idea,--the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term,
'Providentia,' when applied to the Divine power. In its truest sense and
scholarly use, it is a human virtue, [Greek: Prometheia]; the personal
type of it is in Prometheus, and all the first power of [Greek: techne],
is from him, as compared to the weakness of days when men without
foresight "[Greek: ephyron eike panta]." But, so far as we use the word
'Providence' as an attribute of the Maker and Giver of all things, it
does not mean that in a shipwreck He takes care of the passengers who
are to be saved, and takes none of those who are to be drowned; but it
_does_ mean that every race of creatures is born into the world under
circumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities; and, beyond
all others, the ingenious and observant race of man is surrounded with
elements naturally good for his food, pleasant to his sight, and
suitable for the subjects of his ingenuity;--the stone, metal, and clay
of the earth he walks upon lending themselves at once to his hand, for
all manner of workmanship.
150. Thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire creation is
shown by his making the most of what he can get most easily; and there
is no virtue of art, nor application of common sense, more sacredly
necessary than this respect to the beauty of natural substance, and the
ease of local use; neither are there any other precepts of construction
so vital as these--that you show all the strength of your material,
tempt none of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply and
permanently done.
151. Thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, or burnt
clay, but with no artificial compound; all good painting with common
oils and pigments on common canvas, paper, plaster, or wood,--admitting
sometimes, for precious work, precious things, but all applied in a
simple and visible way. The highest imitative art should not, indeed, at
first sight, call attention to the means of it; but even that, at
length, should do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take
pleasure in seeing how completely the workman is master of the
particular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a
substance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting, its unctuous
quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass,
its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in
porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, one
should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten
together into rugged walls. In a marble country, one should be always
more and more astonished at the exquisite color and structure of
marble; in a slate country, one should feel as if every rock cleft
itself only for the sake of being built with conveniently.
152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials--Clay, and
Stone; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and brittle as it cools,
and metal a clay that gets opaque and tough as it cools. Indeed, the
true use of gold in this world is only as a very pretty and very ductile
clay, which you can spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you
like, and which will neither crack nor tarnish.
All the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under the word
'Plastic,' and all of those in stone, under the word 'Glyptic.'
153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast brickwork,
pottery, and tile-work[31]--a somewhat important branch of human skill.
Next to the potter's work, you have all the arts in porcelain, glass,
enamel, and metal,--everything, that is to say, playful and familiar in
design, much of what is most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or
gold, most precious and permanent.
154. Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while we
accurately use the general term 'glyptic' for it, may be thought of
with, perhaps, the most clear force under the English word 'engraving.'
For, from the mere angular incision which the Greek consecrated in the
triglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts
of bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected
with each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, the
arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves.
155. Over all this vast field of human skill the laws which I have
enunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embracing the
greatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion; strong to repress
the ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, but gentle to approve
the efforts of children, made in accordance with the visible intention
of the Maker of all flesh, and the Giver of all Intelligence. These
laws, therefore, I now repeat, and beg of you to observe them as
irrefragable.
1. That the work is to be with tools of men.
2. That it is to be in natural materials.
3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at no
quality inconsistent with them.
4. That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony with common
needs, and in consent to common intelligence.
We will now observe the bearing of these laws on the elementary
conditions of the art at present under discussion.
156. There is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts, as it dries,
and is very easily frangible. Then you must put no work into it
requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elaborate that it would be a
great loss if it were broken; but as the clay yields at once to the
hand, and the sculptor can do anything with it he likes, it is a
material for him to sketch with and play with,--to record his fancies
in, before they escape him,--and to express roughly, for people who can
enjoy such sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. The
clay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line; being easily
frangible, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, so that a
blunt and massive rendering of graceful gesture will be its natural
function: but as it can be pinched, or pulled, or thrust in a moment
into projection which it would take hours of chiseling to get in stone,
it will also properly be used for all fantastic and grotesque form, not
involving sharp edges. Therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal,
for painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors; they are all most
precious materials for true masters, but tempt the false ones into fatal
license; and to judge rightly of terra-cotta work is a far higher reach
of skill in sculpture-criticism than to distinguish the merits of a
finished statue.
157. We have, secondly, work in bronze, iron, gold, and other metals;
in which the laws of structure are still more definite.
All kinds of twisted and wreathen work on every scale become delightful
when wrought in ductile or tenacious metal; but metal which is to be
_hammered_ into form separates itself into two great divisions--solid,
and flat.
