PART IV

Transcriber’s Notes:

Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_

in the original text.

Equal signs “=” before and after a word or phrase indicate =bold=

in the original text.

Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.

Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs.

Typographical and punctuation errors have been silently corrected.

Pages 170 and 171 are missing.

A HISTORY OF SCULPTURE

=APOLLO=: AN ILLUSTRATED MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF ART THROUGHOUT THE

AGES, BY SALOMON REINACH, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, TRANSLATED

BY FLORENCE SIMMONDS

M. Reinach’s manual has been welcomed with enthusiasm in every European

country. It has been translated into every civilised tongue. Never

before have the treasures of all the great galleries been laid under

such contribution, and thus M. Reinach’s book claims a distinctive

place among students’ manuals. The new edition has been revised and

corrected throughout by the author with the utmost care. Some new

illustrations have been added, certain unsatisfactory blocks have

been replaced by new ones, and the bibliographies have been expanded

and brought up to date. Interpolations in the text in connection

with English works of art or artistic possessions are added by the

translator and approved by the author.

“To criticise it would be much the same as to criticise one’s

‘Bradshaw’—it is unique and it is a necessity.”—_Bookman._

_New and Cheaper Edition, with over

600 Illustrations. Price 6s. net._

[Illustration: _The Virgin_

_From Michael Angelo’s “Pieta”, St. Peter’s. Rome._]

A HISTORY OF SCULPTURE

BY ERNEST H. SHORT

_WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS_

[Illustration]

LONDON

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

1907

_Copyright 1907 by William Heinemann_

TO

_MISTRESS KATIE GIBBS_

IN TOKEN OF

THE AUTHOR’S AFFECTIONATE REGARD

PREFACE

Much that might properly occur in the preface of this book will be

found in its opening chapter. I there set out the ground to be covered,

and define the point of view from which I have treated my facts. These

few remarks will, accordingly, be addressed to any who may think that

a work bearing the title “A History of Sculpture” requires a word of

introduction.

My justification for the title and, indeed, for the work as a whole,

is that I have not attempted to write a new text-book. In my view,

all great art is essentially national art. It can therefore only be

understood in the light of national and international history. For this

reason, I have given much more attention to the artistic interpretation

of historical events and social circumstances than most, historians

of the arts have deemed necessary. Throughout I have written from the

standpoint of one who believes that the great schools of sculpture were

created, not, by individuals of genius, but by the peoples to whom

they appealed. A work written on these lines can fairly claim to be “A

History of Sculpture.”

This general scheme has entailed several consequences. I am conscious

that I have dealt curtly with pre-Hellenic art—particularly with that

of the Mycenæan age. My reason is that ivory work and goldsmithery,

by which Mycenæan art can best be illustrated, do not come within the

scope of the book. References to such schools as the modern German and

the American have been omitted in the belief that they would have added

little to the strength of my main argument. For the same reason I have

devoted comparatively little space to biographical details concerning

individual artists—even of the first class—and have referred to only

the most characteristic of their works.

I trust, however, that I have mapped out the main facts which are

essential to a right judgment in sculpture. The list of books will

indicate sources of more detailed information about particular schools

and artists.

Seeing that I have dealt with general propositions rather than

particular facts, I have not burdened my pages with continual

references to “authorities.” Any of my readers who regret the absence

of the “notes” so dear to many Englishmen, will, I am convinced, be

out-numbered by those who will welcome this small relief. I have

purposely confined my bibliography to small limits, and, as a rule,

have only included books likely to be of use to English readers. I have

taken care to choose those which are well illustrated.

In the absence of “notes” and an extensive bibliography, I can only

make a general acknowledgment of my obligation to the many writers who

have dealt with various aspects of the art. I wish, however, to record

the deep debt of gratitude I owe to my friend, Dr. Emil Reich. I am

indebted to him for that broad, large-hearted view of general history

which is essential to the right understanding of any art. With his name

I should like to couple that of my wife, upon whose sympathetic help I

have relied from first to last.

I have to thank my father, Mr. Charles Short, and Mr. Edwin Preston,

for their kindness in reading my proofs, and Mr. H. L. Weinberg for his

help while this book has been passing through the press.

ERNEST H. SHORT.

6, PITT STREET,

KENSINGTON.

CONTENTS

PART I.—HELLENIC SCULPTURE

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE RISE OF GREEK SCULPTURE AND THE ATHLETIC

SCULPTURES OF GREECE 3

II. THE PARTHENON AND THE TEMPLE STATUARY OF GREECE

(470 B.C. to 420 B.C.) 25

III. THE AGE OF SCOPAS AND PRAXITELES

(400 B.C. to 330 B.C.) 44

IV. LYSIPPUS AND THE FOURTH-CENTURY REALISTS; WITH A

NOTE ON MODERN SCULPTURAL CRITICISM 65

PART II.—HELLENISTIC AND

ROMAN SCULPTURE

V. THE POST-ALEXANDRIAN ART OF THE EMPIRE OF SELEUCUS,

THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS, OF RHODES, AND OF

ALEXANDRIA (300 B.C. to 50 B.C.) 83

VI. THE HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE OF GREECE

(300 B.C. to 50 B.C.) 99

VII. THE PORTRAIT SCULPTURE OF ROME

(50 B.C. to A.D. 330) 117

PART III.—THE SCULPTURE OF

THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

VIII. THE GOTHIC SCULPTORS AND THE RISE OF ITALIAN

SCULPTURE AT PISA (A.D. 1000 to 1350) 145

IX. THE RISE OF NATURALISM—GHIBERTI, DONATELLO,

VEROCCHIO, ETC. (A.D. 1400-1500) 159

X. MICHAEL ANGELO AND THE FLOOD TIDE OF RENAISSANCE

SCULPTURE (A.D. 1490-1530) 183

XI. ITALIAN SCULPTURE FROM A.D.. 1527

TO A.D. 1650—CELLINI, GIOVANNI BOLOGNA,

AND BERNINI 198

PART IV.—MODERN SCULPTURE

XII. THE ART OF MONARCHICAL FRANCE, FROM FRANCIS I.

(A.D. 1515) TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION (1789) 221

XIII. THE NEO-CLASSICAL REVIVAL: EUROPEAN SCULPTURE

OF THE REVOLUTION AND THE REACTION

(A.D. 1789-1848) 246

XIV. THE MODERN FRENCH SCHOOL (AFTER 1848) 263

XV. THE MODERN BRITISH SCHOOL (THE NINETEENTH CENTURY) 280

LIST OF BOOKS 305

INDEX 309

LIST OF PLATES

_To face page_

THE VIRGIN. From Michael Angelo’s “Pieta.”

St. Peter’s, Rome _Frontispiece_

DIANA (Archaistic). The National Museum, Naples 12

DEDICATORY STATUE (Archaic).

The Acropolis Museum, Athens 12

HARMODIUS. National Museum, Naples 14

THE CHARIOTEER. Delphi Museum 14

THE SPARTAN GIRL. The Vatican, Rome 18

THE DORYPHORUS. National Museum, Naples 18

MYRON’S DISCOBOLUS. The Ashmolean, Oxford 22

THESEUS. British Museum. A figure from the Eastern

Pediment of the Parthenon 30

THE THREE FATES. British Museum. A group from the

Eastern Pediment of the Parthenon 30

From THE PARTHENON FRIEZE. British Museum.

Scenes from the Panathenaic Procession 32

ZEUS. The Vatican, Rome. Found at Otricoli 36

HERA. Terme Museum, Rome. From the Villa Ludovisi 36

HERA. The Vatican, Rome 40

THE MAUSOLEUM CHARIOTEER. British Museum, London 48

NIOBE. The Glyptothek, Munich 50

MENELAUS AND PATROCLUS. Loggia de Lonzi, Florence 52

ARES LUDOVISI. The Vatican, Rome 52

THE “DEXILEUS” RELIEF. The Ceramicus, Athens 54

THE HERMES (head). By Praxiteles. Olympia 58

THE “EROS” TORSO. The Vatican, Rome.

Found at Centocelle 60

APHRODITE OF CNIDUS. The Vatican, Rome 62

THE APOXYOMENUS. The Vatican, Rome 68

MELEAGER. The Vatican, Rome 68

THE SARCOPHAGUS OF ALEXANDER. Constantinople 74

PHOCION. The Vatican, Rome 76

PERICLES. British Museum 78

THE HEAD OF ALEXANDER (after Lysippus). British Museum 78

THE TYCHE OF ANTIOCH. The Vatican, Rome 86

THE DYING GAUL. The Capitoline Museum, Rome 88

THE TRIUMPH OF ATHENA. From the Altar of Zeus,

Pergamus. Berlin 92

THE LAOCOON GROUP. The Vatican, Rome 94

THE NILE. The Vatican, Rome 96

THE FARNESE HERCULES. National Museum, Naples 100

THE CERIGOTTO BRONZE. The Museum, Athens 102

THE APOLLO BELVEDERE. The Vatican, Rome 106

VENUS OF MEDICI. The Uffizi, Florence 106

VENUS OF MILO. The Louvre, Paris 112

BOY STRANGLING A GOOSE. The Louvre, Paris 114

CHILD WITH LANTERN. Terme Museum, Rome 114

THE BOXER (Bronze). Terme Museum, Rome 120

ORESTES AND ELECTRA (pseudo-archaic).

National Museum, Naples 128

AUGUSTUS. The Vatican, Rome 128

NERVA (Head). The Vatican, Rome 132

ANTINOUS. The Vatican, Rome 136

MARCUS AURELIUS. Rome 138

A GOTHIC PANEL: “THE LAST JUDGMENT.” A bas-relief

from the porch of Bourges Cathedral 150

GIOVANNI PISANO: “THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI.”

A panel from the pulpit of the Pisan Duomo.

Now in the Museo Civico, Pisa 150

NICCOLA PISANO: “THE PULPIT AT PISA” 156

LORENZO GHIBERTI: “THE GATES OF PARADISE.”

The Baptistery, Florence 164

DONATELLO: “SAINT GEORGE.” From the church of Or

San Michele, Florence 172

DONATELLO: “DAVID.” The Bargello, Florence 174

JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA: THE TOMB OF ILARIA DEL CARRETTO.

The Cathedral, Lucca 176

LUCA DELLA ROBBIA: “THE VISITATION.” Pistoja 178

ANDREA VEROCCHIO: “THE DOUBTING THOMAS.” A group for

the exterior of Or San Michele, Florence 180

VEROCCHIO AND LEOPARDI: THE COLLEONI MONUMENT.

Venice 182

MICHAEL ANGELO: “DAVID.” Academy of Fine Arts,

Florence 184

MICHAEL ANGELO: “THE PIETA.” St. Peter’s, Rome 186

MICHAEL ANGELO: MONUMENT OF LORENZO. Medici Chapel,

Florence 186

MICHAEL ANGELO: “MOSES.” A figure designed for the

Tomb of Julius II. 188

MICHAEL ANGELO: LORENZO, DUKE OF URBINO.

The Medici Chapel, Florence 192

MICHAEL ANGELO: “NIGHT.” From the monument to

Giuliano, Duke of Nemours.

The Medici Chapel, Florence 194

MICHAEL ANGELO: “DAWN.” From the monument to

Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino.

The Medici Chapel, Florence 194

BENVENUTO CELLINI: “PERSEUS.” The Loggia dei Lanzi,

Florence 204

GIOVANNI BOLOGNA: “MERCURY.” The Bargello, Florence 204

GIOVANNI BOLOGNA: “THE RAPE OF THE SABINE WOMEN.”

The Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence 208

GIOVANNI BERNINI: “APOLLO AND DAPHNE.”

From the Borghese Gallery, Rome 210

GIOVANNI BERNINI: “THE ECSTATIC VISION OF ST. THERESA.”

The church of S. Maria della Vittoria, Rome 210

PETER VISCHER: “KING ARTHUR.” Innsbruck 224

GOUJON: “THE DIANA” FROM ANET. The Louvre, Paris 230

PUGET: “THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION.” Genoa 234

GIRARDON: “APOLLO AND NYMPHS.” Versailles 236

PIGALLE: “MERCURY.” The Louvre, Paris 238

FALCONET: “L’AMOUR MENAÇANT.” The Louvre, Paris 238

CLODION: “SATYR WITH FLUTE” 240

HOUDON: “DIANA.” The Louvre, Paris 242

HOUDON: “VOLTAIRE” (bust). The Louvre, Paris 244

ANTONIO CANOVA: PAULINE BORGHESE AS “VENUS VICTRIX.”

Villa Borghese, Rome 248

ANTONIO CANOVA: “CUPID AND PSYCHE.” Villa Carlotta,

Lake of Como 248

BERTEL THORVALDSEN: “VENUS.” Devonshire Collection,

Chatsworth 252

FRANÇOIS RUDE: THE MARSEILLAISE RELIEF. Paris 254

JOHN FLAXMAN: “SATAN AND THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL.”

From the model in South Kensington 260

ANTOINE BARYE: “CENTAUR AND LAPITH.”

The Louvre, Paris 264

JEAN BAPTISTE CARPEAUX: “THE DANCE.”

Opera House, Paris 268

ANTOINE IDRAC: “MERCURY INVENTING THE CADUCEUS.”

The Luxembourg, Paris 270

PAUL DUBOIS: “ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST.”

The Luxembourg, Paris 270

JULES DALOU: “THE TRIUMPH OF SILENUS.”

Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris 272

AUGUSTE RODIN: “THE KISS.” The Luxembourg, Paris 276

AUGUSTE RODIN: “THE THINKER.” The Pantheon, Paris 278

JOHN GIBSON: “HYLAS AND THE NYMPHS.”

Tate Gallery, London 282

ALFRED STEVENS: FIGURE FROM THE FIREPLACE,

DORCHESTER HOUSE, LONDON 286

LORD LEIGHTON: “ATHLETE AND PYTHON.” Tate Gallery 288

THOMAS BROCK: “EVE.” The Tate Gallery, London 290

HAMO THORNYCROFT: “THE MOWER.” Liverpool 290

MEUNIER (Belgian School): “THE MOWER” 292

ALFRED GILBERT: “SAINT GEORGE.”

From the Clarence Memorial, Windsor 296

ONSLOW FORD: “EGYPTIAN SINGER.”

The Tate Gallery, London 298

HARRY BATES: “PANDORA.” The Tate Gallery, London 300

J. M. SWAN: “ORPHEUS” 300

GEORGE J. FRAMPTON: “MYSTERIARCH” 302

PART I

HELLENIC SCULPTURE

CHAPTER I

THE RISE OF GREEK SCULPTURE AND THE ATHLETIC SCULPTURES OF GREECE

Nowadays sculpture is not an acknowledged queen in the Tourney of the

Arts. The writer who has thrust her colours into his casque and would

break a lance on her behalf, struggles for some unstoried damsel about

whose very existence he has been playfully twitted by the champions of

the reigning beauties.

Rightly considered, art is but a form of speech—sculpture speaking

through words formed from chiselled marble and moulded bronze. Such a

language can only have lost its meaning if the men of to-day differ

fundamentally from those of the past. But is this the case? Can

any one doubt that human thought and action are ever substantially

repeating themselves, since men and women are at all times actuated by

substantially the same passions? The twentieth century simply requires

to realise that sculpture throbs with the thought and emotion astir

in itself. Though it cannot be claimed that the art is popular in the

sense that music and painting are popular, our firm conviction is that

its peculiar thrill only needs to be felt, for sculpture to become as

widely appreciated as the sister arts. Dancing may be a lost art; we

are assured sculpture is not.

Under these circumstances, honesty compels us to preface this book

with a confession. It is a history of sculpture with a purpose. It

seeks to entice a few men and women into the belief that sculpture is,

essentially, a living art. Its one object is to marshal the evidence

in favour of the proposition that the marbles and bronzes of the great

sculptors are not dead things which may well be left to gather dust in

national museums and unfrequented corners of public galleries.

Though marble and bronze have not lost their potency, it would

be folly to regard all sculpture as equally vital. Much has only

an archæological or antiquarian interest in these latter days.

Consequently, though building from the bricks of the past, everything

which has lost its meaning for the men of to-day will be ruthlessly

excluded. Our purpose is to write a history of the art itself, to

show how its various manifestations arose from social and political

circumstances, to trace the emotions and thoughts which stimulated

the artists to produce their greatest works and to gauge the action

and interaction which created the various national styles. On the one

hand is the sculptor expressing what appears to be his own thoughts

and emotions. On the other, the men of his country and time providing

him with the raw material of thought and feeling, and compelling the

production of works which could never have seen the light had he

dwelt on a column in the desert after the manner of some Alexandrian

mystic. Nor is this all. In addition, there is the influence which

the sculptor exerts upon those around him, and particularly upon his

fellow craftsmen. Out of the reciprocal modification arises a body of

sculptural production, endowed with a definite national style.

The task of estimating these actions and counteractions and their

effects cannot be an easy one. It calls for heart as well as mind,

both from writer and reader. It would be fatal to treat the bronzes of

Polyclitus, the marbles of Phidias, Donatello, and Michael Angelo, as

too many historians do the documents from which they presume to create

the past. Even if political history can be profitably reduced to a dull

catalogue of charters and enactments—which we deny—the history of an

art cannot. That _must_ take human passion and emotion into account,

and must be written by those who are not afraid to feel or ashamed of

their feelings. From any other standpoint, art becomes divorced from

life. The reader is denied a glimpse of its most potent force—its

mysterious power of arousing echoes in his own heart.

Fortunately, the ground to be covered is pregnant with interest.

The story of the meteoric rise of the art in Greece, so sudden that

a paltry half-century separated the dead work of the sixth century

from the vitalised marbles of the Parthenon, will be followed by an

account of the “Golden Age,” in which sculpture expressed the whole

nature—physical, mental, and spiritual—of the most complete men

who have ever lived. Thence to the art of the Alexandrian and Roman

Empires, leading up to the great revival of sculpture in the city

states of Northern Italy. Finally, a consideration of the sculpture

of Monarchical, Imperial, and Republican France will lead up to the

works of our own time and the final problem—how near such a sculptor

as Rodin is to assimilating and expressing the strange and wonderful

experiences arising from the stress of modern life.

In the nature of things all our correlations will not be equally

exhaustive or correct. The philosophical method is more open to

errors arising from individual prejudice than the more strictly

scientific one, which is content to collect and group examples. In

some cases, moreover, peculiarities of style and subject will depend

upon circumstances extremely remote from present-day experience, and,

therefore, peculiarly difficult to express adequately. Nevertheless,

we hope to suggest a method, and to lay a foundation upon which our

readers will be able to build. Though we shall base our generalisations

upon a comparatively few examples, we shall seek to provide niches into

which practically all the greater works of sculpture can be fitted.

THE EARLY BEGINNINGS (1000 B.C. TO 550 B.C.)

Bearing in mind that our only concern is with what may be termed “vital

sculpture”—art with a message for the twentieth century—we may ask,

where should a beginning be made?

Unfortunately, the art of sculpture, unlike history, has never been

blessed with an Archbishop Ussher willing to vouch for the day and hour

of its birth in some year after 4004 B.C. As a _craft_, of course,

sculpture dates from the very earliest times. While the prehistoric

painter was scratching his first rude picture in the sands about his

doorway, his sculptor brother was whittling a stick into the semblance

of a human figure, or roughly moulding the river clay to his fancy.

The results interest the archæologist, and rightly find a place in our

museums rather than in our art galleries. But they are not what we have

in mind when we speak of “paintings” or “sculpture.”

How far then must we go back to find the birth of the _art_ of

sculpture? In other words, when did man first awaken to a sense of the

real beauty of human form; and, under the impulse of this feeling, when

did he first seek to perpetuate the fleeting beauties he saw around

him, and the still more fleeting imaginations which these beauties

evoked? Where must we begin if we would determine the various human

influences—social, political, and religious—which have determined the

course of sculpture as an art?

The man in the street answers readily enough—and he is quite

right—“Fifth Century Greece.” He is satisfied that, speaking in

general terms, it was not until after Marathon and Salamis that

“Human hands first mimicked, and then mocked

With moulded limbs more lovely than its own,

The human form, till marble grew divine.”

The average man, who has none of the yearnings of the archæologist,

sees the interest of some of the plastic art of the earlier

civilisations. He even grants it a certain beauty. Yet he knows that it

is not what he expects to find in a gallery of sculpture. In Babylonia,

the art was too closely identified with architecture to ever attain

a vigorous independent growth. In Egypt, the conventionalities that

resulted from the influence of an all-powerful priesthood and an

extremely narrow emotional and intellectual experience, proved too

strong for the native sculptor. The brilliant civilisation that existed

during the second millennium in pre-Hellenic Greece and the islands and

coasts of the Ægean, was too short-lived to allow of any art reaching

maturity. It was only when the final defeat of the Persians permitted

the Greeks to devote their great intellectual gifts to the task that

the workers proved the full capabilities of stone and bronze as mediums

of emotional expression, and “marble grew divine.”

But the efflorescence of the sculptor’s art in fifth-century Greece

can only be realised by reference to the efforts of an earlier age.

In comparison with poetry, sculpture developed late in Greece. Homer

had lived and died. His epics had been chanted by the minstrels of the

feudal courts for hundreds of years; but it was not until the tribal

organisation became weakened, and the Greek trading and manufacturing

cities arose, that men looked to marble and bronze to give material

form to their fleeting imaginations. The case of Greece is, however,

typical. The sculptor, like the dramatist, needs the atmosphere of a

city and the vivifying effects of a city’s ever-changing influences to

kindle the vital spark. Both are inspired, not by the appreciation of

the few, but by the homage of the many. So long as the Greek husbandmen

met by tens to honour Dionysus, the god’s feast was the occasion of

a rude medley of rustic song and dance. When thousands gathered in

the theatre below the Acropolis at Athens, an Æschylus showed that an

art, using the same elements, could sound the depths of all hearts and

imaginations. So, in the spot where a few rustics offered up their

prayers and their praises for the increase of their herds, a rude

wooden image was sufficient to mark the resting-place of the god. But

when the Athenian populace gathered near the shrine of Athene, the

goddess was symbolised by the great ivory and gold statue of Phidias.

The earliest Hellenic images were of wood hewn into the rough

semblance of human figures. There was no attempt at more than vaguely

indicating the limbs. The heavy blocks were, however, covered with

richly embroidered dresses which served to hide some of their rudeness.

When stone began to be used instead of the more perishable wood, the

masons did not conceive the possibility of any great improvement.

Yet these painted wooden images were not the first instances of the

sculptor’s art in the Ægean peninsula. Six hundred years before, the

Mycenæan civilisation in the south of the Peloponnesus and in the

island of Crete, which the excavations of Dr. Schliemann and Sir Arthur

Evans have recently revealed, had given birth to work far nearer to

nature than any produced in the eighth and ninth centuries. But during

the years following the so-called Dorian invasion this was lost.

Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Cnossus became vague memories—the dwelling-places

of mythical kings and heroes—invaders and natives, settling down to an

agricultural life in a not-too-fruitful country. The bare necessities

of life were hard to come by. There was no leisured class such as alone

could support an art like sculpture.

But this is scarcely a sufficient explanation of the extreme roughness

of the early temple images of Greece before the sixth century. We still

ask why a race in which the artistic instinct was so strong, and which

had already inspired a great epic poem, did not produce more natural

representations of the deities they had evidently clearly imaged

mentally. An answer is suggested by an analogous case in early Egyptian

history. Among the temple shrines of the Nile Valley, natural flints

have been found that had evidently been selected on account of their

rough resemblance to some animal form. Limestone figures have been

found alongside these, the workmanship of which is almost as rough.

These carved lumps of limestone are rather the result of improving

natural forms than of actual modelling. Applying this analogy to the

case of Greece, the early temple images seem to have been chosen, in

the first place, on account of some fancied resemblance to a human or

superhuman figure. The temptation to commit a pious fraud by adding a

nostril, or an eye, or a suggestion of drapery would be very great, but

it could not be carried too far. Beauty or naturalism were not aimed at

or desired.

The suggestion that the extreme rudeness of the early Hellenic

religious sculptures was deliberate, becomes still more probable when

we turn to the history of Renaissance art, two thousand years after

the age of which we speak. At a time when the artists of Italy were

lavishing all their imagination and technical skill upon figures of

the Madonna, the old symbolic representations of the Byzantine type

were still preserved as precious relics in church and cathedral. Of

the Italians of his day, for instance, no man realised the beauty of

physical form and the possibility of expressing it by means of pigment

and brush, more than Guido, the father of Italian painting. Yet he did

not worship at the foot of one of his own pictures of the Madonna. Week

by week he knelt before the little Madonna della Guardia from the East,

black with age as it was. He felt instinctively that, for all the sheer

beauty that he was striving to impart to his pictures of the Mother of

Christ, they lacked the spiritual appeal of this old work. And so it

was long after the time of Guido. Seeing that the Italian worshipper,

who saw the most lovely representations of the Divine Motherhood in

every church, still regarded the old conventional types with awe, we

need not be surprised that the Greek peasant was content to worship the

rough wood or stone image which he was told was heaven sent.

If this explanation is correct, the image would be an object of awe on

account of the very artlessness which is surprising in a race so gifted

as the Greeks. We escape the difficulty of believing that such a temple

image as the “Hera of Samos,” in the Louvre, was the highest stage that

the craftsmanship and the imagination of the Greek sculptor could then

attain.

THE GROWTH OF NATURALISM (550 B.C. TO 480 B.C.)

The Ionic Colonies in Asia Minor were the first of the Greek-speaking

races to acquire material prosperity, and it was there that the

sculptor first began to shake off the old conventional shackles. The

Ionians were in touch with the civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt,

and merchandise from the East flowed through their markets for Greece

and the Grecian Colonies in the far west. Sculpture, in which the

Oriental influence was strongly marked, flourished there considerably

earlier than in Argos or Attica. About the middle of the seventh

century B.C. these Ionian Colonies began to influence Greece strongly,

and Athens in particular. This is evidenced by the manner in which the

Ionic linen chiton, or sleeved tunic, gradually superseded the woollen

peplos which the Athenians had worn earlier.

At this time the Greeks were becoming richer; their Colonies continued

to demand ever increasing quantities of their manufactures, and to

send more and more of the raw materials. The greater cities were able

to replace the old shrines of brick and wood, which had contained

the wooden images of their gods, by new stone structures. During the

second half of the sixth century, temples were erected all over the

Greek-speaking world, the ruins of those at Ægina and Selinus still

remaining to show us the general type. Sculpture was the twin sister

of architecture. Pediments, metopes, and friezes were all adorned

with marble groups or reliefs. In Greece proper, the tyrants, who had

usurped the power in many States, spent vast sums on beautifying their

capitals. Such a one as Pisistratus turned to Ionia for the craftsmen

he needed, and, particularly, to the school of sculpture in the island

of Chios. Many Ionians skilled in the working of marble from Naxos and

Paros settled in Athens, and they instructed their Athenian brethren.

With the increasing facility that resulted from the greater number

of workmen who could give their lives to mastering its technical

difficulties, sculpture gradually lost its conventionalities.

By this time the art had made immense strides beyond the rude wooden

images of the earlier age, as can be seen from the well-known

archaistic “Diana,” in the National Museum, Naples. This particular

work was executed in Roman times under the influence of a strong

tendency to reproduce the prominent characteristics of the archaic

style. But though it dates from a time when sculpture was once more

falling into lifeless conventionalism, it gives a good idea of the

results of the first earnest efforts after truthful representation. The

sculptor is not yet master of his material. Note the strange expression

known as “the archaic smile,” a direct consequence of the craftsman’s

inability to represent correctly the human eye in profile.

[Illustration: DEDICATORY STATUE (ARCHAIC) Acropolis Museum, Athens]

[Illustration: DIANA (ARCHAISTIC) National Museum, Naples]

A number of painted archaic sculptures have been unearthed in recent

years on the Athenian Acropolis, which show the originals upon which

the archaistic style of the “Diana” at Naples was formed. They were

buried during the improvements consequent upon the rebuilding after the

Persian Wars. Many of these were dedicatory offerings. The increasing

custom of substituting such statues for the tripods and craters

dedicated in earlier days, did much to provide artists at the end of

the sixth, and the beginning of the fifth century, with opportunities

for experiment. In such work the artist had only to satisfy the donor.

Private individuals were less insistent upon conventional forms than

the temple priests. Under these influences the drapery gradually became

less angular, and the set smile of the older statues gave place to a

dignified repose. The illusion of form became more and more complete,

and there was less and less insistence upon the reproduction of the

detail in every fold of the elaborate Ionic drapery. In other words,

the artist was no longer a slave to his material. He was learning

how to make the marble express what he had in mind. The numerous

discoveries of these archaic statues illustrate the gradual change

and, particularly, the growing beauty after which the Athenian artists

were striving. Incidentally, they afford interesting evidence of the

practice of painting marble which was general in Greece. From the

remains of the actual pigments used, it can be seen that the hair was

coloured, and the brow, lashes, pupil and iris of the eye indicated.

The borders of the dress too were strongly marked, so that one garment

could be readily distinguished from another.

With the growing naturalism even portrait statues became possible. For

instance, after the dismissal of the sons of Pisistratus, a group in

honour of Harmodius and Aristogiton, who had headed an insurrection

against the tyrant, was erected in the Agora by their democratic

admirers. When this was carried off by Xerxes, it was replaced by a

group, the work of Critius and Nesiotes, a marble copy of which can be

seen in the National Museum at Naples. We have chosen the statue of

“Harmodius” as an illustration of the earliest Greek iconic statuary.

It will be seen that it entirely lacks the ideality of treatment which

was to be the leading characteristic of the art fifty years later.

THE ATHLETIC SCULPTURES (480 B.C. TO 400 B.C.)

The magnificent full length “Charioteer,” reins in hand, excavated by

the French Expedition at Delphi, is not only the finest pre-Phidian

bronze in existence, but marks the “border line between dying archaism

and the vigorous life of free naturalism.” The statue may have formed

part of a chariot group set up as a dedicatory offering by Polyzalus,

the brother of Hieron of Syracuse, in honour of a victory in the games

at Delphi. The entire work portrayed a high-born youth, waiting in a

chariot at the starting-post. A companion was at his side, grooms, no

doubt, standing at the horses’ heads. The driver’s chiton is gathered

across the shoulders by a curious arrangement of threads, run through

the stuff in order to prevent the loose garment fluttering in the

wind. It dates from about 470 B.C. The bronze is representative of the

highest achievements of Greek art before the advent of the three great

sculptors of the fifth century. Traces of archaic workmanship are most

noticeable in the face and drapery. The arms and the feet, however, are

beautifully natural.

[Illustration: THE CHARIOTEER (BRONZE) Delphi Museum]

[Illustration: HARMODIUS National Museum, Naples]

Still the stiffness and conventionality of the archaic period died

hard. Even in the works of Myron, whose reputation was established by

the middle of the fifth century, there are still traces of archaic

treatment, as in the hair. But in such a statue as his “Discobolus,”

with its truthfulness to nature, its rhythmic grace of design and its

triumphant mastery over all technical difficulties, we can realise how

far the sculpture of his age was ahead of the best work possible fifty

years earlier.

The mention of Myron, the earliest artist to benefit by the freeing

of the plastic arts from the shackles of conventionalism, brings us

upon one of the prime problems of Greek sculpture. Practically, the

history of Greek sculpture depends upon the connections which can be

established between the art and three leading ideals. The difficulty

of really understanding it depends upon the distance we moderns have

progressed—pardon us the term—from those three dominating ideas.

“How we jabber about the Greeks! What do we understand of their art,

the soul of which is the passion for naked male beauty?” So says

Nietzsche. And he proceeds to point out that for this very reason the

Greeks had a perspective altogether different from our own. Nothing

can be truer; nor can anything be more certain than that this truth

must be realised absolutely by all who would penetrate beyond the outer

courts of the temple of Hellenic sculpture. But though we cannot look

at a Greek statue with the understanding of a Hellene, though classic

sculpture is, as it were, written in an alien tongue, the historian can

readily enumerate the influences by which the art was fostered, and the

ideals which it sought to embody.

_The first_ was a civic pride so intense that no Greek of the best

period hesitated to sacrifice all individual considerations for the

sake of the common weal. To the true Hellene, life was life in the

Greek city-state.

_The second_ was a realisation of the extent and limit of human powers

so complete that it left little room for the idea of the extra-mundane

God which Christian nations have found so satisfying. The immediate

consequence was a religious tolerance so complete that we Christians,

who are apt to estimate religious fervour by proselytising energy, too

often regard it as proceeding from a mere poetical philosophy.

_The third_ was a love, amounting to worship, for the human physical

frame—for the actual bone, flesh and muscle, which make the man.

Every Greek statue owes its greatness to the intensity of the artist’s

attachment to one or other of these dominating beliefs. The Panathenaic

frieze on the Parthenon was, primarily, the result of the first; the

great temple statues of Zeus, Hera, Athena and Asclepius represent

the fruits of the second; the glorious series of athletic statues by

Hellenic sculptors of every period witness to the potency of the third.

Like most ultimate problems, the puzzle goes back to a question of

morality. To-day, virtue is personal, morality is practically a bargain

between man and man and between the individual creature and his

Creator. We cannot easily realise the position of the fifth-century

Hellene, whose moral sense did not depend upon the promptings of an

individual conscience, but upon the influence of an unwritten, but

unbending, civil code. There was not one such code in Greece, but a

hundred and fifty. Each city-state had its own fixed ideals. Greatly as

these differed, all agreed that the interests of the individual were

as nothing compared with those of the city. And to this all added as

the second great commandment, “Thou shalt love thy body as thyself.”

To-day, we appoint Degeneration Commissions. In Greece they went to

the root of the matter and made a well-proportioned and strong body a

prime condition of citizenship. In Sparta every child was submitted to

the inspection of the heads of the tribe, whose task it was to decide

if any bodily weakness or deformity was present or seemed likely to

develop. If so, the verdict was death. At seven the Spartan boy left

home and entered the state schools, his life, until he reached manhood

at thirty, being a continual round of exercises, athletic and military.

And so it was with the fairer sex. The one end of the education and

training of a Spartan woman was to give birth to perfectly-proportioned

sons. Each girl attended the public gymnasium. Nor were these customs

peculiar to Sparta. The maidens of the Greek world had their athletic

festivals, under the guardianship of the goddess Hera. A typical

example, the Heræa of Elis, was celebrated once in every Olympiad,

and was presided over by the sixteen matrons who had woven the sacred

peplos of the goddess. The principal solemnity was the race of the

maidens in the Olympic stadium. The course, however, was much shorter

than that of the Olympian games, in fact a sixth part. The girls were

divided into three classes according to age, their prize being the

garland of wild olive awarded at Olympia. The victors were allowed to

set up statues of honour, and a marble copy of one of these bronzes,

often called “The Spartan Girl,” has come down to us. The forearms have

been wrongly restored, but the statue evidently represents a maiden

of about sixteen years of age at the starting-point, waiting for the

signal. She is clad in the short linen chiton, reaching to the knees.

But to return to the main thread of our argument. The Spartan system

was not singular but typical. It is true that no other Greek state

called upon its parents to expose their halt, maimed, and blind

weaklings on the wild slopes of Mount Taygetus. So drastic a method

was only necessary where military considerations were paramount. But

every Greek city relied upon the physical fitness of its citizens, and

any Greek commander might confidently have followed the example of

the officer who stripped the rich robes and jewels from his Persian

captives and exposed their unmanly limbs to his company. “Such plunder

as this,” he cried, “and such bodies as those!”

The Hellenic belief in the prime importance of physical fitness and

the worship of bodily beauty to which it gave rise explain why the

school of “Athletic” sculptors, who first shook off the chains which

had hampered the progress of the plastic arts, made such an immediate

impression. These men appealed to more than the sense of physical

beauty. They touched a chord in the Greek heart which was in a very

true sense “religious.” An Athenian of the time of Pericles must have

inspired Mr. Arthur Balfour when in answer to the query “What do you

mean by a beautiful soul?” he replied, “Well, to tell you the truth, my

dear lady, I mean a beautiful body.”

The mythological religion of Greece had retarded, as we have seen, the

progress of the sculptor. In its early stages the art, of course, owed

much to its position as a handmaiden of religion. The first artists

found the priests, and still more those making dedicatory offerings

at the shrines of the great gods, their chief patrons. When, however,

the craftsmen proved the possibility of not only a truthful but even

an ideal representation of nature, and were ready to discard the

meaningless conventionalities of the earlier stage, these religious

influences proved a bar rather than an aid to progress. When a city

desired to erect a new statue in its chief temple, it offered the

commission, not to the daring innovator, but to one of the old school,

or at least to an artist who was willing to confine his experiments to

other classes of subjects.

[Illustration: “THE SPARTAN GIRL” Vatican, Rome]

[Illustration: THE DORYPHORUS OF POLYCLITUS National Museum, Naples]

In this plight the sculptor, consciously or unconsciously, sealed

an alliance with the worshipper at the shrine of bodily beauty. The

results were immediate. After the middle of the sixth century it became

customary to erect statues in honour of victors in the national games.

They were frequently set up by the victor’s colony or state in the

sacred grove of Zeus at Olympia, in honour of their subject’s success.

An iconic statue was the peculiar privilege of one who had proved the

winner on at least three occasions, but others were erected of a more

general character. These portrayed the pick of the youth of the Grecian

world in all the varied attitudes of the different sports. No subjects

could have offered better opportunities to an artist appealing to a

race with the characteristics we have sketched.

Moreover, the circumstances under which his work was given to the

world were ideal. Compare the sculpture-rooms at Burlington House with

the sacred grove of Zeus at Olympia, compare the average private-view

“crowd” with the gathering of Greeks every four years for the Olympian

festival, and one can see why men speak of sculpture as “a lost art.”

