imaginative. In large measure it served either to answer some definite
practical end or to satisfy (as in the decoration of palaces) the Roman
taste for grandeur and display. It shows the influence of a less
full-hearted and unquestioning religious inspiration than that which had
such marked effect on the early art of Greece and again in the
Renaissance. The work of all the various branches of art produced in the
Roman territory before the importation of Greek artists was of the
rudest. It was necessary to employ Etruscans to decorate the temple of
the Capitoline Jove and until the first century before Christ the
artistic product of Rome seems to have been scanty. The energies of the
people were expended in war and colonisation. They were essentially a
commercial race. The existence of their city was derived from and
depended on their control of foreign trade. The first necessity of such
a city was to master the business of political organisation and not to
cultivate the tastes that minister to affluence and ease. Pride of race
and the acquisition of great wealth were results of the transformation
of the small republic into the great empire, and with pride and money
came luxury, and the arts, with the desire for portraits.
[Illustration: PLATE XLIX.]
Pliny tells of portraits made of wax, owned by the various families,
which were carried in funeral processions,—how these were considered as
belonging to the house and in case of the sale of the latter passed with
it to the new owner; such portraits as these would, like the earlier
Egyptian ones, tend to the purest realism of external appearance. He
mentions also the muniment rooms filled with records of ancestors.
Stress was laid on the actions of the illustrious dead in order that the
ensuing generations might be stirred to ambitious effort. Very different
is this from the Grecian sinking of the individual in the state. Roman
tombstones exhibit the same pride in great deeds and the same interest
in details. They are entirely different from the Greek grave monuments.
The Greek gives the name of the deceased, and sometimes a greeting to
the living wayfarer who may pass by and note the tomb; or, sometimes he
inscribed a plaintive verse—the expression of a broken heart—but nothing
more. How old were the dead? What had they done? No one now can tell.
Their course was run and the restless curiosity of later ages must
remain unsatisfied. On Roman tombstones all this is very different. They
tell us the age and family of the deceased, their occupation, what
offices they had held and their age even to days. In the cases where a
portrait of the dead person is added, it is treated in no general and
typical way; but the individual is set before us with unsparing
accuracy.
This interest in the events of each individual life led to the chief
difference between Roman and Greek portrait busts. The Roman thought of
the great men of his country as the persons who had done such and such
things rather than as the leaders of such and such policies.
Consequently, the Roman portraits suggest activity and not
repose,—action and not thought. The idea embodied in the bust is not of
a placid and meditative but of a positive and active cast. The
portraitist seems almost always to represent his sitters at the moment
when they were accomplishing the great deed that brought them fame. The
eyes are made expressive by being distinctly focussed, and this
expression is emphasised by the treatment of the brow, which oftentimes
is more or less wrinkled or contracted in a way that suggests vigorous,
passing, mental action. In many cases the ball of the eye is cut so as
to produce a strong shadow and thus to suggest the pupil. This also
makes the fixed look more intense, but unless the light is exactly right
it is apt to produce an unpleasant appearance.
That an artist should do this shows the desire for dramatic, restless
effects. The treatment of the lips and the part of the face about the
mouth also suggests an expression not typical of any general trend of
thought so much as of some momentary and strong emotion. Then the way
the head is set on the neck and turns sharply to one side or the other
can be understood only by supposing that the artist represented the
sitter as he appeared when employed on some one active and
characteristic piece of work. There is, for instance, in Corbulo none of
the Greek treatment of the individual as a type, but everything is done
to make more prominent the individualities of the man. And just as the
Pericles is not alone in its class, so too the Corbulo is matched by
many others, such as the Julius Cæsar, the Augustus, Caracalla or
Antoninus Pius (Plate XLIX).
[Illustration: PLATE L.]
As one looks at these Roman portraits one frequently feels that the
persons are on the point of moving. But notwithstanding this quality of
life which has led to their being called realistic, the best of them are
no more merely superficial in their realism than the best Greek busts.
Neither class is vulgarly realistic and imitative solely in the
external, but both depend for their effect on the correct comprehension
and presentation of actual phenomena of form and facial expression. The
different effect they produce is due to the fact that the Greek desired
an expression of the inner man, the man as he was to himself, while the
Roman desired the expression of the man as he showed himself to others.
Putting the case concisely, and remembering that such conciseness does
not express the completest truth, we may say that one was the portrait
of man as a thinker, the other of man as a doer.
In the foregoing explanation of the nature of Roman portraits, no
account has been taken of the numerous beautiful busts of children and
women that were carved by the sculptors of the Eternal City. At first
sight these seem to contradict the contention that the almost universal
intention of the Roman sculptor was to make a portrait of a single
sharply defined phase of his sitter’s personality. They seem to be done
rather in accordance with Greek taste; but closer study will reveal that
they are not truly Greek,—that their real nature is Roman and their
seeming Grecian spirit is an illusion due to accident and not to
intention.
