Library Edition

THE COMPLETE WORKS

OF

JOHN RUSKIN

CROWN OF WILD OLIVETIME AND TIDEQUEEN OF THE AIRLECTURES ON ART AND LANDSCAPEARATRA PENTELICI

NATIONAL LIBRARY ASSOCIATIONNEW YORK CHICAGO

ARATRA PENTELICI. 

SEVEN LECTURES

ON THE

ELEMENTS OF SCULPTURE, GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1870. 

CONTENTS. 

 PAGE

PREFACE v

LECTURE I. OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS 1

LECTURE II. IDOLATRY 20

LECTURE III. IMAGINATION 39

LECTURE IV. LIKENESS 67

LECTURE V. STRUCTURE 90

LECTURE VI. THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS 114

LECTURE VII. THE RELATION BETWEEN MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET 132

LIST OF PLATES

 Facing Page

I. Porch of San Zenone, Verona 14

II. The Arethusa of Syracuse 15

III. The Warning to the Kings, San Zenone, Verona 15

IV. The Nativity of Athena 46

V. Tomb of the Doges Jacopo and Lorenzo Tiepolo 49

VI. Archaic Athena of Athens and Corinth 50

VII. Archaic, Central and Declining Art of Greece 72

VIII. The Apollo of Syracuse, and the Self-made Man 84

IX. Apollo Chrysocomes of Clazomenæ 85

X. Marble Masonry in the Duomo of Verona 100

XI. The First Elements of Sculpture. Incised outline and opened space 101

XII. Branch of Phillyrea 109

XIII. Greek Flat relief, and sculpture by edged incision 111

XIV. Apollo and the Python. Heracles and the Nemean Lion 119

XV. Hera of Argos. Zeus of Syracuse 120

XVI. Demeter of Messene. Hera of Cnossus 121

XVII. Athena of Thurium. Siren Ligeia of Terina 121

XVIII. Artemis of Syracuse. Hera of Lacinian Cape 122

XIX. Zeus of Messene. Ajax of Opus 124

XX. Greek and Barbarian Sculpture 127

XXI. The Beginnings of Chivalry 129

PREFACE. 

1. I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember thatthe duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complexcharacter. Directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in astudy which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to beuseless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by whichthe study itself should be guided; and to vindicate their securityagainst the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately incumbereda subject which all think themselves competent to discuss. Thepossibility of such vindication is, of course, implied in the originalconsent of the Universities to the establishment of Art Professorships. Nothing can be made an element of education of which it is impossible todetermine whether it is ill done or well; and the clear assertion thatthere is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more importantfunction of each University than the instruction of its younger membersin any branch of practical skill. It matters comparatively littlewhether few or many of our students learn to draw; but it matters muchthat all who learn should be taught with accuracy. And the number whomay be justifiably advised to give any part of the time they spend atcollege to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, andfinally _must_ depend, on their being certified that painting andsculpture, no less than language, or than reasoning, have grammar andmethod, --that they permit a recognizable distinction between scholarshipand ignorance, and enforce a constant distinction between Right andWrong. 

2. This opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore restrictedto the statement, not only of first principles, but of those which wereillustrated by the practice of one school, and by that practice in itssimplest branch, the analysis of which could be certified by easilyaccessible examples, and aided by the indisputable evidence ofphotography. [1]

The exclusion of the terminal Lecture[2] of the course from the seriesnow published, is in order to mark more definitely this limitation of mysubject; but in other respects the Lectures have been amplified inarranging them for the press, and the portions of them trusted at thetime to extempore delivery (not through indolence, but becauseexplanations of detail are always most intelligible when most familiar)have been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in what Isaid too imperfectly, completed. 

3. In one essential particular I have felt it necessary to write what Iwould not have spoken. I had intended to make no reference, in myUniversity Lectures, to existing schools of Art, except in cases whereit might be necessary to point out some undervalued excellence. Theobjects specified in the eleventh paragraph of my inaugural Lecture[3]might, I hoped, have been accomplished without reference to any worksdeserving of blame; but the Exhibition of the Royal Academy in thepresent year showed me a necessity of departing from my originalintention. The task of impartial criticism[4] is now, unhappily, nolonger to rescue modest skill from neglect; but to withstand the errorsof insolent genius, and abate the influence of plausible mediocrity. 

The Exhibition of 1871 was very notable in this important particular, that it embraced some representation of the modern schools of nearlyevery country in Europe: and I am well assured that, looking back uponit after the excitement of that singular interest has passed away, everythoughtful judge of Art will confirm my assertion, that it contained nota single picture of accomplished merit; while it contained many thatwere disgraceful to Art, and some that were disgraceful to humanity. 

4. It becomes, under such circumstances, my inevitable duty to speak ofthe existing conditions of Art with plainness enough to guard the youthswhose judgments I am intrusted to form, from being misled, either bytheir own naturally vivid interest in what represents, howeverunworthily, the scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunninglydevised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of Art which has longsince confessed itself to have no other object than to allure. I have, therefore, added to the second of these Lectures such illustration ofthe motives and course of modern industry as naturally arose out of itssubject; and shall continue in future to make similar applications;rarely indeed, permitting myself, in the Lectures actually read beforethe University, to introduce, subjects of instant, and therefore tooexciting, interest; but completing the addresses which I prepare forpublication in these, and in any other, particulars, which may renderthem more widely serviceable. 

5. The present course of Lectures will be followed, if I am able tofulfill the design of them, by one of a like elementary character onArchitecture; and that by a third series on Christian Sculpture: but, inthe meantime, my effort is to direct the attention of the residentstudents to Natural History, and to the higher branches of idealLandscape: and it will be, I trust, accepted as sufficient reason forthe delay which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for thepress, that I have not only been interrupted by a dangerous illness, butengaged, in what remained to me of the summer, in an endeavor to deduce, from the overwhelming complexity of modern classification in the NaturalSciences, some forms capable of easier reference by Art students, towhom the anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often no less importantthan that of the human body. 

The preparation of examples for manual practice, and the arrangement ofstandards for reference, both in Painting and Sculpture, had to becarried on, meanwhile, as I was able. For what has already been done, the reader is referred to the "Catalogue of the Educational Series, "published at the end of the Spring Term: of what remains to be done Iwill make no anticipatory statement, being content to have ascribed tome rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance inexpectation. 

 DENMARK HILL, _25th November, 1871. _

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finishedsculpture; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with themore roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. For the renderingof all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of formsdisturbed by the luster of metal or polished stone, the method employedin the plates of this volume will be found, I believe, satisfactory. Casts are first taken from the coins, in white plaster; these arephotographed, and the photograph printed by the autotype process. PlateXII. Is exceptional, being a pure mezzotint engraving of the old school, excellently carried through by my assistant, Mr. Allen, who was taught, as a personal favor to myself, by my friend, and Turner's fellow-worker, Thomas Lupton. Plate IV. Was intended to be a photograph from the superbvase in the British Museum, No. 564 in Mr. Newton's Catalogue; but itsvariety of color defied photography, and after the sheets had gone topress I was compelled to reduce Le Normand's plate of it, which isunsatisfactory, but answers my immediate purpose. 

The enlarged photographs for use in the Lecture Room were made for mewith most successful skill by Sergeant Spackman, of South Kensington;and the help throughout rendered to me by Mr. Burgess is acknowledged inthe course of the Lectures; though with thanks which must remaininadequate lest they should become tedious; for Mr. Burgess drew thesubjects of Plates III. , X. , and XIII. ; and drew and engraved everywood-cut in the book. 

[2] It is included in this edition. See Lecture VII. , pp. 132-158. 

[3] Lectures on Art, 1870. 

[4] A pamphlet by the Earl of Southesk, 'Britain's Art Paradise'(Edmonston and Douglas, Edinburgh), contains an entirely admirablecriticism of the most faultful pictures of the 1871 Exhibition. It is tobe regretted that Lord Southesk speaks only to condemn; but indeed, inmy own three days' review of the rooms, I found nothing deserving ofnotice otherwise, except Mr. Hook's always pleasant sketches fromfisher-life, and Mr. Pettie's graceful and powerful, though too slightlypainted, study from Henry IV. 

ARATRA PENTELICI. 

LECTURE I. 

OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS. 

_November, 1870. _

1. If, as is commonly believed, the subject of study which it is myspecial function to bring before you had no relation to the greatinterests of mankind, I should have less courage in asking for yourattention to-day, than when I first addressed you; though, even then, Idid not do so without painful diffidence. For at this moment, evensupposing that in other places it were possible for men to pursue theirordinary avocations undisturbed by indignation or pity, --here, at least, in the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of England, only one subject, I am well assured, can seriously occupy yourthoughts--the necessity, namely, of determining how it has come to passthat, in these recent days, iniquity the most reckless and monstrous canbe committed unanimously, by men more generous than ever yet in theworld's history were deceived into deeds of cruelty; and that prolongedagony of body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflictingwillfully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and acceptedportion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent persons, inhabiting thedistricts of the world which, of all others, as it seemed, were bestinstructed in the laws of civilization, and most richly invested withthe honor, and indulged in the felicity, of peace. 

Believe me, however, the subject of Art--instead of being foreign tothese deep questions of social duty and peril, --is so vitally connectedwith them, that it would be impossible for me now to pursue the line ofthought in which I began these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasiswould be given to every sentence by the force of passing events. It iswell, then, that in the plan I have laid down for your study, we shallnow be led into the examination of technical details, or abstractconditions of sentiment; so that the hours you spend with me may betimes of repose from heavier thoughts. But it chances strangely that, inthis course of minutely detailed study, I have first to set before youthe most essential piece of human workmanship, the plow, at the verymoment when--(you may see the announcement in the journals either ofyesterday or the day before)--the swords of your soldiers have been sentfor _to be sharpened_, and not at all to be beaten into plowshares. Ipermit myself, therefore, to remind you of the watchword of all myearnest writings--"Soldiers of the Plowshare, instead of Soldiers of theSword, "--and I know it my duty to assert to you that the work we enterupon to-day is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope; the hope, namely, that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead thenational passions towards the arts of peace, instead of the arts of war. 

I say, the work "we enter upon, " because the first four lectures I gavein the spring were wholly prefatory; and the following three onlydefined for you methods of practice. To-day we begin the systematicanalysis and progressive study of our subject. 

2. In general, the three great, or fine, Arts of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, are thought of as distinct from the lower and moremechanical formative arts, such as carpentry or pottery. But we cannot, either verbally, or with any practical advantage, admit suchclassification. How are we to distinguish painting on canvas frompainting on china?--or painting on china from painting on glass?--orpainting on glass from infusion of color into any vitreous substance, such as enamel?--or the infusion of color into glass and enamel fromthe infusion of color into wool or silk, and weaving of pictures intapestry, or patterns in dress? You will find that although, inultimately accurate use of the word, painting must be held to mean onlythe laying of a pigment on a surface with a soft instrument; yet, inbroad comparison of the functions of Art, we must conceive of one andthe same great artistic faculty, as governing _every mode of disposingcolors in a permanent relation on, or in, a solid substance_; whether itbe by tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs; inlaying metals with fusedflint, or coating walls with colored stone. 

3. Similarly, the word 'Sculpture, '--though in ultimate accuracy it isto be limited to the development of form in hard substances by cuttingaway portions of their mass--in broad definition, must be held tosignify _the reduction of any shapeless mass of solid matter into anintended shape_, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature ofthe instrument employed; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a pieceof box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument, ax, orhammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire tofuse;--whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we doso under the laws of the one great art of Sculpture. 

4. Having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we shall see thatthere is, in the third place, a class of work separated from both, in aspecific manner, and including a great group of arts which neither, ofnecessity, _tint_, nor for the sake of form merely, _shape_ thesubstances they deal with; but construct or arrange them with a view tothe resistance of some external force. We construct, for instance, atable with a flat top, and some support of prop, or leg, proportioned instrength to such weights as the table is intended to carry. We constructa ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference to certainforces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be overcome; or weconstruct a wall or roof with distinct reference to forces of pressureand oscillation, to be sustained or guarded against; and, therefore, inevery case, with especial consideration of the strength of ourmaterials, and the nature of that strength, elastic, tenacious, brittle, and the like. 

Now although this group of arts nearly always involves the putting oftwo or more separate pieces together, we must not define it by thataccident. The blade of an oar is not less formed with reference toexternal force than if it were made of many pieces; and the frame of aboat, whether hollowed out of a tree-trunk, or constructed of planksnailed together, is essentially the same piece of art; to be judged byits buoyancy and capacity of progression. Still, from the most wonderfulpiece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to this simple one, [5]the plowshare, on which it depends for its subsistence, _the putting oftwo or more pieces together_ is curiously necessary to the perfectnessof every fine instrument; and the peculiar mechanical work ofDædalus, --inlaying, --becomes all the more delightful to us in externalaspect, because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood of a bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension and resistance. 

5. And observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the simplestarchitecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the timbers in a ship'sstem, and the laying of the stones in a bridge buttress, are similar inart to the construction of the plowshare, differing in no essentialpoint, either in that they deal with other materials, or because, of thethree things produced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it, another to divide water by advancing through it, and the third to dividewater which advances against it. And again, the buttress of a bridgediffers only from that of a cathedral in having less weight to sustain, and more to resist. We can find no term in the gradation, from theplowshare to the cathedral buttress, at which we can set a logicaldistinction. 

6. Thus then we have simply three divisions of Art--one, that of givingcolors to substance; another, that of giving form to it without questionof resistance to force; and the third, that of giving form or positionwhich will make it capable of such resistance. All the fine arts areembraced under these three divisions. Do not think that it is only alogical or scientific affectation to mass them together in this manner;it is, on the contrary, of the first practical importance to understandthat the painter's faculty, or masterhood over color, being as subtle asa musician's over sound, must be looked to for the government of everyoperation in which color is employed; and that, in the same manner, theappliance of any art whatsoever to minor objects cannot be right, unlessunder the direction of a true master of that art. Under the presentsystem, you keep your Academician occupied only in producing tintedpieces of canvas to be shown in frames, and smooth pieces of marble tobe placed in niches; while you expect your builder or constructor todesign colored patterns in stone and brick, and your china-ware merchantto keep a separate body of workwomen who can paint china, but nothingelse. By this division of labor, you ruin all the arts at once. The workof the Academician becomes mean and effeminate, because he is not usedto treat color on a grand scale and in rough materials; and yourmanufactures become base, because no well-educated person sets hand tothem. And therefore it is necessary to understand, not merely as alogical statement, but as a practical necessity, that wherever beautifulcolor is to be arranged, you need a Master of Painting; and wherevernoble form is to be given, a Master of Sculpture; and wherever complexmechanical force is to be resisted; a Master of Architecture. 

7. But over this triple division there must rule another yet moreimportant. Any of these three arts may be either imitative of naturalobjects or limited to useful appliance. You may either paint a picturethat represents a scene, or your street door, to keep it from rotting;you may mold a statue, or a plate; build the resemblance of a clusterof lotus stalks, or only a square pier. Generally speaking, Paintingand Sculpture will be imitative, and Architecture merely useful; butthere is a great deal of Sculpture--as this crystal ball, [6] forinstance, which is not imitative, and a great deal of architecturewhich, to some extent, is so, as the so-called foils of Gothicapertures; and for many other reasons you will find it necessary to keepdistinction clear in your minds between the arts--of whateverkind--which are imitative, and produce a resemblance or image ofsomething which is not present; and those which are limited to theproduction of some useful reality, as the blade of a knife, or the wallof a house. You will perceive also, as we advance, that sculpture andpainting are indeed in this respect only one art; and that we shall haveconstantly to speak and think of them as simply _graphic_, whether withchisel or color, their principal function being to make us, in the wordsof Aristotle, "[Greek: theôrêtikoi tou peri sômata kallous]" (Polit. 8. 3), "having capacity and habit of contemplation of the beauty that is inmaterial things;" while architecture, and its correlative arts, are tobe practiced under quite other conditions of sentiment. 

8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist either inimitation or mechanical construction, the right judgment of them mustdepend on our knowledge of the things they imitate, and forces theyresist: and my function of teaching here would (for instance) so farresolve itself, either into demonstration that this painting of apeach[7] does resemble a peach, or explanation of the way in which thisplowshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth aside withleast force of thrust. And in both of these methods of study, though ofcourse your own diligence must be your chief master, to a certain extentyour Professor of Art can always guide you securely, and can show you, either that the image does truly resemble what it attempts to resemble, or that the structure is rightly prepared for the service it has toperform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is, perhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your Professor to teach youmost, and which, on the contrary, is exactly that about which you mustteach yourselves all that it is essential to learn. 

[Illustration: FIG. 1]

9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible examples of theunion of the graphic and constructive powers, --one of my breakfastplates. Since all the finely architectural arts, we said, began in theshaping of the cup and the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with theplatter. 

Why has it been made round? For two structural reasons: first, that thegreatest holding surface may be gathered into the smallest space; andsecondly, that in being pushed past other things on the table, it maycome into least contact with them. 

Next, why has it a rim? For two other structural reasons: first, thatit is convenient to put salt or mustard upon; but secondly, and chiefly, that the plate may be easily laid hold of. The rim is the simplest formof continuous handle. 

Farther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to put thisridge beneath, round the bottom; for as the rim is the simplest possibleform of continuous handle, so this is the simplest form of continuousleg. And we get the section given beneath the figure for the essentialone of a rightly made platter. 

10. Thus far our art has been strictly utilitarian, having respect toconditions of collision, of carriage, and of support. But now, on thesurface of our piece of pottery, here are various bands and spots ofcolor which are presumably set there to make it pleasanter to the eye. Six of the spots, seen closely, you discover are intended to representflowers. These then have as distinctly a graphic purpose as the otherproperties of the plate have an architectural one, and the firstcritical question we have to ask about them is, whether they are likeroses or not. I will anticipate what I have to say in subsequentLectures so far as to assure you that, if they are to be like roses atall, the liker they can be, the better. Do not suppose, as many peoplewill tell you, that because this is a common manufactured article, yourroses on it are the better for being ill-painted, or half-painted. Ifthey had been painted by the same hand that did this peach, the platewould have been all the better for it; but, as it chanced, there was nohand such as William Hunt's to paint them, and their graphic power isnot distinguished. In any case, however, that graphic power must havebeen subordinate to their effect as pink spots, while the band ofgreen-blue round the plate's edge, and the spots of gold, pretend to nographic power at all, but are meaningless spaces of color or metal. Still less have they any mechanical office: they add nowise to theserviceableness of the plate; and their agreeableness, if they possessany, depends, therefore, neither on any imitative, nor any structural, character; but on some inherent pleasantness in themselves, either ofmere colors to the eye, (as of taste to the tongue, ) or in the placingof those colors in relations which obey some mental principle of order, or physical principle of harmony. 

11. These abstract relations and inherent pleasantnesses, whether inspace, number, or time, and whether of colors or sounds, form what wemay properly term the musical or harmonic element in every art; and thestudy of them is an entirely separate science. It is the branch ofart-philosophy to which the word 'æsthetics' should be strictly limited, being the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves arepleasant to the human senses or instincts, though they representnothing, and serve for nothing, their only service _being_ theirpleasantness. Thus it is the province of æsthetics to tell you, (if youdid not know it before, ) that the taste and color of a peach arepleasant, and to ascertain, if it be ascertainable, (and you have anycuriosity to know, ) why they are so. 

12. The information would, I presume, to most of you, be gratuitous. Ifit were not, and you chanced to be in a sick state of body in which youdisliked peaches, it would be, for the time, to you false information, and, so far as it was true of other people, to you useless. Nearly thewhole study of æsthetics is in like manner either gratuitous or useless. Either you like the right things without being recommended to do so, or, if you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by lectures on the lawsof taste. You recollect the story of Thackeray, provoked, as he washelping himself to strawberries, by a young coxcomb's telling him that"he never took fruit or sweets. " "That, " replied, or is said to havereplied, Thackeray, "is because you are a sot, and a glutton. " And thewhole science of æsthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by onepassage of Goethe's in the end of the second part of Faust;--the notableone that follows the song of the Lemures, when the angels enter todispute with the fiends for the soul of Faust. They entersinging--"Pardon to sinners and life to the dust. " Mephistopheles hearsthem first, and exclaims to his troop, "Discord I hear, and filthyjingling"--"Mis-töne höre ich: garstiges Geklimper. " This, you see, isthe extreme of bad taste in music. Presently the angelic host beginstrewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic crowd altogether. Mephistopheles in vain calls to them--"What do you duck and shrinkfor--is that proper hellish behavior? Stand fast, and let themstrew"--"Was duckt und zuckt ihr; ist das Hellen-brauch? So haltetstand, und lasst sie streuen. " There you have also, the extreme, of badtaste in sight and smell. And in the whole passage is a brief embodimentfor you of the ultimate fact that all æsthetics depend on the health ofsoul and body, and the proper exercise of both, not only through years, but generations. Only by harmony of both collateral and successive livescan the great doctrine of the Muses be received which enables men"[Greek: chairein orthôs], "--"to have pleasure rightly;" and there is noother definition of the beautiful, nor of any subject of delight to theæsthetic faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit has created, seen and felt by another of similar or equal nobility. So much as thereis in you of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty, and creates none:what is human in you, in exact proportion to the perfectness of itshumanity, can create it, and receive. 

13. Returning now to the very elementary form in which the appeal to ouræsthetic virtue is made in our breakfast-plate, you notice that thereare two distinct kinds of pleasantness attempted. One by hues of color;the other by proportions of space. I have called these the musicalelements of the arts relating to sight; and there are indeed twocomplete sciences, one of the combinations of color, and the other ofthe combinations of line and form, which might each of them separatelyengage us in as intricate study as that of the science of music. But ofthe two, the science of color is, in the Greek sense, the more musical, being one of the divisions of the Apolline power; and it is sopractically educational, that if we are not using the faculty for colorto discipline nations, they will infallibly use it themselves as a meansof corruption. Both music and color are naturally influences of peace;but in the war trumpet, and the war shield, in the battle song andbattle standard, they have concentrated by beautiful imagination thecruel passions of men; and there is nothing in all the Divina Commediaof history more grotesque, yet more frightful, than the fact that, fromthe almost fabulous period when the insanity and impiety of war wrotethemselves in the symbols of the shields of the Seven against Thebes, colors have been the sign and stimulus of the most furious and fatalpassions that have rent the nations: blue against green, in the declineof the Roman Empire; black against white, in that of Florence; redagainst white, in the wars of the Royal houses in England; and at thismoment, red against white, in the contest of anarchy and loyalty, in allthe world. 

14. On the other hand, the directly ethical influence of color in thesky, the trees, flowers, and colored creatures round us, and in our ownvarious arts massed under the one name of painting, is so essential andconstant that we cease to recognize it, because we are never long enoughaltogether deprived of it to feel our need; and the mental diseasesinduced by the influence of corrupt color are as little suspected, ortraced to their true source, as the bodily weaknesses resulting fromatmospheric miasmata. 

15. The second musical science which belongs peculiarly to sculpture, (and to painting, so far as it represents form, ) consists in thedisposition of beautiful masses. That is to say, beautiful surfaceslimited by beautiful lines. Beautiful _surfaces_, observe; and rememberwhat is noted in my Fourth Lecture of the difference between a space anda mass. If you have at any time examined carefully, or practiced from, the drawings of shells placed in your copying series, you cannot buthave felt the difference in the grace between the aspects of the sameline, when inclosing a rounded or unrounded space. The exact science ofsculpture is that of the relations between outline and the solid form itlimits; and it does not matter whether that relation be indicated bydrawing or carving, so long as the expression of solid form is themental purpose; it is the science always of the beauty of relation inthree dimensions. To take the simplest possible line of continuouslimit--the circle: the flat disk inclosed by it may indeed be made anelement of decoration, though a very meager one; but its relative mass, the ball, being gradated in three dimensions, is always delightful. Here[8] is at once the simplest, and, in mere patient mechanism, themost skillful, piece of sculpture I can possibly show you, --a piece ofthe purest rock-crystal, chiseled, (I believe, by mere toil of hand, )into a perfect sphere. Imitating nothing, constructing nothing;sculpture for sculpture's sake of purest natural substance into simplestprimary form. 

16. Again. Out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster shell you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular disks of theprettiest color and luster. To some extent, such tinsel or foil of shell_is_ used pleasantly for decoration. But the mussel or oyster becomingitself an unwilling modeler, agglutinates its juice into threedimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometricallygradated, together with the savage instinct of attributing value to whatis difficult to obtain, make the little boss so precious in men's sight, that wise eagerness of search for the kingdom of heaven can be likenedto their eagerness of search for _it_; and the gates of Paradise can beno otherwise rendered so fair to their poor intelligence, as by tellingthem that every gate was of "one pearl. "

17. But take note here. We have just seen that the sum of the perceptivefaculty is expressed in these words of Aristotle's, "to take pleasurerightly" or straightly--[Greek: chairein orthôs]. Now, it is notpossible to do the direct opposite of that, --to take pleasureiniquitously or obliquely--[Greek: chairein adikôs] or [Greek:skoliôs], --more than you do in enjoying a thing because your neighborcannot get it. You may enjoy a thing legitimately because it is rare, and cannot be seen often (as you do a fine aurora, or a sunset, or anunusually lovely flower); that is Nature's way of stimulating yourattention. But if you enjoy it because your neighbor cannot haveit, --and, remember, all value attached to pearls more than glass beads, is merely and purely for that cause, --then you rejoice through the worstof idolatries, covetousness; and neither arithmetic, nor writing, norany other so-called essential of education, is now so vitally necessaryto the population of Europe, as such acquaintance with the principles ofintrinsic value, as may result in the iconoclasm of jewelry; and in theclear understanding that we are not, in that instinct, civilized, butyet remain wholly savage, so far as we care for display of this selfishkind. 

