ASPECTS OF THE ART OF SCULPTURE
Reading edition
57
I. THE ART OF PORTRAITURE
All students have noticed the similarity in style between certain Egyptian portraits and other works by ancient Roman as well as Florentine artists, and the resemblance in style that exists between Greek and Venetian portraits. Also there is a marked dissimilarity between the Egyptian-Roman-Florentine Group on the one hand and the Greek-Venetian Group on the other; and these two facts suggest the conclusion that the art of portraiture consists in something more than the mere photographic imitation in stone, or with paint, of the human face or figure. Were such imitation the essential factor in the art the only differences in portraits of different epochs would be those of ethnographic character. The special characteristics of portraiture as of the other arts at any given period are the result of the intellectual and material condition of the people to whom the artist belongs. Style, that is the distinguishing quality of the work of art, the quality which differentiates it from a work of another period or race, is the result, largely unconscious, of the relation of the artist to life and its effect upon him. The material, the means by which he gives expression to his endeavour at creation or representation, is of minor importance.
The Sheik-el-Beled (Plates XLI, XLII) and the bust of Scipio so called (Plate XLIII) might almost be portraits of brothers; and the family is increased by a little Egyptian head 58in the museum in Venice, and by some of the men immortalised by Donatello. So too Pericles as we see him in the bust by Kresilas seems separated by but a narrow margin from Giorgione’s Knight of Malta. And yet in blood, traditions, circumstances and hopes these men were the poles asunder.
How then is this likeness of certain portraits to one another to be explained unless by the existence of some connection dependent on the temper of the artist?
There is still another curious likeness and another difference to be noted among the carved and painted portraits of various epochs and schools. While the head of Corbulo is unlike that of Pericles in the æsthetic impression it gives, and that of Angelo Doni by Raphael also is æsthetically unlike the Duke of Norfolk by Titian, still the carved heads have a common bond as have also the painted ones.[19] They do not make the two broad groups into which I have, for the sake of making plain a general idea, divided portraits æsthetically similar, but they make plain when understood that painted portraits are necessarily different from carved ones—different in more than the mere fact that one is round and the other flat. The difference springs deep down from what is possible to attain by either art. The sculptor of the Pericles and the painter of the Norfolk both set before us the grave, elegant and stately face of a bearded man in middle life. Neither artist distracts our attention by bravura or technique or by realistic emphasis of detail. Though stylistically similar, these works still do not impress our minds in the same way. The following pages will be clearer if I say at once that this differing mental impression arises because in busts our attention is drawn chiefly to the mouth while in painted portraits it is turned on the eyes. This is due to the special laws of the technique by which the works are produced; given a painter and sculptor with the same point of view and the same mental tendencies, the portraits produced by them, even of the same person, though evidently expressing the same intellectual qualities both of artist and of sitter, are in modes of expression and certain external aspects necessarily unlike. In pursuing this investigation and in discussing the existence and nature of the various laws the governance of which I have suggested, the history of the rise and spread of portraiture must be kept in mind.
Plate XLI.
59Before the intention of the maker of portraits can be comprehended the motives that lead to the desire of the public or of private individuals to possess such work must be understood. In the main they are two,—one religious and one historic; to these may be added a third, that of sentiment and friendship. The religious cause is best illustrated by Egyptian statues, of which a large proportion were made to be placed in tombs. These are the earliest portraits of western origin which exist in sufficient numbers to afford a sound basis of criticism. The well-known dependence, in that country, of these works on religious prescriptions needs hardly more than passing mention. That the soul of dead mortals might, returning to this earth and to the tomb, find its accustomed corporeal dwelling place, portrait statues of the deceased were placed in the sepulchral chamber.
Holding this belief, it was only natural that the sculptors often made statues life-size, and as closely resembling 60the dead original as possible, in order that the soul might find a shelter exactly similar to its original living one. Had they not been so made, the soul would have been troubled in its search. Work such as this was of course expensive and the mass of the people had to content themselves with smaller and less elaborate figures or with mere glazed figurines. But the more rare elaborate works show the ideal and serve as a sure guide in studying the conceptions and hopes of this or any people—just as the gold treasure from Mycenæ is of much greater value than all the terra-cotta vases in showing the life and thoughts of the time.
Other portraits of Pharaohs and their queens, of priests and generals, were carved on temple walls or set up to commemorate striking events, and these also were made realistic because of the egotistic idea that called them into being. Unless the person portrayed was carved realistically the commemorative value of the monument was lessened. These religious and commemorative ideas influenced the sculptors in their choice of material. Both the desire to make an enduring image of the dead for the sake of the soul that might return and the wish to make the memory of the person as enduring as possible led the sculptors to make use of the hardest stones; stones such as do not lend themselves to sculpture and such as are never used where the art develops in accordance with cultivated taste rather than special demand.[20] But though exactness of likeness was tirelessly sought for by the Egyptians (I refer of course to the earlier epochs before the influx of Greek or Roman ideas), it was not attained with the same success as in later days by the Romans and Florentines.
Plate XLII.
61This failure was in part due to the use of unyielding material, such as granite and basalt. Successful representation, in such stone, of the finer details of facial form, was practically impossible, and furthermore, owing to the dark and variegated colour of these stones, would have been scarcely noticeable could it have been attained. Hence the sculptors were led to practise a certain broadness of treatment that makes their work seem, to careless observation, like the Greek; but though one of the chief charms of Greek work is broadness, it is the outcome of very different causes and, if carefully studied, is seen to produce a very different effect from that of Egyptian work.[21]
Any phenomenon is due to mixed causes, and it must not be supposed that the use of hard materials alone led to breadth of treatment. The conventional position of the figures in Egyptian art (due in large measure to various non-æsthetic causes) was suited better by a broad and conventionalised treatment of the face than by more particular niceness in the rendering of its detail.[22] Religious feeling led to the placing of quietly posed statues in the tombs, and as regards 62the figures of the great rulers whose word was law, attitudes expressive of the calm that results from absolute power were best fitted to express the current beliefs. These attitudes were also restrained in consequence of the refractory nature of the stones used.
It is interesting to consider what would have been the development of sculpture in Egypt had the art been freed from the necessity of conforming to the demands of religion and contemporary history. One searches in vain among the masses of Egyptian sculpture for the expression of the individual sculptor’s emotions. We do not even know the names of the sculptors. They were not noted by their contemporaries nor did interest in their work lead them to sign it. Sculpture in that antique land was not a fine art in the sense of being chosen by men of special tastes and feeling to express the enjoyment felt by them in certain forms. It was a highly developed handicraft, a technique pursued by rule. As illustrative of the character, the life and the thought of the people portrayed it is allied to Roman work rather than to Greek.
