Volume 76 / Part 1 — THE CRYSTAL PALACE.[44]

THE CRYSTAL PALACE.^[44]

It is the common practice of innovators to set up a loud cry against long-received opinions which favour them not, and the word prejudice is the denunciation of “mad-dog.” But prejudices, like human beings who hold them, are not always “so bad as they seem.” They are often the action of good, natural instincts, and often the results of ratiocinations whose processes are forgotten. Let us have no “Apology” for a long-established prejudice; ten to one but it can stand upon its own legs, and needs no officious supporter, who simply apologises for it.

We have had philosophers who have told us there is really no such thing as beauty, consequently there can be no such thing as taste; that it is a mere idea, an unaccountable prejudice somehow or other engendered in the brain. And though there exists not a head in the universe without a portion of this disorder-breeding brain, the philosopher persists that the product is a worthless nonentity, and altogether out of the nature of things. We maintain, however, in favour of prejudices and tastes—that there are real grounds for both; and, presuming not to be so wise as to deny the evidences of our senses, and conclusions of our minds, think it scarcely worth while to unravel the threads of our convictions. In matters of science we marvel and can believe almost anything; but in our tastes and feelings we naturally, and by an undoubting instinct, shrink from the touch of an innovator, as we would shun the heel of a donkey.

Whenever an innovator of this kind sets up “An Apology” for his intended folly, we invariably feel that he means a very audacious insult upon our best perceptions. The worst of it is, he is not one easily put aside—he will labour to get a commission into your house, ransack it to its sewers, and turn it out of windows. He is the man that must ever be doing. He will think himself entitled to perambulate the world with his pot of polychrome in his hand, and bedaub every man’s door-post; and if multitudes—the whole offended neighbourhood—rush out to upset his pot and brush, he will laugh in their faces, defend his plastering instruments, and throw to them with an air his circular, “An Apology;” and perhaps afterwards knock the doors down for an authorised payment. Such a one shall get no “Apology”-pence out of us.

We are prejudiced—we delight in being prejudiced—will continue prejudiced as long as we live, and will entertain none but prejudiced friends. There are things we will believe, and give no reasons for, ever; and things we never will believe, whatever reasons are to be given in their favour. We think the man who said, “Of course, I believe it, if you say you saw it; but I would not believe it if I saw it myself,” used an irresistible argument of good sound prejudice, mixed with discretion. It is better, safer, and honester, to bristle up like a hedgehog, and let him touch who dares, than to sit and be smoothed and smoothed over with oily handling of sophisticated arguments, till every decent palpable roughness of reason is taken from you.

Reader, do you like white marble? What a question! you will ask,—do you suppose me to have no eyes? Do not all people covet it—import it from Carrara? Do not sculptors, as sculptors have done in all ages, make 318statues from it—monuments, ornaments, and costly floors? Of course, everybody loves white marble. Then, reader, if such is your taste, you are a prejudiced ignoramus; you belong to that age “devoid of the capacity to appreciate and the power to execute works of art”—that age which certain persons profess to illuminate. You are now, under the new dictators of taste, to know that you had no business to admire white marble,^[45]—that you are so steeped in this old prejudice that it will require a long time before you can eradicate this stain of a vile admiration, although your teachers have acquired a true knowledge in an incredible time. You must put yourself under the great colourman of the great Crystal Palace, Mr Owen Jones, who, if he does not put out your eyes in the experiments he will set before you, will at least endeavour to convince you that you are a fool of the first water. But beware how you don his livery of motley. Hear him: “Under this influence (the admiration of white marble), however, we have been born and bred, and it requires time to shake off the trammels which such early education leaves.” You have sillily believed that the Athenians built with marble because of its beauty,—that the Egyptians thought there was beauty in granite. You thought in your historical dream that he who found the city of brick, and left it of marble, had done something whereof he might reasonably boast. You have been egregiously mistaken. If you ever read that the Greeks and Romans, and other people since their times civilised, sent great distances for marble for their palaces and statues, you must put it down in your note-book of new “historic doubts.” You learn a fact you never dreamed of, from Mr Owen Jones. They merely used it (marble) because it lay accidentally at their feet. He puts the richest colouring of his contempt on “the artificial value which white marble has in our eyes.” Learn the real cause of its use: “The Athenians built with marble, because they found it almost beneath their feet, and also from the same cause which led the Egyptians to employ granite, which was afterwards painted—viz. because it was the most enduring, and capable of receiving a higher finish of workmanship.” He maintains that so utterly regardless were these Greeks of any supposed beauty in marble—especially white marble—that they took pains to hide every appearance of its texture; that they not only painted it all over, but covered it with a coating of stucco. Listen to an oracle that, we will answer for it, never came from Delphi, that no Pythia in her madness ever conceived, and that, if uttered in the recesses, would have made Apollo shake his temple to pieces.

“To what extent were white marble temples painted and ornamented? I would maintain that they were entirely so; that neither the colour of the marble, nor even its surface, was preserved; and that preparatory to the ornamenting and colouring of the surface, the whole was covered with a thin coating of stucco, something in the nature of a gilder’s ground, to stop the absorption of the colours by the marble.”

“A thin coat of stucco!” and no exception with respect to statues—to be applied wherever the offensive white marble showed its unblushing nakedness and beauty!! Let us imagine it tested on a new statue—thus stucco over, however thin, Mr Bayley’s Eve, or Mr Power’s Greek Slave—the thought is enough to make the sculptor go mad, and commit a murder on himself or the plasterer—to see all his fine, his delicate chisellings obliterated! all the nice markings, the scarcely perceptible dimplings gone!—for let the coat of stucco be thin as a wafer, it must, according to that thickness, enlarge every rising and diminish the spaces between them: thus, all true proportion must be lost; between two risings the space must be less. “What fine chisel,” says our immortal Shakespeare, “could ever yet cut breath?” How did he imagine, in these few words, the living motion of the “breath of life” in the statue! and who doubts either the attempt or the success 319so to represent perfect humanity, when he looks at the finest antique statues? Let an audacious innovator dare to daub one of them with his coat of stucco, and all the chiselling of the life, breath, and motion is annihilated. It must be so, whatever be the thickness of the coat; though it be but a nail-paring it must diminish risings and hollows, and all nicer touches must disappear. We should heartily desire to see the innovator suffocated in his plaster and paint-pot, that in his suffering he may know it is a serious thing to knock the life-breath out of the body even of a statue.

“Nec lex est justior ulla

Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ.”

There is one slight objection to our getting rid of this prejudice in favour of white marble which we suggest to Mr Owen Jones, and all the “Stainers’” Company—the unseemly blots we shall have to make in the fairest pages of poetry, old and new. Albums will of course be ruined, and a general smear, bad as a “coat of stucco,” be passed over the whole books of beauties who have “dreamed they dwelt in marble halls.” The new professors, polychromatists, must bring out, if they are able, new editions of all our classics. How must this passage from Horace provoke their bile:

“Urit me Glycone nitor

Splendentis Pario marmore puriùs.”

And when, after being enchanted by the “grata protervitas,” he adds the untranslateable line,

“Et Vultus nimium lubricus aspici,”

we can almost believe, with that bad taste which Mr Owen Jones will condemn, that he had in the full eye of his admiration the polished, delicately defined charm of the Parian marble.

It was a clown’s taste to daub the purity; and first he daubed his own face, and the faces of his drunken rabble. He would have his gods made as vulgar as himself; and then, doubtless, there was many a wooden, worthless, and obscene idol, the half joke and veneration of the senseless clowns, painted as fine as vermilion could make them.