You think, perhaps, I am quitting my subject, and proceeding, as it istoo often with appearance of justice alleged against me, into irrelevantmatter. Pardon me; the end, not only of these Lectures, but of my wholeProfessorship, would be accomplished, --and far more than that, --if onlythe English nation could be made to understand that the beauty which isindeed to be a joy forever, must be a joy for all; and that though theidolatry may not have been wholly divine which sculptured gods, theidolatry is wholly diabolic, which, for vulgar display, sculpturesdiamonds. 

18. To go back to the point under discussion. A pearl, or a glass bead, may owe its pleasantness in some degree to its luster as well as to itsroundness. But a mere and simple ball of unpolished stone is enough forsculpturesque value. You may have noticed that the quatrefoil used inthe Ducal Palace of Venice owes its complete loveliness in distanteffect to the finishing of its cusps. The extremity of the cusp is amere ball of Istrian marble; and consider how subtle the faculty ofsight must be, since it recognizes at any distance, and is gratified by, the mystery of the termination of cusp obtained by the gradated light onthe ball. 

In that Venetian tracery this simplest element of sculptured form isused sparingly, as the most precious that can be employed to finish thefaçade. But alike in our own, and the French, central Gothic, theball-flower is lavished on every line--and in your St. Mary's spire, andthe Salisbury spire, and the towers of Notre Dame of Paris, the richpleasantness of decoration, --indeed, their so-called 'decorativestyle, '--consists only in being daintily beset with stone balls. It istrue the balls are modified into dim likeness of flowers; but do youtrace the resemblance to the rose in their distant, which is theirintended, effect?

19. But, farther, let the ball have motion; then the form it generateswill be that of a cylinder. You have, perhaps, thought that pure earlyEnglish architecture depended for its charm on visibility ofconstruction. It depends for its charm altogether on the abstractharmony of groups of cylinders, [9] arbitrarily bent into moldings, andarbitrarily associated as shafts, having no _real_ relation toconstruction whatsoever, and a theoretical relation so subtle that noneof us had seen it till Professor Willis worked it out for us. 

20. And now, proceeding to analysis of higher sculpture, you may haveobserved the importance I have attached to the porch of San Zenone, atVerona, by making it, among your standards, the first of the group whichis to illustrate the system of sculpture and architecture founded onfaith in a future life. That porch, fortunately represented in thephotograph, from which Plate I. Has been engraved, under a clear andpleasant light, furnishes you with examples of sculpture of every kind, from the flattest incised bas-relief to solid statues, both in marbleand bronze. And the two points I have been pressing upon you areconclusively exhibited here, namely, --(1) that sculpture is essentiallythe production of a pleasant bossiness or roundness of surface; (2) thatthe pleasantness of that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective ofimitation on one side, and of structure on the other. 

[Illustration: I. 

PORCH OF SAN ZENONE. VERONA. ]

[Illustration: II. 

THE ARETHUSA OF SYRACUSE. ]

[Illustration: III. 

THE WARNING TO THE KINGS

SAN ZENONE. VERONA. ]

21. (1. ) Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant bossinessor roundness of surface. 

If you look from some distance at these two engravings of Greek coins, (place the book open, so that you can see the opposite plate three orfour yards off, ) you will find the relief on each of them simplifiesitself into a pearl-like portion of a sphere, with exquisitely gradatedlight on its surface. When you look at them nearer, you will see thateach smaller portion into which they are divided--cheek, or brow, orleaf, or tress of hair--resolves itself also into a rounded or undulatedsurface, pleasant by gradation of light. Every several surface isdelightful in itself, as a shell, or a tuft of rounded moss, or thebossy masses of distant forest would be. That these intricatelymodulated masses present some resemblance to a girl's face, such as theSyracusans imagined that of the water-goddess Arethusa, is entirely asecondary matter; the primary condition is that the masses shall bebeautifully rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order. 

22. (2. ) It is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order andbeauty of surface, apart from the imitation. But you can see there is apretty disposition of, and relation between, the projections of afir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates nothing. Order exactly thesame in kind, only much more complex; and an abstract beauty of surfacerendered definite by increase and decline of light--(for every curve ofsurface has its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolicsolid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or sphericalone)--it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain; as it isthe essential business of a painter to get good color, whether heimitates anything or not. At a distance from the picture, or carving, where the things represented become absolutely unintelligible, we mustyet be able to say, at a glance, "That is good painting, or goodcarving. "

And you will be surprised to find, when you try the experiment, howmuch the eye must instinctively judge in this manner. Take the front ofSan Zenone, for instance, Plate I. You will find it impossible, withouta lens, to distinguish in the bronze gates, and in great part of thewall, anything that their bosses represent. You cannot tell whether thesculpture is of men, animals, or trees; only you feel it to be composedof pleasant projecting masses; you acknowledge that both gates and wallare, somehow, delightfully roughened; and only afterwards, by slowdegrees, can you make out what this roughness means; nay, though here(Plate III. ) I magnify[10] one of the bronze plates of the gate to ascale, which gives you the same advantage as if you saw it quite close, in the reality, --you may still be obliged to me for the information that_this_ boss represents the Madonna asleep in her little bed; and thissmaller boss, the Infant Christ in His; and this at the top, a cloudwith an angel coming out of it; and these jagged bosses, two of theThree Kings, with their crowns on, looking up to the star, (which isintelligible enough, I admit); but what this straggling, three-leggedboss beneath signifies, I suppose neither you nor I can tell, unless itbe the shepherd's dog, who has come suddenly upon the Kings with theircrowns on, and is greatly startled at them. 

23. Farther, and much more definitely, the pleasantness of the surfacedecoration is independent of structure; that is to say, of anyarchitectural requirement of stability. The greater part of thesculpture here is exclusively ornamentation of a flat wall, or ofdoor-paneling; only a small portion of the church front is thus treated, and the sculpture has no more to do with the form of the building than apiece of lace veil would have, suspended beside its gates on a festalday: the proportions of shaft and arch might be altered in a hundreddifferent ways without diminishing their stability; and the pillarswould stand more safely on the ground than on the backs of these carvedanimals. 

24. I wish you especially to notice these points, because the falsetheory that ornamentation should be merely decorated structure is sopretty and plausible, that it is likely to take away your attention fromthe far more important abstract conditions of design. Structure shouldnever be contradicted, and in the best buildings it is pleasantlyexhibited and enforced: in this very porch the joints of every stone arevisible, and you will find me in the Fifth Lecture insisting on thisclearness of its anatomy as a merit; yet so independent is themechanical structure of the true design, that when I begin my Lectureson Architecture, the first building I shall give you as a standard willbe one in which the structure is wholly concealed. It will be theBaptistery of Florence, which is, in reality, as much a buttressedchapel with a vaulted roof, as the Chapter House of York;--but round it, in order to conceal that buttressed structure, (not to decorate, observe, but to _conceal_, ) a flat external wall is raised; simplifyingthe whole to a mere hexagonal box, like a wooden piece of Tunbridgeware, on the surface of which the eye and intellect are to be interestedby the relations of dimension and curve between pieces of incrustingmarble of different colors, which have no more to do with the real makeof the building than the diaper of a Harlequin's jacket has to do withhis bones. 

25. The sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoyment of such apiece of art entirely depends, is one of the æsthetic faculties whichnothing can develop but time and education. It belongs only to highlytrained nations; and, among them, to their most strictly refinedclasses, though the germs of it are found, as part of their innatepower, in every people capable of art. It has for the most part vanishedat present from the English mind, in consequence of our eager desire forexcitement, and for the kind of splendor that exhibits wealth, carelessof dignity; so that, I suppose, there are very few now even of our besttrained Londoners who know the difference between the design ofWhitehall and that of any modern club-house in Pall Mall. The order andharmony which, in his enthusiastic account of the Theater of Epidaurus, Pausanias insists on before beauty, can only be recognized by sternorder and harmony in our daily lives; and the perception of them is aslittle to be compelled, or taught suddenly, as the laws of still finerchoice in the conception of dramatic incident which regulate poeticsculpture. 

26. And now, at last, I think, we can sketch out the subject before usin a clear light. We have a structural art, divine and human, of whichthe investigation comes under the general term Anatomy; whether thejunctions or joints be in mountains, or in branches of trees, or inbuildings, or in bones of animals. We have next a musical art, fallinginto two distinct divisions--one using colors, the other masses, for itselements of composition; lastly, we have an imitative art, concernedwith the representation of the outward appearances of things. And, formany reasons, I think it best to begin with imitative Sculpture; thatbeing defined as _the art which, by the musical disposition of masses, imitates anything of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us; anddoes so in accordance with structural laws having due reference to thematerials employed_. 

So that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry what thethings are of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us: what, in fewwords, --if we are to be occupied in the making of graven images, --weought to like to make images _of_. Secondly, after having determined itssubject, what degree of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in ourgraven image; and, lastly, under what limitations demanded by structureand material, such likeness may be obtained. 

These inquiries I shall endeavor to pursue with you to some practicalconclusion, in my next four Lectures; and in the sixth, I will brieflysketch the actual facts that have taken place in the development ofsculpture by the two greatest schools of it that hitherto have existedin the world. 

27. The tenor of our next Lecture, then, must be an inquiry into thereal nature of Idolatry; that is to say, the invention and service ofIdols: and, in the interval, may I commend to your own thoughts thisquestion, not wholly irrelevant, yet which I cannot pursue; namely, whether the God to whom we have so habitually prayed for deliverance"from battle, murder, and sudden death, " _is_ indeed, seeing that thepresent state of Christendom is the result of a thousand years' prayingto that effect, "as the gods of the heathen who were but idols;" orwhether--(and observe, one or other of these things _must_ betrue)--whether our prayers to Him have been, by this much, worse thanIdolatry;--that heathen prayer was true prayer to false gods; and ourprayers have been false prayers to the True One?

FOOTNOTES:

[5] I had a real plowshare on my lecture-table; but it would interruptthe drift of the statements in the text too long if I attempted here toillustrate by figures the relation of the colter to the share, and ofthe hard to the soft pieces of metal in the share itself. 

[6] A sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable by thereader, without a figure. 

[7] One of William Hunt's peaches; not, I am afraid, imaginablealtogether, but still less representable by figure. 

[8] The crystal ball above mentioned. 

[9] All grandest effects in moldings may be, and for the most part havebeen, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental) section. More refined sections, as that of the fluting of a Doric shaft, are onlyof use near the eye and in beautiful stone; and the pursuit of them wasone of the many errors of later Gothic. The statement in the text thatthe moldings, even of best time, "have no real relation toconstruction, " is scarcely strong enough: they in fact contend with, anddeny the construction, their principal purpose seeming to be theconcealment of the joints of the voussoirs. 

[10] Some of the most precious work done for me by my assistant, Mr. Burgess, during the course of these Lectures, consisted in makingenlarged drawings from portions of photographs. Plate III. Is engravedfrom a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of whichPlate I. Is a reduction. 

LECTURE II. 

IDOLATRY. 

_November, 1870. _

28. Beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as the art offiction in solid substance, we are now to consider what its subjectshould be. What--having the gift of imagery--should we by preferenceendeavor to image? A question which is, indeed, subordinate to thedeeper one--why we should wish to image anything at all. 

29. Some years ago, having been always desirous that the education ofwomen should begin in learning how to cook, I got leave, one day, for alittle girl of eleven years old to exchange, much to her satisfaction, her schoolroom for the kitchen. But as ill-fortune would have it, therewas some pastry toward, and she was left unadvisedly in command of somedelicately rolled paste; whereof she made no pies, but an unlimitedquantity of cats and mice. 

Now you may read the works of the gravest critics of art from end toend; but you will find, at last, they can give you no other true accountof the spirit of sculpture than that it is an irresistible humaninstinct for the making of cats and mice, and other imitable livingcreatures, in such permanent form that one may play with the images atleisure. 

Play with them, or love them, or fear them, or worship them. The cat maybecome the goddess Pasht, and the mouse, in the hand of a sculpturedking, enforce his enduring words "[Greek: es eme tis horeôn eusebêsestô]"; but the great mimetic instinct underlies all such purpose; andis zooplastic, --life-shaping, --alike in the reverent and the impious. 

30. Is, I say, and has been, hitherto; none of us dare say that it willbe. I shall have to show you hereafter that the greater part of thetechnic energy of men, as yet, has indicated a kind of childhood; andthat the race becomes, if not more wise, at least more manly, [11] withevery gained century. I can fancy that all this sculpturing and paintingof ours may be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind ofdoll-making, and that the words of Sir Isaac Newton may be smiled at nomore: only it will not be for stars that we desert our stone dolls, butfor men. When the day comes, as come it must, in which we no more defaceand defile God's image in living clay, I am not sure that we shall anyof us care so much for the images made of Him, in burnt clay. 

31. But, hitherto, the energy of growth in any people may be almostdirectly measured by their passion for imitative art; namely, forsculpture, or for the drama, which is living and speaking sculpture, or, as in Greece, for both; and in national as in actual childhood, it isnot merely the _making_, but the _making-believe_; not merely the actingfor the sake of the scene, but acting for the sake of acting, that isdelightful. And, of the two mimetic arts, the drama, being morepassionate, and involving conditions of greater excitement and luxury, is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating strength in thepeople; while fine sculpture, requiring always submission to severe law, is an unfailing proof of their being in early and active progress. _There is no instance of fine sculpture being produced by a nationeither torpid, weak, or in decadence. _ Their drama may gain in grace andwit; but their sculpture, in days of decline, is _always_ base. 

32. If my little lady in the kitchen had been put in command of colors, as well as of dough, and if the paste would have taken the colors, wemay be sure her mice would have been painted brown, and her catstortoiseshell; and this, partly indeed for the added delight andprettiness of color itself, but more for the sake of absoluterealization to her eyes and mind. Now all the early sculpture of themost accomplished nations has been thus colored, rudely or finely; andtherefore you see at once how necessary it is that we should keep theterm 'graphic' for imitative art generally; since no separation can atfirst be made between carving and painting, with reference to the mentalpowers exerted in, or addressed by, them. In the earliest known art ofthe world, a reindeer hunt may be scratched in outline on the flat sideof a clean-picked bone, and a reindeer's head carved out of the end ofit; both these are flint-knife work, and, strictly speaking, sculpture:but the scratched outline is the beginning of drawing, and the carvedhead of sculpture proper. When the spaces inclosed by the scratchedoutline are filled with color, the coloring soon becomes a principalmeans of effect; so that, in the engraving of an Egyptian-colorbas-relief (S. 101), Rosellini has been content to miss the outliningincisions altogether, and represent it as a painting only. Its properdefinition is, 'painting accented by sculpture;' on the other hand, insolid colored statues, --Dresden china figures, for example, --we havepretty sculpture accented by painting; the mental purpose in both kindsof art being to obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, andthe ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation isobtained by engraving or painting. For, as I pointed out to you in myFifth Lecture, everything is seen by the eye as patches of color, and ofcolor only;--a fact which the Greeks knew well; so that when it becomesa question in the dialogue of Minos, "[Greek: tini onti tê opsei horataita horômena], " the answer is "[Greek: aisthêsei tautê tê dia tônophthalmôn dêlousê hêmin ta chrômata]. "--"What kind of power is thesight with which we see things? It is that sense which, through theeyes, can reveal _colors_ to us. "

33. And now observe that, while the graphic arts begin in the meremimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more perfect realization, to act under the influence of a stronger and higher instinct. They beginby scratching the reindeer, the most interesting object of sight. Butpresently, as the human creature rises in scale of intellect, itproceeds to scratch, not the most interesting object of sight only, butthe most interesting object of imagination; not the reindeer, but theMaker and Giver of the reindeer. And the second great condition for theadvance of the art of sculpture is that the race should possess, inaddition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or idolizing instinct;the desire to see as substantial the powers that are unseen, and bringnear those that are far off, and to possess and cherish those that arestrange. To make in some way tangible and visible the nature of thegods--to illustrate and explain it by symbols; to bring the immortalsout of the recesses of the clouds, and make them Penates; to bring backthe dead from darkness, and make them Lares. 

34. Our conception of this tremendous and universal human passion hasbeen altogether narrowed by the current idea that Pagan religious artconsisted only, or chiefly, in giving personality to the gods. Thepersonality was never doubted; it was visibility, interpretation, andpossession that the hearts of men sought. Possession, first of all--thegetting hold of some hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on itsknees if it was pulled from its pedestal--and, afterwards, slowlyclearing manifestation; the exactly right expression is used in Lucian'sdream, --[Greek: Pheidias edeixe ton Dia]; "Showed[12] Zeus;" manifestedhim; nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, or created, as you have it, in Anacreon's ode to the Rose, of the birth of Athena herself, --

 [Greek: polemoklonon t' Athênên koryphês edeiknye Zeus. ]

But I will translate the passage from Lucian to you at length--it is inevery way profitable. 

35. "There came to me, in the healing[13] night, a divine dream, soclear that it missed nothing of the truth itself; yes, and still afterall this time, the shapes of what I saw remain in my sight, and thesound of what I heard dwells in my ears"--(note the lovely sense of[Greek: enaulos]--the sound being as of a stream passing always by inthe same channel)--"so distinct was everything to me. Two women laidhold of my hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, thatI had like to have been pulled asunder; and they cried out against oneanother, --the one, that she resolved to have me to herself, being indeedher own; and the other, that it was vain for her to claim what belongedto others;--and the one who first claimed me for her own was like a hardworker, and had strength as a man's; and her hair was dusty, and herhand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight about her, andthe folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that she looked justas my uncle used to look when he was filing stones: but the other waspleasant in features, and delicate in form, and orderly in her dress;and so, in the end, they left it to me to decide, after hearing whatthey had to say, with which of them I would go; and first thehard-featured and masculine one spoke:--

36. "'Dear child, I am the Art of Image-sculpture, which yesterday youbegan to learn; and I am as one of your own people, and of your house, for your grandfather' (and she named my mother's father) 'was astone-cutter; and both your uncles had good name through me: and if youwill keep yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies thatcome from this creature, ' (and she pointed to the other woman, ) 'andwill follow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be brought upas a man should be, and have strong shoulders; and, besides that, youshall be kept well quit of all restless desires, and you shall never beobliged to go away into any foreign places, leaving your own country andthe people of your house; _neither shall all men praise you for yourtalk_. [14] And you must not despise this rude serviceableness of mybody, neither this meanness of my dusty dress; for, pushing on in theirstrength from such things as these, that great Phidias revealed Zeus, and Polyclitus wrought out Hera, and Myron was praised, and Praxitelesmarveled at: therefore are these men worshiped with the gods. '"

37. There is a beautiful ambiguity in the use of the preposition withthe genitive in this last sentence. "Pushing on from these things" meansindeed, justly, that the sculptors rose from a mean state to a nobleone; but not as _leaving_ the mean state, --not as, from a hard life, attaining to a soft one, --but as being helped and strengthened by therough life to do what was greatest. Again, "worshiped with the gods"does not mean that they are thought of as in any sense equal to, or liketo, the gods, but as being on the side of the gods against what is baseand ungodly; and that the kind of worth which is in them is thereforeindeed worshipful, as having its source with the gods. Finally, observethat every one of the expressions used of the four sculptors isdefinitely the best that Lucian could have chosen. Phidias carved likeone who had seen Zeus, and had only to _reveal_ him; Polyclitus, inlabor of intellect, completed his sculpture by just law, and _wrought_out Hera; Myron was of all most _praised_, because he did best whatpleased the vulgar; and Praxiteles the most _wondered at_, or admired, because he bestowed utmost exquisiteness of beauty. 

38. I am sorry not to go on with the dream: the more refined lady, asyou may remember, is liberal or gentlemanly Education, and prevails atlast; so that Lucian becomes an author instead of a sculptor, I think tohis own regret, though to our present benefit. One more passage of his Imust refer you to, as illustrative of the point before us; thedescription of the temple of the Syrian Hieropolis, where he explainsthe absence of the images of the sun and moon. "In the temple itself, "he says, "on the left hand as one goes in, there is set first thethrone of the sun; but no form of him is thereon, for of these twopowers alone, the sun and the moon, they show no carved images. And Ialso learned why this is their law, for they say that it is permissible, indeed, to make of the other gods, graven images, since the forms ofthem are not visible to all men. But Helios and Selenaia are everywhereclear-bright, and all men behold them; what need is there therefore forsculptured work of these, who appear in the air?"

39. This, then, is the second instinct necessary to sculpture; thedesire for the manifestation, description, and companionship of unknownpowers; and for possession of a bodily substance--the 'bronzeStrasbourg, ' which you can embrace, and hang immortelles on the headof--instead of an abstract idea. But if you get nothing more in thedepth of the national mind than these two feelings, the mimetic andidolizing instincts, there may be still no progress possible for thearts except in delicacy of manipulation and accumulative caprice ofdesign. You must have not only the idolizing instinct, but an [Greek:êthos] which chooses the right thing to idolize! Else, you will getstates of art like those in China or India, non-progressive, and ingreat part diseased and frightful, being wrought under the influence offoolish terror, or foolish admiration. So that a third condition, completing and confirming both the others, must exist in order to thedevelopment of the creative power. 

40. This third condition is that the heart of the nation shall be set onthe discovery of just or equal law, and shall be from day to daydeveloping that law more perfectly. The Greek school of sculpture isformed during, and in consequence of, the national effort to discoverthe nature of justice; the Tuscan, during, and in consequence of, thenational effort to discover the nature of justification. I assert to youat present briefly, what will, I hope, be the subject of prolongedillustration hereafter. 

41. Now when a nation with mimetic instinct and imaginative longing isalso thus occupied earnestly in the discovery of Ethic law, that effortgradually brings precision and truth into all its manual acts; and thephysical progress of sculpture, as in the Greek, so in the Tuscan, school, consists in gradually _limiting_ what was before indefinite, in_verifying_ what was inaccurate, and in _humanizing_ what was monstrous. I might perhaps content you by showing these external phenomena, and bydwelling simply on the increasing desire of naturalness, which compels, in every successive decade of years, literally, in the sculpturedimages, the mimicked bones to come together, bone to his bone; and theflesh to come up upon them, until from a flattened and pinched handfulof clay, respecting which you may gravely question whether it wasintended for a human form at all;--by slow degrees, and added touch totouch, in increasing consciousness of the bodily truth, --at last theAphrodite of Melos stands before you, a perfect woman. But all thatsearch for physical accuracy is merely the external operation, in thearts, of the seeking for truth in the inner soul; it is impossiblewithout that higher effort, and the demonstration of it would be worsethan useless to you, unless I made you aware at the same time of itsspiritual cause. 

42. Observe farther; the increasing truth in representation iscorrelative with increasing beauty in the thing to be represented. Thepursuit of justice which regulates the imitative effort, regulates alsothe development of the race into dignity of person, as of mind; andtheir culminating art-skill attains the grasp of entire truth at themoment when the truth becomes most lovely. And then, ideal sculpture maygo on safely into portraiture. But I shall not touch on the subject ofportrait sculpture to-day; it introduces many questions of detail, andmust be a matter for subsequent consideration. 

43. These, then, are the three great passions which are concerned intrue sculpture. I cannot find better, or, at least, more easilyremembered, names for them than 'the Instincts of Mimicry, Idolatry, andDiscipline;' meaning, by the last, the desire of equity and wholesomerestraint, in all acts and works of life. Now of these, there is noquestion but that the love of Mimicry is natural and right, and the loveof Discipline is natural and right. But it looks a grave questionwhether the yearning for Idolatry (the desire of companionship withimages) is right. Whether, indeed, if such an instinct be essential togood sculpture, the art founded on it can possibly be 'fine' art. 

44. I must now beg for your close attention, because I have to point outdistinctions in modes of conception which will appear trivial to you, unless accurately understood; but of an importance in the history of artwhich cannot be overrated. 

When the populace of Paris adorned the statue of Strasbourg withimmortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious decorators, wouldsuppose that the city of Strasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost ofthe city, was actually there, sitting in the Place de la Concorde. Thefigure was delightful to them as a visible nucleus for their fondthoughts about Strasbourg; but never for a moment supposed to _be_Strasbourg. 

Similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue purporting torepresent a river instead of a city, --the Rhine, or Garonne, suppose, --and have been touched with strong emotion in looking at it, ifthe real river were dear to them, and yet never think for an instantthat the statue _was_ the river. 

And yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they might takedelight in the beautiful image of a god, because it gathered andperpetuated their thoughts about that god; and yet never suppose, nor becapable of being deceived by any arguments into supposing, that thestatue _was_ the god. 

On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in the sight ofa savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it asidein some, to him, sacred place, and believe the _stone itself_ to be akind of god, and offer prayer and sacrifice to it. 

In like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, such, forinstance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, he would be apt toregard in the same way; and very possibly also construct for himselffrightful idols of some kind, calculated to produce upon him a vagueimpression of their being alive; whose imaginary anger he mightdeprecate or avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving inthem any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature. 