Religion is seen to influence portraiture in another way. Many pictures, the subjects of which are religious, by Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and others, are filled with portraits, but these are essential to the composition, and are thought of as figures first, as portraits afterwards. But there are many sacred pictures of the Renaissance in which, with varying degrees of simplicity and frankness, a portrait of the donor of the painting is inserted not as an essential part of the composition but because of the desire of the donor to secure lasting recognition of the fact that he had fulfilled his religious vows and duties. It was an accepted proof of respectability in this 63world and might possibly help in the next. Neither in Egypt nor in this class of pictures of the Renaissance are the works thought of primarily from the point of view of being artistic reproductions of the human face, but they are means to an end. They are in fact symbols. Work of this sort is so rare in Greek or Roman art that it may be considered as practically non-existent.[23]
The personal portrait, the portrait made for the sake of gratifying the self-esteem of the person represented, is well exhibited in Egyptian work in the bas-reliefs illustrating the conquests of the Pharaohs and in the colossal statues erected in a spirit of pride and self-glorification such as was exhibited again by the Romans. Such portraits as these are a certain indication of the all but universal desire for glory and fame. They are an expression of the same confident spirit that leads the owners of great buildings to carve their names over the entrance and are produced in large numbers only during periods when individuals seek eagerly for personal recognition.
Such periods occur when large stores of money are possessed by private persons; then religious beliefs grow faint, in men’s if not in women’s[24] minds, and the quiet and enduring appreciation of a few objects gives way to the excited pursuit of constant novelty in enjoyment. Consequently instead of being content with philosophic moderation men attribute an untrue value to mere possession, and, since money can buy many 64material things, come to the false conclusion that he who has the most is to be ranked among the world’s greatest sons.
But the qualities needful for amassing riches are by no means rare and in the main are correlated with lack of interest in the Past and with undeveloped imagination. Hence ignorant of, or at least not sympathetic with, the more subtle but more effective types of men who work not with money but with personal character, the wealthy naturally come to think of themselves as individually interesting and important, and in consequence their portraits are made in every shape and size. Such works cannot, as regards the person portrayed, be of much interest, and are usually ugly, because the lives and occupations of people invariably affect the forms and expressions of their faces. The exceptions to this rule are the portraits of such men as Lorenzo dei Medici, or others of our own day who use their inherited or acquired wealth in the patronage of the arts and sciences—who use their powers indirectly for the cultivation of ideals.
Such portraits as these are of varying character. They may be public, put up, that is, by a grateful and flattering people to commemorate a ruler or chief citizen, as in the case of Gattamalata in Padua and Colleone in Venice; or they may be of purely private interest and intended only for the eyes of the successive generations of the family to which the person depicted belongs. But public or private, in the one case as in the other, the desire for them being due to personal regard and love of fame, an accuracy in the reproduction of feature is sought that distinguishes them clearly from portraits made with other less worldly motives.
Plate XLIII.
65It is known of course that this desire for fame stirred the hearts of oriental potentates long centuries before the beginning of connected history. But in that classic part of the ancient world with which we are intimately related, it does not become specially noticeable till the time of Alexander. It was an active factor in life during the existence of the Roman world, and again in the Renaissance. One of the phenomena most indicative of this aspiration is the character of the monuments placed on graves, and particularly the inscriptions on such stones. On the Greek grave stones we find often enough the name of the deceased but rarely if ever any intimate notice of his life. On Roman and Renaissance monuments, on the other hand, the length of life, and the honorific offices held, are all given with wearisomely full detail.
Portraits made for friendship’s sake are uncommon and do not, I believe, occur before the time of the Renaissance. Then one hears of friends sending their portraits to one another. In Rome a somewhat similar custom was practised to a certain extent, as is shown by the portraits on rings and cameos. Such work, meant as it was for personal adornment, must have been, at least in part, inspired by the tender regard of friend for friend. But it seems not to have been a common custom in the ancient world; just why it would be hard to tell, for no more inviolable friendships have ever been known than those told of in ancient history and drama, nor more tender feeling than is expressed in many of the inscriptions on ancient tombstones. Perhaps it was that the house architecture of those days was but little adapted to the displaying of such objects, and the collection by private individuals of things was but little practised except in Rome, and 66even there collectors were comparatively few. However this may be, the fact remains that the portraits of the ancient world were in the main religious or commemorative, and the idea of friendship being maintained or strengthened by the possession of the dumb semblance of absent dear ones seems to have grown and spread with the Christian religion.
At first sight it appears as if there were three ways of making portraits—the sculptor’s, the painter’s, and the writer’s. It is not however in any true sense a portrait that a writer sets before us. This is beyond his power to accomplish. He is unable, that is, to give various readers such impression of the look and carriage of the person described that they can inevitably recognise him in the passing crowd. Continuous and sequent events may be described by words, but they cannot show instantaneously isolated images. Masters of style can call up visions to the mind by well-selected epithets, but such visions are typical rather than actual; and they are of scenes of considerable scope, or of actions of dramatic quality, rather than accurate images of facial form and expression such as in the only true sense of the word, can be called portraits.
So far as art in the sense of reproduction is concerned, it is evident that language can be used for description, for suggestions of moods and general conditions, but not for showing in a sharp and quickly defined manner a given scene or object at a given moment. When Shelley speaks of
The obscene ravens, clamorous o’er the dead;
The vultures to the conqueror’s banner true
Who feed where Desolation first has fed,
And whose wings rain contagion,—
Plate XLIV.
67he calls to mind most vividly conditions consequent on war, but before no two readers of the lines will the same visions rise. To see such horrors as Shelley writes of, presented so that all beholders will regard them in the same way, we must turn to such a work as Turner’s Rizpah.[25]
The Greeks, it is interesting to note in this connection, recognised this limitation of the power of words and rarely tried to delineate the actors in their poetry and drama by other means than the description of traits of character. It may be said that the Greeks also did not attempt landscape in their writing. True, but we have every reason to know that the Greek mind was not interested seriously in beauties of landscape, while we know that it was deeply concerned with the characters and actions of individuals. Landscape was not studied by the Greeks as an end in itself, whereas portraiture was. Hence the absence of an attempt at portraiture in their literature by other means than description of character is the natural result of their mental tendencies. Such description can of course be accomplished by language with greater certainty than by sculpture or painting. It can give such an impression of the nature of a person that there is no more room for doubt concerning the qualities that constitute that nature than there is concerning the colour of eyes that have been put on canvas by some painter. Take any example and it will appear that when an author tries to stir the imagination to form an image of a character, he does it mainly by describing carefully his nature rather than his personal appearance, 68and when he attempts to do more than this, he suggests inevitably a different vision to every reader. Shakespeare’s sonnets are sufficient evidence of the truth of these statements.
