partly due to the fact that the foreground, where atmosphere has little
effect, is more studied than the background. To him as to Pheidias the
human figure was of the deepest interest, but its natural surroundings
of little or none, so the figures are drawn with a distinctness and
illumined with an intensity of light which make them look more solid and
material than many a painter’s work. It does not mean that Michael
Angelo failed to understand the function of painting as a Fine Art. The
true function of art is the presentation of the ideal and this is done
by the translation of emotion. This translation of emotion, when
accomplished with the motive of giving pleasure by pleasing the senses
or elevating the mind, produces the noblest art, for this search for
pleasure is in healthy minds but the search for beauty, and beauty is
the suggestion of the ideal. This being the general function of Art each
one of the Fine Arts follows in ways individual to itself the search
after beauty in the translation of emotion. Music is the most subtle and
architecture is the most general of the arts, and poetry the most
commonly understood, while painting and sculpture, the terms of which
are hardest to define, are the most closely related. As an art
architecture is an expression of man as a social animal. Painting and
sculpture are its proper adjuncts. Painting ought to be merely the
representation by colour of three dimensional spaces in two dimensions,
while sculpture should attempt nothing but the rendering of forms in
full or partial relief. Each art _per se_ has special powers, but when
used as a detail of work of another kind, its peculiarities must then be
suppressed till it is in accord with the work of which it is a portion
or detail.
Now this is exactly what Michael Angelo accomplished. It is natural for
painting, since it cannot represent figures in the round, to lay most
emphasis on the face, but when it is used to ornament the separate parts
of an architectural work, it must generalise its own peculiarities and
use them to enrich the architectural scheme. For in so far as painting
thus used impresses the beholder with its excellence as painting, by
just so far has the architecture become a frame for the painting and the
painting failed to be a glory added to the architecture. Michael Angelo
was a great enough genius to be able to use painting perfectly as an
additional splendour to his architecture.
You do not think of the figures or pictures on the Sistine ceiling as
separate works—in large measure the composition is such that you
cannot—so much as the finishing ornament of the Chapel. This is because
the artist did not put the greatest amount of expression into the faces,
it permeates equally the whole body. Thus these grand creatures look
like sculpture, which is in fact, as more similar in its permanence to
architecture, the noblest means of decorating a building. Ceilings
cannot, it is true, be covered with carved figures, and great care
should be chosen in the scenes depicted on them, for they do not offer a
suitable position in which to hang pictures that are primarily conceived
as pictures. This was a common mistake of the Venetians, who covered the
ceilings of the Ducal Palace, Santa Maria del’ Orto and countless other
buildings with elaborate paintings of subjects that have no
architectural significance and cannot be thought of as scenes taking
place in the heavens. They are in fact large easel pictures and as such
would be better seen if hung upright on the wall than in their present
position.
In the Sistine Chapel Michael Angelo showed his complete understanding
of painting as an ornament and finish to architecture, and in his easel
paintings he manifests, if not as complex effects as some painters, at
least as full a knowledge of what constitutes painting, from its roots
of drawing and composition to the full blossom of colour and expression.
Perhaps the most marked peculiarity of his paintings is the lack of
complex backgrounds of any sort, whether of landscape, or drapery, or
architecture. This again allies him to the Greeks, not to those of any
one age in especial, but to all, for the most marked difference (leaving
the less important matters of medium and technique aside) between their
paintings and those of modern times is, that they did not consider
backgrounds as a part to be treated with much elaboration or care.
The Greek painter, we know, presented his scene with only enough
suggestion of the surroundings in which the figures stood for the
beholder to understand the general character of the spot where the
action was taking place. He lavished his care on the figures, and did
nothing to distract the full attention of the beholder from them.
Michael Angelo did the same. In so far as he rivets your whole attention
to the figures on the canvas, his painting is sculpturesque, but this
word cannot be applied to his work in the sense that he was ignorant of
the principles of painting as an art of expression. That in his painting
as in his sculpture he tended to overstep what are generally considered
the proper limits of the art is true, but this was due rather to great
knowledge than to any imperfect understanding. At such times he was
striking out into the unknown realms of discovery and searching for new
possibilities for the arts of which he was the most accomplished master
of the time.