“Agricola et minio suffusus, Bacche, rubente,

Primus inexpertâ duxit ab arte choros.”

Tib.

But to suppose that Praxiteles and Phidias could endure to submit their loveliest works to be stuccoed and solidly painted over with vermilion, seems to us to suppose a perfect impossibility. That they could not have willingly allowed the defilement we have shown by the nature of their work, all the nicety of touch and real proportion of parts lying under the necessity of alteration, and consequently damage thereby. Whatever apparent proof might be adduced that such statues were painted—and we doubt the proof, as we will endeavour to show—we do not hesitate to say that the daubings and plasterings must have been the doing of a subsequent less cultivated people, and possibly at the demand of a vulgarised mobocracy. The clown at our pantomimes is the successor to the clown who smeared his face with wine-lees, and passed his jokes while he gave orders to have his idol painted with vermilion. Yet though it must be impossible that Phidias or Praxiteles would have allowed solid coats of paint or stucco, or both, to have ruined the works of their love and genius, under the presuming title “historical evidence” an anecdote is culled from the amusing gossip Pliny, to show what Praxiteles thought of it. “There is a passage in Pliny which is decisive, as soon as we understand the allusion.” Speaking of Nicias (lib. xxxv. cap. 11), he says that Praxiteles, when asked which of his marble works best satisfied him, replied, “Those which Nicias has had under his hands.” “So much,” adds Pliny, “did he prize the finishing of Nicias”—(tantum circumlitioni ejus tribuebat). This “finishing of Nicias,” by its location, professes to be a translation from Pliny, which it is not. Had the writer adopted the exact wording of the old English translation, from which he seems to have taken the former portion of the sentence, it would not have suited his purpose, but it would have been more fair: it is thus, “So much did he attribute unto his vernish and polishing”—which 320contradicts the solid painting. Pliny is rather ambiguous with regard to this Nicias—whether he was the celebrated one or no. But it should be noticed that the anecdote, as told in Mr Owen Jones’ “Apology,” is intended to show that the painter’s skill, as a painter, was added—substantially added—to the work of Praxiteles, whereas this Nicias may have been one who was nice in the making and careful in the use of his varnish; and we readily grant that some kind of varnishing or polishing may have been used over the statues, both for lustre and protection. Certainly at one time, though we would not say there is proof as to the time of Phidias, such varnishes, or rather waxings, were in use. But even if it were the celebrated Nicias to whom the anecdote refers, we cannot for a moment believe he would have touched substantially, as a painter, any work of Praxiteles. But as genius is ever attached to genius, he may have supplied to Praxiteles the means of giving that polish which he gave to his own works, and probably aided him in the operation, not “had under his hands,” as translated—“quibus manum admovisset.” Pliny had in his eye the very modus operandi of the encaustic process, the holding heated iron within a certain distance of the object. But what was the operation? Does the text authorise anything like the painting the statue? Certainly not. And however triumphantly it is brought forward, there is a hitch in the argument which must be confessed.

In making this confession, it would have been as well to have referred to Pliny himself for the meaning. Pliny uses the verb illinebat, in grammatical relation to circumlitio, in the sense of varnishing, in that well-known passage in which he speaks of the varnish used by Apelles—“Unum imitari nemo potuit, quod absoluta opera illinebat atramento ita tenui,” &c.

The meaning of this passage hangs on the word circumlitio. Winckelmann follows the mass of commentators in understanding this as referring to some mode of polishing the statues. But Quatremère de Quincey, in his magnificent work Le Jupiter Olympien, satisfactorily shows this to be untenable, not only “because no sculptor could think of preferring such of his statues as had been better polished, but also because Nicias being a painter, not a sculptor, his services must have been those of a painter.” If these are the only “becauses” of Quatremère de Quincey, they are anything but satisfactory; for a sculptor may esteem all his works as equal, and then prefer such as had the advantage of Nicias’s circumlitio. Nor does the because of Nicias being a painter at all define the circumlitio to be a plastering with stucco, or a thick daubing with vermilion; for, be it borne in mind, this vermilion painting is always spoken of as a solid coating. As to Nicias’s services, “What were they?” asks the author of the Historical Evidence in Mr Jones’s Apology. “Nicias was an encaustic painter, and hence it is clear that his circumlitio, his mode of finishing the statues, so highly prized by Praxiteles, must have been the application of encaustic painting to those parts which the sculptor wished to have ornamented. For it is quite idle to suppose a sculptor like Praxiteles would allow another sculptor to finish his works. The rough work may be done by other hands, but the finishing is always left to the artist. The statue completed, there still remained the painter’s art to be employed, and for that Nicias is renowned.”—Indeed! This is exceedingly childish: first the truism that one sculptor would not have another to finish his work—of course, not; and then that the work was not finished until the painter had regularly, according to his best skill and art—which art and skill were required—been employed in the painting it as he would paint a picture, “for which he was renowned;”—that is, variously colour all the parts—till he had variously coloured hair and eyes, and put in varieties of flesh tones, show the blue veins beneath, and all that a painter renowned for these things was in the habit of doing in his pictures. If this be not the meaning of this author, and the object of Mr Owen Jones in making such a parade 321of it, he or the writer writes without any fixed ideas, and all this assumption, all this absurd theory, is after all built upon a word which these people are determined to misunderstand, and yet upon which they cannot help but express the doubt. But why should there be any doubt at all? As far as we can see, the word is a plain word, and explains itself very well, and even expresses its modus operandi. A writer acquainted with such a schoolboy book as Ainsworth’s Dictionary might have relieved his mind as to any doubts or forced construction of circumlitio; he might have found there, that the word comes from Lino, to smear, from Leo, the same—and that Circum in the composition shows the action, the mode of