The appreciation of sculpture; a handbook

Front matter

MONUMENT TO JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY,

BY DANIEL C. FRENCH:

ERECTED IN THE FENWAY, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS.

Contents

L The Greek Standard of Excellence .... 11

II. Greek Culmination and Decline 29

III. The Eoman Empire and Early

Chapter I

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 sculpture of the Greeks in the works of greatest importance, as produced between the expulsion 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 [11]

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 inquiry the difficulty 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 flesh 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 uniform as are seen in the polychromatic woodcuts of the Japanese. Drapery was not [12]

left to the simple effect of the folds as carved, but the painted pattern of the surface, or at least of the border, was carried in and out of the folds to emphasize their hollows 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 conception 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 polychromatic statuary and relief was, in ancient 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 beautifullv col- [13]

ored natural material has been employed : — 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 Delacroix, who, three quarters of a century since, was arguing questions of form and of the treatment of form with his brother artists— the modern world is not wrong in receiving, as its standard for the present and future, the now uncolored statuary and relief which it has treasured up, and which it finds on the whole superior to anything which has been done since in the same direction. Indeed it is inevitable that this art upon which all European arts of form have been based, should remain the accepted 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 43O B.C. EAST FRONT, NO. 6, 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.

riate II B. — RELIEF, A DANCER, FOUND IN THEA- TRE OF DIONYSOS, ATHENS, NOW IN CENTRAL MUSEUM THERE; WORK OF ABOUT 3£0 B. C.

of his workmanship remains superior in pure form to that which we find elsewhere.

These statues and reliefs are not so numerous as one is apt to suppose ; for our museums 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 sculpture, first, the bas-reliefs from the Parthenon (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 condition 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]

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 temple 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 Monument 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 significant 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]

Plate III. — STATUE FROM EAST PEDIMENT OF PARTHENON, NOW IN BRITISH MUSEUM; CALLED GENERALLY THESEUS. WORK OF ABOUT 43O B. C.

Plate IV. — STATUE FROM WEST PEDIMENT OF PARTHENON, NOW IN BRITISH MUSEUM; CALLED GENERALLY ILISSOS. WORK OF ABOUT 43O B. C.

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 priceless 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 pediments of the Parthenon, the two reclining male figures, one from the eastern, one from the western pediment, in common nomenclature “ Theseus ” and “ Ilissos ” (see Plates III and IV), and several draped female figures grouped or single (see Plate V) ; second, the caryatides of the Erechtheion (see Plate VI) ; third, the “ standing ” or “ resting ” 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]

ument ; and seventh, the Hermes of Praxiteles (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 ?) of the Naples Museum, all found arranged in stately order in the peristyle of that famous villa at Herculaneum. 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, differing 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 masterpieces.

There is still a whole class of sculpture of the time of Phidias which is undoubtedly original, and Greek, but not of supreme [18]

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 — different 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]

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 Glyptothek ; 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 sculptures. 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 u 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.

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 mention of such pieces is in order, and pictures of them may also be given as illustrating 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 collating 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 cemetery, 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]

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 photograph 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 certain 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 outside 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]

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 characteristically 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.

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 Vatican, 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 observing 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 development of the muscular formation above the hip : surely that is not copied from life, [24]

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 development 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]

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 accepted with pleasure the other standard, the conventional standard, the hierarchic standard, 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 convention 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 B. C. THIS ONE IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM; ITS PLACE IN THE BUILDING FILLED BY A TERRA COTTA COPY.

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 recognition 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 changing of tradition — each great sculptor in- [27]

fluencing his contemporaries and his followers as to the way in which the human body should be treated in the arts of form.

Chapter II

Inasmuch as the interest of antique sculpture is, for us, wholly artistic — as we cannot know or closely guess what was the personal or emotional or non-artistic feeling behind it — it is of the very highest importance 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 during 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 difference between a fine copy and the lost original was made clear.

It will be necessary to compare the undisputed original statue, the Hermes found at Olympia (Plate VII), with statues of the same epoch which are not thought to be [29]

originals, however trustworthy they may be as copies — however fine in their individual 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,’7 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]

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

Plate VIII A. — so-called antinous of belve- Plate VIII B. —so-called mercury; British

DERE; VATICAN MUSEUM, ROME. MUSEUM.

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 treatment, 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 unanimity 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 respect at least, the Vatican statue seems the finer conception. The trunk — the torso — is more nobly modelled, while the London 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]

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 shoulder. The interesting subject of the treatment of the nude body may be followed in this connection by any one who will procure photographs of nude models and compare them, detail by detail, with these statues. An eminent living sculptor tells the writer that as for the great development 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]

the proportion of thigh to trunk and to the leg below the knee, the question of the setting on of the arm on either side, its growth from the shoulder and its position when it hangs somewhat freely, the proportion 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 rounding 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 comparison of the modelling of these figures in the whole and in the details with the unquestioned 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 admitted superiority of the resulting forms in the marble of Olympia, and in that of the [33]

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 farther, 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 highest rank, — even as against the Hermes of Olympia. They, also, are undoubted originals : 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 architecture or of another decorative art, the differences seen or felt by the critic may sometimes be expressed in words, or it may [34]

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 inferiority 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]

of the Vatican, the Niobide of the Chiaramonti Museum (Plate IX). It is immeasurably 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 except 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 wre 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 MUSEUM: POPULARLY THE VENUS OF MILO. PHOTOGRAPH OF 1876.

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 confirm the impression 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.