THE OLYMPIAN GAMES

When the Olympian games started they were confined to the south of

Greece, and grew up under the patronage of Sparta. As early as 776 B.C.

the meetings determined the chronological system of Greece. A few years

later the festival had established itself so firmly in the Hellenic

social system that it became the occasion of a national assembly of

the Greek-speaking world. At all other times the distinction between

Athenian and Spartan, between Argive and Theban, was absolute. During

the Olympian games the Greek escaped from the grinding effort to

preserve his civic individuality—the price he paid for citizenship in

such a state as Athens or Sparta. Under the shadow of Mount Cronus, at

the time of the second full moon after Midsummer Day, the competitors

and spectators came together from Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor, and the

islands of the Ægean. A sacred armistice had been proclaimed by the

Olympian heralds in all the states of Greece. The deputies from every

part vied with one another in the splendour of their equipment and the

value of their offerings to the state of which they were the guests.

Remembering that we are endeavouring to account for the rise of one

of the great arts of all time, let us call to mind the scene on the

plain between the Alpheus and the Cladeus on one of the five days

during which the festival lasted. With one exception—the Priestess of

Demeter—there is no woman in the vast assembly. It is the fourth day

of the games. The judges can be seen, clad in the purple robes of their

office. Near by, in the brilliant sunshine, his naked form standing

out in clear outline, is one of the competitors in the Pentathlon.

This comprises leaping, running, wrestling, and hurling the spear and

discus. All who enter must excel in each. Victory is not certain until

three of the five events have been won. The most famous Pentathli are

light men—not bulky wrestlers. Of all the competitions, this needs

the finest physique and is most calculated to develop that elasticity

and harmonious balance which the Greek prizes in his youth. Well might

Aristotle call the Pentathli “the most handsome of all athletes.” The

youthful figure, on a space raised slightly above the ground, is of

pure Hellenic blood. He rests on his right foot, his knee bent and

his body leaning forward. In his hand is the stone discus, ten or

twelve inches in diameter, which reaches half way up his forearm. In

front, in the distance, stands a friend ready to mark the spot where

the stone falls. The eyes of Greece are upon the discobolus. His only

reward is the right to lay the crown of leaves in the shrine of the

god of his native town. Can it be wondered that the artists of Greece

were inspired to their grandest achievements by such sights? It would

have been strange indeed if their finest works had not included the

representations of the winners of the garland of wild olive.

But the truth goes deeper than this. Without such inspirations Greek

sculpture would never have risen to the heights it did attain. And

without the achievements of the Hellene, can we be sure that Michael

Angelo would have ever been more than a struggler? He might have

painted the Sistine ceiling, but would he have modelled the David or

carved the monuments in the Medici Chapel? The festival at Olympia and

the gymnasia in every Greek city were surely necessary if the art which

depends upon “the passion for naked male beauty” was to come to its

own. In no other way could “every limb present”—we are quoting from

Schopenhauer—“its plastic significance to criticism and to comparison

with the ideal which lay undeveloped” in the imaginations of men. Under

circumstances less strenuous the dull anticipation of bodily beauty

would never have been raised “to such distinct consciousness that men

would have become capable of objectifying it in works of art.”

We have seen that the initiation of the Olympian games was due to

Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies. Moreover, the custom of laying

aside all clothing for the various sports was first adopted by the

Peloponnesians, and only spread slowly through the other Greek

city-states. These facts, together with the location of Olympia in

the centre of the Peloponnese, suggest why the “Dorian” sculptors

devoted particular attention to such subjects as the Olympian festivals

offered. In the fifth century Argos was second only to Athens as an

artistic centre, and Polyclitus of Argos, who headed “the Dorian

School,” was considered the equal of Phidias himself.

The ideal for which Polyclitus worked was the portrayal of the healthy

human form in its most complete and harmonious development, and,

particularly, the preservation of a due proportion between the various

parts of the body. His success may be judged from the fact that his

statue, the “Doryphorus”—spear-bearer—was adopted by his artistic

successors as the standard of perfection of the youthful male figure,

and was known as “The Canon.”

The bronze originals of the “Doryphorus” and its companion, the

“Diadumenus,” which depicts a youth binding the diadem of victory about

his brow, have perished. We are therefore compelled to gauge the genius

of Polyclitus by the marble copies. There is a famous copy of the

“Doryphorus” in the National Museum at Naples.

[Illustration: _Photo. Holliday, Oxford_

MYRON’S DISCOBOLUS The Ashmolean, Oxford]

The chief point of interest in the Dorian school, however, arises from

a comparison of the works produced under its direct influence with

the better-known examples of the Attic school. Early in the fifth

century the school of sculpture located around Argos seems to have

been one of the most influential in Greece. The Argive Ageladas, under

whom Polyclitus was a student, is credited with having instructed the

two other early masters—Myron and Phidias. However this may be, the

Argive influence was not all-powerful amongst the Athenian sculptors.

The variation between the two schools is more noticeable than the

resemblance. And this is of vital interest, depending as it does upon

the entirely different mental and emotional atmosphere in the two

city-states.

If the two well-known statues of discoboli are compared with the

“Doryphorus” of Polyclitus, the characteristic differences between the

Athenian and Dorian schools are clear.

The standing “Discobolus” may well be a copy of the “Pentathlon Winner”

of Alcamenes, a co-worker with Phidias, who reached his prime about 420

B.C. It shows the athlete holding the discus in his left hand. He is

measuring the ground with his eye, testing the elasticity of his limbs

and the sureness of his footing as he does so.

The “Discobolus” of Myron represents the Pentathlete in the act of

throwing the discus. Lucian speaks of “the discus-thrower, bending into

position for the cast: turning towards the hand holding the discus,

and all but kneeling on one knee, he seems as if he would straighten

himself up at the throw.” The statue is a consummate proof of Myron’s

skill in the rendering of vigorous movement. The copies in the Vatican

and the British Museum are in marble. In the original bronze the

discus-thrower looked back, not at the ground, as in the restoration.

The correct attitude can be seen in the recently discovered replica,

now in the possession of the Italian Government, or, still better, in

the fine bronze cast in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, which dispenses

with the disfiguring support necessary in a marble copy.

Both these statues of discoboli are distinguished above all for the

rhythm of their composition—a rhythm which is the expression in

bronze of the beautifully balanced and magnificently full lives of the

Athenians of the Periclean age. Polyclitus invested his figures with

a natural vigour and dignity which won for him the suffrages of his

Peloponnesian countrymen. But even allowing for the fact that we judge

the Argive from late copies, while such originals as the Parthenon

frieze remain to witness to the achievements of the rival school,

it cannot be doubted that the Athenian ideal was the nobler and its

attainment worthier of praise. Nor can we attribute the difference to

anything else than the more vitalising atmosphere in which Athenian art

was nourished—a fact which will be clear when we have estimated the

circumstances which led to the erection of the Parthenon.

CHAPTER II

THE PARTHENON AND THE TEMPLE STATUARY OF GREECE (470 B.C. TO 420 B.C.)

On the vast canvas of recorded history one half-century has always

stood out. The clearer the vision of the observer and the larger his

view, the more every line in the composition has appeared to converge

upon and lead up to that central point. Ever and again the imagination

of man, fascinated by some new beauty, has been tempted away. It has

always returned with a new wonder. The advance of knowledge has changed

the world’s estimate of this and that part of the glowing record of

human action and endeavour. But the relative importance of those fifty

years has been preserved throughout the ages.

This, we believe, represents the true position of Athens during the

fifth century before our era in the scheme of general history. But a

great art is only the expression of a nation’s moods. As the Greek

epigram puts it:

“I sang those songs that gain so much renown:

I, Phœbus; Homer merely wrote them down.”

We have therefore only to alter a few phrases to arrive at the real

position of Athenian sculpture between 470 and 420 B.C. in the scale

of artistic achievement. The proposition may need qualification. If

so, we may well prepare ourselves for the task by the most generous

appreciation of this—the Golden Age of Sculpture.

So much for panegyric. What are the facts? How closely was sculpture

connected with the every-day and all-day lives of the Athenian

citizens? We shall find that the art was interwoven with all that was

most vital in the nation’s history; that its roots struck down deep

into the hearts of the people.

The victory at Marathon, which broke the spell of Persian

invincibility, and the brilliant sea fight at Salamis, which settled

the future course of civilisation in Western Europe, had made Athens

the principal city in Greece. The smaller states in her vicinity and

the great trading cities of Asia Minor, attracted by the position of

Athens as a sea power, joined the Confederation of which she was the

leading spirit. Even those which refrained from a political alliance

could not withhold their admiration from the men who had done so much

to save Greece from the dreaded hordes from the East.

The Athenians had, however, only attained this position at the cost

of the destruction of their city. Xerxes had sacked and burnt Athens

during the second campaign of 480 B.C. Directly peace was assured the

Athenians set to work to rebuild the town. Cimon, the aristocrat, and

Pericles, the democrat, vied with each other in ensuring that the

new city should outshine the capital of any state in Greece. With

fresh markets opening up every year the material prosperity of Attica

increased by leaps and bounds. Produce poured in from Asia Minor,

the islands of the Ægean, the colonies in Sicily and Italy, and the

settlements on the shores of the Black Sea. Directly the absolutely

necessary rebuilding had been accomplished and the defences of the

town were sufficiently sure, the Athenians prepared to make their city

worthy of the headship of the Panhellenic League. In bringing this

about they were to do honour to the goddess to whose fostering care

they ascribed their victory over the great conqueror of the East. As we

have seen, no lack of means hampered the accomplishment of the Athenian

ambition.

About 450 B.C. a temple was erected on the south-west of the Acropolis

to the honour of Athena Nike—the giver of Victory. A year or two later

the colossal bronze statue of Athena was erected in front of the spot

where the Parthenon was to be built in the following year.

THE PARTHENON

In the early days of Athens the Acropolis had been a rocky eminence

which served as a natural retreat, on which the dwelling of the chiefs

was erected with the shrine of the tribal deity. Its precipitous cliffs

enabled a body of determined defenders to keep an enemy at bay; so that

those living at its foot soon obtained a commanding position among the

village tribes of Attica from their ability to offer a place of safety

in time of stress. In course of time these tribes became united in the

common worship they paid to the Virgin Athena who gave her name to the

leading settlement, and all offered their gifts at her shrine in the

centre of the fortress when her inspiration gave them the victory. Now,

however, Athens was to put the Acropolis to another use. Cimon levelled

its rugged plateau, and, by building extensive walls around its slopes

and filling in the gaps between the walls and the rock, considerably

increased its area. On the top arose the buildings which were to make

Athens one of the wonders of the world. The chief of these was, of

course, the Parthenon—the temple of the virgin goddess Athena. On this

all the genius of Attica was lavished. Ictinus, the greatest architect

in Greece, furnished the design. Phidias was by common consent the

most fitted to beautify the buildings with the marble groups and

reliefs which were now the great feature of every public building in

Greece. Under him were placed the most accomplished bronze-workers and

stone-cutters of the day. Born about 500 B.C., Phidias was a boy when

Miltiades and his eleven thousand Athenians and Platæans drove the army

of Darius to its boats at Marathon. Like Sophocles, he may have borne

arms at Salamis. He had grown up in an atmosphere saturated with his

countrymen’s successes and ambitions. In temperament, the embodiment

of the Attic spirit, Phidias was the very man to compose the pæan in

marble which should cry his country’s prowess to the world when every

Grecian voice was stilled. The others were to carry out his designs

for the decoration of the temple, but his own work was to be the great

ivory and gold statue of Athena which the Parthenon was to enshrine.

Ten years later (438 B.C.) the work was finished. When the second

statue of Athena was unveiled the goddess was found to be no longer

the warlike maiden who, spear in hand, led those who bore her name to

victory. Phidias’ colossal figure, some forty feet high, portrayed

the virgin in her robes of triumph, with the symbol of victory in her

hand. From her shoulders hung the ægis wherewith her father Zeus had

destroyed his foes, from the centre of which the dreaded gorgon’s head

stared out. The face, arms and feet of the goddess were of ivory,

the dress being decorated with gold. This statue of Athena Parthenos

has been lost to the world since the coming of Christianity to Athens

about 430 A.D., but the accounts of classical travellers and some rude

reproductions enable us to reconstruct the masterpiece of Phidias, at

least in imagination.

The Parthenon itself was built from the golden-hued marble of

Pentelicus, quarried from the mines near Athens. Its architecture was

of the simple yet stately Doric order. The principal chamber of the

temple—the cella—in which the statue of Athena Parthenos stood, was

surrounded by a colonnade of Doric pillars. The metopes, or square

panels above the colonnade, were filled with groups sculptured in high

relief, the outside of the cella being decorated with a frieze in low

relief. In judging this it is important to remember that these reliefs

stood forty feet above the floor of the colonnade. Colour was added to

increase their effect, while the bridles and other appointments of the

horses were of metal. The triangular pediments above the porticos were

filled with two great groups sculptured in the round.

Throughout the series of sculptured marbles with which the Parthenon

was decorated, Phidias’ aim was to illustrate the greatness of the

goddess of the Athenians. In the pedimental groups the artist showed

Athena’s miraculous birth and her victory in the contest with Poseidon.

The eastern pediment pictured Olympus just after the axe of Hephaestus

had freed Athena from her father’s head. The virgin stood fully armed

by the side of Zeus in the midst of the wondering gods. The design for

the western pediment portrayed a scene even more closely connected with

Athenian history. Poseidon had claimed the right to give a name to the

city of the sons of Cecrops, a demand to which Athena would not agree.

It was decided that the one who, in the opinion of Zeus, produced the

more serviceable gift for mankind, should secure the privilege. Phidias

chose the moment when Zeus had awarded the right to Athena on the

ground that the olive tree, which had sprung up on the Acropolis at her

command, was of more value to the human race than the horse—the emblem

of war—upon which Poseidon had relied.

The carvings of the metopes represented the overthrow of the

personifications of the powers of evil of which it was the mission

of the goddess of wisdom to rid the world. In some were depicted the

victory of the Greeks over the Eastern amazons, in others the victory

of the gods over the earth-born giants, and in the rest the contests of

Centaurs and Lapiths. They were all in very high relief. It is certain

that Phidias had less to do with this portion of the decoration of the

temple than with the sculptures in the pediments or the frieze, and the

work is of varying merit.

In the low relief on the frieze within the colonnade the sculptor

depicted perhaps the most Athenian scene of all—the panathenaic

procession. The festival of which this was the culmination was

instituted in honour of Athena Polias—the Protectress of the City.

Every town in Attica and each colony and subject town contributed its

share to the sacrifices in honour of the occasion. On the last day the

whole population of the State, some on foot, some on horseback or in

chariots, marched in procession to lay the peplos of the goddess in

her temple. The concourse included a band of the noblest maidens of

the city carrying baskets of offerings, the right to be one of these

being the greatest honour to which an Athenian girl could aspire. To

adorn the frieze, Phidias imaged this great procession divided into

two long lines, running along the north and south sides of the cella

respectively. Both met in the eastern face. At this spot the sculptor

showed the Athenian maidens with the vessels of sacrifice and the gods,

who, though invisible, were among their people on that day. A priest

stood in the centre possibly receiving the embroidered robe of the

goddess from a little boy. On the right and left were seated the chief

divinities of Hellas—on the one side Athena, Hephaestus, Poseidon, and

Dionysus, and on the other Zeus and Hera attended by Isis.

[Illustration: “THESEUS” British Museum]

[Illustration: “THE THREE FATES” British Museum]

Enough remains of the various parts of the Parthenon decorations

to enable us to judge of the supreme gifts of the artist to whose

imagination they were due and under whose direction they were

fashioned. An hour in the Elgin room of the British Museum, where

the larger part are enshrined, should be sufficient to convince the

greatest sceptic. The magnificent group “The Three Fates” show the

marvellous skill of the Athenian sculptors in dealing with drapery.

There is an ideal nobility in such a figure as that familiarly known

as “The Theseus” which places it on a higher plane of art than either

the beautifully proportioned forms of Polyclitus or the rhythmical

translations of nature by Myron. The wonderful fertility of invention,

which is, perhaps, the most noticeable feature of the whole of the

Parthenon designs, would have been an impossible achievement for the

steady imagination of the Argive sculptor. It needed the temperament

of an Athenian artist working under the inspiration of his subject

and certain of the appreciation of his countrymen. It is one of the

tragedies of art that one who had deserved the esteem of his fellows so

fully did not retain it. Phidias died in exile at Elis. An accusation

of misappropriating the gold voted for the statue, together with a

charge of sacrilege for engraving his own portrait and that of Pericles

on the shield of Athena, caused the great sculptor to leave the city he

had served so well. He died about 432 B.C.

So far we have spoken of Phidias, the sculptor, and Ictinus, the

architect. Our modern ideas incline us to associate the artist with

the work—Wren with St. Paul’s and Raphael with the “Sistine Madonna.”

In reality, the foundation-stone of the Parthenon should be inscribed

thus: “Pericles and the people of Athens made me.”

A work of art so great, which exemplified the struggles and aspirations

of a race so completely, could not but owe the largest debt to the

political leader of the State. All the forces of Athens were united

to beautify the Acropolis, and these were marshalled, naturally

enough, not by an artist but by a politician. The _real_ creator of

the temple of Athena was Pericles. He realised that the greatness of

his countrymen depended, not upon the breadth of their dominions,

but upon the healthy development of every citizen, physically,

mentally, and emotionally. He divined that the proud boast “we love

the beautiful without extravagance and knowledge without exaggeration”

was incompatible with strivings after empire. To engage the Athenian

imagination, and to wean it from the road which eventually led to ruin,

Pericles bethought him of the erection of the series of monuments

witnessing to the glory of the first city of Greece. His was the

conception in its entirety, he found the means, and, above all, he

never permitted the enthusiasm of his countrymen to flag.

[Illustration: GROUP OF GODS From the Parthenon Frieze]

[Illustration: BOY WITH PEPLOS From the Parthenon Frieze]

These are the chief facts. They prove that the temple of the Virgin

goddess and the marbles with which it was adorned, played a part in

the life of the fifth-century Athenian, for which there is no modern

counterpart. The Parthenon brought heaven to earth. It satisfied the

individual Athenian’s craving for light as to his personal destiny.

But above all, it stood for those social and political ideals which he

estimated far above his own personal wants. It spoke to his soul as the

idea of Empire speaks to the patriotic Briton of to-day. The pedimental

groups, too, were more than decorations or mere pictures of the great

gods; they glowed with a message which we should deem inspired.

When the Athenian’s gaze wandered towards the Acropolis—still

more when, during some high festival, he stood before the temple

marbles—he could forget the perpetual sacrifice of will, liberty and

individuality—things which we Europeans deem altogether desirable—and

say with all sincerity, “it is worth while.”

THE TEMPLE STATUARY

One thing will have struck our readers throughout the foregoing

argument. It has been impossible to avoid a certain tendency towards

confusing terms. For instance, stress has been laid upon three factors

in Greek life, as exercising an immense influence upon Hellenic

sculpture—civic pride, a deep tolerance in religious opinion, and

an intense feeling for physical strength and beauty. Yet, directly

we have come to grips with these conceptions, they have appeared to

be inextricably commingled. The Greek’s pride in his city-state, his

absorption in physical beauty, are religious in their fervour and

in the way in which they are utilized to uphold a strenuous moral

ideal. Again, the actions which are most akin to what we term religion

nowadays, closely resemble philosophy in their rigid rejection of

everything approaching mysticism.

In relating any art to the social and political circumstances which

gave it birth, it is all-important to remember that the distinctions

between such terms as science, art, religion, and philosophy are more

or less arbitrary. In the earliest times men did not distinguish

between any of the four. When the skin-clad dweller in the forests

gazed upon the lightning flashing among the oak branches, and imaged

the angry ruler of earth and sky, he did not separate the explanation

of the natural phenomenon from the symbolical incarnation, or both from

the religious belief. Nor was this less so when the human mind rose to

more complex conceptions. The Pueblo Indian, for instance, recognizes

a Sky-god and an Earth-goddess, the parents of all living things. The

Sky-god passes across the heavens with the blazing shield of the sun’s

disc in his hand, to vanish beyond the portals of the dark underworld

where the spirits of the dead are at rest. This is at once the science,

the art, and the religion of the Pueblo Indian. It satisfies two

elemental cravings of his nature. In the first place it translates

the phenomena of the natural world into terms which his reason can

grasp. In the second place it satisfies his yearning for some superior

will—we call this God—to which he may attribute the purpose and order

which he instinctively assumes in the world.

So it was in Greece. We may be convinced that the Iliad and the Odyssey

should be described as art. They _are_ art to our way of thinking; that

is to say, to our minds they are clearly more akin to “Paradise Lost”

than to the religious poetry of the Jews. But to the Greek they were at

once religion and art and philosophy.

Exactly the same remark must preface our consideration of the third

class into which the sculptures of fifth-century Greece may be

divided—the temple statues, erected to such deities as Zeus, Hera, and

Athena.

For five hundred years or more the best elements in the religious faith

of ancient Greece had been fostered and sustained by the Homeric poems.

These, at least, offered an antidote to the brutal temple myths which

had gradually gathered around the names of the gods, the nature of

which can be realized from the pages of Hesiod. But the Greeks must at

times have hungered for more definite representations of the great gods

and goddesses.

In the fifth century, however, the sculptors shook off the bonds of

realism, which had prevented the portrayal of such a purely ideal

figure as the deity “who dwelt in the heights of the air,” and whose

voice could be heard in the rustling of the oak-leaves of Dodona. It

was realized that a divine image, as satisfying to the imagination of

the Greek as the word-pictures of Homer, was possible. The success of

the great artists of the fifth century was instantaneous. Within a

short time all the great temples of the Hellenic world were furnished

with statues of the deities in whose honour they were erected.

The sculptors were content for the most part to follow the imaginations

of the earlier poets. They only sought to realize in the god-like

forms their highest ideals of human beauty and dignity. They avoided

the example of the Babylonians and Egyptians who had emphasized the

unworldliness of their deities by investing them with strange shapes

and symbols. The Greek imagination was content to add to the human

form a more than human majesty. Gradually these statues became so

much a part of their imagination that the Greeks found it impossible

to picture the great gods apart from the artists’ portrayals. So

widespread was the effect of sculpture on Greek and Roman religious

thought that, at length, no other conception of the gods could be

formed. In the wall paintings of Pompeii the deities are represented

as of the colour and material of statues, the sculptural effect being

imitated as closely as possible.

Lucian, too, in one of his dialogues, pictures the assembly of the

Olympian deities who are dismayed that men no longer rest upon the

faiths of their forefathers. In the course of the dialogue, Zeus orders

“that the gods should be seated in order of merit. The gold gods first,

then the silver, then the ivory, bronze, and stone,” he commands, “and

give preference to any work of Phidias, or Alcamenes, or Myron, or

Euphranor, or other artist of distinction.”

The most famous of the religious statues of ancient Greece were erected

to Zeus and Hera. Other gods and goddesses were particularly identified

with the various cities of Greece, such as Athena with Athens. But for

the whole Greek world Zeus and Hera were the recognized rulers among

the dwellers in Olympus. The chief temple of Zeus was at Olympia where,

as we have seen, the Pan-Hellenic Games were held in his honour. That

of Hera lay between Argos and Mycenæ. To these the Hellenic world came

from time to time to honour the Father of the gods and his chosen

consort. In the inner shrine of each stood a great “chryselephantine”

statue—a term used to distinguish the wooden statues, with their

veneer of ivory and gold, from the ordinary marbles and bronzes. No

trace of either remains to-day. Wood is perishable, and the plunder of

gold would doubtless have proved irresistible to the Turk, even had the

Christian been scrupulous enough to resist the temptation. Had they

been cut from the cold marble it might have been otherwise. They were,

however, still in their places in the time of Hadrian, when Pausanias

wrote the greatest of all guide-books.

[Illustration: ZEUS Vatican, Rome]

[Illustration: HERA Terme Museum, Rome]

We can picture the great statue of Zeus, possibly the most remarkable

creation of the sculptor’s art in Greece. The features of the “Father

of the Gods” are majestic, yet not unkindly; the arms and the upper

parts of the body are fashioned from the gleaming ivory, the lower

limbs being wrapped in the golden mantle. In the days of Pausanias

there was a building outside the sacred Grove, which was still

treasured by the people of Elis as the workshop in which, for five

years, the sculptor wrought the image piece by piece. “Why,” says

Pausanias, “the god himself bore witness to the art of Phidias. For

when the image was completed Phidias prayed that the god would give a

sign if the work was to his mind, and straightway, they say, the god

hurled a thunderbolt into the ground at the spot where the bronze urn

stood down to my time.” This second-century Baedeker has given us the

greater part of our knowledge of the works of antiquity, which are now

lost or survive only in Roman copies. He described the statue of Zeus

by Phidias thus:

“The god is seated on a throne: he is made of gold and ivory: on his

head is a wreath made in imitation of sprays of olive. In his right

hand he carries a Victory, also of ivory and gold: she wears a ribbon,

and on her head a wreath. In the left hand of the god is a sceptre,

curiously wrought in all the metals: the bird perched on the sceptre

is the eagle. The sandals of the god are of gold and so is his robe.

On the robe are wrought figures of animals and the lily flowers. The

throne is adorned with gold and precious stones, also with ebony and

ivory; and there are figures painted and images wrought on it.”

The statue of Hera in the temple between Argos and Mycenæ was the work

of Polyclitus. It was erected after 423 B.C., when it was necessary to

rebuild the shrine of the goddess owing to the burning of the older

temple. The goddess was seated on her throne; the crown on her head

was decorated with a design of the Graces and the Seasons in relief.

Ivory was used to represent the flesh of the “white-armed” goddess,

and her rich garments were elaborately decorated with gold, the finish

of every detail being even more complete than was the case with the

work of Phidias. If the statue of Hera was second to that of Zeus in

its suggestion of god-like majesty and repose, it was nevertheless

remarkable for its stately beauty. The head, as would be expected

from the hand of Polyclitus, was noticeable for the absolute symmetry

of every feature. The ripples of hair falling on either side of the

central parting gave an impression of dignified calm to the face of the

goddess.

The “Zeus” of Phidias and the “Hera” of Polyclitus are the most

famous examples of the Greek statues which we have designated as

“religious.” The term is, however, misleading. Religious art proper,

religious art in the modern sense of the term, did not exist for the

citizens of Periclean Athens: “personal” religion—with its intense

subjectivity—was a closed book to him. The mysticism—that yearning

to be at one with the ultimate reality—which is the keynote of what

we moderns deem religion, would have been simply meaningless to the

Argive, the Spartan, or the Athenian of the fifth century. No Greek

could ever have said with Bacon, “Our humanity were a poor thing but

for the divinity that stirs within us.” Such sentiments as those of the

mystic, Antony, the Egyptian, would have struck him as sheer nonsense.

“He who sits still in the desert is safe from three enemies—from

hearing, from speech, from sight; and has to fight against only

one—his own heart.” The Greek had no conception of a “personal” and

quasi-human intelligence working in and through the human agent. Human

speech, human sight, and, above everything, the promptings of the

heart, were all in all to him.

We are, therefore, unable to correlate such a statue as the Zeus of

Olympia with such an every-day human craving as that for communion with

a personal creator and ruler of the universe which we experience. It

rather depends upon a desire for an all-embracing interpretation of the

phenomenal world. In other words, such a statue might more rightly be

called philosophical than religious.

With the rise of the city-states, the growth of an intense desire

for all knowledge brought a new light to bear upon the whole content

of consciousness. Men began to distinguish between those impressions

which came from outside, and those which seemed rather to depend upon

emotional interpretation supplied by the self. The deductions that

appeared to be correctly drawn from sense impressions came to be

regarded as having a greater validity than the rest, and science arose

as a sphere of thought sufficient unto itself and governed by its own

rules. During the fifth century the scientists strove to relate the

phenomena of the senses, now to one natural force, now to another.

But they never reached a unity that carried conviction. The general

law upon which they seemed to come ever and again was a constant and

eternal flux. “Strife is the father of all things,” said Heraclitus.

But while Greek science was growing there were many—say one half of

the Greek world—to whom its generalisations were simply uninteresting.

They were the men to whom the poet could appeal. The mystery all

desired to fathom was deeper than sense. Each felt, rather than saw,

that:

“Something is or seems,

That touches me with mystic gleams,

Like glimpses of forgotten dreams—

Of something felt, like something here,

Of something done, I know not where;

Such as no language may declare.”

To such men the “realities” of the scientists were but shadows behind

which lay a more abiding truth. The riddle they desired to solve was

what relation the fictional realities of the scientists bore to the

abiding truths beyond. And the bolder spirits, spurred on by the great

intellectual and emotional flood which followed the Persian wars,

started upon the quest.

These were craftsmen all—the artists proper. In obedience to

some unreasoned desire, these men bethought them to fashion new

representations of “the all of things.” They took the ultimate

conceptions of life. For example:

“Him, who from eternity, self-stirred,

Himself hath made by His creative word.”

They strove to convey, not only the impressions realised by their

brothers, the scientists, but the emotions astir in their own hearts.

What matter if the scientists proved these “ideal types” to be mere

lies. The artists felt that the unconscious criticism of nature

revealed truths far beyond those at which the conscious criticism of

science stopped.

[Illustration: THE BARBERINE HERA Vatican, Rome]

By the middle of the fifth century the Greek artist had realized that

his true task was not to strive to copy the known, but, “hungry for the

infinite,” to seek the ideal whose home was in the unknown. The inmost

revelations vouchsafed to Greek thought and imagination in the fifth

century found expression in the great temple statues. Earlier they had

been embodied in such poems as the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” Later

they were to find expression in the dialogues of Plato. But between

450 B.C. and 400 B.C. the natural philosophy of the Greek world was

embodied in such sculptures as the “Zeus” of Olympia and the “Hera” of

Argos. That is why we call the second half of the fifth century “the

golden age of Greek sculpture.” Then, and only then, did it embody

_all_ Greek thought; then, and only then, were the workers in marble

and bronze inspired to express the passion for physical beauty, the

fierce pride in citizenship, as well as the deepest thoughts upon

nature and humanity.

The passion for physical beauty found material expression in the great

series of athletic sculptures of Argos and Athens. The Parthenon was

the outcome of the Hellene’s civic pride. The deepest philosophical

beliefs of the fifth-century Greek are to be found in such statues

as the “Zeus Otricoli” and the “Hera Ludovisi.” These are certainly

the finest conceptions of the great god and goddess which have

been preserved to us. Both are based on the statues of Phidias and

Polyclitus, though there are traces of a more sensuous and florid taste

than would have been possible in the fifth century. In the head of

Zeus, for instance, the suggestion of awful power is lacking. The great

sculptor working under the inspiration of Homer’s lines: “Spake the

Son of Cronus and nodded thereto with swart brows and the ambrosial

lock of the King rolled backward from his immortal head and the heights

of Olympus quaked,” could not have missed this. The two heads convey

all the beauty of the first conceptions, but they lack the serene

austerity—the stern aloofness—that we may be sure characterized

the work of Phidias and Polyclitus. The fifth-century artists were

appealing to men who preserved a measure of unreasoning faith in the

gods of their fathers.

The beautiful full length “Barbarian Hera,” in the Vatican Collection,

represents a step further in the emphasizing of sensuous charm, and

consequently there is even less insistence upon the severe beauty which

the fifth-century sculptor sought to portray. To be understood the

statue must be regarded as a work of the fourth century, and be judged

by the standards of Scopas and Praxiteles.

The ideal head of Asclepius, in the British Museum, which has

been ascribed to Thrasymedes of Paros, the sculptor of the great

chryselephantine statue at Epidaurus, is a work bearing a strong

resemblance to the “Zeus Otricoli.” It was found in the Island of

Melos, in a shrine dedicated to the Physician of the Gods, hence the

title. The expression of the God of Healing, whose worship was so

general in Greece at one time that it threatened to become almost

universal, is, however, more kindly and human than that of Zeus. It

is a beautiful example of the joyousness and sweet reasonableness

which Greek sculpture possessed through contact with a system of

religious belief which left the intelligence unhampered and the human

emotions free. It is true that the religion of ancient Greece lacked

the driving power of other and more potent faiths. It was not based

upon such personalities as Buddha, Moses, or, greatest of all, the

Founder of the faith which eventually Hellenized the Western world. But

for a few short years the humane and tolerant religion of Greece was

all-sufficient. Any one who would have abundant proof has only to stand

for a few minutes before the marbles which sum up and express the Greek

belief in an entirely reasonable and beautiful world.

CHAPTER III

THE AGE OF SCOPAS AND PRAXITELES

(400 B.C. TO 330 B.C.)

There is a wealth of worldy wisdom in the saying “Close sits my shirt,

but closer my skin.” It reminds us that the relation of the individual

to society answers many a riddle. The Athens of the fifth century has

furnished us with one great type of individualism—that in which the

citizen was willing simply to add his unit to the energy directed by

the State. In its sculpture we saw the consequences of a social system

which rested upon a foundation essentially unselfish. But, after all,

such social altruism is unnatural. Individuality _does_ stand for a

dominant passion in humanity. The Athenian communal spirit lasted

for a few short years. Then, like many another truly great ideal, it

vanished, and with it the school of sculpture to which it had given

birth.

After 400 B.C. the Hellenic sculptor found himself in a new world of

thought and emotion. The Greek to whom he appealed looked to marble

and bronze to express ideals entirely different from those which had

been potent fifty years earlier. It would not have been surprising had

the sculptor of the later age been overwhelmed by the sense of the

achievements of the earlier era. We could have pardoned a half-century

of decadent workmanship, while a method suited to the new ideas was

being evolved. As a matter of fact, the Greek sculptor passed from

one to the other without perceptible effort. The succession of great

artists was unbroken.

Nevertheless, the break with the old epoch was complete. Indeed, it

will ever be one of the mysteries of art how human craftsmanship could

successfully express thoughts and emotions so diverse by the same

medium. There was the same sleepless criticism of nature, the same

overpowering impulse towards generalisation, which gave the keynote to

the sculpture of the fifth century. But the younger school found fresh

themes for plastic expression. It drew new passions from the pulsating

humanity in the city-states. That the Greek sculptor passed so easily

from the one to the other is a sure proof of the natural bias of the

Hellenic genius towards sculpture. It shows that for one century and

a half, at any rate, Greece was peopled by a race of sculptors. Many

individuals lacked the technical resources of the craftsman, but the

average Athenian thought in terms of marble or bronze. Denied an outlet

in one direction, the natural impulse found it elsewhere. The result

was a new melody, a harmony equally perfect—so true is it that the

poet-soul of a nation of artists has “but to be struck, and the sound

it yields will be music.”

It is by no means easy to distinguish thus strongly between the

sculpture of the fifth-century Greece and that of the fourth without,

in a measure, appearing to depreciate the one or the other. It is

particularly easy to convey some such impression when we have to assert

that Scopas and Praxiteles, the typical sculptors of fourth-century

Greece, failed to embody in their bronzes and marbles the inmost

revelations vouchsafed to the Greek imagination. It is as true that

Greece owes to Phidias and Polyclitus the sculpture which is most truly

Hellenic, as that we owe to Shakespeare the drama which is most truly

English. But the appreciation of the art produced by the England of

the twenty years after the Armada does not necessitate our decrying

such lyricists as Herrick and Rochester. We know that our literature

is the richer for both these elements. We can spare neither the awful

pathos of Leah’s recognition of Cordelia, nor Herrick’s “Night Piece to

Julia.” We must hold the scales at least as evenly between the art of

Phidias and the art of Praxiteles.

In many ways the “Niobe” of Scopas and the “Hermes” of Praxiteles

testify even more strongly to the vitality of the Hellenic genius.

Certainly the best work of the fourth-century sculptors appeals far

more directly to us. The period is that of the Spartan and Theban

supremacy. Athens has practically acknowledged defeat in the struggle

for the hegemony of Greece. Instead of the all-pervading pride in

citizenship, the Athenian is conscious of an increasing interest in

himself as an individual. The old absorption in the ideal citizenship

vanishes. For this very reason the sculptor strikes a note more akin

to our nature. The cold, almost repellent, beauty of the fifth-century

sculpture is replaced by a new and more sensuous grace.

What were the historical circumstances which brought about this entire

change in the Greek artists’ outlook upon life? Upon the withdrawal

of the calm judgment and imaginative grip of Pericles, the Athenian

political system degenerated rapidly. Drunk with the lust for conquest,

Athens forgot that no single town could hope to conquer and rule any

large portion of the Hellenic world. Under the influence of such

firebrands as Alcibiades, Athens pursued the mad phantom of Empire.

Defeat was inevitable, and the catastrophe at Syracuse in 413 B.C. was

but a prelude to the final disaster nine years later.

There is perhaps no more awful page in the book of human history than

that which pictures the scene in the Piræus after Ægospotami, when the

last Athenian fleet was destroyed by Lysander in 405 B.C. “That night

not a man slept.” Every Athenian remembered the fate of Demosthenes and

Nicias at the hands of the revengeful Syracusans. He called to mind

the living death of his 7000 countrymen condemned to a slavery in the

stone quarries of Achradina. Now that the final catastrophe had come,

his memory must have carried him back to his vote in 428 B.C., when

the Assembly ordered the execution of the whole adult male population

of Mytilene and Lesbos. He recalled the sentence passed upon the

inhabitants of the rebellious Melos, which ended in the death of every

man of military age. As these thoughts crowded in, each man must have

asked if the gods would save him as they had saved the men of Mytilene,

or whether his fate would be the death he had meted out to the soldiers

of Melos and that of his wife and children the slavery that had

befallen the rest of the islanders.

No pleasant picture. But it is to these events that the world owes the

sculptures of Scopas and Praxiteles.

Accepting, as we do, the dictum of Pericles, “Athens is the school of

Hellas,” we have no hesitation in turning to _her_ social and political

history for an explanation of the essential difference between the

sculpture of Greece in the fifth and the fourth century. The term

“Athenian” cannot be used at will for “Hellenic.” Every city and state

in Greece contributed something to the Hellenic genius. Each added its

quota to the fund of intellectual and emotional experience upon which

the great Greek artists drew. In these 150 city-states all types of

political institutions and social customs flourished. Some developed

their citizens in one direction, others in another. Men of all types

were created. But Athens alone absorbed and utilized all the artistic

energies generated in the Ægean peninsula. In the Athenian character

alone do we find those traits which, for want of a better name, we may

term Pan-Hellenic.

