THE age of Pericles seemed marked out by fortune as a distinguished
epoch in the history of his country. The fine talents, also, and
popular qualities of this accomplished statesman, were admirably
adapted to turn to the best account the propitious circumstances of the
period. To the further progress of the fine arts, and of sculpture in
particular, preceding events, and their present consequences, almost
necessarily contributed; while the condition of the art itself was just
fitted to receive the perfecting impulse.
The energies of sculpture, likewise, were now to be more directly
concentrated in one parent school; which, while it especially adorned
one seat, preserved yet the stirring rivalry of honorable emulation,
as being the common seminary of free and independent states. The noble
stand she had made, her superior sacrifices and sufferings in the cause
of freedom, directed to Athens the sympathy and deference of Greece.
The prosperity, too, of her political situation, was suitable to the
support of this moral pre-eminence. Provided with means of defence and
of commerce, on a scale which seemed to contemplate future empire, she
was left by Themistocles with ample resources--a noble field of fame
and recompense for the artist. He himself, satisfied with the useful,
had cared less about the ornamental; but, among the little he did add,
were the lions, now at Venice, originally placed on the entrance to the
Piræus, in which fidelity of detail, and grandeur of conception, have
furnished to us existing evidence of the skill of this age.
Great as they were, the mind of Phidias proved equal to these external
advantages. Possessing that rarest and highest of all genius which
is at once creative and regular--learned, yet original, he caught the
inspiration of art in the most elevated range of the past, bringing in
his own attainments a sublimity and truth yet unequalled by all that
has followed.
This great master, the son of Charmidas, an Athenian citizen, was
born about the 72d Olympiad, or nearly 500 years before our era, and
studied under Eladas. His numerous works belonged to three distinct
classes: Toreutic, or statues of mixed materials, ivory being the
chief,--statues of bronze,--sculptures in marble. In this enumeration
are included only capital performances, for exercises in wood, plaster,
clay, and minute labours in carving, are recorded occasionally to have
occupied his attention. The beauty of these miniatures was not inferior
to the excellence of his greater works; at once sublime and ingenious,
he executed grand undertakings with majesty and force, and the most
minute with simplicity and truth.
'Artis Phidiacæ toreuma durum
Pisces adspicis: adde aquam, natabunt.'
'These fish are iv'ry--but by Phidias made;
From want of water only seem they dead.'
Of the works belonging to the first division, the Olympian Jupiter, and
the Minerva of the Parthenon, colossal statues composed of gold and
ivory, were the most wonderful productions of ancient art. The former,
placed in the Temple at Elis, was sixty feet high, in a reposing
attitude, the body naked to the cincture, the lower limbs clothed in a
robe gemmed with golden flowers; the hair also was of gold, bound with
an enamelled crown; the eyes of precious stones; the rest of ivory.
Notwithstanding the gigantic proportions, every part was wrought with
the most scrupulous delicacy; even the splendid throne was carved with
exquisite nicety. The whole was finished before the artist had obtained
the direction of the public works of the Athenians, in the 83d Olympiad
after a labour of ten years; the same date in which Herodotus read the
second part of his history, the first regular prose composition that
had been heard at Athens.
About twelve years later was executed the Minerva, of inferior
dimensions, being only forty feet in altitude, but equal, if not
superior, in beauty of workmanship and richness of material, the nude
being of ivory, the ornaments of gold. A flowing tunic added grace to
the erect attitude of the goddess: in one hand was a spear, upon the
head a casque; on the ground a buckler, exquisitely carved, the concave
representing the giants' war, the convex a conflict with the Amazons,
portraits of the artist and of his patron being introduced among the
Athenian combatants--one cause of the future misfortunes which envy
brought upon the author. On the golden sandals was also sculptured
another favorite subject, the battle of the Centaurs, praised by
historians as a perfect gem of minute art.
Such admiration attached to these two works, that they were regarded as
'having added majesty to the received religion;' and it was esteemed a
misfortune not to have been able, once in a lifetime, to behold them.
