprised in taking
shape, when half complete. These figures,
moreover, are far enough from being any
one's canon of form ; the gigantic work of
Michelangelo does not suggest the taking
of its proportions as final perfection. It is
rather as a suggestion of the almost impos
sible, of the extreme in energy and in rude
force, that we go to this great artist. The
Lorenzo portrait statue, shown in Plate
XXVI, is, on the other hand, rightly named
il Pensieroso, or The Thinker. The face of
it was for many years so shaded that indeed,
[102]

The Italian Revival
it could not be distinguished at all. At
some time about 1875, light was admitted
to the New Sacristy in greater abundance
and from other directions than before, and
since that time the statue has been visible
as other statues are.
A curious fact has been the great loss of
interest in the statue itself and even in the
whole monument. It is even a surprise to
those who remember the statue when it
was still possible to write of it as Samuel
Rogers did :
" What from beneath its helm-like bonnet scowls?
la it a face or but an eyeless skull ?
'Tis lost in shade, but like the basilisk
It fascinates and ia intolerable."
It follows from this change that the latest
writers of weight on Florentine sculpture
speak of the tomb without any of that old
sense of awe ; and from this it follows,
again, that their comments are far less heart
ily laudatory. It is somewhat the rule, dur
ing and since the closing years of the nine
teenth century, to treat this and the com
panion monument as works of the Decadence
[103]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
— certainly as works of Michelangelo's
later and less tasteful style, a style assumed
to be closely connected with the admitted
pomposity and false dignity of some of his
architectural compositions. Of course the
actual objection to the monument as a
work of sculpture lies in the forced and al
most grotesque attitudes, the determined
search for something overstrained, too forci
ble, too violent ; and with this there is a
feeling shared by almost all lovers of the
sculpture of the time in Italy, that Michel
angelo was very ready to desert nature and
nature's forms altogether, seeking in his
profound knowledge of the body and all its
composing parts an opportunity to create a
Nature of his own, in which movement
should be more violent, muscles more pro
nounced, expressions more strongly stamped
upon the countenance, than is to be seen
in human life. It is in this way, undoubt
edly, that the real Decadence of sculpture
began in Italy. The most marked charac
teristic of it all was the continual striving
of imitative minds to do what this mighty
[104]

The Italian Revival
and original mind had done, and the first
sculptors of the decline are precisely those
who were the closest students of the mas
ter, Baccio Bandinelli, Guglielmo della
Porta, Raphael da Montelupo and Montor-
soli. Still, as this brief enquiry has little
to do with the work of those imitators, and
as Chapter VI, which deals with the de
cline, has much better men than they to
describe and to appraise, so it is fitting that
this chapter be closed by thoughts about
the sculpture of two men who were exactly
contemporary with Michelangelo : Jacopo
Sansovino, who died six years after him,
and Benvenuto Cellini, whose death-date is
the next year again, 1571.
The greater Sansovino was he whose
name, as known to his parents, was Jacopo
Tatti, and he was called by his better known
surname because of his connection through
his master with a little town near Arezzo in
Tuscany. He lived only six years after the
death of his great contemporary, and yet he
seems to be his successor as supreme sculptor
of Italy : for Michelangelo was caught up
[105]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
by the Papal orders and turned into a
painter of symbolical and Christian subjects
at a time so early that it left the greater
part of Sansovino's busy life after and be
yond that period. From the time when
Michelangelo began in earnest upon the
ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which we may
fix at 1510, he, only thirty-five years old,
was able to produce but little sculpture, and
it was just at that time that Jacopo, four
years younger, began to be employed upon
his most important work.
Michelangelo was sculptor by choice,
painter by compulsion, architect because
every one concerned in fine art, and thought
successful in it, was called upon by some
prince or prelate to design buildings. San
sovino was sculptor and architect from the
beginning, architect perhaps first, and by
his earlier teachings, but sculptor also be
cause in the good times of art the man who
ordered the disposition of the street front
was compelled to carve, or at least to model,
the compositions which were to form its
chief glory. Now, Sansovino, in conse-
[106]

The Italian Revival
quence of influences which it is hard for us
to trace, shows from the flrst as strong a de
sire to avoid excess as his more famous con
temporary always showed to resort to it.
We cannot be sure of these influences, it has
been said — but assuredly one of them was
the close connection between his statuary
and his own architectural designs. Thus in
the Loggetta at the foot of that Campanile
in Venice which fell in ruins in 1902, there
was one of the most remarkable pieces in
Europe of skilled disposition of sculpture ;
a design which in architectural simplicity
and significance alone deserves to be com
pared with any small and purely decorative
building we know. This was built by San
sovino in 1540, and adorned with a broad
attic of relief sculpture by Girolamo da Fer-
rara, bronze gates by Antonio Gai (though
these are of later date) and four statues by
Sansovino himself, arranged in niches of
the fagade and so near the eye that for once
architectural adornments can be studied as
pure sculpture. Of these four statues we
give (in Plate XXVII) the Apollo, which is
[107]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
the statue on the left of the main entrance
to the Loggetta, and the Minerva, which is
the farthest towards the left, or south. If,
in addition to these we could give the other
two statues of the series, the lovely Madonna
group in terra-cotta which this same Log
getta holds, like a shrine, the Bacchus of
the National Museum of Florence, the St.
James in the Cathedral of Florence, and the
St. Julian carved above the door of the
church dedicated to him in Venice, we
should note in them the same restrained and
yet powerful modelling that is seen in the
Apollo. There are other noble Madonnas,
in Venice and in Rome. The huge statues
at the head of the great out-of-door stairs in
a courtyard of the Doge's Palace in Venice,
the Neptune and the Mars which give that
beautiful perron the name of The Giants'
Stairs, are indeed conceived in a different
spirit. In them it seems as if something of
the fire and fury of Michelangelo inspired
their creator, and the yielding to this in
spiration has caused that loss of charm
which comes always when a man is trying
[108]

The Italian Revival
to do that which it is not in his nature to
do successfully. We may regret the willing
abandonment of Michelangelo to force and
violence ; we may regret it deeply, and yet
admire to the full even the work in which
those tendencies showed strongly : but in
the sculpture of the less mighty man, the
lesser genius, the inferior though still clear
and truly creative intelligence, we find the
sculpture of force and violence a little ab
surd. The mission of Sansovino was to pre
serve some of the vanishing charm of the
Risorgimento ; and he was fitted for that by
his simple style, his freedom from manner
ism, and by a feeling for the decorative side
of art such as befitted a Venetian artist.
What he had to do was to provide regular,
seemly, well marshalled fronts for palaces,
— these being the natural exteriors of well
planned, well conceived, well built edifices,
— among them the exquisite library of Saint
Mark, chief of all buildings of the sixteenth
century. He had then to provide as the
adornment of these, amid the multitude of
sculptures of less value furnished by his
[109]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
pupils and followers, two or three clearly
noble conceptions of his own. This is as
much as to say that he came very near to
the position of the modern architect who, if
the Fates should permit, might also be a
sculptor of renown. Is it conceivable that
in our time a man of real force as a sculptor
would deliberately become a master builder
and devote his time to the plan and ordon
nance of noble buildings? Should that
come to pass the world might see — we can
not tell — once more, a true revival of archi
tectural art. One who has filled his mind
with the charm of the early Renaissance
and loves as he ought to love the works of
Donatello and Verocchio, della Querela and
della Robbia, Mino and Rossellino, will be
ready to think the statuary of Sansovino
cold. One who has enjoyed to the full the
grasp and swing of Michelangelo will be
inclined to think the work of his contem
porary tame. This, however, it is safe to
promise, that if a student will compare
again and again the work of the earlier
men and the greater man with the work
[110]

Plate XXVII. — TWO statues, called minerva and apollo; by jacopo sansuvino. in front of
LOGGETTA, CAMPANILE DI S. MARCO, VENICE.

Plate XXVIII. — VIEW in loggia dei lanzi, Florence, the rape of the
SABINES, and HERCULES KILLING A CENTAUR. BY GIOVANNI DA BOLOGNA.
THE STATUE BEYOND IS AN ANTIQUE.

The Italian Revival
of Sansovino, they will find arising in their
thought a respect for the sculptor and his
art, and a constantly increasing suspicion
that the epoch was better than they had
supposed. For that is the curious thing
about the Italian Decadenza as it is about
other periods of decline — the charm, the
grace, the refinement have lingered after
the first impulse is spent.
There is still another famous artist who
was the contemporary of Buonarroti and of
Tatti, that marvellous worker in bronze who
was called by his own name to the day of
his death, violating all the traditions of
Tuscan art and artists. Benvenuto Cellini
was indeed born twenty -five years later than
Michelangelo, but he outlived him only
seven years, so that while his youth is con
temporaneous with the middle age of the
great Florentine, his work done in France for
the famous king of the Renaissance, Francis,
is only just prolonged beyond the other's busy
life. And as Michelangelo, the sculptor,
was at his best in the design and the adorn
ing of monuments, his mightiest thought
[lllj

The Appreciation of Sculpture
and most nearly faultless execution going to
the completion of a tomb, so Benvenuto is
at his best in a wholly decorative bronze,
something which makes no pretension to
grandeur, which is, indeed, a development
and an enlargement of jeweller- work. The
piece which travellers think of immediately,
and which most persons know the best of
the sculpture of the Italian time, the
Perseus under the arches of the Loggia dei
Lanzi, is also, especially if we take it with
its pedestal, the most perfect expression of
this, the lifelong characteristic of Cellini.
The pedestal stands on a block let into the
low parapet, which block on the outer side
shows its whole depth and bears a very cu
rious and elaborate low relief in bronze,
illustrating the famous adventure of Perseus,
the rescue of Andromeda. The pedestal
itself, elaborately wrought in marble, the
corners emphasized by curious consoles, pro
vides four niches in which stand four
statuettes of entirely symbolical meaning.
The guide-books call them Juno, Jupiter,
and what not, but it is not in that way that
[112]

The Italian Revival
the student of neo-classic art reads either
their apparent significance, or their Latin
mottoes borne by the labels beneath their
feet. As for the principal group itself, the
Medusa lies in a most contorted attitude
upon a cushion whose presence puzzles all
the historians, and the body is treated with
a singular mixture of realism and bold
interpretation, the spouting blood itself
wrought in the bronze. Treading down the
body of the slaughtered monster is Perseus
holding up the snaky head, while the great
sword of the god fills his right hand : and
we note that the artist would not injure the
smooth disposition of the left side of his
hero by allowing a scabbard to dangle there
— at least there is the sword-belt, bearing
the only inscription which the artist cared
to give to his work, and ending in a mere
knot through which the blade is assumed to
have been slipped. The marvel of it is
that an artist accustomed to the most
minute and delicate work, and who has filled
this monument so full of detail, should
have cared so little for great refinement of
[113]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
modelling. How did it happen that the
statuettes are better things than the large
statue ? Why are the limbs of Perseus so
unintelligently modelled? Is it really a
matter of scale — and could not the practiced
hand and eye lend themselves to an in
crease in the size of the parts ? Assuredly
the smaller things which we have of Cellini
are better. We should prefer to possess the
famous salt-cellar of the imperial collection
at Vienna, clumsy as are the attitudes of
the two divinities which preside over it.

[114]

CHAPTER VI
ITALIAN DECADENCE — FEENCH TRANSITION
The sceptre was passing from Italy, and
the seventeenth century, in painting, was
for Velasquez and the Dutchmen. In
sculpture the whole of Europe was languid.
It was not a breakdown like that of the
fourth century, a collapse in technical skill
and in knowledge ; but decline was every
where, — decline in taste, in energy, in
definite purpose. And yet there is one
very able sculptor who begins the seven
teenth century for us, and another who
takes up the work as his predecessor lays
it down. Giovanni da Bologna, who died
very old in 1608, is followed by Lorenzo
Bernini, another of the long-lived artists
(1598-1680) ; and these two men have the
largest share in carrying on the work
through the Decadenza, leaving it then to
France. There is always a crowd of sculp
tors around the leaders ; but it is the need
[115]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
of a brief enquiry like this to make one
— the best — man stand for many.
"John of Douay shall work my plan,
Mould me on horseback here aloft,
Alive — (the subtle artisan) ! "
It is in some such words that any Floren
tine noble of the second half of the six
teenth century might have spoken of that
strong Fleming who became an Italian in
his youth, and a Florentine, in spite of his
two geographical surnames. This powerful
artist represents for us a definitely later epoch
than that over which broods the vast in
fluence of Michelangelo ; but he is not a
follower of Michelangelo, not one of the
crowd of imitators who tried to flnd his
strength in his exaggeration.
This artist is best known to our own
times by his famous " Flying Mercury,"
the statue in the National Museum of
Florence representing the youthful god
alighting, as it were, on the point of the
left foot ; but, inasmuch as his gaze is up
ward and his gesture is emphatically one of
uprising, and to be so interpreted — rather
[116]

Italian Decadence — French Transition
to be considered as really in flight, only
bound by the necessities of hard and heavy
matter to be propped on a support. The
true nature of this support when treated as
a part of the design is evident, when we
consider the nature of that mass of bronze
which it forms ; it is a head, as of Zephyr,
breathing out wind ; and as in Cellini's
statue the flowing blood of the Medusa was
rendered in bronze, so here the actual
presence of the wind is given, and it is that
and not the physical and tangible thing
which is supposed to support the wind-borne
deity. Still it was not this piece which
made famous that remarkable sculptor
who, coming to Italy from the far and un
known northwest of Europe, speedily took
the lead in that country of slowly declin
ing art. The excellent suggestion of Louis
Gonse that had John of Douai not steered
his bark towards Italy he would have been
one of the chief sculptors of the French
Renaissance, is calculated to leave us with
a sincere regret that this great contem
porary of Germain Pilon and Bartholom6
[ 117 ]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
Prieur should not have been allowed by
Fate to aid in the development of a new
and vigorous art, destined to flourish with
out serious decline for one hundred and fifty
years, rather than to come in almost at the
close of the artistic epoch in Italy. His
work, though, was done in Italy, and as if
by an Italian ; and as such w^e must take it.
There is in Bologna the bronze fountain in
the great square ; in Florence there is the
fountain in the Boboli Garden, the Rape of
the Sabines in the Loggia dei Lanzi, the
Hercules killing the centaur under the
same vaulted roof; central Italy is full of
his important works, large and small, and
the equestrian statue alluded to in Brown
ing's poem (quoted as in the edition of
1855) — that of Duke Ferdinand in the
Square of the Annunziata in Florence,
seems to have assured his predominant
position among the Italian artists of his
time. This work was not put up till 1608,
and it is well enough for the books to say
that it is not his masterpiece, that pieces of
his youthful prime are finer things, as in-
[118]

Italian Decadence — French Transition
deed it is natural that they should be in
view of the fact that the times were bad
and public taste declining. It is still a
great work, a bold and vigorous piece of
bronze, worthy to adorn the noblest city in
the world — for which, indeed from the art
point of view, Florence may easily be
taken. Plate XXVIII is a view of two of his
pieces as they stand in Florence under the
arcade of the Loggia dei Lanzi. The piece
most in evidence is the seizure of the Sabine
woman, in which there has been found a
great chance to contrast youthful manhood
with vigorous womanhood and with the
forms of old age. The group in the back
ground is Hercules or more probably The
seus killing a centaur ; wrought by Bologna
in 1599, but this group alone would not
have made the artist famous. It is curious
to note how far he has gone in his eager
desire to avoid axaggeration. Violent
muscular action is almost ignored in the
Hercules — the very arm which holds down
the head and shoulders of the struggling
[119]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
monster is only in part made rigid by the
effort, — it is as if it were evident that a force
other than physical were acting here, though
in defiance to sculpturesque expression.
This work, admired as it is and has been,
is a production of the man's old age. But
the Sabine is of 1582 when Bologna was still
short of sixty ; a good age for the master
piece of a vigorous man ; and artists are al
ways a long-lived race. It is a noble group :
and in one respect among the most remark
able works of European sculpture, — in the
faultless lines and masses as shown in all
the hundred points of view which its out-
of-door situation allows.
Plate XXIX presents the work of Gio
vanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680) the
famous architect who was brought from
Italy by Louis XIV and set to work on a
design for a Louvre of Italian majesty.
The scheme failed, the design was not ac
cepted, the famous artist at whose feet lay
the art of Italy had to relinquish his hold
upon France, in which land he left merely
that portrait statue of the great King Louis
[120]

Italian Decadence — French Transition
which was destined to disappear in the
tempests of the Revolution. In Italy Ber
nini is known also as an architect, and it
may well be that his huge colonnades were
even during his lifetime admired by more
persons than could be expected to enjoy his
sculpture. Fully as much as in the case of
Sansovino, fully as much as with the earlier
men, the sculptors of the true Risorgimento,
did Bernini conceive of sculpture as his
own, his personal work, and his architecture
as in a way the secondary achievement
which every powerful and original artist of
the time had need to undertake.
The statue of the prophet Daniel, which
is shown in the plate, is as perfect a piece of
modelling and as simple a piece of thought
as his work affords. There is certainly
nothing in it of that pomposity of which
we accuse his vast architectural composi
tions ; and with a work as dignified as this
and as truly fitted to its purpose of adorn
ing a chapel in a great church of Rome it
is safe to leave, for the present, the study
of the artists of Italy and to approach
[121]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
our last group of sculptors of old times —
of those who still worked and flourished
before the outbreak of the Revolution in
1789. The eighteenth century is a much
abused epoch, but there is noble art in it
still, and France has had the secret known
only to her, of preserving for her artists an
energy of their own in the days of decline,
out of which comes progress again at the
earliest moment.
In the fourth chapter the French sculptors
of the transition were considered very
briefly ; and then the subject led us to
Italy, because it was in Italy that the
Greco-Roman feeling arose and grew strong
— that feeling w^hich was to dominate all
Europe, from the time of its conquest of the
north early in the sixteenth century. We
have not been able to speak of the con
temporaries in France of the great Italians,
Michelangelo, Sansovino, Ammanati, Cel
lini, and John of Bologna ; but the men
among them whom history knows best,
Germain Pilon and Bartholom6 Prieur,
each dying about 1590, would be of equal
[122]

Plate XXIX. — statue of daniel the prophet, by Lorenzo bernini, in
THE CHIGI CHAPEL, CHURCH OF S. MARIA DEL POPOLO, ROME.