smearing. Nay, he is referred to two passages in Pliny, the very one from which the quotation in the Historical Evidence is taken, and to another in the same author, Pliny—and authors generally explain themselves—where the word is used in reference to the application of medicinal unguents. We can readily grant that the ancient sculptors did employ recipes of the most skilful persons in making unctuous varnishes, which they rubbed into the marble as a preservative, and also to bring out more perfectly the beauty of the marble texture—not altogether to hide it. It may be, without the least concession towards Mr Owen Jones’s painting theory, as readily granted that they gave this unctuous composition a warm tone, with a little vermilion, as many still do to their varnishes. Pliny himself, in his 33d book, chap. vii., gives such a recipe: White Punic wax, melted with oil, and laid on hot; the work afterwards to be well rubbed over with cere-cloths. To return to the “Circumlitio,” we have the word, only with super instead of circum, used in the application of a varnish by the Monk Theophilus, of the tenth century, who, if he did not take the word from Pliny, and therefore in Pliny’s sense, may be taken for quite as good Latin authority. After describing the method of making a varnish of oil and a gum—“gummi quod vocatur fornis”—he adds, “Hoc glutine omnis pictura superlinita, fit et decora ac omnino durabilis.” The two words Superlitio and Circumlitio,^[46]—the first applicable to such a surface as a picture; the last to statues, which present quite another surface. But if it could be proved—and it cannot—that the works of Praxiteles were in Mr Owen Jones’s sense painted over, would that justify the colouring the frieze of the Parthenon, the work of Phidias, who preceded Praxiteles more than a century, during which many abominations in taste may have been introduced? We are quite aware that, at a barbarous period, images of gods, probably mostly those of wood, were painted over with vermilion, as a sacred colour and one of triumph. We extract from the old translation of Pliny this passage:—“There is found also in silver mines a mineral called minium, i. e. vermilion, which is a colour at this day of great price and estimation, like as it was in old time; for the ancient Romans made exceeding great account of it, not only for pictures, but also for divers sacred and holy uses. And verily Verrius allegeth and rehearseth many authors whose credit ought not to be disproved, who affirm that the manner was in times past to paint the very face of Jupiter’s image on high and festival daies with vermilion: as also that the valiant captains who rode in triumphant manner into Rome had in former times their bodies covered all over therewith; after which manner, they say, noble Camillus entered the city in triumph. And even to this day, according to that ancient and religious custom, ordinary it is to colour all the unguents that are used in a festival supper, at a solemne triumph, with vermilion. And no one thing do the Censors give charge and order for to be done, at their entrance into office, before the painting of Jupiter’s image with minium.” Yet Pliny does not say much in favour of the practice; for he adds—“The cause and motive that induced our ancestors to this ceremony I marvel much at, and cannot imagine what it should be.” The Censors did but follow a vulgar taste to please the 322vulgar, for whom no finery can be too fine, no colours too gaudy. However refined the Athenian taste, we know from their comedies they had their vulgar ingredient: there could be no security among them even for the continuance in purity of the genius which gave them the works of Phidias and Praxiteles; nor were even these great artists perhaps allowed the exercise of their own noble minds. The Greeks had no permanent virtues—no continuance of high perceptions: as these deteriorated, their great simplicity would naturally yield to petty ornament. They of Elis, who appointed the descendants of Phidias to the office of preserving from injury his statue of Jupiter Olympius, did little if they neglected to secure their education also in the principles of the taste of Phidias. The conservators would in time be the destroyers; and simply because they must do, and know not what to do. When images—their innumerable idols—were carried in processions, they were of course dressed up, not for veneration, but show. We know that in very early times their gods were carried about in shrines, and, without doubt, tricked up with dress and daubings, pretty much as are, at this day, the Greek Madonnas. Venus and Cupid have descended down to our times in the painted Madonna and Bambino. Whatever people under the sun have ever had paint and finery, temples, gods, and idols have had their share of them. We need no proofs, and it is surprising we have so few with respect to the great works of the ancients, that these corruptions would take place. It is in human nature: barbarism never actually dies; it is an ill weed, hard entirely to eradicate, and is ready to spring up in the most cultivated soils. The vulgar mind will make its own Loretto: imagination and credulity want no angels but themselves to convey anywhere a “santa casa;” nor will there be wanting brocade and jewels, the crown and the peplos, for the admiration of the ignorant. Are a few examples, if found and proved, and of the best times—which is not clear—to establish the theory as good in taste, or in any way part of the intention of the great sculptors? If authorities adduced, and to be adduced, are worth anything, they must go a great deal farther. Take, for instance, a passage from Pausanias, lib. ii. c. 11: Καὶ Ὑγείας δ’ ἐσι κατα ταυτον αγαλμα οὺκ αν οὐδὲ τοῦτο ἴδοις ῤᾳδίως, οὕτω, περιεχουσιν ἀυτὸ κόμαι τε γυναικὼν άὓ κειρονται τῇ θεῶ, καὶ ἐσθῆτός Βαβυλωνίας τελαμῶνες.—“And after the same manner is a statue of Hygeia, which you may not easily see, it is so completely covered with hair of the women who have shorn themselves in honour of the goddess, and also with the fringes of the Babylonish vest.” Here, surely, is quite sufficient authority for Mr Jones to procure ample and variously coloured wigs for the Venus de Medicis, and other statues, and to order a committee of milliners to devise suitable vesture. Images of this kind were mostly made of wood, easy to be carried about; and were often, doubtless, made likest life, for the deception as of the real presence of a deity. The view of art was lost when imposture commenced. Mr Jones admits that the Greek sculptors did not intend exact imitation, but his theory goes so close to it, it would be difficult to say where it stops short. Indeed, he had better at once go the whole way, or we may better say, “the whole hog,” with bristle brushes, for when he has got rid of the “prejudice” in favour of white marble, his spectators will be satisfied with nothing less than wax-work.