The first effect of the shattering of the imperial dream was to scatter

Athenian culture broadcast over the Hellenic world. The store-house of

Athenian genius was opened to all. The typical Greek of the new era was

the cosmopolitan Xenophon. The ideal of Pericles, “my state right, or

my state wrong, but _my_ state, right or wrong,” was sadly out of date.

Phidias was an Athenian, born and bred. His life-work was for Athens,

and the one thing that Athens shared with Greece—the worship of Zeus.

But Scopas was a Parian by birth and an Athenian only by adoption. He

worked everywhere and for anybody—as a young man in Tegea; as an old

man in Asia Minor upon the great mausoleum erected by the Ephesian

Artemisia to her Carian husband.

[Illustration: THE MAUSOLEUM CHARIOTEER British Museum]

For thirty years after Ægospotami, Sparta, with the help of Persia,

ruled Greece. After the peace of Callias in 371 B.C. came the

domination of Pheræ and Thebes, and the military supremacy of

Epaminondas. During all this time Athens looked on. Her commerce

had suffered little. The wealth of her capitalists had rather been

increased than decreased by the abandonment of the luxury of empire.

But if the material difference was small, the psychological difference

was immense. Whereas Demosthenes could cry of the Athenian who had

fought at Salamis, that he believed himself “not born to his father and

mother alone, but also to his country,” the State in the fourth century

came to be regarded as a joint stock corporation, to be bled for the

benefit of its most noisy members. Mercenaries took the place of

citizen soldiers in the army of the State. Regardless of the necessity

for providing against emergencies, the citizens voted themselves

largesses from the public funds. A popular statesman was the man who

lessened the cost of public administration, and so could distribute

ever increasing dividends of festival money to the proletariat.

This new regard for the individual was entirely foreign to the ideals

which had dominated Hellas fifty years earlier. Each man began to

realise that apart from citizenship there was an entity which also

claimed attention, an “I” with passions and emotions which required

satisfaction and called for artistic expression. The sculptor no

longer rejected those subjects which derived their interest from the

successful expression of individual emotion.

THE AGE OF SCOPAS (400 B.C.-350 B.C.)

Scopas was the first artist to realise the new necessity laid upon

the plastic arts. He was the chief architect of his day, and in his

work we can trace the effect of the new ideas before sculpture was

divorced in great measure from architecture. We have already mentioned

his association with the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus—one of the “Seven

Wonders.” The Carian ruler Mausolus died in 353 B.C., leaving his

widow Artemisia to rule. She determined to erect a great monument to

his memory, and impressed the best known artists of Magna Græcia into

her service for the purpose. The restoration by C. R. Cockerell in

the Mausoleum Room at the British Museum, or, still better, that by

Oldfield (_The Antiquary_, vol. liv., pp. 273-362), give some idea of

the great pyramidical building, glowing with colour, which stood on a

lofty basement by the harbour side. The whole was surmounted by a great

chariot group by Pythis, containing the heroic figure of Mausolus,

possibly accompanied by Artemisia, after the fashion of Zeus and Hera

in the chariot of the gods.

To the art historian, however, the most interesting feature is the

frieze. The principal subject of the existing fragments in the British

Museum is a fight between Greeks and Amazons. But the most beautiful

section is perhaps a sadly-mutilated slab from a portion of the frieze

whereon was pictured a chariot race. It is known as the “Mausoleum

Charioteer.” Nothing could bring home more clearly the immense strides

Greek art has made than a comparison of this tiny marble fragment with

the “Bronze Charioteer” from Delphi, sculptured about one hundred and

twenty years earlier. The Mausoleum figure is also clad in the long

close-fitting robe of his calling. But every trace of conventionalism

has vanished. Even the calm restraint with which an Alcamenes would

have treated the subject has gone. Instead we find a passionate

intensity which is altogether new. As Mr. E. A. Gardner reminds us,

the “Mausoleum Charioteer” might well be of the company described by

Shelley, who:

“With burning eyes, lean forth and drink

With eager lips the wind of their own speed,

As if the thing they loved fled on before,

And now, even now, they clasped it.”

[Illustration: THE NIOBE GROUP]

The “Mausoleum Charioteer” is a beautiful illustration of the more

individualistic melody which the early fourth-century sculptor drew

from the great orchestra of Greek genius. But we can gauge the effects

of the new sympathies still more clearly in the celebrated “Niobe”

group. Even in classical times it was a moot point whether its author

was Scopas or Praxiteles. Probably the question will never be settled.

Modern criticism, however, generally favours its attribution to Scopas.

The group certainly contains all the characteristics which we have

associated with his influence.

The series was excavated in Rome in 1583 A.D., near the Church of St.

John Lateran. It was acquired by one of the Medici family, and placed

in the garden of his villa, where it remained until it was removed to

its present resting-place in the Uffizi Palace, Florence.

The Florentine “Niobides” are not from the chisel of a fourth-century

craftsman. They are probably copies of those described by Pliny as

having been brought to the Temple of Apollo Sosianus in 38 B.C.

Indeed, other ancient versions of the great group exist, including a

magnificent copy of the daughter of Niobe—“The Chiaramonti”—now in

the Vatican. The “Niobides” were almost certainly originally designed

to serve an architectural purpose. It has been surmised that they

formed a pedimental group for a Temple of Apollo in Asia Minor. To

judge of their relation to the rest of Greek art, they must be compared

with such a pedimental group as that of the Parthenon, and we have,

therefore, preferred to illustrate them from the collection of casts at

Munich, instead of from the marbles in Rome or Florence. Incidentally,

it is interesting to note that Phidias was content to allow three

or four figures in the centre of the group to tell the story. We do

not, for instance, even know whether the “Theseus” is a god, a hero,

or merely a personification of one of the Athenian rivers. But in the

Niobe group every figure is concerned with the main theme.

Regarded as an incident in the history of Greek sculpture, the

“Niobides” brilliantly illustrate the fourth-century artist’s success

in the depiction of human expression and passion. The Theban Queen is

the incarnation of the belief that womanhood’s greatest glory is to

bring into the world “full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted

human creatures.” She stands for the Hellene’s agreement with Ruskin’s

doctrine that the true veins of wealth are purple—“not in rock but in

flesh.” But her proud sense of the glory of motherhood has aroused the

ire of the Virgin Artemis. The sculptor chooses the moment when Niobe

and her fourteen children are suddenly faced with the dread vengeance

of Apollo and the goddess. The unseen arrows have stricken some of the

fearful boys and girls. Others are as yet unhurt. A brother supports a

sister. The centre of the group is occupied by the unfortunate mother,

to whom the youngest daughter has fled in her terror.

These Roman copies of the “Niobides” were carved long after the

schools of Pergamus and Rhodes had shown the possibility of a far more

realistic presentation of physical terror and bodily pain. But they

still retain evidence of the Greek sculptor’s determination not to

be tempted beyond the limits set by bronze and marble. A desire for

dramatic expression does not interfere with that harmony of the planes

which to the purest Greek taste made for perfectly beautiful sculpture.

There are none of the nervous suggestions of muscular action whereby

later artists conveyed ideas of dramatic intensity. Such figures as

Niobe with her shrinking girl rather display a desire to postpone

physical to spiritual anguish. Upon analysis, this can be traced to

the sculptor’s realisation of the impossibility of expressing the

ultra-dramatic in terms of perfect beauty.

[Illustration: THE LUDOVISI ARES (PAGE 71) Vatican, Rome]

[Illustration: MENELAUS AND PATROCLUS Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence]

As we look upon the “Niobe,” we feel at once that so dramatic a theme

would have made no appeal to the generation before Scopas. But we

must also feel that the fourth century has struck a new note—a note,

moreover, to which marble _can_ respond. But what is most wonderful is

the magnificent reserve, the perfect moderation, with which the artist

has expressed emotions that had been considered beyond the range of the

art. The sculptor has not sacrificed that harmony and repose which he

regards as essential to the idea of the beautiful.

The group usually called the “Menelaus and Patroclus” displays in equal

degree this balance between the expression of deep emotion and the

perfect moderation which the Greeks regarded as the hall-mark of the

truly beautiful. The limitations incidental to marble as a medium for

emotional expression are borne in mind. There is no effort to force the

note of pathos.

THE AGE OF PRAXITELES (360 B.C.-325 B.C.)

If Scopas may be regarded as the first Greek to realise that marble and

bronze could express the more passionate intensity of feeling which

naturally followed the increasing importance of the individual and the

individual’s thoughts and emotions, his successor, Praxiteles, must

be associated with the second great characteristic of fourth-century

sculpture—its lyrical appeal. Greek sculpture had been epic. It

had concerned itself with the heroic myths of the race. But as art

became every year less a matter of communal concern, it began to voice

the growing self-assertion of the individual Greek. In other words,

sculpture became lyric.

Almost any fourth-century work would illustrate what we mean, but a

beautiful practical example is furnished from the history of Attic

sepulchral sculpture.

Any visitor to Athens will remember the numerous dedicatory reliefs,

chapels and memorial stelæ still to be seen _in situ_ in the Ceramicus,

the cemetery near the Dipylon Gate. Reconstructing the scene at

the time of Praxiteles, we must imagine the roads leading from the

principal city gates as flanked with such sculptured memorials of the

dead. The Sacred Way to Eleusis, for instance, became a favourite site.

To-day the Ceramicus is in ruins, but its monuments still present some

of the finest examples of original Hellenic sculpture extant. There is

the famous “Relief of Dexileus.” It depicts with magnificent vigour an

Athenian cavalry-man, triumphing over a prostrate foe. Dexileus died

in the war which Athens waged unsuccessfully with the Corinthians, so

the monument dates from about 394 B.C., the time when the youthful

Scopas was at work upon the pedimental groups at Tegea. The beautiful

work often called the “Death of Socrates” is only a few years earlier

in date. The connection with Socrates is, of course, apocryphal, the

subject really being an Athenian pouring a libation. At the other

side is the wife, absorbed as was the wont of Athenian wives in some

domestic interest—her dress, or her jewellery. The third figure is a

young slave holding the vessel filled with wine.

[Illustration: “THE DEXILEUS RELIEF” Ceramicus, Athens]

Neither of the works memorialises any great political or social figure.

Nothing could well be more individualistic than a monument erected

to an unknown man by his friends or relations. Dating from about 400

B.C., both belong to an age when sculpture was divorcing itself from

its close alliance with the State. But the point to be realised is that

a few years earlier such works would have been impossible. Sculptors

of such power would not have been at the service of mere individuals,

however wealthy. Cicero (“De Legibus,” ii. 26) tells that in the

period after Solon’s death, the Athenians legislated against elaborate

monuments in such cemeteries as the Ceramicus. No tomb was permitted

unless it could be made by ten men in three days.

For many years public opinion approved of these sumptuary laws. It

was only when the fifth century was well advanced that they fell into

disuse. Even then the transition was gradual. The sepulchral monuments

were small and stonemasons only were employed. In the fourth century,

however, the best known sculptors accepted such commissions. Pausanias,

describing the antiquities near the Piræus Gate, says, for instance:

“Not far from the gates is a tomb, whereon stands a soldier standing by

his horse; who he was I know not, but it was Praxiteles who made both

man and horse.”

But the tendency towards an increased interest in the needs of the

individual citizen is even more strongly exemplified by the growth of

home life. Home life had been sacrificed to public life in the age

of Themistocles and Pericles. The victors of Salamis lived in small

houses, which were particularly dark and uncomfortable owing to the

lack of glass. The poorer citizens lived in a single “cella.” Families

of moderate means had two sets of rooms, the upper floor for the women,

and the lower set apart for the men. In the fifth century only a few

rich men could afford the series of rooms grouped round the two courts

which enabled the wealthy Athenian to receive his friends and enjoy

some of the privileges of home life. Under the circumstances, we cannot

wonder that the Greek left his home early and preferred the gymnasium

or the market-place, the law courts or the covered corridors. A few

met in the courtyards of their friends but, as a whole, social life in

Athens was public.

In the fourth century, however, the richer members of the community

began to build magnificent houses in the suburbs of Athens. Attempts

at decorating the interiors followed as a matter of course. It is said

that Alcibiades was the first Athenian to try, calling in Agatharchus,

the painter, to his aid. The poorness of the light in the majority of

the houses doomed the painters’ efforts to failure, but the sculptor

had a better chance. His work could be used, at any rate, for the

decoration of the courtyards. He was employed to supply portrait

busts and a host of single figures, which, appealing as they did to

the individual taste alone, would have had no place in the art of the

preceding century.

The range of subjects was still further increased by the popular

sculptor being no longer chiefly engaged upon huge chryselephantine

statues of deities, in which it was manifestly impossible to depart far

from the popular types which had been fixed by sculptors like Phidias

and Polyclitus. Moreover, the sculptor was no longer compelled to spend

most of his time in filling a triangular pediment, a square metope,

or shaping his design to the long narrow frieze. The consequence was

the discovery of numbers of mythical subjects capable of objective

realisation in bronze and marble.

The “Hermes” is a beautiful example of the use such a sculptor as

Praxiteles made of the new opportunities. The place it occupies in the

history of the art is unique. Whereas most sculptures of its class are

Roman copies, the “Hermes of Praxiteles” is an undoubted original.

The marble was found at Olympia in 1877 A.D., on the very spot where

Pausanias recorded having seen it. The find was preceded by the

identification of a dipteral temple with an Heraion (Temple of Hera)

also described by Pausanias. But this was of small interest compared

with the statue which the German excavators discovered embedded in a

fragment of wall. There was never any doubt as to its identity. It was

clearly “the Hermes of stone, carrying the infant Dionysus—a work

moreover by Praxiteles”—as Pausanias had recorded.

Every one has seen a cast of the statue. The god is carrying the

babe Dionysus to the nymphs. He has stopped for a moment’s rest and

is amusing his little charge, may be with a bunch of grapes held in

the right hand. The perfect grace of the figure and the pose are

essentially Praxitelean. The work illustrates the softer and more

sensuous manner of imaging the lesser divinities which arose in the

fourth century. In this case the youthful god in the flush of early

manhood must be contrasted with the “bearded” Hermes of the age of

Phidias. After the time of Praxiteles there was no reversion to the

earlier type. He did for Hermes and Apollo what Phidias and Polyclitus

had done for Zeus and Hera.

The influence of Praxiteles can be traced in a hundred kindred works

produced during the next few centuries. In particular, it led to a

fuller appreciation of the value of marble as a medium. Previously most

of these single male statues had been bronze. The use of marble in

turn led to increased technical skill. Take Praxiteles’ treatment of

the hair in the “Hermes,” for instance. Note the massing of the locks,

without an attempt at the realistic representation of the details,

and the skilful use of the play of light and shade which such free

treatment makes possible.

THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK WOMANHOOD

But even these factors, potent though they were, do not account for the

whole of the increased scope afforded to the fourth-century sculptor.

We have passed in review various circumstances, political, economic,

intellectual and moral. But we have said nothing of a good half of

Greek society—the women. Yet the influence exerted by the fairer

sex, negatively upon fifth-century, positively upon fourth-century,

sculpture was all-important. It must not be overlooked if we would gain

a complete understanding of either phase of Hellenic art.

Speaking generally, women occupied a place in Greek society which

cannot be readily illustrated from our modern experience. The earliest

Greek women is pictured in the pages of Homer. The typical wife is

Penelope; the typical virgin is Nausicaa. To Homer, the wife is the

trusted friend of her husband. The current belief is that

“The woman’s cause is man’s: they rise or sink

Together, dwarf’d or god-like, bond or free.”

[Illustration: HERMES OF PRAXITELES (DETAIL) Olympia]

But prosperity brought a change. At the time of the rise of

sculpture—in the early days of Pericles—the interests of the citizens

were entirely political. At no time, perhaps, in the history of the

world have men and women had so little in common. The duty of an

Athenian wife was to stay at home, to order the house economically,

and to control the numerous slaves. Wedded, perhaps at fifteen,

after a childhood spent in strict seclusion, she could not hope to

be a companion to the active-minded Athenian. “The best woman,” said

Thucydides, “is she of whom least is said, either in the way of good or

harm.”

Towards the end of the fifth century, the political interests became

less absorbing, as we have seen. Private affairs began to occupy the

major part of the wealthy citizen’s time. It might have been expected

that the Athenian wife would have been gradually reinstated in the

position of intimate companionship she had occupied before city life

became general. But the custom of centuries was too firmly rooted. When

the Athenian once more looked for the pleasures that might arise from

social contact with his womenfolk he found his wife entirely without

charm.

Naturally enough he turned to the Hetaerae. The word is too thoroughly

Hellenic to be translated. Demosthenes distinguished the class from the

rest of the Athenian women when he said:

“By means of wives we become the fathers of legitimate children and

maintain faithful guardians of our homes; the Hetaerae are meant to

promote the enjoyment of life.”

The “female friends” were usually captives made in war or, at any rate,

strangers who found Athens a convenient market for their physical and

intellectual charms. Few Athenian women dared to join their ranks.

Every Hetaera was an expert dancer. She could play on the flute or

lyre. Her wealth was often considerable. The boast of Phryne—the

greatest feminine influence of her day in Greece—did not appear

absolutely beyond reason. Yet the courtesan offered to rebuild the

walls of Athens at her own cost. Not infrequently the Hetaera’s mental

culture was sufficient to enable her to consort with the greatest

philosophers and statesmen. Pericles himself imperilled his position in

the State by his dealings with Aspasia.

We are not called upon to pass judgment upon these social customs. Our

task is rather to estimate the influence of such a state of society

upon the child of his time—the artist. Looking the facts in the face,

we have simply to note that the old demand for manly vigour and civic

unselfishness was giving place to a far less strenuous ideal. The

Athenians could applaud a Phryne who at a festival at Eleusis, let down

her hair and descended into the sea in the sight of all the Greeks,

after the manner of a sea-born Aphrodite. Instead of Zeus and Hera, men

looked to Dionysus, the leader of the revels; to Apollo, the chief of

the Muses; to Aphrodite, the Queen of Desire, who held in her cestus

all the magic of passion.

The greatness of an artist does not rest upon opposition offered to

current civic and social ideals. On the contrary, it depends entirely

upon the perfect expression which he gives to the body of emotions

experienced by the men and women around him. The fame of Praxiteles is

due to his complete identification with the paramount influences of his

age. A true Athenian, the refined sensuality of his style picked him

out as the artist to give objective form to the popular imaginations.

[Illustration: THE EROS OF CENTOCELLE Vatican, Rome]

Praxiteles himself was closely associated with the Hetaera, Phryne.

One of his most renowned works was the “Eros” which he carved as the

artistic expression of his love for the beautiful courtesan, and which

was dedicated by Phryne at Thespiae about 360 B.C. The Epigrammatist

said of the Thespian “Eros” that it “excited transports of love by

hurling, not darts, but glances.” There have been many attempts to

identify this statue with marbles that have come down to us. It has

been often suggested that the beautiful torso found at Centocelle,

and now in the Vatican, may be a copy. Without dogmatising, we can

realise some of the qualities of Praxitelean art from the “Eros of

Centocelle.” We can see the dreamy melancholy with which the artist no

doubt invested the graceful and tender form of the God of Love. It is

strongly typical of the Praxitelean imagination that Eros is depicted

as on the very verge of youth, at the dawn of the first forebodings of

passion.

Praxiteles’ “Aphrodite of Cnidus” is equally associated with the memory

of the Hetaera, Phryne. Originally executed for the islanders of Cos,

it was refused by them on account of the daring manner in which the

sculptor had imaged the goddess—a manner which can be realised from

the epigram to which it gave rise.

“The Paphian Cytherea went down to the waters of Cnidus desiring to

behold her own image; having beheld it, ‘Alas! Alas!’ she cried, ‘where

did Praxiteles behold me thus? I thought only three persons, Paris,

Anchises, and Adonis had done so.’”

The people of Cnidus differed from their brothers of Cos. As Pliny

suggests, their acceptance of the statue made their island famous.

The marble was placed in the centre of a grove of myrtle, and was

approached by several paths so that it could be viewed from every side.

The Vatican replica of the Aphrodite is the best known copy of the

work. It is, however, at present disfigured by the addition of metal

drapery which the taste of the last century considered necessary. The

Praxitelean design can be realised from the copy at the Glyptothek,

Munich, originally in the Palace Braschi. There is also an undraped

cast of the Vatican statue in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South

Kensington. Our own illustration is from a photo of the Vatican copy

taken for the Hellenic Society many years ago.

To the people of Cnidus, the statue was not marble white. The eyes

and hair of the goddess were coloured. The drapery and the flesh

were delicately tinted. In exactly what manner this was done, we do

not know. That such statues were painted is beyond argument. Pliny

tells that the painter Nicias assisted Praxiteles. He suggests that

the sculptor considered the encaustic additions of prime importance

and necessitating the greatest skill. Whatever the purpose of this

colouring of statues may have been, it is certain that there was no

effort to secure greater realism by this addition. The desire seems to

have been to soften the harsher tones of the marble and to increase the

decorative effect of the statue by distinguishing the principal masses

of the composition.

For hundreds of years after it was set up in the myrtle grove in

Cnidus, the “Aphrodite” was the most renowned statue in Western Europe.

This can only be attributed to the exquisite sense of artistic fitness

with which Praxiteles carried out his task, together with the fact

that he had enshrined in marble one of the ever potent human passions.

Phryne had been Praxiteles’ model. But the statue was by no means a

realistic presentation of the erotic beauties of the Hetaera. No fault

can be found with Praxiteles’ treatment of his theme on that ground.

[Illustration: APHRODITE OF CNIDUS Vatican, Rome]

Nevertheless the representation of a goddess in the guise of a woman

shrinking from the revelation of her beauty to mankind argues the loss

of a certain morality. True, the Greek sculptor had never aimed at the

inculcation of moral ideas. But in an age before the religious sense

of the Greek had become dulled, he would have confined himself to the

creation of an atmosphere in which moral ideas could range without

friction. The “Aphrodite of Cnidus” belongs to a time which made no

such demand upon its artists. The sculptor no longer believed that he

owed a duty to the state in this particular respect. Every work now

stood or fell by virtue of its innate truth and beauty.

But Praxiteles was in no sense “a brilliant exponent of decadent art.”

On the contrary, his sculptures bear witness to perhaps the most

magnificent endowment of the Attic brain—the fineness with which it

felt. To-day, we are too apt to regard clarity of thought as the chief

attribute of genius. Really genius depends upon the power to call

up delicate tones of feeling, of infinite subtlety of texture when

compared with the ideas which we often regard as its sole endowment.

Praxiteles has been described as “He who actually blended with his

marbles the emotions of the soul.” The phrase is a fitting one with

which to close our review of his art. His abiding greatness depends

less upon sheer beauty of line than upon the delicacy of the feelings

which he made marble convey. The play of the passing emotion on the

face of the “Hermes,” the dreamy passion of the “Eros,” and the

illusive charm with which the “Aphrodite of Cnidus” shrinks from

the revelation of her beauty—these are typical of what is most

characteristic in the sculpture of Praxiteles and his fellow workers.

He _felt_ the emotional appeal of the feminine and the youthful male

form rather than _saw_ the beauties of line displayed in the new

subjects offered for sculptural treatment. It is far from true that

the Greek sculptor generally sought for beauty of form to the neglect

of all the varied charm that lies in intellectual and emotional

expression. This might be said of Phidias and Polyclitus. The insight

of the sculptors of the following century into the depths of human

emotion, on the contrary, was infinite. Scopas and Praxiteles made

marble speak the more delicate emotions of the soul to the last word.

CHAPTER IV

LYSIPPUS AND THE FOURTH-CENTURY REALISTS WITH A NOTE ON MODERN

SCULPTURAL CRITICISM

It needs little knowledge of human nature to realise that the

idealisation of sensuous passion, which was the keynote of the art

of Praxiteles, could not express the whole nature of a composite

civilisation, and particularly the whole nature of a civilisation great

enough to mother an Alexander and a Demosthenes. The presence of a more

strenuous ideal was inevitable. The body social in this respect closely

resembles the individual. To the individual, merely sensual pleasure is

rarely entirely absorbing. It is a matter of hours, weeks—months, it

may be, then the impulse weakens, and

“Like the snow-falls in the river,

A moment white—then melts for ever!”

It would, therefore, have been possible to diagnose the presence of the

colder and more self-contained art hard by the warmly glowing art of

Praxiteles.

It is to be found in a large class of sculptures which we shall

designate as Lysippic. These contain strongly marked characteristics,

and a moment’s consideration will show that they must be traced to

a social opinion entirely different to that pervading such works as

the “Olympian Hermes,” the “Aphrodite of Cnidus,” and the “Eros of

Centocelle.”

But if a school of sculpture opposed to that of Praxiteles was an

artistic necessity, a reaction against the social circumstances which

had rendered a Praxiteles possible was equally sure. The art change

indeed witnesses to the social revolution; the social change to the

artistic.

Nor is the reaction in any sense the result of a merely passive

objection to a dangerous method of living and feeling. Athens was

impelled by misfortune into adopting sounder ideals. Such an incident

as the sack of the shops in the Piræus by the pirate vessels of

Alexander of Pheræ after the battle of Mantinea (362 B.C.) had

rudely shaken the self-confidence of the Athenians. At the time, the

outrage led to no more vigorous step than the exiling of the Athenian

statesman, Callistratus. But these rebuffs reached a climax in 338

B.C. when Thebes and Athens were routed by Philip and Alexander at

Chæronea. The impossible had happened. With the victory of Chæronea,

the hegemony of Greece had passed to Macedonia—a non-Greek power. The

Athenians prepared for root and branch reform. As if to justify the

taunt of Demosthenes, “the administration has risen from beggary to

wealth, while the Treasury wants sustenance for one day’s march,” such

an incorruptible as Lycurgus was elected to the Ministry of the Public

Revenue. What is more he was permitted to act. The Navy was increased

to 400 galleys. The marble store-house for ships’ gear (the Skeuotheke

of Philo) was completed. With grim irony, the cases that lined the

triple-aisled arcades were left open for public inspection, “that those

who passed might see all the gear in the gear-house.”

It was almost a century since the seeds of decay had been sown in the

city-state system. It needed no Demosthenes to prove that with all

its faults it was to this system that Athens owed its most enduring

glories. It had developed the powers of the citizens to the greatest

extent. Faced with the possibility of the absolute monarchy embodied in

the power of Macedonia triumphing over the free commonwealth, Athens

naturally looked to the past. The rule of Phocion and Lycurgus was the

result. It was marked by a closer return to the ideals of the fifth

century than had prevailed in Athens since the death of Pericles,

a century earlier. Many of the old shrines were restored, and the

theatre of Dionysus rebuilt. Aided by the produce of the silver mines

of Laurion, Lycurgus was able to rebuild the Lycæan gymnasium and

construct the Panathenaic stadion.

But an even more signal proof of the reaction against the selfish

policy of the previous fifty years is to be found in the effort made

to rid Athens of the mercenary system which was sapping the military

strength of the state. After Chæronea the youth of Athens was once

more trained to arms. Young men had to serve the state for at least

two years. These Epheboi, under the direction of a marshal and ten

masters of discipline, wore a common uniform, lived together and dined

frugally at a common mess. The system was almost Spartan in its simple

temperance. The Epheboi were trained in the exercises of the hoplite.

At the end of the first half of their training they gave a public

exhibition of athletic and military skill in the Athenian theatre. The

ministry of Lycurgus between 338 and 326 B.C. was not a second golden

age for Athens. But it was a faithful copy. There was, at least, a

partial return to the good old times when Athenian lads ran races

under the sacred olives, redolent of convolvulus and whitening poplar,

“rejoicing in the sweet o’ the year when the plane-tree whispers to the

elm.”

It was in a world dominated by these ideals that Lysippus (roughly

375 B.C. to 300 B.C.), the last of the great Greek sculptors, worked.

In place of the less virile type favoured by the age of Praxiteles he

aimed at the expression of natural manly beauty. Lysippus moulded his

style upon that of Polyclitus. Like Polyclitus, he preferred to work in

bronze. The preference is typical of his departure from the style of

the Athenian artists who had dominated sculpture during the forty years

before Chæronea. Marble had proved the very medium for the portrayal

of the softer graces of the human form and the delicate expression

of emotion. But it was inadequate for the representation of the more

vigorous human forms which Lysippus sought to portray.

Lysippus, however, was no blind follower of Polyclitus. It is narrated

that he once said, “Polyclitus made men as they were, but I make them

as they appear to the eye.” Lysippus added the truth of expression

which the beautifully symmetrical but impassive figures of Polyclitus

lacked. He aimed at imparting to his figures a lightness that those of

the Argive sculptor wanted.

The Vatican “Apoxyomenus” is without doubt the finest statue extant

embodying these tendencies. This fine marble was excavated in April

1849 from among the ruins of a large private house in the Vicolo delle

Palme in Transtevere. It is doubtless a marble copy of the bronze which

was one of the most popular works of art in Rome during the Empire. In

the bronze original the supports which are necessary for the marble

copy were absent.

[Illustration: MELEAGER Vatican, Rome]

[Illustration: APOXYOMENUS (SCHOOL OF LYSIPPUS) Vatican, Rome]

But what strikes us first is not the resemblance to the athletic

sculptures of Polyclitus, but the marked difference. The subject is of

the _genre_ order, which in itself denotes a change. Wrestlers were

wont to anoint their bodies with oil and besprinkle themselves with

fine sand in order to afford a firm grip. Here we see the athlete

scraping the oil-soaked sand from his limbs with a strigil.

But the difference goes still deeper. A physique that would serve the

State in good stead at any moment was clearly _the_ essential to the

youth who posed for the “Diadumenus” of Polyclitus. Above all, there

was no suggestion of training for a single event. The “Apoxyomenus,”

on the contrary, rather recalls the system of our own day, in which

particular muscle, rather than balanced strength, is the prime

desideratum. To-day the athlete never loses sight of the fact that a

definite contest has to be won on a fixed date. Mr. K. T. Frost, in a

delightful criticism of the “Apoxyomenus” from the point of view of

the athletic anatomist, couples the work with the well-known “Fighting

Warrior” of Agasias, now in the Louvre. “Both,” he says, “have the

physical characteristics which we associate with the thoroughbred.”

Comparing them with other Greek athletic statues, he shows that the

back and trunk in the earlier works depend for strength upon the

general solidity of the frame, not on specially developed muscles.

This, as he proves, is not the case with the “Apoxyomenus,” though

the steel-like tendons and sinews prevent the resulting slimness from

suggesting any lack of power.

MODERN SCULPTURAL CRITICISM

The “Apoxyomenus,” since its discovery in 1849, has always been

associated with the name of Lysippus. It certainly shows all the

features which are usually associated with his style, including the

small head, the long limbs, and the life-like animation which he strove

to express in his figures.

The attribution of these characteristics originally depended upon

the interpretation placed upon various references to Lysippus in the

classical authors. A passage in Pliny, for instance, speaks of his

“Constantia,” and seems to suggest that a sleepless regard for truth in

detail was a prime feature of the Lysippic style. When we add to this

the passages relating to his pupils, we can scarcely fail to regard

Lysippus as the founder of the realistic school, which was opposed

throughout the Hellenistic age to the more fanciful and idealistic art

based upon the marbles of Praxiteles. When we come to the consideration

of the portraits of the Lysippic school, we shall see that realism

to Lysippus did not mean exactitude to life. He always sought to add

that rhythmic beauty which Nature never supplies, but which every true

artist, and especially every great Greek sculptor, is persuaded lies at

the root of art.

It was upon such evidence as this that the “Apoxyomenus” was attributed

to Lysippus. Practically all the well-known and frequently copied

sculptures are attributed to the famous sculptors of antiquity upon

similar grounds.

In recent years, however, the archæologists have sought to introduce a

supplementary method whereby the authorship of well-known sculptures

may be verified. The method depends upon the minute examination

of pieces of sculpture and the tabulation of their technical

peculiarities. The eye or the ear, the nostril or the chin of a statue,

and especially of a Greek original, speaks volumes to the scientific

critic. Aided by a collection of prints, he arranges sculptures from

any of the European collections into classes. The hint of a date

enables him provisionally to associate a class with a well-known

craftsman, and the identification of the authorship of masterpieces

begins.

Criticism of this kind looms largely in the literature of sculpture

in these days. Even the amateur who is interested in art rather than

archæology must, therefore, have a clear idea of the type of evidence

leading to the ascription of well-known sculptures to particular

artists. Almost any famous work would serve to illustrate this.

Critical struggles, for instance, have waged around the “Venus of

Milo.” Is it a fourth-century work, or can it be roughly dated at 150

B.C.? We have also referred to the critical mystery surrounding the

authorship of the “Niobides.”

We, however, choose for the purpose of illustrating our point,

two famous works now in the Vatican—“The Ares Ludovisi” and

the “Meleager.” Both are generally acknowledged to be copies of

fourth-century sculptures of the finest quality. Neither possesses the

strongly marked characteristics of the style of Praxiteles; nor do they

resemble the “Apoxyomenus.” Are they then to be ascribed to Scopas?

That is the critical problem.

The “Ares” depicts the war-god as a youth. This is a fourth-century

variation from the robust, bearded, and fully armed type of an earlier

period. Ares is pondering fresh feats of arms. Or may be, as the Roman

copyist suggests by the introduction of the tiny Eros, he is solving

some deep amatory problem set him by Aphrodite. At first sight the

“Ares” seems to be by a sculptor who has imbibed some of the spirit of

both Scopas and Praxiteles. The sentiment strikes us as Praxitelean,

the expression rather suggests Scopas. Leubke, noting the length of

the limbs, says that the “Ares Ludovisi” reminds him of the style of

Lysippus. Dr. Waldstein, however, will have none of this. He insists

upon the claims of Scopas. To Dr. Waldstein, the overhanging brow

which gives the pensive expression to the “Apoxyomenus” is _the_

characteristic of Lysippus. Its absence compels him to refer the “Ares”

to Scopas. It all depends upon a wrinkle. Needless to say, we do not

propose to decide where doctors disagree.

But the archæological method can be illustrated even more happily by

the critical history of the Vatican “Meleager.” The stripling stands

with his dog, careless of any danger which the future may have in

store. The artist would seem to represent a youthful huntsman impatient

for his quarry, rather than the trusty hero who sailed with the

Argonauts and freed the chace of Calydon from the devastating boar of

Artemis. As is the case with most of the well-known Greek sculptures,

no signature or inscription connects it with any particular artist. The

exceptional evidence present in the case of the “Hermes” of Praxiteles

is, as we shall see, also absent. The first clue comes from the pages

of Pausanias, who names Scopas as the architect of the temple of Athena

Alea at Tegea, and speaks of him as the sculptor of the pedimental

groups. Pausanias goes on to describe the marbles, and gives a list of

the figures in the eastern pediment whereon was figured, as he says,

“The hunting of the Calydonian boar.” These facts, together with the

emotional character of the “Meleager,” justified the statue being

associated with the sculptor of the Tegean group.

But the evidence did not end here. During recent excavations, two

heads, which had evidently fallen from the eastern pediment, were

discovered. (“Journal Hellenic Studies,” vol. xv.) They showed the

passionate insistence upon vitality, particularly in the intensity of

the gaze of the eyes, which we have already noted in the “Mausoleum

Charioteer,” and which certainly characterises the “Meleager” at Rome.

Here was fair material for a dogmatic superstructure of really

imposing dimensions. The scientific critic had, of course, to seek

for further instances of the sharply rounded eyeballs. He had to find

other cases in which the intensity of expression was clearly due to

the deep setting of the eyes. Upon the results of these researches he

could assign a certain number of the sculptures to Scopas, and by a

process of exhaustion many another fourth-century work to the numerous

sculptors mentioned in Pliny and Pausanias. So far all was plain

sailing. The attributions were admittedly risky, but the interest of

the results seemed to justify the method.

Unfortunately the matter did not end here. While one party of

excavators was working at Tegea, another party was unearthing a

disconcerting inscription elsewhere. This suggested that a statue

known as the “Agias,” a figure of an athlete found at Delphi, was

a marble copy of a work by Lysippus. The discovery necessitated a

fresh examination of fourth-century works, and as a result, such an

authority as Mr. Percy Gardner now feels compelled to doubt whether the

“Meleager” can be properly associated with the influence of Scopas any

longer. Guided by resemblances to the “Agias,” he suggests that the

“Meleager” is much more probably after a work by Lysippus.

But again the critical argument takes a fresh lease. For the “Agias” is

found to resemble strongly the “Heracles” at Lansdowne House. Moreover,

since neither possesses any of the strongly marked characteristics

of the “Apoxyomenus,” doubt is thrown upon the generally accepted

attribution of that statue to Lysippus. What is the alternative? Mr.

Percy Gardner has a suggestion at once. He turns to his Pliny (“Nat.

Hist.” xxxiv. 87). The “‘Apoxyomenus’ is not a genuine fourth-century

work; it is rather Hellenistic,” says he; “it may well be a copy of the

Perixyomenus of Diappus, the son or pupil of Lysippus.”

We do not refer to the battle of the critics over Scopas, Praxiteles,

and Lysippus at this length on account of the intrinsic value of the

critical spoils. On the contrary, the value of the accumulation of

evidence seems to us to be entirely negative. We are far from wishing

to depreciate the value of such researches, but candour compels us

to remind the amateur that the modern methods of critical research

are full of pitfalls. One can scarcely steer too far from the hasty

generalisation which can be so readily drawn from the necessarily

flimsy evidence upon which the archæologist is compelled to rely.

[Illustration: “SARCOPHAGUS OF ALEXANDER” Constantinople]

For ourselves we prefer to regard the work of the critical school

as scaffolding which will doubtless lead to a permanent erection of

ascertained fact. The “Ares,” the “Meleager,” and the “Apoxyomenus” may

be neither by Scopas nor Lysippus. It is sufficient if we can honestly

detect in them the general characteristics of particular phases of

fourth-century sculpture. The “Mausoleum Charioteer,” the “Menelaus and

Patroclus,” and the “Niobe” group may none of them be the actual design

or handiwork of Scopas. We cannot do more than detect in them the

general characteristics of the period in which Scopas was a dominating

influence. But there must have been a personality to popularise the

new style—a brain and hand through whom the new artistic tendency

first found expression. With all the reservations that these remarks

imply, we give this personality the name of Scopas, and, as we said

before, regard him as the first Greek to realise that marble and

bronze could express the more passionate intensity of feeling which

naturally followed the increasing importance of the individual and the

individual’s thoughts and emotions.