I should not wish to imply that writers, even the greatest of them, do not sometimes attempt to depict persons by elaborate descriptions, but a comparison of any two illustrated editions of an author will show my contention to be correct. The inefficiency of the means and the inadequacy of the result has been recognised by the masters of literature. And it needs but to compare a word portrait with a painted one of the same person to be convinced of the painter’s greater power in this work. Take Shelley’s lines describing the crazed musician:
There the poor wretch was sitting mournfully
Near a piano, his pale fingers twined
One with the other, and the ooze and wind
Rushed through an open casement, and did sway
His hair, and starred it with the brackish spray;
His head was leaning on a music book,
And he was muttering, and his lean limbs shook;
His lips were pressed against a folded leaf
In hue too beautiful for health, and grief
Smiled in their motions as they lay apart—
As one who wrought from his own fervid heart
The eloquence of passion, soon he raised
His sad meek face and eyes lustrous and glazed
And spoke—sometimes as one who wrote and thought
His words might move some heart that heeded not
If sent to distant lands.—
As a portrait the failure of these verses lies in the fact that the attention of the reader is hurried on from point to point like a storm-driven bird and never allowed to rest. Look, for half the time it takes to read the lines, at Titian’s Concert, and you have a much more definite image of a musician. It is 69just because of this unrest of the attention, due to continued introduction of some new feature of importance, that poets and writers of prose are much more successful when they endeavour to reproduce a landscape, for it is a natural tendency, as we look at any scene of nature, for the eyes to wander over the hills and far away. They cannot seize the essential points instantaneously and they cannot apprehend the interrelation of the details as when they look at a person’s face and figure.
Sometimes the poet—it is generally a poet, for the epithets that poets use are apt to be more carefully chosen and so have greater graphic force than those of prose writers—seems to succeed in portraiture, but if you will consider closely, it will be seen that the success is fictitious. It is due to our having a ready-formed picture of the character of the person described which is suited by the poet’s words, as in Browning’s lines:
You know we French stormed Ratisbon,
A mile or so away
On a little mound Napoleon stood
On our storming day
With neck outthrust, you fancy how,
Legs wide, arms locked behind,
As if to balance the prone brow
Oppressive with its mind.
But to one who had never seen a picture of Napoleon what image would these lines give? Or, take Lowell’s lines on Lincoln. Not a word in them concerning the outward appearance of the Martyr Chief; but the attempt, successful to the uttermost, is made to impress on the reader’s mind what there was of him to think of, not to look at:
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God and true.
70These epithets offer no suggestion that can be visualised, nor is there when we note
... that sure mind’s unfaltering skill
And supple tempered will
That bent like perfect steel to spring again and thrust.
And then finally, to sum up:
Here was a type of the true elder race,
And one of Plutarch’s men talked with us face to face.
Vivid and eloquent as all this is, it offers no picture of the tall, gaunt President. It is but a suggestion of mental conditions. It does not show the deep-set eyes, sorrowful with the sorrows of two races, or the firm mouth lined with the humour that helped him to bear his burden of care. Plutarch himself does not show us Cæsar, or Pericles, or Demosthenes or any other worthy, as the sculptors do.
Possibly it might be suggested that in such poems as those quoted the writer had no intention of giving a suggestion of the outer husk that hides the inner man; but there is one class of poems—the love lyrics—in which the passion-driven bard would surely, could it be accomplished, give the immortality of portraiture to the beloved. But those “dear dead women,” the ever-renewing Spring brood of Sappho, Chloris, Lesbia, Lalage and Doris, are but the vague dwellers of dreamland. Sometimes they are dark and sometimes fair; they have cheeks that shame the rose, and eyes whose glance overwhelms as does the bolt of Jove; their brows are white as driven snow, and a nest for little loves is in their bosom—but can we ever be sure that we recognise from such description each particular Lesbia as, waiting and watching at the corner, we hopefully murmur “She comes, she’s here, she’s past”? Such 71words as these form a portrait only for that one love-stung heart that beats the overtone to the note of Lesbia’s footfall.
No, the writer cannot, in any adequate sense, place before us portraits.
Literature being excluded as a means of portraiture, it remains to consider sculpture and painting. In order to understand why painted and carved portraits showing similar types with equal distinctness and emphasis produce very different effects on the observer and hold his attention in different ways, study must be made of the different results possible to attain by these arts. If these general propositions in regard to the two arts be true, the demands and characteristics of portraiture will become plainer.
The fundamental distinction between sculpture and painting lies in the fact that the former concerns itself not always, but primarily, with light and shadow and fully modelled forms, while the latter deals chiefly with colour. Furthermore, painting works in two dimensions, while sculpture exercises herself with three. Hence, figures in positions that are much contorted or groups that are complexly organised in retreating planes are unsuitable subjects for a painter, inasmuch as he cannot represent them clearly except at the expense of infinite labour. If the sculptor, on the other hand, chooses such subjects, he is not hampered by the difficulties that block the painter’s path. His finished work can be looked at from all sides, and he is not liable to the painter’s risk that his final effect may, perhaps, be ruined by a misuse of light and shade or by faulty drawing and perspective.
The advantage, however, is not altogether on one side. The 72sculptor has this other difficulty to contend with, that the appearance of his work will change with every change of light. The painter can fix whatever light he pleases on his canvas. As the appearance of the sculptured work will vary with the light, the sculptor can attain but partial success in the representation of figures or scenes in which much active emotion is shown in the faces. But in such scenes as these a painter’s power can well be shown, since, owing to his ability to paint any power of light (except, of course, direct sunlight), and his power of placing the various figures of a group in various lights, and by means of varied tints and lights being able to bring sharply into notice any expression of the face, he can well depict most violent emotion. It will be found, I think, that the sculpture which is most successful deals with groups or figures whose meaning is made clear by action and by the form of the body as a whole, and the paintings that are most successful are those in which effects of chiaroscuro, colour and facial expression are the most satisfactory method for making the figure intelligible. Several facts which will be readily acknowledged show the truth of this statement. For instance, Veronese, Rubens, Tintoretto, Velasquez when painting scenes the interest of which depends on the individual figures appearing in them (not such scenes as Paradise, Hell or battles where the interest is in the masses and spaces), compose them mainly in one plane. Also if single heads be taken from pictures and from sculptured groups, it will usually be found that the former give a fuller impression of the artist’s intention than the latter.