Busts of children or women made to show character in action could never
resemble the Roman busts of men. The qualities that make the character
of men are non-existent, or at least undeveloped, in the child, and in
the woman take another form. The Greek by his generalising and typifying
process which brought about the production of placid figures was led to
express chiefly those qualities which produce similar effects in all
faces. The Roman, though searching for active expression still noted in
the child as the most beautiful and characteristic qualities, softness,
roundness and breadth of modelling, and the dignity of infantine
demeanour. Hence the Roman heads of children have a somewhat Greek look,
but in every part, as for example the hair, where stress can be laid on
accidental and purely individual appearance, this is done (Plate L). The
Greek appearance was inherent in the object; the most suggestive symbol
to express curled or straight locks was sought, but to carve hair in all
its fairness of strand, in all its waving masses or its fantasticalities
of fashion, was not the aim of the sculptor. In Roman work the hair is
scarcely ever conventionalised in a Grecian manner but shows the fashion
of the day. Usually, the head is not symmetrically placed, but is turned
to one side or the other, implying that the child’s attention was
attracted to some special object.
The same points are to be noted in the portraits of women. In their
faces as in children’s the beauty and softness of feature led to
something like a Greek breadth of modelling, but the hair and the action
of the head are purely Roman (Plate LI).
[Illustration: PLATE LI.]
The Florentine portraits show these same characteristics. Among them
also the children and women seem at first glance to be Grecian or
Venetian in character, but, when looked at more closely, one sees that
those features which are not mere copies of nature but which show
artistic intention are not Venetian, nor Greek, in character, but Roman.
Yet another class of Florentine monuments which are at first sight
misleading in the same way are the recumbent statues on tombs. In these
the Greek quality of quietness and repose is very marked and is due to
the artist being called upon to represent faces modelled by the stilling
touch of death and no longer to be thought of as showing active forces.
But even in these figures the intense actuality of feature, the lack of
conventionalising and typifying, is noticeable. In fact there is little
doubt that oftentimes the artist did his work not from sketches of the
living model but from a death mask.
If now we consider from a more general point of view this art of
portraiture and its relationship to times and peoples, certain things
become clear. Portraiture may be due, as in Egypt, to some religious
motive, but this is uncommon. Where it develops as an art, simply for
its æsthetic value, we note that it becomes a general practice only as
ideal and imaginative work loses ground. While the Greeks never, in a
certain sense, showed much imagination in their sculpture, it is
unquestionable that towards the end of the fifth century B.C., when
portraiture becomes prominent, the idealising and religious works
decrease and deteriorate. The same truth holds good in Italy during the
Renaissance, when much more imagination was shown than in Greece.[31]
Portraiture is due to a family interest in its own members or to a
people’s interest in an individual. It is not practised (for artists
such as Silanion are not true _portraitists_) by the artist to please
himself.
But whatever may be the interests, private or public, that call for
portraiture, the art becomes common only in times of centralisation,
times when large fortunes, and hence great power, are possessed by
individuals. Furthermore, no matter who may be the persons represented
(setting aside women and children) it is not possible to carve or paint
them except in one of two ways, as an embodiment of thought, or as an
embodiment of action. The former method appealed to Greeks and
Venetians,—the latter better pleased the Romans and Florentines. Both
are realistic because both strive to show in one way or another actually
existent forms and expressions. It depends on each man’s natural
temperament which will give him most satisfaction. Other methods are
frequently adopted in the modern struggle for originality, but it is
safe to say that they will exert little influence on the development of
art, for, while they may be clever devices, while they make certain
effective features particularly prominent, they are still unsatisfactory
because they produce at best but a partial likeness. If it be granted
that there are but two great methods of portraiture, there is yet no
reason to fear that dulness will ensue. The interest excited by the
individual man comes from the character shown.
There are just double as many portraits, potentially, as there are
individuals, and the interest of portraiture lies in what the artist
makes us comprehend of the nature of the man. Too often the public is
deceived into thinking that the work of handicraftsmen, with little or
no power of reading and understanding character, is to be judged as true
portraiture. Such work may be decorative in chiaroscuro, it may be
pleasant as colour; but the mere drawing of a face, even if what is
called a good likeness is produced, is not portraiture. It is but the
outer husk and dead wrapping hiding the vital germ within.
II. PHEIDIAS AND MICHAEL ANGELO
Different as were the lives and works of the two sculptors whose names
are more familiar to us than those of any others, there were,
nevertheless, many circumstances of closely related character that
affected their careers. But apart from such circumstances the
consideration of even those influences which were absolutely different
in the one case and in the other, exhibits clearly some of the broader
laws of the art practised by them both. In truth, it is the art rather
than the individual style of the sculptors that is worth study, for the
art is a language, the works but the expression of single ideas; the one
is a perpetual and constantly varying power, the other but separate
thoughts expressed.