So with Lysippus. The individual is not an essential element in the

history of Greek sculpture. If he never lived, another sculptor “of the

same name” gave plastic expression to the more realistic ideals aroused

by the triumph of Macedonia. Some master inaugurated the realistic

school, which persisted beside the idealistic, based upon the art of

Praxiteles. Whether Lysippus, Diappus, or an unknown sculptor of the

Hellenistic school moulded the “Apoxyomenus” is of small consequence.

Moreover, when all is said and done, there is not much to choose

between this position and that of Mr. Percy Gardner himself. As Mr.

Frost has pointed out, the length of limb and lightness of frame seen

in the “Apoxyomenus” are only the tendencies of the “Agias” carried

a step further. When Mr. Percy Gardner goes on to suggest that the

Vatican statue is not by the master but by the pupil, he practically

accepts the general view we hold. Barring the “Hermes” of Praxiteles,

it is practically impossible to attribute dogmatically any of the

Hellenic sculptures to the craftsmanship of particular artists.

Inscriptions, literary references, and further Greek originals, or

Roman copies, may yet be found. For the present, the art lover will do

well to content himself with realising the methods which the critical

schools have adopted, and the path by which it seeks answers to the

high problems it desires to solve.

We cannot pass from our consideration of the last effort of Hellenic

sculpture proper without a reference to one other work associated

with the Lysippic period. We mean the magnificent sarcophagus now at

Constantinople, and sometimes called the “Sarcophagus of Alexander.”

This is clearly a Greek original produced about 300 B.C. It was found

early in the last decade in the family vault of a Sidonian king at

Saida, with several sarcophagi of the finest style. Those who cannot

see the original, can gain a clear idea of the great work from the

magnificent publication issued by Hamdi Bey, the discoverer, entitled

“Une Necropole Royale de Sidon,” of which the British Museum possesses

a copy. All sides of the sarcophagus are decorated with a wealth of

sculptured design and ornament. Macedonians, Greeks, and Persians

all take part in the scenes of battle and chase represented by the

sculptor. The work is in the finest preservation. The silver bridles

and weapons have been removed, but in all other respects it is perfect.

One head is missing but this is due to an accident since its discovery.

Even the original colours can be traced. Indeed, any one wishing to

obtain a clear idea of the use the Greeks made of colour in sculpture

cannot do better than study the fine coloured plates picturing the

“Sarcophagus of Alexander” prepared for Hamdi Bey.

[Illustration: “PHOCION” Vatican, Rome]

GREEK PORTRAITURE

So far few references to the portrait sculptures of Greece either

in the fifth or fourth century have been necessary. We have now,

however, to redeem the promise to make clear the use Lysippus and

his school made of realistic detail in this department of art. The

opportunity suggests a few general remarks upon Hellenic portrait

sculpture generally. Before the latter half of the fourth century

there was no portraiture in Greece, in the modern sense of the word.

That is to say, the sculptor made no effort to produce a realistic

representation of the sitter. He rather sought to present a type

suggested by the individual. Take, for instance, the British Museum

bust of “Pericles”—probably a copy of the statue by Cresilas dedicated

after the revolt of Samos (440 B.C.). This stood on the Acropolis,

hard by the Lemnian “Athena” of Phidias, on the right-hand side as

the Athenian passed up through the Propylæa. Even such a well-known

figure as the warrior statesman is not highly individualised. The

clear-cut brow and the broad mouth tell of the profound judgment and

sober will needful to the man who gave Athenian policy its deepest

and most imaginative characteristics. The voluptuous lips tell of the

passionate emotionalism which brought Pericles into sympathy with his

fellow countrymen, and which every true Athenian would have considered

it inhuman to crush. But these characteristics are rather those of the

ideal statesman which the Athenian system sought to produce. Every

trait applicable to Pericles alone has been removed.

Much the same may be said of the well-known “Sophocles,” or the

so-called “Phocion” in the Vatican, two of the finest Greek portraits

of the best style extant. Both have all the strongly idealistic

qualities of Hellenic portraiture before the Alexandrian age. Neither

the “Sophocles” nor the “Phocion” can be termed portraits in the sense

that the Roman busts are portraits. Both represent ideal types rather

than individual personalities. The Greek thinker desired to look at

everything from the universal point of view. He sought to form general

abstract conceptions about humanity and nature, applicable to any

and every part of the universe. The task of the Greek sculptor was,

therefore, to produce figures embodying these types. Phocion was to

him the incorruptible statesman. Sophocles was the typical Athenian

gentleman—sound in body as in mind.

So when Lysippus set out to carve a portrait statue such as that

preserved in the marble bust of “Alexander” in the British Museum, he

did not picture the man or the king of Macedon, but the descendant of

Achilles, whose mission it was to conquer the world. He abstracted

every trait that endured but for the moment, and sought only to

express the heroic side of the Macedonian character. Plutarch (“Life

of Alexander”) tells of the impression this method made upon Alexander

himself. We read:

“When Lysippus first made a portrait of Alexander with his countenance

uplifted to heaven, just as Alexander was wont to gaze with his neck

gently inclined to one side, some one wrote the following note in

appropriate epigram:

‘The man of bronze is as one that looks on Zeus, and will address him

thus: “O Zeus, I place earth beneath my feet, do thou rule Olympus.”’

[Illustration: PERICLES Vatican, Rome]

[Illustration: ALEXANDER After Lysippus]

“For this reason Alexander gave orders that only Lysippus should make

portraits of him, since he alone, as it would seem, truly revealed

his nature in bronze and portrayed his courage in visible form, while

others in their anxiety to reproduce the bend of the neck, and the

melting look of the eyes, failed to preserve his masculine and leonine

aspect.”

The portraits of Lysippus therefore differ from such an ideal figure

as the “Pericles” in the skilful use made of realism. The portrait is

cast in an heroic mould, but this is not obtained at the expense of all

likeness. Note the way in which the peculiar eyes of the king and the

turn of his neck have been utilised.

The change was not entirely for the better. The passage from Plutarch

itself suggests where an artist of less than the front rank would fail.

The followers of Lysippus were not content to make this sparing use

of detail. Forgetful that general truths and general emotions can be

embodied in marble and bronze most clearly and therefore most properly,

they made realistic detail an end in itself. Pliny tells of Lysistratus

of Sicyon, a brother of Lysippus, and says that he introduced the

practice of “life-like portraiture,” previous artists having sought

“to accentuate the more beautiful qualities of the sitter.” From this

it was but a step to the work of Demetrius of Alopece, whose portraits

were so realistic that Lucian called him “the maker of men” rather than

the “maker of statues.”

Lucian’s phrase reminds us that we have brought our survey of Hellenic

sculpture to a close. The downfall of the city-state system militated

against those habits of thought which ever aimed at eliminating

every trait applicable to the individual object, and which were so

essentially Hellenic. When the aristocratic or monarchical rule of

the country-state was substituted, the rural voter no longer troubled

to exercise his franchise. He left the duty of recording a vote to

the townsmen on the spot. The earlier constant contact with actuality

became a thing of the past.

Speaking of the essential quality of Greek sculpture, Pater has said:

“Hellenic breadth and generality come of a culture, minute, severe,

constantly renewed, and concentrating its impressions into certain

pregnant types.”

These words exactly describe the relation of Greek sculpture to general

culture during the fifth and fourth centuries. When Greece failed to

withstand Macedonia, the entire current of social and political life

changed. A culture which had been Hellenic became Hellenistic.

PART II

HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN SCULPTURE

CHAPTER V

THE POST-ALEXANDRIAN ART OF THE EMPIRE OF SELEUCUS, THE KINGDOM OF

PERGAMUS, RHODES, AND ALEXANDRIA

The life story of an idea—the flower of the spiritual world—presents

many analogies to the vital phenomena of the natural world. It is born,

it lives and, maybe, it suffers the “sea-change” we call death. There

are the weeks, months, or years which correspond to the time when the

flowers are in their tiring rooms,

“Fast busy, weaving, in those still retreats,

The robes of rainbow dyes, which they must wear.”

Then, with the idea as with the flower, comes the day when Spring,

“Fast running o’er the drowsy earth,

Taps at the closed portals of their homes,

And calls them forth, fresh perfumed and new clad,

To the festival of Nature.”

And after the flower comes the seed and the scattering of the seed.

The blossoming time of the idea which we saw in bud three centuries

earlier—Hellenism—was the age during which Hellas consisted of a

cluster of self-dependent cities in Greece, with their free colonies

in Sicily, Italy, Asia Minor and elsewhere around the Mediterranean

basin. Phidias, Praxiteles, and Lysippus were the sculptors of the age

when Athens was still the centre of Greek intellectual thought and

artistic action. The seedtime of Hellenism—its second phase—is that

in which the Hellenic ideal is given to mankind. Magna Græcia is no

longer self-centred and self-contained. The Greek takes upon himself

the task of showing the barbarian world the value of that clarity

of thought and expression which is at once peculiarly Hellenic and

peculiarly sculpturesque.

This second phase is the Hellenistic period. It roughly dates from 323

B.C., when Alexander died, until the Roman occupation of Syria in the

first century before our era. During this period independent schools

of sculpture arose beyond the Ægean Peninsula. These were animated in

the main by the Hellenic spirit, but the resulting works show abundant

traces of the alien influences among which the seed was planted and

grew up.

Previously, countries within reach of Greek influence turned to such

a centre as Athens when they required artists of the first rank to

design or decorate a temple or to adorn a public building. Moreover,

Greek ideals had never penetrated into the vast countries ruled by

Persia. But the union of the country between the Adriatic and the Indus

into one Hellenic-Oriental empire, and the foundation of Greek cities

throughout the length and breadth of the vast territory, changed all

this. Workers in marble and bronze of the first rank arose at centres

as remote from Greece as Pergamus and Alexandria. In Greece itself, the

peculiar conditions which had produced Hellenism passed away. But a

measure of the old artistic force remained, and though the Hellenistic

sculptures possess definite characteristics of their own, evidence of

connection with the original stock can still be traced.

The first task—the purpose of the present chapter—is to realise the

circumstances under which the experience of the Hellenic sculptor was

given to the non-Greeks.

The prime essential was, of course, an immense widening of the borders

of the Greek world. In view of our sketch of fourth-century Greece, it

is not surprising that the necessary energy came from a non-Hellenic

power. The rude force of a people, who a generation earlier had been

ploughmen and shepherds, was naturally enough more potent in the task

of carving the greater part of the then civilized world into a vast

empire, than the artistic instincts of Greece.

Nor is it wonderful that when the mere physical work of conquest

was accomplished, the non-Hellenic Macedonians were found to lack

the organising powers required to complete the task. They wanted

that experience which only comes after centuries of commercial and

political struggle. It was at once found that Macedonia was entirely

unequal to the work of administering Alexander’s vast empire. Thousands

of Athenian younger sons flocked into Asia in search of careers.

Twenty years after Alexander’s death, the language and art of Greece

predominated in every country from the Mediterranean to India.

In the more eastern portions of Alexander’s empire, the Greek

predominance was short-lived. But in the western countries, a sure

source of Hellenic influence was present in the cities founded by the

conqueror and the generals who followed him. Alexander’s policy had

been to bind the conquered provinces together by a stout chain of

cities. In each a garrison was left, and with it a body of merchants to

organize the civic life of the new town.

THE EMPIRE OF SELEUCUS (301 B.C. TO 65 B.C.)

No one centre is entirely typical, but a fair idea of the influences

which favoured the spread of Hellenic experience eastwards can be

gained from the history of the Empire of Seleucus, and, particularly,

from the circumstances under which the city of Antioch, on the Orontes,

was founded. Seleucus Nicator was a Macedonian noble, and being only

thirty-three on the death of Alexander had his life’s work before

him. After two years as commander of the household cavalry he became

Satrap in Babylon. It will be remembered that the general political

situation was unstable in the extreme. Macedonia and Greece had fallen

to the lot of Antipater; Antigonus had taken Phrygia; Ptolemy, Egypt;

and Lysimachus, Thrace. A series of encounters ended in the defeat of

Antigonus by Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus at Ipsus in 301 B.C. As

the price of his aid, Seleucus claimed firm establishment in a kingdom

bounded on the one side by the Taxartes and the other by the Euphrates.

But the star of Seleucus continued in the ascendant for many years. The

crowning-point in his career of conquest was reached after the defeat

of Lysimachus at Corupedion in 281 B.C. Seleucus at this time held

practically the entire Empire of Alexander, except Egypt.

[Illustration: THE TYCHE OF ANTIOCH Vatican, Rome]

How then did Seleucus seek to administer this vast agglomeration of

peoples? Briefly he adopted the practice of Alexander. His schemes of

military aggrandizement were shot through and through with efforts for

the encouragement of commercial, scientific and artistic enterprises.

He created centres of Greek influence all over his Empire. The

foundation of Antioch, on the Orontes, furnishes a typical instance of

the method of the Seleucidæ.

Syria, the stretch of fertile country which bridges Europe and Asia as

well as Africa and Asia, was clearly the keystone of the empire which

Seleucus sought to establish. How could Syria be converted into an

Asian Macedonia? As a first step Seleucus planned three cities in the

Orontes Valley, through which the regular land-routes to Babylonia and

Persia passed. Seleucia, in Pieria, guarded the mouth of the Orontes.

Farther east was Apamea. At the spot where the Orontes ceased to be

navigable, Antioch arose. Seleucus peopled the new city with a mixed

population drawn largely from Macedonia and partly from Crete and

Cyprus. It became the first city in the western world at the time.

How close the contact with Greek ideas was in such a town as Antioch

can be judged from the famous Vatican marble known as the “Tyche of

Antioch.” The figure with the mural crown represents the tutelar

goddess of the city. Holding the symbols of fertility in her hand,

she sits upon the rocks above the Orontes. The sculptor, Eutychides

of Sicyon, has carried out his task with the reserve and appreciation

of formal effect which we should expect from a pupil or follower of

Lysippus. But the whole conception lacks the emotional force of a

really great Hellenic work. Comparing it with, say, the “Zeus Otricoli”

or the “Hera Ludovisi,” we feel that centuries of time separate the

two works. The “Tyche of Antioch” is a sound piece of work; it can

hardly be said to be profound. It has the graces of a blossom reared

in an alien soil. The sculptor is not working under the impulse of

an overpowering emotion. Indeed it is easy to see that the old civic

pride which had found vent in the Parthenon marbles was impossible

in the Seleucidean Empire. A vigorous political life was out of the

question in the semi-oriental kingdom. As rulers, the Seleucid princes

have been likened to Albanian chiefs. Their position certainly had

the smallest resemblance to the democratic tyrants of earlier Greece.

The coins of the Seleucid rulers prove that even the facial type soon

lost its Hellenic purity. The self-respect and self-control which had

kept the actions of an Athenian within bounds were lost. We read of

Antiochus IV. being carried by mummers into his own banqueting-hall

as “a swaddled figure,” until, “at the first note of the symphonia,

the figure started from its wrappings and there stood the king naked.”

Seeing that

“Nothing other than a noble aim

Up from its depths can stir humanity,”

it seems unnecessary to search further for an explanation of the

absence of a vigorous impulse seeking expression in sculpture in any

country controlled by the Seleucidæ.

[Illustration: THE DYING GAUL Capitoline Museum, Rome]

THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS (283 B.C. TO 133 B.C.)

But it was otherwise in the second great centre of Greek influence in

Asia Minor—the kingdom of Pergamus. The course of Pergamene history

led to one of those emotional outbursts which always find an outlet

in national action and often in art. In consequence, evidence remains

of a far greater body of sculptural achievement in Pergamus than we

find in the Empire of the Seleucidæ. Indeed, the force and originality

of Pergamene sculpture raises it far above any artistic effort of its

age. This will be granted directly we recall that “The Dying Gaul,” of

the Vatican, is a work in the finest Pergamene style. When Byron wrote

the two cantos in “Childe Harold” the statue was known as the “Dying

Gladiator.”

“I see before me the gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand—his manly brow

Consents to death, but conquers agony,

And his droop’d head sinks gradually low—

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow.

* * * * *

He reck’d not of the life he lost nor prize,

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,

_There_ were his young barbarians all at play,

_There_ was their Dacian mother—he, their sire,

Butchered to make a Roman holiday.”

We now know that the Pergamene sculptor sought to show one of his

country’s Gaulish enemies in the agony of death. The barbarian

sinks back on to the narrow shield of his race. At his side is his

battle-horn. Round his neck the Gallic torques. The shaggy eyebrows and

the matted hair all identify the figure with one of the rude savages

whom the Latin and Greek historians describe as fighting naked and

ignorant of the elements of military science.

Another work that undoubtedly belongs to the school of Pergamus is

the well-known group in the Villa Ludovisi, often called “Paetus and

Arria.” A more correct title is “The Gaul killing his Wife.” The

warrior realizes his defeat and has just plunged his sword into his

breast. He still supports the woman who sinks in death at his side. The

matted hair of the wife and the dress edged with fur are sufficient

proof of her race. But there is other evidence that “The Dying Gaul”

and the “Gaul killing his Wife” have a similar origin. Both appear

together in an inventory of Cardinal Ludovisi, dated 1633. Both are

made from a marble found on the island of Furni near Samos. It is

evident that the two sculptures are copies of Pergamene bronzes which

stood in the open square surrounding the temple of Athena Polias on the

Acropolis of Pergamus.

The two works represent a large number of similar marbles after

Pergamene originals scattered through the galleries of Europe. They

lead us at once to inquire into the historical events they clearly

incarnate.

The story of the foundation of Pergamus is full of interest. During

the years following Alexander’s death, Lysimachus had accumulated a

vast treasure in the impregnable Acropolis of Pergamus. He placed his

lieutenant Philetairus in charge, occupying himself with schemes of

conquest. But Lysimachus was human and late in life took to himself

a young wife. To humour her he assented to the murder of a son by a

former marriage. The atrocity finally alienated Philetairus. He headed

a rebellion, seized the treasure under his charge and founded the

kingdom of Pergamus in 283 B.C.

The dynasty founded in this dramatic fashion was destined to a stormy

history. As early as 280 B.C. fresh danger threatened from the hordes

of Gauls, who began to pour across the passes of the Balkans. Some of

these barbarians marched upon Greece. Others crossed the Bosphorus at

Byzantium, and eventually founded the Gallo-Greek kingdom of Galatia

in the heart of Phrygia. But the king of Pergamus felt that his safety

depended upon checking the victorious career of the Gauls. Allying

himself with the ruling Seleucus, Attalus I. of Pergamus inflicted a

signal defeat. This was about 241 B.C. The victory was not the only one

gained by the kingdom of Pergamus. Early in the second century, Eumenes

II. (197 B.C.-159 B.C.) gained fresh laurels for his countrymen.

The effect of these brilliant victories upon the imagination of the

people of Pergamus can only be realized by comparing it with that of

Marathon and Salamis upon the fifth-century Athenians. All around

them the Pergamenes saw civilized communities acknowledging defeat at

the hands of the Gauls. As the Athenians stemmed the tide of Persian

invasion at Marathon, so the Princes of Pergamus saved the Greeks in

Asia Minor from the barbarian Gauls who seemed destined to sweep away

the newly planted Hellenic civilization. The victories made Pergamus

the rival of Alexandria and Antioch. As had been the case after

Salamis, a long series of public buildings and temples were erected,

until the Acropolis at Pergamus threatened to outshine even that at

Athens. Among the statues, as we have said, was the bronze original of

“The Dying Gaul.”

It was the second defeat of the Gauls, at the hands of Eumenes II.,

which led to the building of the great altar of Zeus on the Acropolis

of Pergamus. It is worth while to reconstruct a picture of the huge

edifice with the aid of our memory of the sister Acropolis at Athens.

The Altar stood a little below the Temple of Athena, on the south-west

terrace, and was surmounted by an Ionic colonnade, which enclosed

the actual place of sacrifice. The worshippers approached by a broad

staircase cut from the west side of the great pile. Around the whole

structure ran the frieze, with its multitude of figures in the highest

relief—the carvings, of course, being interrupted by the staircase.

The whole work serves to carry the history of Pergamene sculpture

beyond the stage when such a statue as “The Dying Gaul” was produced.

The great frieze was discovered by a young German engineer named Carl

Humann. During a business visit to Pergamus, Humann noticed the native

workmen breaking up large fragments of sculptured marble, burning them

in lime kilns and building them into walls. The exhibition of specimens

in Berlin led to systematic excavations in 1879. All that remains of

the great work is now exhibited in a specially designed gallery in

Berlin, where the frieze can be seen in something approaching its

original setting.

No single slab can convey an impression of the bewildering power of

the carvings as a whole. The best known is that called “The Triumph of

Athena.” The colossal figures (the frieze is almost nine feet high)

show the goddess seizing a young giant by the hair, while the serpent

of Athena bites at her enemy’s breast. Nike bears a laurel crown in

token of Athena’s victory. In the lower part of the slab, the Earth

Mother of the giants is seen in anguish. “The Triumph of Athena” was

the central group on the Eastern side, and, therefore, faced the square

in which the people of Pergamus met. It was balanced by another mighty

group, representing Zeus in conflict with three giants. Either affords

a fine example of the theatrical style into which the later Pergamene

sculpture degenerated. The artist is clearly more interested in the

attempt to express excited action than in the more subtle phases of

emotion. Nevertheless, mutilated as it is, a fragment like “The Triumph

of Athena” testifies to an extraordinary level of technical skill and

a magnificent vigour of imagination, even if it also proves an absence

of the earlier emotional balance which gave “The Dying Gaul” a deeper

beauty.

[Illustration: TRIUMPH OF ATHENA From the Altar of Zeus, Pergamus

(Berlin)]

THE SCULPTURE OF RHODES AND ALEXANDRIA

(300 b.c. TO 50 b.c.)

If the fame of the school of sculpture at Pergamus is inextricably

connected with “The Dying Gaul,” the sister school at Rhodes can claim

the even more famous “Laocoon Group.”

Throughout the second and third centuries before Christ, Rhodes was the

meeting-place of commerce passing between Asia and Europe. The Rhodians

were the finest seamen in the world at the time and to them fell the

task of clearing the seas of pirates which had given Athens so strong

a position a century or two earlier. Indeed, the commercial mantle of

Athens had fallen upon Rhodes. Unlike the kingdoms of Pergamus and of

the Seleucidæ, the middle-class was paramount here. Rhodes, like Venice

in later years, was practically ruled by an aristocracy of merchants.

The vigorous schools of art and rhetoric depended in no small measure

upon this. Such a social system provides that prime essential of vital

literature and art—large numbers of citizens with the experience that

comes from rubbing wit against wit and passion against passion in the

market square and the forum.

Rhodes was eminently the centre in Hellenistic times which most closely

approached the standard set in the days of the Greek city-states. This

fact, together with the traditions of Hellenic sculptors which Rhodes

had received, made “The Laocoon Group” possible.

The statue was the work of three Rhodian artists, Agesander, Polydorus,

and Athenodorus, who lived about 125 B.C. The group was found in the

Baths of Titus in 1506. A recent discovery suggests that the present

restoration of the right arm of Laocoon is incorrect. The serpent’s

coil should come up to the neck of Laocoon, and his right hand should

clasp a coil close to his head.

Ancient tradition held that the statue had been hewn from a single

block of stone. In reality, it is constructed from six pieces, though

the joints are so cunningly concealed that even Michael Angelo could

only detect three. The sculptors display an extraordinary mastery

over the problems of human anatomy which they have set themselves to

solve, while their treatment of the combination of physical tension and

emotional stress is unsurpassed. Indeed the technical beauty of “The

Laocoon” has never been questioned.

But “The Laocoon Group” may be regarded from another point of view,

displaying yet a new facet of the genius of its authors. Consider the

immense difficulty of visualizing such a scene so that the various

parts form a complete design capable of translation into marble. The

version of the story in the Æneid is known to all.

The priest Laocoon has violated the shrine of Tritonia and unheedful of

his doom is sacrificing a bullock at the altar of Neptune. Suddenly,

as Virgil pictures the scene, the two great serpents rise from the

sea. Their glaring eyes shot with blood and their jaws darting fire,

they make for the shore and move steadily upon Laocoon. His two small

boys are taken first. Then the serpents gather the father himself in

their mighty folds. One coil grasps Laocoon’s body. Another part of the

scaly chain winds twice round his neck. In vain the priest tries to

tear asunder the dreadful coil, crying to Heaven, to use the Virgilian

simile, like a bull who, having escaped the sacrificial axe, flies

wounded from the altar.

[Illustration: THE LAOCOON GROUP Vatican, Rome]

The designers of the group have clearly followed an earlier version

of the legend in which the younger son escapes. But the difficulty of

visualization and expression is the same. It is comparatively easy to

find words to convey the general impression. But the three sculptors

had to find the momentary action which would suggest the whole story.

Yet the design of “The Laocoon Group” tells everything. We see

“The father’s double pangs, both for himself

And sons convulsed; to Heaven his rueful look,

Imploring aid, and half accusing, cast;

His fell despair, with indignation mixed,

As the strong curling monsters from his side

His full-extended fury cannot tear.”

None of the tragic horror of the scene is lost. It can be said with

absolute candour,

“Such passion here,

Such agonies, such bitterness of pain,

Seem so to tremble through the tortured stone

That the touched heart engrosses all the view.”

None of us at once realize the reason we are so moved by a mere echo

of an old myth. When the truth dawns upon us, we see that the awful

admiration with which “The Laocoon” has always been regarded, finds

its source deep down in the human heart. The emotions we experience

do not depend upon the sufferings of the priest of Neptune. Laocoon

is mankind himself. His fight with death is an emblem of the far more

general struggle which every human being must share—the struggle which

is the price we pay for life. “The Laocoon” is not unique in this

respect. On the contrary, a similar dominating idea is enshrined in all

the greatest examples of Hellenic sculpture. The “Aphrodite of Cnidus”

is more than a woman. The statue is the incarnation of the idea of

womanly love.

It is the presence of a dominating idea of this kind which

distinguishes “The Laocoon” of Rhodes from “The Tyche of Antioch.”

Admitting its presence places the sculpture beyond and above both

criticism and praise. A sentence, however, of Walter Pater suggests a

point of critical vantage which the student of the history of sculpture

cannot disregard. He says: “‘The Laocoon,’ with all that patient

science through which it has triumphed over an almost unmanageable

subject, marks a period in which sculpture has begun to aim at effects,

legitimate, because delightful, only in painting.”

No man had a truer appreciation of Greek art than Walter Pater, and

no opinion is more entitled to thoughtful consideration. But in view

of the fact that the extreme classical school of criticism has always

tended to depreciate the value of all Hellenistic art, we may regret

that Pater’s argument was not illustrated by a lesser work of the

Rhodian school. The suggestion that the Laocoon myth borders upon the

illegitimate as far as sculptural treatment is concerned, seems to

demand the qualification that supreme success justifies the disregard

of any canon of art.

[Illustration: THE NILE Vatican, Rome]

Pater’s judgment, however, applies with real force to other works by

sculptors of Rhodes. It might, for instance, be used of “The Farnese

Bull,” now in the National Museum at Naples. The group was found in the

baths of Caracalla at Rome during the sixteenth century, and has been

so largely restored that criticism is, perhaps, unjust. If the present

work can be regarded as embodying the ideas of its authors, we see a

passion which has degenerated from the dramatic to the theatrical.

The subject of the statue is the punishment of Dirce at the hands of

Amphion and Zethus. Below, the sculptors show the rocky ledges of Mount

Cithæron—the death-place of the unfortunate woman who is being bound

to the horns of the bull. This suggests nothing that can be called

ennobling. It is all merely horrible. Comparing “The Farnese Bull” with

“The Laocoon” or the figure of the “Niobe” mother, we realize that the

loss of reposeful beauty entailed in the treatment of such a subject is

not compensated for in any other direction. The great end of art has

been forgotten:

“That it should be a friend

To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.”

The last great division of the post-Alexandrian Greek world was the

kingdom of the Ptolemies which included Egypt and Phœnicia. The

Macedonian rulers of Egypt soon made Alexandria, their capital, a

flourishing centre both for the arts and sciences. But the genius of

the place seemed to favour literature rather than sculpture.

The statue of “The Nile,” excavated in Rome during the pontificacy of

Leo X. and placed in the Vatican, is a fine instance of Hellenistic art

produced under the influence of Alexandrian civilization. The statue

is always associated with its companion work, “The Tiber.” Apparently

both formed part of the decoration of a temple of Isis in Rome. While

“The Nile” was reproduced from a fine Alexandrian original, “The

Tiber,” an inferior work, was specially designed by a Greek sculptor

working in Rome. The Alexandrian work proves, however, that statues of

great beauty could be produced in essentially un-Hellenic surroundings.

The figure of the sea god is surrounded by a host of putti, the

number—sixteen—symbolizing the cubits which the river rises during

a maximum inundation. The delightful way in which the little figures

are disposed in the design so that they shall not interfere with the

lines of the central figure is worthy of all praise. Nevertheless, the

judgment we arrived at with regard to the sculpture of the Seleucidæ

applies to that of Egypt. The foreign bureaucracy which Ptolemy

organized, and the tendency towards an imperial rule of the Eastern

pattern, militated against the rise of a strongly differentiated style.

Egypt was not favoured as either Pergamus or Rhodes had been.

These are the chief examples of Hellenistic sculpture produced beyond

the direct influence of the home of the Hellenic idea. We have next to

consider the Hellenistic sculpture of Greece itself.

CHAPTER VI

THE HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE OF GREECE

(300 B.C. TO 50 B.C.)

“The wren can soar as high as the eagle—once lodged upon the shoulders

of the king of the skies.” So men say. But the high gods only smile.

They know that emotions must arise and thoughts be nourished in hearts

and minds great enough to contain them, if they are to live in ethereal

depths. The sculptor or the painter, with the wings of the wren, must

be content to flutter nearer to the flowers.

In this truth lies the key which unlocks the mystery of the sculpture

of Hellenistic Greece, one of the most elusive problems in the history

of art. Before any marble of this age we feel we are face to face with

the work of lesser spirits—men who cannot boast of the eagle wings of

their brothers of the fourth and fifth centuries. Few can recall the

name of a single Greek sculptor of the later age. There is certainly

no Scopas, no Praxiteles, no Lysippus. Yet the mere enumeration of the

“Farnese Hercules,” the “Belvedere Apollo,” the “Venus of Milo,” and

the “Venus of Medici,” witnesses to craftsmen of the highest technical

skill. What the sculpture of Hellenistic Greece lacks is the passionate

enthusiasm for emotional and intellectual beauty which impressed the

personality of such a man as Praxiteles upon his age, and made him not

only a sculptor of note but a cosmic force. Praxiteles found sculptural

expression for new loves and new hates. This is the power which creates

a school. It is the absence of men possessed of this faculty, together

with the absence of the new loves and hates themselves, which the

historian of Hellenistic Greek sculpture must explain.

But, first of all, terms require definition. “Hellenistic Greece”

connotes both a period and a locality. In point of time, it roughly

includes from 300 B.C., when the immediate influence of Lysippus was

removed, to, say, 50 B.C., when Rome realized her task of ruling the

Western world. In point of place, the sculpture of Hellenistic Greece

is to be sharply distinguished from that of Rhodes, Pergamus, and

Alexandria. This is the more important, as the term Hellenistic is

properly applicable to all these schools. Moreover, there are many

characteristics common both to the Hellenistic sculpture of Greece

itself and the art of the various States of the Alexandrian empire.

Neither Rhodes nor Pergamus, for instance, gave rise to masterful

spirits of the type which directed the course of Hellenic art during

the fourth and fifth centuries. Both Pergamus and Rhodes, however,

were centres which had never encountered the full tide of Hellenic

civilisation.

It was not hard to correlate political and social circumstances which

had no counterpart in fourth- and fifth-century Greece with the

characteristics which distinguished the “Dying Gaul” and the “Laocoon”

from the sculptures of Praxiteles and Scopas. But in Greece, during

the post-Alexandrian age, the problem is far more complicated. The

old methods of life and thought lingered on. The difference between

“Hellenic” and “Hellenistic” is far more intangible than it is in

countries where the Greek city-state system had never taken root. It is

true that even in Greece the peculiar political and social conditions

which gave rise to Hellenic sculpture passed away. But, once developed,

the body of ideas which arose from them continued to influence the

sculptor and the public to whom he appealed.

[Illustration: THE FARNESE HERCULES National Museum, Naples]

THE FOLLOWERS OF LYSIPPUS

Putting aside then for the moment the characteristics which

_distinguish_ the art of Hellenistic Greece from that of the earlier

age, let us fix our attention upon the long series of works which owe

their inspiration to the great sculptors of the fourth century. Nowhere

can any affinity with the works of Phidias and the other fifth-century

masters be detected. The men of Hellenistic Greece were entirely out of

sympathy with the ideals of Periclean Athens. But they could realize

the emotions aroused by Scopas, with his insistence upon the struggles

of the individual soul. They could seek to express for themselves the

feminine graces of Praxiteles. Above all they realized the value of the

more strenuous ideals embodied in the sculpture of Lysippus.

The “Farnese Hercules” affords a striking instance of the effect of the

Hellenistic outlook upon a theme which had been closely identified with

a Hellenic sculptor of the first order. Lysippus had done for Hercules

what Praxiteles had done for Hermes. He fixed the type. The “Farnese

Hercules,” however, is the work of the Athenian sculptor, Glycon, and

dates from the first century B.C. Glycon has chosen the moment when

the hero, worn out by his labours, stands with every muscle relaxed,

resting. The keynote of his statue is to be found in

“The spreading shoulders, muscular and broad,

The whole a mass of swelling sinews.”

To the imagination of the Athenian of the age of Lysippus, this would

have appeared forced. The muscularity of the hero would have struck

him as excessive. Lysippus indeed satisfied the craving for a deeper

naturalism, which arose from a surfeit of the sensuous idealism

of Praxiteles. But his judgment would have avoided the pitfall of

excessive realism which distinguishes Glycon’s conception of Hercules

from that which any fourth-century Athenian would have formed.

A less significant example but in some respects an even more

interesting one, is to be found in the magnificent nude, the “Cerigotto

Bronze,” recovered, near the island after which it is named, about

the year 1900. This derives its importance from the fact that it is

a bronze original and not the work of a Roman copyist as so many

Hellenistic marbles are.

The story of its romantic recovery would alone ensure this bronze

becoming historic.

“A thousand years it lay in the sea

With a treasure wrecked from Thessaly.

Deep it lay ’mid the coiled sea-wrack.”

The second chapter in its history opened when a party of sponge-fishers

happened upon what they found to be the wreckage of an ancient vessel

which had run upon the rocks to the east of the island of Cerigotto

and sunk in thirty fathoms of water. The cargo had evidently been the

property of a dealer in antiques, the wreck probably dating from the

second century B.C. A considerable portion of the cargo was brought to

the surface.

[Illustration: THE CERIGOTTO BRONZE Athens]

The marbles, with one exception, were unrecognizable. But the bronzes

had fared better. In particular, a life-sized statue of an athlete,

with right arm outstretched, proved capable of complete restoration.

It now stands in the museum at Athens. The critical battle as to the

date of its casting was a long one. General opinion to-day regards

it as an early Hellenistic work based upon the Lysippic style. In

the “Cerigotto Bronze,” the tendency towards excessive realism noted

in the “Farnese Hercules” has not proceeded so far. But in the body,

and especially in the treatment of the abdominal muscles, a departure

from the idealistic standard approved by the great masters of the

fourth century can be clearly detected. Instead of being content with

a suggestion of the natural form, the Hellenistic sculptor aims at

realistic representation. He seeks to copy the human form, regardless

of the lesson afforded by every great sculptor of Greece, that the more

indirect methods of idealism are far better calculated to arouse the

uplifting emotions which every true man and woman must feel before the

grandest object Heaven ever made.

The classical art critics were fully aware of the snare which lay in

this passion for extreme realism of detail. They clearly recognized

it to be a characteristic feature of much Hellenistic sculpture. They

tell, for instance, of the statue of the “Dying Jocasta” in which

the Hellenistic sculptor mingled silver with the bronze, to denote

the pallor of coming death. Pliny adds that the sculptor Aristonidas

of Rhodes mixed iron with the metal from which he cast a statue of

Athamas—that the ruddy glow might suggest the blush of remorse which

a father who had hurled his son from the rocks would naturally wear.

Both these instances are narrated as mere eccentricities. Their

interest for ourselves lies in the fact that they illustrate precisely

the same tendency which distinguishes the “Hercules” of Glycon from

that which Lysippus had made three centuries earlier or the “Cerigotto

Bronze” from a similar work by a fourth-century sculptor.

When analyzed, this tendency towards realism points clearly to an

absence of that fine critical faculty with which every supreme artist

is endowed. It argues a lack of moderation which in the end must lead

to disaster. The admixture of silver to the bronze “Dying Jocasta” was

no isolated case. Hellenistic Greece proved itself open to a charge of

immoderate folly on many another occasion. The instance furnished by

that “Wonder of the World,” the Rhodian Colossus, will occur to every

one. The great statue of the Sun-god at Rhodes measured 105 ft. high.

It was cast hollow, the separate pieces being set up, one upon another,

around an inner structure of masonry. Pliny says of it:—

“The greatest marvel of all, however, was the colossal figure of the

sun at Rhodes made by Chares of Lindus, a pupil of Lysippus. This

figure was seventy cubits in height, and after standing fifty-six years

was overthrown by an earthquake. But even as it lies prostrate, it is

a marvel. Few men can embrace its thumb. Its fingers are larger than

most statues. There are huge yawning caverns where the limbs have been

broken.”