Plate xxx. — TOMB of cardinal mazarin, by coysevox: formerly in cha
pel OF college DES QUATRES NATIONS (NOW MEETING ROOM OF THE IN
STITUT DE FRANCE). THE TOMB IS NOW IN THE LOUVRE MUSEUM.

Italian Decadence — French Transition
importance with the contemporary Italians
except in this — that the future was not
with them. The future was not with the evo
lution of mediaeval art ; it was with the study
of neo-classic art and what that art might
bring with it, and this was thoroughly es
tablished in France in the hands of Coysevox
(1640-1720). But unfortunately for the
art of that immediate epoch in the North,
the contemporary work in Italy had al
ready gone through a long period of devel
opment and decline, which double move
ment had occupied two centuries and a half
before Coysevox was of age to do serious
work. Because of this late coming of the
Frenchman as of the other classically
minded sculptors of the North, the style
taken up by them was a bastard one : noth
ing else was possible, at first, while Italy
offered no stimulus. It was vulgar in a
way ; but there is nothing more interesting,
were there time to follow it up, than to
trace the struggle of the more serious artists
of France with the Italian importations,
which they felt to be inferior in intelli-
[123]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
gence, affected and trivial in sentiment.
We shall see in the work of a still later
master a still greater triumph over this
tendency to triviality which marked the
later Italian school. But in Coysevox the
two tendencies struggle with one another.
They contend for the mastery in a way so
visible and pronounced that no one can fail
to see in the tomb of Cardinal Mazarin
(Plate XXX) both the architectonic knowl
edge of the Italian school and its infirmity
of purpose. Those figures which accom
pany the tomb are not satisfactory, they are
not sympathetic, they are neither noble nor
graceful if we are setting up a high standard
for nobility and grace. As compared with
the statues of Sansovino (Plate XXVII),
these figures are lacking in dignity ; as com
pared with those of Bologna (Plate XXVIII)
they are lacking in force ; and yet there is
evidently a grasp of the subject, a power of
modelling the figure in any attitude without
violence as without feebleness ; and in the
portrait statue kneeling above, there is
equally admirable work in a technical way,
[124]

Italian Decadence — French Transition
with what is admitted to be immense merit
in artistical portraiture in a dignified form.
Coysevox left behind him an enormous mass
of work ; he was one of the most diligent
artists and at the same time one of the
most even, for there is little of his great
series which is unworthy of the rest — which
can in any way be said to lower his general
standard. He is best known, undoubtedly,
by his portraits, by such extraordinary
pieces as the bronze bust of Cond6 in the
Louvre, a bust which has evidently served
as a guide to a later artist, as shown in
Plate XL.
We are compelled to take Coysevox aa
the representative of a great many artists
who were nearly contemporary with him,
Nicolas and Guillaume Coustou, Pierre Le
Gros, Martin Desjardins, all Frenchmen —
and Andreas Schliitter of Germany ; but
indeed it was a slack time in sculpture, the
seventeenth century. In the century that
followed they called it with pride le grand
siecle; but that was a political phrase,
coined in honor of le grand roi, Louis
[125]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
XIV, and the political and military
changes of that time. Nobody whose
life was mainly devoted to the inter
ests of the spirit would have called the
seventeenth century a " great " one ; in
spite of the painters mentioned above
(see Page 115) ; in spite of Milton, in spite
of Moliere. Neither in literature nor in
art was it a time of lofty aims or of great
achievement, except in a few lofty souls.
The struggle for the new world and the
settlement of it by Protestants in the
North and by Roman Catholics in the
South: the frightful Thirty Years' War
with all that it involved : the struggle be
tween Puritanism and the old loyalty to
the Church of England : the repeated
efforts of northern Europe with such allies
as it could find to check the ambitions of
Louis XIV : the struggle of the Spanish
succession and that connected with the
English monarchy when William of
Orange was enthroned : these are the
matters which the words " The Seventeenth
Century " call to mind. Artistically the
[126]

Italian Decadence — French Transition
one thing of great and lasting importance
is the growth of the northern post-
Renaissance style in its many varied
forms, but this is almost entirely an archi
tectural development, nor did it help
sculpture to be great and glorious during
that one hundred years.
With the eighteenth century there is in
a way a change for the better. Archi
tecture had indeed grown feebler : there is
still dignity and stateliness and a world of
magnificence, royal in its scale and in its
grandiose character ; but of intense and
absorbing interest there is none. Painting
is, in its turn, inferior in its attractiveness
to sculpture throughout this period.
Among the men who made sculpture
what it was in the eighteenth century there
is none of greater prominence than Jean
Baptiste Pigalle (1714-1785). Contem
porary with him were the youngest
Coustou, Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Falconet,
Pajou, Claude Michel — whom they call
Clodion — Bouchardon and Tassaert ; and
Houdon's youth is contemporaneous with
[127]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
the maturity and age of Pigalle. It is
curious that the epoch which we associate
with triviality and elegant nonsense, the
reign of Louis XV, following that almost
legendary epoch which we call the Regency,
should tell more decidedly in sculpture
than in the more gentle and graceful and
dainty art of the painter ; but the best that
the painters of the day have to show us is
after all the work of Boucher and Chardin,
and how slight and weak is that, in com
parison with the sculpture of the men
whose names are given above !
Of Pigalle the most renowned work is
certainly that Mercury attaching his
Sandal, which is preserved in the collec
tion of Frederick the Great in Potsdam,
while a replica of the figure is in the
Louvre. If it is not chosen alone for re
production here, that is merely because of
its wide celebrity, and because the other
statue given in Plate XXXI is . certainly,
as a piece of pure sculpture, as attractive as
the Mercury itself. This statue, called De
spair (Le Desespoir), is by J. J. Perraud, a
[128]

Plate XXXI. — STATUE OF MERCURY FASTENING HIS SANDAL,
BY J. J. PERRAUD: BOTH IN LOUVRE MUSEUM.

BY J. B. PIGALLE : STATUE CALLED DESPAIR,

Plate XXXII. — STATUE OF PHILOPOEMEN, BY DAVID d' ANGERS: STATUE OF DIANA, BV HOUDON: BOTH IN
LOUVRE MUSEUM.

Italian Decadence — French Transition
man of the nineteenth century ; and it is
interesting to see the very similar treatment
of a similar theme by men living half a
century apart. The faultless straightfor
wardness and simplicity of the modelling,
the clear and dextrous execution as if all
masterhood had come easily to Pigalle, and
the academic fidelity of the later epoch, are
shown in these not very large nor very
elaborate works in an almost perfect
fashion. The bad taste of the times, the
excesses, the fantastical forms, are kept
away from each piece, are pushed one side,
as it were, to allow the tranquil artist to
pursue his work without reference to the
'more trivial fashions of the day.
This same Pigalle was capable of the
quaintness and the whims of the monument
erected in Strasbourg to the Marshal Saxe,
and that indeed, is a conglomeration of
lions and eagles in distress, with the Genius
of France warding off" the attack of Death,
and History and Wisdom weeping at the
foot of the coffin, while floating banners
combine with the bier-cloth to give to the
[129]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
huge composite mass that effect of abundant
drapery which the taste of the times de
manded. In such a work as that the clear
intelligence of the sculptor^ considered as a
sculptor, shines through the real vulgarity
of the crude composition, impossible for
any one to organize aright. The man is still
a sculptor, but neither he nor any one else
could preserve an architectonic disposition
in such a bewildering mass of incongruous
thought. To other artists of the time the fanciful
composition was familiar, but the sculptur
esque power was wanting. It must be held
a glory of the nineteenth century that its
second half sought a real revival of the
sculptor's art. To deal with this is the sub
ject of the following chapters, and it appears
in them that the art in the years following
1850 is to be compared without fear to the
work of all ages since the great epoch of the
Greeks, and to be compared even to that
for our guidance in the true judgment of
art. The sculptors whose great fame fills up
[130]

Italian Decadence — French Transition
the gap which otherwise would be caused
by the revolutionary struggle, Houdon and
David, are still to be mentioned in connec
tion with the last years of the old world.
Jean Antoine Houdon (1740-1828) worked
in France, where his portrait statues consti
tute an epoch by themselves — for that ex
traordinary embodiment of despotism, Cath
erine of Russia, and for the state of Virginia
for which he made the most important
statue of Washington. In France this great
sculptor is best known by the statue of Vol
taire in the possession of the Th6^tre Fran
gais. But if one were to desire an excellent
school of art for young sculptors seeking for
strictness and reserve combined with energy,
he would do well to gather delicately made
casts of Houdon's draped statues and busts.
The undraped Diana shown in Plate XXXII
was rejected by the jury of the Salon of
1781 because, as it appears, that particular
goddess should not be represented in a nude
statue. What would the critics of that day
have said to the nude Dianas of our own
time? Half a dozen of them are based
[131]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
upon this work of Houdon in their very
inception. Pierre-Jean-David, whom we call from
his birthplace David d' Angers (1789-1856)
would be a modern but that he holds to the
manner of an earlier age. David was al
most alone in the artistic world. Sur
rounded by patriotic Frenchmen who found
in him the one man of force and of char
acter who was still devoted to fine art, his
work was praised beyond its true value, and
for the last thirty years of his life he was
overwhelmed with work — forced beyond his
strength, compelled to undertake what was
not within his scope. And yet the ideal
statue, Philopcemen, shown in Plate XXXII
partly explains the excessive admiration
which a non-artistic quarter-century had
for its most powerful artist.

[132]

CHAPTER VII
RECENT ART, PART I, FORM
Sculpture in the twentieth century is in
a position very different from that of archi
tecture. In a former hand-book of this
series it was necessary to point out the gen
eral truth of the proposition that architec
ture as a fine art was non-existent, the pur
pose of each artist being (in almost every
case) to revive some bygone thought, some
half-forgotten scheme, and to make these
thoughts and schemes do duty afresh and
under new conditions. In sculpture this
has never been the case. There have been
times when sculpture was almost non-ex
istent. Such a time was after the establish
ment of Christianity, after the destruction
of the Roman world. There have been
times when sculpture was feeble and in a
way trivial. Such a time was the second
half of the seventeenth century and the
beginning of the eighteenth, when the
sculptor seemed to have very little to say.
[133]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
There have been times when bad taste
ruled ; or if not bad taste, then a certain
inadequacy of critical faculty, as if vigor
had been eliminated from the world of fine
art and no intelligence was left to tell the
executant how very slovenly were the re
sults of his labor. Such a time existed
during the first half of the nineteenth cen
tury, after the brief reign of Houdon was
over and before the coming of the recent
development of sculpture in France — the
days of the worship of Canova, when his
feebler characteristics were copied and his
feeling for classical art misunderstood ; with
the result that the modelling of Vasse,
Julien, Duret, Lemaire, and Simart carried
it over the earlier achievements of David
d'Angers and Rude : and that the art of
Hiram Powers obtained an European rank.
Such times of languor there have been, but
never has there been a time when sculpture
was conscious re-study of the past. The
pupil has studied the antique, the mature
sculptor has studied it all the harder and
has joined thereto some investigation into
[134]

Recent Art, Part I, Form
the picturesque achievements of the Mid
dle Ages and the gentle grace of the Italian
fifteenth century. But never has the work
of sculpture been a conscious and feven an
avowed remaking of what has once been
successfully and triumphantly made. Ap
parent exceptions to the truth of this state
ment are found in the sculpture of the
earliest Italian students of antiquity — but
they had Christian and ecclesiastical sub
jects to treat and churches and church
fittings to adorn and therefore would not
have done what the Greco-Roman sculptors
did, even had they been so skilled as to
achieve it. The Gothic revivalists in Eng
land after 1850 often copied closely the
mediaeval style of English statues on church
fronts but their practice did not influence
the world of sculptors. One living artist
and another has tried to model a statue
exactly on the lines laid down for him by
his ancient Greek predecessor, but this has
been recognized at once as a piece of study
— either the preparation of a beginner or
the pleasant experiment of the made artist.
[135]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
Sculpture has never been what the fine art
of architecture has been since 1815 in all
the lands of western civilization.
The reason for this difference between
the arts is not far to seek. The art which
is based upon constant study of nature has
nature to revive it continually. This is the
art which we call the art of representation
and of expression ; and such an art sends
its pupils at once to the great school where
they learn afresh what they need most to
know. They look about them, they look
intently at this and that ; they learn to
look profoundly and with the eyes of the
spirit at that which is most important to
their task, and they become artists. In the
decorative arts, however, there is no such
opportunity. It is not in the study of
nature, external, visible, tangible nature,
that one learns how to build wisely and in
a comely fashion, and how to adorn his
building. The traditions once broken, can
not, as it seems, be renewed. The maxims
formerly accepted and now forgotten, can
not, it appears, be rediscovered or replaced.
[136]

Recent Art, Part I, Form
The only decoration which the twentieth
century seems to have within its grasp is
that of the immediate application to the
thing to be adorned of parts of its stock of
material gained from the study of nature ;
of thoughts directly arising during such
study of nature. It has learned to record,
and to select from the great stock of natural
objects, forms, colors and combinations. It
tries in a hesitating way to apply some of
this to the vase or the tray : but it cannot
design a vase or a tray.
Our present business, then, is with the
encouraging study rather than with the un
promising one. And we will divide the
examination of the sculpture of our time as
follows : —
First, sculpture of pure form, such as seems
to be undertaken with constant thought of
Greco-Roman work.
Second, sculpture of sentiment, a thing
almost unknown to the great past, and
therefore of peculiar importance to the
modern world in the cases where it remains
sculpturesque. [137]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
Third, sculpture used for immediate
decorative purpose, a thing made difficult
by the feebleness of the fine art of archi
tecture, but resulting in a few cases in in
teresting and even promising works of art.
There are, of course, many examples
which partake of two or more of these three
characteristics. Thus, there is many a group
which belongs at once to the second and to
the third category. Again there are cases
which leave one in doubt ; for is it not evi
dent that the statue first hereafter men
tioned might be treated equally well under
the first and under the second head ?
That statue, to which the first place is
given, not at all because of any supreme
excellence (good as it is), is that by Alfred
Boucher, 1 la Terre (Plate XXXIII). The
reader will probably note at once that this
statue is not classical in its proportions or in
the treatment of its details. It is a realistic
study ; but it is a study of form alone. It
is so far from being classical in spirit that
one might say without much fear of contra
diction that no Greek or Greco-Roman
[138]

Plate XXXIII. — STATUE, A l.i terre; by Alfred boucher (b. 1850).

Plate XXXIV. — statue by chas. h. niehaus (b. 1S55), decorating the
drake monument at titusville, penna.