A. In solid metal-work, _i.e._, metal cast thick enough to resist
bending, whether it be hollow or not, violent and various projection may
be admitted, which would be offensive in marble; but no sharp edges,
because it is difficult to produce them with the hammer. But since the
permanence of the material justifies exquisiteness of workmanship,
whatever delicate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces may
be advisedly introduced; and since the color of bronze or any other
metal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh as that of marble, a
wise sculptor will depend less on flesh contour, and more on picturesque
accessories, which, though they would be vulgar if attempted in stone,
are rightly entertaining in bronze or silver. Verrocchio's statue of
Colleone at Venice, Cellini's Perseus at Florence, and Ghiberti's gates
at Florence, are models of bronze treatment.
B. When metal is beaten thin, it becomes what is technically called
'plate,' (the _flattened_ thing,) and may be treated advisably in two
ways: one, by beating it out into bosses, the other by cutting it into
strips and ramifications. The vast schools of goldsmiths' work and of
iron decoration, founded on these two principles, have had the most
powerful influences over general taste in all ages and countries. One of
the simplest and most interesting elementary examples of the treatment
of flat metal by cutting is the common branched iron bar, Fig. 8, used
to close small apertures in countries possessing any good primitive
style of ironwork, formed by alternate cuts on its sides, and the
bending down of the severed portions. The ordinary domestic window
balcony of Verona is formed by mere ribbons of iron, bent into curves as
studiously refined as those of a Greek vase, and decorated merely by
their own terminations in spiral volutes.
All cast work in metal, unfinished by hand, is inadmissible in any
school of living art, since it cannot possess the perfection of form due
to a permanent substance; and the continual sight of it is destructive
of the faculty of taste: but metal stamped with precision, as in coins,
is to sculpture what engraving is to painting.
158. Thirdly. Stone-sculpture divides itself into three schools: one in
very hard material; one in very soft; and one in that of centrally
useful consistence.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.]
A. The virtue of work in hard material is the expression of form in
shallow relief, or in broad contours: deep cutting in hard material is
inadmissible; and the art, at once pompous and trivial, of gem
engraving, has been in the last degree destructive of the honor and
service of sculpture.
B. The virtue of work in soft material is deep cutting, with studiously
graceful disposition of the masses of light and shade. The greater
number of flamboyant churches of France are cut out of an adhesive
chalk; and the fantasy of their latest decoration was, in great part,
induced by the facility of obtaining contrast of black space, undercut,
with white tracery easily left in sweeping and interwoven rods--the
lavish use of wood in domestic architecture materially increasing the
habit of delight in branched complexity of line. These points, however,
I must reserve for illustration in my Lectures on Architecture. To-day,
I shall limit myself to the illustration of elementary sculptural
structure in the best material,--that is to say, in crystalline marble,
neither soft enough to encourage the caprice of the workman, nor hard
enough to resist his will.
159. C. By the true 'Providence' of Nature, the rock which is thus
submissive has been in some places stained with the fairest colors, and
in others blanched into the fairest absence of color that can be found
to give harmony to inlaying, or dignity to form. The possession by the
Greeks of their [Greek: leukos lithos] was indeed the first circumstance
regulating the development of their art; it enabled them at once to
express their passion for light by executing the faces, hands, and feet
of their dark wooden statues in white marble, so that what we look upon
only with pleasure for fineness of texture was to them an imitation of
the luminous body of the deity shining from behind its dark robes; and
ivory afterwards is employed in their best statues for its yet more soft
and flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicate
color--(therefore to this day the favorite ground of miniature
painters). In like manner, the existence of quarries of peach-colored
marble within twelve miles of Verona, and of white marble and green
serpentine between Pisa and Genoa, defined the manner both of sculpture
and architecture for all the Gothic buildings of Italy. No subtlety of
education could have formed a high school of art without these
materials.
160. Next to the color, the fineness of substance which will take a
perfectly sharp edge, is essential; and this not merely to admit fine
delineation in the sculpture itself, but to secure a delightful
precision in placing the blocks of which it is composed. For the
possession of too fine marble, as far as regards the work itself, is a
temptation instead of an advantage to an inferior sculptor; and the
abuse of the facility of undercutting, especially of undercutting so as
to leave profiles defined by an edge against shadow, is one of the chief
causes of decline of style in such incrusted bas-reliefs as those of the
Certosa of Pavia and its contemporary monuments. But no undue temptation
ever exists as to the fineness of block fitting; nothing contributes to
give so pure and healthy a tone to sculpture as the attention of the
builder to the jointing of his stones; and his having both the power to
make them fit so perfectly as not to admit of the slightest portion of
cement showing externally, and the skill to insure, if needful, and to
suggest always, their stability in cementless construction. Plate X.