[Illustration: PLATE LIX.]
I have tried to show how the general beliefs and ideals of the people
among whom they lived would have tended to differentiate these two
artists one from the other in certain ways and to ally them in certain
others. But different or similar, can it be said of either: this one is
the greater? I think not, even though one recognises that Michael Angelo
certainly gave more varied expression to his genius. Neither of them
shows a more complete understanding of the arts, or embodies a fuller
realisation of the ideal in his figures, than the other.
Take for example Pheidias’s statues of Athena and Michael Angelo’s of
the Madonna. No artist could express all each of these beings suggests
in one figure, but it would be a hard task to find anything that they
did not show in one or the other of their several presentations. We know
with considerable accuracy what was the grandeur of the Athena
Parthenos, the guardian of her chosen people, and we also know the
divine rage felt by Athena the warrior Goddess driving Poseidon from the
sacred citadel; and finally we know by literary and probably by ocular
evidence with what consummate grace Pheidias represented Athena the
ideal of Attic maidenhood. There are many other statues of the Goddess
by other artists and from other periods but none I believe that add to
the realisation these three give us of what Athena was to the Athenians.
In the same way Michael Angelo shows us the feeling of his time towards
the Virgin. In the figure at Bruges we see the youthful figure—the
Virgin of the Visitation. In the partially finished group in Florence
there is more trouble in the face, the feeling expressed in the words
“behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” and “they
understood not the saying that he spake unto them” (Plate LIX). In the
Pietà in St. Peter’s her heart is numb with grief—the flood of sorrow
that has whelmed her is
“Such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound or foam,
When that which draws from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.”
Her figure as shown us by other lesser men seems trivial or incomplete
when these are remembered.
If one considers the larger undertakings of the two men, the Parthenon
and the Sistine Chapel, one cannot say that either surpasses the other,
though one can say with absolute security that neither has ever been
approached. In these works they show themselves the masters of all
craftsmen. Note the way in which the composition of the Parthenon groups
suits the long, low triangular space in which they are placed, each
group, taken as a whole, being made up of numerous lesser groups which
are quite perfect by themselves and so interwoven by means of upraised
arms or turned bodies or bits of floating drapery, that it is only after
careful observation that one sees how the artist made various parts
unite into one perfect whole. It is the acme of architectural sculpture.
It seems simple, but one searches in vain among the pediment groups that
have been made since for one that can approach it even distantly in
merit. It is this same intertwining of simple, unforced separate parts
into one grand, living completeness that marks out the ceiling of the
Sistine Chapel as a thing apart and unequalled.
To compare the more private, perhaps more personal works, of the two men
is impossible, for the reason that nothing of this sort made by Pheidias
has been preserved for us. There are a few such by Michael Angelo, some
from his earliest years, as the Battle of the Centaurs, others like the
David or perhaps the Eros. From these we get a suggestion regarding the
ideas which Michael Angelo thought were to be expressed by sculpture.
The bas-relief showing the Battle of the Centaurs can, however, scarcely
be taken into consideration, for it is a work of his mere boyhood and
shows little except unusual power for a youth and an interest, which
apparently did not last, in subjects drawn from ancient art. The man’s
unconventional and powerful nature is shown by the fact that in his
mature years he did not ever, as most contemporary painters and
sculptors did, try to copy the antique in any way. His own mind was too
active for him to adopt either the subjects or modes of other men’s
work. So, too, in the case of Pheidias, his work does not suggest that
of any predecessor, but in later periods of Greek sculpture the figures
which hark back in some way to Pheidian originals are innumerable.
In the David, in the figures in the Medici Chapel and those for the
Julian tomb one sees the same strained look: physical calm and great
strength combined with a marked expression of mental restlessness and
trouble, undoubtedly significant of Michael Angelo’s own feeling of
weariness and of the ‘powerful trouble’ that beset the world. Pheidias
came just at the acme of a great period. Michael Angelo, on the other
hand, felt that the light in the sky was that of the waning day, not of
the sunrise. His figures are sad; those by Pheidias are quiet and
peaceful. Society and the artist were in harmony in the case of the
Greek; they were not in accord in the case of the Florentine.