Recent Art, Part I, Form
artist whose work we possess would have
dreamed of producing anything so minutely
studied from nature in all its parts. The
famous Farnese Hercules in the British
Museum is a study of the exaggerated
muscles which might be supposed to give
the physical explanation of the godlike
force of the Greek hero Herakles, or of the
Roman caricature of him called Hercules :
but we all detest that statue, nor would any
modern writer dream of pointing to it as an
example of anything that is worthy of our
study in what remains of the past. The
student may, if he likes, turn from this
statue of the digger also, but he should first
note that there is here no attempt to render
anything preterhuman in the size or the
disposition of the muscles. In fact the
starting of the veins to the surface is ex
pressive rather of human weakness ; for al
though it is good " to have the circulation
near the surface " both for horse and for
man, yet the high relief of the swollen veins
is a confession that the powers are being
strained beyond their normal endurance.
[139]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
It is a faithful study of how a powerful man
uses his power, the visible results of a great
and long-continued strain being shown in
the whole body and all the limbs ; for that
is precisely the end proposed — that the ac
tion of all the important muscles together is
necessary for such an effort. The student
will then consider whether these manifesta
tions are truthful in a high sense as express
ing forcibly the way in which the limbs and
the trunk portray the effort which they are
called upon to make ; and also whether such
conventions as are used, are used to the best
advantage ; and again whether it has been
conventionalized enough. Is there or is
there not an undue insistence upon the hol
lowing of the soft part behind the collar
bone, and the pulling of the muscles at
their points of adhesion to the breast-bone ?
Would it or would it not be better to retain
some of that Greek reserve which never
allowed the over-complete expression of
violent exertion, which expression may
easily be ugly ?
It may be well to compare with this an im-
[140]

Recent Art, Part I, Form
portant American conception. The Driller,
by Charles Niehaus (see Plate XXXIV), a
statue intended to adorn a tomb, and sug
gestive of that well-sinking for mineral oil
of which we think so much. The work
man is, except in his nudity, the workman
of every day, intensely occupied with what
is, after all, an every-day piece of work.
This is indeed a frank attempt to study the
pure art of the figure under the conditions
of contemporary life. The modern man
studied without drapery, is not a Spear
Bearer (Doryphoros), nor an idealized por
trait to be set upon a tomb, nor yet is he
deified. The question comes up at once
whether it is profitable to produce a pa
tiently wrought study from life of the nude
figure engaged in any conceivable occu
pation of our own time. In The Hewer
by Mr. George Gray Barnard the same
thought is expressed, the same effort has
been made ; and these two American stat
ues may well be compared each with the
other or with the Greek figures of kindred
import shown in this book, or to be seen
[141]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
elsewhere, that we may note the difference
of conception between the Greek and the
modern man. Thus it would not take
long for most students to ascertain that
there is much more of the classical feeling
in The Driller than there is in The Hewer.
Most persons looking at the two statues or
at any two photographs of them, will feel
an immense superiority in artistic charm of
the first named, which is also the earlier
produced of the two. Whether or not it
was proposed by the sculptor of the Hewer
to express a less perfected form of the body
of man, it will be felt by most persons
that there is something of that character
about it. It is in a way formless ; the dig
nity of sculpture seems not to have been
given to it. In the Niehaus statue, how
ever, there is much dignity, and one is re
minded of a more entirely classical compo
sition, that figure which was exhibited in
the first show of the National Sculpture
Society and which then reminded us of The
Scraper (Apoxyomenos) of the Vatican,
though that was, as it seemed, a conscious
[142]

Recent Art, Part I, Form
study of antiquity and this is merely a
study from life carried out in the spirit of
one who loves antiquity.
Such another work of art is The Racers,
also by Boucher (see Plate XXXV). This
work, of which the proper name is Au But
— " At the Goal," is again non-classical in
its treatment, and essentially so in the types
of forms, which have nothing of the grace
and little of the non-intellectual character
of the Greek statue of The Athlete, properly
so called. We will consider this group in
the present section under the first heading,
merely, because it is a study of the nude
form alone, without even the remotest con
sideration of sentiment (for the eagerness to
win is not a sentiment at all, but a part of
that brutality which nature uses to keep
her physical forms in energetic life). The
criticism easy to pass upon it is that these
men are not in the attitude of the chosen,
the accepted, the representative, competitors
of the race track. They are not in posi
tion — let that position be what you will.
The answer is, of course, first, they are not
[143]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
now in the regular form of the race — they
are instantly approaching the goal and
each hopes to be the first to lay his hand
upon it. But again the real and sufficient
answer is that the sculptor did not promise
to his audience a study of " good form " in
athletics. He has promised and he offers a
sincere study of the comely bodies of young
men in most violent exertion in the way
of rapid movement, different at once, and a
contrast to the stillness of the digger in the
ground (Plate XXXIII).
Let us consider now (Plate XXXVI) one
of the great achievements of Auguste Rodin ;
the statuette called la Danaide, one of the
daughters of Danaos. This work is one of
the most marvellous productions of the
greatest modern student of the human
form. The attempt is twofold. There is
first the deliberate choice of a pose which
shall allow of the least available detach
ment from the block of marble ; and second,
a posture extremely difficult to model
aright, and affording a most excellent op
portunity to enlarge and to display the
[144]

Plate XXXV. — group, au but; by Alfred boucher (b. 1850),

Plate XXXVI. — small statue, une danaide; by auguste eodin (b. 1840).

Recent Art, Part I, Form
artist's profound knowledge of the external
characteristics of humanity. It cannot be
thought that any sentiment is purposely
expressed. We assume, of course, that a
Danaide is a young woman in distress,
whether we take her to be a bride with
orders which she dares not disobey, to mur
der her new-wedded husband, or a sufferer in
Hades undergoing a ceaseless punishment
for a crime committed on earth. In any
case the Danaide, like the Foolish Virgin
of Christian legend, is assumed to be a
young woman in deep distress. This was
the reason, perhaps, why the figure is called
by this name ; but it cannot be thought
that the attempt to express any profound
suffering was present in the artist's mind.
So in the interesting pair of busts by Guil
laume, called The Gracchi (Plate XXXVII)
we are not to suppose that the sculptor was
in any very special way an admirer of those
would-be reformers of the decaying repub
lic ; he was impressed with the charm of
those monuments found on the Campagna
of Rome, on which the half-figures of hus-
[145]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
band and wife are set side by side and com
bined into a group by touch or gesture ;
and he thought of the similar and yet con
trasted pair of busts expressing in attitude
the common life of two young men, broth
ers and fellow patriots. The document upon
which they lay each his right hand is a
mere " property " ; it has nothing to do
with the sculpture considered as a work of
art, but only with the little affectation of
the Roman name of the group. You are
reminded by this paper of the struggle
made by the brothers Gracchus to restore
or reform the commonwealth : but this is
of so little importance that a person who
had never heard of those two episodes in
Roman history might easily find exactly
as much pleasure in the group as a Roman
izing republican of the time of the French
Revolution. What is important is the
casting of the drapery, a study of what is
taken conventionally as Roman rather than
Grecian distribution of folds, and suggest
ing but in part the actual tunica and toga.
In other ways, as in the close-cropped hair,
[146]

Plate XXXVII. — half-length group, the gracchi; by j. b. c, e. guillaume (b. 1822).

Plate XXXVIII. — group of lions, by a. n. gain (k. 1822).

Recent Art, Part I, Form
the shaven face and the general type of
man, either head and bust is Roman
enough for the purpose, but not so delib
erately classical that its essential character
as a piece of independent sculpture is at all
disguised. '<
It is much easier, in connection wdth
works such as these which we have just
now dealt with (Plates XXXIII to XXXVII
inclusive) to understand the true spirit of
every sculptor who is worthy of his place
in the fraternity. The question for the
sculptor himself is not how he is to express
a certain epoch, a certain race of men, a
certain incident, a certain sentiment — not
so much these or any one of them, as How
to produce a beautiful work of art. What
ever the historical, or associated, or ethno
logical thought in the sculptor's mind may
have been, it disappears when the work is
in hand, leaving nothing to occupy the
artist's thought except the production of a
noble work of art. If it be not so — if eth
nology, or history, or religious enthusiasm,
or patriotic excitement sway him too far,
[147]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
the work of art is certain to suffer by the
substitution of the foreign set of thoughts,
for those which appertain to sculpture alone.
It is, as has been said, more easy to judge
of the sculptor's own work when there is
the simplest, even the barest set of thoughts
of non-artistic character. Let us consider,
then, the strange phenomenon of the
nineteenth century, the appearance of beast
sculpture and bird sculpture as the principal
subjects for really monumental works of
art. Art has always known the beast of
chase and the beast of prey as a part of
human sculpture. The herdsman needs
his oxen, the hunter his stags and all the
rest of it, but rarely has it been the case
that sculpture has dealt with the bull, the
horse, the elephant as the prime subjects of
its work. Antiquity knew such sculpture
as this, a fact which has been revealed to us
by the excavations at Herculaneum and at
Pompeii, and which is recorded for us in
the bronze collection at the Naples Museum ;
but we know little of how the horses and
stags at Herculaneum were set up in
[148]

Recent Art, Part I, Form
place ; and it really was a bold thing for
Barye to fill the middle of the nineteenth
century with his struggling and prowling
beasts of prey — works which he alternated
with highly classical groups of athletes and
centaurs. Nor was Barye left long alone in
this pursuit. The ferocious creatures of
Auguste-Nicolas Cain succeeded them, and
went even a step farther in realism as well
as in the size and monumental importance
of the pieces. Thus the lion and lioness
(Plate XXXVIII), concerned with the car
cass of a boar which the lion proposes to
have to himself until he has had his fill,
form a group of great dignity in spite of the
vigorous action which it suggests. Such
action is carried farther in other pieces, and
there are those groups of the great cats
which are repulsive in their torturing
struggles, the violent deaths which they
are about to die, their ferocity, their greed. .
It is a side of nature to be ignored when
one is not compelled to face it, and in art
one is never compelled to face it. More
agreeable is the study of creatures which
[ 1^9 J

The Appreciation of Sculpture
have dignity without ferocity. When the
Trocad^ro Palace was built in time for the
exposition of 1878, there were set up, at the
four corners of the tank or basin into which
ran the cascade from the Chateau d'Eau,
four magnificent beasts, the horse by Cain,
the elephant and the rhinoceros by Fremiet,
and the bull of Jacquemart : and these are
splendid decorative objects forming as com
pletely as a simple composition can, a
worthy setting to this interesting architec
tural centre. The last named piece forms
the subject of our Plate XXXIX. These
animal sculptures are to be taken as seriously
as any study of humanity, the purpose be
ing the same as that in the noblest works of
human sculpture, namely, fine decorative
and purely artistic effects, with this only
drawback, that to our eyes the forms of man
kind are more subtile and therefore are cap
able of being far more noble than those of
the lower animals.

[150]

Plate XXXIX. — decorative figure, the bull, by a. h. m. jacquemart (b. 1824).

Plate XL. — ideal portrait of the prince of conde, victor of rocroy;
BY CANIEZ.

CHAPTER VIII
recent art, part II, SENTIMENT
The second of those divisions into which
we have parted, rudely enough, the sculp
ture of our contemporaries (Page 137), is
concerned with Sentiment. In this connec
tion, of course, there is room for infinite
failure to understand — there is room for
quite immeasurable differences of opinion
as to what should go into the monumental
and what into the sympathetic group. For,
to consider at once such a piece as the
very attractive one at the Ecole Militaire,
the statue, an ideal portrait, of Le Grand
Conde (Plate XL), we note that an ideal
statue is at once a decorative piece intended
to adorn a hall, a frontispiece of a great
building, or the like and a study in patri
otic or purely historical record. The artist
is free to study the known portraits of his
subject as far as he pleases, and in this very
instance Mr. Caniez had an excellent con
temporary original to study — Coysevox'
[151]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
bust of Cond6 now in the Louvre. He is
also at liberty to stop where he pleases.
There is really no check upon him in that
direction ; and if Mr. Caniez had fancied
that he could make a better hero of the
Field of Rocroy than that which contem
porary portraits had preserved for him, he
would have felt at liberty to study his own
conceptions rather than the bust named
above, or the one preserved at Chantilly.
Consider, then, this piece as an ideal sculp
ture, intended to express that kind of hero
ism which we accept as being of the time of
transition between the Middle Ages and
modern times, that shifty, dexterous, polit
ical heroism which knew how to be bold
and effective at the right time, and at the
right time knew how to defer to royalty, to
play the courtier, to seize without hesitation
on advantages which might offer them
selves. Ideal portraiture has always been
interesting, and many sculptors have pre
ferred it, it would almost seem, to all other
forms of the sculptor's art. Take one
of a different character, the monument
[152]

Plate XLI. — monument to the admiral gaspard de coligny; by crauk:
decorating the apse of the oratoire, at PARIS.

"¦¦"'¦^r'T'-''^'''""*-'** " "^" yi'j' I'WijSJ^i'ai

By the courtesy of Charles Scribner's Sons.
Plate XLII. — BEONZE statue of Michelangelo; by paul wayland bartlett, in the library of con
gress, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
to Gaspard de Coligny (Plate XLI). This
work is on the north side of the Rue
de Rivoli at Paris, part of the apse
of the Oratoire, and therefore is monu
mental sculpture. As such we might con
sider it in a future chapter, but, as for
our present purpose, the ideal portrait is
much the most important part of the whole
group. This might be treated with unre
served dignity as a statue altogether heroic ;
because those who care for the famous
admiral, the first and most celebrated victim
of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve,
care for him very much, and, in a certain
fashion as for the hero of their cause. It is
treated in a way far more abstract than that
which is allowed to the Conde. Even the
costume is handled with reserve, though
most carefully studied from the monuments
of the time.
With these is to be compared a piece as
important as they, the Michelangelo of Paul
Wayland Bartlett (Plate XLII). In this
work a really interesting thought has been
embodied ; the thought that Michelangelo
[163]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
was in his person not the lordly being that
we think of as we study his art ; but a
slender, not lusty, not triumphant looking
man at all, small rather than large, with
disfigured face and with but little charm of
personality. The treatment of him as a
stone mason with leather apron and all the
signs of vigorous manual labor, is only a
suggestion of that tradition of the great
sculptor, the well known story of the
handling of the marble himself with strong
and regular hammer blows " taking off"
great pieces so that danger seemed to
threaten the outlines of the sculpture."
The conditions of such sculpture are in
deed of the most interesting possible. They
connect in a curious way the study of the
beautiful form, interesting form, suggestive
form taken by itself, with our historical
recollections and our personal affinities.
One sympathizes with the rich man who
paid Rude for an ideal statue of Napoleon
Bonaparte ; with the builders of the Oxford
museum and their life-size portrait statues
of Bacon, Leibnitz and Newton ; with the
[154]

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
similar calling up of old times in the
Library of Congress at Washington, of which
the statue Plate XLII is an important part.
In a curious way it is the reverse of the old
custom according to which the persons of
our own time are travestied into heroes of
Greece and Rome. Greenough 's Washington
east of the capitol, is not at all a work of
art which should be ridiculed. There is no
better specimen of that class which includes
those stately Roman emperors which are
ranged along the walls of the Museo
Chiaramonti — a deified Trajan and alas !
also a deified Commodus. So when the
sculptor wished to give King Frederick the
Great the representation of his military
following in classical costume, the king (or
the queen acting for him) pointed out that
it was not a case of Roman soldiers, that it
was Prussians who were wanted. This hint
was not given to the great Frangois Rude
when he was at the point of undertaking
his most renowned, perhaps even his
greatest work, the splendid Departure for
War ( " La Marseillaise " ) on the Paris
[155]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
front of the Arc de I'Etoile. Plate XLIII
shows this colossal group in its completeness,
and gives one a thrill of regret that there
was absolutely no realistic thought as to the
costume and the personages allowed the
artist, that he was left to the notions of the
revolutionary epoch as to what would look
warlike — that he armed his heroes, young
and old, with pieces of plate armor and
shirts of mail gathered promiscuously from
a great museum of all the history of the
past. It is no great matter here ; the vigor
and rush of the composition is everything ;
it is almost as absurd to find fault with the
linked mail of the foreground heroes, as it
is to object to the lorica worn by the fero
cious Bellona, who cheers her hosts on to
war ; and yet one would like so much to see
what Rude would have done with the dress
of his own time, as worn by soldiers called
out on the lev^e en masse — a touch of realism
in this great work would have been so great
a strengthener of the patriotic sentiment !
One would have liked those improvised
warriors, the armed and arming citizens,
[156]

.^^»;.. ....^*'-^^,^-'j.b..iaaa^.>.:i..fcjtoi-a~— "^'-<i*ii uii. ^WmttdlMiltttttU

Plate XLIII. ALTO relief called "la Marseillaise;" by franqois rude,
(1784-1855); ONE of the four GREAT GROUPS ADORNING THE ARC DE
l'eTOILE, AT PARIS.

Plate XLIV. — the four quarters of the world, group by jean-baptiste carpeaux.
A. THE plaster cast AS E.KHIBITED.
B. THE BRONZE IN LUXEMBOURG GARDEN.