45. If you will now refer to §§ 52-9 of my Introductory Lectures, youwill find this distinction between a resolute conception, recognized forsuch, and an involuntary apprehension of spiritual existence, alreadyinsisted on at some length. And you will see more and more clearly as weproceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded conception isnot idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one of the grandestand wholesomest functions of the human soul; and that the essence ofevil idolatry begins only in the idea or belief of a real presence ofany kind, in a thing in which there is no such presence. 

46. I need not say that the harm of the idolatry must depend on thecertainty of the negative. If there be a real presence in a pillar ofcloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in a still small voice, it is no sinto bow down before these. 

But, as matter of historical fact, the idea of such presence hasgenerally been both ignoble and false, and confined to nations ofinferior race, who are often condemned to remain for ages in conditionsof vile terror, destitute of thought. Nearly all Indian architecture andChinese design arise out of such a state: so also, though in a lessgross degree, Ninevite and Phoenician art, early Irish, andScandinavian; the latter, however, with vital elements of high intellectmingled in it from the first. 

But the greatest races are never grossly subject to such terror, even intheir childhood, and the course of their minds is broadly divisible intothree distinct stages. 

47. (I. ) In their infancy they begin to imitate the real animals aboutthem, as my little girl made the cats and mice, but with anunder-current of partial superstition--a sense that there must be morein the creatures than they can see; also they catch up vividly any ofthe fancies of the baser nations round them, and repeat these more orless apishly, yet rapidly naturalizing and beautifying them. They thenconnect all kinds of shapes together, compounding meanings out of theold chimeras, and inventing new ones with the speed of a runningwildfire; but always getting more of man into their images, andadmitting less of monster or brute; their own characters, meanwhile, expanding and purging themselves, and shaking off the feverish fancy, asspringing flowers shake the earth off their stalks. 

48. (II. ) In the second stage, being now themselves perfect men andwomen, they reach the conception of true and great gods as existent inthe universe; and absolutely cease to think of them as in any wisepresent in statues or images; but they have now learned to make thesestatues beautifully human, and to surround them with attributes that mayconcentrate their thoughts of the gods. This is, in Greece, accuratelythe Pindaric time, just a little preceding the Phidian; the Phidian isalready dimmed with a faint shadow of infidelity; still, the OlympicZeus may be taken as a sufficiently central type of a statue which wasno more supposed to _be_ Zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks it wasmade of; but in which the most splendid powers of human art wereexhausted in representing a believed and honored God to the happy andholy imagination of a sincerely religious people. 

49. (III. ) The third stage of national existence follows, in which, theimagination having now done its utmost, and being partly restrained bythe sanctities of tradition, which permit no farther change in theconceptions previously created, begins to be superseded by logicaldeduction and scientific investigation. At the same moment, the elderartists having done all that is possible in realizing the nationalconceptions of the gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change thescheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anythingbetter in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the oldideas with more attractive skill. Their aims are thus more and morelimited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. Also in thecourse of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, andbeing made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, foreminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation; whereasintellectual design can never be discerned but by the few. So that inthis third era we find every kind of imitative and vulgar dexterity moreand more cultivated; while design and imagination are every day lesscared for, and less possible. 

50. Meanwhile, as I have just said, the leading minds in literature andscience become continually more logical and investigative; and once thatthey are established in the habit of testing facts accurately, a veryfew years are enough to convince all the strongest thinkers that the oldimaginative religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be honestlytaught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant persons. And atthis point the fate of the people absolutely depends on the degree ofmoral strength into which their hearts have been already trained. If itbe a strong, industrious, chaste, and honest race, the taking its oldgods, or at least the old forms of them, away from it, will indeed makeit deeply sorrowful and amazed; but will in no whit shake its will, noralter its practice. Exceptional persons, naturally disposed to becomedrunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who had been previously restrainedfrom indulging these dispositions by their fear of God, will, of course, break out into open vice, when that fear is removed. But the heads ofthe families of the people, instructed in the pure habits and perfectdelights of an honest life, and to whom the thought of a Father inheaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, will assuredly not seekrelief from the discomfort of their orphanage by becoming uncharitableand vile. Also the high leaders of their thought gather their wholestrength together in the gloom; and at the first entrance to this Valleyof the Shadow of Death, look their new enemy full in the eyeless face ofhim, and subdue him, and his terror, under their feet. "Metus omnes, etinexorabile fatum, ... Strepitumque Acherontis avari. " This is thecondition of national soul expressed by the art, and the words, ofHolbein, Dürer, Shakspeare, Pope, and Goethe. 

51. But if the people, at the moment when the trial of darknessapproaches, be not confirmed in moral character, but are onlymaintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of a spectral religion; themoment the staff of their faith is broken, the character of the racefalls like a climbing plant cut from its hold: then all the earthliestvices attack it as it lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insanesin is developed; and half a century is sometimes enough to close inhopeless shame the career of the nation in literature, art, and war. 

52. Notably, within the last hundred years, all religion has perishedfrom the practically active national mind of France and England. Nostatesman in the senate of either country would dare to use a sentenceout of their acceptedly divine Revelation, as having now a literalauthority over them for their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom fortheir contemplation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in theface of her former God; and proclaimed, with open challenge to Him, herresolved worship of His declared enemy, Mammon. All the arts, therefore, founded on religion and sculpture chiefly, are here in England effeteand corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the historyof mankind; and it is possible to show you the condition of sculptureliving, and sculpture dead, in accurate opposition, by simply comparingthe nascent Pisan school in Italy with the existing school in England. 

53. You were perhaps surprised at my placing in your educational series, as a type of original Italian sculpture, the pulpit by Niccola Pisano inthe Duomo of Siena. I would rather, had it been possible, have given thepulpit by Giovanni Pisano in the Duomo of Pisa; but that pulpit isdispersed in fragments through the upper galleries of the Duomo, and thecloister of the Campo Santo; and the casts of its fragments now puttogether at Kensington are too coarse to be of use to you. You maypartly judge, however, of the method of their execution by the eagle'shead, which I have sketched from the marble in the Campo Santo (Edu. , No. 113), and the lioness with her cubs (Edu. , No. 103, more carefullystudied at Siena); and I will get you other illustrations in due time. Meanwhile, I want you to compare the main purpose of the Cathedral ofPisa, and its associated Bell Tower, Baptistery, and Holy Field, withthe main purpose of the principal building lately raised for the peopleof London. In these days, we indeed desire no cathedrals; but we haveconstructed an enormous and costly edifice, which, in claimingeducational influence over the whole London populace, and middle class, is verily the Metropolitan cathedral of this century, --the CrystalPalace. 

54. It was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly discoveredstyle of architecture, greater than any hitherto known, --our bestpopular writers, in their enthusiasm, describing it as an edifice ofFairyland. You are nevertheless to observe that this novel production offairy enchantment is destitute of every kind of sculpture, except thebosses produced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the Duomo ofPisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its capitals, inlaid color designs of its façade, embossed panels of its Baptisteryfont, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, contained the germ of aschool of sculpture which was to maintain, through a subsequent periodof four hundred years, the greatest power yet reached by the arts of theworld, in description of Form, and expression of Thought. 

55. Now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the vastdiscrepancy in the character of these two buildings. 

In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa was a colossal image ofChrist, in colored mosaic, bearing to the temple, as nearly as possible, the relation which the statue of Athena bore to the Parthenon; and inthe same manner, concentrating the imagination of the Pisan on theattributes of the God in whom he believed. 

In precisely the same position with respect to the nave of thebuilding, but of larger size, as proportioned to the three or four timesgreater scale of the whole, a colossal piece of sculpture was placed byEnglish designers, at the extremity of the Crystal Palace, inpreparation for their solemnities in honor of the birthday of Christ, inDecember 1867 or 1868. 

That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a pantomime, sometwelve feet high from brow to chin, which face, being moved by themechanism which is our pride, every half-minute opened its mouth fromear to ear, showed its teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of theseperiodical seasons of expression being increased and explained by theilluminated inscription underneath, "Here we are again. "

56. When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that the mind of theEnglish populace is to be addressed, in the principal Sacred Festival ofits year, by sculpture such as this, I need scarcely point out to youthat the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence bycollecting within this building (itself devoid absolutely of every kindof art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it arecontinually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind ittogether, ) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the pastwork, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Christians, miscolored, misplaced, and misinterpreted;[15] here thrust into unseemlycorners, and there mortised together into mere confusion ofheterogeneous obstacle; pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable inweariness, until any kind of relief is sought from it in steamwheelbarrows or cheap toyshops; and most of all in beer and meat, thecorks and the bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp dealflooring of the English Fairy Palace. 

57. But you will probably think me unjust in assuming that a buildingprepared only for the amusement of the people can typically representthe architecture or sculpture of modern England. You may urge that Iought rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which isexecuted in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upperclasses, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. But I could not nowcriticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because Ihave not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general. I will, however, in some points, tell you the facts by anticipation. 

58. We have much excellent portrait sculpture; but portrait sculpture, which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, even when produced bymen of genius;--nor does it in the least require men of genius toproduce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest giftsof painting; but any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, cancarve a satisfactory bust. 

59. Of our powers in historical sculpture, I am, without question, just, in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments we have erected to ourtwo greatest heroes by sea and land; namely, the Nelson Column, and thestatue of the Duke of Wellington opposite Apsley House. Nor will you, Ihope, think me severe, --certainly, whatever you may think me, I am usingonly the most temperate language, in saying of both these monuments, that they are absolutely devoid of high sculptural merit. But considerhow much is involved in the fact thus dispassionately stated, respectingthe two monuments in the principal places of our capital, to our twogreatest heroes. 

60. Remember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetualstudy and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand yearspast; especially, we have the best sculpture of Greece, for example ofbodily perfection; the best of Rome, for example of character inportraiture; the best of Florence, for example of romantic passion; wehave unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we havethe most perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human andcomparative; and we have bribes for the reward of success, large in theproportion of at least twenty to one, as compared with those offered tothe artists of any other period. And with all these advantages, and thestimulus also of fame carried instantly by the press to the remotestcorners of Europe, the best efforts we can make, on the grandest ofoccasions, result in work which it is impossible in any one particularto praise. 

Now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the negation of thefaculty of sculpture this implies in the national mind! What measure canbe assigned to the gulf of incapacity, which can deliberately swallow upin the gorge of it the teaching and example of three thousand years, andproduce, as the result of that instruction, what it is courteous to call'nothing'?

61. That is the conclusion at which we arrive on the evidence presentedby our historical sculpture. To complete the measure of ourselves, wemust endeavor to estimate the rank of the two opposite schools ofsculpture employed by us in the nominal service of religion, and in theactual service of vice. 

I am aware of no statue of Christ, nor of any apostle of Christ, nor ofany scene related in the New Testament, produced by us within the lastthree hundred years, which has possessed even superficial merit enoughto attract public attention. 

Whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art which we learn, more or less apishly, from the French schools, and employ, but toogladly, in manufacturing articles for the amusement of the luxuriousclasses, must be ranked as one of the chief instruments used by joyfulfiends and angry fates for the ruin of our civilization. 

If, after I have set before you the nature and principles of truesculpture, in Athens, Pisa, and Florence, you consider thesefacts, --(which you will then at once recognize as such), --you will findthat they absolutely justify my assertion that the state of sculpture inmodern England, as compared with that of the great Ancients, isliterally one of corrupt and dishonorable death, as opposed to brightand fameful life. 

62. And now, will you bear with me while I tell you finally why this isso?

The cause with which you are personally concerned is your own frivolity;though essentially this is not your fault, but that of the system ofyour early training. But the fact remains the same, that here, inOxford, you, a chosen body of English youth, in nowise care for thehistory of your country, for its present dangers, or its present duties. You still, like children of seven or eight years old, are interestedonly in bats, balls, and oars: nay, including with you the students ofGermany and France, it is certain that the general body of modernEuropean youth have their minds occupied more seriously by the sculptureand painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all thedivinest workmanship and passionate imagination of Greece, Rome, andMediæval Christendom. 

63. But the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, and ofworse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms of deadlyIdolatry which are now all but universal in England. 

The first of these is the worship of the Eidolon, or Fantasm of Wealth;worship of which you will find the nature partly examined in thethirty-seventh paragraph of my 'Munera Pulveris'; but which is brieflyto be defined as the servile apprehension of an active power in Money, and the submission to it as the God of our life. 

64. The second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly imaginativefaculty, is the worship of the Letter, instead of the Spirit, in what wechiefly accept as the ordinance and teaching of Deity; and theapprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading the Bookwhose primal commands we refuse to obey. 

No feather idol of Polynesia was ever a sign of a more shameful idolatrythan the modern notion in the minds of certainly the majority of Englishreligious persons, that the Word of God, by which the heavens were ofold, and the earth, standing out of the water and in the water, --theWord of God which came to the prophets, and comes still forever to allwho will hear it (and to many who will forbear); and which, calledFaithful and True, is to lead forth, in the judgment, the armies ofheaven, --that this 'Word of God' may yet be bound at our pleasure inmorocco, and carried about in a young lady's pocket, with tasseledribbons to mark the passages she most approves of. 

65. Gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, and England islittle likely to give the unexampled spectacle, of a country successfulin the noble arts, yet in which the youths were frivolous, the maidensfalsely religious; the men, slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity. Not from all the marble of the hills of Luini will such a people evershape one statue that may stand nobly against the sky; not from all thetreasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they gather, fortheir own descendants, any inheritance but shame. 

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Glance forward at once to § 75, read it, and return to this. 

[12] There is a primary and vulgar sense of 'exhibited' in Lucian'smind; but the higher meaning is involved in it. 

[13] In the Greek, 'ambrosial. ' Recollect always that ambrosia, as foodof gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food isambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called 'ambrosial'because it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the23d Psalm, the stillness of waters. 

[14] I have italicized this final promise of blessedness, given by thenoble Spirit of Workmanship. Compare Carlyle's fifth Latter-dayPamphlet, throughout; but especially pp. 12-14, in the first edition. 

[15] "Falsely represented, " would be the better expression. In the castof the tomb of Queen Eleanor, for a single instance, the Gothic foliage, of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, isrepresented by a repetition of casts from one mold, of which the designitself is entirely conjectural. 

LECTURE III. 

IMAGINATION. 

_November, 1870. _

66. The principal object of the preceding Lecture, (and I choose ratherto incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity indefining it, ) was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble andfalse phase of Idolatry, which consists in the attribution of aspiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seekingphase of it, to which I shall in these Lectures[16] give the generalterm of Imagination;--that is to say, the invention of material symbolswhich may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods, spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least implyingthe actual presence of such Beings among us, or even their possession, in reality, of the forms we attribute to them. 

[Illustration: FIG. 2. ]

67. For instance, in the ordinarily received Greek type of Athena, onvases of the Phidian time, (sufficiently represented in the followingwood-cut, ) no Greek would have supposed the vase on which this waspainted to be itself Athena, nor to contain Athena inside of it, as theArabian fisherman's casket contained the genie; neither did he thinkthat this rude black painting, done at speed as the potter's fancy urgedhis hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the goddessherself. Nor would he have thought so, even had the image been ever sobeautifully wrought. The goddess might, indeed, visibly appear under theform of an armed virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow, when it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence; but itdid not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested with any ofthese forms, or that the best which human skill could, even by her ownaid, picture of her, was, indeed, a likeness of her. The real use, atall events, of this rude image, was only to signify to the eye and heartthe facts of the existence, in some manner, of a Spirit of wisdom, perfect in gentleness, irresistible in anger; having also physicaldominion over the air which is the life and breath of all creatures, andclothed, to human eyes, with ægis of fiery cloud, and raiment of fallingdew. 

[Illustration: FIG. 3. ]

68. In the yet more abstract conception of the Spirit of Agriculture, inwhich the wings of the chariot represent the winds of Spring, and itscrested dragons are originally a mere type of the seed with its twistedroot piercing the ground, and sharp-edged leaves rising above it, we arein still less danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of anactual Person. But I must, with persistence, beg of you to observe thatin all the noble actions of imagination in this kind, the distinctionfrom idolatry consists, not in the denial of the being, or presence, ofthe Spirit, but only in the due recognition of our human incapacity toconceive the one, or compel the other. 

69. Farther--and for this statement I claim your attention still moreearnestly. As no nation has ever attained real greatness during periodsin which it was subject to any condition of Idolatry, so no nation hasever attained or persevered in greatness, except in reaching andmaintaining a passionate Imagination of a spiritual estate higher thanthat of men; and of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quitereal and personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us. 

And all the arts of the present age deserving to be included under thename of sculpture have been degraded by us, and all principles of justpolicy have vanished from us, --and that totally, --for this doublereason; that we are, on one side, given up to idolatries of the mostservile kind, as I showed you in the close of the last Lecture, --while, on the other hand, we have absolutely ceased from the exercise offaithful imagination; and the only remnants of the desire of truth whichremain in us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover theorigin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the source ofthe order of the universe is the accidental concurrence of its atoms. 

70. Under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpture hasperished more totally than any other, because the object of that art isexclusively the representation of form as the exponent of life. It isessentially concerned only with the human form, which is the exponent ofthe highest life we know; and with all subordinate forms only as theyexhibit conditions of vital power which have some certain relation tohumanity. It deals with the "particula undique desecta" of the animalnature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward for its disciples'contemplation, all the energies of creation which transform the [Greek:pêlos], or, lower still, the [Greek: borboros] of the _trivia_, byAthena's help, into forms of power;--([Greek: to men holon architektônautos ên syneirgazeto de toi kai hê 'Athêna empneousa ton pêlon kaiempsycha poiousa einai ta plasmata;])[17]--but it has nothing whateverto do with the representation of forms not living, however beautiful (asof clouds or waves); nor may it condescend to use its perfect skill, except in expressing the noblest conditions of life. 

These laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the practice of ourday, I cannot expect you to accept on my assertion, nor do I wish you todo so. By placing definitely good and bad sculpture before you, I do notdoubt but that I shall gradually prove to you the nature of allexcelling and enduring qualities; but to-day I will only confirm myassertions by laying before you the statement of the Greeks themselveson the subject; given in their own noblest time, and assuredlyauthoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time to come. 

71. If any of you have looked at the explanation I have given of themyth of Athena in my 'Queen of the Air, ' you cannot but have beensurprised that I took scarcely any note of the story of her birth. I didnot, because that story is connected intimately with the Apolline myths;and is told of Athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but asthe goddess of Art-Wisdom. 

You have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or avoided thinkingof it, as revolting. It is, indeed, one of the most painful and childishof sacred myths; yet remember, ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us, this story satisfied the fancy of the Athenian people in their higheststate; and if it did not satisfy, yet it was accepted by, all latermythologists: you may also remember I told you to be prepared always tofind that, given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder thesymbol, the deeper would be its purpose. And this legend of the birth ofAthena is the central myth of all that the Greeks have left usrespecting the power of their arts; and in it they have expressed, as itseemed good to them, the most important things they had to tell us onthese matters. We may read them wrongly; but we must read them here, ifanywhere. 

72. There are so many threads to be gathered up in the legend, that Icannot hope to put it before you in total clearness, but I will takemain points. Athena is born in the island of Rhodes; and that island israised out of the sea by Apollo, after he had been left withoutinheritance among the gods. Zeus[18] would have cast the lot again, butApollo orders the golden-girdled Lachesis to stretch out her hands; andnot now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the island rises outof the sea. 

Physically, this represents the action of heat and light on chaos, especially on the deep sea. It is the "Fiat lux" of Genesis, the firstprocess in the conquest of Fate by Harmony. The island is dedicated tothe nymph Rhodos, by whom Apollo has the seven sons who teach [Greek:sophôtata noêmata]; because the rose is the most beautiful organismexisting in matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of lighton the earth, giving lovely form and color at once, (compare the use ofit by Dante, as the form of the sainted crowd in highest heaven); andremember that, therefore, the rose is, in the Greek mind, essentially aDoric flower, expressing the worship of Light, as the Iris or Ion is anIonic one, expressing the worship of the Winds and Dew. 

73. To understand the agency of Hephæstus at the birth of Athena, wemust again return to the founding of the arts on agriculture by thehand. Before you can cultivate land, you must clear it; and thecharacteristic weapon of Hephæstus, --which is as much his attribute asthe trident is of Poseidon, and the rhabdos of Hermes, is not, as youwould have expected, the hammer, but the clearing-ax--the double-edged[Greek: pelekys], the same that Calypso gives Ulysses with which to cutdown the trees for his home voyage; so that both the naval andagricultural strength of the Athenians are expressed by this weapon, with which they had to hew out their fortune. And you must keep in mindthis agriculturally laborious character of Hephæstus, even when he ismost distinctly the god of serviceable fire; thus Horace's perfectepithet for him, "avidus, " expresses at once the devouring eagerness offire, and the zeal of progressive labor, for Horace gives it to him whenhe is fighting against the giants. And this rude symbol of his cleavingthe forehead of Zeus with the ax, and giving birth to Athena, signifiesindeed, physically, the thrilling power of heat in the heavens, rendingthe clouds, and giving birth to the blue air; but far more deeply itsignifies the subduing of adverse Fate by true labor; until, out of thechasm, cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude, springs the Spiritof Wisdom. 

[Illustration: FIG. 4. ]

74. Here (Fig. 4) is an early drawing of the myth, to which I shallhave to refer afterwards in illustration of the childishness of theGreek mind at the time when its art-symbols were first fixed; but it isof peculiar value, because the physical character of Vulcan, as fire, isindicated by his wearing the [Greek: endromides] of Hermes, while theantagonism of Zeus, as the adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, isshown by his striking at Hephæstus with his thunderbolt. But Plate IV. Gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow it to bedeciphered) a characteristic representation of the scene, as conceivedin later art. 

75. I told you in a former Lecture of this course[19] that the entireGreek intellect was in a childish phase as compared to that of moderntimes. Observe, however, childishness does not necessarily implyuniversal inferiority: there may be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemnchildhood, and there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition ofadvanced life; but the one is still essentially the childish, and theother the adult phase of existence. 

76. You will find, then, that the Greeks were the first people that wereborn into complete humanity. All nations before them had been, and allaround them still were, partly savage, bestial, clay-incumbered, inhuman; still semi-goat, or semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. Butthe power of a new spirit came upon the Greeks, and the stones werefilled with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh; and then came thegreat spiritual battle between the Centaurs and Lapithæ; and the livingcreatures became "Children of Men. " Taught, yet by the Centaur--sown, asthey knew, in the fang--from the dappled skin of the brute, from theleprous scale of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of alittle child, and they were clean. 

Fix your mind on this as the very central character of the Greekrace--the being born pure and human out of the brutal misery of thepast, and looking abroad, for the first time, with their children'seyes, wonderingly open, on the strange and divine world. 

[Illustration: IV. 

THE NATIVITY OF ATHENA. ]

77. Make some effort to remember, so far as may be possible to you, either what you felt in yourselves when you were young, or what you haveobserved in other children, of the action of thought and fancy. Childrenare continually represented as living in an ideal world of their own. Sofar as I have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child isto live always in the tangible present, having little pleasure inmemory, and being utterly impatient and tormented by anticipation: weakalike in reflection and forethought, but having an intense possession ofthe actual present, down to the shortest moments and least objects ofit; possessing it, indeed, so intensely that the sweet childish days areas long as twenty days will be; and setting all the faculties of heartand imagination on little things, so as to be able to make anything outof them he chooses. Confined to a little garden, he does not imaginehimself somewhere else, but makes a great garden out of that; possessedof an acorn-cup, he will not despise it and throw it away, and covet agolden one in its stead: it is the adult who does so. The child keepshis acorn-cup as a treasure, and makes a golden one out of it in hismind; so that the wondering grown-up person standing beside him isalways tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, "What would youhave more than these?" but "What possibly can you see _in_ these?" for, to the bystander, there is a ludicrous and incomprehensibleinconsistency between the child's words and the reality. The littlething tells him gravely, holding up the acorn-cup, that "this is aqueen's crown, " or "a fairy's boat, " and, with beautiful effrontery, expects him to believe the same. But observe--the acorn-cup must be_there_, and in his own hand. "Give it me; then I will make more of itfor myself. " That is the child's one word, always. 

78. It is also the one word of the Greek--"Give it me. " Give me _any_thing definite here in my sight, then I will make more of it. 

I cannot easily express to you how strange it seems to me that I amobliged, here in Oxford, to take the position of an apologist for Greekart; that I find, in spite of all the devotion of the admirable scholarswho have so long maintained in our public schools the authority of Greekliterature, our younger students take no interest in the manual work ofthe people upon whose thoughts the tone of their early intellectual lifehas exclusively depended. But I am not surprised that the interest, ifawakened, should not at first take the form of admiration. Theinconsistency between an Homeric description of a piece of furniture orarmor, and the actual rudeness of any piece of art approximating, withineven three or four centuries, to the Homeric period, is so great, thatwe at first cannot recognize the art as elucidatory of, or in any wayrelated to, the poetic language. 

[Illustration: FIG. 5. ]

[Illustration: V. 