Every point we study brings us to the same conclusion, that while each
of these men was the supreme master of his time and of incomparable
capacity, Pheidias had less to struggle against than Michael Angelo; and
through being able to carry out his ideas unhampered, he had a better
effect on his followers than Michael Angelo, whose works are in the main
monuments of thwarted purpose. Each sought unceasingly to embody in his
work ideals of beauty beyond the influence of contemporary events. In
the one case this was possible, in the other not. To the Greek,
contemporaneity was nothing, to the Italian, it was all. Where Pheidias
was called on to decorate the chief public building of Athens with
scenes of war which were known only by popular tradition and which were
instinct with poetry, Michael Angelo had to depict a battle that was a
mere incident of border warfare. Each of these men, however, enriched
the world with works that are unsurpassed, and similar work will never
again be accomplished.
With the passing of the Greek world passed the ideals that inspired
Pheidias. Others came and faded away again with Michael Angelo. Their
works are immortal in the sense that in their kind they cannot be
superseded. But the arts themselves are not immortal, for this would
mean that they could not advance and develop. It is in this power of
growth and change and adaptation that art is allied to science, and we
turn to the most recent exponent of either with the incommensurable hope
that he may have found the master key to beautiful new worlds.
III. A HEAD OF ATHENA FROM CYRENE
In the first, and, as it was destined to be, the last report on the
excavations by the Archæological Institute of America at Cyrene,[35] I
published a marble head of Athena which we found a few inches below the
surface on the top of the Acropolis.
The spot where it was found afforded no clew to its origin. It came to
light in a small room constructed probably in the later Ptolemaic times,
and had obviously fallen and been lost to sight, by one of those
inexplicable accidents familiar to all excavators, on the spot where our
picks discovered it. No temple stood near; no trace of pedestal could be
found and no other fragment of marble came from the torn covering of
protecting earth to help answer the eager questioning the quiet face
aroused. Except for a flake off the hair, the tip of the helmet
projecting over the brow, the edge of one ear and the point of the nose,
the marble was as fresh as the day the figure was first unveiled to the
worshipping multitude. (Plates LX, LXI.)
The perfect head alone is left us to solve the riddles the archæologist
and artist may ask. Doubtless when in the oncoming years the Italians
have the satisfaction of finishing the work which we inaugurated and
made possible, further discoveries will dispel whatever doubts now
harass our minds, and students, forgetful of the time and circumstances
under which we wrought, will wonder why we hesitated, why we did not
see, why the closed lips did not speak to us with as clear a note as to
them. Doubtless, but still it seems likely that many years must elapse
before others will be able to finish our work, and in the meantime it is
well to bring this lovely bit of sculptor’s art more adequately to the
attention of students than seemed wise before the hope of continuing the
excavation was blighted by the careless hand of war.
Before studying the special characteristics of this head of Athena and
showing how, notwithstanding the very numerous representations of the
warrior Goddess which we possess, it is entirely individual and unlike
any other, we may do well to recall certain facts regarding Cyrene as a
centre of Greek life and thought, facts that are not open to question,
being proved by historical and other positive evidence. The accounts
given by the ancient historians and poets of the foundation and rapid
rise to wealth of Cyrene were sufficient to make us certain that the
archæologist’s spade would find in plenty those beautiful monuments of a
long-since vanished spirit which make the work of the excavator on Greek
soil so entrancing and satisfying.
Even at inaccessible Cyrene, however, we were not the first. In the
early sixties of the last century, Smith and Porcher, two fine examples
of men of English breadth of view combined with well-trained and
persistent capacity, had brought to light a considerable number of bits
of sculpture which showed clearly that Cyrene, like every other Greek
city, had once been a kindly nurse to artists. True though it be that
these broken fragments now sheltered in the British Museum were, with
the exception of a magnificent bronze head, of second-rate quality,
still they dispelled all doubt regarding one very important point; that
is, they showed that at Cyrene itself there were large numbers of
sculptors whose technical skill was of a high order. That there were
numerous sculptors was proved by the fact that the works found by Smith
and Porcher embraced a long stretch of years.