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
much better, had they been Frenchmen of
1789 in dress, in form, in face, in bearing.
Closely connected with this matter of
ideal portraiture is that metaphorical or
symbolical sculpture of which we have so
much. The beginnings of American art
accept the symbolical as readily as does the
developed art of the French. Jean Baptiste
Carpeaux' group, The Four Quarters of the
World following one another in order as
marking the revolution of the Celestial
Globe, is not more completely the embodi
ment of such abstract ideas than are the
sculptures with which the Americans of our
own day adorn in plaster the great exposi
tions as they succeed one another, or com
plete in stone and bronze the permanent
buildings of the great cities. Plate XLIV
gives this important group in two aspects,
the difference in the accessory picture being
merely in this — that the one photograph is
from the plaster model shown at the Salon
in 1872, the other from the bronze in the
Luxembourg Garden, put in place about
1876. This work is of peculiar interest to
[157]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
students of sculpture because there is seen in
it the striving of the two powerful tenden
cies — the one towards a pronounced discrimi
nation between the forms of different races of
mankind — the other, the classical tradition
which says that the form of man or of
woman is to be modelled according to a cer
tain standard — not a formula so much as a
habit of mind when the sculptor takes
modelling tools in hand. Thus if we were
to refer as to an authority to the careful
book by Dr. C. H. Stratz, ," Die Rassen-
schonheit des Weibes," we should be led to
believe that these Carpeaux statues of the
negress, the Asiatic woman and the red
woman of America, were feeble reflections
of the marked and emphatic facts of nature
as shown in the woman of the white race ;
but then a second thought would suggest —
a second examination would show — that the
modelling of the European figure also was
an abstraction. The body of the woman is
not so made in any race that has ever lived
on earth. Feminine beauty is one thing ;
the beauty of a female statue is another,
[158]

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
so remote from the natural beauty from
which it takes its origin that you feel
as often the remoteness as the resemblance.
There are opportunities enough in this
treatise to dwell upon the same truth with
regard to the form of man ; but there is,
perhaps, not so good an opportunity to con
sider this general truth when it relates to
the form of woman.
Of course this strongly marked charac
teristic is in no way a fault ; neither is it to
be imputed to any sculptor as a merit. It
is simply in the nature of the art as we
now know it, as we inherited it from gen
erations of ancestors as wise as we ; as we
find it embodied if we look back to the
works of our real masters, the Greeks.
The Aphrodite of the Capitol (Plate XI)
is indeed a realistic conception. The Aph
rodite of Melos (Plate X) is an extremely
conventional one, a figure carried far in
deed towards a controlling, universal ideal ;
yet it would be hard to say that the ex
tremely naturalistic statue in Rome is
more truly an actual copy of the form of
[159]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
woman than is the abstract and goddess
like figure of the Louvre. In like manner
the group by Carpeaux is modelled with
strict reference to a monumental effect.
The four figures have to be a little more
powerfully built, and a little less exclu
sively feminine in modelling, in pose, and
in seeming action, because they have to
lead up to that superincumbent mass. For
the same reason they are a little taller, a
little less compact and stocky than the
artist would find the women of most of the
four races portrayed. In like manner,
again, the supposedly inferior forms of
negress and American are of necessity
treated more in the line of purely classical
standards of excellence because of their im
mediate connection in the group with the
entirely ideal European figure. All these
considerations worked together, as they
must work in the mind of so powerful and
altogether competent an artist, to produce
a work absolutely remote from realism in
the strict sense. J. Q. A. Ward, in his
Freedman, the statuette of 1863, and in his
[160]

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
Indian Hunter of Central Park, has made
careful studies of the form of man of the
black and of the red race, and his purpose
was in those cases strictly descriptive ; his
business was to attract sympathy for the
newly freed black of the southern states,
and for the naked hunter of the plains.
Just so far, then, as he was employed in
recording the peculiarities of these two
races of men, his work may be thought to
be non-artistic — to be in a sense that of the
historian rather than of the artist ; for al
though the artist has often dealt with that
which is less than perfectly matured, or
perfectly composed, or perfectly developed,
and although he makes of that very de
ficiency a quality peculiar to his work of
art, the production of that abnormal qual
ity is, in a sense, the forcing of the artistic
thought away from its due severity of con
centration. The Indian Hunter is an ad
mirable group of man and dog, but the
lover of sculpture would be glad to replace
it by an equally thorough and complete
study of a man of the highest known race,
[161]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
idealized as to his figure according to the
noblest Greek tradition, and posed in a
more strictly graceful attitude. The reader
will note that it is not here suggested that
all studies of inferior forms should be des
troyed to make room for ideal statues.
No one who loves book illustration of high
quality, or who cares for grotesque art, for
caricature, for the exaggeration of archaic
or of decadent art, no one, in short, who
has a catholic taste in art, would wish to
see the amount of that sort of sculpture
which is removed from the great central
stream of tradition diminished or hidden
away in corners. All that one asks is a
great increase in number of the sculptures
of ideal perfection.
The sentiment of ordinary human life as
distinguished from the purely artistic senti
ment of grandiose sculpture is, of course,
more easily obtained in figures represented
with the clothing of the sculptor's own
time. It becomes, therefore, one of the
most interesting of the minor considera
tions in sculpture to note the way in which
[162]

Recent An, Part II, Sentiment
the artist sometimes tries to simplify mod
ern costumes into the semblance of antique
severity ; and on the other hand how he
enjoys sometimes the investing of the dress
of his figures with the accessory splendors
of embroidery and jewelry. Both are rec
ognized devices of the artist, and either is
acceptable ; but it is the former, the simpli
fying of dress, the rendering of the essential
and abstract, that one must often treat in
considering sculpture of dignity.
Plate XLV shows a group by Albert Le
feuvre which was exhibited in the Salon of
1878 and again in the Triennial Exhibition
of 1883. It impressed those who saw it in
its crowded surroundings as a group of
singular significance, both artistic and
pathetic. On their way home from the
field where their toil has been severe, the
two laborers stop by a brook, and the man
lies down to drink from the flowing water.
Thoughtful, patient, the woman stands
waiting. The spectator is not told whether
she has had her refreshing drink or whether
she is waiting for that as well as for her
[163]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
companion. It is in that way that living
groups appeal to us ; and here is an attempt
to leave just as much of the situation unex
plained as in the case of the living group.
We, the spectators, wait also, but we shall
not see the figures move. Meantime we are
left with a satisfied sense of human beauty
and human character well and nobly ex
pressed. One might easily ask for a more
complete realization of the matter of costume
in that an ampler dress be given to the man
— something as adequate as the excellently
devised dress of the woman. It seems like
shirking a difficulty to leave the torso, the
shoulders and arms naked in a statue of the
modern sort.
The touching group by Camille Lefevre
shown in Plate XLVI is an example of
pathos, of patient suffering carried as far as
the artist has a right to go — as far as the
spectator can be expected to follow him.
The dress here is that of the Paris street in
winter. Child and mother alike are pro
tected from the cold by such rough gar
ments as their poor fortunes allow. The
[164]

Plate XLV. — group, apres le travail; by lefeuvre.

Plate XL\ I. — statue or group, dans la rue; by ca.mille lefevre.

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
Woman is trying to sell fruit from a poor
little basket in which we think is invested
all her capital. Exposure, anxiety — not
starvation exactly, but short commons often
— prevailing, and the presence of frequent
and bitter tears have modified the mother's
countenance, and the expression of that new
face as of one created expressly for her
changed condition, is contrasted with the
entirely tranquil and merely pensive face of
the child. The figure is admirable in its
pose, as would be visible if we could com
pare several views of it ; and the great ques
tion for the student to consider is, probably,
whether the art of the sculptor should be
forced so far out of its path into the way of
the painter, which may be the delineation
of human sorrow and joy ; or, indeed, into
the way of the poet using the language of
words, to whom such sentiment is the chief,
the greatest of his subjects of thought.
Turning now to a very different group, to
a piece of painter's sculpture in every sense
of that term (see Plate XLVII), the group
which is set upon the pedestal of the statue
[165]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
to Alexandre Dumas has that complexity
of non-artistic significance one looks for in
the works of Gustave Dore, himself not a
sculptor by the habit of his life. The
monument is in the Place Malesherbes, and
was erected by popular subscription. We
are concerned now rather with the thought
expressed by the group of readers. A young
woman is reading intently from a romance
of Alexandre the Great and there are listen
ing to it two — one of whom — like the en
thusiastic and literary-minded youth that
he is — cannot keep from watching the page
over his sister's shoulder. The other lis
tener, a much older man, in the dress of a
workman in the heavy labors of the forge
and the machine-shop, is not so much ac
customed to take in his information through
the eyes, and he listens with all his ears
while he looks abroad over the landscape.
That is a true memorial to Alexandre Dumas ;
it is in that way that the French people
of all classes of society except the severely
literary on the one hand and the very low
est and least educated on the other, are in-
[166]

Plate XLVII. — group, the rfaders of dumas; by gustave dore, from
THE monument TO ALEXANDRE DUMAS; PLACE MALESHERBES, PARIS.

Plate XLVIII. — RELIEF, the army; by
FROM THE PLASTER MODEL.

FREDERICK macmonnies (b, 1863);

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
fluenced by the enchantment of the great
popular writer, the vulgarisateur as he called
himself. It is interesting to follow the sub
ject farther and enquire how the sculptors
of different schools and different moods
would consider those peculiarities of group
ing and of pose which distinguish essentially
this remarkable composition. The concen
trating of the triple group at top, and again
below, where the six feet are grouped in a pic
turesque and wholly realistic series of poses,
seems to the writer an admirable and truly
sculpturesque thought, although originating
in the artistical conception of a fantastic and
unrestrained book illustrator — a master at
once and a slave, of wild exaggeration.
Military patriotism of the popular sort
has been touched upon in this enquiry in
what has been said of the famous group by
Frangois Rude on the great triumphal arch
of Paris. The contemporary understanding
of it may be thought to be well expressed
in the reliefs by Frederick W. MacMonnies,
on the memorial arch in Brooklyn. Plate
XLVIII, shows the model of this work as ex-
[167]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
hibited at Paris, and there may be noted in
it the same disposition to mingle symbol
ism and reality which we find in the ex
ample shown in Plate XLIII ; though here
there is a step taken farther towards real
ism in the free use of the uniforms of the
day. It must always be a moot point — the
propriety of this mingling of the real and the
wholly imaginary ; the Bellona leading a
crowd of riflemen, the Greek Victory blow
ing a clarion to guide or to stimulate sol
diers furnished with firearms of precision
and coming on with fixed bayonets. In
the case before us there is a Roman legion
ary eagle visible in the background and
there is something about the armor of the
winged Victory which suggests to us the
time of the great Empire ; but that is in
different. When we were told, last year,
that the recently-ordered paintings in the
Memorial Hall of the Boston State House
were to be historical and not symbolic,
some persons rejoiced, and their pleasure
was confirmed when two at least of the
four paintings proved to be strictly pictures
[168]

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
of record — treated in an imaginative way in
deed and admirable as compositions in form
and in color, but still historical pictures,
with no suggestion of anything more than
the day and the event which the picture
had to commemorate. There may be per
sons who like the other two pictures all the
better that they add the symbolism of
Patriotism and Victory, or Courage and
Virtue, or other embodied principles min
gled with their historical character ; and so
in this case it is not submitted as a neces
sarily erroneous course to follow, this in
which the body, which is the purpose and
ultimate aim of sculpture, is to be traced
beneath the buttons and military costume
in the one case, beneath a scale-coat with
pauldrons in the other case ; or that the
ugly k6pi of the nineteenth century soldiers
is contrasted with the beautiful helm of the
goddess. In either case the piece must
stand or fall by its merits as a work of
sculpture, fine or less fine in its details,
noble or less noble in its composition and
in its main lines. [169]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
The Military Courage of Paul Dubois (see
Plate XLIX) is an ideal figure, well known
because of the immense reputation of the
monument to which it belongs, that beauti
ful tomb of the general Juchault de la Mori-
ciere, of which the architectural disposition
is due to the refined genius of the architect
Boitte. The famous and admirable sculp
tor, Paul Dubois, is one of the Academics,
the chief of those who follow the traditions
of the French school, in doing this neither
worse nor better as an artist. To say that
he is this is merely to account in part for
the severity of his compositions and the
absence from all of them of any very bold
and " new departure " towards undiscov
ered realms. Let us note then, the methods
of an artist taught in the schools which
make Greek perfection of modelling their
aim, but Italian grace of the Renaissance a
secondary object, using indeed the less re
mote experience of Italy in the fifteenth
century to supply that missing knowledge
of the many modifications of Greek sculp
ture which assuredly existed, though we of
[170]

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
the modern world know them not. Italy
and Greece alike recognized all this accou
trement of the partly-clothed military figure,
the nude throat, arms and legs, the body
clothed in a leather tunic, the feet in leath
ern buskins of which it is true the design
is very realistic indeed, the panther's skin
worn on the shoulder as an additional de
fense, or for warmth, or as a trophy. The
figure so clothed is crowned with a helmet
of very independent design, like nothing
actually known of the north or of the south
— of antiquity or of the Middle Ages. The
sword, in like manner, is certainly not an
tique, nor can it be imagined as the
weapon of one of those races whose garb of
fence was as slight and unformed as the
one before us ; it is the sword of the six
teenth century warrior. All of which
means that we have not here an archseo-
logical study at all, but a serious attempt
to create a typical warrior, the success of
the attempt to be gauged by the good taste
shown and the contentment the student
has in accepting it for what it is intended
[171]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
to be. The other three attendant figures at
the corners of the tomb are Faith, Charity
and Wisdom ; it is therefore seen that while
these four qualities are assigned to the dead
man, the famous leader of the last army of
defense on which the Papal government
could rely as against Garibaldi, so the
artistic character of each one of the figures
must be as abstract as this one. It would
not do to make a Sister of Charity or a nun
or a professor of the Sorbonne of any one
of the other three figures, because that would
be to connect our hero — the dead man —
to many narrow and temporary systems of
thought for which he is not to be held re
sponsible. Indeed, it does not require much
argument to show the probable necessity of
treating such an embodiment of Courage
in the abstract way in which it is treated
here. And now to take up one of the most
complex achievements of modern times and
one about which there must, of necessity,
be many diverse and clashing opinions —
take the Monument to the Dead in the
[172]

Plate XLIX. — statue, military courage; by paul Dubois (b. 1829) from
THE monument TO GENERAL LA MORICIERE IN THE CATHEDRAL AT NANTES;
from the PLASTER AS EXHIBITED.

Plate L. — LE MONUMENT DES MORTS; BY' ALBERT BARTHOLOME. PLASTER STUDY
FOR THE MONUMENT ERECTED IN THE CEMETERY OF PERE-LA-CHAISE, PARIS.

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
cemetery of Pdre la Chaise, the work of
Albert Bartholom6 ; Plate L shows the
full disposition of the monument as exhib
ited in the large model in the exposition of
1900, and this arrangement of the sculp
tured figures is that which was exactly fol
lowed in the executed monument, although
the architectural forms have been slightly
varied. Our present purpose is most nearly
served by the study of the two figures which,
taken together with the doorway in which
they are engaged, form the central feature
of the whole work. This may be thought
ethical in a high degree, the more touching
that it is so wholly general in its appeal to
humanity. The man and the woman enter
the darkness of the tomb side by side, and
the man is immersed in his own anticipa
tions, not necessarily selfish ones either, but
because it is for him to look ahead. The
woman looks rather to the man, and this
for the giving as well as the taking of such
help as sympathy may afford. It will not
seem to our readers an excessive amount of
" reading in " if we ascribe all this signif-
[173]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
icance to the group before us. Another
question is, however, less certain to be an
swered alike by all students of art — How
far is it wise and expedient to treat the two
nude figures in as off-hand and realistic a
way as this — how nearly may it be con
doned that they are somewhat less charm
ing, each by itself, than the figures of con
vention which we expect to find, and which
we find, in the ideal statues of our times ?
Neither the male nor the female figure is
treated here in the noblest way. Each is
much more closely studied from the living
models, which can never give a result of
dignity or of perfect grace. It was not in
tended, perhaps, to give dignity and perfect
grace to these embodiments of actual hu
manity. The same line of thought, both in
the basic sentiment and in the sculpturesque
conception, is shown in the series of figures
on either side of the doorway. There is
fear and distress, there is resignation and
even what may be thought indifference on
the part of tottering age ; there is farewell
to earth expressed without bitterness, and
[174]

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
there is the expression of tranquil hope.
For all this rendering of daily experience
no classically perfect form of the sculp
turesque ideal would have served the turn.
It was necessary to be realistic ; and the re
sult of the realistic treatment is seen in
what is, after all, a huddled crowd of
studies from the living model. That in
this way a less attractive, a less imposing,
piece of sculpture is obtained is one of the
most important demonstrations which such
an enquiry as this may lead to. Compare
these grouped figures with the Parthenon
relief or statues (Plates I, III and V), or the
Reims statues (Plate XXI), or the Michel
angelo tomb (Plate XXVI), or the Carpeaux
group (Plate XLIV), to learn how much
sculpture owes to those conventions which
separate her creations from the works of
nature which have been her inspiration.
Consider now the extreme appeal to pity
and to affection. The Saint Veronica by
Carli (Plate LI), should be taken as typical.
The legend is that as Jesus fell under the
weight of the cross a woman kneeled beside
[ITS]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
him and wiped the sweat from his face
with her veil, and that upon this veil an
image of the Divine face was found to be
imprinted forever. But this legend suf
fices merely to give a name to the piece.
Its real interest is in the image of serious,
careful and conscious ministry to suffering,
which is made the more plain to our per
ceptions by its associations with the Re
deemer and the Stations of the Cross. It
has always been one of the expedients of
preachers of religion to appeal strongly to
the sympathy of their hearers, and the
great Baptist orator, Spurgeon, was as ready
to insist upon the frightful details of the
suffering of Jesus as any devout Roman
Catholic artist. The question is merely
with the artistic propriety of such strong
appeals to sympathy ; for observe, it is not
now the question whether Christianity, or
any form of Christianity, gains or loses,
but whether the universal doctrine of art
admits of so much passionate appeal to
sympathy. We are led to consider actual portraiture,
[176]

Plate LI. — GROUP, SAINT VERONICA, BY CARLI.