TOMB OF THE DOGES JACOPO AND LORENZO TIEPOLO. ]

79. You will find, however, exactly the same kind of discrepancy betweenearly sculpture, and the languages of deed and thought, in the secondbirth, and childhood, of the world, under Christianity. The same fairthoughts and bright imaginations arise again; and, similarly, the fancyis content with the rudest symbols by which they can be formalized tothe eyes. You cannot understand that the rigid figure (2) with checkersor spots on its breast, and sharp lines of drapery to its feet, couldrepresent, to the Greek, the healing majesty of heaven: but can you anybetter understand how a symbol so haggard as this (Fig. 5) couldrepresent to the noblest hearts of the Christian ages the power andministration of angels? Yet it not only did so, but retained in the rudeundulatory and linear ornamentation of its dress, record of the thoughtsintended to be conveyed by the spotted ægis and falling chiton ofAthena, eighteen hundred years before. Greek and Venetian alike, intheir noble childhood, knew with the same terror the coiling wind andcongealed hail in heaven--saw with the same thankfulness the dew shedsoftly on the earth, and on its flowers; and both recognized, rulingthese, and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of Wisdom, whichleads the children of men to all knowledge, all courage, and all art. 

80. Read the inscription written on the sarcophagus (Plate V. ), at theextremity of which this angel is sculptured. It stands in an open recessin the rude brick wall of the west front of the church of St. John andPaul at Venice, being the tomb of the two doges, father and son, Jacopoand Lorenzo Tiepolo. This is the inscription:--

 "Quos natura pares studiis, virtutibus, arte Edidit, illustres genitor natusque, sepulti Hâc sub rupe Duces. Venetum charissima proles Theupula collatis dedit hos celebranda triumphis. Omnia presentis donavit predia templi Dux Jacobus: valido fixit moderamine leges Urbis, et ingratam redimens certamine Jadram Dalmatiosque dedit patrie post, Marte subactas Graiorum pelago maculavit sanguine classes. Suscipit oblatos princeps Laurentius Istros, Et domuit rigidos, ingenti strage cadentes, Bononie populos. Hinc subdita Cervia cessit. Fundavere vias pacis; fortique relictâ Re, superos sacris petierunt mentibus ambo. 

 Dominus Jachobus hobiit[20] M. CCLI. Dominus Laurentius hobiit M. CCLXXVIII. "

You see, therefore, this tomb is an invaluable example ofthirteenth-century sculpture in Venice. In Plate VI. , you have anexample of the (coin) sculpture of the date accurately corresponding inGreece to the thirteenth century in Venice, when the meaning of symbolswas everything, and the workmanship comparatively nothing. The upperhead is an Athena, of Athenian work in the seventh or sixthcentury--(the coin itself may have been struck later, but the archaictype was retained). The two smaller impressions below are the front andobverse of a coin of the same age from Corinth, the head of Athena onone side, and Pegasus, with the archaic Koppa, on the other. The smallerhead is bare, the hair being looped up at the back and closely boundwith an olive branch. You are to note this general outline of the head, already given in a more finished type in Plate II. , as a most importantelementary form in the finest sculpture, not of Greece only, but of allChristendom. In the upper head the hair is restrained still more closelyby a round helmet, for the most part smooth, but embossed with a singleflower tendril, having one bud, one flower, and, above it, two oliveleaves. You have thus the most absolutely restricted symbol possible tohuman thought of the power of Athena over the flowers and trees of theearth. An olive leaf by itself could not have stood for the sign of atree, but the two can, when set in position of growth. 

I would not give you the reverse of the coin on the same plate, becauseyou would have looked at it only, laughed at it, and not examined therest; but here it is, wonderfully engraved for you (Fig. 6): of it weshall have more to say afterwards. 

[Illustration: VI. 

ARCHAIC ATHENA OF ATHENS AND CORINTH. ]

81. And now as you look at these rude vestiges of the religion ofGreece, and at the vestiges still ruder, on the Ducal tomb, of thereligion of Christendom, take warning against two opposite errors. 

There is a school of teachers who will tell you that nothing but Greekart is deserving of study, and that all our work at this day should bean imitation of it. 

Whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of these portraits ofAthena and her owl, and be assured that Greek art is not in all respectsperfect, nor exclusively deserving of imitation. 

[Illustration: FIG. 6. ]

There is another school of teachers who will tell you that Greek art isgood for nothing; that the soul of the Greek was outcast, and thatChristianity entirely superseded its faith, and excelled its works. 

Whenever you feel tempted to believe _them_, think of this angel on thetomb of Jacopo Tiepolo; and remember that Christianity, after it hadbeen twelve hundred years existent as an imaginative power on the earth, could do no better work than this, though with all the former power ofGreece to help it; nor was able to engrave its triumph in having stainedits fleets in the seas of Greece with the blood of her people, butbetween barbarous imitations of the pillars which that people hadinvented. 

82. Receiving these two warnings, receive also this lesson. In bothexamples, childish though it be, this Heathen and Christian art is alikesincere, and alike vividly imaginative: the actual work is that ofinfancy; the thoughts, in their visionary simplicity, are also thethoughts of infancy, but in their solemn virtue they are the thoughts ofmen. 

We, on the contrary, are now, in all that we do, absolutely withoutsincerity;--absolutely, therefore, without imagination, and withoutvirtue. Our hands are dexterous with the vile and deadly dexterity ofmachines; our minds filled with incoherent fragments of faith, which wecling to in cowardice, without believing, and make pictures of invanity, without loving. False and base alike, whether we admire orimitate, we cannot learn from the Heathen's art, but only pilfer it; wecannot revive the Christian's art, but only galvanize it; we are, in thesum of us, not human artists at all, but mechanisms of conceited clay, masked in the furs and feathers of living creatures, and convulsed withvoltaic spasms, in mockery of animation. 

83. You think, perhaps, that I am using terms unjustifiable in violence. They would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken from this chair, theywere violent at all. They are, unhappily, temperate andaccurate, --except in shortcoming of blame. For we are not only impotentto restore, but strong to defile, the work of past ages. Of theimpotence, take but this one, utterly humiliatory, and, in the fullmeaning of it, ghastly, example. We have lately been busy embanking, inthe capital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, theimagination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the bounty ofnature most useful. Of all architectural features of the metropolis, that embankment will be, in future, the most conspicuous; and in itsposition and purpose it was the most capable of noble adornment. 

For that adornment, nevertheless, the utmost which our modern poeticalimagination has been able to invent, is a row of gas-lamps. It has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our minds as appropriate togas-lamps set beside a river, that the gas should come out of fishes'tails; but we have not ingenuity enough to cast so much as a smelt or asprat for ourselves; so we borrow the shape of a Neapolitan marble, which has been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in everycapital in Europe for the last fifty years. We cast _that_ badly, andgive luster to the ill-cast fish with lacquer in imitation of bronze. Onthe base of their pedestals, towards the road, we put, foradvertisement's sake, the initials of the casting firm; and, for fartheroriginality and Christianity's sake, the caduceus of Mercury: and toadorn the front of the pedestals, towards the river, being now wholly atour wits' end, we can think of nothing better than to borrow thedoor-knocker which--again for the last fifty years--has disturbed anddecorated two or three millions of London street-doors; and magnifyingthe marvelous device of it, a lion's head with a ring in its mouth, (still borrowed from the Greek, ) we complete the embankment with a rowof heads and rings, on a scale which enables them to produce, at thedistance at which only they can be seen, the exact effect of a row ofsentry-boxes. 

84. Farther. In the very center of the City, and at the point where theEmbankment commands a view of Westminster Abbey on one side, and of St. Paul's on the other, --that is to say, at precisely the most importantand stately moment of its whole course, --it has to pass under one of thearches of Waterloo Bridge, which, in the sweep of its curve, is asvast--it alone--as the Rialto at Venice, and scarcely less seemly inproportions. But over the Rialto, though of late and debased Venetianwork, there still reigns some power of human imagination: on the twoflanks of it are carved the Virgin and the Angel of the Annunciation; onthe keystone, the descending Dove. It is not, indeed, the fault ofliving designers that the Waterloo arch is nothing more than a gloomyand hollow heap of wedged blocks of blind granite. But just beyond thedamp shadow of it, the new Embankment is reached by a flight of stairs, which are, in point of fact, the principal approach to it, afoot, fromcentral London; the descent from the very midst of the metropolis ofEngland to the banks of the chief river of England; and for thisapproach, living designers _are_ answerable. 

85. The principal decoration of the descent is again a gas-lamp, but ashattered one, with a brass crown on the top of it, or, rather, half-crown, and that turned the wrong way, the back of it to the riverand causeway, its flame supplied by a visible pipe far wandering alongthe wall; the whole apparatus being supported by a rough cross-beam. Fastened to the center of the arch above is a large placard, statingthat the Royal Humane Society's drags are in constant readiness, andthat their office is at 4, Trafalgar Square. On each side of the archare temporary, but dismally old and battered boardings, across twoangles capable of unseemly use by the British public. Above one of theseis another placard, stating that this is the Victoria Embankment. Thesteps themselves--some forty of them--descend under a tunnel, which theshattered gas-lamp lights by night, and nothing by day. They are coveredwith filthy dust, shaken off from infinitude of filthy feet; mixed upwith shreds of paper, orange-peel, foul straw, rags, and cigar-ends, andashes; the whole agglutinated, more or less, by dry saliva into slipperyblotches and patches; or, when not so fastened, blown dismally by thesooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who ascend anddescend. The place is worth your visit, for you are not likely to findelsewhere a spot which, either in costly and ponderous brutality ofbuilding, or in the squalid and indecent accompaniment of it, is so farseparated from the peace and grace of nature, and so accuratelyindicative of the methods of our national resistance to the Grace, Mercy, and Peace of Heaven. 

86. I am obliged always to use the English word 'Grace' in two senses, but remember that the Greek [Greek: charis] includes them both (thebestowing, that is to say, of Beauty and Mercy); and especially itincludes these in the passage of Pindar's first ode, which gives us thekey to the right interpretation of the power of sculpture in Greece. Youremember that I told you, in my Sixth Introductory Lecture (§ 151), thatthe mythic accounts of Greek sculpture begin in the legends of thefamily of Tantalus; and especially in the most grotesque legend of themall, the inlaying of the ivory shoulder of Pelops. At that story Pindarpauses, --not, indeed, without admiration, nor alleging any impossibilityin the circumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger ofDemeter, --and gives his own reading of the event, instead of the ancientone. He justifies this to himself, and to his hearers, by the plea thatmyths have, in some sort, or degree, ([Greek: pou ti], ) led the mind ofmortals beyond the truth; and then he goes on:--

"Grace, which creates everything that is kindly and soothing formortals, adding honor, has often made things, at first untrustworthy, become trustworthy through Love. "

87. I cannot, except in these lengthened terms, give you the completeforce of the passage; especially of the [Greek: apiston emêsatopiston]--"made it trustworthy by passionate desire that it should beso"--which exactly describes the temper of religious persons at thepresent day, who are kindly and sincere, in clinging to the forms offaith which either have long been precious to themselves, or which theyfeel to have been without question instrumental in advancing the dignityof mankind. And it is part of the constitution of humanity--a partwhich, above others, you are in danger of unwisely contemning under theexisting conditions of our knowledge, that the things thus sought forbelief with eager passion, do, indeed, become trustworthy to us; that, to each of us, they verily become what we would have them; the force ofthe [Greek: mênis] and [Greek: mnêmê] with which we seek after them, does, indeed, make them powerful to us for actual good or evil; and itis thus granted to us to create not only with our hands things thatexalt or degrade our sight, but with our hearts also, things that exaltor degrade our souls; giving true substance to all that we hoped for;evidence to things that we have not seen, but have desired to see; andcalling, in the sense of creating, things that are not, as though theywere. 

88. You remember that in distinguishing Imagination from Idolatry, Ireferred[21] you to the forms of passionate affection with which anoble people commonly regards the rivers and springs of its native land. Some conception of personality, or of spiritual power in the stream, isalmost necessarily involved in such emotion; and prolonged [Greek:charis], in the form of gratitude, the return of Love for benefitscontinually bestowed, at last alike in all the highest and the simplestminds, when they are honorable and pure, makes this untrue thingtrustworthy; [Greek: apiston emêsato piston], until it becomes to themthe safe basis of some of the happiest impulses of their moral nature. Next to the marbles of Verona, given you as a primal type of thesculpture of Christianity, moved to its best energy in adorning theentrance of its temples, I have not unwillingly placed, as yourintroduction to the best sculpture of the religion of Greece, the formsunder which it represented the personality of the fountain Arethusa. Butwithout restriction to those days of absolute devotion, let me simplypoint out to you how this untrue thing, made true by Love, has intimateand heavenly authority even over the minds of men of the most practicalsense, the most shrewd wit, and the most severe precision of moraltemper. The fair vision of Sabrina in 'Comus, ' the endearing and tenderpromise, "Fies nobilium tu quoque fontium, " and the joyful and proudaffection of the great Lombard's address to the lakes of his enchantedland, --

 "Te, Lari maxume, teque Fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, Benace, marino, "

may surely be remembered by you with regretful piety, when you stand bythe blank stones which at once restrain and disgrace your native river, as the final worship rendered to it by modern philosophy. But a littleincident which I saw last summer on its bridge at Wallingford, may putthe contrast of ancient and modern feeling before you still moreforcibly. 

89. Those of you who have read with attention (none of us can read withtoo much attention), Molière's most perfect work, 'The Misanthrope, 'must remember Celimène's description of her lovers, and her excellentreason for being unable to regard with any favor, "notre grand flandrinde vicomte, --depuis que je l'ai vu, trois quarts d'heure durant, cracherdans un puits pour faire des ronds. " That sentence is worth noting, bothin contrast to the reverence paid by the ancients to wells and springs, and as one of the most interesting traces of the extension of theloathsome habit among the upper classes of Europe and America, which nowrenders all external grace, dignity, and decency impossible in thethoroughfares of their principal cities. In connection with thatsentence of Molière's you may advisably also remember this fact, which Ichanced to notice on the bridge of Wallingford. I was walking from endto end of it, and back again, one Sunday afternoon of last May, tryingto conjecture what had made this especial bend and ford of the Thames soimportant in all the Anglo-Saxon wars. It was one of the few sunnyafternoons of the bitter spring, and I was very thankful for its light, and happy in watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of theclassical river, when I noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just outof some orderly Sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet; watching, as I conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge-buttress. I went upto him to see what he was looking at; but just as I got close to him, hestarted over to the opposite parapet, and put himself there into thesame position, his object being, as I then perceived, to spit from bothsides upon the heads of a pleasure party who were passing in a boatbelow. 

90. The incident may seem to you too trivial to be noticed in thisplace. To me, gentlemen, it was by no means trivial. It meant, in thedepth of it, such absence of all true [Greek: charis], reverence, andintellect, as it is very dreadful to trace in the mind of any humancreature, much more in that of a child educated with apparently everyadvantage of circumstance in a beautiful English country town, withinten miles of our University. Most of all is it terrific when we regardit as the exponent (and this, in truth, it is) of the temper which, asdistinguished from former methods, either of discipline or recreation, the present tenor of our general teaching fosters in the mind ofyouth;--teaching which asserts liberty to be a right, and obedience adegradation; and which, regardless alike of the fairness of nature andthe grace of behavior, leaves the insolent spirit and degraded senses tofind their only occupation in malice, and their only satisfaction inshame. 

91. You will, I hope, proceed with me, not scornfully any more, totrace, in the early art of a noble heathen nation, the feeling of whatwas at least a better childishness than this of ours; and the efforts toexpress, though with hands yet failing, and minds oppressed by ignorantfantasy, the first truth by which they knew that they lived; the birthof wisdom and of all her powers of help to man, as the reward of hisresolute labor. 

92. "[Greek: Haphaiston technaisi]. " Note that word of Pindar in theSeventh Olympic. This ax-blow of Vulcan's was to the Greek mind trulywhat Clytemnestra falsely asserts hers to have been, "[Greek: tês dedexias cheros, ergon, dikaias tektonos]"; physically, it meant theopening of the blue through the rent clouds of heaven, by the action oflocal terrestrial heat (of Hephæstus as opposed to Apollo, who shines onthe surface of the upper clouds, but cannot pierce them); and, spiritually, it meant the first birth of prudent thought out of rudelabor, the clearing-ax in the hand of the woodman being the practicalelementary sign of his difference from the wild animals of the wood. Then he goes on, "From the high head of her Father, Athenaia rushingforth, cried with her great and exceeding cry; and the Heaven trembledat her, and the Earth Mother. " The cry of Athena, I have before pointedout, physically distinguishes her, as the spirit of the air, from silentelemental powers; but in this grand passage of Pindar it is again themythic cry of which he thinks; that is to say, the giving articulatewords, by intelligence, to the silence of Fate. "Wisdom crieth aloud, she uttereth her voice in the streets, " and Heaven and Earth tremble ather reproof. 

93. Uttereth her voice in the "streets. " For all men, that is to say;but to what work did the Greeks think that her voice was to call them?What was to be the impulse communicated by her prevailing presence; whatthe sign of the people's obedience to her?

This was to be the sign--"But she, the goddess herself, gave to them toprevail over the dwellers upon earth, _with best-laboring hands in everyart. And by their paths there were the likenesses of living and ofcreeping things_; and the glory was deep. For to the cunning workman, greater knowledge comes, undeceitful. "

94. An infinitely pregnant passage, this, of which to-day you are tonote mainly these three things: First, that Athena is the goddess ofDoing, not at all of sentimental inaction. She is begotten, as it were, of the woodman's ax; her purpose is never in a word only, but in a wordand a blow. She guides the hands that labor best, in every art. 

95. Secondly. The victory given by Wisdom, the worker, to the hands thatlabor best, is that the streets and ways, [Greek: keleuthoi], shall befilled by likenesses of living and creeping things. 

Things living, and creeping! Are the Reptile things not alive then? Youthink Pindar wrote that carelessly? or that, if he had only known alittle modern anatomy, instead of 'reptile' things, he would have said'monochondylous' things? Be patient, and let us attend to the mainpoints first. 

Sculpture, it thus appears, is the only work of wisdom that the Greekscare to speak of; they think it involves and crowns every other. Image-making art; _this_ is Athena's, as queenliest of the arts. Literature, the order and the strength of word, of course belongs toApollo and the Muses; under Athena are the Substances and the Forms ofthings. 

96. Thirdly. By this forming of Images there is to be gained a'deep'--that is to say, a weighty, and prevailing, glory; not a floatingnor fugitive one. For to the cunning workman, greater knowledge comes, 'undeceitful. '

"[Greek: Daenti;]" I am forced to use two English words to translatethat single Greek one. The 'cunning' workman, thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be done; no machine, witless, and ofnecessary motion; yet not cunning only, but having perfect habitualskill of hand also; the confirmed reward of truthful doing. Recollect, in connection with this passage of Pindar, Homer's three verses aboutgetting the lines of ship-timber true, (Il. XV. 410):

 "[Greek: 'All' hôste stathmê dory nêion exithynei tektonos en palam si daêmonos, hoo rha te pasês eu eidê sophiês, hypothêmosynêsin 'Athênês], "

and the beautiful epithet of Persephone, --"[Greek: daeira], " as theTryer and Knower of good work; and remembering these, trust Pindar forthe truth of his saying, that to the cunning workman--(and let mesolemnly enforce the words by adding--that to him _only_, ) knowledgecomes undeceitful. 

97. You may have noticed, perhaps, and with a smile, as one of theparadoxes you often hear me blamed for too fondly stating, what I toldyou in the close of my Third Introductory Lecture, [22] that "so far fromart's being immoral, little else except art is moral. " I have nowfarther to tell you, that little else, except art, is wise; that allknowledge, unaccompanied by a habit of useful action, is too likely tobecome deceitful, and that every habit of useful action must resolveitself into some elementary practice of manual labor. And I would, inall sober and direct earnestness, advise you, whatever may be the aim, predilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve upon this one thingat least, that you will enable yourselves daily to do actually with yourhands, something that is useful to mankind. To do anything well withyour hands, useful or not; to be, even in trifling, [Greek: palamêsidaêmôn], is already much. When we come to examine the art of the MiddleAges, I shall be able to show you that the strongest of all influencesof right then brought to bear upon character was the necessity forexquisite manual dexterity in the management of the spear and bridle;and in your own experience most of you will be able to recognize thewholesome effect, alike on body and mind, of striving, within properlimits of time, to become either good batsmen or good oarsmen. But thebat and the racer's oar are children's toys. Resolve that you will bemen in usefulness, as well as in strength; and you will find that thenalso, but not till then, you can become men in understanding; and thatevery fine vision and subtle theorem will present itself to youthence-forward undeceitfully, [Greek: hypothêmosynêsin Athênês]. 

98. But there is more to be gathered yet from the words of Pindar. He isthinking, in his brief intense way, at once of Athena's work on thesoul, and of her literal power on the dust of the Earth. His "[Greek:keleuthoi]" is a wide word, meaning all the paths of sea and land. Consider, therefore, what Athena's own work _actually is_--in theliteral fact of it. The blue, clear air _is_ the sculpturing power uponthe earth and sea. Where the surface of the earth is reached by that, and its matter and substance inspired with and filled by that, organicform becomes possible. You must indeed have the sun, also, and moisture;the kingdom of Apollo risen out of the sea: but the sculpturing ofliving things, shape by shape, is Athena's, so that under the broodingspirit of the air, what was without form, and void, brings forth themoving creature that hath life. 

99. That is her work then--the giving of Form; then the separatelyApolline work is the giving of Light; or, more strictly, Sight: givingthat faculty to the retina to which we owe not merely the idea of light, but the existence of it; for light is to be defined only as thesensation produced in the eye of an animal, under given conditions;those same conditions being, to a stone, only warmth or chemicalinfluence, but not light. And that power of seeing, and the othervarious personalities and authorities of the animal body, in pleasureand pain, have never, hitherto, been, I do not say, explained, but inanywise touched or approached by scientific discovery. Some of theconditions of mere external animal form and of muscular vitality havebeen shown; but for the most part that is true, even of external form, which I wrote six years ago. "You may always stand by Form againstForce. To a painter, the essential character of anything is the form ofit, and the philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, forinstance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (orwhatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle, as in agier-eagle. Very good: that is so, and it is very interesting. Itrequires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, to take thegier-eagle up to his nest, and as much more to bring him down again on ahare or a partridge. But we painters, acknowledging the equality andsimilarity of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our principal interest to the difference in theirforms. For us, the primarily cognizable facts, in the two things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; the one a lid on itsback, the other a pair of wings; not to speak of the distinction also ofvolition, which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or modeof force--but then, to an artist, the form or mode is the gist of thebusiness. "[23]

100. As you will find that it is, not to the artist only, but to all ofus. The laws under which matter is collected and constructed are thesame throughout the universe: the substance so collected, whether forthe making of the eagle, or the worm, may be analyzed into gaseousidentity; a diffusive vital force, apparently so closely related tomechanically measurable heat as to admit the conception of its beingitself mechanically measurable, and unchanging in total quantity, ebbsand flows alike through the limbs of men and the fibers of insects. But, above all this, and ruling every grotesque or degraded accident of this, are two laws of beauty in form, and of nobility in character, whichstand in the chaos of creation between the Living and the Dead, toseparate the things that have in them a sacred and helpful, from thosethat have in them an accursed and destroying, nature; and the power ofAthena, first physically put forth in the sculpturing of these [Greek:zôa] and [Greek: herpeta], these living and reptile things, is putforth, finally, in enabling the hearts of men to discern the one fromthe other; to know the unquenchable fires of the Spirit from theunquenchable fires of Death; and to choose, not unaided, betweensubmission to the Love that cannot end, or to the Worm that cannot die. 

101. The unconsciousness of their antagonism is the most notablecharacteristic of the modern scientific mind; and I believe no credulityor fallacy admitted by the weakness (or it may sometimes rather havebeen the strength) of early imagination, indicates so strange adepression beneath the due scale of human intellect, as the failure ofthe sense of beauty in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct, which have become the curses of recent science, [24] art, and policy. 

102. That depression of intellect has been alike exhibited in the meanconsternation confessedly felt on one side, and the mean triumphapparently felt on the other, during the course of the dispute nowpending as to the origin of man. Dispute for the present not to bedecided, and of which the decision is, to persons in the modern temperof mind, wholly without significance: and I earnestly desire that you, my pupils, may have firmness enough to disengage your energies frominvestigation so premature and so fruitless, and sense enough toperceive that it does not matter how you have been made, so long as youare satisfied with being what you are. If you are dissatisfied withyourselves, it ought not to console, but humiliate you, to imagine thatyou were once seraphs; and if you are pleased with yourselves, it is notany ground of reasonable shame to you if, by no fault of your own, youhave passed through the elementary condition of apes. 

103. Remember, therefore, that it is of the very highest importance thatyou should know what you _are_, and determine to be the best that youmay be; but it is of no importance whatever, except as it may contributeto that end, to know what you have been. Whether your Creator shapedyou with fingers, or tools, as a sculptor would a lump of clay, orgradually raised you to manhood through a series of inferior forms, isonly of moment to you in this respect--that in the one case you cannotexpect your children to be nobler creatures than you are yourselves--inthe other, every act and thought of your present life may be hasteningthe advent of a race which will look back to you, their fathers (and youought at least to have attained the dignity of desiring that it may beso, ) with incredulous disdain. 

104. But that you _are_ yourselves capable of that disdain and dismay;that you are ashamed of having been apes, if you ever were so; that youacknowledge, instinctively, a relation of better and worse, and a lawrespecting what is noble and base, which makes it no question to youthat the man is worthier than the baboon, --_this_ is a fact of infinitesignificance. This law of preference in your hearts is the true essenceof your being, and the consciousness of that law is a more positiveexistence than any dependent on the coherence or forms of matter. 