THE FOLLOWERS OF PRAXITELES

Considered as a whole the sculpture of Hellenistic Greece exhibits an

intensification of the characteristics which distinguish the sculpture

of Praxiteles and Lysippus from that of Phidias and Polyclitus. So

far we have only traced the indebtedness of the Hellenistic sculptor

to Lysippus. We have seen how one branch of the Hellenistic school

continued to favour the virile subjects Lysippus had preferred, how

it accentuated the natural realism which characterized his style. The

second branch, which carried forward the traditions of Praxiteles, was

equally potent. Though it cannot be said that these sculptors “blended

with their marbles the emotions of the soul,” as had been said of

Praxiteles, yet the feeling for grace of line and sensuous beauty,

which were the keynotes of the Praxitelean manner, remained.

The finest work of this great division of Hellenistic art is probably

the celebrated “Belvedere Apollo” in the Vatican collection. In these

days, the “Apollo” is, perhaps, not esteemed as highly as it was a

century ago, when opportunities for appreciating the true beauties of

the sculpture of the age of Phidias and Pericles were wanting. But it

will never entirely lose its power of attraction.

The modelling of the hair and the short cloak show that the original

was a bronze. As to the motive of the statue, James Thomson, in his

“Liberty,” writes:

“All conquest-flushed, from prostrate Python, came

The Quivered God. In graceful act he stands,

His arm extended with the slackened bow:

Light flows his easy robe, and fain displays

A manly-softened form. The bloom of gods

Seems youthful o’er the beardless cheek to wave.

His features yet heroic ardour warms;

And sweet subsiding to a native smile,

Mixed with the joy elating conquest gives,

A scattered frown exalts his matchless air.”

For many years, however, the archæologists have been battling, proving

and disproving the proposition that the god is really holding the ægis

with the head of Medusa before his terror-stricken foes. The suggestion

is that the original of the Belvedere was intended to be set up with a

statue of Artemis—the “Artemis of Versailles,” now in the Louvre—at

Delphi, in commemoration of the defeat of the Gauls in 276 B.C. It will

be remembered that Macedonia was invaded by the Gauls about the year

280 B.C., the time when the barbarians from the North overran Asia

Minor and founded the kingdom of Galatia after a severe defeat at the

hands of Attalus of Pergamus. Sosthenes rallied the Macedonian army,

but, in spite of all his efforts, the Gauls under Brennus continued to

push south. Thermopylæ was garrisoned as it had been at the time of the

Persian invasion. The entire Greek world sent contingents to repel the

invaders. Finally, legend tells that the raid was stayed by the divine

interposition of Apollo and Artemis. Angered at the daring of Brennus,

Apollo called upon the forces of nature to defend the shrine at Delphi.

An earthquake and a devastating storm forced Brennus to retire.

[Illustration: THE APOLLO BELVEDERE Vatican, Rome]

[Illustration: THE VENUS OF MEDICI (_see p. 112_) Uffizi, Florence]

Until recently it was generally believed that the association between

the “Apollo” and the defeat of the Gaulish invaders was supported

by the evidence of a bronze statuette belonging to Count Sargei

Stroganoff. The bronze is undoubtedly a copy of the Belvedere statue,

and the object in the god’s hand is not a bow and might well represent

the ægis with the head of Medusa. Archæological opinion has, however,

now veered round, and since Professor Fürtwangler has pronounced

the Stroganoff bronze a modern forgery, it must be admitted that no

trustworthy evidence remains for connecting the Apollo Belvedere with

one of the few political crises which galvanized Hellenistic Greece

into vigorous action.

The coincidence that the crisis was the very Gaulish invasion which

created Pergamene art would certainly have afforded a valuable analogy.

The great products of the school of sculpture at Pergamus were the

direct outcome of the passions and fears aroused in a country where

every man and woman stood face to face with death or a slavery worse

than death. In Hellenistic Greece the same dread—the selfsame chance

of death or slavery—only stirred the individual.

There can be little doubt that this is why almost all Hellenistic

sculpture strikes us as wanting some material element. The very

refinement of the modelling of the “Belvedere Apollo,” compared with

the strenuous naturalism of the Pergamene artists, argues an absence

of vital feeling. There is almost a feminine note in the smooth-limbed

Apollo, when the sentiment of the Hellenistic statue is contrasted with

the vigorous manhood of the “Hermes” of Praxiteles, the product of an

age which really knew what manhood was worth. In a phrase, the “Apollo

Belvedere” belongs to a time when individual Greek sculptors were

producing great bronzes and marbles but when Greece itself had ceased

to do so. Seeing that the emotions of an individual can never have

the driving force which is given to the feelings and thoughts astir

in nations, the absence of this national stress stamps the “Apollo

Belvedere” as Hellenistic—the product of a civilization which had lost

that sense of communal fellowship which was peculiarly Hellenic.

During the fifth century B.C., and, in a great measure, throughout the

fourth century, the individual Greek had sacrificed everything to his

membership in the city-state. He cared nothing for individual pleasures

and aspirations. But when the civilization which had been Hellenic

became Hellenistic, the relationship between the citizen and the state,

between the citizen and his fellows, changed entirely. The rise of a

new political power—the country-state—led to the abandonment of the

intimate interest with which each member had followed every change in

the political and social life around him.

Roughly, the new political situation in Greece after the death of

Alexander amounted to this. A city-state continued free and independent

as long as it was content to remain poor. But any accumulation of this

world’s goods was the signal for the descent of a Macedonian garrison

and a peremptory demand for a subsidy. If the city-state determined to

resist the Macedonian demands, two courses were open. Allies could be

purchased or a federation of neighbouring cities could be formed. The

federation of neighbouring cities constituted the country-state, which

played so large a part in the history of Hellenistic Greece. A typical

league is the Achæan. Its early beginnings dated from 281 B.C., but it

was thirty years later before a man of genius arose to make the dead

arrangement a living force. When Aratus persuaded Sicyon to join the

League, a really powerful body was created. Corinth joined in 243 and

finally Argos and the rest of the states of North Peloponnesus. The

Achæan League was by this time the chief political power in Southern

Greece. Its counterpart in the North was the Ætolian League, whose

allies met periodically at Thermus, where the booty won in their

piratical expeditions was stored.

Nominally, every citizen in the federation over the age of thirty

could exercise his suffrage. Practically, the distance from the seat

of government caused the Common Assembly to become more and more a

constitutional fiction. The real power passed into the hands of the few

who held positions upon the executive. Patriotism naturally lost much

of its old force. Certainly it was no longer the one goad to artistic

production as had been the case in the age of Pericles.

Nor was this all. With the decay of the virile life in the city, the

exquisite sense of form and the power of imaginative generalization

which sculpture had derived from continual discussion in the

market-place and the law courts, began to weaken. The changed social

and political circumstances necessitated an art with fresh methods and

fresh ideals.

Passing in review the numberless sculptures of Greece produced after

300 B.C., with a view to finding the intellectual and emotional

atmosphere which shaped them, we continually meet with a certain

romantic subjectivity which is essentially modern. It is this fact

which makes much Hellenistic sculpture peculiarly akin to the art of

our own day. Hellenic sculpture implied a type of character and a body

of ideas of which the twentieth-century man can have no first-hand

experience. The Western European of to-day is a member of a community

numbering between forty million and eighty million people. He pays his

rates and taxes—under protest. There, unless a system of universal

military service prevails, his civic duties end. Any very active

sympathy with the member of a microscopic city-state is impossible.

The typical modern cannot be expected to realize clearly how a

political or social event struck one whose chief joy was that he, as an

individual, played a very real part in every national action. During

the Hellenistic age, however, all this was changed. An essentially

twentieth-century individualism prevailed—an individualism which

rejected the narrowing limits set by the love of a single city.

With the broadening of the individual sympathies, a certain

subjectivity replaced the marked objectivity of fourth- and

fifth-century Greek thought. With it went much of the earlier depth of

passion, much of the old artistic initiative, precisely as it has gone

from the “universe-loving” art of to-day. In the new philosophy the

individual played a far larger _rôle_. His own thoughts and feelings,

as opposed to the thoughts and feelings of his fellow citizens, became

predominant. Private life and the interests arising from the family

began to suggest a great majority of the themes of the sculpture by

which the Hellenistic Greek expressed himself.

This can be beautifully illustrated by a brief survey of the

Hellenistic Greek’s treatment of woman as a theme for his sculptural

art. In dealing with Praxiteles we dwelt upon the position which the

women of Greece occupied in fourth-century Athens compared with her

sister in the fifth century. In the course of the next hundred years

the position was reversed. During the Hellenistic period the social

necessity for the sacrifice of the Athenian woman vanished completely.

She was permitted to share the life of her husband and her sons to

the full. The whole of her womanly nature was developed. Nor were

her energies confined to the larger sphere offered by the changed

circumstances in the Greek home. Woman in Hellenistic times began

to play a _rôle_ upon the world’s stage which would have struck the

old-fashioned Greek of the Periclean age as grotesque and immoral.

Towns named after such women as Laodicea, Berenice, and Arsinoe,

testify to the immense influence of a long line of princesses of the

type of Cleopatra of Egypt in national and international politics.

Unfortunately, the Greek woman sacrificed a good deal to gain the new

liberty. The mysterious respect with which she had been regarded in

the fifth century became a thing of the past. It had depended upon the

fact that women lived in a world apart from men. This social convention

commenced to wane during the fourth century. It vanished almost

entirely during Hellenistic times.

What was the effect of all this upon sculpture? We can trace it

most surely in the sculptor’s treatment of the incarnation of true

womanhood—Aphrodite or Venus.

The fifth-century sculptor always depicted Aphrodite clad in the full

robe of every-day life. In all fifth-century statues of women the

girdle was placed low on the figure. The idea was to emphasize the

qualities of modesty and reserve which were the cardinal feminine

virtues in such a city as Athens at that time. But in the following

century, under the influence of the more individualistic age of

Praxiteles, the sculptor began to dwell upon the frankly physical

attributes of womanhood. The girdle was set well above the level of

the natural waist. We have also seen how Praxiteles dared to lay aside

drapery altogether when he carved his Aphrodite for the islanders of

Cnidus. But even the artistic courage of Praxiteles dared not omit a

plausible excuse for the change. The robe in the hands of Aphrodite

gave the necessary suggestion to the Greek imagination, that womanhood

had not put off all womanly reserve when it discarded its drapery.

The Hellenistic sculptor, however, not only in Greece but throughout

the post-Alexandrian Empire, made no effort to restrain the tendency

to insist upon the merely sensuous beauties of womanhood. In the

well-known slab from the altar frieze of the Pergamene Acropolis, the

girdle of the goddess Athena is placed just beneath the breasts. In

the “Venus of Medici”—the typical embodiment of the womanhood of the

Hellenistic age—drapery is laid aside altogether. In the sculptor’s

view, he owes the world no explanation of the situation in which the

goddess finds herself. He is content to offer those external charms of

youthful beauty which fascinate the senses but do not satisfy the human

heart. Accepting his standpoint, the “Venus of Medici” is one of the

most perfect statues in the world. But the Aphrodite of Praxiteles and

such a work as “The Three Fates” of Phidias, remind us that the grace

of form in the Medicean Venus is, after all, rather humanly human than

humanly divine. We feel that the suggestion of reserve to which the

earlier sculptors clung only deepened the sensuous emotion which every

sculptor seeks to arouse when he sets forth the physical charms of the

Goddess of Love.

[Illustration: THE VENUS OF MILO Louvre, Paris]

From time to time during the Hellenistic age there was doubtless a

return to the older ideals. The magnificent “Venus of Milo,” now in

the collection at the Louvre, is a proof of this. Since its excavation

in the island of Melos during the nineteenth century, the right of

this magnificent marble to rank among the sculptural masterpieces of

the world has never been challenged. The motive of the design has

always furnished the critics with occasion for controversy. It may

be that an exact restoration would give a further specimen of the

type exhibited in the “Venus of Capua,” which depicts Aphrodite with

the shield of Ares, the goddess using the shield as a mirror. The

date of the production of the “Venus of Milo” is as problematical as

the subject. At first it is difficult to believe that this statue is

rightly assigned to so late a date as 150 B.C. There have always been,

and doubtless the critical conflict will continue, differences of

opinion as to the time of its production. Some have traced it back to

the Aphrodite of Scopas. There is, however, little reason to doubt the

opinion generally held, that it is really a work of Hellenistic times.

Assuming this to be the case, the statue certainly exhibits a point

of view which is in striking contrast to that offered by the “Venus

of Medici.” The lofty sentiment of the “Venus of Milo” marks it as

essentially un-Hellenistic. The sculptor throughout subordinates the

physical beauties of the human form to the deeper sense of beauty which

springs from the realization of the idea of the divinity of womanhood.

For this reason, the statue stands in glorious solitude apart from the

rest of the sculpture of its time.

There can be little doubt that, as a rule, the Hellenistic age could

not stand the intensity of emotion aroused by such a work as the “Venus

of Milo.” The “golden age” of Greece had passed away when every Greek

knew that it was good to be alive. During Hellenistic times Greek

citizenship became a doubtful blessing. It chiefly served to remind its

possessors of the lost glories of an earlier age. Can we be surprised

that men looked to art to redress the balance, and called for the works

which would wean them for a few moments from the dreary truths of

existence?

No single formula will explain all the facts, but some connection

between the degree of strenuousness in the political and social life of

a state and the degree of strenuousness reached in its art, is certain.

Consider the case of Homer—the direct outcome of the victorious

struggle which the Greeks waged with the barbarians upon the shores

of the Eastern Ægean. In the Athenian artists, Phidias, Polygnotus

and Sophocles, we find the alliance of restful calm with the deepest

thought and emotion which we should expect during a period of relative

peace and prosperity, following an intense though victorious struggle.

But how, it may be asked, did the long fight with Sparta during the

Peloponnesian war affect Athenian art? The old emotional depth became

unbearable. Comedy arose. In sculpture, Praxiteles replaced Phidias.

Coming to our own artistic history, we find an English audience

answering to the deep emotional appeal of _Macbeth_ or _Lear_ in the

years which followed the glorious victory over the Armada. The period

after the severe self-repression of the puritanical era naturally

enough produced such a comedy as Congreve’s _Way of the World_.

But this antipathy to too strenuous an art is not the only factor

which led to a great increase in the range of subjects open to the

Greek sculptor, and presented a host of lighter themes to his chisel.

The “Rape of the Lock” was the outcome of the boudoir experience upon

which the fancy of Pope was nourished. The eighteenth century could not

furnish the mental and emotional stimulus needful for the production of

_Othello_. But it could and did suggest a perfectly charming poem to

the “unwhipt, unblanketed, unkicked, unslain carcase” we call Alexander

Pope. May this not have been the case in Hellenistic Greece? Previously

“Greek life had been too full to put frills on its thoughts,” as

De Quincey once said. But the Hellenistic age revelled in the very

“frills” which the men of the fourth and fifth centuries had rejected.

Allegory replaced natural symbolism. Instead of Aphrodite—Cupid. For

Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, and Eros, the personification of the

desire which makes powerless the limbs of men—Cupid, the smiling

embodiment of the love which flits from fancy to fancy.

[Illustration: BOY STRANGLING A GOOSE Louvre, Paris]

[Illustration: CHILD WITH LANTERN Terme Museum, Rome]

It is not easy to illustrate this phase of Hellenistic sculpture. But

there can be few finer examples than the large bronze statuette, “The

Winged Cupid,” belonging to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, long lodged in the

South Kensington Museum. It once decorated a Roman villa on the slopes

of Vesuvius, and was excavated at Boscoreale, a village near Naples at

the foot of the volcano. The bronze is much beautified by the wonderful

bluish-green patina with which time has endowed it. The perfectly

poised figure, springing forward with the burning torch of desire,

stands for an entirely new note in Greek sculpture. Its frolicsome

roguishness can be compared with nothing which the Hellenic mind

expressed in sculptural form.

A further instance of the same tendency is furnished by the well-known

“Boy strangling a Goose,” by Boethus of Chalcedon. This delightful

work, one of the few sculptural jokes, is an obvious parody upon one

of the adventures of the hero Hercules. Lastly, we may point to the

charming “Child with Lantern,” recently taken from the Tiber, and now

standing in the rose-decked cloisters of the Terme Museum.

These three unpretentious little works, all remarkable for their easy

and graceful humour, happily complete our survey. Greek sculpture had

learnt to smile. It ended with the coming of the Romans. When the

Roman imperial rule finally extended over Asia Minor and Egypt, as

well as over Hellas itself, Greek art began to lose its individuality,

and a Græco-Roman style was evolved which was finally merged into the

distinctive sculpture of Rome itself. In 146 B.C. Greece was conquered

by Mummius and became a Roman province. In 133 B.C. Attalus III. willed

Pergamus to Rome. In 64 B.C. Pompey put an end to the Seleucid rule

in Syria. Some thirty years later, the sea fight at Actium ended the

Ptolemaic rule in Egypt, and the last Hellenistic stronghold fell. An

art impulse which had been predominant for five hundred years was at an

end.

CHAPTER VII

THE PORTRAIT SCULPTURE OF ROME

(50 B.C. TO THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN 330 A.D.)

Roman sculpture and Roman imperialism—these two things are

indissolubly connected. That is the proposition, expressed in the

baldest terms, that must now be established. As long as the Republican

system sufficed for the needs of Rome, her sculpture was entirely

Hellenistic in character. It was only with the advent of the Augustan

age (between, let us say, 50 B.C. and the year of Our Lord) that

traces of a distinctively national spirit began to show themselves.

A complete imperial system had commenced to exert its influence upon

society. From that time onward, and throughout the three following

centuries, characteristics can be traced which clearly differentiate

the work of the Roman sculptor from that of any Hellenic or Hellenistic

artist. It was only when “the pale Galilean” triumphed and the ideals

of Christianity supplanted those of an outworn imperialism that “Roman

sculpture,” too, became a thing of the past.

The how and the why suggested by our major proposition must be faced

boldly. Reducing the problem to its elements, we require, in the first

place, to gain a clear idea of what “Roman imperialism” denotes. In the

second place we must distinguish clearly between “Roman sculpture” and,

an entirely different thing, “sculpture produced in Rome.” The one is

organically Roman. The parentage of the other is Greek; its birthplace

is an accident. It precedes the national art of imperial times by at

least a century.

That so widely diffused an appreciation of sculpture existed long

before the growth of a native art is in itself highly significant.

An imported art is not a rare phenomenon in history, but it rarely

persists for the length of time it did in Rome. In the sixteenth

century, England welcomed an invasion of Italian “noveletti” and

romantic poetry. In a very short while, however, the alien art was

replaced by a vigorous national drama. Earlier in the same century,

France for a time suffered the Italian school of painting (the school

of Fontainebleau). But the stranger never quite made herself at home,

and was finally supplanted by an artistic canon which was entirely

French in spirit.

Republican Rome, on the contrary, was not only satisfied with her alien

school of sculpture for a century and a half, but borrowed at the same

time an entire culture from Greece—literature, science and philosophy.

The Roman boy was educated by Greek teachers in Rome. During

adolescence, he passed over to Athens for a course of philosophy or to

Rhodes for instruction in the accepted methods of rhetoric. Afterwards,

a year was spent upon “the grand tour” through Greece and Asia Minor

where the chief temples and monuments of the Hellenic masters were

still to be seen _in situ_. This Greek education by no means changed

the Roman Republican into a Hellenistic Athenian. The Roman was never

more Roman than he was during the Republican age. Yet the same art and

philosophy served for both. In other words, peculiarly Roman thought

and emotion found no artistic expression whatever.

These facts compel us to retrace some of the ground covered in our last

chapter. Both upon the historical and the artistic side we are forced

back to the time when Republican Rome furnished the principal market

for the wares of the Hellenistic sculptor. We shall, however, regard

it from a different ground. Our review of Hellenistic sculpture only

interested us in as far as it affected Greece. We judged it from the

standpoint of the Greek artist. Now Hellenistic sculpture calls for

attention from the point of view of the Roman patron.

During the later Republican age—the period from the defeat of Carthage

to the rise of Julius Cæsar—Rome was filled with Greek sculpture.

Thousands of original Hellenic and Hellenistic works were carried

there. Numberless Græco-Roman sculptors spent their time in producing

copies of Greek masterpieces or designing variations upon well-known

and popular designs. The process of despoiling Greater Greece of its

art treasures began as early as the fall of Syracuse in 212 B.C.

Corinth was stripped in 146 B.C. by Mummius. Delphi and Olympia both

suffered. Even Athens itself was plundered by Sulla in 86 B.C. during

the war with Mithridates. Chryselephantine statues like the “Athena” of

Phidias and the decorative sculptures of the great temples were left

untouched, but so many works of the Greek masters were carried westward

that Myron, Phidias, Polyclitus, Praxiteles, Scopas, and Lysippus

became household names in Rome.

We moderns can only be grateful that Roman taste did _not_ prefer the

productions of its own native sculptors. Had it done so, the history

of Greek sculpture would have had to be reconstructed from stray works

like the Elgin and the Æginetan marbles, the “Charioteer of Delphi” and

the “Hermes” of Olympia. As matters stand, we have such books as those

of Pausanias and Pliny. We are, moreover, furnished with numberless

copies of the principal Hellenic masterpieces. True, these “copies”

are not “the real thing.” In many cases they are marble translations

from bronze originals, giving us, let us say, that intimacy with the

earlier Greek works which the Arundel Society’s prints, or large-sized

photo-gravures, afford about the Italian original paintings they

reproduce. In addition, the Roman preference for Greek sculpture

resulted in the production of many statues which, though they cannot

be directly connected with any original Greek work, are clearly little

more than variations upon popular Greek themes.

THE GRÆCO-ROMAN SCULPTORS

Generally speaking, throughout the first and second century B.C. none

of the Greek sculptors working in Rome departed far from the accepted

models. Some followed the general standards adopted by Praxiteles;

some those of Lysippus; others again preferred the more romantic style

of the school of sculpture at Rhodes. When new subjects presented

themselves, however, Roman taste began to exercise a direct influence

upon the work of the Hellenistic sculptors. We dwelt upon some of

the effects of the Roman influence when considering the “Farnese

Hercules”—the work of the Græco-Roman Glycon. It is equally well

illustrated by two fine bronzes which have been recently discovered

and placed in the Terme Museum at Rome. The first is the life-sized

warrior or athlete leaning on his spear, usually called “The Prince.”

It closely resembles such a work as the “Cerigotto Bronze” in general

style. Nothing except the tendency towards an accentuation of muscular

development and the fact that it apparently does not follow an earlier

Greek design mark its Græco-Roman origin.

[Illustration: THE SEATED BOXER Terme Museum, Rome]

The second is the “Seated Boxer,” a magnificently powerful presentation

of an utterly ignoble theme. The fighter is resting; he is waiting

for his call to another bout. Each hand is still cased in the leather

cæstus. The bruised and swollen features of the man are given with

savage truth. By reason of its entirely un-Hellenic subject, the

“Seated Boxer” affords as fine an illustration of the Græco-Roman style

at its best as can be given. We see the grand technical skill which led

the Roman connoisseur to give his commissions to Greek sculptors. In

the insistence upon realistic detail and the absence of a high ideal

guiding the choice of subject, we can trace the influence of a taste

far removed from any that Greek sentiment could have fostered.

Hellenistic works showing the influence of Roman taste as clearly

as the “Seated Boxer” are rare. The Roman collector, as a rule, was

perfectly content with a work which was practically identical with

some earlier Greek design. A close resemblance to a Greek original was

in itself a strong recommendation. The faithfulness with which Roman

taste abided by Hellenic sculpture is proved by the popularity of the

pseudo-archaic school of Pasiteles during the last days of the Roman

Republic. Pasiteles was an Italian Greek. Pliny says of him that “he

never executed any work without first making a clay model.” Excessive

care and excessive emotional sobriety were the keynotes of his style.

It is peculiarly interesting to note in the works of this school an

obvious revolt against both the sensuous tendencies of the followers

of Praxiteles and the theatrical propensities of the Rhodians. The

pseudo-archaic sculptors and the patrons for whom they catered had

sufficient insight to distinguish between the various epochs of Greek

sculpture, that is to say, between work imbued with Hellenic qualities

and work which was only Hellenistic.

This can be seen at once in the group by Menelaus known as “Orestes

and Electra” (Plate, p. 128), as good an example of the school of

Pasiteles as can be found. The sculptor has evidently imitated the

style of an Argive artist living just before Polyclitus. In other

words, the “Orestes and Electra” represents a reversion beyond even the

purely Hellenic style of Polyclitus. So successfully is this archaic

manner imitated by the Græco-Roman followers of Pasiteles that modern

experts can easily be in doubt, in the case of particular statues,

whether the style is real or feigned. Dr. Murray, for instance, has

suggested that the Vatican “Spartan Girl,” which is usually assigned

to the transitional period of Hellenic sculpture ending with Myron’s

“Discobolus,” is actually by a follower of Pasiteles. The likeness

of the “Spartan Girl” to the works of the followers of Pasiteles is

obvious.

With characteristics like these, how should statues of the school of

Pasiteles be classed? That they are not Hellenistic is plain. Equally

clearly the resemblance to Hellenic work is so close that it would be

absurd to regard the style popularized by Pasiteles as a movement

towards a Roman national art. Really a pseudo-archaic statue like the

“Orestes and Electra” represents a passing craze. It is the outcome of

the fancy of a few art collectors.

One may, however, argue that the popularity of such a school points to

a dissatisfaction with the accepted Hellenistic art of the latter Roman

Republic. Be that as it may, a genuinely Roman school of sculpture

arose directly after.

Roman social and political circumstances began to influence sculpture

soon after the year 50 B.C. One hundred and fifty years earlier, the

defeat of Hannibal and the fall of Carthage had left Rome with the

undisputed headship in Western Europe. Spain was in her hands and her

frontiers stretched to the Atlantic. In the East, however, Rome was

faced with the Hellenistic kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria and Egypt. One

by one these fell before her. Naturally, so tremendous a success was

not attained without social and political changes of the first order.

Even before the Punic Wars the inner ring of the Roman aristocracy had

lost its long-established monopoly of the great offices of State. At

the time of the fall of Carthage, the Senate was certainly the supreme

authority in Roman affairs, the various magistrates being no more

than its executive tools. But the aristocracy had been compelled to

recognize a new class of capitalist merchants which had established

a claim to Rome’s regard by its ready aid during the Punic wars. The

body which directed Rome’s expansion beyond the borders of Italy was

therefore composed of a blend of wealthy patricians and plebeians.

These were the patrons of the Græco-Roman sculptors. They were the men

who composed “the assembly of kings,” whose report the ambassadors of

Pyrrhus carried to their master. For close upon a century a senate of

this type guided the destinies of the Roman Republic.

By about 100 B.C.—we express time in the roundest of round numbers—it

had become apparent that the political foundations upon which Rome’s

career of conquest was based were radically unsound. No body of

men—even an “assembly of kings”—could deal with the multitudinous

problems which arose from an attempt to absorb the whole of the

civilized world. The first man to realize this, and to attempt a

practical solution of the difficulty, was Marius. Soon after 107

B.C. he proved that he understood the essentials of the problem by

reorganizing the Republican armies. He converted them into fit tools

for the first “adventurer of genius” by ordaining that the soldiery

should be paid by land grants and booty.

The reforms of Marius were none too early. Between 89 B.C. and 64

B.C. the wars with Mithridates of Pontus showed Rome its weakness.

Mithridates overran Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece. Syria was

only regained by a gigantic effort. Then came “the adventurer of

genius”—Julius Cæsar—the founder of the Roman Imperial system. He was

followed by his son Octavius (Augustus Cæsar), the “Organiser of Roman

Imperialism.” These two men made Roman sculpture possible. On the day

that Cæsar and his eleven legions crossed the Rubicon with the cry “the

die is cast,” Roman sculpture was born.

The victory over Pompey at Pharsalia in 49 B.C. left Julius Cæsar

in supreme control. Brutus and Cassius led the Republican forlorn

hope, and Cæsar himself was murdered in 44 B.C., but he had achieved

his end. He had pointed out the only method of consolidating Rome’s

vast conquests and bringing peace to the sorely tried State.

Augustus realized at once the impossibility of reverting to the

discarded republican form of government. In its place he set up a

veiled despotism which enabled him to control all the energies and

resources of Rome’s great empire. As Imperator, Augustus made himself

commander-in-chief of the armies; as Princeps Senatus, he was leader

of the Legislative Assembly of the Senate; as Tribune, he acted as the

representative of Roman democracy; as Chief Pontiff, he was the head of

an all-powerful ecclesiastical organisation.

With the advent of peace Rome was able to turn her energies to art.

The consequences were immediate in all departments of culture. It was

the patronage of Mæcenas, the chief minister of Augustus, which placed

Virgil in a position to write the “Georgics.” By 19 B.C. the “Æneid”

was written in honour of Augustus. It was Mæcenas who provided Horace

with the farm among the Sabine hills, where the Roman lyricist and

satirist wrote all his later works.

THE RISE OF ROMAN PORTRAITURE

The effects of this social and political revolution upon sculpture

could not be more happily illustrated than by two portraits of the men

who brought them to pass. The “Julius Cæsar” is the well-known portrait

bust in the British Museum;[1] the “Augustus” is the equally famous

life-sized figure in the Vatican.

[1] See Furtwängler, “Neuere Fälschungen von Antiken,” p. 14.

In the first place, both are portraits. This emphasizes the prime fact

that the branch of sculpture chiefly affected was portraiture. It is

not difficult to surmise why this was so. In all other branches,

whether athletic statues, dramatic groups or sculptures of the gods,

earlier Hellenic and Hellenistic artists had produced works which

the unimaginative Romans could never hope to equal. The copies of,

and variations upon, the works of the Greek masters so fitted Rome’s

needs that little or no effort was made to produce new works of the

same class. But in portraiture this was not the case. In the nature

of things portraits cannot be so directly affected by an earlier

artistic method. The sculptors of Rome soon found that the methods of

their Hellenic masters would not yield the results required. The true

Greek portrait sculptor had never aimed at the realistic and life-like

representation which was the one desire of the matter-of-fact Roman

patron. As we have seen, the Greek had refrained from elaborating

expression. He portrayed an ideal type rather than an individualized

man or woman.

Take any typical Greek portrait as an illustration—the bust of

“Pericles,” in the Elgin Room at the British Museum, for instance.

Compare it with the “Julius Cæsar” in the same collection. We see

Pericles in the perfection of physical force and mental energy.

The ruler of Athens is more than a man. He is an epitome of all

that a Greek would be. There is no attempt at characterization. The

suggestion of voluptuousness in the lips, which heightens the work

so much, is really not an individual trait. It is rather an Hellenic

characteristic. It is part of an effort to express a type. But the

Roman sculptor of the “Julius Cæsar” never dreamt of embodying a whole

race in a single portrait—a philosophy in a statue. He was content to

give expression to the man before him. For this very reason the finest

Roman portraits possess a vigorous vitality which an Hellenic portrait

study lacks. As Pater expressed it: “The seeking of the type in the

individual, the abstraction of all that because of its nature endures

but for a moment, this involves loss of expression.” That is why the

“Pericles” is the portrait of a fifth-century Athenian and the Roman

work is the portrait of Julius Cæsar.

Exactly the same must be said of the great statue of “Augustus

addressing his Soldiers,” in the Vatican. Compared with the “Phocion,”

the “Augustus” is a carefully individualized character-study. The

tendency is not, however, carried to the extreme limit attained in

later Roman sculpture. The artist evidently hesitates to break entirely

with the idealistic method of the Hellenes. He willingly sacrifices

the chance of creating an eternal type, symbolizing the idea of Roman

imperialism incarnated in the first Emperor, preferring to convey the

impression of life-like portraiture. But he shows an ideal Augustus.

The statue does not convey the sensation of a moment of time—good, bad

or indifferent—captured and fixed for ever, which is so characteristic

of Roman portraits during the next century or two.

For this reason there is much to be said in favour of the view which

regards Augustan Rome as the last Hellenistic centre. It is still an

artist who is Greek at heart who is at work. But he differs from his

predecessors inasmuch as he is striving to give his Roman patrons a

thrill which they will feel to be national—to be truly Roman.

The Vatican statue of Augustus Cæsar was discovered in 1863. Apart from

its interest as a transitional work leading to the pure Roman style, it

claims attention owing to the light it throws upon the much discussed

problem of the colouring of marble statuary. We have previously noted

the fact that it is established beyond possibility of doubt that the

great mass of Greek and Roman sculpture was freely coloured. Traces

of pigment can still be found in numerous works, but the evidence is

insufficient to justify any really dogmatic utterances as to actual

methods. We have therefore preferred to do little more than allude to

the practice. The evidence furnished by the statue of Augustus is so

complete, however, that it suggests the desirability of a rather fuller

reference. The work was discovered in the Villa of Livia, near Prima

Porta. Otto Jahn, in his _Aus der Alterthumswissenschaft_, published in

1868, gives the following particulars as to its condition:

“The tunic of Augustus is crimson, the mantle purple, the fringe of the

armour yellow; on the nude portions of the body no traces of colour are

noticeable, except the indication of the pupils with a yellowish tint;

and the hair no longer shows colour. But the relief decorations of the

cuirass are painted with especial care, although the flat surfaces are

left without colour. The god of heaven, rising from the blue waves or

clouds, holds a purplish garment in both hands; the chariot of the

sun-god is crimson; before him soars a female with outspread blue

wings; the goddess of the earth wears a wreath of wheat in her blonde

hair. Apollo in a crimson mantle rides upon a griffon with blue wings;

the light haired Diana, in a crimson garment, is borne by a reddish

brown stag. In the middle stands a Roman Commander in blue and red

armour, crimson tunic, and purple mantle, with a blue helmet. A bearded

warrior in crimson tunic and blue trousers holds up a Roman standard

with insignia painted blue. The barbarian on the right, with auburn

hair, in a purple mantle, holds a war-trumpet; the figure on the left

is likewise light haired and clothed in a blue mantle.”

[Illustration: ORESTES AND ELECTRA (SCHOOL OF PASITELES) National

Museum, Naples]

[Illustration: AUGUSTUS Vatican, Rome]

We shall not refer to the problem of how generally Greek and Roman

sculptures were coloured again. M. Maxime Collignon, in his _La

Polychromie dans la Sculpture Grecque_, has collected the evidence

bearing upon the point. The “Augustus” shows how elaborate the process

must have been in many cases. It will, however, be worth while to refer

to two typical pieces of evidence supporting the view that the great

bulk of Greek and Roman sculpture was coloured.

In a wall-painting, once in Pompeii, now in the National Museum at

Naples, a picture represents a woman actually painting a statue.

It is a “Herma,” one of the popular figures of Dionysus set on a

quadrilateral base. The god’s hair is dark brown, the beard is grey

and the mantle yellow. A study of the wall paintings and mosaics

unearthed at Pompeii and Herculaneum gives the following result. Out of

eighty-one pictures of statues, fifty-nine are coloured completely. The

male figures are painted a ruddy brown, the female pink and white. Of

the others, fourteen are of a greeny brown tinge suggesting bronze.

Returning once again to our main argument: we have referred to Julius

Cæsar, as the father alike of Roman imperialism and Roman sculpture.

Roman national art was created when Cæsar and Augustus established a

political system which gave Italy peace after close upon a hundred

years of strife. It is not difficult to realize the relief with which

Italy must have greeted the new era. In the last few lines of the

First “Georgic,” Virgil has drawn a picture of the Roman world as it

had been until the imperial visions of Julius Cæsar had become living

realities for every Roman citizen under Augustus Cæsar. War was raging

everywhere. Corruption was rife. Agriculture was languishing. “The

crooked scythes are forged into rigid swords,” says Virgil.

With the advent of peace came the same desire to build which followed

the Persian war in Athens. The Augustan age changed Rome—to use

the well-worn metaphor—from a town of bricks to a city of marble.

The student of sculpture will do well to associate both events—the

coming of peace to the sorely tried Empire and the era of Augustan

building—with a slab of the great Ara Pacis which has been preserved

by a strange chance. The fragment shows Augustus, accompanied by his

family and the leading citizens and senators, going to the consecration

ceremony on July 4, 13 B.C.—the Independence Day of Roman Imperialism.

The Ara Pacis was built to honour the Goddess of Peace, in the style of

the Altar on the Acropolis of Pergamus. Just as the Altar at Pergamus

memorized the delivery of the Hellenistic state from the Gauls, the

Ara Pacis enshrined the fact that Rome was at last the acknowledged

mistress of the civilized world. Men could now dream of an era of

eternal peace; Rome set itself to enjoy the pleasures of intellectual

existence in a way that had been impossible amid the perpetual march

and remarch of armies and the rise and fall of factions.

It is true that the Roman Empire did not long remain at peace. But

Italy, at any rate, did not experience the horrors of war for some

centuries. The years of struggle had aroused a strong sense of

national feeling. The imperial system organized by Augustus set men

free to cultivate the arts of peace. Patrons with national instincts

and artists with the gift of expressing national feelings and

thoughts arose. In a few years, the tendencies shadowed forth in such

sculptures as “The Julius Cæsar” and “The Augustus,” became fixed, and

a national school of Roman portraiture sprang up. The characteristics

of the national style became more and more strongly marked.

THE HEIGHT OF ROMAN IMPERIALISM

(96 A.D. TO 117 A.D.)

The distinctively Roman portrait, untainted with any Hellenic or

Hellenistic admixture, is seen in the famous statue of the Emperor

Nerva in the Vatican collection. Here the artist has left the

idealistic methods of the Hellenic sculptors entirely behind. He has

depended upon the cunning use of realistic detail for his effect,

emphasizing the impression of life-like portraiture beyond anything

attempted in the Augustan age. Even the grace of a statue like “The

Augustus” has been sacrificed in the search for vigorous actuality. The

English equivalent of the new ideal is “Cromwell, warts and all.” But

one cannot but admire the magnificent judgment with which the realistic

detail is managed. There is nothing set down which does not add to the

vivid sense of a living portrait. As Wickhoff says in his fine study

of Roman art, “They gave an exact reproduction of nature, but with a

terseness which produced the desired impression of cold distinction.”

In the “Nerva” we have the Roman ideal in its most concrete form. Not a

word too much, but sufficient to ensure the impression of intense and

living reality.