Plate LII.  PORTRAIT ST.\TUE OF THE PHYSICIAN PHILLIPE RICORD; BY E. j..
BARRIAS (b. 1S41).

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
the portraiture of the day. In this there
would be found a full expression of sym
pathy and of the strong personal feeling
which the artist needs if he is to be really
strong, if only we were able to consider
portraits in the presence of their originals.
This can never be ; and portrait sculp
ture is hardly a fit subject for general discus
sion. In portrait painting we look, and
properly, for the evidence of masterly work
manship, noble coloring, and that sort of
grasp of a subject which raises it in its artistic
dress into a high plane of merit. But in
sculpture the requisites of portraiture are a
little less easy to trace, — at least they are a
little less easy to express in words. We
have all seen the portrait bust which is
developed into a noble composition although
the subject is, to us, a very ignoble person
indeed, unattractive in character, unim
pressive in outward bearing. It is a merit
which we all love to recognize, a gift given
by nature but perfected by training, which
enables the artist to make his statue look
like the person represented and yet look,
[177]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
better, wiser, nobler than he. Now in the
case of Dr. Ricord, perhaps no one who
reads this book will be familiar with the
shape and bearing ofthat famous physicist.
But in that statue by Louis Ernest Barrias
(see Plate LII), it is probable that all will
feel the very admirable presence of por
trait art. In the Horace Greeley (Plate
LIII), one of the masterpieces of modern
portraiture in pure form, we have a study
from nature whose accuracy and whose
dignity at once can be more easily verified,
for there are many still living who can re
call the odd, unimposing figure and face of
the celebrated founder of the New York
Tribune — the most unlucky of all candi
dates for the presidency. The awkwardness,
the strange face and figure, had to be noted
by the artist, and the disposition and pose
of the man in his armchair, with the sheet
of manuscript, and the bowed though still
alert attitude as of a person keenly awake
to intellectual questions, is all perfectly in
harmony with the conditions of the prob
lem. It is to be mentioned, also, that the
[178]

Plate LTII. — portrait statue of Horace greeley;
BY J. Q. A. ward.

Plate LIV.  PORTRAIT of the PAINTER JEAN LEON GERU.ME, BY J. B. CAR-
PEAU.X (1827-1875).

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
necessity of placing the statue in front of
the Tribune office, in one of the busiest
corners of New York, and of raising it
above the crowded sidewalk, compelled the
placing of it close beneath the deep and
massive segmental arch, one of the great
openings of the basement story. All these
influences acted together to produce a most
unusual and striking composition, as shown
in the Plate.
On the other hand, in the extraordinary
school of portraiture developed in France
between 1875 and the close of the century,
and embodied the most frequently in heads
alone — mere heads, in each case supported
on its characteristic and individual neck —
it is notable how detached, how vigorous
and even violent these portrait heads
became. The head of the painter, Jean
L6on G6r6me (Plate LIV) by that same
Carpeaux who modelled the Four Quarters
of the Globe (Plate XLIV), is one of the most
spirited of those portrait heads which, as
the visitors to the Salon know well, are
scattered about le jardin year by year,
[179]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
carried out as they are in bronze, in marble,
in terra-cotta, or simply in the plaster casts
taken from the original clay model.
The question of sentiment combined with
portraiture is well set forth in the famous
and really important relief by Dalou (Plate
LV), in which is recorded the resistance of
the Tiers Etat, or the popular branch of
the States General, when in 1789 it was
undertaken by the court to snuff" them out
— them and their attempts at universal re
form — by sending workmen to break up
the room and provide for some fandango
of the court. It was the 23d of June, and
the king had just left the hall, having
issued the most peremptory command that
the Three Orders of the States General
should meet separately, each in its own
hall. Meantime the workmen had already
come in to remove the benches. The Mar
quis de Dreux-Br6z6, who was then master
of ceremonies, came in and asked the presi
dent if he had not heard the order of the
king. To this the president, Bailli, an
swered that he had no power to disperse
[180]

Recent Art, Part II, Sentiment
the assembly without its order. Mirabeau,
one of the deputies, came to the front of
the president's table and, speaking directly
to the master of ceremonies, reminded him
that he had no right of speech or even of
presence in the assembly, and that his or
ders could not be listened to. This epi
sode, one of the most important and re
markable in modern history as the com
mencement of the world of modern politics,
the breaking down of privilege and the in
stallation of democracy, is rendered here
with entire fidelity to surroundings, to cos
tume, to the passions and interests at stake,
and even to fidelity of portraiture ; for
there is no reason to doubt the belief com
monly held among artists and students in
France, that all, or nearly all, of the heads
are studies carefully made from the still
preserved portraits of the time.

[181]

CHAPTER IX
EECENT AET, PAET III, MONUMENTAL EFFECT
It is said elsewhere that there is often
difficulty in distinguishing between sculp
ture of sentiment and sculpture of monu
mental character. In this chapter we con
sider those productions of that art which
are used and presented in a monumental
way, without any attempt to exclude from
this category works which may express
sentiment on the one hand, and on the
other hand may be chiefly studies of sculp
turesque beauty without other significance.
Thus in the famous monument by Daniel
C. French, in The Fenway at Boston, Mas
sachusetts, and erected in honor of John
Boyle O'Reilly (Frontispiece), there is in
deed a very refined and subtile feeling, and
also a very attractive treatment of the prob
lem of the human figure in easy yet cor
relative attitudes : but our main purpose
must be here to consider its monumental
value. The central figure is, of course,
[182]

Plate LV. — RELIEF, BY JULES DALOU (B. 1 838); MIRABEAU ANSWERING DREUX-BR^zfi; MODELLED FOR THE
PALAIS BOURBON (CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES).

Plate LVI. — MONIMENI' to the e.mpress Augusta, near the royal library,
BERLIN; BV H. W. F. SCHAPER (b. 1841).

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
Hibernia, and on the right of this em
bodied nationality sits a figure suggesting
the Military Courage of Paul Dubois (see
Plate XLIX), and standing here for the same
or a similar quality, for O'Reilly was the
soldier by choice and by instinct, and did
what he could to organize military action
in behalf of his fatherland. The figure on
the left of Hibernia is Poetry, and the ges
ture, the movement of the right arm by
which a twig of leaves is offered to Hiber
nia that she may twist this memorial of
the poet O'Reilly in her crown of fame, is
often and rightly praised. The sculptur
esque quality of the group is probably more
marked than in any other work of this
sculptor. And here it may be well to re
mark upon that comparison of this poet in
form to the poet in verse — Longfellow —
which has been made by sincere and ad
miring friends of the sculptor, French.
The resemblance, of course, is in the sim
plicity and homeliness of the sentiment,
expressed on the one hand by the familiar
verse, on the other hand by the simply
[183]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
posed figure or naturally organized group.
The sentiment of a Longfellow poem is apt
to be in the very obvious patriotism of the
warrior, the every-day virtue of the work
man or of the wife, the appeal to memories
of childhood, the association of humanity
with something beyond humanity. Much
in the same way do the conceptions of
French manifest themselves. Gallaudet
Teaching the Deaf Mute, the Milmore
tombstone, with the winged and draped
Death arresting the chisel of the young
sculptor, are both of them illustrations of
this simplicity of aim in the intellectual
reach of these sculptures. But there is in
French's work an immeasurably greater
achievement in the use of the quality of
art than there is in the poems of Longfel
low. These last (the poems) are disfigured
by solecisms ; expressions that are dragged
in for the sake of the rhyme, serious
blunders in taste and in form, which abso
lutely prevent the acceptance of these
poems as of very high rank ; whereas the
technical art of French is always true and
[184]

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
pure, resorting to few exceptionally unfa
miliar devices, achieving its results in a
sufficiently familiar way, but still achieving
them and evidently disappointing no one —
neither the artist nor the students of his
work. A comparison with Tennyson would
be more in the way, one would think, for
the musical charm of the poet may be
matched by the visible rhythm of the
sculptor ; while neither of them has, as it
would seem, a supernal message to deliver.
In comparison with this is to be named
the monument to the Empress Augusta at
Berlin (Plate LVI), a grave and dignified
work by H. W. F. Schaper with an emblematic
subject in the marble bas-relief let into the
pedestal. It is obvious that here the monu
mental impulse carries it over the thought
of portraiture. " Flattery," as Disraeli is
supposed to have said, " is important in
statesmanship, and wherever it is used for
royalty it has to be laid on with a trowel."
Accordingly we do not ask that the statue
of a beloved empress should be realistically
truthful. It is more important that our
[185]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
ideas of a pious, helpful and stately per
sonage be embodied in the work. We are
reminded of the positive order which Na
poleon's Chamberlain sent out early in the
days of the First Empire, calling the atten
tion of the painters of the day to the neces
sity of giving an important military bearing
to the central figure in their compositions.
For there are two main considerations in
a monument which includes representative
sculpture. There is the dignity, the arch
itectonic disposition of the whole design, as
of its great subdivisions ; and there is the
stately character which must of necessity be
given to the principal figures. The first of
these two requirements is at the bottom of
what would otherwise be an absurd — an in
excusable — device, the use of the high ped
estal. In the subject before us the lower
edge of the white marble bas-relief is about
six feet above the neighboring surface of
the pavement, and it is six feet more to the
platform upon which the Empress sits. If,
now, we should look at the portrait statue
with something like the same angle of vi-
[isi;i

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
sioii with which we would approach a living
woman seated in a chair of state raised a step
or two above the floor of a throne-room or
the like, we should have to recede from
the monument for such a distance that the
value of the sculpture could no longer be
appreciated except by the use of a power
ful fleld-glass. Two hundred feet horizon
tally away from the statue would be about
the distance which one would have to re
cede in the case of this Berlin monument.
In reality, most persons (it is a matter of
daily observation) fail to see a portrait
statue or a symbolical group, when raised
in this way upon a pedestal. They fail to
see it as it really is ; they take in the gen
eral outline shown in light against darkness
as in the present instance, or in darkness
against bewildering and modifying light, as
when the sky forms the background ; or
still worse, the outline — that is to say, the
separating edge between the statue and that
against which it is relieved — disappears, and
the subordinate masses of the sculpture as
sume far too great a proportional emphasis.
[187]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
The fault of the high pedestal, the injury
done by it to the piece of sculpture which it
supports and ought to set off, is felt most
strongly in the case of equestrian statues.
That one which a wise writer said was
" after all the only equestrian statue in the
world," the Marcus Aurelius in the Cam-
pi doglio, stands on a pedestal not more, cer
tainly, than nine feet high, and the horse
and man, much larger than life, seem near
to the spectator. But note what the Ro
mans of modern Rome did when " Italy and
Victor Emmanuel " erected a monument to
Garibaldi, on the Janiculan Hill. If there
is any truth in proportion, or if one can
scale the thing at all by a photograph taken
almost exactly in elevation, the horse's
hoofs are thirty feet above the surrounding
level, and that means that the thousands of
visitors will see it from beneath in a way
which makes the belly of the horse and the
boot-soles of the man much the most promi
nent objects, while horse and man alike are
foreshortened in the most ungainly of all
ways. For can you compel spectators to go
[188]

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
away five hundred feet and to use powerful
field-glasses ? Is it alleged that the sculptor
has it in his hands to model his group for
the place it is to occupy ? The answering
doubt is whether it is possible for any
sculptor to achieve that feat when the con
tradiction between the natural requirements
of the student and the natural difficulties
of the place are balanced one against the
other. So with the famous monument at
Venice, that which is crowned by the Col-
leone statue ; is it not the complaint of
every one who visits the City of the Lagoon
that the pedestal is so high ? In fact this
pedestal was a special study, a delight, to
the artist who designed it, and he was too
busy thinking of his order, of the delicately
imagined Corinthian columns of Renais
sance type, to remember what he was doing
to the statue above. For indeed the Campo
where it stands is very small ! We may,
indeed, cross the little bridge and see the
statue from the greater distance, directly in
front of the rider, but for any other point of
view (and that is not the best point of view
[189]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
for the equestrian statue) one is limited to the
eighty foot retreat which is practicable on
either side. It does not appear that modern
arrangements are much more intelligible,
though there are exceptions to the bad rule.
Think of the valuable Thomas equestrian
statue by J. Q. A. Ward, at Washington, on
the high pedestal, which in its turn rises from
the top of a sloping mound of green, which
again is enclosed by a railing — a frank noti
fication to everybody that this particular
statue, one of the most intelligently designed
of modern times, is intended by its owner,
the Municipality of Washington, to be a mere
commonplace of public magnificence — not a
work of art which we are to see. It is true
that this keeping of the spectator at a dis
tance of 120 feet more or less, is a good rule
if no other means could be used to persuade
the spectator that it could only be seen,
placed as it is, from some such distance as
that ; but it is the frank acceptance of the
situation that one complains of — the bold
statement that the equestrian statue has no
message for anybody who is not prepared to
[190]

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
examine it through a spy-glass. This fault
is wholly avoided in the case of the Shaw
Monument on Boston Common. That re
markable production, a huge alto-relief, is
set so that one approaches it close, the Bea
con Street sidewalk leading quite up to the
slight terrace upon which you are free to
stand while you gaze into the details of the
bronze. The monumental effect, the idea,
the bigness, the display of a long and
stately inscription intended to be studied
and remembered, is all relegated to the side
facing the Common, where the ground is
many feet lower and where there are
benches from which you can study the
Latin as well as the architectural ordon
nance at your leisure. Robert Gould Shaw
was colonel of the first negro regiment, and
was killed at Fort Wagner while leading his
troops. He is shown riding beside the men
of his command (see Plate LVII) and the
piece has been greatly in the public eye ever
since the erection of the monument on
Boston Common. There must arise, of
course, the gravest inquiry into the fitness
[191]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
of the composition for an alto-relief on a
large scale set up in the most prominent
place, and forming the greatest part of an
important and prominent monument. For
that purpose it seems to many persons much
too familiar and oflf-hand in its composition.
It is too much like a picture in a book ;
that is to say it is not merely a painter's
rather than a sculptor's work, but it is even
more the work of an illustrator than of a
painter. If produced in a wood-cut on such
a scale that it would go easily into the page
of an octavo it would be more, as it seems
to many of us, in its true place — the design
would be — than when carried out in this
grandiose form. That this opinion is not
universal nor even a general one, is evident
enough, nor is it intended to insist upon
that or any other opinion in these pages ;
but it is quite obvious that we must make
it clear that such an opinion exists and is
held by the most ardent lovers of sculpture.
Like the Sherman monument by the same
artist, recently set up in New York, and
which there has been hardly time as yet to
[192]

Copyright, iSg7, by Augustus St Gaudens. From a Copley print, copyright, 1897, by Curtis & Cameron, publishers, Boston.
Plate LVII. — RELIEF FORMING MEMORIAL OF EOBERT GOULD SHAW; BY AUGUSTUS SAINT GAUDENS
(b. 1848); ERECTED IN BOSTON COMMON.

Plate LVIII. — FONTAINE MOLILRE, PARIS: STATUE OF MOLIERE, BY G. B. SEURRE
(1795-I865); SYMBOLICAL STATUES (COMEDIE SERIEUSE, COMEDIE LEGERE);
BY JAMES PRADIER (1792-1852).

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
study aright, this work is less attractive,
less powerful, less valuable as a work in
pure form than it is when considered from
the point of view of portraiture, of narrative,
of appeal to popular sentiment. But the
object of a great and important work of
sculpture is and must be very largely the
presentation of pure form in a new and
charming aspect. What has the sculptor to
say so important as this : " Come and see
this new combination of masses beautifully
composed, made up of details beautifully
modelled " ?
Monumental sculpture is not often as
near to being a work of pure sentiment as
in those two interesting examples, the
O'Reilly Monument and the Shaw Monu
ment. The sculpture of modern France
which is, after all, the field in which we
study most easily, will give us examples
enough of that truth. Plate LVIII shows
the wall-fountain which serves also as a
monument to Molidre ; standing near the
great theatre which we consider almost as
the earthly home of the famous dramatist.
[193]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
This work was designed by Visconti, and
there are two admirable symbolical statues
by James Pradier, with the seated one of
Moliere by Bernard Gabriel Seurre. This
is the finest of the wall fountains of modern
times, and is almost a perfect type of what
we should be aiming at for the adornment
of our American cities. As yet no one has
found a way to appropriate the little piece
of ground necessary for the basin and the
architectural mass, nor the blank wall
against which it is to be set up.
In Vienna the monument to the Empress
Maria Theresia (Plate LIX), the work of
Kaspar Zumbusch and Karl, Freiherr von
Hasenauer, was not completed until 1888,
and yet is far more like the art of the
languid and indifferent age which came to
an end about 1850, than is the monument
just described, which dates from 1845.
There are four equestrian statues of four of
the military chiefs of the reign, and be
tween them four standing figures of the
statesmen of the time, Kaunitz, the famous
Chancellor, in the middle of our picture,
[194]

Plate LIX. — MONUMENT TO THE EMPRESS MARIA THERESIA, QUEEN OF HUN
GARY AND BOHEMIA, IN VIENNA, AUSTRIA. THE SCULPTURE BY G. C.
ZUMBUSCH (B. 1830).