Naturally the two interests, one that of becoming more familiar with the
products of the “fine intelligence of noble minds,” the other the more
abstract one of a more intimate knowledge of the powers and
possibilities of one of the fine arts, are inextricably combined. The
study of the two sculptors mentioned is particularly interesting owing
to the ever-increasing production of sculpture in our own day; and owing
to various conditions in modern life, there is a close relationship in
many important matters between us and these two masters of days long
past. Therefore, whatever can be certainly learned about them will help
us to appreciate more truly the work and workers of to-day and
to-morrow. Nothing can help more to attain this appreciation and
sympathy than the study of the great workers of past ages, even when
they may to a casual glance seem to be of somewhat remote interest.
The work of men such as Pheidias and Michael Angelo cannot be considered
by any serious student as in fact remote from our time and interests.
The study of the Past, particularly that part filled by Greece, becomes
every day more and more general and the influence of the Renaissance in
Italy upon modern thought and work is seen on every hand; here we come
to the first noteworthy fact regarding these two sculptors. It is not
going too far to say that all the best Greek sculpture, that is to say,
what was produced during the latter half of the fifth century before
Christ and the fourth century, was strongly influenced by Pheidias and
that his influence shows itself intermittently until the end of the
ancient world.
It would of course be too much to claim Pheidias as the originator of
all the qualities in sculpture which are apt, nowadays, to be named
Pheidian, but as the master who most adequately expressed the ideals
held in his time so far as sculpture allowed of their expression, he may
be used as the type; and among the varied interests which Michael Angelo
and the other students of the Renaissance found in Greek work were
several that may properly be called Pheidian.
This influence of Greek work on the Renaissance can hardly be over
estimated. It shows itself in many ways and with varying
force,—sometimes producing direct imitation of ancient works, then again
becoming manifest in new work done with the intention of reviving the
spirit of the ancient world. Michael Angelo did not fall under the spell
as completely as many of his less vigorously original contemporaries,
but it was no more to be entirely avoided by him than one of the laws of
nature. Thus with the work of the Greeks directly affecting us to-day in
a very similar way to that in which it affected the Italians in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and with the work of the later
period, deeply tinctured with the Grecian dye, also influencing us, it
becomes deeply interesting to find in what the greatest artists of the
two periods were alike and wherein they differed one from the other.
The influence of Pheidias on the art of his race was not so much that of
the originator or inventor as it was that of the poet, who gathering the
various and unconnected beauties that are felt by all, though less
keenly than by him, binds them together by the indefinable power of his
genius and gives back to the admiring world not separate things of
beauty but a standard of the beautiful and perfect. And this power of
genius deals with such finenesses, is so subtle, that oftentimes it is
almost beyond the power of words to make clear the manner of its
working. As the sensitiveness of the photographic plate is greater than
that of the eye, so the trained and perceptive eye notes much that can
only with difficulty be expressed by words. The genius is felt, it
thrills and vivifies the observer, but it cannot be expounded like a
problem in mathematics.
For this reason, we must believe, the few great writers on these matters
are oftentimes scoffed at by persons whose eyes have not been trained to
see nor their hearts to understand. Not that the scoffers can be blamed
for this unhappy sterility of their powers, for in most cases the
circumstances of life have not been of that fortunate kind which would
enable them to acquire the finer faculties. They are only to be blamed
in so far as either through envy or stupidity they refuse to believe
that others may be endowed with power which is lacking to them—power
dependent upon long and arduous training. It is a curious but familiar
phenomenon that the person who will not hesitate an instant to admit
that the trained rider or sportsman or oarsman can ride, shoot or row
better than he can, will energetically claim for himself as fine-seeing
an eye, or a mind as keenly interpretative, as the practised artist or
the scholar. That is, he asserts that the exercises of the body need
training, but those of eye and brain do not, a theory manifestly absurd.
The genius of Pheidias is so ultimate in its fineness that it needs long
training before it can be properly appreciated. If this is doubted, one
has but to consider the fact, that among all the numerous references to
him and his work which are preserved for us in ancient writers, not one
mentions him, as his elder contemporaries Myron, Pythagoras, Kalamis or
many others are mentioned, as having been the first to institute any
particular detail of carving. No new treatment of the hair, no new way
of representing the body, no special scheme of proportion are attributed
to him, and yet the absolute consensus of opinion was that he was the
unrivalled master of them all. Fashions changed, and a new one, that of
making collections, arose, which demanded the satisfaction of individual
tastes, but Pheidias’s fame knew no eclipse.
[Illustration: PLATE LII.]
Besides this subtle quality in his genius, this weaving of the various
beautiful threads spun by others into one consummate stuff, there are
other qualities that render his work difficult to appreciate. One is
that the ideals both of religion and of life were very different from
those of to-day, so that we have to lay aside all preconceived notions
and at first regard him as children who wonder but do not understand.