Plate XLV.
Every rule has exceptions and among Michael Angelo’s sculptures are works in which he sought to reproduce effects 73of light and shade and expression that if given by painting would have been more successful because the latter would have expressed the artist’s intention more clearly; and in certain of his paintings he attempted effects of form that could be given more satisfactorily by sculpture. Done by any less a genius than Michael Angelo, such work would be either ineffective or laboured. Done by him one can but marvel at his mastery over the sister arts that enabled him to approach so closely to the effects proper to the one while using the means offered by the other. But such success as he attained does not prove soundness in the principles that led him to make the attempt. A tour de force is but the attempt to attain a result by means other than the best. It may be successful, but it must be unsatisfactory. It is unreal, impractical; it is a form of jugglery!
To see how similar scenes are treated in the two arts, compare the group of Niobe and her Children with the Massacre of the Innocents as painted by the Renaissance artists.[26] In such comparison trivial details must not be too much regarded, for of the Niobe group there consists but one incomplete set of copies of the original figures and of the Massacre of the Innocents each one of us probably considers a different artist’s conception of the scene most effective. But the general impression given by Niobe and her children is that of bodies driven into violent motion by fright, what might be called frightened motion; the figures are rushing from one spot to another in search of safety; they bend and cower in terror of 74the peril. They are the incarnation of dread of physical suffering. The impression of the Massacre of the Innocents is one of faces contorted by horror. The action of the bodies is of less concern. The attention is drawn to the eyes, the mouths, the hands, the three chief outlets of mental feeling. The sufferers in the scene are moved by the horror of unjustifiable slaughter. They are the incarnation of anger, revolt and despair induced by the sight of pitiless massacre.
In portraiture the painter and sculptor are drawn together because the greatest interest of the work is centred in the face, which is the clearest index of thoughts and emotions. Both sculptors and painters even when making figures of life size are limited in portraiture to seeking their chief effects in the treatment of the face. But though so far working in common, the painter and sculptor still have different aims; for that part of the head the expression of which can be more strongly accented and more completely reproduced by the use of colour and a chosen shade and light, is the eyes; while that part the expression of which can be most adequately rendered by modelling is the mouth. This is the reason why portraits similar in style, such as those above mentioned, the bust of Pericles, and the painting of the Duke of Norfolk, attract our attention in different ways. In the bust the most noticeable feature is the firm but sensitive mouth, in the painting it is the steady, but vivid, eye.
Mindful of these conditions that govern the art of portraiture we find it easy to see how the artists of various epochs have conformed to them. This may seem to be putting the cart before the horse; to be fitting the facts to the theory. But it is not so,—it is merely searching for proof of a working hypothesis. The theory was suggested by the phenomena and it will be seen to explain these phenomena.
Plate XLVI.
75The study of Greek sculpture is at present seriously hampered by statements and beliefs concerning it which arose at a time when its place in the history of art was very inaccurately understood. These have been repeated so often that they are frequently accepted without being critically weighed in the light of recent knowledge. It is a unique and very perfect art, but the causes and qualities of its perfection are sometimes misunderstood. Justifiable admiration has out-weighed the critical faculties. It is generally thought to be more imaginative and ideal than is in fact the case. The quality of realism is not usually attributed to such a work as the portrait bust of Pericles. And yet this bust is quite as realistic, though not so prosaic, as that of the Roman general Corbulo. I mention these two because they are very generally known; but many others such as the Demosthenes, Sophocles, Cæsar, Caligula would do equally well. The word realism is reserved too much for those works in which the artist has represented the forms that would be first noticed by the casual observer and, in this limited sense, the Corbulo is far more realistic than the Pericles; but realism is just as truly displayed in works in which the forms, while reproducing those of the model, may perhaps not be the most obvious ones and though the juxtaposition of them be not their most common combination. In this sense the Pericles is as realistic as the Corbulo. Greek realism in portraits deals chiefly with faces and figures in repose; Roman realism deals in the main with faces and figures in action.
It is noteworthy that portraiture was a late development of 76sculpture in Greece. We know, for instance, of no contemporary portraits of Solon or Peisistratus, and there exist in museums and private collections extremely few busts or statues of the period preceding the middle of the fifth century B.C., that have the character of portraits. One reason of this doubtless was the feeling that the success which brought fame in its train was due more to the Gods than to the individual. The individual was an accident in the exhibition of beneficent power by the Gods, and consequently, so far as form and feature are concerned, was of no special interest. Furthermore, there was the feeling that the fame of individuals was due to and a part of the fame of the whole state; hence the individual was not apt to overestimate his own value nor to be thought of by his neighbours with any such feeling of special respect as is expected by, and often granted to, those who are “self-made.”
Over and above these causes was another which must have been largely responsible for the late development of portraiture and for its character when it began to be common. This was the Hellenic love of beauty. Divided though the Greeks were into numerous states, they were held together by bonds of language, tradition, religion and politics. But the bond that united them more strongly than all others, even than their hatred of barbarians, was their love of beauty. “Beauty the first of all things” says Isocrates “in majesty and honour and divineness. Nothing devoid of beauty is prized. The admiration of virtue itself comes to this, that, of all manifestations of life, virtue is the most beautiful.” The consequence of this feeling was to make the individual and imperfect man uninteresting to the artist while the general and typical figure became his supreme aim. When at last in the fifth century 77B.C. portraiture became more frequent than it had previously been, the perfect portrait was the one which gave most completely the impression of the general character of the man and not the one which gave the most vivid and striking representation of the separate features of his face.
Curiously enough the first portrait we hear of in Greece was a caricature of the poet Hipponax by Bupalos and Athenis, artists of the sixth century B.C. While caricature was attempted as early as this, as is shown by the drama, by terra-cotta figurines and by vases such as those from the sanctuary of the Kabeiroi in Bœotia, it may be questioned whether such a portrait of Hipponax ever existed. The details of the story, such as the suicide of the artists owing to the satirical attacks of the poet, are scarcely credible, and if we remember the very strange and unlifelike appearance of archaic art it seems not improbable that the story arose in the attempt to explain some rude statue the true intention of which had been long forgotten or had not been clearly indicated. Even were it certain that such a caricature did once exist, the knowledge would be of no great interest, because caricatures are but a debased form of art. They are only the exaggeration of accidental physical peculiarities. If the traces of a warped or ill-developed character show in the face or figure, the representation of them may be made a caricature, but almost all so-called caricatures show not oddities of character but deformities of person. It is in literature, in the works of Molière or Shakespeare, rather than in sculpture or painting, that we find true caricatures. Not that they do not exist in the plastic arts, but the literary art lends itself more readily than the others to this mode of representation.