^''''^^ LX_^— MONUMENT TO ADMIRAL FARRAGUT, MADISON SQUARE, NEW YORK; BY AUGUSTUS SAINT GAUDENS

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
with the collar of the Order of the Golden
Fleece on his breast and dressed in his
official robes of ceremony. These figures
are all above life-size, and the seated
statue of the Empress is colossal. There
are, moreover, four groups, not in relief,
but rather in the form of statues relieved
against the background formed by the
pedestal, and these again are portrait fig
ures of the military and civil celebrities
who served the empress. Moreover, the
pedestal itself is not ill designed, a good
order, well proportioned, and the manage
ment of the niches between the coupled
columns more than usually successful ; and
yet the whole thing is uninteresting in a
very surprising way, and it is worth any
one's time and effort to discover the reason
for this comparative failure. As we look
at the single statue of Kaunitz it will prob
ably seem to most of us that it is a masterly
portrait statue, and again the huge figure
of the Empress is well composed, and if we
must have colossal statues high above the
eye, this is the way which suggests itself as
[11)5]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
the most natural to carry out that scheme.
Neither is it quite sufficient to urge the
difference in scale between the portrait
figures below, the Empress above, and the
intermediary Virtues which form pinnacles
as it were, to the central, spire-like mass;
for this contrast is not enough to account
for the feebleness of the whole. The monu
ments of antiquity and of the Middle Ages,
and some of those of modern times, go to
prove the contrary — to prove that you may
set up little figures alongside of large ones
and make a design thereby. This is not
the place to undertake an elaborate criti
cism of the monument in question ; and it
is offered here as an excellent example of the
learning, labor and good will of modern times
going astray — as they have done so often.
A strange contrast to this is in the sculp
tures of the pedestal (Plate LX) which, by
the architects McKim, Mead & White, and
the sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens, was
carved and set up to support the bronze
statue of Admiral Farragut. Those splendid
figures of Patriotism and Courage are treated
[196]

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
in an absolutely decorative way, that is to
say, combined with sculptured lines carved
in stone and suggesting obviously the sweep
of the ocean, the officer's sword, and even
the lettering needed to express the thought
in which the monument was erected. The
statue itself is, of course, a part of the com
position, and we will not judge the exedra
as if it had not a statue to support ; and
yet it seems unnecessary to insist upon the
statue at this moment. It is a very noble por
trait, singularly simple and direct in design.
Plate LXI is another work less happy
in its composition but equally representa
tive of the slowly forming modern system
of design. The work is not classical nor
even pseudo-classical of any school ; al
though the heavy stone masses and the
somewhat awkward bronze festoons of the
pedestal call up a memory of the later years
of the seventeenth century : that is of no
consequence ; what is valuable about the
fountain both as an independent work of
art and as a landmark in our slow progress,
is the daring treatment of the red Indians,
[197]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
both men and maidens. It is not necessary
to reckon with the bronze stag which serves
as the finial ; but the four Indian girls who
surround the great central shaft of the foun
tain are extremely well placed as decorative
figures and are interesting as racial studies,
and the men — the Indian braves — mounted
upon the four pedestals on the edge of the
basin, while faulty enough in their exag
gerated realistic attitudes and in this way
helping little the reposeful character which
a monumental fountain should have, are
yet individually attractive studies of the
type. The Indian spearing fish, the Indian
raising the left hand in friendship or in
desire of a parley, the Indian with bow and
arrow, and the Indian striking with the
tomahawk, are a shade too ethnographical
— not quite subdued to the artistic purpose
of their share of the monument, but in
themselves they are of importance.
Considering now the very few works of
associated sculpture in the adornment of
large, prominent and utilitarian buildings,
we have to note that the influences upon
[198]

Plate LXI — CORNING fountain AT HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT; BY J. MASSEY
RHIND (B. 1S53).

Plate LXII. — STATUE, athlete and serpent;
.AFTERWARDS LORD LEIGHTON (l830-lSg6j.

]1V SIR FREDERICK LEIGHTON,

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
architect and sculptor are in our own times
contradictory and irreconcilable. More
over, this has been the case since the be
ginning of the revived interest in decora
tive architecture at the middle of the nine
teenth century. On the one hand the sculp
ture of the European Middle Ages with its
astonishing fitness for its place, its adapta
bility, its unique and unmatched effective
ness as a part of the ornamental structure —
on the other hand the sculpture of antiquity
with its superior beauty and perfection
when considered merely as sculpture — these
two evident triumphs of art have attracted
those minds which are the most trained to
receive beauty, and, according to the occa
sion, those artists and employers who are
in a position to utilize it.
There is still a third course which we
may pursue if we will, and this is laid out
for us by the only race of architectural
artists who in the modern world employ
sculpture on a grand scale and continually.
Their plan is to erect their great building,
and to put up on pedestals ranged along ita
[199]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
front, statues — some greater than life-size,
and groups perhaps on a still larger scale ;
with occasionally figures in metal at the
crests or at the points of the roof These
statues may be portraits, ideal portraits, or
embodiments of virtues and qualities.
These groups may be expressive of the ob
ject of the building, or generally of the
epoch and the political situation. In either
case they are not architectural sculpture in
any accurate sense of the word. In this
the example of the Greeks has been, per
haps, too powerful ; and because the sculp
tures of the Parthenon might have been
taken down and others put up without dis
turbing the ordonnance of the building at
all — as the Parthenon would still have
been the Parthenon without the sculptures
of the pediments or with entirely differ
ent groups there — it is inferred that the
statuary may or may not be put in place on
a modern Paris structure. It is a good
place to show off the statue — ^though this
may also be disputed in view of the height
of that statue above the pavement ; but ex-
[200]

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
cept for this the building does not need
sculpture, which, indeed, forms no part of
it. At most it may be said that the front
of the Hotel de Ville needs its statuary as a
mantelpiece in a drawing room needs its
Sevres vases with a clock between them ;
and yet we do not consider that the mantel
piece needs its garniture de cheminte in
order to be a complete mantelpiece.
Evidently there is much excuse for this
way of regarding the sculpture connected
with a monument — an excuse which draws
its strength from the example of the all
powerful artists of antiquity. Greece and
Rome did nearly this same thing. The
Renaissance and the years immediately fol
lowing saw the development of a more in
telligent use of sculpture in connection with
buildings. It was not pushed very far ;
sculpture was still mainly for tombs and for
isolated statues through those great artistic
years, 1400 to 1500, as set forth in another
part of this book. But still the attempt to
employ sculpture on the building itself re
mains a continual effort, a constant aspira-
[201]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
tion, an ideal standard of excellence ; and
in such buildings as the Library of St.
Mark (begun 1536) this is carried out in a
very perfect way, though without much
elaboration (see Chapter VI). Since that
time the placed statue has held control, and
of all ways of placing it certainly the least
successful is that which was taken up and
approved by all Italy for a century — the
setting of isolated statues upon the cornice,
sharp against the sky. Of course, if you
are not considering the beauty of the sculp
ture you may do this with freedom and
may improve your building by the upright
figures rising in the clear air, which again
seems to fill the space between them and
produce a beautiful pattern of a simple sort
— that effect we are accustomed to in battle
ments, in pierced parapets, in balustrades of
all sorts. It is, however, a poor way to treat
your costly sculpture of human subject, be
cause of the brilliancy of the sky, which is
really the poorest background that sculp
ture can have. So in America the statues
by J. Massey Rhind are fortunate in that
[202]

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
they stand on the entablature at the top of
the ground story and are relieved against
the second story wall of the Surety Build
ing in New York and of the Exchange
Court Building, a few streets further south.
The unlucky white marble palace on
Madison Square in New York, the home of
the Appellate Division of the Supreme
Court, presents sculpture in the round and
raised high against the firmament ; but
this building is indeed unfortunate, for
even that sculpture which is displayed with
the attic wall as a background, arranged
upon the frontons of the great windows,
and resting upon the ramps of the entrance
doorway, is ill placed.
Far more agreeable is it to note those
buildings which have been treated in a
masterful way, first with sculpture subdued
and restrained to the condition of the
mediaeval style ; second, with the sculpture
treated indeed, as forming a part of the
building, and yet so modelled with the full
swing of the studio-taught artist's inde
pendent conceptions, filled with his ana-
[203]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
tomical knowledge and designed according
to the considerations of his education and
his surroundings, and therefore hardly
architectural in character. For it must be
noted that in a time when there is very lit
tle architectural sculpture, the conditions
of architectural sculpture are, of course,
largely ignored and misunderstood. Is it
supposable that even the most intelligent
man, even the most highly trained and
most nobly ambitious sculptor, can foresee
the effect of his work once the last scaffold
ing is down and the sunshine streaming
upon it? Where has he, where can he
have had, the experience to set him right?
The existing architectural sculpture which
he may look at with a little respect, is either
that of a declared revival of a now less
esteemed style (that is to say, of the Gothic
revival of 1850 to 1875), or else it is the
single daring attempt, like that which he
has undertaken for himself, — the belt of
figures on the Campanile of the Brattle
Street Church in Boston, or the portrait
and ideal heads wrought into the capitals
[204]

Recent Art, Part III, Monumental Effect
of the great State House at Albany. Ac
cordingly we are to look for sculpture too
little studied for itself, in the strictly faith
ful architectural setting forth of certain
Romanesque church porches and church
towers : we are to look for much excellence
in sculpture but far too little decorative
consideration, in the bold friezes and groups
of sculptors who do not propose to be
hampered by their surroundings. Those are
the handicaps. Neither one nor the other
class of sculptors can avoid their fate. The
hindrance is on them and on all, the abso
lute authority of the mediocre. We do not
know which way to turn when we want
architectural sculpture, and when we try
we are not to be surprised by the partial
failure of our efforts, — for partial failure was
foreordained, and we are fortunate to
secure even partial success.
It appears that there is still open to mod
ern designers a decorative combination in
which the sculpture shall control the
scheme, — shall be decidedly the most im
portant thing. In a realistic modern way
[205]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
without much reference to tradition of any
kind, the Farragut monument (Plate LX)
excells. In a more traditional way, and on
lines laid down by the French Renaissance
three and a half centuries ago, a monument
already named is a sufficient example : let
us consider it a little farther.
The work of Paul Dubois attracts us
greatly by its exquisite modelling : his Eve
entering on Life (Eve Naissante) is a nude
statue of unsurpassed merit in this respect,
among moderns. The same sculptor has
produced the statues of the tomb of La
Moriciere at Nantes, already named (see
Plate XLIX) placing four allegorical figures
at the four corners, and the recumbent
statue of the dead man, covered with the
pall, upon the marble bier. This is shaded
by a canopy of delicate Renaissance archi
tecture, of which the design is helped by
the sculpture. No modern piece of com
bined sculpture and architecture surpasses
this : nor can we point to a more fit and
perfect way of placing and using the best
sculpture the age can produce.
[206]

CHAPTER X
RECENT ART COMPARED WITH GREEK
STANDARD
In Chapters I and II there is discussion
of those works of sculpture which are un
questionably of the best epoch of Greek art ;
and furthermore of those which, without
being accurately dated, have the character
istics of the best epoch. It is pointed out
that these classical sculptures constitute our
general standard of excellence in sculpture
considered by itself — not as allied with
architecture — not as a part of a decorative
scheme. In Chapter III the inquiry is
carried a little farther, so as to include those
sculptures in which the Greek tradition was
strong, while yet the Roman control made
for a large field and wider sympathies,
though at the cost of technical merit and
of the artistical charm which goes with it.
This, morever, is our theme in this essay :
sculpture for itself, sculpture for sculpture's
sake. The decorative side of sculpture, with
[207]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
all its far-reaching alliances with the material
used, with the surroundings and with the
exact placing of every piece of pure form
among masses, small or large, of compara
tively unorganized parts : all that is out of
our reach at present. Some slight allusion
to monumental effects, and even the naming
of architecture in connection with sculp
ture has been inevitable : but that is
merely because so much great thought has
been bestowed upon sculpture so allied ;
some epochs knowing no other grand sculp
ture than that applied to building.
Let us now continue the examination of
pure sculpture, and consider in the present
chapter the relations of classical art to that
of the nineteenth century. It may be well
to compare separate works piece by piece ;
but it is also well to note what are those
special peculiarities of classical work which
the modern world accepts as giving that
whole body of sculpture a rank attained by
the sculpture of no other period.
When the well known Castellani Collec
tion was brought to New York, about 1875,
[ 208 ]

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
while one amateur desired to see the
beautiful majolica bought for some Ameri
can museum, while another longed to see
the engraved gems kept together and
preserved for the United States, and while
these two departments attracted much the
most general attention (being, as they were,
very splendid and rich) it was noticeable
that artists of the more thoughtful and
better informed class, painters and archi
tects as well as sculptors, were attracted by
the marbles of the collection, although
much broken and defaced, and although
no famous pieces were among them. They
were not of first-rate quality ; but they were
antique. There was not one piece which
could be mistaken for a Greek original of
the time of Phidias, of the time of Praxi
teles or of the Alexandrian period. The
artists who most craved their permanent
possession for the citizens of New York saw
in them merely a record of ancient meth
ods in studying and modelling the nude
figure, and in dressing the marble. They
called one another's attention to the fact
[209]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
that, even in confessedly inferior relics of
a great time, there was something visible
of that secret which the Greek artists and
their imitators had preserved, until the col
lapse of the Roman imperial system with
its Grecian proclivities. Here in these
marbles, it was boldly said, there was fine
modelling — such modelling as was hardly
used by the men of the Risorgimento
(though they had the secret of a special
charm of their own) — such as was not at
tained by the men of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries — such handling as had
been extremely rare in the second quarter
of the nineteenth century. These second-
rate antiques were asked for eagerly, then,
that they might influence for the better the
technique of modern work. The degrees of
merit are so hard to fix and to limit : and
yet they exist ! The Theseus of the Par
thenon or the Hermes of Olympia may be
in our highest class ; the " Antinous " of the
Vatican (Plate VIII) may come in the next
rank, and the Germanicus (Plate XII) in
the third. There is no limit at all to these
[210]

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
gradations ; " no chess-player so good that
he won't find some one who can give him a
castle," but the chess-player has the decid
ing test of check-mate, a test which we can
not apply in matters of Fine Art. Some
of the Castellani pieces may have been as
fine in quality as the Germanicus : others
were assuredly altogether inferior : but the
collection together might have helped our
sculptors greatly.
The present writer, going to Paris to the
exhibition of 1878, was so fortunate as to
meet on the first day of his arrival ah
American sculptor, now known as of the
first rank, then a young man and building
up in Paris the edifice of his great fame ;
and the question passed. What pieces of
sculpture in the exhibition should one look
at, if he desired to see first-rate modelling?
Who is there, of living men, who can show
me something of the ancient thoroughness ?
"Never mind the subject, or the purpose,
or the size and dignity, or the skill in com
position ; what have you noticed during
the two months since the exhibition opened
[211]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
which is supremely fine in modelling?"
The question was answered in a satisfac
tory way, and the circumstances of the
answer involved the recognition of one
great sculptor's greatness. For, while a
sculptor might be identified as a master
of subtile form in the trunk and limbs, the
shoulders, the ankles and wrists, the cheek
and brow — and yet as feeble in posing his
figures or in grouping several figures to
gether, it is noticeable that we do not often
find such weakness allied to such strength.
And yet there are those two forms of
excellence in modelling, and a piece of
work may greatly excel in one way and
be far less strong in another. Let another
true story illustrate that truth : A cele
brated American painter being in Paris
about 1890, was asked by an American
sculptor there how he approved a certain
elaborate composition of many figures — the
work of the inquiring sculptor. The an
swer made by this painter was that he, the
speaker, had had recently many opportuni
ties of studying the nude among whole
[212]