[Illustration: PLATE LX.]
At first sight this fact may appear little noteworthy, and its bearing
on our Athena head may not be perceived. It takes on a fresh aspect,
however, when we realise that there is no marble to be found within
hundreds of miles of Cyrene, and, in consequence, the stone must have
been imported to the city. It might be suggested that not the marble but
the finished carvings were imported, as we know from literary evidence
was sometimes done in other parts of the Greek world. Had the English
and ourselves found only one or two examples of supreme merit, this
theory might be tenable. No one, however, will attempt to uphold it in
the face of the numerous busts, statues, bas-reliefs, grave monuments
and inscriptions, many of which are of very little importance, which
were dug up by the Englishmen and ourselves. Portrait busts alone show
that Cyrene had her own sculptors who, even though they lacked the
advantage their _confrères_ of many Greek cities had in near-by
quarries, managed to overcome the difficulties Nature put in their way
and struggled to a mastery of their chosen art. The bearing of this on
the Athena will become manifest as we go further into the study of the
subject.
If only another Pausanias, one might suggest, had gone sightseeing and
note-taking along the surprising shores of Libya, our work of
interpretation had been far simpler. But though we are not helped by
such written evidence, we can still discover the essential qualities and
meanings of these sculptures, and the diggers who in years to come drive
our trenches deeper into the ground will find nothing more unexpected
than the Athena, for she is the drifted seaweed that proves the still
invisible land. In fact, I for one am glad we have no Pausanias to dull
the edge of our wits with his bald and often erroneous statements. He
has helped much in making it possible to draw up chronological tables
and schedules of all sorts regarding the development of Greek sculpture,
yet had he never written, the true understanding of the art, the
comprehension of the forces that moulded it from the days of its early
promising effort through its bloom of unchallenged perfection on to its
phosphorescent decay, would have been not less full and possibly even
more intelligent than it is to-day. Pausanias and others of his kind
have handed down many names which mean, in truth, no more to us than the
titles “master this” or “master that” of the mediæval German school of
painting. Such facts and data are of infinitely little importance. Even
without them the razor-sharp critical powers of a Heinrich Brunn or an
Adolf Furtwaengler (before he gave up his energy to acrimonious and
petty dispute) were not to be denied and without any fictitious aid of
names would have interpreted Greek art to us. That there are always
blind souls who, when they see the Hermes of Praxiteles, think it Roman,
and consider the Maiden of Anzio a work of the time of the Antonines,
and who find other blind souls to follow them, does not delay the Brunns
and Furtwaenglers when they make their rare appearance in the world of
scholarship.
Thus with no help or suggestion derived from information given us by
ancient travellers we start on our study of the Athena with the
knowledge that the technique of the art of sculpture was so well
understood, and the practice of it so common, at Cyrene, that we need
not, unless forced by internal evidence, look elsewhere for the nameless
sculptor who carved this masterpiece. The result will show that all the
internal evidence is in favour of its Cyrenean origin.
Since, then, sculpture was at Cyrene, as everywhere else in the Greek
world, one of the common modes of expression, it remains for us to study
the influences to which it was subjected. We meet here the strange
phenomenon that the millennial-old civilisation of Egypt exerted
apparently no influence whatever on the young Greek town to the west.
That towards the end of the latter’s career, when she had fallen under
Ptolemaic control, she should be unaffected by Egyptian thought is not
surprising, for Egypt herself had at that time submitted to the spell of
Greece, and the true Egyptian art must have seemed to the fellahin who
then cultivated the Nile valley almost as strange as it does to us. If,
however, the often-expressed theory, supposed to be borne out by certain
statues found on the Acropolis of Athens and elsewhere, that the archaic
sculptors of the Greek mainland were more or less governed by Egyptian
ideals, be true, then it is odd that even the most archaic art of
Cyrene, represented by statuettes of the sixth century B.C., does not
exhibit a similar tendency. But this belief in the Egyptian influence on
the artists of Greece is based, it seems to me, on unsound evidence.