We remember hearing, in a remote village, the consolation one poor woman gave another—“Look up to them pretty angels, with their lovely black eyes, and take comfort from ’em.” These were angels’ heads in plaster, round the cornice, which the church-wardens, year after year, with the official taste and importance of the Roman Censors, had caused to be so painted when, as they announced on a tablet, they “beautified” the church. Of late years we have been removing the whitewash from our cathedrals, thicker, by repetition, than Mr Owen Jones’s prescribed coats of stucco. Should his theory prevail, we shall be again ashamed of stone; white-lime 323will be restored until funds shall be found for stucco, inside and out, as preparation for Mr Jones’s bright blue and unmitigated vermilion and gold. It is frightful to imagine Mr Owen Jones and his paint-pot over every inch of Westminster Abbey, inside and out.

Let us take a nearer view of the historical evidence. We are told, “Ancient literature abounds with references and allusions to the practice of painting and dressing statues. Space prevents their being copiously cited here.” We venture to affirm, that the lack of existence is greater than the lack of space, if by ancient literature is meant the best literature—the literature contemporary with the works of the great sculptors. There were poets and historians—can any quotation be given at all admissible as evidence? It is extraordinary that the advocates for the theory, if it were true, can find no passages in the poets. Is there nothing nearer than what Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates? “Let it be remembered that Socrates was the son of a sculptor, and that Plato lived in Athens, acquainted with the great sculptors and their works; then read this passage, wherein Socrates employs by way of simile the practice of painting statues—‘Just as if, when painting statues, a person should blame us for not placing the most beautiful colours on the most beautiful parts of the figure—inasmuch as the eyes, the most beautiful parts, were not painted purple but black,—we should answer him by saying, Clever fellow, do not suppose we are to paint eyes so beautifully that they should not appear to be eye.’—Plato, De Repub., lib. iv. This passage would long ago have settled the question, had not the moderns been preoccupied with the belief that the Greeks did not paint their statues; they therefore read the passage in another sense. Many translators read ‘pictures’ for ‘statues.’ But the Greek word Ανδριας signifies ‘statue,’ and is never used to signify ‘picture.’ It means statue, and a statuary is called the maker of such statues—Ανδριαντοποιος. (Mr Davis, in Bohn’s English edition of Plato, avoids the difficulty by translating it ‘human figures’).”—Mr Lloyd, in his remarks upon this passage, confesses that it does not touch the question concerning the painting the flesh, but refers to the eyes, lips, and ornaments. We object not to admit more than this, and, as we have before observed, that certain images, mostly of wood, were painted entirely, excepting where clothed; and, for argument’s sake, admitting that Socrates alluded to these common images, if we may so speak, the ancestors of our common dolls, should we be justified in building a theory subversive of all good taste upon such an ambiguity? For nothing is here said of marble statues; and there is nothing to show that marble statues are meant. The writer in the “Apology” says, with an air of triumph, that Ανδριας always means statue, and never picture; but these were figures, that he would call statues, of wood and of clay, and of little value—a kind of marketable goods for the vulgar, as we have already shown. But if the writer is determined to make them marble statues, and of the best, he might certainly have made his case the stronger; for when he says, and truly, that Socrates was the son of a sculptor, he forgets that Socrates was himself a sculptor,—and some have supposed him to have been a painter also, but Pliny is of another opinion. The three Graces in the court before the Acropolis of Athens were his work; and it is probably to the demands these Graces made upon his thoughts the philosopher alluded in his dialogue with Theodote the courtesan. She had invited him to her home; he excused himself that he had no leisure from his private and public affairs,—“and besides,” he adds playfully, “I have φἴλαι—female friends—at home who will not suffer me to absent myself from them day or night, learning, as they do from me, charms and powers of enticement.”^[47] So that we may suppose him to have been no mean statuary. Yet, considering that his mother followed the humble occupation of a 324midwife, and that consequently his father was not very rich, it may not be an out-of-the-way conjecture to suppose that the family trade may have had its humbler employments, of which the painting images may have borne a part. Ships had their images as well as temples, and we know that the ship’s head was “Μιλτοπάρἤος.” The custom has descended to our times. But we are not to take the word put by Plato into the mouth of Socrates—ανδριαντας—necessarily in the highest sense, and imagine he speaks of such works as those of Phidias or Praxiteles. Although the Greeks did distinguish the several words by which statues were understood, they were not very nice in the observance of the several uses. Ανδριαντας may have been applied to any representation of the human figure.^[48] Ανδριαντοποιος, says the Apologist, was a statuary—so may have been said to be Ανδριαντοπλάσης the modellist in clay or wax; but neither word is used by Socrates—simply Ανδριαντας, (images). There is not a hint as to how, or with what materials, they were made. The scholiast on the passage in Aristophanes respecting the work of Socrates (the Graces), makes a distinction between ανδριαντας and αγαλματα—noticing that Socrates was the son of Sophroniscus, λιθοξόou, with whom he took his share in the polishing art, adding that he polished ανδριαντας λιθινouς ἐλαξεύε, and that he made the “αγαλματα” of the three Graces. Now, let ανδριας be a statue, or human figure, of whatever material, and grant that some such figures had painted eyes, and probably partially coloured drapery, possibly the whole body painted—what then? they might have been low and inferior works. Who would think, from such data, of inferring a habit in the Greek sculptors of painting and plastering all their marble statues—asserting too, so audaciously, that we the moderns have, and not they, a prejudice in favour of white marble? But Mr Lloyd, in his note on this passage, with respect to Socrates (vide “Apology”), admits that it is no evidence of the colouring the flesh. “The passage is decisive, as far as it goes, but it does not touch the question of colouring the flesh. It proves that as late as Plato’s time it was usual to apply colour to the eyes of statues; and assuming, what is not stated, that marble statues are in question, we are brought to the same point as by the Æginetan marbles, of which the eyes, lips, portions of the armour and draperies, were found coloured. I forget whether the hair was found to be coloured, but the absence of traces of colour on the flesh, while they were abundant elsewhere, indicates that, if coloured at all, it must have been by a different and more perishable process—by a tint, or stain, or varnish. The Æginetan statues, being archaic, do not give an absolute rule for those of Phidias. The archaic Athenian bas-relief of a warrior, in excellent preservation, shows vivid colours on drapery and ornaments of armour, and the eyeballs were also coloured: here again there is no trace of colour on the flesh.” But notwithstanding that no statue has been found with any trace of colour in the flesh, and not satisfied with Mr Lloyd’s commentary, Mr Owen Jones seeks proof and confirmation of the sense of the quotation from Plato, in a caution given by Plutarch, thus mistranslated: “It is necessary to be very careful of statues, otherwise the vermilion with which the ancient statues were coloured will quickly disappear.” What kind of care is necessary? Plutarch uses the word γάνωσις, which means more than care—that a polishing or varnishing is necessary (if, as we may presume, they would preserve the old colouring of an archaic statue), because, not perhaps of the quick fading of the vermilion, as translated by Mr 325Lloyd, but the vermilion εξανθεῖ—effloresces; or, as we should say, comes up dry to the surface, leaving the vehicle with which it was put on. However, let the passage have all the meaning Mr Owen Jones can desire, it relates only to certain sacred figures at Rome, not in Greece, and which may have been, for anything that is known to the contrary, figures of sacred geese. How do these quotations show the practice of Phidias? In the first place, Plato, who narrates what Socrates said, was nearly a century after Phidias, and Plutarch nearly six hundred years after Phidias. On every account the authority of Plato would be preferable to that of Plutarch, who kept his school at Rome, and was far more fond of raising questions than of affording accurate information.^[49] Mr Owen Jones, however, in the impetuosity of his imaginary triumph, outruns all his given authorities to authorities not given. He says: “There are abundant notices extant which illustrate it (the painting of statues). One will suffice. The celebrated marble statue of a Bacchante by Scopas is described as holding, in lieu of the Thyrsus, a dead roebuck, which is cut open, and the marble represents living flesh.” We willingly excuse the blunder of the living flesh of a dead roebuck, ascribing it solely to the impetuosity of the genius of Mr Owen Jones, which, plunging into colouring matter, would vermilionise the palest face of Death. If paint could “create a soul under the ribs of death,” he would do it. He must greatly admire the old lady’s dying request to—

“Put on this cheek a little red,

One surely would not look a fright when dead.”

We know not where to lay our hand upon the original account of this statue of the Bacchante of Scopas; but if it says no more than the Apologist says for it—that the marble represented “living flesh”—it does not necessarily imply colour. Here is a contradiction: if it be meant that by “living flesh” the colour of living flesh was represented—for that must be the argument—there must have been an attempt towards the exact imitation of nature. “In the first place,” says Mr Owen Jones, arguing against the suggestion of coloured and veined marble having been used, “veins do not so run in marble as to represent flesh. In the second, unless statues were usually coloured, such veins, if they existed, would be regarded as terrible blemishes, and the very things the Greeks are supposed to have avoided—viz., colour as representing reality—would be shown.” Does Mr Owen Jones here admit that this exact imitation by colour was not usual? If so, as the words imply, what becomes of his quotation of the words of Socrates with regard to colouring the eyes? And further, upon what new plea will he justify his colouring the Parthenon frieze—not only the men and their cloaks, but the horses—so that the latter exactly resemble those on the roundabouts on which children ride at fairs? We suppose he meant the men to have a natural colour, and the horses also—a taste so vile, that we are quite sure such a perpetration would have shocked Phidias out of all patience. And if not meant for the exact colour, what can he suppose they were painted for?—as, to avoid this semblance of reality, the Greeks, according to him, should have painted men and horses vermilion or blue, or any colour the farthest from reality, the contrary to the practice of Mr Owen Jones—and that he should have painted them vermilion he immediately shows, by quoting Pausanias, where he describes a statue of Bacchus “as having all those portions not hidden by draperies painted vermilion, the body being of gilded wood.” What has this to do with marble statues? But he seems not to understand the hint given by his commentator, Mr Lloyd, “that the statue was apparently ithyphallic, and probably archaic”—a well-known peculiarity in statues of Bacchus. Not having, 326however, such a specimen in marble, he is particularly glad to find one of gypsum, “ornamented with paint:” nothing more probable, and for the same reason that the wooden one was painted vermilion.