Yet judged according to the true principles of genuine art, theirs
was not a legitimate beauty. It does not excite surprise, then, to
learn that Phidias himself disapproved of the mixed effect produced
by such a combination of different substances, nor will it appear
presumptuous here to condemn these splendid representations. It is not
sufficient that a work of art does produce a powerful impression--it
is indispensable to its excellence that the means employed be in
accordance with the principles and the mode of imitation. Now, in the
compositions just described, exposed as they were to the dim light of
the ancient temple, and from very magnitude imperfectly comprehended,
the effects of variously reflecting surfaces, now gloom, now glowing
of unearthly lustre, must have been rendered doubly imposing. But
this influence, though well calculated to increase superstitious
devotion, or to impress mysterious terror on the bewildered sense, was
meretricious, altogether diverse from the solemn repose, the simple
majesty of form and expression, which constitute the true sublimity of
sculptural representation.
Statuary, or the art of casting in bronze, as the term was used by
the ancients, Phidias carried to unrivalled perfection. The Amazon,
the Minerva, at Lemnos, and in the Acropolis, were considered as the
masterpieces in this department. The last, called the Minerva Polias,
was of such majestic proportions, that the crest and helmet might
be discerned above the battlements of the citadel at a distance of
twentyfive miles, pointing home to the Athenian mariner, as he rounded
the promontory of Sunium. Of these and other works, descriptions
alone remain; we are consequently indebted for our positive knowledge
of his style and principles to the marble sculptures of Phidias, in
which department numerous admirable performances of his hand have also
perished; but we have here an advantage in the possession of undoubted
originals denied in every other instance.
Of the scholars of Phidias, the most esteemed were Alcamenes the
Athenian, and Agoracritus of Paros. Their real merit, however, is
matter of uncertainty, since their works are reported to have been
retouched by their master, who was likewise in the habit of inscribing
his statues with the names of his favorite pupils. Indeed, the
sublime style perfected by Phidias seems almost to have expired with
himself--not that the art declined, but a predilection for subjects
of beauty, and the softer graces, in preference to more heroic and
masculine character, with the exception of the grand relievos on the
temple of Olympia, may be traced even among his immediate disciples.
Among his contemporaries, indeed, Polycletus, the second of the
name, has been by some placed equal in grandeur of style, while by
others he has been described as unequal, to the majesty of the great
Athenian. Polycletus himself appears to have decided the controversy,
by showing, from the selection of his subjects, that his genius
carried him to the imitation rather of the beautiful than the great.
His most celebrated performances were the statues of two youths, both
nude, the Diadumenos and the Doryphorus, so called from their action
of binding the head with a fillet, and bearing a spear. The latter
formed the famous 'canon,' from which, as from an unerring standard,
all succeeding artists, even Lysippus, borrowed their proportions.
Among contemporaries, also, a most distinguished station must have been
occupied by Ctesilaus, since he contested with Phidias and Polycletus
the public prize of merit for a statue to be dedicated in the temple of
the Ephesian Diana. To this artist is erroneously ascribed one of the
finest specimens of art now in existence, miscalled, but best known as,
the Dying Gladiator, and which, more than any other ancient example,
discovers the most profound knowledge of the internal structure of the
human frame.
From the banishment and death of Phidias, which occurred some time
before his patron died of the plague, in the last year of the
eightyseventh Olympiad, the history of art is carried forward through
a period, one of the most stormy and unsettled in the Grecian annals.
He beheld the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, an event, indeed,
Pericles is accused of having at least hastened, in order to screen his
remaining friends from those accusations of which the sculptor had been
the guiltless victim. During thirty years of hostile commotions, the
arts flourished with almost unimpaired vigor, except that towards the
close of the contest, sculpture, which had naturally participated in
the fortunes of Athens, suffered a decline in this its capital school.
The spirit of the age generally, however, united with the sentiment
of hostility a more generous rivalry in excellence of every kind.
The grand and beautiful in art continued to be followed and admired,
while, amid the contention of arms, eloquence began to attain that
nervous elegance which yet renders attic oratory the finest model of
deliberative procedure. Even the less friendly interval which followed,
the establishment of the iron rule of Sparta--the ruin of the milder
and more splendid dominion of Athens--and, more disastrous still,
the war kindled by the ambition of Thebes, with the various isolated
struggles arising out of these leading events, appear to have produced
no material degradation in that heroic style, whose lofty character
harmonized with the strong excitement of contests for freedom or empire.
Of the artists who adorned this stirring era, the names of nearly
fifty, with descriptions of certain of their works, have been handed
down in the incidental notices of contemporary history, or in the
more detailed accounts of Pausanius, Strabo, and Pliny. Naucydes was
author of that beautiful figure holding a discus, and measuring in his
own mind the distance, of which antique copies remain, admired for
fine position, sweet variety of contour, and unaffected expression.