Exactly the same tendency can be observed when the languages of the

two races are compared. The Roman—practical man—preferred a narrow

and concrete vocabulary. He willingly sacrificed flexibility of

expression to a businesslike conciseness. Hence arose his system of

inflectional speech, which is to be contrasted with the analytical

speech of the Hellenes with its particles and definite article. Just as

the inflectional language of Rome would not have expressed a quarter

of what the agile-minded Greek desired to say, so the methods of the

Roman portrait sculptor would have been valueless to the Greek to

whom philosophical _aperçus_ into the whole of human experience alone

seemed worthy of incarnation in marble and bronze. The Roman sculptor,

however, was quite satisfied with a narrow and concrete mode of

expression. He was content with an intensely concise method entirely

unsuited to the abstract thought and emotion in which the Greek had

revelled.

Our argument then has led us to this. Roman sculpture, far from being

a decadent anticlimax to Greek sculpture, is actuated by entirely new

ideals—ideals which arise out of the Roman nature. It is, therefore,

in the truest sense a national art. It embodies a temperament bearing

no possible relation to that of the Greek. For that very reason the

characteristics of Roman sculpture are most strongly accentuated at

times when the ideals embodied are most potent. The Roman imperial

spirit reached its climax in the age of Trajan (96 A.D. to 117 A.D.).

The statue of Nerva dates from the early years of Trajan’s reign, that

is a little before 96 A.D., when Nerva, who had raised his vigorous

lieutenant to imperial rank, died. For close upon a century the

tendency towards terse realism of the Roman method of portraiture had

been growing. When we picture a characteristically Roman figure during

the height of the imperialistic wave we can readily see why.

[Illustration: NERVA (DETAIL) Vatican, Rome]

What was the position at the time of Trajan himself? After securing

his frontiers in Northern Europe, Trajan passed eastward. He crossed

the Tigris and made a determined attempt to gain the control of the

overland trade with India. At the time of his death, the Roman empire

included Europe south of the Rhine and the Danube; in Asia it stretched

to the Euphrates.

What sort of men would be required to administer such an Empire? Can we

not picture them from our own experience of Empire-building? Imagine

for a moment that Trajan had established a permanent occupation of the

Punjab. It might well have been. As it was, he died after receiving a

check at the hands of the Parthians. What would Roman rule in India

have entailed? While the weaker states would have been absorbed, many

of the stronger ones would have entered the Empire as subject kingdoms.

The allies of Rome would, doubtless, have been rewarded with grants of

territory at the expense of the harder fighters. In other words, the

problem of government would have needed an infinity of administrative

tact, for all sorts and conditions of subject states would have had to

be appeased or held in subjection. The Roman governor of the Punjab

would have been in the first place a soldier. But he would only have

been guided in his general conduct by a rough _lex provinciæ_, so that

in practice he would have had to combine with his military duties

those of our Lord Chief Justice. It was not an age of cablegrams. The

decision upon a host of matters would necessarily have been in his

hands. So with his subordinates. They, too, would have had to solve the

nicest problems of practical administration every day—success being

their only justification.

These were the duties which Rome demanded of her sons. She educated

them for such posts as these. The circumstances in which the Romans

lived and the characteristics which their lives engendered, in turn,

reacted upon their art. As Mr. Dooley has told us, various nations

have various methods of treating “what Hogan calls th’ Muse,” when

they ask her “f’r to come up an’ spind a week” with them. A country

like Rome doesn’t expect her guest “to set all day in th’ hammock on

th’ front stoop, singin’ about th’ bur-rds. She’s got to do th’ week’s

washin’, clane th’ windows, cook th’ meals, chune th’ pianny, dust th’

furniture, mend th’ socks an’ milk th’ cow be day, an’ be night she’s

got to set up an’ balance th’ books iv an Empire.”

Mr. Dooley, of course, has Rudyard Kipling in mind. But the lines so

exactly fit the case of the Roman portrait sculptor, that we may well

pursue the analogy further.

Kipling is himself the product of political circumstances. He finds

expression for the vigorous matter-of-fact vision of an imperialism

that is nearly akin to that of Rome. Kipling joined the _Civil and

Military Gazette_ at Lahore when he was seventeen. He lived in India

during the formative period. At twenty-four he was back in England with

the essential features of his style fixed. The man the Roman State

required and for whom the Roman sculptor worked, was the man for whom

Kipling writes and whose ideals he expresses in throbbing prose and

verse.

But we may pursue the analogy even further. Rudyard Kipling and the

sculptor of the “Nerva:” Does a comparison of the styles of these

two artists reveal any innate resemblance? In both we see an intense

interest in strongly individualized humanity. Neither pays much heed

to grace or beauty—in the Hellenic sense of the word. Both are more

concerned with actuality than with the more shadowy realms of the

ideal. But most striking fact of all, the methods by which both express

their body of thought and emotion are strangely similar. Compare a

typical Kipling portrait with the “Nerva.” Let us say Miss Minnie

Treegan’s picture of Captain Gadsby.

“He belongs to the Harrar set. I’ve danced with him but I’ve never

talked to him. He’s a big yellow man, just like a newly hatched chicken

with an e-normous moustache. He walks like this (imitates Cavalry

swagger) and he goes ‘Ha-Hmm!’ deep down in his throat, when he can’t

think of anything to say. Mamma likes him. I don’t!”

This sketch gives us the heart of the Kipling style. Certain as the

day—cocksure, some might say. Photographically true? In a sense

only. Emphatic? As emphatic as capitals and apostrophes can make it.

Imaginative? Yes. If imagination be the faculty for creating a mental

image. These are the characteristics alike of the Kipling portrait and

the statue of “Nerva.” The sculptor is as emphatic in his message and

as certain in his delivery as the poet of English Imperialism. He has

not given a transcript of reality but has deepened the essential lines

until they speak with telling effect.

It is true that we miss the philosophical calm with which a Greek

sculptor would have treated such a subject as the imperial jurist

Nerva. But, in some ways we must admit that the Roman portraitist is

to be rated higher. If the impression that one is gazing upon reality

is the proper object of the portrait sculptor, the Roman gives us the

more life-like picture. But if the artist’s first function is to show

us nature, so that we may form our own judgment as to what is essential

and organic by the aid of his insight, then the Greek who carved the

very soul of men was the truer artist.

“Do you remember your mother, my dear?” was the question put to the

under-fed, under-clothed, Bermondsey waif.

“Yes, she was a stout woman, what beat me.”

It was a Roman answer, Roman in its magnificent brevity and

extraordinary directness. It typifies the artistic method of a society

which can spend no energy upon the production of men devoted to pigment

mixing and marble cutting for no better purpose than to dream dreams.

Something had to be sacrificed. The price Rome chose to pay was that

broad view of the world of nature and humanity which alone produces an

idealistic art like that of Greece. This is why when Rome finally began

to express its thoughts and emotions through marble and bronze it chose

a very different method to that of the Hellene. In Greece, the sculptor

had needed men and women, gods and heroes; Rome contented herself

with one branch of the art—that of sculpture-portraiture. Instead of

expressing herself by means of flesh and muscle, limbs and trunk, Rome

concentrated all her attention upon the human face.

THE REACTION UNDER HADRIAN

(117 A.D. TO 138 A.D.)

Surely it will be admitted that the facts and the historical

explanation fall beautifully into line. If further proof of the direct

connection between the ideas fostered by Roman imperialism and the

national school of portraiture is necessary, it is to be found in the

tendency to revert to a more Hellenic style when the imperialistic wave

recedes.

[Illustration: ANTINOUS Vatican, Rome]

Trajan was succeeded by Hadrian in 117 A.D. The former’s intensely

imperial policy had overtaxed Rome’s strength. The keynote of

Hadrian’s method was reaction against the forward policy which had

been paramount. Hadrian stopped the Parthian war. He abandoned Armenia

and the provinces beyond the Euphrates. All Rome’s efforts were

concentrated upon the task of finding out how to hold as opposed to how

to gain.

There is abundant artistic material in which to trace the effects of

this reactionary spirit, for Hadrian was one of the greatest of the

Roman builders. His efforts to beautify the cities of his Empire were

continuous. Temples and monuments were set up; theatres and baths

erected. The grand scale upon which he worked can be judged from

Pausanias’ statement that the Library of Hadrian was decorated with

one hundred columns of Phrygian marble—the walls of the surrounding

porticoes being similarly decorated. Or again, take the case of the

City of Antinopolis which Hadrian erected on the banks of the Nile to

the memory of his famous Antinous. The walls of Antinopolis enclosed

a rectangular space three miles in length. The great avenues that

ran through it were bordered by porticoes decorated with Corinthian

columns, the principal thoroughfares being ornamented with statues,

fountains, and votive monuments.

Upon examination it is found that the leading characteristic of the

great artistic wave of the age of Hadrian was a reversion to Greek

models. The Maison Carrée at Nîmes was erected at this time—the most

perfectly preserved temple in the Greek style now extant. During the

years 132 and 133 A.D., which Hadrian passed in Athens, he spent

immense sums upon rebuilding the city. Surely an additional proof

of his devotion to Greek art and culture. In all his tastes Hadrian

was a philo-Hellene—a “græculus,” as the Romans called him. When in

Athens he had himself initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. His very

appearance witnesses to his preference for Greece and things Greek.

Instead of the clean-shaven face of his imperial predecessors, Hadrian

wore a beard after the Hellenic fashion.

Turning to the portrait sculpture of the age of Hadrian we can see the

influence of the Emperor’s instinctive preference for Greek modes of

thought and expression very clearly.

The most typical pieces are to be chosen from the numberless statues

of Antinous, in whose honour Antinopolis was built. Hadrian’s love for

the beautiful Bythinian youth was in itself rather Greek than Roman.

Looking at the “Antinous” in the Vatican collection, and comparing it

with the statue of “Nerva,” the reaction against the Roman preference

for a vigorous actuality is apparent at once. The “Antinous” is not

a portrait as much as the incarnation of a type. The expression of

brooding melancholy, rather than the features of the man Antinous,

characterizes all the statues of the Bythinian youth scattered through

the galleries of Europe. This is the Greek, not the Roman method.

[Illustration: MARCUS AURELIUS Rome]

POST-HADRIAN SCULPTURE

The last Roman sculpture to which reference need be made is the

well-known equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The highest

praise that can be accorded to it, is, that it can bear comparison with

the finest equestrian statue the world possesses—that of Colleoni at

Venice, the joint work of Verocchio and Leopardi.

A melancholy interest attaches to the “Marcus Aurelius” for the reason

that it signalizes the close of an artistic movement that had run its

course for more than eight hundred years. The transition from Greek to

Roman sculpture had been uninterrupted. Now, the art of sculpture was

to pass into the shades for almost the same period. Even in the days of

Marcus Aurelius himself, the world had dim forebodings of the Dark Ages

which were approaching. The effort with which Aurelius arrested the

flow of Germanic invasion was far from reassuring. To an Emperor such

as Trajan it would have spelt disaster. Every Roman capable of bearing

arms was enrolled in the forces defending Italy itself. The outposts

of the Empire—the Danubian provinces, for instance—were only saved

by the efforts of the barbarians. A Roman Elijah might have warned the

Empire of what Alaric’s boastful cry would be when asked what ransom

Rome should pay.

“All your gold, all your silver, the choicest of your treasures.”

“What then will you leave us?”

“Your lives!”

As the third century of our era advanced, the system upon which the

Roman Empire had been founded showed even clearer signs of breaking

down. The supply of capable administrators proved insufficient. Roman

citizens no longer took the keen interest in political affairs they

had of old. The men who had furnished the brains of the state in

earlier times abandoned themselves to lives of luxury and idleness.

The concentration of power in the hands of the few governors of real

ability and vigour led to a state of perpetual insurrection. On the

contrary, the counter-check of subdivision of provinces and powers,

devised by Diocletian and Constantine, led to the rise of a bureaucracy

which got entirely out of hand. The ideals of Roman imperialism passed

away. With them went the art of portraiture which they had fostered. An

effete empire led to an effete art.

As we have said many centuries were to pass before the Catholic Church,

which fathered the next great school of national sculpture—the

Gothic—realized the possibility of embodying its thoughts and feelings

in marble and bronze. The early Christians could never disassociate

sculpture from the religious beliefs of the Romans. The art was too

closely allied with a pagan faith to be acceptable to the new church.

This more or less accounts for the absence of a vigorous school of

sculpture in Italy between the fourth and the thirteenth centuries A.D.

The circumstances in Constantinople were not more favourable. During

the early years of the Eastern Empire Greek and Roman sculpture never

lacked appreciation. Constantine made his new capital an immense museum

of classical art. But when the Byzantine artist sought to express the

ideals of Christendom by means of sculpture he failed. All Byzantine

art tended to become more and more abstract and symbolical. It finally

became completely divorced from naturalism—the only sure ground upon

which a sculptor can stand. At the same time Christian thought and

feeling, which the Byzantine artist might have expressed, passed under

the control of a Church which would not recognize the rights of any

artist. No other explanation of the absence of a vigorous school of

sculpture during the Dark Ages is required than the recital of the

following decision of the Council of the Church at Nicæa. It refers to

painting. A similar decree issued by the Empress Theodora, however,

forbade any sculpture save low relief. Sculpture in the round was

denounced as entirely pagan. The Nicæan decree may, therefore, be

accepted as applying to any art effort.

It ran: “The composition of the figures is not the invention of the

painters but the law and tradition of the Catholic Church.... Nor is

this purpose and tradition the part of the painter (for his is only the

craft) but is due to the ordination and disposition of Our Father.”

Principles such as these ruled until about the tenth century, when

circumstances led to their gradual decay and the consequent rise of

a new school of sculpture. We shall see that this found a wealth of

material in Christian myths and personalities which had suggested

nothing to the craftsmen of Rome and Byzantium.

PART III

THE SCULPTURE OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

CHAPTER VIII

THE GOTHIC SCULPTORS AND THE RISE OF ITALIAN SCULPTURE AT PISA.

(1000 A.D. TO 1350 A.D.)

The period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of

communal life in the Netherlands, Normandy, and Lombardy, saw sculpture

at a lower ebb than at any time for 1200 years. Such buildings as

Santa Sophia in the Eastern Empire and the basilicas of Ravenna in

the Western, stand to witness that the artistic sense itself was

still alive. But no great political or social force called forth the

craftsmanship of the sculptor. As the Dark Ages drew to a close,

however, a change came about. Mankind once more sought to find

expression for its deepest imaginations and beliefs through sculptured

marble and bronze.

We may roughly fix the date of the rebirth of sculpture at 1000 A.D.

Scientific accuracy would perhaps demand references to Charlemagne. The

historian of art, however, seeks causes of the greatest magnitude. He

must point to vast eruptions of human energy and emotion, not to brick

upon brick erections of paltry feelings, if he is to really account for

the creation of a great art. We are, therefore, safe in starting from

the feverish anxiety with which Christendom awaited the advent of the

year 1000 after our Lord. The Millennium had expired. Satan was to be

loosed. Men knew not what to expect. He who made a will or executed a

deed started with such a phrase as “Seeing that the end of the world is

at hand.” The very indefiniteness of the fears only served to increase

the terror. Month after month crept by. Nothing untoward happened. At

last the mystic year passed. The revulsion of feeling was immense, the

immediate result being an enormous devotional impulse, the evidence of

which remains to-day in the great number of ecclesiastical buildings

erected in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Let us not be misunderstood. The year 1000 A.D. was not the cause of

the new spirit. It simply marks the time. To understand why the men

of these centuries instinctively lavished wealth and labour upon the

cathedrals and abbeys and their sculptured decorations, we must picture

the social and political state of Western Europe at the time.

During the years following the break up of the Empire hordes of heathen

invaders had poured into the Roman world. The torrent was not stayed

until the age of Charles the Great. The first result of the beating

of this human tide upon the rocks of the old civilization had been a

fund of nervous energy unequalled since the struggle with Carthage had

produced vital force sufficient to enable Rome to conquer and rule

the Western world. But this fund of energy needed concentration and

direction. Politically, Western Europe in the eleventh century was a

heterogeneous collection of feudal states. It was soon evident that

the only common interests were those aroused by the belief in a common

religious creed. In the midst of a general social chaos, the only

really organized community was the Catholic Church. What wonder then

that, in search for some sure resting-place, Christendom submitted

itself to Rome? By the time of Gregory VII. (1073 A.D.) the occupant of

the Chair of St. Peter had become all-powerful. Hobbes’ picture of the

Papacy—the ghost of the Empire sitting crowned on its own grave—had

been realized to the full. As the Festival at Olympia had been the

rallying-point for the Greek world, so the meeting at Clermont,

where the First Crusade was inaugurated, witnessed to the only unity

Christendom could then imagine. This is why the artistic energies of

Western Europe after 1000 A.D. followed channels suggested by the Roman

Church.

THE GOTHIC SCULPTORS

For one reason and another, the first country to drag itself from the

intellectual torpor which had affected Western Europe for hundreds

of years was France. The commercial classes, particularly in the

north-west, shook themselves free from the dominion of the feudal lords

earlier than their brethren, say, in Northern Italy. As material wealth

increased, the French _bourgeoisie_ naturally sought for a means of

expressing its pride in the communal life which it had created. But

in doing so, it could not rid itself of the memory of the even deeper

emotions aroused by the realization of the co-ordinating power of

the Catholic Church. The cry, “A cathedral for Amiens, a city church

for Rouen,” made much the same appeal to the imaginations of these

Frenchmen as the idea of a Parthenon had made to the Athenians 1500

years earlier.

Previously the religious buildings had mostly been abbeys, and the

property of the religious orders. Now the laity desired to do what

they could. The finest French cathedrals were built by the great lay

guilds. Their foundations were planted in the very centre of social and

communal life. In this respect, the great Gothic churches of France

differ markedly from those of our own island. Nôtre Dame, Bayeux,

Chartres, Bourges, Rheims, and the rest are to be contrasted with such

a typical English Cathedral as Lichfield, which nestles among the

trees and makes, with the Close, a little world entirely apart from

the clatter and chatter of the market square. Just because a French

cathedral was so direct an expression of popular emotion, it was as

a rule a less balanced artistic creation. The builders of Salisbury

were not driven by the pricking desire to out-top the topmost which

impelled the French Gothic architects and masons. But the French

cathedral voiced more truly the inner feelings of the people to whose

heart-burnings and soul-aspirations it was due.

Turning now to sculpture, the circumstance common to the Greek temple

with its marbles and the French Gothic cathedral with its stone

decorations, strikes us at once. In both cases, the prime impulse

was civic pride. This is important. But it is even more necessary

to realize the essential difference—that the Gothic cathedral owed

even more to the inspiration of a great church and an all-powerful

priesthood. At the very outset we come upon the fact that whereas

the growth of Greek sculpture largely depended upon such a purely

human feeling as the passion for physical beauty, sculpture in the

Middle Ages was required to incarnate an entirely extra-mundane

emotion—the craving for an all-ruling and ever-living deity. It

was to this Coleridge referred when he said that “the principle of

Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable.” Just as the Doric

temple—“Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime”—was an echo of the

Greek spirit; so the Gothic cathedral, with its vast spaces and its

complex schemes of columns, aisles and chapels, ministered to that

mysticism which distinguished the Christian religion of Western Europe

from the crystal clear faith of Ancient Greece.

Some will remember William Watson’s lines “Upon a prelude or a fugue of

Bach.”

“Contentedly, with strictest strands confined,

Sports in the Sun that oceanic mind;

To leap their bourn these waves did never long,

Or roll against the stars their rock-bound song.”

That is the Greek view. How different is the Gothic. Again we turn to

William Watson—four lines upon “The Gothic Spire”:

“It soars like hearts of hapless men who dare

To sue for gifts the gods refuse to allot;

Who climb for ever toward they know not where,

Baffled for ever by they know not what.”

It is not an exaggeration to say that no great sculpture was produced

under the influence of the Gothic passion for mystic communion with

the Unseen. No one now remembers the name of a single Gothic sculptor.

Certainly, no one can recall a single statue of the period as a “joy

for ever,”—_the_ test of a work of art of the first order. May we not

infer that the art by which the religious instinct most naturally finds

expression is architecture, or, as experience has since shown, music?

The absence of sculpture of real beauty was not due to any lack of

opportunity. There were thousands of stone workers. As had been the

case with the Greek temples, the great Gothic cathedrals provided

abundant opportunities for sculptural decoration. In France the façades

of the great churches were often literally covered with carved reliefs,

and rows upon rows of statues. The purely architectural work served

merely as a background to one huge composition of statuary. The deeply

recessed portals and the galleries and columns of the interior were

equally designed to receive a profusion of sculptural decoration. The

triple portal of the west front at Chartres contained some 720 figures,

large and small, the tympanum in the centre depicting Our Lord in

Glory. Attached to the pillars of the doorways were numerous large

carvings representing the ancestors of Christ. The transept porches

were decorated with a similar profusion of statuary.

But whereas the sculpture of the Parthenon not only served perfectly

as an architectural decoration, but was also “a thing of beauty” in

itself, it was otherwise with the plastic decoration of a Gothic

cathedral. The Gothic architect had not the slightest scruple in

sacrificing the beauty of any statue for the architectural effect as

a whole. At times the Gothic sculptor’s deviations from nature were

almost uncanny. In his choice of a subject, and in his method of

representation, he was only concerned with the realistic presentation

of the beliefs of the Roman Church. His task was to translate the

mysteries of life and death into a language which the humblest

worshipper could not misunderstand. The well-known alto-relievo in

Bourges Cathedral affords a fine illustration of this phase of Gothic

art. The scene represents the torturing of the souls of the damned. We

are spared nothing. Everything is set down in all its naked horror. The

Gothic sculptor had his virtues. One was that he always told his story

clearly. He sought to suggest the ideals revealed by the Man Christ as

he understood them. His only aim was to give form to the new emotions

and thoughts which he believed arose from the teachings of the Church.

Can we help admiring the grand sincerity with which he kept his aim

ever in the foreground, and the wonderful fertility of his invention in

presenting the ideas he had to portray?

[Illustration: GOTHIC PANEL

THE LAST JUDGMENT A bas-relief from the porch of Bourges Cathedral]

[Illustration: GIOVANNI PISANO

THE ADORATION OF THE MAGI

A panel from the pulpit of the Duomo at Pisa, now in the Museo Civico,

Pisa]

Though the Gothic sculptor cannot be denied his meed of praise, an

equal candour compels us to admit that these are not the virtues of

a great artist. They are too utilitarian. Art lends its aid to make

religious ideas more persuasive, but it is, properly, neither religious

nor ethical. We realize this at once when we compare the Gothic ideal

with that which actuated the Greek in the days of Phidias.

How altered are the circumstances under which the two schools worked.

Let us catalogue them for the last time. The balance which the Greek

preserved between emotion and intellect was no longer regarded as

desirable. It was not even considered. Men had ceased to believe

that a right judgment accepted the limitations to human endeavour

set by the threescore years and ten of human life. Instead, there

was an overmastering passion to enter into conscious relation with a

mysterious power endowed with the faculty of controlling human destiny.

In place of the sunny myths of ancient Hellas, the Gothic sculptor drew

upon the superstitious perversions of Scripture which his age accepted.

The Church loved to dwell upon the wrath of God. The sculptor could

only follow.

Whereas the Greek had realized to the full the beauty of the human

body, and its possibilities as an emotional agent, the Gothic artist

appealed to men who had no reverence for the human form, rather to

those who despised it. Asceticism was rampant. Drapery was used, not to

display the beauties of the human figure, but to hide them. The art of

sculpture, which depends upon the perfectly developed human body and

the balanced human mind and heart for all the more impressive notes in

its song, could not flourish in such an atmosphere.

The differences between Northern France in the eleventh and twelfth

centuries A.D. and Greece in the fifth century B.C. at once show why we

must look elsewhere for a social state in which the art of the sculptor

could find sustenance. As we should expect we find this in a country

where Gothic architecture never achieved the brilliant success that

attended it in France and England. We mean, of course, Italy.

The culture of Gothic architecture never bore transplanting from French

to Italian soil satisfactorily. Many so-called Gothic cathedrals were

erected. But the Italian architects always leant towards the Roman

simplicity, and never multiplied the niches and columns in the way the

French architect did. As a consequence the opportunities for marble

and bronze decorations were greater than in the north, and the art of

sculpture at once took a firmer position.

But the chief reason for the immediate growth of sculpture in Italy

was not material but psychological. It depended not upon opportunity

but upon the mental and emotional temper of those to whom it appealed.

The Gothic architect in Italy did not adopt the methods by which his

French brother appealed to the mystic instincts of his countrymen,

simply because the Italian temperament was less eager to “dwell

overmuch among desired illusions.” With a far fuller emotional and

intellectual experience, the Italian did not feel, in the same degree,

what Matthew Arnold has called “that passionate, turbulent, indomitable

reaction against the despotism of fact.”

For many years the population of Northern Italy had been victimized by

the continual invasions which the Holy Roman emperors made against the

Pope. At first there were constant efforts to form leagues of townships

to combat Emperor or Pope. But the cities could not put large bodies of

fighters in the field, and their condition was deplorable. The great

struggle between Henry IV. of Germany and the Papacy aided by Matilda

and the Normans, brought matters to a head.

The remedy was found towards the end of the eleventh century, when each

town discovered that it could best serve its interests by acting alone.

In other words, the conception of a city-state was reached. During the

struggle in which bishop was pitted against feudal lord, feudal lord

against bishop, and both or either against Emperor or Pope, each city

developed a political individuality. Genoa became distinguished from

Pisa, and both from Milan in marked fashion. Nor was this all. It was

soon realized that the bond of citizenship was an asset that could

be used with magnificent effect. As had been the case in Greece, a

city with a few thousand burghers found it could safely face a power

apparently vastly stronger. The enthusiasm of every citizen was fired

in a manner unequalled since a similar concatenation of circumstances

had given Phidias and Praxiteles to the Ægean Peninsula. Finally, this

civic ideal did not entail the jettisoning of a hundred human ambitions

and emotions which were entirely foreign to the Roman Catholic Church.

A social philosophy began to arise in which human interests

predominated. Here was the very condition for lack of which Gothic

sculpture had been still-born.

THE PISANI

The city of Pisa is particularly identified with the rise of Italian

sculpture. Near the town lay the marble mines of Carrara. The Crusades,

by opening up the markets of the East and, particularly, Byzantium,

had done much to increase its material prosperity. The citizens

of Pisa, for instance, had contributed largely to the success of

the second Crusade. Their reward for assistance in the capture of

Jerusalem was a series of trading privileges extending over a great

part of the East. Pisan banks and warehouses arose in every port.

Material prosperity freed social life from many hampering conventions.

Economic independence proved the first step towards the consciousness

of intellectual liberty which was so striking a characteristic of

the Renaissance. Pisa was only nominally a republic. Its aristocrats

wielded power, and they realized, as Pisistratus had done in ancient

Athens, that their tenure of authority was held at the price of

magnificent schemes of public utility. The Cathedral was consecrated in

1118, and forty years later the Baptistery was finished. During this

time the Republic, owing to its successful campaigns against Genoa and

Lucca, became more and more powerful.

One of the principal results following the opening up of the Eastern

world was a revelation of the grace and beauty of the sculpture of

the ancients. The Pisans evinced a strong interest in the few works

of antiquity that could be found. The merchants eagerly competed for

one of the carved Roman sarcophagi which the Pisan fleets occasionally

brought over from the East.

Under these influences, the sculptors who were engaged upon the

decoration of Gothic cathedrals in Italy found themselves called upon

to add a beauty to their work which was not required in North-west

Europe. In their search for this beauty, the harmonious naturalism

lacking in the plastic arts prior to the thirteenth century was

attained. Craftsmen from Byzantium and architects and masons from the

North came to such a town as Pisa to educate a band of local artists.

They, too, drank deep at the well of Hellenic genius. The sculptors

of Italy still worked under the inspiration of the Catholic Church.

But, fired by the achievements of Greece, their work displayed a

natural grace far in advance of the realistic fables in stone which the

Northern artist fashioned or the symbolic pictures which the Byzantium

craftsman produced. Niccola Pisano (1205-1278 A.D.) was the greatest

Italian architect of his day and the wealth of his native town early

furnished him with opportunities for exercising his skill both as an

architect and as a sculptor. From Pisa, Niccola’s reputation spread

through Italy. As a sculptor he was influenced strongly by Græco-Roman

art. Being intended for Gothic buildings, his sculptural work has many

of the characteristics of the French style, but it shows the clearest

signs of classical feeling. It is true that he crowds the space he has

to fill with a multitude of figures, where the taste of the Greek would

have suggested a simpler scheme. His figures and drapery are heavy

when compared with the graceful forms of the Hellenic artists. But all

Niccola Pisano’s later work proves how thoroughly he appreciated, and

how earnestly he strove to attain, the stately beauty that pervaded the

art of Hellas.

Giovanni, a son of Niccola Pisano, worked between 1270 and 1330 A.D.

Giovanni Pisano, like his father, was a brilliant architect. As a

sculptor, however, he lacked Niccola’s sense of beauty, and he clung

too closely to the fantastic exaggerations of the Gothic artists.

He abandoned the ideal of tranquillity and self-restraint which his

father had learnt from the Hellenic example. But his technical skill

was so great and his efforts to give a passionate realization of the

scriptural scenes were so sincere that Giovanni’s best work shows a

force lacking in the sculptures of Niccola Pisano.

On the whole, the works of Giovanni prove that the influence of Niccola

was not very potent. This seems to be due to the fact that to the time

of his death the taste for sculpture was not general. It was rather

eclectic. It appealed to few beyond the ranks of the aristocrats.

Moreover, though Niccola had realized that “art must anchor in nature,

or be the sport of every breath of folly,” the conviction was not

general. The feeling for the beauties of the natural world was only

growing slowly. It came to the flood early in the thirteenth century,

and found its most intense expression in the sermons of Francis of

Assisi (1182-1226). It is idle to inquire whether the “First of the

Friars” taught the world to look once more for the beauties of nature

beneath the hard crudities of external phenomena. Certain it is that he

was one

“Who heard the tale

The low wind tells,

Who read the rune

Of moorland wells.”

[Illustration: NICCOLA PISANO THE PULPIT AT PISA]

Saint Francis never reached the modern conception of nature as the

embodiment of the divine spirit such as is found in the poems of

Wordsworth. It could not be said of him

“None inlier taught how near to earth is heaven,

With what vast concords Nature’s harp is strung.”

But his passion for the beauties of nature added a new note to the

prevalent interpretation of Scripture. Consciously or unconsciously, it

led him to a far more human conception of the Godhead.

As a result of the preaching of St. Francis and that of his followers,

all Italy clamoured for representations of the Christ and the Saints in

the new manner. The demand was first satisfied by the painter Giotto

(1266-1337). Under the influence of St. Francis, Giotto translated the

new Christian thought and emotion into terms of flesh and blood. He

pictured this living reality upon the walls of such a building as the

Upper Church at Assisi. He did for Italy what Phidias and Polyclitus

did for Greece when they gave material form to the Zeus and Hera of

Homer.

The sculptor most closely identified with Giotto was Andrea Pisano

(1270-1348). A pupil of Giovanni, Andrea carried the principles of

sculpture enunciated by Niccola to Florence. The city, at the time, was

one of the richest and most enlightened in Italy. It was, moreover,

the centre from which the naturalism of Giotto was spreading. Andrea

was always greatly influenced by his friend Giotto, and upon the

latter’s death carried through the architectural works upon which he

was engaged. But the words of Andrea show that Giotto’s influence upon

sculpture was not entirely for good. For some time after the great

painter’s death a distinctly pictorial character pervaded the works of

the Italian sculptors. Andrea Pisano, for instance, himself spent many

years in fashioning one of the great bronze doors of the Florentine

Baptistery. This contains some of the finest bronze work in the world.

Each panel is decorated with a scene from the life of John the Baptist

and each tells its story simply and clearly. But it is at once obvious

that the ideal at which Andrea was aiming was rather pictorial than

sculptural. At his death sculpture was no longer on the free road of

progress started by Niccola Pisano.

Our study of three centuries has therefore brought us to the following

conclusion. After centuries of effacement and years of struggle, the

art of sculpture has once more discovered the possibility of natural

expression. But it is still hampered by its ancient alliance with

sacerdotalism. This must be abandoned, and the sculptor must devote

himself wholly and freely to Mother Nature, and Mother Nature’s most

magnificent achievement—the human form. By no other means can a

standard approaching the Hellenic be reached. We are now to learn how

the bonds fashioned by the Roman Church were shaken off by the Italian

sculptors of the fifteenth century.

CHAPTER IX

THE RISE OF NATURALISM—LORENZO GHIBERTI, DONATELLO, VEROCCHIO, ETC.

(1400-1500 A.D.)

It will be remembered that the rise of Greek sculpture was a matter

of fifty or, at the most, seventy years. The Muse of the art did not

spring fully grown from the head of Apollo, it is true. But within

half a century the Greek craftsman realized the possibilities of his

materials; he discovered what subjects could be treated most properly,

and fitted himself to express the profoundest thoughts and emotions of

his countrymen. The result was Phidias and the Parthenon.

Yet by 1400 A.D. we have by no means reached the zenith of Italian

sculpture. In other words, after tracing the growth of the art for

a century we find that another hundred years is necessary before an

Italian Parthenon is possible. To what was the slower evolution of

sculpture in Italy due?

It might be suggested that marble and bronze were not the fittest media

to embody the teeming experience of fourteenth-and fifteenth-century

Italy. This is probably true. Seeing, however, that the sister art

of painting had lagged behind in similar fashion, we must trace the

deliberate growth of Italian sculpture to the lesser intensity of

the energizing force. The Italians were not stirred to the depths by

one heart-searching struggle like that between the Persians and the

Hellenes. The contention between city and city was, however, incessant.

Within the town walls, too, the strife between class and class was

constant. Apart, therefore, from the question of degree, we find in

the Italian city-states between 1350 and 1400 A.D. the same restless

vortices of intellectual and emotional energy which were the first

consequences of Marathon and Salamis.

As in Greece, these vortices were not of one type nor the creation of

a single centre. Florence certainly played the part in Italian culture

that Athens did in the growth of Hellenism. Of all the cities of Italy,

she was most completely in touch with the diverse influences which

humanized the arts. But the movement was not a matter of Florentine

culture. Just as had been the case in Greece, a hundred centres

produced personalities—men and women of every stamp. The theocracy

of Rome, the democracy of Florence, the monarchy of Naples, the

aristocracy of Venice, and the tyranny of Milan, all did their part.

All assisted to mould that grand complexity which we call the Italian

Renaissance The leaders of public opinion in all these centres, men and

women alike, were continually moving about. Artists were invited now to

one court now to another; scholars and poets were welcomed at Siena and

Ferrara as they were at Milan and Florence. Hence that all-embracing

experience of men and things, which must lie at the foundation of every

art which is not only to grow, but to live and bear fruit.

But it is one thing to realize the presence of a number of factors

favourable to a great art. It is a more difficult thing to estimate

the circumstances under which a large measure of this force and

experience was diverted into channels which made a Michael Angelo not

only possible but certain. The inquiry we are embarking upon is the

counterpart of that which we undertook with reference to the evolution

of Hellenic sculpture between 480 and 450 B.C. Apart from the longer

period occupied, we shall find that the most significant feature is the

resemblance between the circumstances which led up to Phidias and those

which led up to Michael Angelo. This is not surprising. Indeed, were

not many circumstances attending pre-Angelesque sculpture identical

with those in the first half of the fifth century B.C., our entire

critical method would be endangered. As a matter of fact, the identity

of circumstance is remarkable. What is even more important is that

where there is a really striking variation we can correlate it with a

corresponding one in the result. In other words, we can recognize and

account for the characteristics which distinguish the sculpture of the

Italian renaissance from that of Greece 1900 years earlier.

GHIBERTI AND THE GATES OF THE FLORENTINE BAPTISTERY

Turning to the facts: the new spiritual atmosphere, with its strong

artistic potentialities, which followed the preaching of St. Francis,

was much more favourable to the painter’s art than to that of the

sculptor. We have seen that Giotto was able to give adequate expression

to the dominant ideas of his age with much greater freedom than such

an artist as Andrea Pisano. This general tendency unfavourable to the

growth of a vigorous school of Italian sculpture, continued for a

long time. Its effect in turning the budding artist’s dreams towards

painting or influencing his work in unsculpturesque fashion cannot be

doubted. Perhaps this can be most fully illustrated by the subsequent

history of the doors of the Florentine baptistery. It will be

remembered that Andrea Pisano had erected the first of the three bronze

doors seventy years earlier. The political difficulties in the latter

part of the fourteenth century prevented the Florentines completing

the work. In 1403, however, as a thank-offering after the great plague

of 1400, the Guild of Florentine merchants decided to complete the

bronze doors of the baptistery. The commission was offered for public

competition and advertized throughout Italy. The account left by

Lorenzo Ghiberti, the eventual winner, enables us to realize the effect

of the news.

Ghiberti had been born in 1381, so that he was barely out of his

teens when the announcement of the Florentine Guild was published.

He had been educated as a goldsmith, a craft which always flourishes

when wealth is accumulating, civil disorders are frequent and banking

systems insecure. It provides a ready means of hoarding a small store

against a time of stress. But to an artist of ardent imagination

and real ambition like the youth Ghiberti, the narrow limits set by

goldsmithery were cramping. Reading between the lines, we can see that

he was seriously contemplating abandoning his own art for the more

expressive art of painting. He had indeed taken the first step. In

a passage from his own manuscript in the Magliabecchian Library, he

narrates:

“In my youth, anno Christi 1400, moved both by the corrupted air of

Florence and the bad state of the country, I fled with a worthy painter

who had been sent for by Signor Malatesta of Pesaro, and he gave us a

room to paint, which we did with great diligence. My soul was at this

time much turned towards painting, partly from the hope of the works

in which Signor Malatesta promised to employ us; and partly because

my companion was always showing me the honour and utility which would

accrue to me. Nevertheless, at this moment, when my friends wrote to

me that the governors of the baptistery were sending for masters whose

skill in bronze working they wished to prove, and that from all Italian

lands many maestri were coming to place themselves in this strife of

talent, I could no longer forbear, and asked leave of Signor Malatesta

who let me depart.”