78Whatever the actual facts regarding the reported portrait of Hipponax may have been, it is not till about the first quarter of the fifth century (circ. 500–475) that we have undoubted evidence of portraiture. To that time belongs the bust of a bearded man wearing a helmet, in the Glyptothek in Munich. A replica of this work exists in the collection of Barrone Barracco in Rome. These two heads may well be copies of a statue of some victor in the games. As is known, portrait statues were allowed only to thrice victorious athletes, and they were erected not so much as an honour to the victor as to keep fresh the memory of one who had thrice been cherished by the Gods. But this rule governing the making of statues of athletes clearly shows what deep significance a statue was considered to express and the secondary importance to the Greek mind of keeping a record of personal appearance. Whether of a victor or not, the bust referred to belongs to the early period of development of the technique of sculpture, before it had been perfectly mastered, when the artist was able to represent not what he wanted to but what he was able to. Hence it is conventional; so much so that were it not for the helmet and the absence of any attribute of Divinity we could hardly be sure that it was intended as a portrait.
Plate XLVII.
Probably the best known example of portraiture produced during the period when the technique of sculpture was thoroughly understood and mastered, is the head of Pericles by Kresilas to which I have already made reference (Plate XLIV). It is a work of special importance owing to the interest attaching to the character of Pericles, but more particularly from the artistic point of view; and fortunately there exist several 79careful copies of it. These make us sure what its artistic character was,[27] and furthermore Pliny has handed down to us an estimate of the original work by a critic of the ancient world. This critic expressed concisely and epigrammatically the intention that is manifest in all Greek work of the best time, in saying that the bust of Pericles by Kresilas shows how art can make a noble man still nobler.[28] Now this can only be said of the best Greek and Italian work. And all work, no matter where or by whom produced, if wrought in the spirit which was shown more by Greek sculptors and Venetian painters than by other artists, may be described by such words. Such a criticism could not be made of most Roman or Florentine work. It can only be said of work in which the attempt is successfully made to suggest a perfected type by the improvement of an individual example, not of work the intention of which is to represent the individual example as the embodiment of special peculiarities with indifference as to their excellence or defects.
The method adopted by Kresilas is not difficult to analyse. The character of Pericles was a rare and happy mixture of calmness, foresight, perseverance and sensitiveness. His power of understanding men and conditions, together with his quiet and steady pursuit of his aims, is shown by the course of his political policy. His sensitiveness is made clear by his 80unselfish ambitions, by his delight in works of the fine arts and by his chivalrous conduct towards Aspasia, whom general opinion, not confined to the ancient world, would have allowed him to disregard and forget, when for the sake of giving offence to him the populace attacked her character. Such was the man whom Kresilas had to portray, and with high artistic perception he chose his means.
Kresilas, we can well understand, might have shown us Pericles the warrior, or Pericles the orator, or Pericles the lover of philosophy and the arts, and in doing so might have given a more striking impression of one or more of the special qualities by which his contemporaries were impressed. Instead of this he succeeded in setting before us the complex of all these qualities, and many more, that formed Pericles the man. The helmet lifted back from the face reminds us of his military career but does not force this on our attention.[29] The expression of the face is not in the least dreamy but is thoughtful and grave; an expression which, considering his life and friends, must have been habitual when he was in repose. It should not be forgotten that the attitudes assumed by the body when at rest show the presence or lack of inborn grace and dignity, and the expression of the face when in repose is an index to the mental nature. The expression of the eyes is open; the gaze is steady; the brow is undisturbed. The impression given by the eyes is of clear, highly developed intelligence. In the mouth which, as pointed out above, is the most indicative 81single feature in portrait sculpture, may be seen even more markedly than in the eyes, the man’s character. It is a very noticeable mouth, with full and softly modelled lips, lips such as usually suggest a weak and sensuous character. But this mouth is neither insignificant nor weak. Its great sensitiveness passes into firmness in the closure of the lips and the strong jaw, and shows itself not as that of an ungoverned and libitudinous nature, but of a reserved and, in the best way, sensitive quality. It is a mouth that implies vigour but not self-will; the mouth of a very sensitive and appreciative, but not a sensual man.
Besides the character of eyes and mouth, the treatment of the whole head must be studied in order to understand what the critic meant when he wrote that this work made a noble man still nobler. The treatment is broad. The minor and accidental details are disregarded that the general effect may be clearer. The curling hair of head and beard, for instance, is not tossed about in disordered masses, as so often in later works, but is conventionalised. The artist realised that he could not imitate hair, and consequently sought for the best graphic symbol by which to suggest curls. In the modelling of the face he chose an expression of quietness and not one of any fitful, momentary emotion; and by not representing any slight irregularities of surface or structure, he emphasised and made more inevitably noticeable that expression which was most completely indicative of the man’s essential nature. He has given us not alone Pericles the leader of the state, nor Pericles the patron of the fine arts, nor Pericles the impassioned orator, but the Pericles of history, the embodiment of all the best qualities bred in Athens.
82It must not be thought that the Pericles head alone exhibits the qualities of both artist and sitter which I have attempted to suggest. In their various ways the portraits of Sophocles, Euripides, Demosthenes, the so-called Menander (Plate XLV), Periander (Plate XLVI) and many another famous Greek show similar æsthetic feeling.
It was but a short time after the death of Pericles that the intellectual conditions of Greece underwent a great change. Beliefs that, heretofore, had been universally held by the Greeks began to be questioned, and the conditions of state-craft passed into a new phase. The rise and fall of the Macedonian power was of lasting effect on the Greek character. Alexander exhibits the type, which became common again in the Renaissance, of the selfish despot who maintained his power by having the money to maintain his personal influence. His thoughts were set chiefly on his own personal glory as expressed in his empire. He tried, but unsuccessfully, to make his court the centre of the artistic life of the day. He was not a patron of the arts but of artists. To Lysippus alone was granted the right to carve his portrait. No natural development of the arts was possible under such conditions.
The granting of such a monopoly to Lysippus shows that Alexander was merely interested in producing on posterity a good effect so far as his portraits could help him to do so. Copies of some of these portraits exist. They are fine in many ways and, to a high degree, lifelike, but they and other similar works of the epoch lack the quietness and repose of the works of earlier times. There is a melodramatic feeling in the looser treatment of the hair, and, oftentimes, an attempt to give a superhuman expression to the face.