“But colour was used, as we know,” says Mr Owen Jones; “and Pausanias (Arcad., lib. viii. cap. 39) describes a statue of Bacchus as having all those portions not hidden by draperies painted vermilion, the body being of gilded wood. He also distinctly says that statues made of gypsum were painted, describing a statue of Bacchus γυψου πεποιημενον, which was—the language is explicit—ornamented with paint, (επικεκοσμημενον γραφῃ.)” These are statues of Bacchus, and, as the Apologist is reminded by his commentator, Mr Lloyd, “apparently ithyphallic,” and therefore painted red. The draperies are the assumption of the writer; he should have said ivy and laurel. Mr Owen Jones, to render his examples “abundant,” writes statues in the latter part of the quotation, whereas the word in his authority, Pausanias, is singular. We stay not to inquire if γραφη here means paint, though, speaking of another statue, Pausanias uses the verb and its congenial noun in another sense—“ἐπίγραμμα ἐπἄυτῆ γραφῆναι.” We the more readily grant it was painted vermilion, because it was a Bacchic statue; and grant that it was seen by Pausanias. We daresay it was ancient enough; but for any proof we must not look to Pausanias, who lived at Rome 170th year of the Christian era;—and here it must be borne in mind, that of the innumerable statues spoken of by that writer, of marble and other materials, the supposed painted are a very few exceptions. Not only does he speak of marble, without any mention of colouring, but of its whiteness. In this matter, indeed, the exceptions prove the rule of the contrary. Before we proceed to the examples taken from Virgil—weak enough—let us see if there may not be found something nearer the time of Phidias than any authorities given. Well, then, we have an eyewitness, one who must not only have seen the statues of Phidias, but probably conversed with Phidias himself—Æschylus. If such statues as he speaks of were painted generally, and as a necessary part of their completion, could he have brought into poetic use and sentiment their vacancy of eyes? It is a remarkable passage. He is describing Menelaus in his gallery full of the large statues of Helen. It is in the “Agamemnon:”

Εὐμόρφων γὰρ κολοσσῶν

Ἔχθεται χάρις ἀνδρί.

Ὀμμάτων δ’ ἐν ἀχηνίαις

Ἔῤῥει πᾶσ’ Ἀφροδίτα.

There was “no speculation in those eyes.” The eyes were not painted certainly; as the poet saw the statues in his mind’s eye, so had he seen them with his visible organs. The charm of love was not in them, because the outward form of the eye was only represented in the marble. The love-charm was not in those “vacancies of eyes.” Schütz has this note upon the passage: “Quamvis nimirum eleganter fabricatæ sint statuæ, carent tamen oculis, adeoque admirationem quidem excitare possunt amorem non item.”

These lines of the poet Æschylus, repeated before an acute and critical Athenian audience, would have been unintelligible, and marked as an egregious blunder, if the practice of painting statues, or even their eyes alone, had been so universal as it is represented in this “Apology.” Can there be a more decisive authority, than this of the contemporary Æschylus? It is certainly a descent from Æschylus to Virgil; but we follow the apologist.

“Marmoreusque tibi, Dea, versicoloribus alis

In morem pictâ stabit Amor pharetrâ.”

The writer, by his italics, is, we think, a little out in grammar, connecting “in morem” (because it was customary) with “versicoloribus alis,”—and in his translated sense of the passage, with “pictâ pharetrâ” also. This is certainly making nothing of it, by endeavouring to make the most of it. “In morem” may more properly attach itself to “stabit;” if not, to the wings or painted quiver,—not, in construction, to both; at any rate, Virgil, though Heyne reproves him for his bad taste, had here a prejudice 327in favour of marble, for “Amor” shall be marble—that is the first word, and first consideration. In the next quotation Virgil, as provokingly, sets his heart upon marble—nay, smooth polished marble—and the whole figure is to be entirely of this smooth marble; but he gratifies Mr Jones by “scarlet”—the colour of colours, vermilion—and thus so reconciles the Polychromatist to the marble, as to induce him to quote the really worthless passage:—

“Si proprium hoc fuerit, levi de marmore tota

Puniceo stabis suras evincta cothurno.”

It is not of much moment to the main question what statue one clown should offer to Diana, in return for a day’s hunting, or the other to a very different and far less respectable deity, whom he has already made in vulgar marble, pro temp. only, and whom he promises to set up in gold, though simply the “custos pauperis horti.”

“Nunc te marmoreum pro tempore fecimus; at tu

Si fœtura gregem suppleverit, aureus esto.”

The poetical promises exceeded the clown’s means; neither Diana, nor the deity, odious to her, saw the promises fulfilled. The Apologist is merely taking advantage of a poetical license, a plenary indulgence in nonperformance. It is quite ridiculous to attempt to prove what Phidias and Praxiteles must have done, by what Virgil imagined. But as Mr Owen Jones delights in such quasi modern authorities, we venture to remind him of the bad taste of Horace, who loved the Parian marble; and to recommend him to consider in what manner white marble is spoken of by as good authority, Juvenal, who introduces it as most valued in his time—white statues.

“Et jam accurrit, qui marmora donet

Conferat impersas. Hic nuda et candida signa,

Hic aliquid præclarum Euphranoris et Polycleti.”

It may be as well to quote also what he says in reference to waxing statues:—

“Propter quæ fas est genua incerare Deorum.”

Upon which we find in a note—“Consueverant Deorum simulacra cera illinire (the old word of dispute) ibidemque affert illud Prudentii, lib. i., contra Symonachum,—

——‘Saxa illita ceris

Viderat, unguentoque Lares humescere nigros.’”

And in Sat. XII., “Simulacra intentia cerâ.”

We have already treated of this custom of waxing the statues, and given the recipe of Pliny, to which we revert for a moment, because the advocates for the colouring theory insist that illitia, linita, illinere, linire, all of one origin, are words applicable to painting. Pliny says,—we quote from Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities,—after showing how the wax should be melted and laid on, “It was then rubbed with a clean linen cloth, in the way that naked marble statues were done.” The Latin is—“Sicut et marmora nitescunt.” The writer in the Dictionary speaks as to the various application of the encaustic process, to paint and to polish: “Wax thus purified was mixed with all species of colours, and prepared for painting; but it was applied also to many other uses, as polishing statues, walls, &c.”

Lucian, who died ninety years of age, 180th of the Christian era, although he relinquished the employment of a statuary, and followed that of literature, had certainly an excellent taste in art. His descriptions of statues and pictures prove his fondness and his knowledge. What he says of the famous Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles is very remarkable. After admiring the whiteness of the marble and its polish, he praises the ingenuity of the artificer, in so contriving the statue as to bring least in sight a blemish in the marble, (a very common thing, he adds). It would not have required this ingenuity in the design, if Praxiteles had intended his statue to be painted, for the paint would have covered the stain in the marble wherever placed. We may learn something more from Lucian. In his “Images,” wishing to describe a perfect woman, he will first represent her by the finest statues in the world, selecting the beauties of each. It is in a dialogue with Lycinus and Polystratus. 328“Is there anything wanting?” asks Polystratus, after mention of these perfect statues. Lycinus replies that the colouring is wanting. He therefore brings to his description the most beautiful works of the best painters. Enough is not done yet; there is the mind to be added. He therefore calls in the poets. Here, then, we have statuary, painter, and poet, each by their separate art to portray this perfect woman. He does not describe by painted statues, but by pictures. Had painting statues been universal, as pretended, Lucian must have seen examples, and his reference to pictures would have been unnecessary. If it be argued that the paint had worn off, that argument will tell against the Polychromatists, for it at least will show that, in an age when statues were esteemed, the barbarity of colouring was not renewed.

In his “Description of a House,” he says, “Over against the door, upon the wall, there is the Temple of Minerva in relief, where you may see the goddess in white marble, without her accoutrements of war.” The painter, it may be fairly conjectured, painted inside on the wall of the house, the common aspect, and the white marble statue.

In his “Baths of Hippias,” he mentions “two noble pieces of antiquity in marble of Health and Æsculapius.” Nor does he omit noticing paint, and that vermilion—but where is it? “Then you come to a hot passage of Numidian stone, that brings you to the last apartment, glittering with a bright vermilion, bordering on purple.”

According to Mr Owen Jones’s theory, all these exquisite works in white marble are to be considered as unfinished; if they have not been handed over to the painter, they should be now. Why did Phidias and Praxiteles so elaborate to the mark of truth their performances? The reader will be astonished to learn the reason from Mr Owen Jones. It was from the necessity of the subsequent finish by paints!