This is the hardest task the student ever has to master, to free himself
from the bonds of the conventions, beliefs and circumstances common to
his own day and study the work of another time with (so far as he can
accomplish it) an understanding sympathy with the conventions, beliefs
and circumstances belonging to those other days. Still a further
difficulty lies in the fact that there does not exist in the world one
single work of which we can say: this is truly and completely by
Pheidias. The marble figures from the Parthenon show his quality in many
respects clearly but these we know were worked upon by assistants. Other
works by him exist in copies, but for the most part these copies can be
shown to be bad and should be used as evidence only with the utmost
care. Yet, notwithstanding these difficulties, the image that we have of
him is, it can scarcely be doubted, clearly defined in the main
outlines.
How different is all this in the case of Michael Angelo! Here our
embarrassment is of a character diametrically opposed and comes from the
fact that we are so burdened with details about his life and work that
the really important matters are partially obscured by trivialities.
Contemporaries and fellow-workmen wrote his life; his letters and poems
have been preserved; documents of all sorts regarding his works exist,
and the works themselves are where they can be easily seen.
Beyond all these aids to our knowledge of the man we have, again, the
more vital one that the age in which he lived is almost as well
understood as our own, and many of the greater currents of thought and
action were but little different to those of the present time. Unlike
the Pheidian time, but like to-day, his was not a period when
governments deeply believed in the protection of their Gods nor one in
which the individual was scarcely considered except as a detail of the
state, nor when portrait statues were almost unknown. Conquest for the
love of gain, and commonwealths subdued to one will, were the rule. The
truly Greek period in the development of Italy, the time of the
blossoming of Venice, of Siena, of Florence had given way to the
Alexandrian epoch. Though the idea that the will of the masses should
govern the state was fortunately not yet formulated, the development of
individualism was well under way, and instead of men governing their
lives by general ideals they all sought to raise themselves on the
shoulders of their less fortunate brothers to enjoy a little while the
glory of a special and peculiar fame. Hence called as he was to lend his
power to the satisfaction of such desires as these, Michael Angelo’s
work was in many cases, in those, that is, where he was working for a
master other than his own instinct, tinged with a character utterly out
of accord with that of Pheidias, and yet curiously enough even in these
works there are signs of a strong undercurrent of feeling which would
have bound him and Pheidias together as the most sympathetic friends,
thus showing that at bottom art is not governed by circumstance of time
or place.
There were however certain very important aspects in which life as
Michael Angelo saw it in Italy, and particularly in Florence, was
curiously similar to what it was in Athens in the fifth century B.C. The
climate and general appearance of the two countries is even now not
unlike, and it must have been much less so in the time when the hills of
Greece were so forest-grown that Pan and the nymphs could really live in
comfort there, and before modern improvements had eradicated many of the
individual peculiarities of Italy. Then too the habits of the cultivated
classes were similar. Under very different forms the principles of
education seem to have been the same. The schooling shown in
Castiglione’s Cortegiano is like that given the Grecian youth. It was an
education which comprised, both in Greece and in Italy, music, drawing,
a knowledge of the thought and actions of past generations and a mastery
of all those exercises that conduced to self-defence or to the more
perfect development of the body. Similar training naturally taught the
men of these two worlds to see life in very similar ways, and although
the teachings of the Catholic Church were very different from those of
the Greek religion in regard to the relations between men and women, yet
life and instinct were stronger than the holy teachings, and in this
point too the simplicity and naturalness of the Greek found its
counterpart in Italy.
It is easy to see that the power exerted by these various influences on
the art of sculpture was very great, more so even than on the sister art
of painting, for it is on the realisation of what constitutes a fine
body, on the equal simplicity of treatment of the woman’s form and the
man’s, and the knowledge of what ideas can be best interpreted in terms
of form, that the art of sculpture depends. Art is but the translation
of emotion, and each particular art has a particular way of
accomplishing the translation; and in this, painting and sculpture are
more closely connected than any two other arts, so much so that
sculptors in the two greatest periods—the Greek and the
Renaissance—rarely considered their work as finished until the power of
colour had been used to heighten the effect, and often practised the two
arts coincidently. But during these two periods the limits imposed by
the materials of the various arts were clearly recognised and closely
adhered to, and in the best sculpture of the Renaissance there is no
more attempt to represent landscape or other purely colour effects than
in the Parthenon. Sometimes, however, as in the drapery of the Moses or
the modelling of the Pietà in St. Peter’s, Michael Angelo does seem to
overstep the limits of sculpture and to seek for effects which could be
more simply and much more intelligibly given in painting than in stone;
effects that need the manifold devices of light and shade and colour
which are at the disposal of the painter rather than the sculptor.