83These qualities, as critics have often noticed, are to be found in all the forms of art of the time, so far as we now have the means of judging. Even in architecture there is a noticeable change. Stone is not laid so carefully, the cutting of details is coarser and mouldings are heavier; masses are less finely proportioned and the effects of light and shade are made more definite and striking. The miniature portraits on gems and coins show the same characteristics as the large busts, and the mere fact of putting portraits of contemporary rulers on the coinage shows that the relation of the individual to the state had changed and that, on the one hand, the desire for personal fame was spreading over the world—a desire which became still more marked in the Roman and Renaissance epochs; while on the other the worship of rulers, introduced from the Orient, had firmly entrenched itself. In fact, these Hellenistic portraits are not simple. While the technique is still Greek, there is something else in them than the desire of the artist to show the sitter as he appeared to his contemporaries, even in a rightly idealised manner,—they manifest the desire of the sitter to be admired.
The tendencies of the time were all towards exactness of representation of existing forms, and this was soon attained. Perhaps it would have been reached even sooner had it not been for certain interests which held the sculptors partially to the old-time aims. One such conservative influence is shown in the work of Silanion, who became famous for his portraits of persons dead long before his day. Such work, if it was to satisfy a large public, and this was what it aimed at and succeeded in doing, had to be of a broad, general and unemphasized character, for the nature and appearance of persons 84known only by tradition is necessarily more vaguely and variously observed, less easily and surely grasped, than that of the living. Hence, if Silanion had made portraits that suggested strongly what seemed to him the most vital characteristic of the person represented, he would probably have found that many of his contemporaries considered some very different characteristic the most essential. To please the many it was needful for his work to embody only those ideas that were generally accepted. Such work cannot be realistic in the sense of attracting attention to detailed peculiarities.
Greek portraiture became rapidly more and more prosaically realistic. But even in its last stages, when Greek artists were still employed by Greek patrons, the realism is generally restrained. The old conventionalism and typifying of the model is gone, and there is greater frankness in the rendering of special peculiarities of hair or skin; but the work is generally quiet and dignified, calm in expression and reposeful in action. The artist puts before us not the type and idea suggested by the man, nor, except in special cases, the man’s own desire regarding his appearance, but the real daily aspect of the man, dressed up not at all, treated in accordance with the essential rules of sculpture as a fine art.
That there were, however, some artists who amused themselves and a thoughtless public with portraits that were vulgarly realistic—realistic, that is, in the representation of ugly and unessential details—is shown by what we know of Demetrius of Alopeke. He is noted solely for his successful rendering of ugliness. But there was too much cultivated taste in what remained of the Greek world, and too much vigour and good sense in the growing Roman world, for such work to become popular. To see realism developing in a strong and healthy manner, we must turn to Rome where, though the actual carving was done, with few exceptions probably, by Greek workers, still the character of the work itself was controlled by Roman ideas (Plate XLVII).
Plate XLVIII.
85The dry, matter of fact quality of Roman portraiture as opposed to the more imaginative work of the Greeks, has long been recognised. Its direct and unadorned presentation of the human face is noted by the most careless observer and is to most people pleasing. It makes them feel at ease; they have the sensation of being with real people; it does not demand of them a mental effort to analyse the appearance before them in order to understand it. But notwithstanding the facility with which one derives very definite, and it may be lasting, impressions from these Roman busts, they are by no means as simple and artless as they seem at first sight to be. They are the product of complex influences and a highly developed art and are as difficult to understand and properly appreciate as are the earlier Greek ones.
We may illustrate what has been said by glancing a moment at a portrait of an unknown old man[30] (Plate XLVIII). This is a superb example of Roman portraiture of the time of the Republic. It cannot lay claim to any beauty of form or feature; it is uncompromisingly homely. Nevertheless it has a certain fascination for the beholder. The sculptor was a great master. The way in which he has rendered the signs of old age in the withered neck, the irregular wrinkles of the brow, and the uneven mouth is magnificent. It is realism of a perfect kind, for the evidence of the wear and tear of life is 86subdued by and made minor to the splendid and enduring vigour of the mind and character behind the cheerful old face. What an old age! The sap may be running slow, the body may show the blows dealt by life, but the stiff, short hair is still thick, the head is still held upright and forward. It is a face of a clean-living, plain-thinking man, one who had “held both hands before the fires of life,” and seems to scarcely suppress a smile at the thought that any one should want the portrait of his old face.
Roman art, as a whole, was practical and uninspired, and far from 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.
Plate XLIX.
87Pliny 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 88persons 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).
Plate L.
As one looks at these Roman portraits one frequently 89feels 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 90process 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).
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. 91In 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 92power, 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.
93
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 94can 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 95world. 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 96of 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.
Plate LII.
Besides this subtle quality in his genius, this weaving of the various beautiful threads spun by others into one consummate 97stuff, 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.
98Beyond 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 99Florence, 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 100accomplishing 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.
This is, however, a rare weakness in the works of Michael Angelo, and one that apparently never entered those of Pheidias. One reason for this is that the art of painting was more completely comprehended in Italy than in Greece, and the Italian artists, more commonly than the Grecian, practised both arts. Hence, great painter as well as great sculptor, endowed with a readiness of hand, such as scarcely any other artist ever had, to reproduce whatever his mind imaged, it is no wonder that Michael Angelo at times went beyond the bounds of one art and seemed magically to interfuse the beauties of both of them. It would have been a greater wonder had he not done so. It was not a sign of his weakness so much as of his strength, of the inability of any one art to satisfy the artist’s desire and ideal. In this greater complexity, which shows at times in the detail of his work, Michael Angelo differed from Pheidias, but, almost invariably, the two artists, while differing in their feeling for line, or gesture, or substance, treat the human figure and its accessories in the same way. In both one sees a distinct and necessary dwelling on the nude.
Plate LIII.
101Where the human figure is chosen as the object of a work of art, there are but two chief means by which to represent the emotions it contains, one the expression of the face, one the action of the body as a whole. It is in the representation of the face, the most palpable index of the emotions, that painting, with its power over almost infinitesimal lights and shades, finds fullest scope for its power, while it is in the greater lines of the frame and the larger gestures that sculpture satisfies herself. So it is that in the sculptural work of both Michael Angelo and Pheidias one finds drapery treated not, as was distinctly the case in the statues of Praxiteles, for its own special beauty apart from the whole work, but as a means of emphasising the beauty of the body whose details it hid.