105. Now, but a few words more of mythology, and I have done. Rememberthat Athena holds the weaver's shuttle, not merely as an instrument of_texture_, but as an instrument of _picture_; the ideas of clothing, andof the warmth of life, being thus inseparably connected with those ofgraphic beauty, and the brightness of life. I have told you that no artcould be recovered among us without perfectness in dress, nor withoutthe elementary graphic art of women, in divers colors of needlework. There has been no nation of any art-energy, but has strenuously occupiedand interested itself in this household picturing, from the web ofPenelope to the tapestry of Queen Matilda, and the meshes of Arras andGobelins. 

106. We should then naturally ask what kind of embroidery Athena put onher own robe; "[Greek: peplon heanon, poikilon, hon r' autê poiêsato kaikame chersin]. "

The subject of that [Greek: poikilia] of hers, as you know, was the warof the giants and gods. Now the real name of these giants, remember, isthat used by Hesiod, '[Greek: pêlogonoi], ' 'mud-begotten, ' and themeaning of the contest between these and Zeus, [Greek: pêlogonônelatêr], is, again, the inspiration of life into the clay, by thegoddess of breath; and the actual confusion going on visibly before you, daily, of the earth, heaping itself into cumbrous war with the powersabove it. 

107. Thus, briefly, the entire material of Art, under Athena's hand, isthe contest of life with clay; and all my task in explaining to you theearly thought of both the Athenian and Tuscan schools will only be thetracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when, not in tapestry only, but in sculpture, and on the portal of the Templeof Delphi itself, you have the "[Greek: klonos en teichesi lainoisigigantôn], " and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delightfrom the Athenian maids, beholding Pallas in her full power, "[Greek:leussô Pallad' eman theon], " my own goddess. All our work, I repeat, will be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this onesubject, and the pressing fully home the question of Plato about thatembroidery--"And think you that there is verily war with each otheramong the Gods? and dreadful enmities and battles, such as the poetshave told, and such as our painters set forth in graven scripture, toadorn all our sacred rites and holy places; yes, and in the greatPanathenaea themselves, the Peplus, full of such wild picturing, iscarried up into the Acropolis--shall we say that these things are true, oh Euthuphron, right-minded friend?"

108. Yes, we say, and know, that these things are true; and trueforever: battles of the gods, not among themselves, but against theearth-giants. Battle prevailing age by age, in nobler life and lovelierimagery; creation, which no theory of mechanism, no definition of force, can explain, the adoption and completing of individual form byindividual animation, breathed out of the lips of the Father of Spirits. And to recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by whichit lives and moves and has its being--to recognize it, revere, and showit forth, is to be our eternal Idolatry. 

"Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them. "

"Assuredly no, " we answered once, in our pride; and through porch andaisle, broke down the carved work thereof, with axes and hammers. 

Who would have thought the day so near when we should bow down toworship, not the creatures, but their atoms, --not the forces that form, but those that dissolve them? Trust me, gentlemen, the command which isstringent against adoration of brutality, is stringent no less againstadoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to bereformed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. We have ceasedfrom the making of monsters to be appeased by sacrifice;--it iswell, --if indeed we have also ceased from making them in our thoughts. We have learned to distrust the adorning of fair fantasms, to which weonce sought for succor;--it is well, if we learn to distrust also theadorning of those to which we seek, for temptation; but the verity ofgains like these can only be known by our confession of the divine sealof strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and honor in the ferventheart, by which, increasing visibly, may yet be manifested to us theholy presence, and the approving love, of the Loving God, who visits theiniquities of the Fathers upon the Children, unto the third and fourthgeneration of them that hate Him, and shows mercy unto thousands of themthat love Him, and keep His Commandments. 

FOOTNOTES:

[16] I shall be obliged in future Lectures, as hitherto in my otherwritings, to use the terms Idolatry and Imagination in a morecomprehensive sense; but here I use them for convenience' sake, limitedly, to avoid the continual occurrence of the terms noble andignoble, or false and true, with reference to modes of conception. 

[17] "And in sum, he himself (Prometheus) was the master-maker, andAthena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused themolded things to have soul (psyche) in them. "--LUCIAN, _Prometheus. _

[18] His relations with the two great Titans, Themis and Mnemosyne, belong to another group of myths. The father of Athena is the lower andnearer physical Zeus, from whom Metis, the mother of Athena, longwithdraws and disguises herself. 

[19] _Ante_, § 30. 

[20] The Latin verses are of later date; the contemporary plain proseretains the Venetian gutturals and aspirates. 

[21] _Ante_, § 44. 

[22] "Lectures on Art, " § 95. 

[23] "Ethics of the Dust, " Lecture X. 

[24] The best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect facultyof representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability ofrepresenting either a man, a horse, or a lion. 

LECTURE IV. 

LIKENESS. 

_November, 1870. _

109. You were probably vexed, and tired, towards the close of my lastLecture, by the time it took us to arrive at the apparently simpleconclusion that sculpture must only represent organic form, and thestrength of life in its contest with matter. But it is no small thing tohave that "[Greek: leussô Pallada]" fixed in your minds, as the onenecessary sign by which you are to recognize right sculpture; and, believe me, you will find it the best of all things, if you can take foryourselves the saying from the lips of the Athenian maids, in itsentirety, and say also--[Greek: leussô Pallad' eman theon]. I proceedto-day into the practical appliance of this apparently speculative, butin reality imperative, law. 

110. You observe, I have hitherto spoken of the power of Athena, as overpainting no less than sculpture. But her rule over both arts is only sofar as they are zoographic;--representative, that is to say, of animallife, or of such order and discipline among other elements, as mayinvigorate and purify it. Now there is a speciality of the art ofpainting beyond this, namely, the representation of phenomena of colorand shadow, as such, without question of the nature of the things thatreceive them. I am now accordingly obliged to speak of sculpture andpainting as distinct arts: but the laws which bind sculpture, bind noless the painting of the higher schools, which has, for its mainpurpose, the showing beauty in human or animal form; and which istherefore placed by the Greeks equally under the rule of Athena, as theSpirit, first, of Life, and then of Wisdom in conduct. 

111. First, I say, you are to 'see Pallas' in all such work, as theQueen of Life; and the practical law which follows from this, is one ofenormous range and importance, namely, that nothing must be representedby sculpture, external to any living form, which does not help toenforce or illustrate the conception of life. Both dress and armor maybe made to do this, by great sculptors, and are continually so used bythe greatest. One of the essential distinctions between the Athenian andFlorentine schools is dependent on their treatment of drapery in thisrespect; an Athenian always sets it to exhibit the action of the body, by flowing with it, or over it, or from it, so as to illustrate both itsform and gesture; a Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his draperyto conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mentalemotion; but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body orsoul; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothicchivalry, ennoble armor in the same way; but base sculptors carvedrapery and armor for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern, that all delight inmere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is whollyforbidden to sculpture;--for instance, in _painting_ the branch of atree, you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it, but a sculptor must not touch one of them: they are inessential to thetree's life, --he must give the flow and bending of the branch only, elsehe does not enough 'see Pallas' in it. 

Or, to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little painted poem, by Edward Frere; a cottage interior, one of the thousands which withinthe last two months[25] have been laid desolate in unhappy France. Everyaccessory in the painting is of value--the fireside, the tiled floor, the vegetables lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the roof. Butnot one of these accessories would have been admissible in sculpture. You must carve nothing but what has life. "Why?" you probably feelinstantly inclined to ask me. --You see the principle we have got, instead of being blunt or useless, is such an edged tool that you arestartled the moment I apply it. "Must we refuse every pleasant accessoryand picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures?" Evenso: I would not assert it on my own authority. It is the Greeks who sayit, but whatever they say of sculpture, be assured, is true. 

112. That then is the first law--you must see Pallas as the Lady ofLife; the second is, you must see her as the Lady of Wisdom; or [Greek:sophia]--and this is the chief matter of all. I cannot but think that, after the considerations into which we have now entered, you will findmore interest than hitherto in comparing the statements of Aristotle, inthe Ethics, with those of Plato in the Polity, which are authoritativeas Greek definitions of goodness in art, and which you may safely holdauthoritative as constant definitions of it. You remember, doubtless, that the [Greek: sophia], or [Greek: aretê pechnês], for the sake ofwhich Phidias is called [Greek: sophos] as a sculpture, and Polyclitusas an image-maker, Eth. 6. 7. (the opposition is both between ideal andportrait sculpture, and between working in stone and bronze), consistsin the "[Greek: nous tôn timiôtatôn t ê physei], " "the mentalapprehension of the things that are most honorable in their nature. "Therefore, what is indeed most lovely, the true image-maker will mostlove; and what is most hateful, he will most hate; and in all thingsdiscern the best and strongest part of them, and represent thatessentially, or, if the opposite of that, then with manifest detestationand horror. That is his art wisdom; the knowledge of good and evil, andthe love of good, so that you may discern, even in his representation ofthe vilest thing, his acknowledgment of what redemption is possible forit, or latent power exists in it; and, contrariwise, his sense of itspresent misery. But, for the most part, he will idolize, and force usalso to idolize, whatever is living, and virtuous, and victoriouslyright; opposing to it in some definite mode the image of the conquered[Greek: herpeton]. 

113. This is generally true of both the great arts; but in severity andprecision, true of sculpture. To return to our illustration: this poorlittle girl was more interesting to Edward Frere, he being a painter, because she was poorly dressed, and wore these clumsy shoes, and old redcap, and patched gown. May we sculpture her so? No. We may sculpture hernaked, if we like; but not in rags. 

But if we may not put her into marble in rags, may we give her a prettyfrock with ribbons and flounces to it, and put her into marble in that?No. We may put her simplest peasant's dress, so it be perfect andorderly, into marble; anything finer than that would be moredishonorable in the eyes of Athena than rags. If she were a Frenchprincess, you might carve her embroidered robe and diadem; if she wereJoan of Arc, you might carve her armor--for then these also would be"[Greek: tôn timiôtatôn], " not otherwise. 

114. Is not this an edge-tool we have got hold of, unawares? and asubtle one too; so delicate and cimeter-like in decision. For note thateven Joan of Arc's armor must be only sculptured, _if she has it on_; itis not the honorableness or beauty of it that are enough, but the directbearing of it by her body. You might be deeply, even pathetically, interested by looking at a good knight's dinted coat of mail, left inhis desolate hall. May you sculpture it where it hangs? No; the helmetfor his pillow, if you will--no more. 

You see we did not do our dull work for nothing in last Lecture. Idefine what we have gained once more, and then we will enter on our newground. 

115. The proper subject of sculpture, we have determined, is thespiritual power seen in the form of any living thing, and so representedas to give evidence that the sculptor has loved the good of it and hatedthe evil. 

"_So_ represented, " we say; but how is that to be done? Why should itnot be represented, if possible, just as it is seen? What mode or limitof representation may we adopt? We are to carve things that havelife;--shall we try so to imitate them that they may indeed seemliving, --or only half living, and like stone instead of flesh?

It will simplify this question if I show you three examples of what theGreeks actually did: three typical pieces of their sculpture, in orderof perfection. 

116. And now, observe that in all our historical work, I will endeavorto do, myself, what I have asked you to do in your drawing exercises;namely, to outline firmly in the beginning, and then fill in the detailmore minutely. I will give you first, therefore, in a symmetrical form, absolutely simple and easily remembered, the large chronology of theGreek school; within that unforgettable scheme we will place, as wediscover them, the minor relations of arts and times. 

I number the nine centuries before Christ thus, upwards, and divide theminto three groups of three each. 

 {9 A. ARCHAIC. {8 {7 ----

 {6 B. BEST. {5 {4 ----

 {3 C. CORRUPT. {2 {1

Then the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries are the period of archaicGreek art, steadily progressive wherever it existed. 

The sixth, fifth, and fourth are the period of Central Greek art; thefifth, or central, century producing the finest. That is easilyrecollected by the battle of Marathon. And the third, second, and firstcenturies are the period of steady decline. 

Learn this A B C thoroughly, and mark, for yourselves, what you, atpresent, think the vital events in each century. As you know more, youwill think other events the vital ones; but the best historicalknowledge only approximates to true thought in that matter; only besure that what is truly vital in the character which governs events, isalways expressed by the art of the century; so that if you couldinterpret that art rightly, the better part of your task in readinghistory would be done to your hand. 

117. It is generally impossible to date with precision art of thearchaic period--often difficult to date even that of the central threehundred years. I will not weary you with futile minor divisions of time;here are three coins (Plate VII. ) roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. The first is an early coin ofTarentum. The city was founded, as you know, by the Spartan Phalanthus, late in the eighth century. I believe the head is meant for that ofApollo Archegetes; it may however be Taras, the son of Poseidon; it isno matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the fact that wecannot know, is itself of the greatest import. We cannot say, with anycertainty, unless by discovery of some collateral evidence, whether thishead is intended for that of a god, or demigod, or a mortal warrior. Ought not that to disturb some of your thoughts respecting Greekidealism? Farther, if by investigation we discover that the head ismeant for that of Phalanthus, we shall know nothing of the character ofPhalanthus from the face; for there is no portraiture at this earlytime. 

118. The second coin is of Ænus in Macedonia; probably of the fifth orearly fourth century, and entirely characteristic of the central period. This we know to represent the face of a god--Hermes. The third coin is aking's, not a city's. I will not tell you, at this moment, what king's;but only that it is a late coin of the third period, and that it is asdistinct in purpose as the coin of Tarentum is obscure. We know of thiscoin, that it represents no god nor demigod, but a mere mortal; and weknow precisely, from the portrait, what that mortal's face was like. 

[Illustration: VII. 

ARCHAIC, CENTRAL AND DECLINING ART OF GREECE. ]

119. A glance at the three coins, as they are set side by side, will nowshow you the main differences in the three great Greek styles. Thearchaic coin is sharp and hard; every line decisive and numbered, setunhesitatingly in its place; nothing is wrong, though everythingincomplete, and, to us who have seen finer art, ugly. The central coinis as decisive and clear in arrangement of masses, but its contours arecompletely rounded and finished. There is no character in its executionso prominent that you can give an epithet to the style. It is not hard, it is not soft, it is not delicate, it is not coarse, it is notgrotesque, it is not beautiful; and I am convinced, unless you had beentold that this is fine central Greek art, you would have seen nothing atall in it to interest you. Do not let yourselves be anywise forced intoadmiring it; there is, indeed, nothing more here than an approximatelytrue rendering of a healthy youthful face, without the slightest attemptto give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any otherattribute of the Mercurial mind. Extreme simplicity, unpretending vigorof work, which claims no admiration either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of effort at all; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, whether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair; this is all you have tobe pleased with; neither will you ever find, in the best Greek Art, more. You might at first suppose that the chain of beads round the capwas an extraneous ornament; but I have little doubt that it is asdefinitely the proper fillet for the head of Hermes, as the olive forZeus, or corn for Triptolemus. The cap or petasus cannot have expandededges; there is no room for them on the coin; these must be understood, therefore; but the nature of the cloud-petasus is explained by edging itwith beads, representing either dew or hail. The shield of Athena oftenbears white pellets for hail, in like manner. 

120. The third coin will, I think, at once strike you by what we modernsshould call its 'vigor of character. ' You may observe also that thefeatures are finished with great care and subtlety, but at the cost ofsimplicity and breadth. But the _essential_ difference between it andthe central art, is its disorder in design--you see the locks of haircannot be counted any longer--they are entirely disheveled andirregular. Now the individual character may, or may not, be a sign ofdecline; but the licentiousness, the casting loose of the masses in thedesign, is an infallible one. The effort at portraiture is good for artif the men to be portrayed are good men, not otherwise. In the instancebefore you, the head is that of Mithridates VI. Of Pontus, who had, indeed, the good qualities of being a linguist and a patron of the arts;but, as you will remember, murdered, according to report, his mother, certainly his brother, certainly his wives and sisters, I have notcounted how many of his children, and from a hundred to a hundred andfifty thousand persons besides; these last in a single day's massacre. The effort to represent this kind of person is not by any means a methodof study from life ultimately beneficial to art. 

121. This, however, is not the point I have to urge to-day. What I wantyou to observe is, that though the master of the great time does notattempt portraiture, he _does_ attempt animation. And as far as hismeans will admit, he succeeds in making the face--you might almostthink--vulgarly animated; as like a real face, literally, 'as it canstare. ' Yes: and its sculptor meant it to be so; and that was whatPhidias meant his Jupiter to be, if he could manage it. Not, indeed, tobe taken for Zeus himself; and yet, to be as like a living Zeus as artcould make it. Perhaps you think he tried to make it look living onlyfor the sake of the mob, and would not have tried to do so forconnoisseurs. Pardon me; for real connoisseurs he would, and did; andherein consists a truth which belongs to all the arts, and which I willat once drive home in your minds, as firmly as I can. 

122. All second-rate artists--(and remember, the second-rate ones are aloquacious multitude, while the great come only one or two in a century;and then, silently)--all second-rate artists will tell you that theobject of fine art is not resemblance, but some kind of abstraction morerefined than reality. Put that out of your heads at once. The object ofthe great Resemblant Arts is, and always has been, to resemble; and toresemble as closely as possible. It is the function of a good portraitto set the man before you in habit as he lived, and I would we had a fewmore that did so. It is the function of a good landscape to set thescene before you in its reality; to make you, if it may be, think theclouds are flying, and the streams foaming. It is the function of thebest sculptor--the true Dædalus--to make stillness look like breathing, and marble look like flesh. 

123. And in all great times of art, this purpose is as naïvely expressedas it is steadily held. All the talk about abstraction belongs toperiods of decadence. In living times, people see something living thatpleases them; and they try to make it live forever, or to make somethingas like it as possible, that will last forever. They paint theirstatues, and inlay the eyes with jewels, and set real crowns on theheads; they finish, in their pictures, every thread of embroidery, andwould fain, if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. And theironly verbal expression of conscious success is that they have made theirwork 'look real. '

124. You think all that very wrong. So did I, once; but it was I thatwas wrong. A long time ago, before ever I had seen Oxford, I painted apicture of the Lake of Como, for my father. It was not at all like theLake of Como; but I thought it rather the better for that. My fatherdiffered with me; and objected particularly to a boat with a red andyellow awning, which I had put into the most conspicuous corner of mydrawing. I declared this boat to be 'necessary to the composition. ' Myfather not the less objected, that he had never seen such a boat, eitherat Como or elsewhere; and suggested that if I would make the lake look alittle more like water, I should be under no necessity of explaining itsnature by the presence of floating objects. I thought him at the time avery simple person for his pains; but have since learned, and it is thevery gist of all practical matters, which, as Professor of Fine Art, Ihave now to tell you, that the great point in painting a lake is--toget it to look like water. 

125. So far, so good. We lay it down for a first principle that ourgraphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to produce somethingwhich shall look as like Nature as possible. But now we must go one stepfarther, and say that it is to produce what shall look like Nature topeople who know what Nature is like! You see this is at once a greatrestriction, as well as a great exaltation of our aim. Our business isnot to deceive the simple; but to deceive the wise! Here, for instance, is a modern Italian print, representing, to the best of its power, St. Cecilia, in a brilliantly realistic manner. And the fault of the work isnot in its earnest endeavor to show St. Cecilia in habit as she lived, but in that the effort could only be successful with persons unaware ofthe habit St. Cecilia lived in. And this condition of appeal only to thewise increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, that, with only average skill or materials, we must surrender all hope of it, and be content with an imperfect representation, true as far as itreaches, and such as to excite the imagination of a wise beholder tocomplete it; though falling very far short of what either he or weshould otherwise have desired. For instance, here is a suggestion, bySir Joshua Reynolds, of the general appearance of a BritishJudge, --requiring the imagination of a very wise beholder indeed to fillit up, or even at first to discover what it is meant for. Nevertheless, it is better art than the Italian St. Cecilia, because the artist, however little he may have done to represent his knowledge, does, indeed, know altogether what a Judge is like, and appeals only to thecriticism of those who know also. 

126. There must be, therefore, two degrees of truth to be looked for inthe good graphic arts; one, the commonest, which, by any partial orimperfect sign, conveys to you an idea which you must complete foryourself; and the other, the finest, a representation so perfect as toleave you nothing to be farther accomplished by this independentexertion; but to give you the same feeling of possession and presencewhich you would experience from the natural object itself. For instanceof the first, in this representation of a rainbow, [26] the artist has nohope that, by the black lines of engraving, he can deceive you into anybelief of the rainbow's being there, but he gives indication enough ofwhat he intends, to enable you to supply the rest of the idea yourself, providing always you know beforehand what a rainbow is like. But in thisdrawing of the falls of Terni, [27] the painter has strained his skill tothe utmost to give an actually deceptive resemblance of the iris, dawning and fading among the foam. So far as he has not actuallydeceived you, it is not because he would not have done so if he could;but only because his colors and science have fallen short of his desire. They have fallen so little short, that, in a good light, you may all butbelieve the foam, and the sunshine are drifting and changing among therocks. 

127. And after looking a little while, you will begin to regret thatthey are not so: you will feel that, lovely as the drawing is, you wouldlike far better to see the real place, and the goats skipping among therocks, and the spray floating above the fall. And this is the true signof the greatest art--to part voluntarily with its greatness;--to make_itself_ poor and unnoticed; but so to exalt and set forth its theme, that you may be fain to see the theme instead of it. So that you havenever enough admired a great workman's doing, till you have begun todespise it. The best homage that could be paid to the Athena of Phidiaswould be to desire rather to see the living goddess; and the loveliestMadonnas of Christian art fall short of their due power, if they do notmake their beholders sick at heart to see the living Virgin. 

128. We have then, for our requirement of the finest art, (sculpture, oranything else, ) that it shall be so like the thing it represents as toplease those who best know or can conceive the original; and, ifpossible, please them deceptively--its final triumph being to deceiveeven the wise; and (the Greeks thought) to please even the Immortals, who were so wise as to be undeceivable. So that you get the Greek, thusfar entirely true, idea of perfectness in sculpture, expressed to you bywhat Phalaris says, at first sight of the bull of Perilaus, "It onlywanted motion and bellowing to seem alive; and as soon as I saw it, Icried out, it ought to be sent to the god, "--to Apollo, for only he, theundeceivable, could thoroughly understand such sculpture, and perfectlydelight in it. 

129. And with this expression of the Greek ideal of sculpture, I wishyou to join the early Italian, summed in a single line by Dante--"nonvide me' di me, chi vide 'l vero. " Read the twelfth canto of thePurgatory, and learn that whole passage by heart; and if ever you chanceto go to Pistoja, look at La Robbia's colored porcelain bas-reliefs ofthe seven works of Mercy on the front of the hospital there; and noteespecially the faces of the two sick men--one at the point of death, andthe other in the first peace and long-drawn breathing of health afterfever--and you will know what Dante meant by the preceding line, "Mortili morti, e i vivi parèn vivi. "

130. But now, may we not ask farther, --is it impossible for art such asthis, prepared for the wise, to please the simple also? Without enteringon the awkward questions of degree, how many the wise can be, or howmuch men should know, in order to be rightly called wise, may we notconceive an art to be possible, which would deceive _everybody_, oreverybody worth deceiving? I showed you at my First Lecture, a littleringlet of Japan ivory, as a type of elementary bas-relief touched withcolor; and in your rudimentary series you have a drawing, by Mr. Burgess, of one of the little fishes enlarged, with every touch of thechisel facsimiled on the more visible scale; and showing the littleblack bead inlaid for the eye, which in the original is hardly to beseen without a lens. You may, perhaps, be surprised when I tell you that(putting the question of _subject_ aside for the moment, and speakingonly of the mode of execution and aim at resemblance, ) you have there aperfect example of the Greek ideal of method in sculpture. And you willadmit that, to the simplest person whom we could introduce as a critic, that fish would be a satisfactory, nay, almost a deceptive, fish; while, to any one caring for subtleties of art, I need not point out that everytouch of the chisel is applied with consummate knowledge, and that itwould be impossible to convey more truth and life with the givenquantity of workmanship. 

131. Here is, indeed, a drawing by Turner, (Edu. 131), in which, withsome fifty times the quantity of labor, and far more highly educatedfaculty of sight, the artist has expressed some qualities of luster andcolor which only very wise persons indeed could perceive in a John Dory;and this piece of paper contains, therefore, much more, and more subtle, art, than the Japan ivory; but are we sure that it is therefore_greater_ art? or that the painter was better employed in producing thisdrawing, which only one person can possess, and only one in a hundredenjoy, than he would have been in producing two or three pieces on alarger scale, which should have been at once accessible to, andenjoyable by, a number of simpler persons? Suppose, for instance, thatTurner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white paper, withhis camel's-hair pencil, had struck the main forms of his fish intomarble, thus, (Fig. 7); and instead of coloring the white paper sodelicately that, perhaps, only a few of the most keenly observantartists in England can see it at all, had, with his strong hand, tintedthe marble with a few colors, deceptive to the people, and harmonious tothe initiated; suppose that he had even conceded so much to the spiritof popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being inlaid forthe eye, in the Japanese manner; and that the enlarged, deceptive, andpopularly pleasing work had been carved on the outside of a greatbuilding, --say Fishmongers' Hall, --where everybody commerciallyconnected with Billingsgate could have seen it, and ratified it with awisdom of the market;--might not the art have been greater, worthier, and kinder in such use?