Coming to Florence, Ghiberti found himself opposed to six of the best

sculptors of Italy. There was Filippo Brunelleschi, who afterwards

became famous as the architect of the dome of the Florentine Cathedral.

There was also Jacopo della Quercia, the Sienese sculptor, to whom we

shall refer again. Each competitor received “four tables of brass,”

and a year was given to prepare a panel representing the “Sacrifice

of Isaac.” At the end of the time it was evident that the contest had

resolved itself into a duel between Ghiberti and Brunelleschi. Nor was

there any doubt as to the winner. The panels of both men can still be

seen side by side in the National Museum at Florence. They witness to

the truth of Ghiberti’s boast: “The palm of victory was conceded to me

by all the judges and by those who competed with me. Universally the

glory was given to me without any exception.” The commission was dated

November 23, 1403. The Merchants’ Guild agreed to pay all expenses—the

sum eventually expended upon the pair of gates being 22,000 ducats. The

wages of his assistants, who included Donatello, Gozzoli and Uccello,

were defrayed by the Guild. Lorenzo himself received 200 florins a

year, for which he agreed to give all his time. He was bound to design

the panels and execute “the nudes, draperies, and all the artistic

parts with his own hand.” Upon the completion of the first pair of

gates, those executed by Andrea Pisano (1331-1334) were taken down and

Ghiberti’s gates erected in the place of honour facing the Cathedral.

Nor was this all. Twenty-five years had been spent already. Yet he was

ordered to furnish another pair—those which Michael Angelo called “The

Gates of Paradise.” They were unveiled in 1452, when they in their turn

displaced the earlier gates of Ghiberti.

The “Gates of Paradise” represent the zenith that sculpture could

attain, following the path indicated by the Pisani, who had been

compelled to work largely in relief owing to the necessity laid upon

them of being primarily illustrators of the Scriptures. Ghiberti’s

last pair of gates, therefore, merit a detailed examination. There

are ten panels, five on each door. Upon these are pictured scenes

from Old Testament history from the Creation to Solomon. In some of

the reliefs Ghiberti put as many as a hundred figures. Yet the panels

never appear crowded. Throughout there is a fine appreciation of the

story to be depicted. The beauty of the drawing of the nudes and of

the soft flow of the drapery is extreme. It is almost impossible to

select a panel which will illustrate all the charms of design and

beauties of technique with which the “Gates of Paradise” abound. If

one must choose, the panel upon which Ghiberti depicts the Creation

of Adam and Eve, the Temptation and the Expulsion from Eden, seems

to suggest itself. From it we can judge Ghiberti’s treatment of the

male and female nude. We can see how marvellously the sense of aerial

perspective is rendered by the gradual diminution of relief. The

figures nearest the eye are in high relief, the more distant forms

being raised to a less and less degree, until “the multitude of the

heavenly host” melt imperceptibly into the bronze background.

[Illustration: LORENZO GHIBERTI

“THE GATES OF PARADISE” Baptistery, Florence]

Technically—judged from the standpoint of workmanship in bronze—“The

Creation Panel” is beyond criticism. Comparing it with a painting by

Giotto, or, to take an artist of a later date, by Fra Angelico, we

feel, however, that something is lacking. Though the subjects depicted

are biblical, Ghiberti’s work lacks the spirituality which an artist

working under the influence of Giotto, consciously or unconsciously,

infused into his work. Italy in the fifteenth century had realized the

fallacies that underlay the narrow creed of the Church and the too

rigid philosophy of the Scholastics.

Ghiberti, like many another Italian artist, could not accept the

judgment of the extreme ascetics who saw in the beauties of the human

form only snares set by the devil to catch the souls of men. Whatever

may have been Ghiberti’s personal religious belief, as an artist he

knew that such a creed was impossible. He saw that the beauties which

the eye could see were his raw material. The mystical artists of the

Giottesque school would have cried with Watts, “I paint ideas, not

things.” Ghiberti worked upon the principle that an artist holding such

a creed only approaches success when he forgets his predilection for

ideas in the interest aroused by the beauties of the natural world and

particularly by the beauties of the human form.

At the very root of our argument lies the fact that these broader

and more human views are traceable to the growing influence of the

democracy in the Italian cities. It must never be forgotten that such a

work as the “Gates of Paradise” was in every sense a public work. Its

general design and its detailed progress were continually supervised by

the hard-headed burghers of Florence. When, for instance, Ghiberti was

instructed on January 2, 1425, by the consuls of the Guild of Merchants

to commence the third pair of gates, he was not free to choose his

own subjects. Here is an extract from the letter of Leonardo Bruni

d’Arezzo, the Chancellor of the Republic, who actually drew up the

general scheme. After detailing the subjects he added:

“It is necessary that he who has to design them should be well

instructed in every story, so that he may dispose the characters and

scenes to the best effect.... I have no doubt that the work as I have

designed it will succeed well, but I should like to be near the artist

that I may interpret to him the many meanings of the scenes.”

It was no small task which the good Chancellor set Ghiberti. Imagine

the feelings of a twentieth-century sculptor suddenly faced with a

demand to give expression to the following subjects in ten panels,

within the limits set by a single door.

I II

Creation of Adam. Adam, Eve, and children.

Creation of Eve. The two sacrifices.

Temptation. Death of Abel.

Expulsion from Eden. Curse of Cain.

III VII

Noah leaving Ark. Moses on Sinai.

Noah’s sacrifice.

Noah’s drunkenness.

IV VIII

Abraham and the Angels. Joshua marching round Jericho.

The sacrifice of Isaac. The Fall of Jericho.

V IX

Isaac. David and Goliath.

Esau hunting. Defeat of Philistines.

The blessing of Jacob.

VI X

Sale of Joseph. Queen of Sheba at Solomon’s Court.

Pharaoh’s dream.

Joseph’s brethren in Egypt.

Yet Ghiberti’s ingenuity was sufficient not only to make the designs

but to overcome the immense technical difficulties incidental to

carrying them out in bronze. Truth to tell, the commission should

never have been given to a sculptor. In addition to the difficulties

connected with his own art, Ghiberti was faced with the necessity of

adding architectural and landscape backgrounds to his reliefs. He

strove to solve problems of perspective which even the painters of

his day had not mastered. Indeed, for the designer of the Baptistery

gates, sculptural relief was rather a branch of the graphic arts

than a part of the plastic arts, governed by the rules and subject

to the limitations of sculpture. Ghiberti’s life’s work landed his

art in a blind alley. For further progress it was necessary that

sculpture should be once more informed with its own definite spirit.

Ghiberti, or rather his patrons, had failed to realize that sculpture

as a descriptive medium has its limitations. It cannot hope to rival

painting in the multiplicity of subjects which it can depict with

success. It must, therefore, confine itself to subjects which it can

express clearly and vigorously.

DONATELLO AND THE CHURCH OF OR SAN MICHELE

What was denied to Ghiberti was given to his assistant Donatello—the

foremost sculptor of the transitional period which preceded Michael

Angelo. By his example Donatello re-defined the proper limits and

the fittest objects of the art of sculpture. His life’s work was one

continued reiteration of the Hellenic lesson that sculpture is the

concrete expression of man’s joyful interest in the human form. To the

end, his figures never possessed the ideal grace with which Ghiberti

endowed a hundred forms in the Baptistery panels. But Donatello had

the essential quality of a true sculptor within him. He put aside all

desire to rival the painter. He willed to express himself by form and

form only. This fact alone invests his work with an importance and

interest in the history of pure sculpture which the more graceful

productions of Ghiberti cannot claim.

Donato di Betto Bardi, to give Donatello his correct title, was the

son of a wool-comber. He had entered Ghiberti’s studio as an assistant

in 1405, at the age of nineteen. His experience with Ghiberti gave him

the technical skill to carry out an ambition that dated from boyhood.

Before Donatello was thirty, the chances of the age gave him a series

of unique opportunities of making his dreams realities.

As we have seen, a new class of patrons had arisen in Italy with

fresh ambitions and ideals. In Florence, for instance, the mercantile

class had gradually ousted the German nobles who had ruled in fief of

the Emperor. By 1283 the wealthier guilds had established a form of

government delegating all power to members of their own class. Under

this Florence became more and more powerful. By 1406 Pisa was captured,

and the last stronghold of the feudal party in Tuscany had fallen.

During the last years of the fourteenth century Florence had prospered

greatly. Trade developed. The manufacture of silk and wool brought a

large measure of material prosperity. The pride of the burghers in

their city increased correspondingly. The erection of the Baptistery

gates must be regarded as only a single instance of a general tendency.

All over Italy the case was the same. The appreciation of sculpture was

no longer confined to a few score merchants and princes, as had been

the case at Pisa. It had spread from the cloister and castle to the

market square and the Guildhall.

The result of similar circumstances in the earlier history of sculpture

will be remembered. In fifth-century Greece a keen appreciation of

sculpture had been developed among a burgher population. Just as

the proceeds of the commissions for athletic sculptures provided

livelihoods for the budding artists of Greece, so the orders of the

Florentine burghers offered at least a competence to a struggling

Italian sculptor with a belief in the possibilities of his particular

art. What the commission for the Baptistery gates did for Ghiberti,

similar commissions did for Jacopo della Quercia, Donatello and the

rest.

In dwelling upon the importance of such material considerations as

these, we are in no way depreciating the zeal of either the Italian

or the Hellenic sculptor, by his old patrons, the Guild of Merchants.

It was followed by a long series of similar commissions. The Guild of

Moneychangers realizing the credit which attached to its rival, desired

Ghiberti to furnish a companion figure, “Saint Matthew,” which was

in its place by 1422. Finally, the Guild of Wool Merchants employed

Ghiberti to produce a “St. Stephen” for a third niche.

Long before this, other Florentine Guilds had joined in the

public-spirited competition. Moreover, other sculptors were discovered.

In 1416 Donatello had been commissioned by the Guild of Armourers

to model a figure for Or San Michele. The result was the well-known

“Saint George.” It was followed by the statue of “Saint Mark,” of which

Michael Angelo said “it would have been impossible to reject the Gospel

from so straightforward a witness.” The “Saint Mark” is a typical work

of Donatello’s first period (1405 to 1425). The whole conception of the

Apostle is based upon a foundation of stern realism. Gothic strength

rather than Attic grace is aimed at. Comparing it with such a work as

Ghiberti’s “Saint Matthew,” we see at once that an immense step forward

has been taken. The opportunity is nothing to Ghiberti. His deep

knowledge of perspective is valueless, of course. His ingenuity in the

elaboration of detail proves a drawback rather than an advantage. He

produces a graceful lay figure. So with the “Saint George.” Donatello

revels in the chance of sculpturing a life-sized figure. He makes the

masses and lines of the body tell. The ideal aimed at is the ideal of

the Greek sculptor, who felt that his true medium of expression was

the human form. Donatello has found the essentials common to all great

sculpture—the basis upon which the greatness of Greek art depends.

He has rediscovered the _a b c_ of the language of marble and bronze

which every sculptor must realize, whatever differences of thought and

emotion he seeks to express.

[Illustration: DONATELLO SAINT GEORGE From Or San Michele, Florence]

THE INFLUENCE OF THE PLATONISTS

This brings us to the great problem of fifteenth-century Italian

sculpture—its relationship to the art of Greece or Rome. Donatello is

frequently cited as the pioneer of the reviving interest in classical

sculpture. Following Vasari, the text-books tell of his visit to Rome

with Brunelleschi in 1403. They dwell upon the statement that Donatello

spent much time in arranging the collection of ancient sculpture in

the Medici gardens. Recent investigation, however, shows conclusively

that Donatello’s first visit to Rome was made in 1433. In any case, an

honest critic must admit that little evidence of direct Greek and Roman

influence can be observed in his works. Comparing the “Saint Mark”

with such a Hellenic statue as the “Phocion” in the Vatican or the

“Sophocles” in the Lateran, what strikes us most strongly is the entire

difference in the spirit animating the later work.

And this is equally true of the “Saint George” of Or San Michele, or,

to use a clearer example, the nude bronze “David,” now in the Bargello

at Florence. Technically, Donatello’s “David” can be compared with any

nude male figure, let us say the beautiful bronze “Narcissus” found at

Pompeii, and now in the Naples Museum. It is sculptured “in the round.”

It is complete in itself. It proves that at last the Italian sculptor

is on the high road for complete success. But in sentiment it is

utterly un-Hellenic. It possesses none of those external resemblances

to Greek statuary which we detect in the sculpture of Canova or

Thorvaldsen, for instance.

Truth to tell, the effort to trace evidences of a direct

traffic between one great art and another is based upon a total

misapprehension. No great artist can “lift” any considerable idea

from a work produced in an entirely different mental and emotional

atmosphere. What really happened was that a wave of enthusiasm for

Hellenic art and literature broke over Italy. The sculptors shared

in the humanizing effects of the realization of the true greatness

of Greek culture. One cannot point to the treatment of a fold of

drapery here, or to the pose of a torso there, and refer it to a Greek

original. But in the Italian sculpture of the fifteenth century we can

trace a breaking away from ideals which had held sway for centuries.

Inspired by the revelation of what liberty of thought and action had

done for the Greek, the Italian no longer prostrated himself before the

idols of Catholic dogma and scholasticism. Before Donatello’s death the

appreciation of classic culture was no longer confined to a few wealthy

dilettanti, as had been the case at Pisa a century earlier. Admiration

for the productions of the Attic philosophers and artists threatened to

become a religious force capable of engulfing Christianity.

The consequences were tremendous. Consider, for instance, the immense

difference between the educational methods and ideals. Compare those

which operated during the later years of Donatello’s life with those

of the earlier age, when education was entirely in the hands of the

Roman Church. Take a typical Italian schoolmaster, such as Vittorino

of Feltre. Picture his typical Renaissance school, “The House of Joy,”

on the shores of the Mantuan Lake. The spot was hallowed by the memory

that it had been the birthplace of Virgil. Nature had lavished upon it

avenues of planes and acacias. But dominating all was the grand aim

of Vittorino, “I want to teach my pupils how to think, not to split

hairs.”

[Illustration: DONATELLO DAVID Bargello, Florence]

Born at Feltre, Vittorino went as a youth to Padua, one of the leading

humanistic centres at the end of the fourteenth century. After a

period as Professor of Rhetoric, the ruling Gonzaga invited Vittorino

to Mantua to educate his children. This was in 1425, and Vittorino

remained there until his death in 1446. His first step was to abolish

the luxury which had environed the young Gonzagas. He made “The House

of Joy” a seat of plain living and regular study. Youths from other

courts flocked to Mantua. At his own expense, Vittorino maintained a

number of poor scholars, who lived near the villa and shared in all

the privileges of the school. Music and such elementary sciences as

geometry and astronomy were taught, in true Hellenic fashion. The

Latin classics were studied without the fantastic pedantries of the

ecclesiastical era. The grand truth was accepted that every man was

possessed of a free but responsible personality. Each one saw that his

task in this world was to mould his individuality, and by the exercise

of his own free will to prove how far he was above the brutes. The one

end of education was to make the boy or girl, not a specialist, but

a perfectly developed man or woman. The expert had no place in Italy

in those days. Throughout the Renaissance all education aimed at the

production of all-round men and women, physically, emotionally, and

intellectually sound.

It needs little imagination to see the effect of this general

acceptance of Greek ideals of life and conduct upon sculpture. It

rendered possible the production of hundreds of statues which would

have been meaningless a century earlier. Beyond this we may not go.

Every vital art must be largely indebted to the Greek tradition, and

Renaissance sculpture was no exception. But, in the end, a great style

cannot be transferred. A second-hand style, like a second-hand coat, is

apt to be an ill-fit. Taking a few typical fifteenth-century sculptures

we do not say “how Greek they are.” On the contrary, it is at once

apparent that the difference underlying Italian and Greek sculpture is

far more noticeable than any external resemblance.

When once we realize the cause, it is easy to see that it could not be

otherwise. In Italy, the relation of the individual to society differed

entirely from that in any Greek state. Whereas the individuality of

the Greek was constantly sacrificed to the interests of his state,

in Italy everything tended to the free emergence of individual

personalities. The Italian was in touch with no overpowering political

unity. Nothing hampered the attainment of personal ambition or the

satisfaction of personal passions. What he desired was not civic or

national success, but the foundation of a new age of art and culture

in which every type of individuality would have its place. The Italian

longed for individual fame, for individual power. This could not but

entail the loss of that grand unity of aim which was the great glory of

Athenian art. Instead, it led to the growth of a wonderful diversity

of character and an extraordinary variety of interests. Whereas the

Greek had been content to portray a few supreme types, the artist of

the Italian Renaissance wished to show humanity in every aspect. He

was not even content with the limits set by the bounds of grace and

beauty. The expression of spiritual tension and mental energy could not

be indicated without a departure from that harmony of the planes which

the Hellenic sculptor regarded as essential. The Italian boldly adopted

other means. He depicted with cruel emphasis the play of muscles and

tendons which accompanies physical and mental tension. His mission was

to present strongly individualized character. To him every human energy

was fit for sculptural treatment.

[Illustration: JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA

TOMB OF ILARIA DEL CARETTO Lucca Cathedral]

Reviewing our argument we find that by the last quarter of the

fifteenth century the art of sculpture was in this position. A long

series of remunerative public and private commissions had educated

bands of sculptors of real talent in several Italian centres but

particularly in Florence. Their work was held in such public esteem

that they no longer regarded themselves as mere artizans. Moreover,

while the sculptor had been making himself more and more capable of

expressing the thoughts and emotions of his countrymen, they, for

their part, were deepening and widening their experience. Not only

had they come to realize the manifold beauties of nature, but they

were learning man’s intimate relation with it. At the same time the

revelation of what the Greeks had done and what Hellenic culture

really meant was leading to an entirely new regard for mankind and a

desire to cultivate the whole, as opposed to a mere fragment, of the

human capital. In other words, while the sculptor was increasing his

power of interpretation, thoughts of the highest value and emotions of

real depth were being aroused. Comparing the sculpture of Ghiberti,

Donatello, Quercia, della Robbia and the rest, with that of the

Pisani a century earlier, it is seen that the essential difference

depends upon the general adoption of a new philosophical standpoint.

Previously, both the artist and his public viewed man from the heavens

and found him a drowning mite in an ocean of divinity. Now both looked

man in the face and recognized a brother, set for a time in the world

to witness to the abiding beauty of the Eternal Reality. In the

light of this conception, what had been negligible became of prime

importance. The shameful became entirely satisfying.

The truth of this proposition is seen at once if we look at a few

typical fifteenth-century works. Take, as the first instance, the

beautiful tomb of “Ilaria del Carretto,” by Jacopo della Quercia (born

1374). It was erected about 1406. The young wife of Paolo Guinigi lies

in simple garb upon the bier—the dog at her feet an emblem of womanly

faithfulness. Comparing the work with, let us say, the Pisan Pulpit

by Niccola Pisano, we are struck by the beautiful simplicity of the

design. The over-crowded detail has vanished. Instead we have a scheme

of monumental breadth. The difference in spirit is even greater. The

nude children, with their wreaths of flowers, which decorate the bier,

witness to the transition from the Gothic gloom to the Renaissance joy

in the beauties of the natural world.

[Illustration: LUCA DELLA ROBBIA

THE VISITATION Pistoja]

Turning to the works of an entirely different type, we note the same

tendency in the delightfully human bas-reliefs of the della Robbias. No

review of the art of sculpture would be complete without a reference to

Luca della Robbia’s marble Singing Gallery. “The Cantoria” was begun

in 1431 and was placed in the Cathedral at Florence in 1438. The taste

of the seventeenth century, however, demanded the substitution of

large balconies of carved and painted wood, and this singing gallery,

together with that of Donatello, was taken down. Luca’s carved panels

finally found their way to the Museo di Santa Maria del Fiore. Looking

at the panels, we first of all note the immense advance in technical

skill which enabled Luca della Robbia to represent the very poetry of

rhythmic motion in stone. We _note_ this. But we are _moved_ by the

human beauty of the whole conception. It is in a very real sense a

religious work. The sculptor has taken as his theme the one hundredth

and fiftieth psalm:

“Praise ye the Lord ...

Praise him upon the loud cymbals; praise him upon

the high-sounding cymbals.”

But the religion of Luca is essentially human.

The figures from the “Singing Gallery” are so well known that we have

preferred to illustrate the art of Luca della Robbia by the beautiful

“Visitation” at Pistoja, particularly as it is a terra-cotta and,

therefore, recalls the medium in which the artist made his most

constant appeal to his countrymen. The “Visitation” is a comparatively

early work and shows that from the beginning Luca’s genius had little

in common with that of Donatello. He gives us no hint of the restless

search for knowledge which was the first consequence of the Italian’s

realization of the powers of humanity. Luca stands to Donatello, the

apostle of realism, as an Umbrian painter like Perugino stands to

Signorelli. But his quiet self-restraint witnesses to a human virtue at

least as noble—a trusting belief in the ultimate reign of peace and

love.

The last fifteenth-century sculptor to whom reference must be made is

Andrea del Verocchio (1435-1488). His “Doubting Thomas” still stands

in the niche of Or San Michele, where it attracted all Florence 400

years ago. It is a fine example of what a first-rate technique apart

from the fire of genius can produce. The lines of the drapery perhaps,

incline to angularity; the figures are somewhat rigid, but the group

is of real beauty and is conceived by a true sculptor. Whatever his

shortcomings, the artist realizes sculpture to be the medium of man’s

joy in the beauty of the human form. The fame of Verocchio might well

rest upon the “Doubting Thomas.” The name of the Florentine sculptor

is, however, associated with another work—the equestrian statue of the

Venetian commander, Bartolomeo Colleoni at Venice. That, at any rate,

is a work of the very highest order. It was unfinished at Verocchio’s

death, and was completed by the Venetian, Leopardi. No one can fairly

judge what measure of the success of the statue is due to Verocchio’s

earnest technique and how much to Leopardi’s fervid genius. In any case

the Colleoni monument fitly closes this review of Italian sculpture

during the fifteenth century. No more certain evidence of the capacity

of the pre-Angelesque sculptors could be adduced. To this day, the

nobility of the pose of horse and rider and the grandly martial spirit

pervading the work, mark it as the greatest equestrian statue in the

world.

Verocchio was born in 1435. He died when Michael Angelo was still a

boy. The period of his life must, therefore, contain the answer to the

final problem. Why was the acme of Italian sculpture reached at the end

of the fifteenth century? It can be no mere chance that Michael Angelo

produced his finest sculptures between 1495 and 1530. Why could it not

have been fifty years earlier? Some factor was clearly present at the

later date which had not been present when Verocchio was a boy. If it

had been there, it had not acquired its subsequent force. Reverting

for the last time to the Hellenic analogy we find the clue. Neither

the material factors—such as the commissions for public works and

memorial monuments—nor such a psychological factor as the broadened

sphere of human activity exhaust the circumstances which finally gave

Italy its Phidias and its Scopas. The last thing required was a series

of dominating personalities able to focus the emotion and intellectual

forces generated by the age. Florence, in fact, needed a Pericles.

[Illustration: VEROCCHIO “THE DOUBTING THOMAS” Or San Michele,

Florence]

These final co-ordinating factors were not denied. As in Greece, the

personalities were in the first place politicians. The outstanding

feature in the history of Italy during the fifteenth century is the

number of political, military and commercial figures of real vigour

and ability who rose to power. In one state after another they assumed

complete control of affairs. We have only to name the Visconti and the

Sforzas at Milan, the Gonzagas at Mantua, the Bentivoglio and Este

families at Bologna and Ferrara, and the Montefeltro family at Urbino,

to bring home their influence upon art. Most potent of all were,

of course, the Medici, who centralized the artistic enthusiasms of

Florence.

As had been the case in Athens, the domination of the Medici family

commenced with the harnessing of the forces of Florentine democracy.

The power of the Medici began when Giovanni de Medici succeeded in

making the lesser guilds the rulers of Florence at the end of the

fourteenth century. Giovanni had made an immense fortune by trade and

had established banks all over the peninsula which he readily turned to

advantage in furthering his political aims. Cosimo, his son, succeeded

to Giovanni’s popularity with the lower classes, and by carefully

concealing the mailed fist in the velvet glove reduced Florence to

the position of Athens when Cimon and Pericles ruled as the nominal

representatives of the people.

The climax was reached when Lorenzo the Magnificent succeeded Cosimo

in 1469. He so altered the constitution of Florence that it became

a republic only in name. A few years later he seized control of the

public purse and hypnotized the political judgment of his subjects.

Lorenzo was the Pericles of the Italian Renaissance. The energies

and interest of the Florentine burghers were focused around his

personality, and he it was that directed their efforts. As had been

the case with Pericles, the great glory of Lorenzo was the unfailing

tact which never interfered with the perfect freedom of action of the

varied natures with which he surrounded himself—the skill with which

he persuaded them that their intellectual interests were his own. His

Court was frequented by a brilliant band of scholars, and any youth of

ability was assured of patronage.

What was even more important, the young painters or sculptors were

brought into daily contact with the men and women who were moulding

public opinion and shaping history. Artists who had lived for a few

years in the Court of “the Magnificent” were far more than craftsmen.

They were cultivated men of the world, abreast of all the practical

knowledge of their time. It was among men like these that the sculptor

was found, able to give vital expression to even the manifold energies

of the Italian Renaissance.

[Illustration: VEROCCHIO AND LEOPARDI

THE COLLEONI MONUMENT Venice]

CHAPTER X

MICHAEL ANGELO AND THE FLOOD TIDE OF RENAISSANCE SCULPTURE

1490-1530 A.D.

The year 1475 A.D. has been reached. We have seen the conclusion of the

struggle of the sculptors to make marble and bronze bear once more the

impress of every imagination of the human heart. Nothing now remains

save to estimate the fruits of the victory—a task which entails the

appreciation of one man, Michael Angelo.

There is no exaggeration in focussing our attention on one

artist. The apotheosis of Italian sculpture connects itself as

inevitably with Michael Angelo as the topmost peak of Elizabethan

drama—Shakespeare—connects itself with the dramatic hills and

hillocks which led up to it. The first fifty years of Angelo’s life

were to Renaissance sculpture what the age of Phidias and Polyclitus

had been to Greek art. He and he alone found means to express in

marble the deepest thoughts upon nature and humanity which the Italian

Renaissance had aroused.

As had been the case with the Greek sculptors before Salamis, the

pre-Angelesque artists had never quite made their message articulate.

Indeed, the whole fifteenth century was a period of probation and

experiment. In the sister art of painting, the draftsmen and colourists

were realizing the possibilities of line and paint. The consequences

of their efforts were Raphael, Leonardo, Titian and Correggio. What

Angelico, Mantegna, Botticelli and Bellini were to the great painters,

Ghiberti, della Robbia, Donatello, Pollaiuolo and Verocchio were to

Michael Angelo.

But for the fact that Donatello and Ghiberti had raised the plastic

arts for the time far above the graphic, it might well have been that

sculpture would have been only a minor art to Michael Angelo. As

things were in his boyhood, though painting was every year reducing

the lead of the sister art, sculpture had still a far greater body of

achievement to its credit. From the first it was clear that sculpture

was the art by which his nature most naturally expressed itself. In

after life he was wont jestingly to remind his friends of his earliest

years among the mill-stone quarries of Settignano. He had been given to

the wife of a stonecutter to be nursed, and, as he put it, “with the

milk of my foster-mother I sucked in the chisels and mallets wherewith

I now make my figures.”

We do not propose to attempt the narration of even the main events of

Angelo’s life. We can put aside all that is merely personal. Our object

is rather to show how he came into contact with the main political and

social factors of his age, and how these, in turn, reacted upon his

art. Three circumstances single themselves out as all-important—the

sculptor’s connection with the Medici family in his early youth, with

the city of Florence in his early manhood, and with the Papacy in the

prime of life.

[Illustration: MICHAEL ANGELO

DAVID Academy of Fine Arts, Florence]

These three powers practically brought into being all that is greatest

in Italian art. From our sculptor’s association with them we can

understand the influences which were spurring Angelo’s few compeers and

his many inferiors to their greatest efforts.

THE FLORENTINE PERIOD

Like many another scholar and artist, Michael Angelo entered the

household of Lorenzo de Medici, the merchant-despot of Florence, as

a boy. Until his patron’s death he fared like a scion of the family.

While it would have been impossible for an impressionable youth to

grow up without imbibing something of the spirit of the place, Angelo

never thoroughly absorbed the influence of the Medicean court. The

time was too short. Before he was twenty it was a thing of the past.

But for some years the memory of these joy-days persisted, and it was

under their inspiration that the earliest of Angelo’s great works were

produced. Of these, the “David,” begun in 1501 and finished in 1503,

stands out pre-eminently as embodying the humanist creed.

But the statue of the great loose-limbed youth has an even more vital

interest. Nothing could more happily illustrate the relation a great

Renaissance artist bore to his countrymen than the circumstances

attending the carving of the “David.” It was commissioned by the

State of Florence. The first contract signed by the sculptor and the

representative of the town sets forth that “the worthy master, Michael

Angelo, son of Lodovico Buonarroti, Citizen of Florence, has been

chosen to fashion, complete, and perfectly finish the male statue,

already rough-hewn and called ‘The Giant,’ 13 feet 6 inches high, now

existing in the workshop of the Cathedral, badly blocked out aforetime

by Master Agostino di Duccio of Florence.” In other words, Angelo’s

“David”—one of the masterpieces of the world—was cut from a great

block of marble that had been so maltreated by an earlier worker that

no artist of rank could be found to risk his reputation in finishing

it. This alone would be sufficient proof of the immense technical skill

of this youth of twenty-six. In addition, Michael Angelo did not even

model a full-sized clay figure. He worked with no guidance except a few

drawings and wax models some eighteen inches high. His remuneration for

this was fixed at £2 6_s._ a month—workmen, scaffolding, &c., being

supplied. “When the said statue is finished,” continues the contract,

“the consuls and operai shall estimate whether he deserve a larger

recompense, and this shall be left to their consciences.”

History does not record whether the art committee of the Florentine

County Council eventually did add to the rather meagre remuneration

mentioned in the contract. We have ample evidence, however, that the

representatives of the citizens did not shirk their critical duties.

Vasari tells of a certain Gonfaloniere, who essayed to justify the

opinion that the nose of the David was too big. Angelo listened for

a while, and then ascended the scaffolding under which his critic

was standing. Taking a chisel in the one hand and a few pinches of

marble-dust in the other, the sculptor began to tap lightly around the

doubtful spot. From time to time he let fall a little of the dust, but

of course did not alter the nose. “Look at it now,” cried Angelo to

the Gonfaloniere below. “You have given it life,” replied his victim,

rubbing the dust out of his eyes.

[Illustration: MICHAEL ANGELO

MONUMENT OF LORENZO Medici Chapel, Florence]

[Illustration: MICHAEL ANGELO

“THE PIETA” St. Peter’s, Rome]

On January 25, 1503, a solemn conclave of artists resident in Florence

met in the Opera del Duomo to decide where the great figure should be

placed. Piero di Cosimo—readers of Romola will remember him—Cosimo

Rosselli, Botticelli, then a man of sixty-six, Filippino Lippi, and Da

Vinci were among those present. Francesco Monciatto, a wood-carver,

began by advancing the proposition that the statue should be put up

before the Duomo, the site proposed for the original work in fact.

Cosimo Rosselli and Botticelli supported the proposal. Giuliano di San

Gallo then suggested the Loggia dei Lanzi as an alternative on the

ground that the marble had been softened by exposure and might not

last. The “Second Herald” objected to this, fearing that ceremonies in

the Loggia would be interfered with, and his remarks called Leonardi

da Vinci to his feet. Finally Piero di Cosimo, a man of the soundest

common sense in spite of his reputation for freakishness, with the aid

of Salvestro, a jeweller, and Filippino Lippi, carried the proposal

that the choice should be left to the sculptor himself on the ground

that “he would know better how it should be.” Angelo’s decision was for

the steps at the entrance of the Palazzo Vecchio. The curious may see

it in position in the portrait of Francesco Ferruccio, the Florentine

general, in which Cosimo used the square in front of the Palace as a

background. The work is numbered 895 in the National Gallery collection.

But let us return for a moment to the Court of Lorenzo de Medici and

its galaxy of scholars and artists. The creed of the Court of the

Magnificent is summed up for ever in the great right hand of the

“David.” The sculptor purposely emphasized its size. Michael Angelo

desired to lay stress upon the part which the boy took in the struggle

rather than to portray him as a mere instrument. To have been at one

with the spirit of the biblical narrative, the weakness of the human

agent would have been emphasized—as it was, indeed, in the “David”

of Donatello. But the right hand of Angelo’s “David” stands for a new

view—the Greek view—of the part mankind must play in the world. Human

endeavour, rather than divine interference, is now to perfect man. By

his own effort, by the exercise of his own free will, man is to work

out his end.

The influence of this new conception upon the art of Michael Angelo is

equally noticeable in the “Pieta,” a rather earlier sculpture, and the

first work of our artist’s maturity.

The Virgin Mother is seated upon the stone on which the cross had been

erected. The dead Christ lies before her. The scene corresponds with

nothing in the biblical account. It illustrates no single verse. But

it does more. It breathes the very spirit of the Christian narrative,

for it interprets its inner meaning in its most vital and useful sense.

We can see at once that Angelo would have been false to his art had he

been more faithful to the current conception of Christian truth. He was

no preacher. He was not expounding a faith. What he took from the Bible

story was the divine grief of a mother for an all-perfect son. His task

was to translate that without the loss of one iota of physical or moral

beauty. Condivi tells us that there were many who complained that the

mother was too young when compared with her son, and that he himself

laid the matter before Michael Angelo for explanation. The sculptor’s

answer is an example of what a perfect humanist—and that is very near

to saying a perfect man—would have said. It is so characteristic of

the sculptor that no apology for quoting it at length is necessary.

“One day,” says Condivi, “I was talking to Michael Angelo of this

objection.”

[Illustration: MICHAEL ANGELO MOSES (TOMB OF JULIUS II.)]

“Do you not know,” he said, “that chaste women retain their fresh looks

much longer than those who are not chaste? How much more, therefore,

a virgin in whom not even the least unchaste desire ever arose? And I

tell you, moreover, that such freshness and flower of youth besides

being maintained in her by natural causes, it may possibly be that it

was ordained by the Divine Power to prove to the world the virginity

and perpetual purity of the Mother. It was not necessary in the Son;

but rather the contrary; wishing to show that the Son of God took upon

himself a true human body, subject to all the ills of man, excepting

only sin; he did not allow the divine in him to hold back the human,

but let it run its course and obey its laws, as was proved in his

appointed time. Do not wonder then, that I have for all these reasons,

made the most Holy Virgin, Mother of God, a great deal younger in

comparison with her Son than she is usually represented. To the Son I

have allotted his full age.”

The “Pieta” and the “David” are the typical works of Angelo’s first

period—that in which the influences of humanism were paramount. But

it is in the sculptures of his second period that we can detect the

workings of the deep philosophical poetry which inspired the most

characteristic of his works—the tomb of Julius II. and the monuments

in the Medici chapel at Florence.

Neither was ever finished. The Medici monuments are the more complete,

for the majesty of the sculptor’s first conception for the tomb of

Julius II. can now be only guessed from a few rough sketches, half a

dozen measurements and the well-known “Moses.” Yet it occupies a unique

place in the history of Italian art as the foremost work by an Italian

sculptor which arose directly out of the ambition of the Church to make

the Pope’s temporal authority equal his spiritual.

The principle of utilizing the painter, the sculptor, and the architect

for this purpose had been enunciated fifty years earlier. Recognizing

that the earlier aim, which had sought to enforce a spiritual despotism

by making the belief in a God-inspired pontiff universal, had failed,

Nicholas V. determined to try the effect of making the Pope into a

king. His court was to be the centre of European culture. With the aid

of the vast wealth poured into the papal coffers during the Jubilee of

1450, Nicholas began by making the Vatican quarter of Rome a veritable

stronghold for the sovereign pontiff. His full ambition was disclosed

when his will was read to the princes of the church assembled round his

deathbed. In this Nicholas V. showed that the Popes could be secured

from internal revolution and external force by one thing only. That was

by making the seat of the papacy so splendid in the eyes of Christendom

that it would possess the sanctity that had attached to Imperial Rome

itself. It was this great aim that Michael Angelo spent the best

years of his life in forwarding. The personal ambition of each Pope

interfered with the free progress of the great ideal, but it furnished

a strong motive for many years, and actuated both of Angelo’s great

patrons, Julius II. and Leo X.

After finally settling in Rome Michael Angelo’s first task was the

sculptured mausoleum of Julius II. Nicholas himself had started to

rebuild the old basilica of St. Peter, in which Julius designed to set

up his great tomb. Angelo suggested a great marble monument symbolical

of the victory of human energy over death. Upon the lower tiers of a

great pyramid the sculptor showed the arts and sciences which the Pope

had loved to patronize. Above were the prophets and graces, of which

the great statue of “Moses” was one. The apex of the pyramid was a

group in which the earth and the heavens upheld the open tomb where

the dead pope awaited the Resurrection hour. In all forty figures. The

vastness of the conception can best be realized from the fact that

the sculptor spent eight months among the marble mines at Carrara

quarrying the necessary stone. The space covered by the design was

about twenty-five feet by forty. It was soon found that the basilica

was not large enough to contain the monument. “What would be the cost

of rebuilding?” asked Julius. “100,000 scudi,” said the sculptor. “Let

it be 200,000.” And Michael Angelo set to work.

This great dream was never realized. The sculptor worked upon it for

some years and then Julius was persuaded to entrust him with a task at

least as great—that of decorating the vault of the Sistine Chapel in

the Vatican.

THE MEDICI TOMBS

For almost twenty years Michael Angelo produced no great sculpture.

Then came what are perhaps the greatest works of Renaissance sculpture,

the monuments in the Medici Chapel at Florence. They were executed at

the command of Clement VII., the second Medicean pope. His purpose was

to build an abiding testimony to the greatness of his house, which had

now become supreme in Italy by making itself as powerful in Rome as it

had been in Florence.