Look at the group of three women from the western pediment of the Parthenon, or the Lemnian Athena, or the Caryatids of the Erechtheum (Plate LII)—for these are utterly Pheidian in character even if not by the master himself—or the figures on the frieze of the Parthenon (Plate LVII) or the Hegeso relief. In all these the drapery ripples over the shoulders and breasts, breaking in great falls around the waist and legs to disappear and fade away in little curling waves around the feet, not hiding the soft details of the figure 102underneath but serving rather as a frame to emphasise the beauties and set them in true relation to the surroundings. That there was any ethical need of hiding the figure would have seemed the height of absurdity to the Greek or the Italian. Out of the dark it comes and back to the dark it goes in this Adamite condition, so why should the artist not use it so if it serves his purpose?
Thus it has been used in all times when there was a vital art, and such times have been distinguished for greater sanity of thought and health of body than when art was governed by mediæval fanaticisms. Michael Angelo’s figures are as distinguished for this quality as are those shaped by the Grecian chisel. His feeling for the value of the nude is so strong that he can hardly suffer the drapery at all. The Moses, the Madonnas, the Medici Princes are to all intents in large measure undraped. Considered as draped figures they distinctly lack the temperance and quiet nobility of the Greek figures, for the reason that although his feeling towards the relation of draped and nude parts is the same, Michael Angelo does not attain his end in as consummate a way. He makes too sharp a distinction between the parts that are really draped, the parts that are but seem not to be, and the nude. But in one point of this same nature the two artists are completely alike. They both regarded the human figure from the purely artistic point of view as a means to suggest certain ideas. The religious meaning, the question as to its sanctity or unhallowedness, no more occurred to them than to question the advisability of warming themselves before the fire when they were cold because there were fires in Hell. They were completely natural.
103In regard to the lack of complexity and to the greater repose, it may be admitted that Pheidias has the advantage over Michael Angelo whose works, true index as they are of his character, suffered from the time in which he lived—his character suffered and hence his work. His was a time of scepticism and hence of worry. The tranquillity that marked the Greek mind was rarely found in his day. Aretino was planting the destructive roots of modern journalism, and except, in a way marked by strong affectation, at certain courts, one would have had to go far to find Platonic Symposia or Olympic gatherings. The cloudy brow of Michael Angelo himself as well as of many of his figures is a sign how the perplexity of the times preyed upon the sculptor and in turn affected not only the chief motive of many of his works but also their very details.
And, if we admit the truth, this worry and perturbation is more natural to us than is the Greek grace and calm which, to those who do not understand the time, seems unnatural and forced. It was not so, however. The Greek was never forced, but though he felt intensely, he considered that the possession and exercise of control over emotion was as much to be desired as the power which found expression in beating back barbarian hordes. The tenderness of Greek friendships is proverbial, but the whole tone of Greek tragedy is of passion held in check,—carried in the heart rather than worn on the face. Slaves and servants gave way to noisy grief, but not their masters. A Greek of the Periclean age could scarcely have understood the worn, wearied, soul-troubled look of the Pensieroso. It was not that the Greek was unimpassioned, but he never let his passions govern him. He guided them as 104a rider guides a restive horse—as the youths on the Parthenon guide theirs—calming and soothing them lest the animal become the master and break away from the chosen path.
This difference in the character of the two races was due largely to religion, which had the most marked effect on the work produced in the two countries. One is apt to think, when one sees the limitless mass of churches, decorated by painter and sculptor, in Italy, and the unending array of lesser works of distinctly religious intent, that no art could be more religious than that of Italy. But just as in the conduct of individuals it is the spirit rather than the form of action that is the true index to their character, so in art it is the feeling the work shows, and not merely its outer form, which indicates its true nature and value. Now not merely in the number of religious works was Greece in the Periclean days as distinguished as ever Italy was, but she was far more noteworthy, in that her religion was a much more vital impulse than that of Italy. This is certainly true of the Periclean as opposed to the Medicean age.
In the light of present knowledge the circumstances that led to these conditions are discernible. Like every innocent race the Greeks had a firm belief in the Gods, beings developed in their minds by very varied influences, and for the most part not of a character to serve as guides to ideal conduct after the race had once gained the capacity for using its mind in a logical way. One or two of these beings were, however, as noble as any such conceptions at any time. This power to use the mind rationally was not yet a national possession when Pheidias grew up. It was just becoming so. The development of the mind, the strength of it, was there, but for a few decades 105circumstances turned the thoughts of the people away from philosophic consideration to more ecstatic modes in which old conceptions were clung to with passionate fondness and made more beautiful, but a change of belief was the work of a following generation.
These circumstances were chiefly a consequence of the Persian Wars. Greece was threatened with destruction. Athens was harried, and the glories of the Acropolis were razed to the ground. Phœnix-like they disappeared in fire to have an image of themselves more splendid in its youth and vigour rise as a light to all the world. But though the barbarian had for a moment seemed master of the situation, the Greeks had, with the active help of the Gods, been the final victors and it was in the service of thanks to their divine helpers that Pheidias found his chief employment. It was only in the very early years of the Renaissance that the Italians experienced any such miracles as those which Pheidias’s elder contemporaries had known—as, for instance, at the battle of Ravenna—and the effect on them then was much the same as it had been on the Greeks. It was the actual presence of the Gods at critical moments that stirred the Greeks. In Athens Athena’s snake led them to safety, at Salamis the Aiakidoi inspired the heroes with their battlecry, and Pan himself urged the weary messenger over the mountain passes. The Greeks no more doubted that their victory was due to assistance lent them by the Gods than that there had been a war. One event was as real to them as the other, so it was natural for them, as soon as their hearths were once more lit, to render thanks to their Divinities by raising images of them on all sides, that they might never forget them, and by building 106for the houses of their Gods as beautiful temples as could by any possible means be made.
We may frankly concede that the grandeur of this work, the generousness of it, can only be understood when one fully grasps the fact that a Greek temple was, what the Christian’s is not, the house of the Lord. In it but few and most private services were performed,—no processions, no crowds of more or less attentive worshippers, no expounding of the word, nothing whatever of that sort. The temple was the sacred dwelling place of the deity, and the curious no more thought of entering it than of opening uninvited their fellow-citizen’s door. It was a free gift to the God and not to be thought of as a source of satisfaction to the builders except in the same way as it pleases a lover to have his mistress accept some gift at his hands. This feeling is repeated frequently in Pindar and in other poets inspired by the ‘golden muse.’ So it was that, flushed with the excitement of a great cause nobly won, the Greeks turned the full force of their keen, glad energy to works that showed their own greatness by manifesting with the sharpness of full understanding the form of their ideals.