Leochares, Bryaxis, and Timotheus, assisted in the erection of the tomb
of Mausolus, where Scopas, superior to all others mentioned, presided.
Thus his age is fixed about the 102d Olympiad, or 370 B. C. To the
chisel of this eminent artist is ascribed the Townley Venus, or Dione,
now in the British Museum, as also the group of Niobe at Florence.
Grace, softness, and truth, were the characteristics of his style,
which may be considered as forming the intermediate gradation between
that of Phidias and those of Praxiteles and Lysippus; between the two
grand divisions of Greek sculpture, the schools of grandeur and of
beauty.
In the era and labours of Phidias, we discover the utmost excellence to
which Grecian genius attained in the arts. From an examination, then,
of this excellence, we shall not only obtain a knowledge of that style
pronounced by the Greeks themselves to be their proudest achievement
in sculpture, but may also be able to elicit principles of the highest
general importance in the philosophy of imitative art. This inquiry
likewise demands attention, were it merely on account of the singularly
fortunate circumstances under which it can be instituted. Respecting
the most esteemed masterpieces of antiquity, reasonable doubts still
exist how far our judgments are formed upon real originals. But in the
marbles of the British Museum, the former ornaments of the Parthenon,
we certainly behold the conceptions, and, in some measure, the very
practice of the great Athenian sculptor. Both statues and relievos
compose these precious remains, one of the noblest bequests of ancient
to modern talent. The statues adorned the two tympana of the Parthenon,
which was amphiprostylos or double-fronted, consisting, besides
fragments, of fourteen groups, or seventeen figures, of the natural
proportions. The relievos are of two kinds, one of which formed the
inner frieze of the cella, and flat, representing the procession of the
Panathenean festival; the other, consisting of fifteen metopes of the
exterior peristyle, very bold, even to entire roundness in some parts,
the subject, combats of the Centaurs with the followers of Theseus,
appropriate to a national temple.
In these sculptures, the technicality is of unequal merit; but in
the design, the presence of the same mind is visible throughout. In
the statues, and in the frieze, of which nearly two hundred feet
still remain, the execution generally approaches so near the beauty
and grandeur of the composition, that we seem to trace not only one
intelligence, but one hand; in the metopes, again, a baldness of
rendering, utterly inconsistent with the fervid idea, is occasionally
perceivable. These contradictions would naturally arise from, and can
be explained only by, the fact that the master-spirit overlooking
the whole trusted the expressing of his conceptions to assistants of
dissimilar capacity. Of the intellectual character, grandeur is the
prevailing principle; the grandeur of simplicity and nature, devoid
of all parade or ostentation of art. The means are forgotten in their
very excellence, and in the fullest accomplishment of the end. The
ancient critics, who, in speaking of Phidias, seem to labour with the
power of those ideas awakened by the contemplation of his works, are
fond of comparing their effects to those of the eloquence of their most
accomplished orators. The comparison is happy. The sculpture of Phidias
might well be assimilated to Demosthenian eloquence, in the truth and
affecting interest of its imagery, and in its power of bearing the
whole soul along in our engrossing feeling. But the sternness and
the severity of the orator, the taking of the heart by force, attach
not to the artist; all is here sweet and gracious; we are willing
captives to the witchery of art. It is this union of the graceful and
the pleasing with the energetic and the great, which constitutes the
surpassing merit of the works we are considering. Exquisitely delicate
in the minute, in the grand, the style is bold, vigorous, and flowing.
Their author, to use the language of antiquity, united the three
characteristics of truth, grandeur, and minute refinement; exhibiting
majesty, gravity, breadth, and magnificence of composition, with a
practice scrupulous in detail, and truth of individual representation,
yet in the handling rapid, broad, and firm. This harmonious assemblage
of qualities, in themselves dissimilar, in their results the same,
gives to the productions of this master an ease, a grace, a vitality,
resembling more the spontaneous overflowings of inspiration than the
laborious offspring of thought and science.
The attentive study of the remaining labours of Phidias, and,
fortunately for the arts of Britain, their final abiding place is with
us, will supply a criterion by which to estimate the principles of the
beautiful in execution, and of the ideal in imitative art, as exercised
among the Greeks in the most splendid period of their refinement, and
will prove guides by which we may emulate, perhaps, equal, our masters.