Evicted from Florence, the Medici had turned to Rome. Leo X., a son

of the Magnificent, had succeeded Julius. He in turn was followed

by Clement VII. To Clement came the idea of building a sacristy in

San Lorenzo in honour of the Medici family. His intention was that

monuments of Cosimo, Lorenzo, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, Lorenzo,

Duke of Urbino, Leo X. and himself should be placed in the sacristy.

Only two—those to the Dukes of Nemours and Urbino—were finished.

A grim commentary upon the Medicean record, this. The two groups

actually completed are identified, not with the memory of Lorenzo the

Magnificent and Leo X., but with two illegitimate scions of the house.

The whole building was designed by Michael Angelo himself and was

panelled to receive the sculptures, every architectural feature being

planned to enhance the emotional effect of the great marble groups. In

these, Michael Angelo cast aside the pretty compliments upon which he

had exercised his fancy when planning the vast tomb of Julius II.—the

sorrowing arts and sciences, for instance. His aim was to create a

perfectly beautiful resting-place for the mighty dead. This, and

nothing more.

Let us endeavour to follow the train of Michael Angelo’s imagination

as it gradually found the definite forms which were to realize its

deepest beliefs: “A perfectly beautiful resting-place for the mighty

dead.” Could anything be more fraught with all the mingled emotions

and thoughts which human philosophy has tried in vain to unravel? Yet

Michael Angelo was never surer of anything than that sculptured marble

was capable of expressing it all. Even the feelings aroused by this

mystery of mysteries—death—were not beyond the cold stone and hot

chisel of the sculptor. Allied to this faith—that there was no thought

too profound for marble to express—was his favourite fancy that the

form of his finished work dwelt in the rough block. His chisel did but

release it from its marble tomb. He was not the author, only the agent

through whom his work saw the light. As he himself wrote in one of the

sonnets:

“The best of artists hath no thought to show

Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell

Doth not include; to break the marble spell

Is all the hand that serves the brain can do.”

[Illustration: MICHAEL ANGELO

THE DUKE LORENZO The Medici Chapel, Florence]

Moreover, he held that this could be done without the use of symbolism.

The simplest natural objects, transfigured by the artist-poet, would

carry the profoundest truth.

Let us see how Michael Angelo proved his belief in the all-sufficiency

of the art of sculpture in this respect. Choose two typical figures

from the groups we are considering.

“Marble griefs,

Hewn from a Titan’s heart,”

some one has called them. Say those of “Dawn” and “Night.” Both are

female nudes, and illustrate a vital feature in Michael Angelo’s

technique—his preference for the male over the female form. The Greek

sculptors before Praxiteles had the same preference. The male form

made a more vital appeal to them than the female. With its infinitely

greater variety of surface and its greater diversity of posture, it

expressed more directly the vast complexity of human energies which

their age had seen spring into being. Two thousand years later the

times gave rise to thoughts no less profound and to emotions of no less

intensity. And Michael Angelo found that they were too heavy a burden

for a woman’s form to bear. That the full sentiment aroused by his

conception of “Night” may find expression, the sculptor has lengthened

the trunk and the limbs. He has twisted the torso upon the hips. He has

added, as it were, a masculine character to the feminine form. He has

treated the female nude in the male key. This is a direct reversion of

the Praxitelean method by which profoundly beautiful sensuous effects

were obtained through treating the male figure in the female key—the

“Hermaphroditus,” for instance.

And yet it cannot be denied that the Praxitelean method is what we

should have expected Angelo to follow. If the figure of “Dawn” had

conveyed nothing save the virgin fairness of form which Giorgione’s

“Venus” at Dresden embodies, it would have been more in accord with the

popular taste of the first quarter of the sixteenth century. As the

political and social situation in Italy grew more desperate (and it was

never more desperate than during the years in which the monuments in

the Medici chapel were being carved) painting and sculpture had become

more joyous. The themes which the artists treated became less and less

religious and more and more pagan. This has always been the case. In

times of the greatest stress, when the enemy is beating at the very

gates, men cannot sustain the soul-tearing emotions which they welcome

in their art during times of prosperity. The defeat of the Athenians

at Ægospotami did not bring to birth a greater Æschylus who should

give shape to the fearful emotions which the men of the earlier age

had been spared. No! tragedy vanished. Comedy arose. So it was with

sculpture. Men turned from the griefs of a Niobe and found consolation

in the sheer sensuous beauty of Praxiteles’ “Aphrodite.” They preferred

the manly charms of Hermes to the awful sublimity embodied in the

brow of Phidias’ Zeus. And so in our period, when the horrors which

had overtaken the Greek cities were threatening their heirs in Italy,

the same thing took place. We find that the typical work is not the

brooding figure of “Lorenzo of Urbino” or the “Night,” which Michael

Angelo sculptured beneath the figure of Giuliano, but the melodious

dreams that floated from the brush of a Correggio. At this very time

Allegri was at work upon the decoration of the great chamber of the

Abbess of the Convent of St. Paul, Parma. He chose to depict no titanic

forms charged with emotion, but covered his ceiling with a vast trellis

of vine-leaves and fruit, and in the oval apertures which these formed

he placed his groups of genii toying with the implements of the chase.

Correggio’s was _the_ manner of his time. His end was sensuous delight

and through it, not the dramatic, but the lyrical note, continually

sounds.

[Illustration: MICHAEL ANGELO NIGHT]

[Illustration: DAWN From The Medici Chapel, Florence]

But Michael Angelo was too true a man to dole out lies which should

pander to a joyous carelessness. It was his task to echo, not one

emotion, but all the emotions which had stirred the Italy of his age.

As a mere boy he had seen the men and women who flocked to the Duomo at

Florence to listen to the denunciations of Savonarola. He had seen them

pass from the Church speechless—“more dead than alive”—because of the

great fear which was upon them. Before he was twenty, he had witnessed

the coming of the “Scourge,” which the fate had foretold. Then he had

passed to “the Eternal City,” the home of the Princes of the Church,

the centre of Christendom, only to find that, to borrow Symonds’s

phrase, “the very popes rose from the beds of harlots to unlock or

bolt the gates of heaven and purgatory.” It has been said that Michael

Angelo worked upon the Medici tombs during the siege of Florence in

1528. He may have been carving these marbles when the artillery of a

Medicean army was actually thundering against the Florence that Lorenzo

had made immortal. As his thoughts were thrown back by his subject

upon his boyhood days, memories of Savonarola—the Jeremiah of the

Renaissance—must have come back in a flood. Well may the sculpture in

the sacristy of San Lorenzo have been termed

“Marble griefs,

Hewn from a Titan’s heart.”

We shall not attempt to translate Angelo’s message into words, but a

happy chance has preserved a story which enables us to realize what

the sculptor intended to convey by the figure of the sleeping woman we

call “Night.” We might have guessed that the firm hips, contrasting

as they do with the long limbs and narrow form of the virgin “Dawn,”

symbolized the end of a life of suffering. Those worn breasts have

suckled many, and the mother, who has watched her children struggling

through the cruel breakers of life, is now herself at rest. The figure

of “Night” was never intended to carry the gay, sunny message that a

Botticelli felt and longed to give forth when he painted such a picture

as the “Birth of Venus” or the “Coming of Spring.” The story goes that

Giovanni Battista Strozzi wrote the following epigram, which he placed

beneath the marble figure. It ran:

“The Night, that thou seest so sweetly sleeping,

Was by an angel carved in the rude stone.

Sleeping, she lives; if thou believ’st it not,

Wake her, and surely she will answer thee.”

Angelo, seeing this, wrote in reply:

“Sweet is my sleep, more sweet to be mere stone,

So long as ruin and dishonour reign.

To hear nought, to feel nought, is my great gain;

Then wake me not; speak in an undertone.”

It is by the light of such an agonized philosophy that we must

interpret the life-work of Michael Angelo. He lived in the midst of a

society that was morally rotten. He saw a foreign foe at the very gates

of his native city. Could one, to whom “Art’s the witness of what _is_

behind this Show,” throw out careless hints as to the struggle the

spirit of man must face before it is released? The almost unnatural

poses in such sculptures as those in the Medici Chapel tell of the

vehement emotion with which the soul of their author contemplated the

“riddle of this painful world.” Michael Angelo would have been false

to his mission had he been content to aim at the graceful repose which

satisfied Praxiteles. His glory was to make sculpture—the most limited

of the arts in this respect—a vehicle for the expression of the

greatest of emotions and passions of which the human heart is capable.

CHAPTER XI

ITALIAN SCULPTURE FROM 1527 TO 1650 A.D. CELLINI, GIOVANNI BOLOGNA, AND

BERNINI

The aftermath of Italian sculpture is indissolubly connected with two

craftsmen of genius and an historical movement of the first order. The

men, Benvenuto Cellini and Giovanni Bologna, stand for all that is best

in Italian sculpture during the middle of the sixteenth century. The

movement—the Catholic Reaction—dominated the following seventy-five

years. Dating the periods a little more precisely, the genesis of

the earlier may be associated with the Sack of Rome in 1527 A.D. The

beginning of the second period may be roughly fixed by the Pontificacy

of Gregory XIII., let us say the year 1580 A.D. It reached a climax

with the advent of Bernini, the exponent _par excellence_ of the Baroco

style, whether in architecture or sculpture.

To bring to birth a Michael Angelo and to nurture his titanic genius

was the supreme effort of the Italian Renaissance in the cause of the

plastic arts. That is why post-Angelesque sculpture must be associated

with the rather depressing image of “the second harvest.” Compared with

the productions of the time of Donatello or the fifty years during

which the influence of Michael Angelo was all-potent, the Italian

sculpture of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries shows a

marked declension. The enthusiasm which had brought the genius of

Donatello and Michael Angelo to fruition was waning. Art was no longer

imbued with the old intensity of purpose and fervour of imagination.

For this very reason the century which followed the Sack of Rome is

of far less importance in the history of sculpture than that which

preceded it. But, as many of the phenomena of health are only clear

in the light of experience gathered from disease, the circumstances

which gave rise to the post-Angelesque sculpture of Italy possess a

unique interest. Against the background of comparative failure, the

essentials necessary to the production of vital sculpture stand out in

the clearest outline.

Starting from the premises that such an art as sculpture expresses the

deepest conviction of the people in which it arises, we are led at once

from the works to the social circumstances in which the emotions arose.

The briefest study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, shows

that all the factors which had lifted sculpture to the summit operated

no longer. The free burghers who had built and decorated the Church of

Or San Michele or commissioned the Baptistery Gates had been forced to

acknowledge the tyranny of a selfish nobility. A source of inspiration

like Lorenzo de Medici was replaced by the crew of degenerates who

represented the House of Medici in the sixteenth century. In the

Roman Catholic Church, too, the Reformation called forth sterner

qualities and less sunny energies. The Papacy was forced to relinquish

the ideals of Julius II. and Leo X., at any rate for a time. Above

all, intellectual life was entirely divorced from national feeling.

Politics—“the art of leading the majority, not where they wish, but

where they ought to go”—interested the individual, not, as in the

earlier age, the mass of the people.

We have then at our hand the key to the problem. A picture of Italy

between 1527 and 1580 will give us the source of the characteristics

of the art of Cellini and Giovanni Bologna. A sketch of the political

and social consequences of the Catholic Reaction will explain the

popularity of Bernini, the typical sculptor of our second period.

First, the politics of sixteenth-century Italy. The outstanding

feature of political life at this time was its utter instability.

With the solitary exception of Venice, every principality and city

was in a condition of constant ferment. State after state ceased to

possess the essential elements of political stability. They had been

ruined, for the most part, by the attempt to combine freedom within

the city walls with dominion beyond. During the first quarter of the

sixteenth century, the success attending the methods of Cæsar Borgia

had suggested that a combination of moral agility and political knavery

might produce the needful balance of power. The advent of the French,

the Germans, and later of the Spaniards, destroyed even this semblance

of political stability. Italian liberty became a thing of the past. The

old absorbing interest in politics vanished, and with it the clarity of

thought and logicality of form which public political discussion does

so much to foster. In such a country art _exists_. It does not _live_.

As Mazzini said two hundred years later:

“Without a country and without liberty we might perhaps produce some

prophets of art but no vital art. Therefore it is better for us to

consecrate our lives to the solution of the problem, ‘are we to have

a country?’ and turn at once to the political question. If we are

successful, the art of Italy will bloom and flourish over our graves.”

So much for the political state of Italy between 1527 and 1580. The

social was even more anarchical. No reference need be made to the moral

code adopted by the leaders of thought and action—to the organized

murder by hired bravi, to the general winking at adultery, to the

convent intrigues. A low standard of morals by no means involves a

low standard of art. But the peculiar viciousness of the morality

of sixteenth-century Italy seems to depend upon the connection of

this degraded moral sense with a general chaos of social order. The

condottieri of the age of Cosimo de Medici were replaced by banditti in

the pay of feudal nobles. The old respect for trade disappeared. With

the growth of the aristocratic ideals of Spain, the wealthy burgher

class, which had been the most stable element in towns like Florence

and Milan, vanished. Monopolies were granted to all and sundry. The

agents of the Italian princes and the Pope, together with the Spanish

viceroys, placed imposts upon all sorts of goods, regardless of the

necessities of commerce.

The prosperity of the great art centres of Italy decreased rapidly.

Take the case of Rome. A passage from the official report of the

Venetian envoy in 1565, Giacomo Soranzo, furnishes a striking contrast

between the condition of Rome in the mid-sixteenth century and

Rome when Michael Angelo was in his first vigorous youth. In 1565

the aristocracy consisted of a fluctuating nobility and priesthood

depending upon the largesses of the chief members of the Papal

Court. At times the population totalled 100,000. During an unpopular

pontificacy it fell as low as 40,000.

“The Court of Rome,” writes Soranzo, “is no longer what it used to

be either in the quality or the numbers of the courtiers. This is

principally due to the poverty of the cardinals and the parsimony of

the popes. In the old days, when they gave away more liberally, men

of ability flocked from all quarters. This reduction of the Court

dates from the Council; for the bishops and beneficed clergy being now

obliged to retire to their residences, the larger portion of the Court

has left Rome. To the same cause may be ascribed a diminution of the

numbers of those who serve the Pontiff, seeing that since only one

benefice can now be given and that involves residence, there are few

who care to follow the Court at their own expense and inconvenience

without hope of greater reward. The poverty of the cardinals springs

from two causes. The first is that they cannot now obtain benefices

of the first class, as was the case when England, Germany, and other

provinces were subject to the Holy See, and when, moreover, they could

hold three or four archbishoprics apiece together with other places of

emolument, whereas they now can only have one apiece. The second cause

is that the number of the cardinals has been increased to seventy-five,

and that the foreign powers have ceased to complement them with large

presents and benefices, as was the wont of Charles V. and the French

Crown.”

The consequence can be readily realized. There was the old demand

for pictures and sculptures. But quick returns rather than sound

accomplishment were required by the artists and their patrons. A

delayed commission would stand but a poor chance of payment. For it

would not fulfil its main purpose—the aggrandizement of a prince or

cardinal whose term of power depended upon the life of the Pope or the

tenure of office by such a ruler as one of the Medicean tyrants of

Florence.

Nor was this all. Not only were the circumstances less favourable

but the artists themselves were unfitted for the accomplishment of

the greatest tasks. The age, not the earthly parent, is the real

father of the man. Lesser spirits attempted to wield a giant’s tools

and struggled with themes which Michael Angelo oftentimes failed

to make articulate. They sought to obtain his sublime effects by

insistence upon such accidents of his style as the exaggerated muscular

development or contorted poses of his figures. Immense monuments,

suggested by the achievements of the earlier age, were called for. A

striving after exaggerated effect replaced the former determination

to base every work of art upon the accurate observation of nature and

the definite proportion of part and part. The later artists lacked the

simple reserve which is only given to men who see life steadily and

see it whole. In place of the deeps of Angelo, we find the shallows

of Giovanni Bologna and his even less gifted contemporaries. Just

because they are shoals, the turmoils surrounding them oftentimes

appear tempestuous. But they never suggest the tremendous power which

evidences the oceanic depths of the passions of a man who is not only a

sculptor but a seer.

BENVENUTO CELLINI

The character of a typical sixteenth-century Italian artist has been

preserved to us in the “Autobiography” of Cellini. From its pages

we can conjure up the lives of the men who made this fifty years of

Italian sculpture. Cellini, be it remembered, is no Bohemian hanging

around the outskirts of the artistic world. On his death in February

13, 1571, his brothers of the Accademia delle Belle Arti record:

“Messer Benvenuto Cellini was buried with great funeral pomp in our

Chapter House at the Annunziata in the presence of our Academical Body

and the Company.”

But the “Autobiography” pictures a born swaggerer, a swashbuckler—a

bully, if you like—though a gay-hearted genius withal.

Let us examine Cellini’s life story rather more closely. When little

more than a youth Cellini was banished from Florence on account of

an affray with a party of his fellows. Returning, a second affair

necessitated a flight to Rome, where he took part in the celebrated

defence of the town against the Constable de Bourbon in 1527. Once more

restored to favour in his native Florence, Cellini took upon himself

to avenge his brother’s death. A murderous affray with a notary and

an ultra-energetic manner of dealing with a rival goldsmith, ended in

the two years’ confinement in the Castle of Saint Angelo with which

all readers of the “Autobiography” are familiar. And in all these

excitements, Cellini is never in the wrong. “What I have done, I have

done in defence of that body which God has lent me.” Adopting the

_apologia_ which he attributes to one of the numerous Popes with whom

he came in contact, Cellini calls upon the world to recognize “that men

like myself, unique in their profession, are subject to no laws.”

[Illustration: GIOVANNI BOLOGNA MERCURY (_p._ 210)

Bargello, Florence]

[Illustration: BENVENUTO CELLINI PERSEUS

Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence]

These darker times heralded the halcyon days of Cellini’s life, which

began when he exchanged the dungeons of Saint Angelo for the court

of Francis I. With a salary of 700 golden scudi a year and the title

of “Seigneur,” Cellini joined the painters, sculptors and goldsmiths

whom Il Rosso had gathered together for Francis I. (the school of

Fontainebleau). Cellini’s work at this time is of small interest to the

student of the history of sculpture. In those days he was a goldsmith.

The great bronze personification of a water nymph, now in the Louvre,

shows that Cellini had already dreamt of fame as a sculptor. It equally

shows that as yet his conceptions would not bear the scrutiny a

life-sized design necessarily challenges. Cellini’s “Water Nymph” is a

glorified piece of goldsmithery.

But on his return to Florence in 1545, Cellini started upon a work that

was to silence all doubt as to his capacity to succeed in the realm of

pure sculpture. By this time Francis I. had tired of the hot-tempered

Florentine. Coming home, Cellini persuaded the reigning Medicean prince

to entrust him with a commission for a “Perseus” for the Loggia dei

Lanzi. The “Autobiography” gives a vivid account of the sculptor’s four

years’ struggle with circumstance. Now, the interest of the Duke and

his Duchess waned. Now, money, material, or both, were wanting. The

promised salary was not forthcoming. Qualified assistants were denied.

Constant quarrels with rivals added to these general difficulties.

We can realize a measure of Cellini’s troubles from his story of the

casting of the “Perseus”—one of the most vigorous romances in the

history of art. We take up the tale where the cast has been placed

in the furnace and the metal introduced. Disaster follows disaster.

Whether the details have been coloured by the vivid imagination of the

artist or no matters little. We hear how the heat sets fire to the

shop on the one hand. On the other, a rain-storm threatens to cool the

furnace, in spite of the stacks of pine that have been piled around the

statue and its metal casing. In the midst of the excitement Cellini is

suddenly attacked by a violent intermitting fever. “In short, I was so

ill that I was forced to take to my bed.” Cellini therefore left his

ten assistants to carry on as best they could.

“In this manner did I continue for two hours in a violent fever, which

I every moment perceived to increase, and I was incessantly crying out,

‘I am dying, I am dying!’

“My housekeeper, whose name was Mona Fiore da Castel del Rio, was one

of the most sensible and affectionate women in the world; she rebuked

me for giving way to vain fears, and at the same time attended me with

the greatest kindness and care imaginable; however, seeing me so very

ill and terrified to such a degree, she could not contain herself, but

shed a flood of tears which she endeavoured to conceal from me. Whilst

we were both in this deep affliction, I perceived a man enter the room

who in his person appeared to be as crooked and distorted as a great S,

and began to express himself in these terms, with a tone of voice as

dismal and melancholy as those who exhort and pray with persons who are

going to be executed: ‘Alas! poor Benvenuto, your work is spoiled, and

the misfortune admits of no remedy.’

“No sooner had I heard the words uttered by this messenger of evil,

but I cried out so loud that my voice might be heard to the skies, and

got out of bed. I began immediately to dress, and giving plenty of

kicks and cuffs to the maidservants and the boy as they offered to help

me on with my clothes, I complained bitterly in these terms: ‘O you

envious and treacherous wretches, this is a piece of villainy contrived

on purpose; but I swear by the living God that I will sift it to the

bottom, and before I die give such proofs who I am as shall not fail to

astonish the whole world.’ Having huddled on my clothes, I went with a

mind boding evil to the shop, where I found all those whom I had left

so alert and in such high spirits, standing in the utmost confusion

and astonishment. I thereupon addressed them thus: ‘Listen all of you

to what I am going to say; and since you either would not or could not

follow the method I pointed out, obey me now that I am present; my

work is before us, and let none of you offer to oppose or contradict

me, for such cases as this require activity and not counsel.’ Hereupon

one Alessandro Lastricali had the assurance to say to me: ‘Look you,

Benvenuto, you have undertaken a work which our art cannot compass, and

which is not to be effected by human power.’

“Hearing these words I turned round in such a passion, and seemed so

bent upon mischief that both he and all the rest unanimously cried out

to me: ‘Give your orders, and we will all second you in whatever you

command; we will assist you as long as we have breath in our bodies.’

These kind and affectionate words they uttered, as I firmly believe, in

a persuasion that I was upon the point of expiring. I went directly to

examine the furnace, and saw all the metal in it concreted. I thereupon

ordered two of the helpers to step over the way to Capretta, a butcher,

for a load of young oak which had been above a year drying, and had

been offered me by Maria Ginevra, wife to the said Capretta.

“Upon his bringing me the first bundles of it, I began to fill the

grate. This sort of oak makes a brisker fire than any other wood

whatever; but the wood of alder-trees and pine-trees is used in casting

artillery, because it makes a mild and gentle fire. As soon as the

concreted metal felt the power of this violent fire, it began to

brighten and glitter. In another quarter I made them hurry the tubes

with all possible expedition, and sent some of them to the roof of the

house to take care of the fire, which through the great violence of

the wind had acquired new force; and towards the garden I had caused

some tables with pieces of tapestry and old clothes to be placed, in

order to shelter me from the rain. As soon as I had applied the proper

remedy to each evil, I with a loud voice cried out to my men to bestir

themselves and lend a helping hand; so that when they saw that the

concreted metal began to melt again, the whole body obeyed me with

such zeal and alacrity that every man did the work of three. Then I

caused a mass of pewter weighing about sixty pounds to be thrown upon

the metal in the furnace, which with the other helps, as the brisk

wood fire, and stirring it sometimes with iron and sometimes with

long poles, soon became completely dissolved. Finding that, contrary

to the opinion of my ignorant assistants, I had effected what seemed

as difficult as to raise the dead, I recovered my vigour to such a

degree that I no longer perceived whether I had any fever, nor had I

the least apprehension of death. Suddenly a loud noise was heard, and

a glittering of fire flashed before our eyes, as if it had been the

darting of a thunderbolt. Upon the appearance of this extraordinary

phenomenon, terror seized on all present, and on none more than myself.

This tremendous noise being over, we began to stare at each other, and

perceived that the cover of the furnace had burst and flown off, so

that the bronze began to run.

[Illustration: GIOVANNI BOLOGNA

RAPE OF THE SABINES Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence]

“I immediately caused the mouths of my mould to be opened, but finding

that the metal did not run with its usual velocity, and apprehending

that the cause of it was that the fusibility of the metal was injured

by the violence of the fire, I ordered all my dishes and porringers,

which were in number about two hundred, to be placed one by one before

my tubes, and part of them to be thrown into the furnace; upon which

all present perceived that my bronze was completely dissolved, and

that my mould was filling; they now with joy and alacrity assisted

and obeyed me. I, for my part, was sometimes in one place, sometimes

in another, giving my directions and assisting my men, before whom I

offered up this prayer: ‘O God, I address myself to Thee, who, of Thy

divine power, didst rise from the dead and ascend in glory to heaven.

I acknowledge in gratitude this mercy that my mould has been filled:

I fall prostrate before Thee, and with my whole heart return thanks

to Thy divine Majesty.’ My prayer being over, I took a plate of salad

which stood upon a little bench, and ate with a great appetite. I then

drank with all my journeymen and assistants, and went joyful and in

good health to bed, for there were still two hours of night; and I

rested as well as if I had been troubled with no manner of disorder.”

All that splendid energy and craftsmanship could do, Cellini did. The

“Perseus” was finished in 1554 and placed in its present position in

the Loggia dei Lanzi amid the enthusiastic plaudits of the Florentines.

Of the vigour of the design there can be no doubt. The beauty of

much of the decoration of the base may be admitted. The figure of

the Gorgon at the feet of Perseus is instinct with passion. Note

the manner in which the right arm lies inert, while the lower limbs

are still palpitating with life. But one cannot but feel the loss of

intellectual beauty and breadth of outlook which might have enshrouded

a more philosophical conception of the Greek hero. There can be no

question about Cellini’s full-blooded, self-assertive vitality. At any

rate, the sculptor of the “Perseus” was no copyist. But he lived in

an age when the first spontaneous outburst of imaginative enthusiasm

had spent itself. Italy had given up thinking and feeling. So Cellini

could express nothing beyond his own passionate personality. He would

have approached Michael Angelo if he could have echoed the prayer which

Socrates sent up in that plane-tree glade on the banks of the Ilissus.

“Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me

beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be at

one.”

Giovanni da Bologna, or John of Douay, as he is also called, was

a sculptor of even greater natural talent than Cellini. He was

equipped with almost every gift that a sculptor can desire. It has

been well said of him that he had “the power of seeing a definite

idea incorporated in a form which is the distillation of all the

related sensations which go to make up the idea.” This is the Hellenic

gift—the essential characteristic of a man who has to express himself

by means of marble and bronze. With it went, in the case of Giovanni

Bologna, a wonderful feeling for the beauty of line. Technically, his

finest endowment was, perhaps, his unique power of expressing swift

movement—the best known example of which is the well-known “Mercury”

now in the Bargello. Giovanni images the Messenger of the gods as borne

on a light zephyr through space. The figure is the very embodiment of

energetic action. Yet the harmony which is essential to sculptural

beauty is never sacrificed.

[Illustration: BERNINI APOLLO AND DAPHNE Borghese Gallery, Rome]

[Illustration: BERNINI SAINT THERESA S. Maria della Vittoria, Rome]

But Giovanni Bologna, like Cellini, worked at a time when the force

of the humanistic revival had spent itself. He lacked two things,

either of which might have placed him among the immortals. One was

the perfection of taste which kept Praxiteles in the straight way.

The other was the philosophic depth which saved Michael Angelo from

overstepping the bounds that separate noble from ignoble art.

As it was, Giovanni Bologna’s craftsmanship continually led him astray.

He preferred to master a technical difficulty rather than to find the

one design which would vitalize an idea or emotion _of real worth_.

The consequence was such a work as the well-known “Rape of the Sabine

Women.” Primarily this group is a study in the contrast between the

strength and vigour of the male form and the shrinking softness of

the female. The knotty muscles of the man are sharply contrasted with

the soft flesh of the woman whom he bears off. The work is full of

beauties, whether we regard it as a design or a piece of modelling. It

was the precursor of a long line of similar statues, particularly in

France, where the influence of Giovanni Bologna was considerable. “The

Rape of Proserpine” by Girardon at Versailles is a good example.

But Giovanni Bologna’s “Rape of the Sabines,” considered as an incident

in the history of sculpture, is superfluous. The world is surfeited

with examples of the magnificent conquest of technical difficulties.

Looking at it critically, we are struck with the qualities it lacks

rather than with the qualities it possesses. In a sentence, it

witnesses to the characteristics of the age for which Giovanni Bologna

worked—its material outlook, and its utter neglect of that side of

human experience which, for want of a better word, we call spiritual or

divine.

It is with Giovanni Bologna as with Benvenuto Cellini. Some source

of inspiration is lacking. Both have lost the habit of artistic

worship. They no longer regard every blow of the chisel as in a very

real sense forwarding some extra human end. The statue to them is a

statue—nothing more. This had not always been the case. As we know it

was no empty phrase when Michael Angelo began one of his sonnets with

the words:

“When that which is divine in us doth try

To shape a face, both brain and hand unite

To give, from a mere model frail and slight,

Life to the stone by Art’s free energy.”

BERNINI AND THE CATHOLIC REACTION

Angelo really did believe in the divinity of his art. So did the

artists of the age succeeding Cellini, Giovanni Bologna, and

Sansovino. And it is this fact which adds an absorbing interest to the

sculpture of the period dominated by the counter reformation which the

sculpture of the previous half-century did not possess. The painters

and sculptors who came under the influence of the wave of religious

enthusiasm known as the Catholic Reaction fully realized that their

efforts were forwarding a great ideal. The patrons for whom they

worked, and the men and women to whom they appealed also felt that art

which dealt with such matters was of real consequence.

Looking at the problem after the centuries have cleared the air of the

dust of dogmatic discussion, we can see that a lasting settlement of

the religious controversy had become a necessity for every country

of Europe. We now know that, for one reason and another, peace could

only be secured upon a foundation of Protestantism in Scandinavia,

in Northern Germany, England, and Scotland. Over the greater part

of Southern Europe, Catholicism was finally proved to be essential.

Spain, Italy, France, ten of the seventeen provinces of the United

Netherlands, Poland, Bohemia and South Germany either declined to be

seduced from the authority of the Pope, or eventually returned to the

fold.

The fact that the problem was of European rather than national

importance, and the memory of the position the Church of Rome had held

throughout the middle ages, explains why its regeneration was felt to

be a social and political event of the greatest significance. During

the first half of the sixteenth century a king like Francis I., and an

emperor like Charles V., had reduced the occupant of the Papal chair to

the position of little more than a counter in the political game. Now

the Roman Church threatened to lead European thought and action as it

had during the Crusades.

The seeds of this regeneration were planted in 1542, when Paul III.

empowered Caraffa to establish the Inquisition in Rome. At the same

time Paul III. sanctioned the Company of Jesus. Caraffa himself became

Pope in 1555. His whole policy was inspired by a determination to

re-establish the political dominion of the papacy. Caraffa’s successor

Pius IV., made an immense step forward when he obtained the sanction of

the General Council of the Church to the principle of papal absolutism.

A more militant policy was at once possible. Added to this, Pius IV.

suggested a return to the older and more subtle forms of political

intrigue which the Papacy had used with such effect during the middle

ages. The change ushered in an age of emotions. Note the religious

origin of the numberless wars which convulsed Western Europe at this

time. Is it surprising that the circumstances which brought this great

change about added a passion, an imaginative glow, to the art of the

later sixteenth and earlier seventeenth centuries?

For several reasons, the religious enthusiasm which revivified

Italian painting and sculpture proved a poor substitute for the civic

enthusiasm of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which it replaced.

The point we are making now is that for good or ill, the Catholic

Reaction added a vitality to art in general, and to sculpture in

particular, which had been absent for half a century.

The effects of the Catholic Reaction began to be felt upon Italian art

about 1580 A.D. Painting quickly offered its aid in spreading the new

ideals. Some time, however, elapsed before a sculptor of sufficient

genius arose to express the regenerated enthusiasm for Catholicism by

means of the chisel and the marble block. Giovanni Bernini (1598-1680),

who was born in the full tide of the Catholic Reaction, made sculpture

once more a living, social force. The influence he exercised over his

age is comparable with that exercised by Michael Angelo. Bernini was

a favourite of Maffeo Barberini (Pope Urban VIII.) and played a great

part in the reconstruction of St. Peter’s. He had a large school and

with the aid of his assistants produced numberless works. He brought an

art which had become alienated from every-day life back to the people.

Bernini’s services to sculpture may be likened to those of Giotto to

the sister art. What Giotto did for painting by allying his art with

the ideals of the Seer of Assisi, and the Franciscans in the thirteenth

century, Bernini did for sculpture by cementing an alliance with the

ideals of Ignatius of Loyola and the Order of Jesus. In both cases it

is impossible to separate the artist from the general body of thought

and emotion which it was his life’s work to express.

Let us look more closely into the ideals which arose with the returning

political power of the Church of Rome, and which were destined to find

expression in the marbles and bronzes of Bernini.

The necessities imposed upon the men who waged the battle of the Roman

church can be gathered from the fourth vow of the Order of Jesus.

“That the members will consecrate their lives to the continual

service of Christ and of the Popes, and will fight under the banner

of the Cross, and will serve the Lord and the Roman pontiff as God’s

vicar upon earth, in such wise that they shall be bound to execute

immediately and without hesitation, or excuse, all that the reigning

Pope or his successors may enjoin upon them for the profit of souls

or for the propagation of the faith, and shall do so in all provinces

whithersoever he may send them, among Turks or any other infidels, to

furthest Ind, as well as in the region of heretics, schismatics or

unbelievers of any kind.”

So far the ideals of the Jesuits were those of the earlier missionary

orders of the Roman Church—implicit obedience and whole-hearted

devotion. But Ignatius Loyola realized that the times had created

a fresh set of circumstances. These circumstances called for a new

“regula.” In a letter to Francis Borgia in 1548, the founder of the

Jesuit Order wrote—

“It is better to strengthen your stomach and other faculties, than to

impair the body and enfeeble the intellect by fasting. God needs both

our physical and mental powers for His service; and every drop of blood

you shed in flagellation is a loss.”

In other words, for the sake of enlisting the sympathy of those beyond

the bounds of the Catholic Church, Loyola was willing to jettison

convictions which had been held most strongly in an earlier age. It is

all important to realize that these were the very convictions which had

militated against a vigorous school of sculpture during the previous

papal dominion before the Renaissance. The fresh body of ideals and

impulses led to the creation of a new style—the Baroco. Taught by

failure, the Jesuit advisers of the Pope now sought the close alliance

with the arts exemplified in the sculptures of Bernini.

No more apposite example could be taken than Bernini’s group of “St.

Theresa” in S. Maria della Vittoria at Rome. It is an example of all

that is best and worst, and most characteristic, in the sculpture

of the Catholic Reaction. On the one hand, its striving after the

expression of passionate emotion tells of the intensity of faith which

animated the militant section of the Church at that time. On the other

hand, the vividness with which the scene is portrayed tells of the

determination to attract attention and compel comprehension, whatever

might be the æsthetic sacrifice.

It is almost impossible for a twentieth-century Englishman to describe

the “St. Theresa” group sympathetically. Bernini shows the saint

sinking back in an ecstatic swoon on to a marble cloud behind. On one

side an angel is discharging an arrow from the quiver of divine love.

Perhaps the real spirit of the sculptured scene can be best realized

from one of “The Advices which the Holy Mother Theresa of Jesus gave to

her children during her life,” which tells of one of these spiritual

trances.

“Once” (says the Saint) “when I was in the hermitage of Nazareth at the

convent of St. Joseph in Avila, it being the vigil of Pentecost; and

while I was reflecting on the exceeding great favour which our Lord had

bestowed upon me on that same day twenty years before, I was seized

with an ecstasy, and with strong impetuous and interior movements,

which quite suspended all my senses.

“While I was in this wonderful rapture, I heard our Lord speaking.”

It is no exaggeration to say that the true Hellene would have shuddered

at the very idea of visualizing such a scene. To have translated it

into marble would have seemed to the Hellenic sculptor in the last

degree immoral. But it was otherwise with the seventeenth-century

Italian. For the sake of the message—for the sake of the spiritual

thrill conveyed by such a group as the “St. Theresa”—he was willing

to dispense with the repose which had been everything to his Hellenic

forerunner. The historical critic can only accept the position. To

say that Bernini did wrongly, that his influence made for ill, is

really beside the point. The times were against him. But we can truly

say that, in view of the experience furnished by the Hellenic and

Florentine sculptors, an art other than sculpture could have more

properly expressed such scenes as the ecstatic transports of Saint

Theresa—possibly poetry, possibly music, certainly not sculpture.

Bernini’s reputation, fortunately, does not depend entirely upon works

executed as directly under the influence of the Catholic Reaction as

the “Saint Theresa” of S. Maria della Vittoria. In estimating his

genius we are not compelled to rely entirely upon the long series of

colossal groups packed with half-draped nudes in wildly fluttering

draperies which issued from his studio. His early work, “Apollo

and Daphne,” is an effort of extraordinary ability. The design was

wonderfully graceful, and the technical skill with which it was

worked out promised more abundant result than Bernini’s life’s work

eventually showed. For the rest the admirer of Bernini can point to

the magnificent series of fountains which he designed and erected. Of

these, the “Fountain of Trevi” stands supreme.

The death of Giovanni Bernini in 1680 marks the end of the last effort

to keep Italian sculpture alive. The works of Donatello, of Angelo,

of Cellini, of Bologna, live to-day. But vital sculptures embodying

national or civic aspirations or the ideals of that truly Italian

institution, the Roman Catholic Church, were produced no longer. For

more than a century, Italian art effort practically ceased. Foreigners

came to the great sources of inspiration in Italy, drank, and returned

to carry a measure of the precious fluid to their homes in the North.

But the Italian knew that “the outward and the inward man” were not at

“one.” He felt that “Beloved Pan” would not bestow that “beauty in the

inward soul” which had made Greek sculpture a joy for ever. A single

sentence of Mazzini gives the historical explanation:

“The Pope clutches the soul of the Italian nation; Austria the body,

whenever it shows signs of life; and on every member of that body is

enthroned an absolute prince, viceroy in turn under either of these

powers.”

PART IV

MODERN SCULPTURE