In our day, animated by so different interests and ambitions, it is hard to sympathise with this natural idealistic work done in Athens, and it is perhaps even harder to understand why it was that Pheidias and the other artists were not called on to erect portrait statues of the great leaders of the war as were the artists of the Renaissance. There is mention of a statue to Miltiades, and this is all. The reason becomes clear immediately we consider well what were the fundamental principles of conduct as taught by the poets, who were in those days in large measure the formulators of public opinion. Pindar is as clear-spoken about this as need be, and he but repeats what one finds in the fragments that are preserved of Solon’s writings and of other earlier writers. He tells us that what is natural is best and that the deed done without the deity is best left unspoken (Olym. IX), and again (Nem. I) that each of us has his special power and we must earnestly endeavour according as Nature shows the way. This is to be the moral of our action, while that of our thought is that man is as nothing (Nem. VI), ephemeral creature naught knowing what he is or what he may be, nothing but a mirage-dream (Pyth. VIII).
Plate LIV.
107Under the spell of such stern teaching as this it is no wonder that Pheidias was not employed, as was Michael Angelo, in depicting for an inquiring posterity the outer husk of the protagonist of his day. Nor was it merely when he was called on to decorate Athens with his accomplished powers that Pheidias found guiding principles of this stern sort, but even in his other great work, the Olympian Zeus, he was governed in the same way. By the Greek, victory in the games was no more to be aspired to without the help of the Gods than was victory in battle, and it was not praise for the winner but gratitude to the Gods that was mete when Nike laid the ‘golden crown’ upon the athlete’s brow. For it is the Gods who, as Pindar sings, guard the deep-breasted plain of Sparta and grant success in the great games. Fame is to be sought but it is to be the fame of honourable deeds (Pyth. VIII), but even this is of less value than happiness and only he who has won both has attained the acme of bliss (Pyth. I). Such men are almost unknown, for the soul of honour is tarnished by lust of gain (Nem. IX). Thus were the athletes 108in that “age of heroic prize-men” taught that physical power was of value, but only as it was a stepping-stone to moral purity. No portraits of such youths as these unless the Gods marked them as their own with the triple crown. The deep-delved researches of epigraphist and excavator show us how rare was that event.
Called upon to embody for the chosen youth of Greece their idea and image of the guardian deity who meted out unquestioned justice to their strife, Pheidias had to depict as it were a masculine counterpart to the Goddess who made Athens her own. That he was as successful in the one task as in the other is instantly apparent to one who notes the quality of the praise bestowed upon his work by the highly trained critics of the classic period. None speak of his figures as they do of Myron’s, for instance, as deceiving the beholder by their realism. There is no question as to the mastery over the material as with Kalamis and Pythagoras,—no suggestion of conventionalism as with Polykleitos, none of overrefinement as with Praxiteles,—but all agree that his works were such nobly adequate representations of the divine beings that they added a new glory to the religion of which they were the perfected expression.
Still another noteworthy peculiarity of this religion in its effect on his work remains to be mentioned. Both he and Michael Angelo had at different times now mere mortals, now deities, to represent. In the case of the Attic master this led to a greater unity of performance than was possible with the Florentine. Between the dwellers on Olympus and those on the broad-bosomed Earth there was to Pheidias’s mind only a difference in degree, whereas to the believer in the Roman 109doctrines there was no real similarity between the heavenly hosts and the inhabitants of this vale of tears; and where such was suggested, it was so as a symbol, not as a representation. To the Greek the Gods were merely his grander, nobler, more powerful brethren, blessed with the same virtues and troubled by similar faults, differing principally from the dwellers on earth by usually escaping the results due to giving way to passion. Even they were not blessed with absolute immunity and freedom of action. Zeus himself was subject to Fate, but in the main the Gods, at least in their outward form, were but more beautiful men and women. Hence when called upon to carve the most noble being whom he could imagine, and equally when carving ideal youths and maidens on the Parthenon, he could only carve the same forms he saw about him every day idealised by his imagination. Whichever branch of his art he followed trained him for the other.
That such conditions and beliefs as these were very different from those under which Michael Angelo had to work needs no elaborate exposition. How different they were in their effect on the art of Pheidias and the happiness of the period for such an artist becomes clearer the more one studies. There is still another point to consider, however,—what might be called a more practical one than the influences of religion, and in this regard, too, Pheidias was the more favoured. I refer to the political conditions of the time, and the relations of Pheidias to his employers.
The lack of original documents makes it impossible for us to follow the course led by Pheidias from its fortunate rise to its unhappy close, but that in most ways he was much to be envied by Michael Angelo cannot be questioned. Athens 110was at the height of her prosperity; freed from foreign or internal foes, she was at liberty to pursue her ends as occasion demanded or as consideration showed was best. It was a time of thanksgiving and hope. No such condition of government as this was known to Michael Angelo, nor did his country have the advantage of being led by as high-minded a statesman, and probably as wise a one, as ever lived. So long as Pericles was leader of the state, Pheidias was his friend and helper. Here was no worry for the artist, no change of master, no blighting of cherished hopes, all which ills were suffered by Michael Angelo; on the contrary, existence in the midst of a most highly cultivated community—a community moved by a common search after ideal ends, a community which must have been a constant inspiration to the sculptor to equal the expectations it had of him. With the rise of mob rule brought on by the momentary successes won by certain demagogues came the downfall of Pericles and in his train Pheidias. But his great work was finished then. He had nothing to fear when he laid aside his chisel, and fortunately he was not left long to mourn the fast vanishing nobility of his city and race. The time of calm self-confidence had passed and the time of trouble was threatening. Only a short time elapsed before the tide of disaster engulfed the whole country, and if we would seek a counterpart to the worn and restless spirit that sometimes appears in Michael Angelo’s work, we can find it in the later Greek masters—even Praxiteles shows traces of it. But it is not mere likenesses we are in search of, so much as explanations and the clarification of certain phenomena of art.
The effect of these conditions of life and thought on Pheidias 111was more strong than on other sculptors of the time because the greater sensitiveness and impressibility of his nature rendered him a more encompassing recipient for ideas and feelings than most of his contemporaries. But the qualities that show in his work with especial sharpness are found diffused throughout all the work of the period, and there is one very noticeable characteristic of this work which distinguishes it markedly from the work produced by Michael Angelo’s fellow-workmen. It is the emphasis laid on youth. Donatello, Verrocchio, Desiderio and many others often represented youthful figures; but the representation of youth and early manhood could scarcely be said to distinguish the work of the Florentine from other epochs, yet this is exactly what can be said of the product of the early Greek and particularly the Attic School.