IX

In order that we may estimate the influence of Greek art on the

civilization of Europe, it is necessary briefly to trace its

reappearances through the ages. Its first conquest was Rome. The

victorious Roman Generals, Marcellus, Scipio, Flamininus, Mummius, and

others, brought to the imperial city, to adorn their triumphs, an

immense quantity of Greek sculpture and paintings, of which they robbed

the great storehouses of works of art in the temples and stoae of

Hellas, Sicily, and Asia Minor. The earlier Emperors, especially Nero,

followed their example, so that in the time of Pliny the naturalist all

the public places of Rome were crowded with sculptures of bronze and

marble and with the painted masterpieces of great artists. It became

fashionable for wealthy Romans, such as Hortensius and Cicero, to stock

their country-houses with such works. Even so, the demand was not

satisfied; and Greek artists were imported into Rome, where they set up

great workshops, and poured out an incessant stream of fresh works of

art. Of such our modern museums are full. Generally speaking they are of

little artistic merit, copies of various degrees of excellence of the

great works of earlier generations. For the Roman plutocrats had little

taste. Because certain figures or groups had a great reputation, and

especially because they had been purchased at a high price by Greek

cities and kings, the Roman collector liked to have copies of them in

his villa; and the artists who produced these copies were mere workers

for hire, without originality and without aspirations. Sometimes when

employed on such works as the Arch of Titus, or the Column of Trajan,

the novelty of the theme stimulated the artist to attempt something of a

more original kind. And occasionally the fire within took course and

produced a finer work than ordinary. Under the art-loving Emperor

Hadrian there was a sort of St. Martin's summer of sculpture; but its

productions were smooth, elegant and refined rather than original or

interesting. The charm of art was not appreciated by the Roman people;

only the few who professed cultivation really cared whether a figure was

good or bad, and even the few were a little ashamed of their

preferences.

Into the Roman Empire, in the first three centuries of our era,

Christianity gradually ate its way. It originated among the Jews, to

whom all representation of living things was hateful. And it developed

under the influence of Greek oriental mysticism, which had no kinship

with sculpture and painting; and so far as it had any expression in

those arts worked in the direction of that symbolism against which Greek

art was a protest. Thus we could not expect any fresh inspiration for

art from early Christianity; on the contrary, Christianity would work

upon it as a blighting influence. If we examine the remains of Christian

art in those early centuries, in sarcophagus and mural painting, we find

that it merely copied the contemporary pagan art, only changing the

subjects portrayed, and introducing a further development in the

symbolic interpretation of ordinary scenes.

Christianity offered almost no field for the exercise of Greek

anthropomorphism. The latter was closely bound up with polytheism and

hero-worship. The Christian Apostles and Saints, who took the place of

the pagan Deities, were men who had lived on the earth and whose deeds

belonged not to mythology but to history, although at the time the line

between history and mythology was not clearly drawn, and history was

largely diluted with myth. A few impersonations of nature, such as

river-gods, lingered on in the paintings of the Roman catacombs. And

winged genii were common there, whether cupids or cherubs it would be

hard to say. But there was no realm into which artistic fancy could

stray, filling it with super-men and super-women. Angels might be

portrayed; but they all came from the Jewish angelology; and there was

no artistic tradition as to their types: it was only later that the

types of Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and others were distinguished.

The second principle of Greek art, balance and symmetry, had almost

disappeared in pagan art in the Antonine age. The reliefs of triumphal

arches and of sarcophagi are crowded with figures inserted without order

or method. Even the mural paintings of Pompeii have escaped from

control; and show no purposeful arrangement. Law and order have given

place to individual fancy, unless in cases where earlier schemes are

adopted. And with artistic arrangement has disappeared all attempt to

idealize, to produce forms nobler and more beautiful than those seen

every day. The figure of Antinous is the latest in which we find any

attempt to produce a type of ideal beauty. Even the Virgin Mary and her

Son are depicted without any attempt to render them beautiful. Nor

indeed does naturalism fare better than idealism. The representation of

the human body is no longer studied. The figures are clothed: and the

clothing is purely conventional, while the features of the landscape are

far less carefully introduced than in Hellenistic Greek art.

In fact one feels that the artist had little interest in his art. Scenes

from the Old and the New Testament are the usual subjects. But the

depiction is little more than picture-writing, mere copies of

traditional groups. The only thing regarded as of any interest is the

meaning. The ethical and spiritual point of view overlies and smothers

any interest in the representation.

And this predominance of the didactic element over the sense of

proportion, the love of beauty, the appreciation of nature prevails more

and more as Europe slowly moves towards the dark ages. The lamps of

Greek art burn more and more dimly. They are never wholly extinguished;

for in all ages there are born artists to whom they are the light of

life; and in mediaeval carvings one finds here and there a touch of

humanism, most often in grotesque or satyric figures. We must never

forget that some of the later masterpieces of Greek work, such as the

Column of Trajan and the Arch of Beneventum, were always to be seen. And

little as they were appreciated by ordinary people, an artist here and

there derived from them some appreciation of the beauty of humanity.