represents a piece of entirely fine Lombardic building, the central
portion of the arch in the Duomo in Verona, which corresponds to that of
the porch of San Zenone, represented in Plate I. In both these pieces of
building, the only line that traces the architrave round the arch, is
that of the masonry joint; yet this line is drawn with extremest
subtlety, with intention of delighting the eye by its relation of varied
curvature to the arch itself; and it is just as much considered as the
finest pen-line of a Raphael drawing. Every joint of the stone is used,
in like manner, as a thin black line, which the slightest sign of cement
would spoil like a blot. And so proud is the builder of his fine
jointing, and so fearless of any distortion or strain spoiling the
adjustment afterwards, that in one place he runs his joint quite
gratuitously through a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign
of preeminence by the minute inlaying of the head of the Lamb into the
stone of the course above.
161. Proceeding from this fine jointing to fine draughtsmanship, you
have, in the very outset and earliest stage of sculpture, your flat
stone surface given you as a sheet of white paper, on which you are
required to produce the utmost effect you can with the simplest means,
cutting away as little of the stone as may be, to save both time and
trouble; and above all, leaving the block itself, when shaped, as solid
as you can, that its surface may better resist weather, and the carved
parts be as much protected as possible by the masses left around them.
[Illustration: X.
MARBLE MASONRY IN THE DUOMO OF VERONA.]
[Illustration: XI.
THE FIRST ELEMENTS OF SCULPTURE.
INCISED OUTLINE AND OPENED SPACE.]
162. The first thing to be done is clearly to trace the outline of
subject with an incision approximating in section to that of the furrow
of a plow, only more equal-sided. A fine sculptor strikes it, as his
chisel leans, freely, on marble; an Egyptian, in hard rock, cuts it
sharp, as in cuneiform inscriptions. In any case, you have a result
somewhat like the upper figure, Plate XI., in which I show you the most
elementary indication of form possible, by cutting the outline of the
typical archaic Greek head with an incision like that of a Greek
triglyph, only not so precise in edge or slope, as it is to be modified
afterwards.
163. Now, the simplest thing we can do next is to round off the flat
surface _within_ the incision, and put what form we can get into the
feebler projection of it thus obtained. The Egyptians do this, often
with exquisite skill, and then, as I showed you in a former Lecture,
color the whole--using the incision as an outline. Such a method of
treatment is capable of good service in representing, at little cost of
pains, subjects in distant effect; and common, or merely picturesque,
subjects even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what colored
sculpture would be in its rudest type, I have prepared the colored
relief of the John Dory[32] as a natural history drawing for distant
effect. You know, also, that I meant him to be ugly--as ugly as any
creature can well be. In time, I hope to show you prettier
things--peacocks and kingfishers, butterflies and flowers,--on grounds
of gold, and the like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expect
you, in right use of your aesthetic faculties, to like those better than
what I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method only; and if
you will look, after the Lecture, first at the mere white relief, and
then see how much may be gained by a few dashes of color, such as a
practiced workman could lay in a quarter of an hour,--the whole
forming, if well done, almost a deceptive image,--you will, at least,
have the range of power in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you.
164. But for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other methods. If we
carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast shadow of the incision
will interfere with its outline, so that, for representation of
beautiful things you must clear away the ground about it, at all events
for a little distance. As the law of work is to use the least pains
possible, you clear it only just as far back as you need, and then, for
the sake of order and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline.
By taking, in this case, the simplest I can,--a circle,--I can clear the
head with little labor in the removal of surface round it; (see the
lower figure in Plate XI.)
165. Now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed bas-relief.
The mass you have to treat consists of a piece of stone which, however
you afterwards carve it, can but, at its most projecting point, reach
the level of the external plane surface out of which it was mapped, and
defined by a depression round it; that depression being at first a mere
trench, then a moat of a certain width, of which the outer sloping bank
is in contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterally
salient portions of sculpture. This, I repeat, is the primal
construction of good bas-relief, implying, first, perfect protection to
its surface from any transverse blow, and a geometrically limited space
to be occupied by the design, into which it shall pleasantly (and as you
shall ultimately see, ingeniously,) contract itself: implying, secondly,
a determined depth of projection, which it shall rarely reach, and never
exceed: and implying, finally, the production of the whole piece with
the least possible labor of chisel and loss of stone.
166. And these, which are the first, are very nearly the last
constructive laws of sculpture. You will be surprised to find how much
they include, and how much of minor propriety in treatment their
observance involves.