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
races of people who lived habitually un
clothed or nearly so — whose daily occupa
tions in a warm climate made clothing a
superfluity : and that with this gained in
sight he could state rather boldly that hu
man beings actively employed, in vigorous
action, a number of them together, posed
and moved and passed from one attitude to
another in a very different way from what
they would do were they still or moving
gently, and were each person alone. More
over, it appeared that the body would be
greatly swayed by its own action upon a
very heavy implement : the rower with a
sweep would not hold himself like the
rower with a light pair of sculls. " In short,
your figures seem to me as if you had
posed one at a time, and not as if you had
imagined the group in action." This was
obviously meant as hypercriticism, that is,
as remote and refined analysis, seeking for
the most perfect achievement in art, and
ready to recognize that achievement as well
as the lack of it. Of course your figures
are good (so runs the dictum), but still they,
[213]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
as a group, lack one element of greatness.
The sculptor's answer to this criticism was,
in effect, " We are not trying, nowadays, in
Paris, to do the pose and the effect of action
so much : what we are trying now to do is
le morceau." That expression meant, of
course, that for the time being the Parisian
infiuence upon the younger men was tak
ing them towards the careful study of
wrist and hand, leg and foot, cheek and
jaw, temple and ear, the articulation of the
knee joint, the setting on of the arm at the
shoulder : and all this for its own sake, as
beautiful in form, not as expressing life by
seeming movement.
Even the modelling of le morceau allows
of two interpretations. One artist may be
more interested in the exact expression of
those facts of nature which are beautiful
in themselves, in good examples, and are
of the highest degree beautiful in an artis
tic sense — those facts which have to do
with structure primarily, the joints, the set
ting on of limbs, the action of the fingers in
holding an object, the grip of the toes upon
[214]

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
the ground when a strong effort is made by
the whole body, the pose of the head in
this and in that movement of the whole
frame. Another may care more about the
mtplats, that is to say, the slightly rounded,
partly flattened, subtile and indescribably
delicate modulation of the cheek in youth,
of the upper arm in a well developed man,
of that strange and almost unseizable pas
sage from shoulder to neck on either side.
The famous recumbent statue of the Par
thenon Pediment, the Ilissos, the headless
one in the British Museum (see Plate IV), is
famous among students of art for the hol
low on the under side of the right thigh,
where, as the right knee is raised slightly,
the great muscles of the thigh relax, and a
curious soft and yet firm condition of those
muscles is made visible. That was pointed
out by our teachers of drawing, a half-cen
tury ago ; it is a commonplace : but the
similar relaxing of the walls of the abdomen
is as remarkable, only not so easy to re
mark. Indeed, analysis need never stop :
body and limbs, that marvellous statue is
[215]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
one and not many parts ; a fautless ex
pression of repose. This is an achieve
ment indeed ; and the point to consider is
that it involves the modelling of le morceau
in both of the senses in which the expres
sion may be used, as just now stated. Do
you care for subtile gradations of surface ?
Do you care for artistic expression of im
portant natural facts ? In either case you
are suited here, your demands are met in a
satisfactory way.
Another artist will care more for pose and
for the expression of action. Let it not be
assumed that he disregards the details ;
indeed he cannot complete his expression of
the human body in action without attend
ing to the details. The statue modelled by
the English painter. Lord Leighton, and
exhibited in 1877, represents a vigorous
man strangling a python who is trying to
crush him in its folds ; and everything
here may be thought to be sacrificed to the
expression of violent effort resulting in no
rapid movement, but in the great exertion
of strength in other muscles than those of
[216]

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
locomotion. This is expressed finally in the
pose of the figure (see Plate LXII) ; but the
very matter alluded to, the grip of the toes
upon the ground and of the fingers on the
serpent, is as important to the expression
required as is the attitude of the whole
body ; and therefore both have been con
sidered equally. Still, in any such piece of
work, the artist will think first of the pose
of the whole body. If his figure is repre
sented as in motion, the very first thing to
do is to make it steady on its legs, well
poised, so swaying with the action of walk
ing or running that the momentary attitude,
the very position given to the block of
hard material, shall be that of the man in
the momentary pause between two of his
strides. This figure by Leighton is " aca
demic," completely so, — the very idea of a
school piece, but see how much the aca
demic teaching can give ! One of the wisest
of living artists says of the mighty
Rodin that he needs, terribly, a year of the
Ecole. In the group " Au But " (see Plate
[217]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
XXXV) the attempt is, of course, to give
the idea of very rapid motion, of headlong
running with the goal close in view and
each one of the three runners striving to
reach it first. Obviously the chief thing at
tempted is the expression, in each figure, of
such hold upon the ground and of such
balanced action, one foot upon the ground
during the instant between two great leaps,
that the idea of rapid running shall
be given, while still nothing hopelessly un
graceful results. The muscles of every part
of the body are affected, in reality, by such
action as this, or it would be more accurate
to say that they effect such motion ; every
muscle, as it were, joining in the combined
effort made by the whole form : and this
action has to be expressed in the modelling
of the surface, even in its smallest part ;
for the chief thing that the artist has cared
about is that his figures shall express the
idea of triumphantly swift movement in
running. Now, in antiquity such motives for
statues or groups were uncommon, and yet
[218]

r^if

Plate LXIII.  STATUE, called the BORGHESE GLADIATOR, LOUVRE MUSEUM.

Plate LXIV. — broken statue, called torso of the belvedere, Vatican museum.

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
we might compare with the group by Mr.
Boucher the famous statue in the Louvre
(Plate LXIII), called formerly the Borghese
Gladiator, but now admitted to be the
image of a Greek engaged in a march or
charge or combat, carrying on his left arm
a heavy shield. If the right arm, which
was never found and has been replaced by a
modern restoration, supported the long
spear, then these would be the arms of the
Hoplite, or heavy-armed Greek foot-soldier ;
and why should not the statue represent the
Pyrrhicha — that ceremonial parade which
we often call the " Pyrrhic Dance " ? The
piece has been variously ascribed to the
pre-Phidian epoch, and to a post-Phidian
epoch, even to a late one, as to the Rhodian
school ; and the probability is that it is
nearly contemporary with the Aphrodite of
Melos and the Belvedere Torso ; but the
noticeable thing about it is that the artist
has used the action of the swiftly moving
man carrying a considerable weight on his
arm, merely to give him a pose which he, the
sculptor, has enjoyed — which as the modeller
[219]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
of the body he had found new and delightful :
and that he has hardly tried to express the
idea of rapid movement at all. The very
fact that the statue was called by modern
sculptors and museum-authorities a gladia
tor, and that the assumed position was that of
the fighter guarding his head with a round
buckler while he prepares a cut with his
armed right hand — that fact seems to point
to an admitted lack of positively determined
pose, and if you choose you may retain the
old belief that the figure did represent a
combatant, and you may dismiss the idea of
his being engaged in a march. The fact that
the pose does not express either one or the
other condition in a positive way, seems
especially the point. No one could doubt
the significance of the modern group : and
all that is left for the student to do is to
study the pose of each figure and the
modelling of each limb and of the torso
of each, with a view of seeing how far they
bear critical examination as expressing this
action which is evidently intended.
Now note another side of the sculpture of
[220]

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
antiquity. We may examine some of those
Hellenistic reliefs which, not easy to date
with accuracy, are to be taken as of the
time between the conquests of Alexander
the Great, about 325 b. c, and the sub
jugation of the Greeks by the Romans two
hundred years later.
There are many Hellenistic reliefs in
marble which may be considered together
with modern genre paintings ; and which
demonstrate the free and easy way of deal
ing with natural forms which the sculptor
even of a great time will allow himself
when he is not on his best behavior. There
is a little of everything : in one of these in
the Lateran Museum we have a child drink
ing, with admirably suggested action, from
an enormous drinking horn which a
smiling maid tilts to his lips ; a small satyr
with Pan-pipes, and a goatskin on his
shoulders ; an eagle on the rock above
tearing his prey ; a serpent winding his
way up a tree towards a nest full of uncon
scious little birds, while the father and
mother of the brood are perched on the
[221]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
limbs beyond and seem to plan resistance ;
and all this combined with a tree-growth
and a setting-on of foliage which has
certainly no close reference to nature at all.
The piece has no great merit as a work of
thought, nor any vast importance as a dec
orative design, moreover it is designed as
if under the influence of a painter, or of a
school of decorative painting ; and yet the
lights and shades are pleasantly interspersed
and intermingled, and this as one of many
panels in a wall would be an attractive unit
enough. Of immeasurably greater power and range
are the reliefs on some of the Roman sar
cophagi ; but these have been famous, in
deed, for centuries, and have been a favorite
study of generations of Italian sculptors.
For our purpose, however, a more interest
ing subject is contained in that great up
right slab given in Plate XIV, which repre
sents the offering of a solemn sacrifice by the
emperor, who is attended by the high priest
of Jupiter and other attendants. In the
background is seen what is probably meant
[222]

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
for the great temple of Jupiter on the Capi
toline Hill. The interest of the piece to
the student of sculpture is in the mingling
of description and a significance beyond
mere description. This great slab with
figures nearly of life-size is as inferior to
the Parthenon bas-reliefs in sculpturesque
treatment as it is beyond them in its pre
tensions — in its range — in its attempt to
interest the world of spectators. Let us
say all we can of this Imperial art of the
second century, a. d., for it is modern ; it
is the work of a sophisticated, organized,
policed society, very like our own in some
respects : and it is towards such a not
wholly admirable manifestation of art that
our twentieth century thinking and striv
ing would tend, but that the sculptors of
our time form a really noble guild of art
ists, inspired continually by the study of
nature and guided by the most constant
and most intelligent intercourse with the
great past. That Roman relief is a splendid
piece of ceremonial record : now let one of
our modern men treat the great events of
[223]

The Appreciation of Sculpture
our time in a way as abstract, — with as few
figures, — in a form as susceptible of being
built into a wall : but with the grace of the
Italian fifteenth century, and the faultless
details of early Greece. There is nothing
contradictory in that.
The hope of any fine art is in the single
ness of purpose of its workmen. That pur
pose is nearly certain to be purely artistic
— we need not trouble ourselves about that
— few indeed, are the painters or sculptors
who trouble themselves about other than
artistic purpose in their work. What we
require of them is, then, an undisturbed
and constant devotion to it. And, that
this may be possible to the artist, the pub
lic must learn that only artistic work is to
be had from an artist, and must really stop
asking him for moral teaching, and archae
ological information, and general exhorta
tion. That piece of sculpture which, alone
among the works even of antiquity is ac
cepted as equal in a later style to the work
of the Phidians is a shattered and muti
lated trunk (Plate LXIV). No one has
[ 224 1

Recent Art Compared with Greek Standard
more than a tolerable guess as to the pose
in which the godlike body was carved. It
is called a Hercules, or rather a Herakles,
and is so entered in certain catalogues,
chiefly because of the fragment on the left
thigh of what is thought to have been the
lion's hide. What then ? Whether it once
formed part of a group, whether it is the
original work of a contemporary of Lysip-
pos and as great as he, though the ancient
writings which we know contain no mention
of him, whether it represents Polyphemos,
the giant who loved Galatea, as one ingeni
ous theorist maintains, what matters it?
That which we regret is not the loss of the
identity, of the legend, of the association,
which a second century Greek would have
with it : we miss the missing parts for their
own sake, primarily, and then because we
need to know what the attitude of the
whole figure was, that we may better under
stand each part. That is what a sculp
tor feels, when he regrets this mutilation.
There remains so much noble sculpture
in the shattered block, that our enquiry
[225]

The Appreciation ot Sculpture
may close with it as it opened with reliefs
and statues of the time of Phidias : pieces
which alone equal the Belvedere Torso in
sculpturesque merit. It is not probable
that any twentieth century man will equal
it : but that merit is, after all, the thing to
seek. Even more than sentiment, even
more than action, pure sculpture is the one
thing needful.

[226]

Ind

ex

AbbevHiLE, Cathedral of,
sculptures, 85
Abbey of Solesmes, sculptures
in, 85
Abundance of sculpture in an
tiquity, 51, 52
Acropolis Museum, votive re
liefs of, 22
".^sop," statues so called, 57
Albany State House (capitol),
205
Alexander the Great, see Alex
andrian period
Alexandrian period, 209, 221
Altar-backs in Italy, 94, 95
Altar of Peace, erected by Au
gustus, 65
Amazon of the Berlin Mu
seum, 18
Amazon, The Wounded, statue
by Polykleitos, 18, 19
Ammanati, sculptor, 122
Andromeda, by Benvenuto
Cellini, 112
Annunciation, The, relief by
Donatello, 95
' ' Antinous, " of the Belvedere,
so-called, statue in the Vati
can, 30, 210
Aphrodite of the Capitol, 159
Aphrodite of Capua, 40
Aphrodite of Knidos, 48
Aphrodite of Melos, 41, 159,
219, (see also Venus of Milo)
"Apollino," statue so-called
of the Uffizi, 20
Apollo Belvedere, statue so-
called, 30, 42
Apollo, by Sansovino, 107, 108
Apoxyomenos, statue so-
called, in the Vatican, 38, 142

Aro de I'fitoile, Paria ; relief
by Rude, 156
Archseology made anew since
1860, 29
Archaic art leading to excel
lence, 19, 24
Architecture practiced by
sculptors, 99, 106, 107, 110,
120, 121
Art of decoration, hard to re
vive, 136
Art of representation and ex
pression easy to revive, 136
Athens, best place to study
relief sculpture, 23
Athens, Temple of Athena-
Nike, 16
Athlete, The, in Greek sculp
ture, 143
Athlete dropping oil in Munich
Glyptothek, 20
Athlete and Python, statue by
Lord Leighton, 216
Au But ("At the Goal"),
group by Alfred Boucher,
143, 217
Augusta, Empress, monument
to, at Berlin, 185
Bacchus of National Museum
of Florence, by Sansovino,
108
Bacchus in polychromy, 12
Bacchus, Infant, with Ilermes,
32
Bacchus, by Michelangelo,
98
Bacchus, statue of, in Museo
delle Terme, 20
Bacon, statue of, by Wool-
ner, 154

[227]

Index

Badia, Church of the, Florence ;
sculptures in, 94
Bailli, ideal portrait iu relief,
by Dalou, 180
Bandinelli, Baccio, sculptor,
105
" Barberini Faun," so-caUed
(sleeping Satyr) , 38
Barnard, George Gray, sculp
tor, 141
Barrias, Louis Ernest, sculp
tor, 178
Bartholom^, Albert, sculptor,
173
Bartlett, Paul Wayland,
sculptor, 153
Barye, sculptor, 149
Beasts in sculpture, 148-150
Bellona, in relief by Rude,
156
Bellona, in relief by Mao
Monnies, 168
Benedetto da Rovezzano,
sculptor, 96
Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo,
sculptor, 115, 120, 121
Boitte, M., architect, 170
Borghese Gladiator, statue in
Louvre, 219
Bouchardon, sculptor, 127
Boucher, Franpois, painter, 128
Boucher, Alfred, sculptor,
138, 143, 219
Brattle Street Church, Boston,
Campanile of, 204
Brou, Church of, aud tombs
in same, 85
"Brutus, Junius," statue so-
called, iu Louvre, 54
Buonarroti, see Michelangelo.

Cain, Augustk-Nicolas,
sculptor, 149, 150
Campagna of Rome, 145
Campanile iu Venice, 107
Campo Santo of Pisa, 90
Caniez, sculptor, 151, 152
Canova, sculptor, 134
Cardinal Mazarin, tomb of, by
Coysevox, 124
[228]

Carli, sculptor, 175
Carpeaux, Jean Baptiste,
sculptor, 157, 158, 160, 175,
179
Castellani Collection, sculp
tures in, 208, 211
Cavo-rilievo sculpture, see
Ccelanaglyphio
Cellini, Benvenuto, sculptor,
105, 111, 112, 114, 117, 122
Chapel, Sistine, Michelangelo
compelled to paint, 106
Chardin, painter, 128
Charity, on Tomb of Hugo,
Marquia of Tuscany, 95
Chartres, Cathedral of (Eure
et Loir), 74, 76, 78
Chateau d'Eau, of the Trooa-
d6ro, 150
Cheferen, statue of King, 68
Christ, Mother of, at Solesmes
85
Christ, Mother of (Mi
chelangelo's PietEi,), see Mi
chelangelo
Ccelanaglyphic relief, 69, 70
Coligny, monument of, by
Crauk, 153
CoUeone, equestrian statue,
189
Colomb, Michel, sculptor, 83
Concavo-convex relief, see
Ccelanaglyphic
Conde, Prince of, bust by
Coysevox, 125, 152
Cond6, Prince of, bust at
Chantilly, 152
Cond6, Prince of, statue by
Caniez, 151-153
Constantine, arch of, 73
Convention in sculpture, see
also Nature and the Ideal,
24, 25, 26, 27, 32, 175
Convention in sculpture (in
connection with the horse),
80-82
Copies, ancient, of Greek orig
inals, 19, 20, 21
Coustou, Nicolas, sculptor,
125

Index

Coustou, William (Guil
laume), sculptor, 125
Coustou, the youngest sculp
tor, 127
Coysevox, sculptor, 123, 124,
125, 151
Crauk, sculptor (of Coligni
monument), 153

Dalou, Jules, sculptor, 180
Daniel the Prophet, statue by
Beruini, 121
Dans la Rue, group by Camille
Lefevre, 164
David, statue by Michelangelo,
98
David d'Angers, sculptor, 131,
134
Dawn, statue by Michelangelo,
101
Day, statue by Michelangelo,
101, 102
Death, personified, Saxe mon
ument, 129
Death and the sculptor, see
Milmore Monument
Decadence, Art of the, see De
cline
Decadent art, see Decline
Decline, art of the, 47, 104,
111-121
Delacroix, Eugene, as critical
writer, 14
"Demosthenes," so-called of
the Vatican, 20
Departure for war ("La Mar
seillaise"), relief by Rude,
155
Desjardins, Martin, sculptor,
125
Despair (Le D6sespoir), statue
by Perraud, 128
Diadumenos (fillet-binder),
statue so-called, 20
Diana, statue by Houdon, 131
Dionysos, seated, from Athens,
statue in British Museum, 38
Discobolos, standing, of the
Vatican, 17 [229]