“People are apt to argue that Phidias never could have taken such pains to study the light and shade of this bas-relief, if the fineness of his workmanship had had to be stopped up when bedaubed with paint.” It is astonishing that not a glimmering of common sense was here let in upon the work of Phidias, while the whole light of his understanding showed the effect of his own handiwork on the plaster; for he, in that case, says, “But when the plaster has further to be painted with four coats of oil-paint to stop the suction, it may readily be imagined how much the more delicate modulations of the surface will suffer.” Does he suppose that the eyes of Phidias, and of people in that age, were blind to the suffering of these nice modulations from the stucco, or over-coats of paint? But why did Phidias so finish his works?—hear the polychromatic oracle “Now, people who argue thus have never understood what colour does when applied to form. The very fact that colour has to be applied, demands the highest finish in the form beneath. By more visibly bringing out the form, it makes all defects more prominent. Let any one compare the muscles of the figures in white with the muscles of those coloured, and he will not hesitate an instant to admit this truth. The labours of Phidias, had they never received colour, would have been thrown away; it was because he designed them to receive colour, that such an elaboration of the surface was required.” This is the most considerable inconsiderate nonsense imaginable. Common sense says, that one even colour, or absence of colour, gives equal shadows, according to the sculptor’s design; but if you colour portions of the same work differently, the unity of shadows will be destroyed, for shadows will assimilate themselves to the various colourings, be they light or dark. This necessity of colouring would impose such a task upon the sculptor, so complicate his work and design, and so bring his whole mind into subservience to, or certainly co-operation and consultation with, the painter, that no man of genius could submit to it; for it is the characteristic of genius to have its exercise in its own independent art. The assertion of this effect of colour, by Mr Jones, is untrue in fact, and if he could make it true, would so complicate, and at the same time degrade, 329the statuary’s art, that in the disgust of its operation it would be both out of the power, and out of the inclination, of men to pursue it. Will the people of England take Mr Owen Jones’s reproof? To them the labours of Phidias have hitherto been thrown away, for they have only as yet seen his works in white marble—in fact, unfinished. In this state Mr Jones thinks they have been very silly to admire them at all—and how they came to admire them who can comprehend? they have no colourable pretext for their admiration. Not only have the labours of Phidias been “thrown away,”—but, what is more galling to this age of economists, some forty thousand pounds of our good people’s money have been thrown away too. What is left to be done? Simply what we have often done before—throw some “good money after the bad,” and constitute Mr Owen Jones Grand Polychromatist-plenipotentiary, with competence of salary and paint-pots, and establish him for life, and his school for ever, in the British Museum. It is well for him and for them the innocent marbles have no motion, or the very stones would cry out against him, and uplift their quiescent arms to smash more than his paint-pots.

And here let us be allowed to remark of Mr Owen Jones’s colouring, having been thoroughly disgusted at the Crystal Palace, that he is as yet but in the very elements of the grammar of colour. He has gone but a very little way in its alphabet. He has practised little more than the A B C—that is, the bright blue, the bright red, the bright yellow. But the alphabet is much beyond this. What of their combinations? These are so innumerable that, as if in despair of their acquirement, he puts his whole trust in the blue, red, and yellow, so that the very object of colour, variety, is missed, and the eye is wearied and irritated in this Crystal Palace with what may be called, in defiance of the contradiction of the word, a polychromatic monotony. His theory of colour stops short at the beginning—it is without its learning. The sentiments of colours are in their mixtures, their relative combinations, and appropriate applications, and we venture to suggest to other Polychromatists, besides Mr Owen Jones, that the grammar of colouring, if learned properly, will lead to a mystery which the blue, red, and yellow, of themselves the A, B, C of the art, are quite insufficient to teach. The study is by none more required than our painters in glass; nor are some of our picture-makers, as our Academy exhibitions show, without the need of a little learning. We scarcely ever see a modern window that does not exhibit a total ignorance of colour. The first thing that strikes the eye is a quantity of blue, for it is the most active colour, and it is given in large portions, not dissipated as it should be—then reds, and as vivid as may be—and yellows. Attempt at proper effect, such as the genius loci requires, there is none. With the unsparing use of these three unmitigated colours only, we do not see why decorators should be called Polychromatists at all; they should style themselves Trichromatists. But of Mr Owen Jones’s polychromatic theory and practice, do not let him so slander the tasks of the ancients as to pretend that he has it from them, if by the ancients he means those artists of good time. They delighted in white marble, “nuda et candida signa,”—the naked and the white. The pretence that he had it from them, is as the

“Painted vest Prince Vortigern had on,

Which from a naked Pict his grandsire won.”

The grandsire never took it; the naked Pict never had it. And yet the directors of this Crystal Palace have taken Mr Owen Jones’s word for it. They have inconsiderately, and with the worst taste, delivered up the Palace into Mr Jones’s hands. We dread his being put into any other palace, for he evidently longs to be stuccoing and daubing the real marbles. “The experiment cannot be fairly tried, till tried on marble”—and he looks to a wide area, ample verge, and room enough, “and in conditions of space, atmosphere, &c., similar to those under which the originals were placed.” We however owe it to Mr Owen Jones’s candour in admitting a note by Mr Penrose, 330which vindicates the character of this odious marble. Thus speaks Mr Penrose: “An extensive and careful examination of the Pentelic Quarries, by the orders of King Otho, has shown that large blocks, such as were used at Athens, are very rare indeed. The distance, also, from the city is considerable: whereas there are quarries on Mount Hymettus at little more than one-third the distance (and most convenient for carriage), which furnish immense masses of dove-coloured marble, much prized, it would seem, by the Romans (Hor., ii. 18), and inferior in no respect but that of colour to the Pentelic. It could, therefore, only have been the intrinsic beauty of the latter material that led to its employment by so practical a people as the Athenians.” It will occur to the reader to ask if there is not here something like a proof that they did not intend this Pentelic marble to be painted; for it is manifest, under the stucco-and-painting theory, the dove-coloured of Hymettus would have answered all purposes. But Mr Owen Jones triumphs over his own candour. He sees nothing in the admission of this note of Mr Penrose; he takes it up, he exhibits it, merely for the purpose of throwing it down and trampling upon it. He gives it a scornful reply.—Reply in large letters. It is a curious one, for, like the boomerang, it flies back upon himself, and gives his own arguments a palpable hit. The reader may remember how he had asserted that “the Athenians built with marble because they found it almost beneath their feet.” In his oblivious reply, he discovers that the Athenians used it because it was a great way off from their feet; nay, that the worst part of the matter was, that it was no farther off from their feet. He uprises in reverential dignity, to reprove “our present ideas of economy.” “I do not think that, with our present ideas of economy, we are able to appreciate the motives of the Athenians in choosing their marble from the Pentelic quarries, in preference to those of Mount Hymettus. We must remember that the Greeks built for their gods; and the Pentelic marble, by presenting greater difficulties in its acquisition, may have been a more precious offering.” Mr Jones thus offers two contradictory motives on behalf of the Athenians—one must be given up. It would be strange in so few pages that a writer should so contradict himself, if we did not bear in mind with what ingenuity a theory will invest its own pertinacity. Surely no man on earth will believe that the Athenians, either by any extraordinary devotion^[50] they showed towards their gods in the time of Pericles, or by an unheard of folly (for they were a practical people), chose the one quarry in preference to the other, for no other reason than its greater cost and difficulty.