In a very interesting essay on the architecture of the Parthenon, by
the Professor of Architecture of the Ecole Polytechnique, M. Emile
Boutmy, you will find it noticed that the Greeks do not usually weaken,
by carving, the constructive masses of their building; but put their
chief sculpture in the empty spaces between the triglyphs, or beneath
the roof. This is true; but in so doing, they merely build their panel
instead of carving it; they accept, no less than the Goths, the laws of
recess and limitation, as being vital to the safety and dignity of their
design; and their noblest recumbent statues are, constructively, the
fillings of the acute extremity of a panel in the form of an obtusely
summited triangle.
167. In gradual descent from that severest type, you will find that an
immense quantity of sculpture of all times and styles may be generally
embraced under the notion of a mass hewn out of, or, at least, placed
in, a panel or recess, deepening, it may be, into a niche; the sculpture
being always designed with reference to its position in such recess:
and, therefore, to the effect of the building out of which the recess is
hewn.
But, for the sake of simplifying our inquiry, I will at first suppose no
surrounding protective ledge to exist, and that the area of stone we
have to deal with is simply a flat slab, extant from a flat surface
depressed all round it.
168. A _flat_ slab, observe. The flatness of surface is essential to the
problem of bas-relief. The lateral limit of the panel may, or may not,
be required; but the vertical limit of surface _must_ be expressed; and
the art of bas-relief is to give the effect of true form on that
condition. For observe, if nothing more were needed than to make first a
cast of a solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to
the flat surface;--if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an apple,
all I had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole apple in half, and
pin it to the wall, any ordinarily trained sculptor, or even a
mechanical workman, could produce bas-relief; but the business is to
carve a _round_ thing out of a _flat_ thing; to carve an apple out of a
biscuit!--to conquer, as a subtle Florentine has here conquered,[33]
his marble, so as not only to get motion into what is most rigidly
fixed, but to get boundlessness into what is most narrowly bounded; and
carve Madonna and Child, rolling clouds, flying angels, and space of
heavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of an inch
thick where it is thickest.
169. Carried, however, to such a degree of subtlety as this, and with so
ambitious and extravagant aim, bas-relief becomes a tour-de-force; and,
you know, I have just told you all tours-de-force are wrong. The true
law of bas-relief is to begin with a depth of incision proportioned
justly to the distance of the observer and the character of the subject,
and out of that rationally determined depth, neither increased for
ostentation of effect, nor diminished for ostentation of skill, to do
the utmost that will be easily visible to an observer, supposing him to
give an average human amount of attention, but not to peer into, or
critically scrutinize, the work.
170. I cannot arrest you to-day by the statement of any of the laws of
sight and distance which determine the proper depth of bas-relief.
Suppose that depth fixed; then observe what a pretty problem, or,
rather, continually varying cluster of problems, will be offered to us.
You might, at first, imagine that, given what we may call our scale of
solidity, or scale of depth, the diminution from nature would be in
regular proportion, as, for instance, if the real depth of your subject
be, suppose, a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, then the
parts of the real subject which were six inches round the side of it
would be carved, you might imagine, at the depth of half an inch, and so
the whole thing mechanically reduced to scale. But not a bit of it. Here
is a Greek bas-relief of a chariot with two horses (upper figure, Plate
XXI.) Your whole subject has therefore the depth of two horses side by
side, say six or eight feet. Your bas-relief has, on this scale,[34] say
the depth of a third of an inch. Now, if you gave only the sixth of an
inch for the depth of the off horse, and, dividing him again, only the
twelfth of an inch for that of each foreleg, you would make him look a
mile away from the other, and his own forelegs a mile apart. Actually,
the Greek has made the _near leg of the off horse project much beyond
the off leg of the near horse_; and has put nearly the whole depth and
power of his relief into the breast of the off horse, while for the
whole distance from the head of the nearest to the neck of the other, he
has allowed himself only a shallow line; knowing that, if he deepened
that, he would give the nearest horse the look of having a thick nose;
whereas, by keeping that line down, he has not only made the head itself
more delicate, but detached it from the other by giving no cast shadow,
and left the shadow below to serve for thickness of breast, cutting it
as sharp down as he possibly can, to make it bolder.
171. Here is a fine piece of business we have got into!--even supposing
that all this selection and adaptation were to be contrived under
constant laws, and related only to the expression of given forms. But
the Greek sculptor, all this while, is not only debating and deciding
how to show what he wants, but, much more, debating and deciding what,
as he can't show everything, he will choose to show at all. Thus, being
himself interested, and supposing that you will be, in the manner of the
driving, he takes great pains to carve the reins, to show you where they
are knotted, and how they are fastened round the driver's waist, (you
recollect how Hippolytus was lost by doing that); but he does not care
the least bit about the chariot, and having rather more geometry than he
likes in the cross and circle of one wheel of it, entirely omits the
other!