Disk -thrower (Discobolos)
(Myron), 19, 20
Doge's palace in Venice, 108
Donatello, sculptor, 92, 93, 95,
110
Dor6, Gustave, painter, etc.,
sculpture by, 166
Doryphoros (spear bearer),
statue so-called, 20, 141
Drapery, Greek, 25, 26, 36,
37, 49
Drapery, Roman, 49, 58, 61
Dress conventionalized (see
also Drapery), 53, 58, 76,
163
Dress, fashion of, in historical
sculpture, 53, 61, 156, 157,
167, 168, 180, 181
Dress, fashion of, in Portrait
ure, 59, 60
Dress, ideal military, 171
Driller, The, statue by Nie
haus, 141, 142
Dubois, Paul, sculptor, 170,
206
Dumas, Alexandre, monument
to, 166
Duret, sculptor, 134

Edfoo, temple of, 69, 70
Eighteenth century, sculptors
of, 127
Eighteenth century in sculp
ture, 127
Egypt, early sculpture of, 66,
67
Elders of the Apocalypse, at
Chartres, 76
" Epictetus," statue so-called,
57
Epidauros, fragments from, 16
Erechtheion, caryatides of, 17
"Euripides," so-called of the
Villa Albani, 20
Eve entering on Life, statue
by Paul Dubois, 206
Falconet, sculptor, 127
Faith (La Foi), statue by Paul
Dubois, 172

Index

Farnese Hercules, statue, 136
Farragut monument, 196, 206
Farragut monument, reliefs on
base, 196
Fenway at Boston, monument
in, 182
Ferdinand, Duke, equestrian
statue of, 118
Fiesole, Cathedral at, sculp
tures in, 95
Flamboyant gothic sculpture,
83-86
Flemish influence in France
and elsewhere, 84
Fountain in Boboli Garden,
by G. da Bologna, 118
Four Quarters of the World,
The, group by Carpeaux,
157, 179
Francis I, King of France, 111
Frederick the Great, purchased
Pigalle's Mercury, 128
Frederick the Great, preferred
modern costume, 155
Freedman, statuette by J. Q.
A. Ward, 160
Fr6miet, sculptor, 150
French, Daniel C, sculptor,
182, 183, 184
Gai, Antonio, sculptor, 107
Gallaudet teaching the deaf
mute, 184
Garibaldi, 172
Garibaldi, equestrian statue
of, 188
Gaspard de Coligny, monu
ment to, 153
Genius of France, in Saxe
monument, 129
Germanicus, statue so-caUed in
Lateran, 54, 57, 210, 211
Gte6me, Jean L^ou, portrait
head of, 179
Giants' Stairs in Venice, The,
108
Girolamo da Ferrara, sculptor,
107
Giovanni da Bologna, 115,
119, 120

Giugni, Bernardo, tomb of, 95
Giuliano (Duke of Nemours),
by Michelangelo, 99, 101
Gjolbaschi, frieze of, see Trysa
Gothic sculpture (thirteenth
century), 78-80, 83
Gracchi, The, group by Guil
laume, 145
Greco-Roman period, 27
Greek original reliefs, 15, 16
Greek original statues, 17, 18,
19
Greek tradition, 55
Greeley, Horace, monument
to, by Ward, 178
Greenough. sculptor," 155
Guglielmo doiia Porta, sculp
tor, 105
Guillaume, sculptor, 145
Hellknistic reliefs, 221
Herakles (Greek hero), in
sculpture, 139, see Torso of
the Belvedere
Herculaneum, bronze female
statues from, 18
Hercules killing the centaur,
by G. da Bologna, 118
Hermes of Andros, in Athens
Museum, 34
Hermes, see also Mercury
"Hermes," of the Belvedere,
see Antinous
Hermes of Olympia, 18, 24,
29, 32, 33, 34, 210
Hermes of Praxiteles, see
Hermes of Olympia
Hermes in polychromy, 12
Hewer, The, statue by Nie
haus, 141, 142
Horse in sculpture, 80-82
Houdon, Jean Antoine, sculp
tor, 127, 131, 132
Hugo (Marquis of Tuscany),
tomb of, 95

statues from

Ilissos, see
Parthenon
II Pensieroso (The Thinker),
statue by Michelangelo, 102
[230]

Index

Indian hunter, statue by J. Q.
A. Ward, 161
Inferior races, sculpture rep-
seuting them. 38, 39, 142,
161, 197, 198
Isocephalic principle, 82
Italian revival influences the
north, 87, 88
Italian revival, its beginning,
89-91, 122
Jacopo della Querela, 96, 110
Jacquemart, sculptor, 150
John of Bologna, see Giovanni
da Bologna
John of Douay, see Giovanni
da Bologna -
Joseph of Arimathea, statue
at Solesmes, 85
Juchault de la MoriciSre, tomb
of, at Nantes, 170, 206
Julien, sculptor, 134
Justice in relief by Mino da
Fiesole, 95
Kaunitz, statue of, 194, 195
La Danaide, statuette by
Rodin, 144
La Moriciere, see Juchaulf
Laokoon, group, in the Vati
can, 39
Lefeuvre, Albert, sculptor, 163
Lefevre, Camille, sculptor, 164
Le Grand Cond6, statue by
Caniez, 151
Le Gros, Pierre, sculptor, 125
Leibnitz, statue of, at Oxford,
154
Leighton, Lord, sculptor, 216,
217
Lemaire, sculptor, 134
Le Moyne, Jean Baptiste,
sculptor, 127
Library Saint Mark, in Venice,
109, 202
Loggetta of Campanile at
Venice, 107, 108
Lorenzo (Duke ot Urbino),

tomb of, by Michelangelo,
99, 100, 101
Louis XV, epoch of, 128
Luca della Robbia, 92, 93, 110
Lycia, lion tombs of, 78
MacMonnies, Fekdeeick
W., sculptor, 167
McKim, Mead & White, archi
tects, 196
Madonna group, by Sansovino,
108
Madonna, relief by Mino da
Fiesole, 94
Madonna, by Michelangelo, at
Bruges, 98
Madonna and Child, in bas-
relief, by Mino da Fiesole,
96
Magdalen, 85
Marcus Aurelius, sacrificing,
alto-relief, 60
Marcus Aurelius, equestrian
statue of, 188-222
Maria Theresia, Empress, mon
ument to, 194-196
Marquis de Dreux-Brfo6, in
relief by Dalou, 180
Mars, by Sansovino, 108
"Mars Borghese," so-called,
statue in liouvre, 17
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus,
78
Medicean monuments, by Mi
chelangelo, 99
Medicean Venus, see Venus of
the Medici
Medici, tombs of the, in S.
Lorenzo, Florence, 97
Medusa, see Perseus
' ' Mercury " statue so-called in
British Museum, 30
Mercury, Flying, by Gio
vanni da Bologna, 116
Mercury tying his sandal,
statue by Pigalle, 128
Metopes of Parthenon, 15
Metopes of Theseion, 16
Michelangelo, sculptor, 96, 97,
98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 104,

[231]

Index

105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111,
116, 122, 153, 175
Michelangelo, statue by Paul
Wayland Bartlett, 153
Michel, Claude (Clodion),
sculptor, 127
Milan Cathedral, statues on
pinnacles, 51
Military Courage, statue by
Paul Dubois, 170, 183
Milmore tombstone, by D. 0.
French, 184
Minerva, by Sansovino, 108
Mino di Giovanni da Fiesole,
93, 94, 95, 96, 110
Mirabeau, ideal portrait of, in
relief, by Dalou, 181
Modelling, qualities of, 214-
217
Moliere, 126, 193, 194
Moliere, fountain of, in Paris,
193
Montorsoli, sculptor, 105
Monument to the Dead, work
of Bartholome, 172
Moses of the Tomb of Julius
II, by Michelangelo, 98
Movement, expression of in
sculpture, 143, 144
Muscular development, exag
geration of, 139

Nature, study of, 136
Nature and the Ideal, see also
Convention, 140, 174
Neptune, by Sansovino, 108
Nereid monument, at Xanthos,
slabs from, 16
Nereid monument, at Xanthos,
statues from, 17
New Sacristy, see Nuova Sa
grestia
Newton, statue of, 154
Niehaus, Charles, 141, 142
Night, statue by Michelangelo,
101
Nike, sculptures in Temple of
Athens, 23
Nike, statues of, see Victory

Niobide of the Chiaramonti
Museum, 36, 49
Niobide group in Florence, 36
Nude statues, female, 157-160
Nude statues, female, not in
early art, 49
Nuova Sagrestia of S. Lorenzo,
Florence, 99
O'Reilly, John Boyle,
monument to, by French,.
182, 193
Painting of Greek sculpture,
12, 13
Pajou, sculptor, 127
Pallas-Athene, in Dresden
Museum, 20
Parthenon, alto reliefs from,
15
Parthenon, bas-reliefs from,
15, 21, 23, 81, 223
Partiienon, frieze of, see Par
thenon bas-reliefs
Parthenon, metopes of, see
Parthenon alto-reliefs
Parthenon pediment, see Par
thenon, statues of
Parthenon sculptures, 175,
200, 210
Parthenon statues of Pedi
ments, 17, 24, 26, 34, 49,
210, 215
Pausanias, ancient traveller,
90
Pedestals, often too high, 186-
190
Perraud, J. J., sculptor, 128
Perseus, by Benvenuto Cellini,
112, 113, 114
Phidian epoch, 36
Phidians, The, 224
Phidias, 18, 19, 27, 49, 209,
226
Phigalia, frieze of, 16
Philopcemen, statue by David
d'Angers, 132
Pieta of Florence, by Mi
chelangelo, 98

[232]

Index

Pieta of St. Peter's Church,
Michelangelo, 97
Pigalle, Jean Baptiste, sculp
tor, 127, 128, 129
pilon, Germain, 117, 122
Pisano, Niccoli, called first
modern sculptor, 90
Pisan, brought ancient sculp
tures from abroad, 90
Pistoja, Church of St. John, 92
Placing of statues, 48, 49
Polychromy in natural ma
terial, 12
Polykleitos, sculptor, 27
Portrait statues, 64, 58, 195,
197
Portraiture, ideal, 151-155, 180
Portraiture in soulpttu-e, 54,
56, 57, 58, 125, 177-179
Powers, Hiram, sculptor, 134
Pradier, James, sculptor, 194
Praxiteles, sculptor, 11, 27,
37, 49, 209
Prieur, Bartholom6, sculptor,
117, 122

Racbbs, The, see Au But
Ea Hotep and wife, Nefert,
statues in Gizeh Museum,
67
Rape of the Sabines, by Gio
vanni da Bologna, 118
Raphael da Montelupo, sculp
tor, 105
Reims Cathedral, statues of,
80, 175
Relief sculpture, monumental,
191, 196
Reliefs, ancient, always orig
inals, never copies, 21
Reliefs, ancient, important to
students, 23
Reliefs, Greek, most abundant
in Athens, 23
Renaissance, see Revival, Ris
orgimento
"Renaissance," Francis I,
called " Great King of the, "
87
Kevival of about 1850, 130
[233]

Revival in tenth century, 73
Revival in fifteenth century,
see Italian Revival
Rhind, J. Massey, sculptor,
197, 202, 203
Eicord, Dr., portrait statue of,
by Barrias, 178
Risen Christ, of the Church of
S. Maria Sopra Minerva,
Michelangelo, 98
Risorgimento, the, 90, 91, 109,
121, 210
Rodin, Auguste, 144, 217
Rogers, Samuel, quotation
from, 103
Roman copies, 51
Roman decorative sculpture,
62, 63, 64, 65
Romanesque sculpture, 73-77
Roman sculpture as a record,
72
Roman sculpture distinguished
from Greek, 53, 54
Rossellino, sculptor, 96, 110
Rude, Fran9ois, sculptor, 134,
154, 156, 167

Sabine woman, seizure of, by
G. da Bologna, 119
Saint Ambrogio, Church of in
Milan, sculptures in, 95
Saint Gaudens, Augustus,
sculpture, 196
St. James, by Sansovino, 108
Saint John Baptist of the Bar
gello, by Michelangelo, 98
St. Julian, by Sansovino, 108
Saint Matthew, by Mi
chelangelo, 98
Saint Veronica and the Image
of Christ, 175
Saint Riquier, statues on
Church of, 85
Salon of 1781, jury of, 131
San Leonardo, in relief by
Mino da Fiesole, 94
San Lorenzo, in relief by
Mino da Fiesole, 94
Sansovino, Jacopo, sculpture,
105,

Index

106, 107, 109, 110, 111, 122,
124
Santa Croce, Church of, in
Florence ; sculptures in, 95
Santa Maria del Popolo,
church of, in Rome, sculp
tures in, 95
Saxe, Marshal, tomb of, by
Pigalle, 129
Scale, differences in, 196
Schaper, H. W. F., sculptor,
185
Schliitter, Andreas, sculptor,
125
Scraper, The, statue by Nie
haus, 142
Sculpture antique, excellent
in modeUing, 209, 210
Sculpture, pictorial (reliefs),
221, 222
Sculpture of rapid movement,
143, 144, 218
Sculpture, recent, its different
qualities, 211
Sculpture, recent, of the
whole figure and of the de
tail, 212-214
Sculpture added to buildings,
(see Parthenon, Nereid Mon
ument), 61, 74-80, 199-204
Sculpture, monumental, pos
sibilities of, 205, 206
Sculpture, architectural, little
understood in recent times,
204
Sculpture, symbolism in, 157,
168, 172, 183, 196
Sculpture, monumental, re
quirements of, 186-194
Sculpture of distorted atti
tude, 144
Sculpture, first art to decay, 71
Sculpture, recent, classification
of, 137, 138
Sculpture of sentiment, 92,
93, 151, 166, 182
Sculpture of sentiment (Loy
alty), 185, 186
Sculpture of sentiment (Re
ligion), 175, 176

[234]

Sculpture of sentiment
(Death), 173
Sculpture, when consciously
imitated, 134, 135
Sculpture, times of feebleness,
133
Sculpture, times of bad taste,
134
Seneca, statues so-called, 57
Sentiment, see Sculpture of
sentiment
Seurre, Bernard Gabriel,
sculptor, 194
Seventeenth century, bad time
for sculpture, 125
Shaw, Robert Gould, monu
ment to, by St. Gaudens,
191, 193
Sherman monument ( eques
trian statue), 192, 193
Simart, sculptor, 134
Skopas, 27, 37, 49
Solesmes, sculptures at, 85
" Sophocles, " so-called of the
Lateran Museum, 20
Stele of Mynno, in Berlin Mu
seum, 16
Symbolical sculpture, see
Sculpture, Symbolism in

Tassaeet, sculptor, 127
Tatti, Jacopo, see Sansovino
Terminal statues, 63
The&tre Frangais, statue of
Voltaire in, 131
Theseion, metopes of, 16
Theseus, see Statues from Par
thenon
Theseus killing a centaur, see
Hercules
Thomas, equestrian statue, by
J. Q. A. Ward, 190
Torso of the Belvedere, 39,
219, 226
Trajan, reliefs on column of,
72
Trajan, reliefs from arch of, 53
Trocad^ro Palace, 150
Trysa, bounding wall of, 78

Index

Trysa (modem Gjolbaschi),
frieze of, 16
Twentieth century, sculpture
more promising than archi
tecture, 133
Twilight, statue by Mi
chelangelo, 101
Uffizi, Museum at Florence,
91

Vasaei, biographer, 90
Vass6 sculptor, 134
Velasquez, painter, 115
Venus, see Aphrodite
Venus of Aries, 47
Venus of the Capitol, 46, 48
Venus of the Medici, 42, 47,
48
Venus of Milo, statue so-called,
in Louvre, 40, 43, 44, 45,
47, 48, see also Aphrodite of
Melos
Verocchio, 110
Victory of Paionios, statue at
Olympia, 17, 24-38

Victory of Samothrace, statue
in Louvre, 38
Victory (winged), at Brescia,
40, 41
Victory in modern relief, 168
Victory type, 17, 38, 40, 41
Visconti, architect, 194
Visitation, The, group by Luca
della Robbia, 92
Voltaire, statue of, 131
Von Hasenauer, Karl, Frei
herr, architect, 194
Votive reliefs, Greek, 22
WALL-tombs of eighteenth
century, 129
Wall-tombs, in Italy, fifteenth
century, 94, 96
Ward, J. Q. A., sculptor, 160,
161, 178, 190
Washington, statue by Craw
ford, 155
Zeus, temple of, at Olympia,
19
Zumbusch, Kaspar, sculptor,
194

[235]

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