[Illustration: FIG. 7. ]

132. Perhaps the idea does not at once approve itself to you of havingyour public buildings covered with ornaments; but, pray remember thatthe choice of _subject_ is an ethical question, not now before us. All Iask you to decide is whether the method is right, and would be pleasant, in giving the distinctiveness to pretty things, which it has here givento what, I suppose it may be assumed, you feel to be an ugly thing. Ofcourse, I must note parenthetically, such realistic work is impossiblein a country where the buildings are to be discolored by coal-smoke; butso is all fine sculpture whatsoever; and the whiter, the worse itschance. For that which is prepared for private persons, to be kept undercover, will, of necessity, degenerate into the copyism of past work, ormerely sensational and sensual forms of present life, unless there be agoverning school addressing the populace, for their instruction, on theoutside of buildings. So that, as I partly warned you in my ThirdLecture, you can simply have _no_ sculpture in a coal country. Whetheryou like coals or carvings best, is no business of mine. I merely haveto assure you of the fact that they are incompatible. 

But, assuming that we are again, some day, to become a civilized andgoverning race, deputing ironmongery, coal-digging, and lucre-digging, to our slaves in other countries, it is quite conceivable that, with anincreasing knowledge of natural history, and desire for such knowledge, what is now done by careful, but inefficient, wood-cuts, and inill-colored engravings, might be put in quite permanent sculptures, withinlay of variegated precious stones, on the outside of buildings, wheresuch pictures would be little costly to the people; and in a morepopular manner still, by Robbia ware and Palissy ware, and inlaidmajolica, which would differ from the housewife's present favoritedecoration of plates above her kitchen dresser, by being every piece ofit various, instructive, and universally visible. 

133. You hardly know, I suppose, whether I am speaking in jest orearnest. In the most solemn earnest, I assure you; though such is thestrange course of our popular life that all the irrational arts ofdestruction are at once felt to be earnest; while any plan for those ofinstruction on a grand scale, sounds like a dream, or jest. Still, I donot absolutely propose to decorate our public buildings with sculpturewholly of this character; though beast, and fowl, and creeping things, and fishes, might all find room on such a building as the Solomon'sHouse of a New Atlantis; and some of them might even become symbolic ofmuch to us again. Passing through the Strand, only the other day, forinstance, I saw four highly finished and delicately colored pictures ofcock-fighting, which, for imitative quality, were nearly all that couldbe desired, going far beyond the Greek cock of Himera; and they wouldhave delighted a Greek's soul, if they had meant as much as a Greekcock-fight; but they were only types of the "[Greek: endomachasalektôr], " and of the spirit of home contest, which has been so fatallately to the Bird of France; and not of the defense of one's ownbarnyard, in thought of which the Olympians set the cock on the pillarsof their chariot course; and gave it goodly alliance in its battle, asyou may see here, in what is left of the angle of moldering marble inthe chair of the priest of Dionusos. The cast of it, from the center ofthe theater under the Acropolis, is in the British Museum; and I wantedits spiral for you, and this kneeling Angel of Victory;--it is lateGreek art, but nobly systematic flat bas-relief. So I set Mr. Burgess todraw it; but neither he nor I, for a little while, could make out whatthe Angel of Victory was kneeling for. His attitude is an ancient andgrandly conventional one among the Egyptians; and I was tracing it backto a kneeling goddess of the greatest dynasty of the Pharaohs--a goddessof Evening, or Death, laying down the sun out of her right hand;--when, one bright day, the shadows came out clear on the Athenian throne, and Isaw that my Angel of Victory was only backing a cock at a cock-fight. 

134. Still, as I have said, there is no reason why sculpture, even forsimplest persons, should confine itself to imagery of fish, or fowl, orfour-footed things. 

We go back to our first principle: we ought to carve nothing but what ishonorable. And you are offended, at this moment, with my fish, (as Ibelieve, when the first sculptures appeared on the windows of thismuseum, offense was taken at the unnecessary introduction of cats, )these dissatisfactions being properly felt by your "[Greek: nous tôntimiôtatôn]. " For indeed, in all cases, our right judgment must dependon our wish to give honor only to things and creatures that deserve it. 

135. And now I must state to you another principle of veracity, both insculpture, and all following arts, of wider scope than any hithertoexamined. We have seen that sculpture is to be a true representation oftrue internal form. Much more is it to be a representation of trueinternal emotion. You must carve only what you yourself see as you seeit; but, much more, you must carve only what you yourself feel, as youfeel it. You may no more endeavor to feel through other men's souls, than to see with other men's eyes. Whereas generally now, in Europe andAmerica, every man's energy is bent upon acquiring some false emotion, not his own, but belonging to the past, or to other persons, because hehas been taught that such and such a result of it will be fine. Everyattempted sentiment in relation to art is hypocritical; our notions ofsublimity, of grace, or pious serenity, are all secondhand: and we arepractically incapable of designing so much as a bell-handle or adoor-knocker, without borrowing the first notion of it from those whoare gone--where we shall not wake them with our knocking. I would wecould. 

136. In the midst of this desolation we have nothing to count on forreal growth but what we can find of honest liking and longing, inourselves and in others. We must discover, if we would healthilyadvance, what things are verily [Greek: timiôtata] among us; and if wedelight to honor the dishonorable, consider how, in future, we maybetter bestow our likings. Now it appears to me, from all our populardeclarations, that we, at present, honor nothing so much as liberty andindependence; and no person so much as the Free man and Self-made man, who will be ruled by no one, and has been taught, or helped, by no one. And the reason I chose a fish for you as the first subject of sculpture, was that in men who are free and self-made, you have the nearestapproach, humanly possible, to the state of the fish, and finelyorganized [Greek: herpeton]. You get the exact phrase in Habakkuk, ifyou take the Septuagint text, --"[Greek: poiêseis tous anthrôpous hôstous ichthyas tês thalassês, kai hôs ta herpeta ta ouk echontahêgoumenon]. " "Thou wilt make men as the fishes of the sea, and as thereptile things, _that have no ruler over them_. " And it chanced that asI was preparing this Lecture, one of our most able and popular printsgave me a wood-cut of the 'self-made man, ' specified as such, sovigorously drawn, and with so few touches, that Phidias or Turnerhimself could scarcely have done it better; so that I had only to ask myassistant to enlarge it with accuracy, and it became comparable with myfish at once. Of course it is not given by the caricaturist as anadmirable face; only, I am enabled by his skill to set before you, without any suspicion of unfairness on _my_ part, the expression towhich the life we profess to think most honorable, naturally leads. Ifwe were to take the hat off, you see how nearly the profile correspondswith that of the typical fish. 

137. Such, then, being the definition, by your best popular art, of theideal of feature at which we are gradually arriving by self-manufacture:when I place opposite to it (in Plate VIII. ) the profile of a man not inanywise self-made, neither by the law of his own will, nor by the loveof his own interest--nor capable, for a moment, of any kind of'Independence, ' or of the idea of independence; but wholly dependentupon, and subjected to, external influence of just law, wise teaching, and trusted love and truth, in his fellow-spirits;--setting before you, I say, this profile of a God-made, instead of a self-made, man, I knowthat you will feel, on the instant, that you are brought into contactwith the vital elements of human art; and that this, the sculpture ofthe good, is indeed the only permissible sculpture. 

138. A God-made _man_, I say. The face, indeed, stands as a symbol ofmore than man in its sculptor's mind. For as I gave you, to lead yourfirst effort in the form of leaves, the scepter of Apollo, so this, which I give you as the first type of rightness in the form of flesh, isthe countenance of the holder of that scepter, the Sun-God of Syracuse. But there is nothing in the face (nor did the Greek suppose there was)more perfect than might be seen in the daily beauty of the creatures theSun-God shone upon, and whom his strength and honor animated. This isnot an ideal, but a quite literally true, face of a Greek youth; nay, Iwill undertake to show you that it is not supremely beautiful, and evento surpass it altogether with the literal portrait of an Italian one. Itis in verity no more than the form habitually taken by the features of awell-educated young Athenian or Sicilian citizen; and the onerequirement for the sculptors of to-day is not, as it has been thought, to invent the same ideal, but merely to see the same reality. 

[Illustration: VIII. 

THE APOLLO OF SYRACUSE, AND THE SELF-MADE MAN. ]

[Illustration: IX. 

APOLLO CHRYSOCOMES OF CLAZOMENÆ. ]

Now, you know I told you in my Fourth Lecture[28] that the beginning ofart was in getting our country clean and our people beautiful, and yousupposed that to be a statement irrelevant to my subject; just as, atthis moment, you perhaps think I am quitting the great subject of thispresent Lecture--the method of likeness-making, --and letting myselfbranch into the discussion of what things we are to make likeness of. But you shall see hereafter that the method of imitating a beautifulthing must be different from the method of imitating an ugly one; andthat, with the change in subject from what is dishonorable to what ishonorable, there will be involved a parallel change in the management oftools, of lines, and of colors. So that before I can determine for you_how_ you are to imitate, you must tell me what kind of face you wish toimitate. The best draughtsman in the world could not draw this Apollo inten scratches, though he can draw the self-made man. Still less thisnobler Apollo of Ionian Greece (Plate IX. ), in which the incisions aresoftened into a harmony like that of Correggio's painting. So that yousee the method itself, --the choice between black incision or finesculpture, and perhaps, presently, the choice between color or no color, will depend on what you have to represent. Color may be expedient for aglistening dolphin or a spotted fawn;--perhaps inexpedient for whitePoseidon, and gleaming Dian. So that, before defining the laws ofsculpture, I am compelled to ask you, _what you mean to carve_; andthat, little as you think it, is asking you how you mean to live, andwhat the laws of your State are to be, for _they_ determine those ofyour statue. You can only have this kind of face to study from, in thesort of state that produced it. And you will find that sort of statedescribed in the beginning of the fourth book of the laws of Plato; asfounded, for one thing, on the conviction that of all the evils that canhappen to a state, quantity of money is the greatest! [Greek: meizonkakon, hôs epos eipein, polei ouden an gignoita, eis gennaiôn kaidikaiôn êthôn ktêsin], "for, to speak shortly, no greater evil, matchingeach against each, can possibly happen to a city, as adverse to itsforming just or generous character, " than its being full of silver andgold. 

139. Of course the Greek notion may be wrong, and ours right, only--[Greek: hôs epos eipein]--you can have Greek sculpture only onthat Greek theory: shortly expressed by the words put into the mouth ofPoverty herself, in the Plutus of Aristophanes, "[Greek: Tou ploutouparechô beltionas andras, kai tên gnômên, kai tên idean], " "I deliver toyou better men than the God of Money can, both in imagination andfeature. " So, on the other hand, this ichthyoid, reptilian, ormonochondyloid ideal of the self-made man can only be reached, universally, by a nation which holds that poverty, either of purse orspirit, --but especially the spiritual character of being [Greek: ptôchoitô pneumati], --is the lowest of degradations; and which believes thatthe desire of wealth is the first of manly and moral sentiments. As Ihave been able to get the popular ideal represented by its own livingart, so I can give you this popular faith in its own living words; butin words meant seriously, and not at all as caricature, from one of ourleading journals, professedly æsthetic also in its very name, the_Spectator_, of August 6, 1870. 

"Mr. Ruskin's plan, " it says, "would make England poor, in order thatshe might be cultivated, and refined, and artistic. A wilder proposalwas never broached by a man of ability; and it might be regarded as aproof that the assiduous study of art emasculates the intellect, _andeven the moral sense_. Such a theory almost warrants the contempt withwhich art is often regarded by essentially intellectual natures, likeProudhon" (sic). "Art is noble as the flower of life, and the creationsof a Titian are a great heritage of the race; but if England couldsecure high art and Venetian glory of color only by the sacrifice of hermanufacturing supremacy, and _by the acceptance of national poverty_, then the pursuit of such artistic achievements would imply that we hadceased to possess natures of manly strength, _or to know the meaning ofmoral aims_. If we must choose between a Titian and a Lancashire cottonmill, then, in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cottonmill. Only the dilettanteism of the studio; that dilettanteism whichloosens the moral no less than the intellectual fiber, and which is asfatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of reasoning power, wouldmake a different choice. "

You see also, by this interesting and most memorable passage, howcompletely the question is admitted to be one of ethics--the only realpoint at issue being, whether this face or that is developed on thetruer moral principle. 

140. I assume, however, for the present, that this Apolline type is thekind of form you wish to reach and to represent. And now observe, instantly, the whole question of manner of imitation is altered for us. The fins of the fish, the plumes of the swan, and the flowing of theSun-God's hair are all represented by incisions--but the incisions dosufficiently represent the fin and feather, --they _in_sufficientlyrepresent the hair. If I chose, with a little more care and labor, Icould absolutely get the surface of the scales and spines of the fish, and the expression of its mouth; but no quantity of labor would obtainthe real surface of a tress of Apollo's hair, and the full expression ofhis mouth. So that we are compelled at once to call the imagination tohelp us, and say to it, _You_ know what the Apollo Chrysocomes must belike; finish all this for yourself. Now, the law under which imaginationworks, is just that of other good workers. "You must give me clearorders; show me what I have to do, and where I am to begin, and let mealone. " And the orders can be given, quite clearly, up to a certainpoint, in form; but they cannot be given clearly in color, now that thesubject is subtle. All beauty of this high kind depends on harmony; letbut the slightest discord come into it, and the finer the thing is, themore fatal will be the flaw. Now, on a flat surface, I can command mycolor to be precisely what and where I mean it to be; on a round one Icannot. For all harmony depends, first, on the fixed proportion of thecolor of the light to that of the relative shadow; and therefore if Ifasten my color, I must fasten my shade. But on a round surface theshadow changes at every hour of the day; and therefore all coloringwhich is expressive of form, is impossible; and if the form is fine, (and here there is nothing but what is fine, ) you may bid farewell tocolor. 

141. Farewell to color; that is to say, if the thing is to be seendistinctly, and you have only wise people to show it to; but if it is tobe seen indistinctly, at a distance, color may become explanatory; andif you have simple people to show it to, color may be necessary toexcite _their_ imaginations, though not to excite yours. And the art isgreat always by meeting its conditions in the straightest way; and if itis to please a multitude of innocent and bluntly-minded persons, mustexpress itself in the terms that will touch them; else it is not good. And I have to trace for you through the history of the past, andpossibilities of the future, the expedients used by great sculptors toobtain clearness, impressiveness, or splendor; and the manner of theirappeal to the people, under various light and shadow, and with referenceto different degrees of public intelligence: such investigationresolving itself again and again, as we proceed, into questionsabsolutely ethical; as, for instance, whether color is to be bright ordull, --that is to say, for a populace cheerful or heartless;--whether itis to be delicate or strong, --that is to say, for a populace attentiveor careless; whether it is to be a background like the sky, for aprocession of young men and maidens, because your populace reverelife--or the shadow of the vault behind a corpse stained with drops ofblackened blood, for a populace taught to worship Death. Every criticaldetermination of rightness depends on the obedience to some ethic law, by the most rational and, therefore, simplest means. And you see how itdepends most, of all things, on whether you are working for chosenpersons, or for the mob; for the joy of the boudoir, or of the Borgo. And if for the mob, whether the mob of Olympia, or of St. Antoine. Phidias, showing his Jupiter for the first time, hides behind the templedoor to listen, resolved afterwards "[Greek: rhythmizein to agalma prosto tois pleistois dokoun, ou gar hêgeito mikran einai symboulên dêmoutosoutou], " and truly, as your people is, in judgment, and in multitude, so must your sculpture be, in glory. An elementary principle which hasbeen too long out of mind. 

142. I leave you to consider it, since, for some time, we shall notagain be able to take up the inquiries to which it leads. But, ultimately, I do not doubt that you will rest satisfied in thesefollowing conclusions:

1. Not only sculpture, but all the other fine arts, must be for thepeople. 

2. They must be didactic to the people, and that as their chief end. Thestructural arts, didactic in their manner; the graphic arts, in theirmatter also. 

3. And chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts--that is tosay, the drama and sculpture--are to teach what is noble in pasthistory, and lovely in existing human and organic life. 

4. And the test of right manner of execution in these arts, is that theystrike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of popular minds to whichthey are addressed. 

5. And the test of utmost fineness in execution in these arts, is thatthey make themselves be forgotten in what they represent; and so fulfillthe words of their greatest Master, "THE BEST, IN THIS KIND, ARE BUT SHADOWS. "

FOOTNOTES:

[25] See date of delivery of Lecture. The picture was of a peasant girlof eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire. 

[26] In Dürer's 'Melancholia. '

[27] Turner's, in the Hakewill series. 

[28] "Lectures on Art, " § 116. 

LECTURE V. 

STRUCTURE. 

_December, 1870. _

143. On previous occasions of addressing you, I have endeavored to showyou, first, how sculpture is distinguished from other arts; then itsproper subjects; then its proper method in the realization of thesesubjects. To-day, we must, in the fourth place, consider the means atits command for the accomplishment of these ends; the nature of itsmaterials; and the mechanical or other difficulties of their treatment. 

And however doubtful we may have remained as to the justice of Greekideals, or propriety of Greek methods of representing them, we may becertain that the example of the Greeks will be instructive in allpractical matters relating to this great art, peculiarly their own. Ithink even the evidence I have already laid before you is enough toconvince you that it was by rightness and reality, not by idealism ordelightfulness only, that their minds were finally guided; and I am surethat, before closing the present course, I shall be able so far tocomplete that evidence, as to prove to you that the commonly receivednotions of classic art are, not only unfounded, but even, in manyrespects, directly contrary to the truth. You are constantly told thatGreece idealized whatever she contemplated. She did the exact contrary:she realized and verified it. You are constantly told she sought onlythe beautiful. She sought, indeed, with all her heart; but she found, because she never doubted that the search was to be consistent withpropriety and common sense. And the first thing you will always discernin Greek work is the first which you _ought_ to discern in all work;namely, that the object of it has been rational, and has been obtainedby simple and unostentatious means. 

144. "That the object of the work has been rational"! Consider how muchthat implies. That it should be by all means seen to have beendetermined upon, and carried through, with sense and discretion; thesebeing gifts of intellect far more precious than any knowledge ofmathematics, or of the mechanical resources of art. Therefore, also, that it should be a modest and temperate work, a structure fitted to theactual state of men; proportioned to their actual size, as animals, --totheir average strength, --to their true necessities, --and to the degreeof easy command they have over the forces and substances of nature. 

145. You see how much this law excludes! All that is fondly magnificent, insolently ambitious, or vainly difficult. There is, indeed, such athing as Magnanimity in design, but never unless it be joined also withmodesty, and _Equ_animity. Nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, orsingular, can be structurally beautiful. No towers of Babel envious ofthe skies; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth; nostreets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that make pigmiesof the worshipers. 

It is one of the primal merits and decencies of Greek work, that it was, on the whole, singularly small in scale, and wholly within reach ofsight, to its finest details. And, indeed, the best buildings that Iknow are thus modest; and some of the best are minute jewel cases forsweet sculpture. The Parthenon would hardly attract notice, if it wereset by the Charing Cross Railway Station: the Church of the Miracoli, atVenice, the Chapel of the Rose, at Lucca, and the Chapel of the Thorn, at Pisa, would not, I suppose, all three together, fill the tenth part, cube, of a transept of the Crystal Palace. And they are better so. 

146. In the chapter on Power in the 'Seven Lamps of Architecture, ' Ihave stated what seems, at first, the reverse of what I am saying now;namely, that it is better to have one grand building than any number ofmean ones. And that is true: but you cannot command grandeur by sizetill you can command grace in minuteness; and least of all, remember, will you so command it to-day, when magnitude has become the chiefexponent of folly and misery, coördinate in the fraternal enormities ofthe Factory and Poorhouse, --the Barracks and Hospital. And the final lawin this matter is that, if you require edifices only for the grace andhealth of mankind, and build them without pretense and withoutchicanery, they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely withlittle decoration. 

147. From these principles of simplicity and temperance, two veryseverely fixed laws of construction follow; namely, first, that ourstructure, to be beautiful, must be produced with tools of men; and, secondly, that it must be composed of natural substances. First, I say, produced with tools of men. All fine art requires the application of thewhole strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is notpossible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of astrong man's arm from the shoulder, as well as the delicatest touch ofhis fingers: and it is the evidence that this full and fine strength hasbeen spent on it which makes the art executively noble; so that noinstrument must be used, habitually, which is either too heavy to bedelicately restrained, or too small and weak to transmit a vigorousimpulse; much less any mechanical aid, such as would render thesensibility of the fingers ineffectual. [29]

148. Of course, any kind of work in glass, or in metal, on a largescale, involves some painful endurance of heat; and working in clay, some habitual endurance of cold; but the point beyond which the effortmust not be carried is marked by loss of power of manipulation. As longas the eyes and fingers have complete command of the material, (as aglass-blower has, for instance, in doing fine ornamental work, )--the lawis not violated; but all our great engine and furnace work, ingun-making and the like, is degrading to the intellect; and no nationcan long persist in it without losing many of its human faculties. Nay, even the use of machinery other than the common rope and pulley, for thelifting of weights, is degrading to architecture; the invention ofexpedients for the raising of enormous stones has always been acharacteristic of partly savage or corrupted races. A block of marblenot larger than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and across-beam, with a couple of pulleys, raise, is as large as shouldgenerally be used in any building. The employment of large masses issure to lead to vulgar exhibitions of geometrical arrangement, [30] andto draw away the attention from the sculpture. In general, rocksnaturally break into such pieces as the human beings that have to buildwith them can easily lift; and no larger should be sought for. 

149. In this respect, and in many other subtle ways, the law that thework is to be with tools of men is connected with the farther conditionof its modesty, that it is to be wrought in substance provided byNature, and to have a faithful respect to all the essential qualities ofsuch substance. 

And here I must ask your attention to the idea, and, more thanidea, --the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term, 'Providentia, ' when applied to the Divine power. In its truest sense andscholarly use, it is a human virtue, [Greek: Promêtheia]; the personaltype of it is in Prometheus, and all the first power of [Greek: technê], is from him, as compared to the weakness of days when men withoutforesight "[Greek: ephyron eikê panta]. " But, so far as we use the word'Providence' as an attribute of the Maker and Giver of all things, itdoes not mean that in a shipwreck He takes care of the passengers whoare to be saved, and takes none of those who are to be drowned; but it_does_ mean that every race of creatures is born into the world undercircumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities; and, beyondall others, the ingenious and observant race of man is surrounded withelements naturally good for his food, pleasant to his sight, andsuitable for the subjects of his ingenuity;--the stone, metal, and clayof the earth he walks upon lending themselves at once to his hand, forall manner of workmanship. 

150. Thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire creation isshown by his making the most of what he can get most easily; and thereis no virtue of art, nor application of common sense, more sacredlynecessary than this respect to the beauty of natural substance, and theease of local use; neither are there any other precepts of constructionso vital as these--that you show all the strength of your material, tempt none of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply andpermanently done. 

151. Thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, or burntclay, but with no artificial compound; all good painting with commonoils and pigments on common canvas, paper, plaster, or wood, --admittingsometimes, for precious work, precious things, but all applied in asimple and visible way. The highest imitative art should not, indeed, atfirst sight, call attention to the means of it; but even that, atlength, should do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to takepleasure in seeing how completely the workman is master of theparticular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable asubstance it was, for work of that kind. In oil painting, its unctuousquality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; inporphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. In a flint country, oneshould feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fastentogether into rugged walls. In a marble country, one should be alwaysmore and more astonished at the exquisite color and structure ofmarble; in a slate country, one should feel as if every rock cleftitself only for the sake of being built with conveniently. 

152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials--Clay, andStone; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and brittle as it cools, and metal a clay that gets opaque and tough as it cools. Indeed, thetrue use of gold in this world is only as a very pretty and very ductileclay, which you can spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as youlike, and which will neither crack nor tarnish. 

All the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under the word'Plastic, ' and all of those in stone, under the word 'Glyptic. '

153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast brickwork, pottery, and tile-work[31]--a somewhat important branch of human skill. Next to the potter's work, you have all the arts in porcelain, glass, enamel, and metal, --everything, that is to say, playful and familiar indesign, much of what is most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze orgold, most precious and permanent. 

154. Sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while weaccurately use the general term 'glyptic' for it, may be thought ofwith, perhaps, the most clear force under the English word 'engraving. 'For, from the mere angular incision which the Greek consecrated in thetriglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the artsof bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connectedwith each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, thearts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves. 

155. Over all this vast field of human skill the laws which I haveenunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embracing thegreatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion; strong to repressthe ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, but gentle to approvethe efforts of children, made in accordance with the visible intentionof the Maker of all flesh, and the Giver of all Intelligence. Theselaws, therefore, I now repeat, and beg of you to observe them asirrefragable. 

1. That the work is to be with tools of men. 

2. That it is to be in natural materials. 

3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at noquality inconsistent with them. 

4. That its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony with commonneeds, and in consent to common intelligence. 

We will now observe the bearing of these laws on the elementaryconditions of the art at present under discussion. 

156. There is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts, as it dries, and is very easily frangible. Then you must put no work into itrequiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elaborate that it would be agreat loss if it were broken; but as the clay yields at once to thehand, and the sculptor can do anything with it he likes, it is amaterial for him to sketch with and play with, --to record his fanciesin, before they escape him, --and to express roughly, for people who canenjoy such sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. Theclay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line; being easilyfrangible, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, so that ablunt and massive rendering of graceful gesture will be its naturalfunction: but as it can be pinched, or pulled, or thrust in a momentinto projection which it would take hours of chiseling to get in stone, it will also properly be used for all fantastic and grotesque form, notinvolving sharp edges. Therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal, for painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors; they are all mostprecious materials for true masters, but tempt the false ones into fatallicense; and to judge rightly of terra-cotta work is a far higher reachof skill in sculpture-criticism than to distinguish the merits of afinished statue. 