In all that merely meets the eye, the marbles of the Parthenon display
the finest keeping, with the general nobleness of their intellectual
character. But the execution is perfect, simply because the composition
is so. It comes not forward as an independent merit. Its exquisite
mechanism operates without intruding. Unseen and unfelt amid the
intelligence it conveys, it is finally noticed as an harmonious element
of a perfect whole, and only then calls forth an especial admiration.
The finish is high, and even delicate, because the extreme beauty and
correctness of the design required to be rendered with corresponding
elegance and ease. The chiselling is at once detailed and vigorous,
harmonizing with attitudes and expressions full of vivacity, natural
grace, and dignity. The touch is broad, the forms decided--the marking
deep and firm, according with and increasing the general grandeur
and conception. The style of design, indeed, is, in the strictest
acceptation, learned, the parts being pronounced with a decision and
truth unequalled, we are almost inclined to say, in any other remain of
antiquity.
The ideal of Phidias is derived entirely from nature, as the true ideal
of art must ever be. Much has been said respecting the import of this
term among the ancients; and the words their writers have employed in
speaking of this very master, have been construed into meanings not
only inconsistent with, but subversive of, the principles of genuine
excellence. If, by the divine archetypes which he is reported to
have followed, be implied, that he copied after ideas not existing
in nature--living and tangible nature, the breathing works before us
attest, that whether ancients or moderns, these critics speak with
more zeal than knowledge. In the Elgin marbles, every conception
deeply participates of human sentiment and action, so intimately does
the representation belong to reality, that every form seems, by the
touch of enchantment, to have become marble in the very energies of
its natural life. This happy effect of truth, however, does not arise
from the imitation of common, that is, of imperfect types; neither is
nature the only real object of art, viewed through any medium of fancy,
nor imitated according to conventional or imaginative principles. The
artist has only looked abroad upon all existence, refining partial
conceptions and limited modes by the unerring and collected harmonies
of the whole. The true ideal, then--the ideal of Grecian sculpture, as
beheld in these its sublimest productions, is but the embodied union
of whatever of beauty and perfection still lingers among the forms of
nature viewed universally--free from individuality or accident. Truth
is thus the primary constituent of the ideal. Beauty is the perfect
expression of this truth, agreeably to the most unblemished and purest
models which general nature presents. In this union of collective
excellence and individual verisimilitude, the mind feels, and at once
acknowledges, a power of awakening and reflecting its own truest, best
sympathies. These principles are unfolded in their purest elements; and
the modes of accomplishing this union distinctly traceable by careful
observation on the style of Phidias. The forms are, in the first place,
composed with the most correct, but unostentatious science; hence
the freedom of their movements, the ease of their attitudes, seeming
to possess the same capabilities of momentary action as the living
models. In this anatomical knowledge, too, as actually displayed,
there is a truly admirable simplicity: the bones and muscles are,
indeed, pronounced with a firmness rare in antique sculpture, whence
chiefly arises the wonderful elasticity of the figures. All this is
unaccompanied with the slightest exaggeration; the divisions being
few, and masses large, the eye runs sweetly along the general forms,
yet finds wherewithal to be delighted in resting upon details. This
absence, or rather this unobtrusiveness, of all pomp of art, throws
over the whole an air of reality and of unsophisticated nature. But
with these essential qualities of merely imitative art, are united
perfect symmetry, the most harmonious contours, grand composition, the
most refined taste, and noble expression. This causes every figure
to respire an heroic and elevated character. Hence, we perceive,
that to base ideal upon imitative art--to address the imagination by
grandeur of design and perfection of form, while he appealed to the
judgment by fidelity of detail and correctness of resemblance--have
formed the objects of this great sculptor. The relations under which
truth and imagination produce results at once grand and interesting,
he has carefully studied and successfully rendered. Hence, while the
general composition breathes the loftiest spirit of ideal or possible
excellence, the means by which the sentiment is rendered are received
from individual nature, expressed simply, and without artifice. In
this happy and unobtrusive union of nature and imagination, in this
continually remounting, without convention or ostentation, to the
eternal sources of natural truth and beauty, Phidias displays the
real sublimity of art, and stands unrivalled among the masters of the
ancient world.