Then in the thirteenth century the dry bones began to come together. The

breath of fresh life stirred Europe, or at least parts of Europe, such

as North Italy, Southern Germany, Eastern France. The magnificent Gothic

Cathedrals rising in the north called forth the talent of the painter

and the sculptor for their adornment. A great Christian art arose, and

in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries flourished widely. Certain

qualities of high art it certainly had. It was lighted by the lamp of

fellowship. The sculpture was the work not of individuals, but of

guilds, groups of workers of the same style, and inspired by the same

motives. It attained to great beauty in decoration, in the adaptation to

architectural purpose of the forms of plants and flowers. Where it was

most defective was in the rendering of the human form, whether nude or

draped, for in such matters the artists had no schooling to be compared

with that of the Greeks.

When the full Renaissance came with the dispersion of the educated

Greeks through Europe, there was a conscious reawakening of the artistic

influence of Greece, contemporaneously with the revived interest in

Greek literature and philosophy. A few great works of ancient sculpture,

the Laocoon, the Dying Gaul of the Capitol, the Apollo Belvedere were

discovered; and collections of ancient gems and coins were formed by

many of the wealthy. We can judge from the life of Benvenuto Cellini how

profound was the effect produced by such discoveries. The great Italians

of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries felt as if they had climbed out

of darkness into light. To rival works of Greek art was looked upon as

the highest ambition which an artist could cherish. Sculptors so great

as Donatello and Michelangelo took the scanty remains of Greek

masterpieces as their models, and measured their attainments by the

degree of success which they reached in copying them. The lamps of Greek

balance and symmetry, Greek idealism, and Greek naturalism were

rekindled, and the crowd of artists vied one with another in walking by

their light.

We may mark four stages in the rediscovery of Greek sculpture. The first

is the Italian Renaissance already mentioned. The second originated in

the visit of Winckelmann to Italy in 1755, and the application by Goethe

and Lessing of his discoveries to the judgement of contemporary art. It

tended greatly to the raising and purifying of the artistic taste of

Europe. The splendid promise of the Renaissance had degenerated into the

mannerism and extravagance of Bernini and his contemporaries.

Winckelmann called it back to simplicity, to self-restraint, to

ideality. But before long this teaching also was perverted; and such

sculptors as Thorwaldsen and Canova were misled by the defects of the

inferior examples of Greek sculpture, which were the only ones

accessible to Winckelmann, into a slavish copy of the antique or works

of an artificial grand style. Then came the third wave of revived Greek

influence, when the sculptures of the Parthenon found a home in London,

and critics were able to observe how infinitely superior the

masterpieces of a really great age were to the copies of Roman times and

the adaptations of the Hellenistic age. When Haydon the painter first

saw the Parthenon marbles he was immensely impressed; but that which

struck him most strongly was not the ideality, for which they have since

become proverbial, but the wonderful naturalism of much of their detail

in contrast to the grandiose conventions of his contemporaries. The

fourth stage in our knowledge of Greek sculpture comes from the very

fruitful excavations on Greek soil, especially at Athens, Olympia, and

Delphi, which have shown us how widely varied is the range of the

ancient sculptors, how many their styles, how admirable their technique.

This extension of our knowledge has not, it is true, as yet much

affected contemporary art, as art was affected by the teachings of

Winckelmann and the publishing of the marbles of the Parthenon. Until

last year there was no book in English setting forth the results of the

excavations of Delphi; and there is even now no book in English

performing the same service for the excavations at Olympia. Sculptors

are so little educated in the history of their craft, that they do not

easily learn from new sources of knowledge. But by degrees, beyond

doubt, the new views of Greek art will filter down to them. A few

recently discovered sculptures, such as the Charioteer of Delphi, the

Hermes of Praxiteles, the bronze head from Beneventum in the Louvre, the

Demeter of Cnidus, have by their overpowering charm affected artists and

art. And most sculptors profess a great admiration for Greek works,

notably Rodin, who, although the tendency of his works is not in a

classical direction, yet uses the strongest language in praising the

Greek masterpieces. But in general the tendency of art towards extreme

individualism and the search after novelty have more than counteracted

the somewhat shallow admiration of sculptors for what is antique.

X

At present religion and culture alike are struggling against the waves

of barbarism reinvading. It is not my business to speak here of the

forces which are trying to crush religion among us. But I may fitly

conclude by sketching some of the tendencies against which culture based

upon that of Greece is our best antidote. If I have rightly set forth

the principles of Greek literature and art in past pages, the nature of

their influence under present conditions will be clear.