157. We have, secondly, work in bronze, iron, gold, and other metals;in which the laws of structure are still more definite. 

All kinds of twisted and wreathen work on every scale become delightfulwhen wrought in ductile or tenacious metal; but metal which is to be_hammered_ into form separates itself into two great divisions--solid, and flat. 

A. In solid metal-work, _i. E. _, metal cast thick enough to resistbending, whether it be hollow or not, violent and various projection maybe admitted, which would be offensive in marble; but no sharp edges, because it is difficult to produce them with the hammer. But since thepermanence of the material justifies exquisiteness of workmanship, whatever delicate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces maybe advisedly introduced; and since the color of bronze or any othermetal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh as that of marble, awise sculptor will depend less on flesh contour, and more on picturesqueaccessories, which, though they would be vulgar if attempted in stone, are rightly entertaining in bronze or silver. Verrocchio's statue ofColleone at Venice, Cellini's Perseus at Florence, and Ghiberti's gatesat Florence, are models of bronze treatment. 

B. When metal is beaten thin, it becomes what is technically called'plate, ' (the _flattened_ thing, ) and may be treated advisably in twoways: one, by beating it out into bosses, the other by cutting it intostrips and ramifications. The vast schools of goldsmiths' work and ofiron decoration, founded on these two principles, have had the mostpowerful influences over general taste in all ages and countries. One ofthe simplest and most interesting elementary examples of the treatmentof flat metal by cutting is the common branched iron bar, Fig. 8, usedto close small apertures in countries possessing any good primitivestyle of ironwork, formed by alternate cuts on its sides, and thebending down of the severed portions. The ordinary domestic windowbalcony of Verona is formed by mere ribbons of iron, bent into curves asstudiously refined as those of a Greek vase, and decorated merely bytheir own terminations in spiral volutes. 

All cast work in metal, unfinished by hand, is inadmissible in anyschool of living art, since it cannot possess the perfection of form dueto a permanent substance; and the continual sight of it is destructiveof the faculty of taste: but metal stamped with precision, as in coins, is to sculpture what engraving is to painting. 

158. Thirdly. Stone-sculpture divides itself into three schools: one invery hard material; one in very soft; and one in that of centrallyuseful consistence. 

[Illustration: FIG. 8. ]

A. The virtue of work in hard material is the expression of form inshallow relief, or in broad contours: deep cutting in hard material isinadmissible; and the art, at once pompous and trivial, of gemengraving, has been in the last degree destructive of the honor andservice of sculpture. 

B. The virtue of work in soft material is deep cutting, with studiouslygraceful disposition of the masses of light and shade. The greaternumber of flamboyant churches of France are cut out of an adhesivechalk; and the fantasy of their latest decoration was, in great part, induced by the facility of obtaining contrast of black space, undercut, with white tracery easily left in sweeping and interwoven rods--thelavish use of wood in domestic architecture materially increasing thehabit of delight in branched complexity of line. These points, however, I must reserve for illustration in my Lectures on Architecture. To-day, I shall limit myself to the illustration of elementary sculpturalstructure in the best material, --that is to say, in crystalline marble, neither soft enough to encourage the caprice of the workman, nor hardenough to resist his will. 

159. C. By the true 'Providence' of Nature, the rock which is thussubmissive has been in some places stained with the fairest colors, andin others blanched into the fairest absence of color that can be foundto give harmony to inlaying, or dignity to form. The possession by theGreeks of their [Greek: leukos lithos] was indeed the first circumstanceregulating the development of their art; it enabled them at once toexpress their passion for light by executing the faces, hands, and feetof their dark wooden statues in white marble, so that what we look upononly with pleasure for fineness of texture was to them an imitation ofthe luminous body of the deity shining from behind its dark robes; andivory afterwards is employed in their best statues for its yet more softand flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicatecolor--(therefore to this day the favorite ground of miniaturepainters). In like manner, the existence of quarries of peach-coloredmarble within twelve miles of Verona, and of white marble and greenserpentine between Pisa and Genoa, defined the manner both of sculptureand architecture for all the Gothic buildings of Italy. No subtlety ofeducation could have formed a high school of art without thesematerials. 

160. Next to the color, the fineness of substance which will take aperfectly sharp edge, is essential; and this not merely to admit finedelineation in the sculpture itself, but to secure a delightfulprecision in placing the blocks of which it is composed. For thepossession of too fine marble, as far as regards the work itself, is atemptation instead of an advantage to an inferior sculptor; and theabuse of the facility of undercutting, especially of undercutting so asto leave profiles defined by an edge against shadow, is one of the chiefcauses of decline of style in such incrusted bas-reliefs as those of theCertosa of Pavia and its contemporary monuments. But no undue temptationever exists as to the fineness of block fitting; nothing contributes togive so pure and healthy a tone to sculpture as the attention of thebuilder to the jointing of his stones; and his having both the power tomake them fit so perfectly as not to admit of the slightest portion ofcement showing externally, and the skill to insure, if needful, and tosuggest always, their stability in cementless construction. Plate X. Represents a piece of entirely fine Lombardic building, the centralportion of the arch in the Duomo in Verona, which corresponds to that ofthe porch of San Zenone, represented in Plate I. In both these pieces ofbuilding, the only line that traces the architrave round the arch, isthat of the masonry joint; yet this line is drawn with extremestsubtlety, with intention of delighting the eye by its relation of variedcurvature to the arch itself; and it is just as much considered as thefinest pen-line of a Raphael drawing. Every joint of the stone is used, in like manner, as a thin black line, which the slightest sign of cementwould spoil like a blot. And so proud is the builder of his finejointing, and so fearless of any distortion or strain spoiling theadjustment afterwards, that in one place he runs his joint quitegratuitously through a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only signof preëminence by the minute inlaying of the head of the Lamb into thestone of the course above. 

161. Proceeding from this fine jointing to fine draughtsmanship, youhave, in the very outset and earliest stage of sculpture, your flatstone surface given you as a sheet of white paper, on which you arerequired to produce the utmost effect you can with the simplest means, cutting away as little of the stone as may be, to save both time andtrouble; and above all, leaving the block itself, when shaped, as solidas you can, that its surface may better resist weather, and the carvedparts be as much protected as possible by the masses left around them. 

[Illustration: X. 

MARBLE MASONRY IN THE DUOMO OF VERONA. ]

[Illustration: XI. 

THE FIRST ELEMENTS OF SCULPTURE. 

INCISED OUTLINE AND OPENED SPACE. ]

162. The first thing to be done is clearly to trace the outline ofsubject with an incision approximating in section to that of the furrowof a plow, only more equal-sided. A fine sculptor strikes it, as hischisel leans, freely, on marble; an Egyptian, in hard rock, cuts itsharp, as in cuneiform inscriptions. In any case, you have a resultsomewhat like the upper figure, Plate XI. , in which I show you the mostelementary indication of form possible, by cutting the outline of thetypical archaic Greek head with an incision like that of a Greektriglyph, only not so precise in edge or slope, as it is to be modifiedafterwards. 

163. Now, the simplest thing we can do next is to round off the flatsurface _within_ the incision, and put what form we can get into thefeebler projection of it thus obtained. The Egyptians do this, oftenwith exquisite skill, and then, as I showed you in a former Lecture, color the whole--using the incision as an outline. Such a method oftreatment is capable of good service in representing, at little cost ofpains, subjects in distant effect; and common, or merely picturesque, subjects even near. To show you what it is capable of, and what coloredsculpture would be in its rudest type, I have prepared the coloredrelief of the John Dory[32] as a natural history drawing for distanteffect. You know, also, that I meant him to be ugly--as ugly as anycreature can well be. In time, I hope to show you prettierthings--peacocks and kingfishers, butterflies and flowers, --on groundsof gold, and the like, as they were in Byzantine work. I shall expectyou, in right use of your æsthetic faculties, to like those better thanwhat I show you to-day. But it is now a question of method only; and ifyou will look, after the Lecture, first at the mere white relief, andthen see how much may be gained by a few dashes of color, such as apracticed workman could lay in a quarter of an hour, --the wholeforming, if well done, almost a deceptive image, --you will, at least, have the range of power in Egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you. 

164. But for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other methods. If wecarve the subject with real delicacy, the cast shadow of the incisionwill interfere with its outline, so that, for representation ofbeautiful things you must clear away the ground about it, at all eventsfor a little distance. As the law of work is to use the least painspossible, you clear it only just as far back as you need, and then, forthe sake of order and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline. By taking, in this case, the simplest I can, --a circle, --I can clear thehead with little labor in the removal of surface round it; (see thelower figure in Plate XI. )

165. Now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed bas-relief. The mass you have to treat consists of a piece of stone which, howeveryou afterwards carve it, can but, at its most projecting point, reachthe level of the external plane surface out of which it was mapped, anddefined by a depression round it; that depression being at first a meretrench, then a moat of a certain width, of which the outer sloping bankis in contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterallysalient portions of sculpture. This, I repeat, is the primalconstruction of good bas-relief, implying, first, perfect protection toits surface from any transverse blow, and a geometrically limited spaceto be occupied by the design, into which it shall pleasantly (and as youshall ultimately see, ingeniously, ) contract itself: implying, secondly, a determined depth of projection, which it shall rarely reach, and neverexceed: and implying, finally, the production of the whole piece withthe least possible labor of chisel and loss of stone. 

166. And these, which are the first, are very nearly the lastconstructive laws of sculpture. You will be surprised to find how muchthey include, and how much of minor propriety in treatment theirobservance involves. 

In a very interesting essay on the architecture of the Parthenon, bythe Professor of Architecture of the École Polytechnique, M. ÉmileBoutmy, you will find it noticed that the Greeks do not usually weaken, by carving, the constructive masses of their building; but put theirchief sculpture in the empty spaces between the triglyphs, or beneaththe roof. This is true; but in so doing, they merely build their panelinstead of carving it; they accept, no less than the Goths, the laws ofrecess and limitation, as being vital to the safety and dignity of theirdesign; and their noblest recumbent statues are, constructively, thefillings of the acute extremity of a panel in the form of an obtuselysummited triangle. 

167. In gradual descent from that severest type, you will find that animmense quantity of sculpture of all times and styles may be generallyembraced under the notion of a mass hewn out of, or, at least, placedin, a panel or recess, deepening, it may be, into a niche; the sculpturebeing always designed with reference to its position in such recess:and, therefore, to the effect of the building out of which the recess ishewn. 

But, for the sake of simplifying our inquiry, I will at first suppose nosurrounding protective ledge to exist, and that the area of stone wehave to deal with is simply a flat slab, extant from a flat surfacedepressed all round it. 

168. A _flat_ slab, observe. The flatness of surface is essential to theproblem of bas-relief. The lateral limit of the panel may, or may not, be required; but the vertical limit of surface _must_ be expressed; andthe art of bas-relief is to give the effect of true form on thatcondition. For observe, if nothing more were needed than to make first acast of a solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it tothe flat surface;--if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an apple, all I had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole apple in half, andpin it to the wall, any ordinarily trained sculptor, or even amechanical workman, could produce bas-relief; but the business is tocarve a _round_ thing out of a _flat_ thing; to carve an apple out of abiscuit!--to conquer, as a subtle Florentine has here conquered, [33]his marble, so as not only to get motion into what is most rigidlyfixed, but to get boundlessness into what is most narrowly bounded; andcarve Madonna and Child, rolling clouds, flying angels, and space ofheavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of an inchthick where it is thickest. 

169. Carried, however, to such a degree of subtlety as this, and with soambitious and extravagant aim, bas-relief becomes a tour-de-force; and, you know, I have just told you all tours-de-force are wrong. The truelaw of bas-relief is to begin with a depth of incision proportionedjustly to the distance of the observer and the character of the subject, and out of that rationally determined depth, neither increased forostentation of effect, nor diminished for ostentation of skill, to dothe utmost that will be easily visible to an observer, supposing him togive an average human amount of attention, but not to peer into, orcritically scrutinize, the work. 

170. I cannot arrest you to-day by the statement of any of the laws ofsight and distance which determine the proper depth of bas-relief. Suppose that depth fixed; then observe what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying cluster of problems, will be offered to us. You might, at first, imagine that, given what we may call our scale ofsolidity, or scale of depth, the diminution from nature would be inregular proportion, as, for instance, if the real depth of your subjectbe, suppose, a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, then theparts of the real subject which were six inches round the side of itwould be carved, you might imagine, at the depth of half an inch, and sothe whole thing mechanically reduced to scale. But not a bit of it. Hereis a Greek bas-relief of a chariot with two horses (upper figure, PlateXXI. ) Your whole subject has therefore the depth of two horses side byside, say six or eight feet. Your bas-relief has, on this scale, [34] saythe depth of a third of an inch. Now, if you gave only the sixth of aninch for the depth of the off horse, and, dividing him again, only thetwelfth of an inch for that of each foreleg, you would make him look amile away from the other, and his own forelegs a mile apart. Actually, the Greek has made the _near leg of the off horse project much beyondthe off leg of the near horse_; and has put nearly the whole depth andpower of his relief into the breast of the off horse, while for thewhole distance from the head of the nearest to the neck of the other, hehas allowed himself only a shallow line; knowing that, if he deepenedthat, he would give the nearest horse the look of having a thick nose;whereas, by keeping that line down, he has not only made the head itselfmore delicate, but detached it from the other by giving no cast shadow, and left the shadow below to serve for thickness of breast, cutting itas sharp down as he possibly can, to make it bolder. 

171. Here is a fine piece of business we have got into!--even supposingthat all this selection and adaptation were to be contrived underconstant laws, and related only to the expression of given forms. Butthe Greek sculptor, all this while, is not only debating and decidinghow to show what he wants, but, much more, debating and deciding what, as he can't show everything, he will choose to show at all. Thus, beinghimself interested, and supposing that you will be, in the manner of thedriving, he takes great pains to carve the reins, to show you where theyare knotted, and how they are fastened round the driver's waist, (yourecollect how Hippolytus was lost by doing that); but he does not carethe least bit about the chariot, and having rather more geometry than helikes in the cross and circle of one wheel of it, entirely omits theother!

172. I think you must see by this time that the sculptor's is not quitea trade which you can teach like brickmaking; nor its produce an articleof which you can supply any quantity 'demanded' for the next railroadwaiting-room. It may perhaps, indeed, seem to you that, in thedifficulties thus presented by it, bas-relief involves more directexertion of intellect than finished solid sculpture. It is not so, however. The questions involved by bas-relief are of a more curious andamusing kind, requiring great variety of expedients; though none exceptsuch as a true workmanly instinct delights in inventing, and inventseasily; but design in solid sculpture involves considerations of weightin mass, of balance, of perspective and opposition, in projecting forms, and of restraint for those which must not project, such as none but thegreatest masters have ever completely solved; and they, not always; thedifficulty of arranging the composition so as to be agreeable frompoints of view on all sides of it, being, itself, arduous enough. 

173. Thus far, I have been speaking only of the laws of structurerelating to the projection of the mass which becomes itself thesculpture. Another most interesting group of constructive laws governsits relation to the line that contains or defines it. 

In your Standard Series I have placed a photograph of the south transeptof Rouen Cathedral. Strictly speaking, all standards of Gothic are ofthe thirteenth century; but, in the fourteenth, certain qualities ofrichness are obtained by the diminution of restraint; out of which wemust choose what is best in their kinds. The pedestals of the statueswhich once occupied the lateral recesses are, as you see, covered withgroups of figures, inclosed each in a quatrefoil panel; the spacesbetween this panel and the inclosing square being filled with sculpturesof animals. 

You cannot anywhere find a more lovely piece of fancy, or moreillustrative of the quantity of result, than may be obtained with lowand simple chiseling. The figures are all perfectly simple in drapery, the story told by lines of action only in the main group, no accessoriesbeing admitted. There is no undercutting anywhere, nor exhibition oftechnical skill, but the fondest and tenderest appliance of it; and oneof the principal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subjectto its quaint limit. The tale must be told within the four petals of thequatrefoil, and the wildest and playfulest beasts must never come out oftheir narrow corners. The attention with which spaces of this kind arefilled by the Gothic designers is not merely a beautiful compliance witharchitectural requirements, but a definite assertion of their delight inthe restraint of law; for, in illuminating books, although, if theychose it, they might have designed floral ornaments, as we now usuallydo, rambling loosely over the leaves, and although, in later works, suchlicense is often taken by them, in all books of the fine time thewandering tendrils are inclosed by limits approximately rectilinear, andin gracefulest branching often detach themselves from the right lineonly by curvature of extreme severity. 

174. Since the darkness and extent of shadow by which the sculpture isrelieved necessarily vary with the depth of the recess, there arise aseries of problems, in deciding which the wholesome desire for emphasisby means of shadow is too often exaggerated by the ambition of thesculptor to show his skill in undercutting. The extreme of vulgarity isusually reached when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, asin much Indian and Chinese work, so as to relieve its forms against anabsolute darkness; but no formal law can ever be given; for exactly thesame thing may be beautifully done for a wise purpose, by one person, which is basely done, and to no purpose, or to a bad one, by another. Thus, the desire for emphasis itself may be the craving of a deadenedimagination, or the passion of a vigorous one; and relief against shadowmay be sought by one man only for sensation, and by another forintelligibility. John of Pisa undercuts fiercely, in order to bring outthe vigor of life which no level contour could render; the Lombardi ofVenice undercut delicately, in order to obtain beautiful lines and edgesof faultless precision; but the base Indian craftsmen undercut only thatpeople may wonder how the chiseling was done through the holes, or thatthey may see every monster white against black. 

175. Yet, here again we are met by another necessity for discrimination. There may be a true delight in the inlaying of white on dark, as thereis a true delight in vigorous rounding. Nevertheless, the general law isalways, that, the lighter the incisions, and the broader the surface, the grander, cæteris paribus, will be the work. Of the structural termsof that work you now know enough to understand that the schools of goodsculpture, considered in relation to projection, divide themselves intofour entirely distinct groups:--

 1st. Flat Relief, in which the surface is, in many places, absolutely flat; and the expression depends greatly on the lines of its outer contour, and on fine incisions within them. 

 2d. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the sculptured mass projects so as to be capable of complete modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. The formation of a coin by the blow of a die necessitates, of course, the severest obedience to this law. 

 3d. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted, so as to throw out the forms against a background of shadow. 

 4th. Full Relief. The statue completely solid in form, and unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected locally with some definite part of the building, so as to be still dependent on the shadow of its background and direction of protective line. 

176. Let me recommend you at once to take what pains may be needful toenable you to distinguish these four kinds of sculpture, for thedistinctions between them are not founded on mere differences ingradation of depth. They are truly four species, or orders, ofsculpture, separated from each other by determined characters. I haveused, you may have noted, hitherto in my Lectures, the word 'bas-relief'almost indiscriminately for all, because the degree of lowness orhighness of relief is not the question, but the _method_ of relief. Observe again, therefore--

[Illustration: XII. 

BRANCH OF PHILLYREA. ]

A. If a portion of the surface is absolutely flat, you have the firstorder--Flat Relief. 

B. If every portion of the surface is rounded, but none undercut, youhave Round Relief--essentially that of seals and coins. 

C. If any part of the edges be undercut, but the general protection ofsolid form reduced, you have what I think you may conveniently callFoliate Relief, --the parts of the design overlapping each other, inplaces, like edges of leaves. 

D. If the undercutting is bold and deep, and the projection of solidform unreduced, you have Full Relief. 

Learn these four names at once by heart:--

 Flat Relief. Round Relief. Foliate Relief. Full Relief. 

And whenever you look at any piece of sculpture, determine first towhich of these classes it belongs; and then consider how the sculptorhas treated it with reference to the necessary structure--thatreference, remember, being partly to the mechanical conditions of thematerial, partly to the means of light and shade at his command. 

[Illustration: FIG. 9. ]

177. To take a single instance. You know, for these many years, I havebeen telling our architects, with all the force of voice I had in me, that they could design nothing until they could carve natural formsrightly. Many imagined that work was easy; but judge for yourselveswhether it be or not. In Plate XII. , I have drawn, with approximateaccuracy, a cluster of Phillyrea leaves as they grow, Now, if we wantedto cut them in bas-relief, the first thing we should have to considerwould be the position of their outline on the marble;--here it is, asfar down as the spring of the leaves. But do you suppose that is what anordinary sculptor could either lay for his first sketch, or contemplateas a limit to be worked down to? Then consider how the interlacing andspringing of the leaves can be expressed within this outline. It must bedone by leaving such projection in the marble as will take the light inthe same proportion as the drawing does;--and a Florentine workman coulddo it, for close sight, without driving one incision deeper, or raisinga single surface higher, than the eighth of an inch. Indeed, no sculptorof the finest time would design such a complex cluster of leaves asthis, except for bronze or iron work; they would take simpler contoursfor marble; but the laws of treatment would, under these conditions, remain just as strict: and you may, perhaps, believe me now when I tellyou that, in any piece of fine structural sculpture by the greatmasters, there is more subtlety and noble obedience to lovely laws thancould be explained to you if I took twenty lectures to do it in, insteadof one. 

[Illustration: XIII. 

GREEK FLAT RELIEF, AND SCULPTURE BY EDGED INCISION. ]

178. There remains yet a point of mechanical treatment on which I havenot yet touched at all; nor that the least important, --namely, theactual method and style of handling. A great sculptor uses his toolexactly as a painter his pencil, and you may recognize the decision ofhis thought, and glow of his temper, no less in the workmanship than thedesign. The modern system of modeling the work in clay, getting it intoform by machinery, and by the hands of subordinates, and touching it atlast, if indeed the (so-called) sculptor touch it at all, only tocorrect their inefficiencies, renders the production of good work inmarble a physical impossibility. The first result of it is that thesculptor thinks in clay instead of marble, and loses his instinctivesense of the proper treatment of a brittle substance. The second is thatneither he nor the public recognize the touch of the chisel asexpressive of personal feeling of power, and that nothing is looked forexcept mechanical polish. 

179. The perfectly simple piece of Greek relief represented in PlateXIII. , will enable you to understand at once, --examination of theoriginal, at your leisure, will prevent you, I trust, from everforgetting, --what is meant by the virtue of handling in sculpture. 

The projection of the heads of the four horses, one behind the other, iscertainly not more, altogether, than three-quarters of an inch from theflat ground, and the one in front does not in reality project more thanthe one behind it, yet, by mere drawing, [35] you see the sculptor hasgot them to appear to recede in due order, and by the soft rounding ofthe flesh surfaces, and modulation of the veins, he has taken away alllook of flatness from the necks. He has drawn the eyes and nostrils withdark incision, careful as the finest touches of a painter's pencil: andthen, at last, when he comes to the manes, he has let fly hand andchisel with their full force; and where a base workman, (above all, ifhe had modeled the thing in clay first, ) would have lost himself inlaborious imitation of hair, the Greek has struck the tresses out withangular incisions, deep driven, every one in appointed place anddeliberate curve, yet flowing so free under his noble hand that youcannot alter, without harm, the bending of any single ridge, norcontract, nor extend, a point of them. And if you will look back toPlate IX. You will see the difference between this sharp incision, usedto express horse-hair, and the soft incision with intervening roundedridge, used to express the hair of Apollo Chrysocomes; and, beneath, theobliquely ridged incision used to express the plumes of his swan; inboth these cases the handling being much more slow, because theengraving is in metal; but the structural importance of incision, as themeans of effect, never lost sight of. Finally, here are two actualexamples of the work in marble of the two great schools of the world;one, a little Fortune, standing tiptoe on the globe of the Earth, itssurface traced with lines in hexagons; not chaotic under Fortune's feet;Greek, this, and by a trained workman;--dug up in the temple of Neptuneat Corfu;--and here, a Florentine portrait-marble, found in the recentalterations, face downwards, under the pavement of Sta. Maria Novella;both of them first-rate of their kind; and both of them, whileexquisitely finished at the telling points, showing, on all theirunregarded surfaces, the rough furrow of the fast-driven chisel, asdistinctly as the edge of a common paving-stone. 

180. Let me suggest to you, in conclusion, one most interesting point ofmental expression in these necessary aspects of finely executedsculpture. I have already again and again pressed on your attention thebeginning of the arts of men in the make and use of the plowshare. Readmore carefully--you might indeed do well to learn at once by heart, --thetwenty-seven lines of the Fourth Pythian, which describe the plowing ofJason. There is nothing grander extant in human fancy, nor set down inhuman words: but this great mythical expression of the conquest of theearth-clay and brute-force by vital human energy, will become yet moreinteresting to you when you reflect what enchantment has been cut, onwhiter clay, by the tracing of finer furrows;--what the delicate andconsummate arts of man have done by the plowing of marble, and granite, and iron. You will learn daily more and more, as you advance in actualpractice, how the primary manual art of engraving, in the steadiness, clearness, and irrevocableness of it, is the best art-discipline thatcan be given either to mind or hand;[36] you will recognize one law ofright, pronouncing itself in the well-resolved work of every age; youwill see the firmly traced and irrevocable incision determining, notonly the forms, but, in great part, the moral temper, of all vitallyprogressive art; you will trace the same principle and power in thefurrows which the oblique sun shows on the granite of his own Egyptiancity, --in the white scratch of the stylus through the color on a Greekvase--in the first delineation, on the wet wall, of the groups of anItalian fresco; in the unerring and unalterable touch of the greatengraver of Nuremberg, --and in the deep-driven and deep-bitten ravinesof metal by which Turner closed, in embossed limits, the shadows of theLiber Studiorum. 