We are referred to the evidence of Mr Bracebridge, produced before the committee of the Institute, which Mr Jones says settles the point “as far as regards monumental sculpture.” The evidence is, that in the winter 1835–6, an excavation, to the depth of twenty-five feet, was made at the south-east angle of the Parthenon. “Here were found many pieces of marble, and among these fragments parts of triglyphs, of fluted columns, and of statues, particularly a female head, which was painted (the hair is nearly the costume of the present day).” It is quite an assumption that the spot of this excavation was the place where “the workmen of the Parthenon had thrown their refuse marble.” There is no proof whatever that these fragments were even of the age of the Parthenon; even if they may be supposed so to be, we presume that, as works of art, they are worthless, for they are called refuse, and most likely had nothing to do with the work of the Parthenon. We believe at the same time was found the very beautiful fragment in relief, the Winged Victory, of which but very few casts were taken. One of these we have just now seen, and doubt not its being of the age of Phidias. This is white marble, and we have never heard that it has any indication of having been painted. If Mr Owen 331Jones could prove to us that the whole Parthenon, with all its statues, showed certain indications of paint, we still have not advanced to any ground of fair conclusion; for, in the want of contemporary evidence—(we cannot call anything yet adduced evidence)—we are left to conjecture that the daubing and plastering were the work of a subsequent age, or ages, when ornament encroached upon and deteriorated every art in Greece, whether dramatic, painting, or sculpture. “Pliny and Vitruvius both repeatedly deplore the corrupt taste of their own times. Vitruvius (vii. 5), observes, that the decorations of the ancients were tastelessly laid aside, and that strong and gaudy colouring and prodigal expense were substituted for the beautiful effects produced by the skill of the ancient artists.”—(Smith’s Antiquities.)

We pay little attention to what has been said by the writers quoted regarding Acrolithic or Chryselephantine statues, whether of the best or lowest character. Whatever they were, they have perished, and there is nothing left for modern barbarism to restore. We have looked chiefly to undoubtedly good genuine marble—white marble statues, and reliefs of the best times, of such as are to be seen and admired, unadorned, in our British Museum. “It is the custom of all barbarous nations to colour their idols,” says the writer of the historical evidence. We perfectly assent to this, and believe we shall ourselves be a very barbarous nation whenever the statues in that Museum shall be plastered with stucco, or painted over with four coats of vermilion or any other colour. Barbarous nations have painted, and do so still, not only their idols but themselves. Our Picts, with their woad colouring, may have emulated the peculiar beauty of blue-faced baboons. We dispute not the point that Greece, as well as every other country, at some period of its history was addicted to the common barbarous taste of colouring to the utmost of their means. The question is not whether they did it, but when they left it off. It is said in the “Apology,” that if they had ever left off the practice, it would have been so remarkable an event that it would have been noted in history. We know not where any one will be able to put his hand upon any passage in history, showing the exact or probable period at which our neighbours the Picts left off the fashion, which we learn prevailed. We think Mr Owen Jones himself would be very much astonished if, even though in pursuit and pursuance of his own argument, he should turn the corner of Pall Mall, and come face to face with half-a-dozen naked Picts in the ancient blue and vermilion costume. Quite satisfied that the fashion has been superseded, we care not about the when. Nor do we care to know, in our practical age, what finery they put upon their idols; and although a commission under Polychromatic direction may bring back, from no very distant travel, accounts of multitudes of idols still draped and painted, we are sure this English nation will not resume the practice. We have something else to do, which the “Wisdom of Solomon” tells us they had not, who fabricated such monstrosities. “The carpenter carved it diligently, when he had nothing else to do, and formed it by the skill of his understanding, and fashioned it to the image of a man, or made it like some vile beast, laying it over with vermilion, and with paint colouring it red, and covering every spot therein.”

Much is made of the notices of Pausanias, who, in the 177th year of the Christian era, travelled over Greece. Mr (afterwards Sir Uvedale) Price, in 1780 published “an accurate bill of fare of so sumptuous an entertainment,” in relation to the temples, statues, and paintings remaining in Greece in the time of Pausanias. We have thought it worth while to look over this bill of fare, and to extract all that is said about painted statues. Page 45: “In the great square, where there are several temples, there are the statues of the Ephesian Diana, and of Bacchus 332in wood—all the parts of which are gilt with gold, except the faces, which are coloured with vermilion.” Immediately follows—“There is a Temple of Fortune with her statue, which is an upright figure of Parian marble”—Nothing about painting this! Page 177–78: “In Ægina there is a Temple of Jupiter, in which there is his statue of Pentelican marble, in a sitting posture, and one of Minerva in wood, which is gilt with gold, and adorned with various colours; but the head, hands, and feet are of ivory.” “At Philoe there are the temples of Bacchus and Diana: the statue of the goddess is in brass, and she is taking an arrow out of her quiver; but that of Bacchus is of wood, and is painted of a ruddy colour.” It is only the wooden are painted! Page 199: “In Phigalia there is a Temple of Diana Sospita, with her statue in marble; and in Gymnasium there is a statue of Mercury, and likewise a Temple of Bacchus Acratophorus with his statue—the upper part of which is painted with vermilion, but the lower part is covered by the ivy and laurel that grows over it.” This is the statue mentioned in the historical evidence, where it says “the body being of gilded wood.” There is no doubt it was so—but in fairness we must say, that, having examined the original passage in Pausanias (Arcad., lib. viii. cap. 89), we find no mention of the material of which it was made. Here it will be observed that in no instance does Pausanias speak of a marble statue painted.

We have been reading an account of the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii—without doubt, both these places contained Greek sculpture of a good period. There have been a vast number of marble statues and fragments of statues found. The marble of which they are made is mentioned. They are mostly white marble, and there is no notice of any having been painted. If one should be, or should have been found coloured, it would be an exception, the not unlikely experiment of individual bad taste. We should bear in mind, also, that the discovered works must have been found with regard to substance and colour in the state in which they were overwhelmed in the sudden destruction of the towns. Yet do we read of a single painted marble statue? The paintings are, however, minutely described, and their coloured wall decorations. We have yet to learn that there has been any paint discovered upon those exquisitely beautiful statues belonging to the Lycian Temple Tomb, in the British Museum, discovered and brought to this country by Sir Charles Fellowes. Could we be brought to believe that marble statues were stuccoed or painted—and we utterly repudiate any such attempts as Mr Jones’s to make it credible—we should bless the memories, had they left us any notices of their names, of those worthies of a better taste who had the good sense to obliterate, to the utmost of their power, the bedaubers’ doings. With them we venerate white marble; and while we think of the Polychromatists, we entertain greater respect for the taste and sense of the so-called simpletons of the fable who endeavoured to wash the blackamoor white, than for the fatuous who would make the white black, or even vermilion.

It is surprising that in the history of the arts the Homeric period is made of so little account. We are inclined to believe that the arts had reached a high state, at least of workmanship; that they were subsequently lost, and revived. If Homer and Hesiod, the eldest of heathen authors, introduced into their poems elaborate descriptions of the shields of Hercules and Achilles, and in some degree spoke of the actual workmanship, can we believe that either of them treated of things totally unknown at the times they wrote? If so, they were inventors—or at least one of them—of the arts they describe. It is all very well to ascribe all that we read of as mere poetry; but poetry, however it invents, or partakes of invention, builds invention on fact. It would not invent an art, and offer it to the world as a thing already known. The shields exhibit extraordinary workmanship, which is thought worthy to be attributed to the skill of a deity. That of Hercules in Hesiod implies the use of hidden springs, for Perseus is described as hovering over and not touching the shield, and the Gorgons 333pursuing him as making a noise with the shield’s motion. The gold and silver dogs keeping watch at the gates of Alcinous could scarcely be the unauthorised invention of the poet. Much might be said upon the Nineveh discoveries; references might be made to the time of Moses—and instances more than that of the brazen serpent; the subsequent building of the Temple might supply most curious detail—all these proving the existence of sculptural arts, more or less refined, long antecedent to what we would fain call the revival of art in Greece. But we cannot be allowed space for a discussion not immediately bearing upon the subject of this paper.