I must venture on a parallel which seems to me very suggestive, though

some readers may regard it as risky. There are two great standards set

up in the past, to control the wayward fanaticisms of men, and to keep

them within the bounds of reason and good sense. The standard in

religion is set by the New Testament: the standard in art is set by

Greece. As at the Renaissance the peoples of Europe went back for their

inspiration and their models to the literature and the art of Hellas, so

at the Reformation they, or at all events the Teutonic races, went back

to the early records of Christianity, appealing to them against the

venality and corruption of the dominant Church. And ever since, at

intervals, there has arisen, alike in the field of culture and in that

of religion, an echo of the appeal to the classical past. It is to the

New Testament that Apostles like John Wesley and George Fox made their

appeal, setting up in opposition to the conventions and worldliness of

the Church in their times the spirituality and simplicity of the

apostolic age, just as Goethe and Lessing turned men's minds from what

was contrary to reason and good taste in their surroundings to Greek

beauty and simplicity. And however some of the followers of Wesley and

Fox may have gone beyond due bounds towards fanaticism, yet in every

branch of the Christian Society the influence of those modern prophets

has been renovating and purifying, just as the schools of critics which

followed Goethe tended greatly to increase among us sweetness and light.

In our schools and colleges, until quite lately, the religion of the New

Testament and the tradition of the Greek and Roman Classics have gone

together, the one preserving us from superstition and materialism in

religion, the other making war upon the inherited barbarisms and

brutalities which we have from our not very distant ancestors. The

spirit of anarchy in religion would persuade us that there is no divine

sanction for goodness and no eternal stamp on vice, that morality is a

matter of convention which every society and every nation has a right to

invert if it judges such inversion in the line of its interests. The

spirit of anarchy in art proclaims that all the works of nature are

equally beautiful or equally ugly, that nothing which exists is unfit to

be represented in our galleries and public places, that so long as a

picture or a statue arouses a sentiment it does not matter whether the

sentiment be one of delight and aspiration or one of horror. If once the

idea of beauty as the end to be aimed at be expelled from art, art sinks

like a stone to the bottom of the sea. Some people are ready to tolerate

any monstrosity in art, however remote from nature, however offensive

to decency, however repugnant to humanity. The whole artistic

inheritance of the race from the day when men began to climb out of

barbarism is liable to be thrown away by an age which has unbounded

confidence in its own wisdom.

I should, however, be sorry to stop at this point, for I might leave on

readers the impression that I am in favour of the mere imitation of

works of Greek art. That is by no means my view. In the last century

several sculptors, overpowered by the charm of the antique, produced

statues which closely followed ancient patterns, such as the Hope and

the Hebe of Thorwaldsen, some of the statues of Rauch and Schadow, and

the tinted Venus of Gibson. Such works were necessarily stillborn; they

had not in them any breath of the life of a new age, any attempt to

conform to changed conditions. Very different was the following of the

antique by Michelangelo. He admired with enthusiasm such works of the

Greek chisel as he knew; but he produced not dull and academic

reflections of them, but works of the most splendid originality and the

greatest charm. He imbibed not the letter but the spirit of Greek art;

and even succeeded better than most artists in combining that spirit

with a breath of Christianity.

The parallel which I have drawn may be carried farther. A reversion to

the letter of the New Testament writers has been often attempted by

considerable religious leaders of our time, especially Tolstoi and the

Quakers. They have gone back to the injunctions of the Sermon on the

Mount, and tried literally to abide by them. But it has become apparent

to all but fanatics that such procedure would be fatal to civil

government and civilized life. It is the spirit not the letter of the

teaching of Jesus which is life-giving. In just the same way an

acceptance of the mere externals of Greek art would not help us at all;

but a revival of its spirit would be a great inspiration to modern

artists. The lamps of Greek art will give light in any age. Greek

idealism, Greek balance and measure, Greek love of what is natural and

healthful, Greek simplicity and moderation are of the very essence of

good art in all ages. We can no more revive the exact conditions under

which art arose than we can import into England the clear air, the

bright sun, the clear-cut shadows of the Greek landscape. But we can

still look up to the philosophy, the poetry, and the art of Greece as

classical, as a revelation of what is most pleasing and most enduring in

human nature. And if we neglect them and reject them from the education

of our children, we shall destroy what has been ever since the

Renaissance the source of pure joy and refined feeling in the majority

of cultured men; we shall make a great gap which material prosperity, a

deeper knowledge of the secrets of nature, the invention of fresh modes

of amusement, can never fill. And if we trust merely to the reflections

of the Greek spirit in modern literature and art, we shall be acting as

the Roman Church in its darker ages has acted, in shutting away from the

people recourse to the primary documents of religion, and obliging them

to be content with such interpretations of those documents as the ruling

hierarchy judged to be useful. We must retain the right of appeal to our

classical examples, whether in religion, in literature, or in art.

Arnold was right. The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, Greek art remain the

stars by which we may direct our course over stormy seas.