There are obviously two, and only two, chief points to consider, if one
would fully understand a work of art. One is its outer form, the other
what it is trying to express; for even the childish and misdirected
efforts of the “Futurists” are an endeavour to express something—how
futile these efforts are is shown by the fact that were it not for the
titles given the works by the Futurists themselves no one, no matter how
capable an artist or how mystical a dreamer, could possibly guess what
they were intended to represent. The works show an even greater
confusion of mind than that of Father Castel who in the early part of
the eighteenth century attempted to make instruments which he called
_clavecin des couleurs_ and _clavecin des odeurs_, instruments intended
to produce by means of changing colours and perfumes the same effects as
music.
Now one thing in very truth Greek art never was, either in poetry,
sculpture, painting, or in any other form: it was never confused, but
had always perfect lucidity. In sculpture, for instance, the composition
of the groups and figures, though often displaying an intricacy almost
as great as that of a knot by Leonardo, is never anything but clear to
the trained eye. To understand the value of this quality one need only
look at the work of Rodin, which, no matter what elements of greatness
it may be thought to have, certainly has not one slightest atom of Greek
quality. Besides the evil of confusion another failure sculpture may
show is the stagnation of formalism. This is one of the most noticeable
features of Egyptian art. Notwithstanding the wonderful technical
dexterity of the workers in that land, hieratic influences were too
strong for them and their natural impulses were shackled by the bonds of
dogma. This blight, too, the Greeks avoided. What then is the ground for
maintaining that their early art was influenced by Egypt? That the early
sculptors may have learnt many technical processes from Egyptians I
would neither deny nor affirm. They may even have had Egyptian teachers,
just as later the Romans had Grecian ones, but that does not mean that
Greek art was of necessity moulded in accordance with Egyptian feelings
and ideals.
True it is that there are certain Greek statues which resemble in pose
and stiffness certain Egyptian statues, but there is a fundamental
difference between the two groups. The pose is an accident and can be
duplicated in work from other parts of the world. The fundamental
difference is that the stiffness of the Greek work does not represent
the formalism of Egypt, but it is due to the awkwardness of
inexperience. Take, for instance, the “Aunts” found on the Athenian
Acropolis. They are by an unpractised, stiff hand and in that sense they
are formal; but they are far more, delightfully spontaneous. Such work
would have been inconceivable to an Egyptian and would have seemed to
him irreligious and indecent. It is not to be thought that Greek art
even in its period of fullest bloom was not formal; it was. It was the
wonderful talent of the Greek clearly to understand the laws proper to
the various arts, but he was always spontaneous and original, and his
work exhibits formality but not formalism.
These qualities are seen in the earliest work found at Cyrene, the
terra-cottas already mentioned. That they should be so manifested is but
another proof of the amazing force and individuality of the Greek mind.
Any other race would almost surely have felt the influence of Egypt. Her
territory joined that of Cyrene on the eastern border and the land
between the city and the Nile offered no barriers of mountains or desert
to hinder easy and comparatively rapid communication, yet the outer form
and inner content of these early Cyrenean figures is completely and
unmistakably Greek. That traders passed back and forth from one region
to the other cannot be doubted. Caravans plodded their slow way from the
sacred fountain to the mysterious river, coastwise boats skirted the
inhospitable shore even as they do to-day. The Greek, then as now the
costermonger of the Mediterranean, made his money, but he kept his
individuality. Throughout the centuries, until at last spiritual
aloofness was trampled down by a ruder and more powerful race, at Cyrene
as completely as at Athens, the Greek maintained his own standards and
beliefs. As the clumsy terra-cottas, wrought not very long after the
first settlers were guided to the spring which made a great city
possible, show this, so also does the Athena. Individual she is, and
unique, but she is pure Greek. The reasons for some part of her
individuality will become clear as we study her still further.