It may be fairly conceded, that we are not to look to the earliest periods of art for its greatest simplicity. In all countries monstrosities and ornament were more eagerly sought, soon after the first attempts at representation, than accuracy and beauty. The time of the

“Fictilis et nullo violatus Jupiter auro,”

if not the poets’ fiction, was of short duration.

In this paper we treat not of the barbarities of art. Barbarous ages may be of all or of any times. Art having once reached perfection, and having mastered, over the falsities of bad taste, its own independence and emancipation from every other art, we deprecate the return of a barbarism which shall unite it with a gaudy presumption of another and a lower art, subjugating the genius of mind to the meaningless handling of the decorator.

Indeed, we should be content very much to narrow the question—to care little whether the ancient statues and relievi were painted or not. We are quite sure, from the very nature of things, the materials and the objects in the use of them, that they never ought to have been painted; and if there ever was such a practice, and it were a common one as pretended, the world has shown its good sense in obliterating the marks of the degradation of art so widely, as that any satisfactory discovery of such a practice is not to be met with. Ages have passed in a contrary belief, and much more than the meagre evidence adduced must be required, in any degree to damage the long-established opinion that statues should not be painted, and that white marble has undeniable, and, for the purpose of the statuary, perfect beauty. The audacious attempt in the Crystal Palace, and the assumptions of the “Apology,” might lead to the worst taste, to retard and not to advance art. And while we see simultaneously set up a foolish and dangerous principle to govern our national collections in painting, and probably sculpture, assumed with too much apparent authority, we fear the introduction of monstrosity in preference to beauty, and the consequence in oblivion of what is good in art, and the encouragement of a practice of all that is bad.

If the reader, unsatisfied with the damage inflicted in these pages upon the facts assumed by Mr Owen Jones in his “Apology,” and his conclusions upon them, would desire to see further arguments adduced from the necessities which originated the various styles of basso, alto, and mezzo relievo,—showing that they all presupposed one even colourless, or at least unvariegated plane, as the surface upon which they were to be executed, and how and why these three—the basso, alto, and mezzo—have each their own proper principles, in which they differ from each other—how they were invented for the very purpose of doing that which, if painting the marble had been contemplated, would have been unnecessary—how, in fact, they are in their own nature independent of colour, regulated by principles of light and shade, with which colour would detrimentally interfere—we would recommend to his attentive reading the short yet complete treatise on the subject, by Sir Charles Eastlake, being No. 7, in his admirable volume, The Literature of the Fine Arts. He proves by the characters of the three styles, and by the wants they were invented to supply, and the diversity of design which they require, that “the Greeks, as a general principle, considered the ground of figures in relief to be the real wall, or whatever the solid plane might be, and not to represent air as if it was a picture.” As Mr Jones’s experiments are made on relievi, a little study of their nature and distinctions is at this moment very desirable.

If Mr Jones colours the horses brown and grey, the faces of the riders flesh colour, and marks their eyes, and reddens their lips, and draperies their bodies after patterns out of a tailor’s book—it is quite absurd to say that the Greeks never intended exact imitation. In what he has done every one will recognise the attempt to portray exact nature in colour. Upon this principle, and establishing a contempt of white marble, there is but one more step to take, to set up offensive wax-work above the art of the statuary in marble. Sculpture is an appeal to the imagination, not to the senses. That which attempts to deceive disgusts by the early discovery of the fraud. Indeed, it is a maxim in sculpture that a certain unnaturalness in subordinate accompanying objects is to be adopted, to show that a comparison with real nature is not intended. “If imitation is to be preferred,” says Aristotle, “which is least adapted to the vulgar and most calculated to please the politest spectators, that which imitates everything is clearly most adapted to the vulgar, as not being intelligible without the addition of much movement and action, as bad players on the flute turn round, if they would imitate the motion of a discus.” Paint to the statuary is what all this motion is to the flute-player. Whoever mutilates what is great and good in art, and would persist in so doing, after reproof, ought to pay the penalty of his folly. We would not be too severe in the punishment of offenders in taste, but should rejoice to see one of a congenial kind put in practice, one very mild for such an offence as this of statue painting—the tarring and feathering the perpetrators, plasterers and bedaubers, principals and coadjutors. Upon Mr Owen Jones’s principle, the “ex uno omnes,” and his making a confirmed summer of one swallow, though we entirely deny the existence of this one rara avis, a white marble statue painted, he and his company ought not to object to the punishing process, for more culprits have been known to have been tarred and feathered than are even the pretended specimens of painted marbles on record. We would, out of consideration for the peculiar taste of the decorators, mitigate the punishment, by allowing the received proportion of Mr Jones’s blue and vermilion to be mixed with the tar.

Besides, as fine feathers make fine birds, and choice may be made of the brightest colours, it would be a fine sight, and one that would very much take the fancy of the public, to see the Polychromatists stand materially and bodily plastered, stuccoed, coloured, tarred and feathered, in the Crystal Palace, in their own glory or shame, as they may be pleased to take it, as living specimens of colouring interferences, to the infinite amusement of all beholders, and a caution to modern decorators. They would be pleased in one respect, for, beyond a question, the white statues would be quite neglected, the “prejudice” in favour of white marble would quite give way, and even the city wonders, Gog and Magog, would be no longer visited.

The reader will think it time to draw to a conclusion; it will be most satisfactory if he deems the case too clear to have required so much discussion, and that

“Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.”

But before we lay down the pen, we would not have it supposed that we are not sensible both of the merits and advantages of the Crystal Palace. It ought to be, and doubtless will be, the means of improving the people, and affording them rational amusement. There has been a little too much bombast about it, as a great college for the education of the mind of the people—too much eulogistic verbiage, which sickens the true source of rational admiration. It will improve, because it will amuse; for good amusement is education both for head and heart. The best praise it can receive is, that it is a place of 334permanent amusement, than which nothing could be devised more beautiful and appropriate for those who mainly want such relief from the toils and cares which eat into life. We could wish the Archbishop of Canterbury had not consented to let the Church of England be dragged in triumph behind the car of a commercial speculation. It was in bad taste at its opening—and Mr Owen Jones’s colouring is another specimen of bad taste—but “non paucis maculis.” We sincerely hope it will succeed in all respects, though we ventured not to join the Archbishop in his prayer. In fact, it is too great in itself for unnecessary display at the ushering in, which was worse than ridiculous—it made that which should be most serious in that place an offence and a falsity. The reader may be amused by an inauguration of quite another kind—one of poetry by anticipation. We summon, then, our oldest poet, to celebrate as afar off, for coming time, our newest Crystal Palace and its wonders, in

CHAUCER’S DREAM OF THE CRYSTAL PALACE.

“As I slept, I dreamt I was

Within a temple made of glass,

In which there were more images

Of gold standing in sundry stages,

In more rich tabernacles,

And with jewels more pinnacles;

And more curious portraitures

And quaint maniere of figures

Of gold work than I saw ever.

There saw I on either side,

Straight down to the door wide,

From the dais many a pillar

Of metal that shone out full clear.

· · · · ·

Then gan I look about I see

That there came entering in the hall,

A right great company withal,

And that of sundry regions,

Of all kinds of conditions,

That dwell on earth beneath the moon,

Poor and rich.

Such a great congregation

Of folks as I saw roam about,

Some within, and some without,

Was never seen, nor shall be no more.”

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