Learn, therefore, in its full extent, the force of the great Greek word[Greek: charassô];--and give me pardon, if you think pardon needed, thatI ask you also to learn the full meaning of the English word derivedfrom it. Here, at the Ford of the Oxen of Jason, are other furrows to bedriven than these in the marble of Pentelicus. The fruitfulest, or thefatalest, of all plowing is that by the thoughts of your youth, on thewhite field of its Imagination. For by these, either down to thedisturbed spirit, "[Greek: kekoptai kai charassetai pedon];" or aroundthe quiet spirit, and on all the laws of conduct that hold it, as a fairvase its frankincense, are ordained the pure colors, and engraved thejust characters, of Æonian life. 

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Nothing is more wonderful, or more disgraceful, among the forms ofignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of gain, than the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentiallyAthletic. I received a letter from Birmingham, some little time since, inviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, "machinery excelledrude hand-work. " The writer had not the remotest conception that hemight as well have asked me to come and see a mechanical boat-race rowedby automata, and "how much machinery excelled rude arm-work. "

[30] Such as the Sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance, referred to in the Third Lecture, § 84. 

[31] It is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of theAthenian Ceramicus to the French Tile-fields, Tileries, or Tuileries:and how these last may yet become--have already partly become--"thePotter's field, " blood-bought. (_December, 1870. _)

[32] This relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in thelower school in the University galleries. 

[33] The reference is to a cast from a small and low relief ofFlorentine work in the Kensington Museum. 

[34] The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not abovethe twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for thisLecture, so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch formaximum projection. 

[35] This plate has been executed from a drawing by Mr. Burgess, inwhich he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, andpreserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photographwould have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains. 

[36] That it was also, in some cases, the earliest that the Greeks gave, is proved by Lucian's account of his first lesson at his uncle's; the[Greek: enkopeus], literally 'in cutter'--being the first tool put intohis hand, and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy, pressingtoo hard, presently breaks;--gets beaten--goes home crying, and becomes, after his dream above quoted, (§§ 35, 36, ) a philosopher instead of asculptor. 

LECTURE VI. 

THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS. 

_December, 1870. _

181. It can scarcely be needful for me to tell even the younger membersof my present audience, that the conditions necessary for the productionof a perfect school of sculpture have only twice been met in the historyof the world, and then for a short time; nor for short time only, butalso in narrow districts, --namely, in the valleys and islands of IonianGreece, and in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between theApennine crests and the sea. 

All other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens in thefifth century before Christ, and by Florence in the fifteenth of our ownera, are imperfect; and the best of them are derivative: these two areconsummate in themselves, and the origin of what is best in others. 

182. And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools are both ofequal rank, as essentially original and independent. The Florentine, being subsequent to the Greek, borrowed much from it; but it would haveexisted just as strongly--and, perhaps, in some respects more nobly--hadit been the first, instead of the latter of the two. The task set toeach of these mightiest of the nations was, indeed, practically thesame, and as hard to the one as to the other. The Greeks foundPhoenician and Etruscan art monstrous, and had to make them human. TheItalians found Byzantine and Norman art monstrous, and had to make themhuman. The original power in the one case is easily traced; in the otherit has partly to be unmasked, because the change at Florence was, inmany points, suggested and stimulated by the former school. But wemistake in supposing that Athens taught Florence the laws of design; shetaught her, in reality, only the duty of truth. 

183. You remember that I told you the highest art could do no more thanrightly represent the human form. This is the simple test, then, of aperfect school, --that it has represented the human form, so that it isimpossible to conceive of its being better done. And that, I repeat, hasbeen accomplished twice only: once in Athens, once in Florence. And sonarrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, that itcannot be said of either of them that they represented the entire humanform. The Greeks perfectly drew, and perfectly molded, the body andlimbs; but there is, so far as I am aware, no instance of theirrepresenting the face as well as any great Italian. On the other hand, the Italian painted and carved the face insuperably; but I believe thereis no instance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, bycommand of his religion, it became his pride to despise and his safetyto mortify. 

184. The general course of your study here renders it desirable that youshould be accurately acquainted with the leading principles of Greeksculpture; but I cannot lay these before you without giving undueprominence to some of the special merits of that school, unless Ipreviously indicate the relation it holds to the more advanced, thoughless disciplined, excellence of Christian art. 

In this and the last Lecture of the present course, [37] I shallendeavor, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and diagram-likeoutline as may be possible or intelligible, the main characteristics ofthe two schools, completing and correcting the details of comparisonafterwards; and not answering, observe, at present, for anygeneralization I give you, except as a ground for subsequent closer andmore qualified statements. 

And in carrying out this parallel, I shall speak indifferently of worksof sculpture, and of the modes of painting which propose to themselvesthe same objects as sculpture. And this, indeed, Florentine, as opposedto Venetian, painting, and that of Athens in the fifth century, nearlyalways did. 

185. I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the simplestkind--engravings, or, at least, linear drawings both; one on clay, oneon copper, made in the central periods of each style, and representingthe same goddess--Aphrodite. They are now set beside each other in yourRudimentary Series. The first is from a patera lately found at Camirus, authoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his recent catalogue, to thebest period of Greek art. The second is from one of the series ofengravings executed, probably, by Baccio Bandini, in 1485, out of whichI chose your first practical exercise--the Scepter of Apollo. I cannot, however, make the comparison accurate in all respects, for I am obligedto set the restricted type of the Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks besidethe universal Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air, earth, and sea; nevertheless, the restriction in the mind of the Greek, and expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both characteristic. TheGreek Venus Urania is flying in heaven, her power over the waterssymbolized by her being borne by a swan, and her power over the earth bya single flower in her right hand; but the Italian Aphrodite is risingout of the actual sea, and only half risen: her limbs are still in thesea, her merely animal strength filling the waters with their life; buther body to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky;her hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth. 

186. The Venus Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to men, has poweronly over lawful and domestic love; therefore, she is fully dressed, andnot only quite dressed, but most daintily and trimly: her feetdelicately sandaled, her gown spotted with little stars, her hairbrushed exquisitely smooth at the top of her head, trickling in minutewaves down her forehead; and though, because there is such a quantity ofit, she can't possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she hasfastened it in with her broad fillet. Of course she is married, so shemust wear a cap with pretty minute pendent jewels at the border; and avery small necklace, all that her husband can properly afford, justenough to go closely round her neck, and no more. On the contrary, theAphrodite of the Italian, being universal love, is pure-naked; and herlong hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea. 

These primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are only because theartists are thinking of separate powers: they do not necessarily involveany national distinction in feeling. But the differences I have next toindicate are essential, and characterize the two opposed national modesof mind. 

187. First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very pretty person, and the Italian a decidedly plain one. That is because a Greek thoughtno one could possibly love any but pretty people; but an Italian thoughtthat love could give dignity to the meanest form that it inhabited, andlight to the poorest that it looked upon. So his Aphrodite will notcondescend to be pretty. 

188. Secondly. In the Greek Venus the breasts are broad and full, thoughperfectly severe in their almost conical profile;--(you are allowed onpurpose to see the outline of the right breast, under the chiton;)--alsothe right arm is left bare, and you can just see the contour of thefront of the right limb and knee; both arm and limb pure and firm, butlovely. The plant she holds in her hand is a branching and floweringone, the seed-vessel prominent. These signs all mean that her essentialfunction is child-bearing. 

On the contrary, in the Italian Venus the breasts are so small as to bescarcely traceable; the body strong, and almost masculine in its angles;the arms meager and unattractive, and she lays a decorative garland offlowers on the earth. These signs mean that the Italian thought of loveas the strength of an eternal spirit, forever helpful; and forevercrowned with flowers, that neither know seedtime nor harvest; and bloomwhere there is neither death nor birth. 

189. Thirdly. The Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and looks straightforward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to havebeen subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face allquivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek one isquiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied: the Italian incapable ofrest; she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has beenbound by a fillet like the Greek's; but it is now all fallen loose, andclotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress ofit is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, and lifted, in theplace where the tongues of fire rest on the brows, in the earlyChristian pictures of Pentecost, and the waving fires abide upon theheads of Angelico's seraphim. 

190. There are almost endless points of interest, great and small, to benoted in these differences of treatment. This binding of the hair by thesingle fillet marks the straight course of one great system of artmethod, from that Greek head which I showed you on the archaic coin ofthe seventh century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth of our ownera;--nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of thehead depends on one lock of hair falling back from the ear, which itdoes in compliance with the old Greek observance of its being bent thereby the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her shoulderscomes from the Athena of Corinth; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of theangels. But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, andtheir anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the characteristicdifference in every conception of the schools, the Greek neverrepresenting expression, the Italian primarily seeking it; but far more, mark for us here the utter change in the conception of love; from thetranquil guide and queen of a happy terrestrial domestic life, acceptingits immediate pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of aninfinite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love divine injealousy, crying, "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal uponthine arm; for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as thegrave. "

[Illustration: XIV. 

APOLLO AND THE PYTHON. 

HERACLES AND THE NEMEAN LION. ]

The vast issues dependent on this change in the conception of the rulingpassion of the human soul, I will endeavor to show you on a futureoccasion: in my present Lecture, I shall limit myself to the definitionof the temper of Greek sculpture, and of its distinctions fromFlorentine in the treatment of any subject whatever, be it love orhatred, hope or despair. 

These great differences are mainly the following. 

191. First. A Greek never expresses momentary passion; a Florentinelooks to momentary passion as the ultimate object of his skill. 

When you are next in London, look carefully in the British Museum at thecasts from the statues in the pediment of the Temple of Minerva atÆgina. You have there Greek work of definite date--about 600 B. C. , certainly before 580--of the purest kind; and you have therepresentation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of the Æacidæ atTroy, with Athena herself looking on. But there is no attempt whateverto represent expression in the features, none to give complexity ofaction or gesture; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visibletemporary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, one pulling alance out of his wound, and others in attitudes of attack and defense;several kneeling to draw their bows. But all inflict and suffer, conqueror expire, with the same smile. 

192. Plate XIV. Gives you examples, from more advanced art, of trueGreek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leadingimport to the Greek heart--that of Apollo with the Python, and ofHercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there theslightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa], or agony of contest. No good Greek artist would have you behold the suffering either ofgods, heroes, or men; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue oftheir contest with evil beasts, or evil spirits. All such lower sourcesof excitement are to be closed to you; your interest is to be in thethoughts involved by the fact of the war; and in the beauty or rightnessof form, whether active or inactive. I have to work out this subjectwith you afterwards, and to compare with the pure Greek method ofthought that of modern dramatic passion, ingrafted on it, as typicallyin Turner's contest of Apollo and the Python: in the meantime, becontent with the statement of this first great principle--that a Greek, as such, never expresses momentary passion. 

[Illustration: XV. 

HERA OF ARGOS. 

ZEUS OF SYRACUSE. ]

[Illustration: XVI. 

DEMETER OF MESSENE. 

HERA OF CNOSSUS. ]

[Illustration: XVII. 

ATHENA OF THURIUM. 

SIREN LIGEIA OF TERINA. ]

193. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses personal character, while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate condition of beauty. Youare startled, I suppose, at my saying this, having had it often pointedout to you, as a transcendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that youcould distinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Dianafrom Juno by her being slender. That is very true; but those are generaldistinctions of class, not special distinctions of personal character. Even as general, they are bodily, not mental. They are the distinctions, in fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician, --between a matronand a huntress; but in nowise distinguish the simple-hearted hero fromthe subtle Master of the Muses, nor the willful and fitful girl-goddessfrom the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But judge for yourselves. Inthe successive plates, XV. -XVIII. , I show you, [38] typically representedas the protectresses of nations, the Argive, Cretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, the Athena of Corinth, the Artemis of Syracuse;the fountain Arethusa of Syracuse, and the Siren Ligeia of Terina. Now, of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature thanthe rest, and some softer in expression: in other respects, can youtrace any distinction between the Goddesses of Earth and Heaven, orbetween the Goddess of Wisdom and the Water Nymph of Syracuse? So littlecan you do so, that it would have remained a disputed question--had notthe name luckily been inscribed on some Syracusan coins--whether thehead upon them was meant for Arethusa at all; and, continually, itbecomes a question respecting finished statues, if without attributes, "Is this Bacchus or Apollo--Zeus or Poseidon?" There is a fact for you;noteworthy, I think! There is no personal character in true Greekart:--abstract ideas of youth and age, strength and swiftness, virtueand vice, --yes: but there is no individuality; and the negative holdsdown to the revived conventionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you how you are to paint young women, and how old ones;though a Greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age as theItalian is in his canon of it, --"old women should be represented aspassionate and hasty, after the manner of Infernal Furies. "

194. "But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they give idealbeauty?" So it is said, without contradiction. But will you look againat the series of coins of the best time of Greek art, which I have justset before you? Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful?Certainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren, and Arethusa, have well-formed and regular features; but I am quite surethat if you look at them without prejudice, you will think neitherreaches even the average standard of pretty English girls. The VenusUrania suggests at first the idea of a very charming person, but youwill find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, lookedat closely. And remember, these are chosen examples, --the best I canfind of art current in Greece at the great time; and if even I were totake the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant, notone of them excels the Venus of Melos; and she, as I have alreadyasserted, in the 'Queen of the Air, ' has nothing notable in featureexcept dignity and simplicity. Of Athena I do not know one authentictype of great beauty; but the intense ugliness which the Greeks couldtolerate in their symbolism of her will be convincingly proved to you bythe coin represented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or threevases of the best time to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular art, not only unattained, but unattempted; and, finally, --andthis you may accept as a conclusive proof of the Greek insensitivenessto the most subtle beauty, --there is little evidence even in theirliterature, and none in their art, of their having ever perceived anybeauty in infancy, or early childhood. 

195. The Greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give character, donot give refined or naïve beauty. But you may think that the absence ofthese is intended to give dignity to the gods and nymphs; and that theircalm faces would be found, if you long observed them, instinct with someexpression of divine mystery or power. 

I will convince you of the narrow range of Greek thought in theserespects, by showing you, from the two sides of one and the same coin, images of the most mysterious of their deities, and the mostpowerful, --Demeter, and Zeus. 

Remember that just as the west coasts of Ireland and England catch firston their hills the rain of the Atlantic, so the Western Peloponnesearrests, in the clouds of the first mountain ranges of Arcadia, themoisture of the Mediterranean; and over all the plains of Elis, Pylos, and Messene, the strength and sustenance of men was naturally felt to begranted by Zeus; as, on the east coast of Greece, the greater clearnessof the air by the power of Athena. If you will recollect the prayer ofRhea, in the single line of Callimachus--[Greek: "Taia philê, teke kaisu; teai d' ôdines elaphrai], " (compare Pausanias, iv. 33, at thebeginning, )--it will mark for you the connection, in the Greek mind, ofthe birth of the mountain springs of Arcadia with the birth of Zeus. Andthe centers of Greek thought on this western coast are necessarily Elis, and, (after the time of Epaminondas, ) Messene. 

[Illustration: XVIII. 

ARTEMIS OF SYRACUSE. 

HERA OF LACINIAN CAPE. ]

196. I show you the coin of Messene, because the splendid height andform of Mount Ithome were more expressive of the physical power of Zeusthan the lower hills of Olympia; and also because it was struck just atthe time of the most finished and delicate Greek art--a little after themain strength of Phidias, but before decadence had generally pronounceditself. The coin is a silver didrachm, bearing on one side a head ofDemeter, (Plate XVI. , at the top); on the other a full figure of ZeusAietophoros, (Plate XIX. , at the top); the two together signifying thesustaining strength of the earth and heaven. Look first at the head ofDemeter. It is merely meant to personify fullness of harvest; there isno mystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which weshould have looked for in any effort to realize the Greek thoughts ofthe Earth Mother, as we find them spoken by the poets. But take itmerely as personified Abundance, --the goddess of black furrow and tawnygrass, --how commonplace it is, and how poor! The hair is grand, andthere is one stalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate thegoddess who is meant; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it showsthat the artist could only inform you that this was Demeter by such asymbol. How easy it would have been for a great designer to have madethe hair lovely with fruitful flowers, and the features noble in mysteryof gloom, or of tenderness. But here you have nothing to interest you, except the common Greek perfections of a straight nose and a full chin. 

197. We pass, on the reverse of the die, to the figure of ZeusAietophoros. Think of the invocation to Zeus in the Suppliants, (525, )"King of Kings, and Happiest of the Happy, Perfectest of the Perfect instrength, abounding in all things, Jove--hear us, and be with us;" andthen, consider what strange phase of mind it was, which, under the verymountain-home of the god, was content with this symbol of him as awell-fed athlete, holding a diminutive and crouching eagle on his fist. The features and the right hand have been injured in this coin, but theaction of the arm shows that it held a thunderbolt, of which, I believe, the twisted rays were triple. In the presumably earlier coin engraved byMillingen, however, [39] it is singly pointed only; and the addedinscription "[Greek: ITHÔM], " in the field, renders the conjecture ofMillingen probable, that this is a rude representation of the statue ofZeus Ithomates, made by Ageladas, the master of Phidias; and I think ithas, indeed, the aspect of the endeavor, by a workman of more advancedknowledge, and more vulgar temper, to put the softer anatomy of laterschools into the simple action of an archaic figure. Be that as it may, here is one of the most refined cities of Greece content with the figureof an athlete as the representative of their own mountain god; marked asa divine power merely by the attributes of the eagle and thunderbolt. 

198. Lastly. The Greeks have not, it appears, in any supreme way, givento their statues character, beauty, or divine strength. Can they givedivine sadness? Shall we find in their art-work any of that pensivenessand yearning for the dead which fills the chants of their tragedy? Isuppose, if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in after-life isto be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in the stories aboutthe Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the Danube, inhabited by the ghostsof Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax the son of Oïleus, and Helen; and in whichthe pavement of the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birdswith their wings, dipping them in the sea. 

Now it happens that we have actually on a coin of the Locrians therepresentation of the ghost of the Lesser Ajax. There is nothing in thehistory of human imagination more lovely than their leaving always aplace for his spirit, vacant in their ranks of battle. But here is theirsculptural representation of the phantom, (lower figure, Plate XIX. );and I think you will at once agree with me in feeling that it would beimpossible to conceive anything more completely unspiritual. You mightmore than doubt that it could have been meant for the departed soul, unless you were aware of the meaning of this little circlet between thefeet. On other coins you find his name inscribed there, but in this youhave his habitation, the haunted Island of Leuce itself, with the wavesflowing round it. 

[Illustration: XIX. 

ZEUS OF MESSENE. 

AJAX OF OPUS. ]

199. Again and again, however, I have to remind you, with respect tothese apparently frank and simple failures, that the Greek alwaysintends you to think for yourself, and understand, more than he canspeak. Take this instance at our hands, the trim little circlet for theIsland of Leuce. The workman knows very well it is not like the island, and that he could not make it so; that, at its best, his sculpture canbe little more than a letter; and yet, in putting this circlet, and itsencompassing fretwork of minute waves, he does more than if he hadmerely given you a letter L, or written 'Leuce. ' If you know anything ofbeaches and sea, this symbol will set your imagination at work inrecalling them; then you will think of the temple service of thenovitiate sea-birds, and of the ghosts of Achilles and Patroclusappearing, like the Dioscuri, above the storm-clouds of the Euxine. Andthe artist, throughout his work, never for an instant loses faith inyour sympathy and passion being ready to answer his;--if you have noneto give, he does not care to take you into his counsel; on the whole, would rather that you should not look at his work. 

200. But if you have this sympathy to give, you may be sure thatwhatever he does for you will be right, as far as he can render it so. It may not be sublime, nor beautiful, nor amusing; but it will be fullof meaning, and faithful in guidance. He will give you clue to myriadsof things that he cannot literally teach; and, so far as he does teach, you may trust him. Is not this saying much?

And as he strove only to teach what was true, so, in his sculpturedsymbol, he strove only to carve what was--Right. He rules over the artsto this day, and will forever, because he sought not first for beauty, not first for passion, or for invention, but for Rightness; striving todisplay, neither himself nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with, in its simplicity. That is his specific character as a Greek. Of courseevery nation's character is connected with that of others surrounding orpreceding it; and in the best Greek work you will find some things thatare still false, or fanciful; but whatever in it is false, or fanciful, is not the Greek part of it--it is the Phoenician, or Egyptian, orPelasgian part. The essential Hellenic stamp is veracity:--Easternnations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them withtwo;--Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the Greeks drewthem with men's; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, andindefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing andexalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable truth. 

201. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which incumbered ourthoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek school into some clearness ofits position for you, with respect to the art of the world. Thatrelation is strangely duplicate; for, on one side, Greek art is the rootof all simplicity; and, on the other, of all complexity. 

On one side, I say, it is the root of all simplicity. If you were forsome prolonged period to study Greek sculpture exclusively in the Elginroom of the British Museum, and were then suddenly transported to theHôtel de Cluny, or any other museum of Gothic and barbarian workmanship, you would imagine the Greeks were the masters of all that was grand, simple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pettiness of the toysof the rest of mankind. 

[Illustration: XX. 

GREEK AND BARBARIAN SCULPTURE. ]

202. On one side of their work they are so. From all vain and meandecoration--all wreak and monstrous error, the Greeks rescue the formsof man and beast, and sculpture them in the nakedness of their trueflesh, and with the fire of their living soul. Distinctively from otherraces, as I have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is thework of the Greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastisementto what was untrue. So far as this is found in any other school, hereafter, it belongs to them by inheritance from the Greeks, or investsthem with the brotherhood of the Greek. And this is the deep meaning ofthe myth of Dædalus as the giver of motion to statues. The literalchange from the binding together of the feet to their separation, andthe other modifications of action which took place, either inprogressive skill, or often, as the mere consequence of the transitionfrom wood to stone, (a figure carved out of one wooden log must havenecessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its sides, ) theseliteral changes are as nothing, in the Greek fable, compared to thebestowing of apparent life. The figures of monstrous gods on Indiantemples have their legs separate enough; but they are infinitely moredead than the rude figures at Branchidæ sitting with their hands ontheir knees. And, briefly, the work of Dædalus is the giving ofdeceptive life, as that of Prometheus the giving of real life; and I canput the relation of Greek to all other art, in this function, beforeyou, in easily compared and remembered examples. 

203. Here, on the right, in Plate XX. , is an Indian bull, colossal, andelaborately carved, which you may take as a sufficient type of the badart of all the earth. False in form, dead in heart, and loaded withwealth, externally. We will not ask the date of this; it may rest in theeternal obscurity of evil art, everywhere, and forever. Now, beside thiscolossal bull, here is a bit of Dædalus-work, enlarged from a coin notbigger than a shilling: look at the two together, and you ought to know, henceforward, what Greek art means, to the end of your days. 

204. In this aspect of it, then, I say it is the simplest and nakedestof lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or rather another pole, for the opposition is diametric. As the simplest, so also it is the mostcomplex of human art. I told you in my Fifth Lecture, showing you thespotty picture of Velasquez, that an essential Greek character is aliking for things that are dappled. And you cannot but have noticed howoften and how prevalently the idea which gave its name to the Porch ofPolygnotus, "[Greek: stoa poikilê], " occurs to the Greeks as connectedwith the finest art. Thus, when the luxurious city is opposed to thesimple and healthful one, in the second book of Plato's Polity, you findthat, next to perfumes, pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it"[Greek: poikilia], " which observe, both in that place and again in thethird book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but theidea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight andsound--the "ravishing division to the lute, " as in Pindar's "[Greek:poikiloi hymnoi]"--runs through the compass of all Greekart-description; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles, youwere to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, forinstance, to Plate IV. Here, ) your impression of it would be, instead ofbreadth and simplicity, one of universal spottiness and checkeredness, "[Greek: en angeôu Herkesin pampoikilois];" and of the artist'sdelighting in nothing so much as in crossed or starred or spottedthings; which, in right places, he and his public both do unlimitedly. Indeed they hold it complimentary even to a trout, to call him a'spotty. ' Do you recollect the trout in the tributaries of the Ladon, which Pausanias says were spotted, so that they were like thrushes, andwhich, the Arcadians told him, could speak? In this last [Greek:poikilia], however, they disappointed him. "I, indeed, saw some of themcaught, " he says, "but I did not hear any of them speak, though I waitedbeside the river till sunset. "

205. I must sum roughly now, for I have detained you too long. 

The Greeks have been thus the origin, not only of all broad, mighty, andcalm conception, but of all that is divided, delicate, and tremulous;"variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made. " To them, asfirst leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise ofglistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabianroof, --quartering of the Christian shield, --rubric and arabesque ofChristian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution ofadorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainouspillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the PisanChapel of the Thorn. 

[Illustration: XXI. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF CHIVALRY. ]

And in their doing all this, they stand as masters of human order andjustice, subduing the animal nature, guided by the spiritual one, as yousee the Sicilian Charioteer stands, holding his horse-reins, with thewild lion racing beneath him, and the flying angel above, on thebeautiful coin of early Syracuse; (lowest in Plate XXI. )

And the beginnings of Christian chivalry were in that Greek bridling ofthe dark and the white horses. 

206. Not that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as many as we doourselves, nearly;--he died of his mistakes at last--as we shall die ofthem; but so far as he was separated from the herd of more mistaken andmore wretched nations--so far as he was Greek--it was by his rightness. He lived, and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land, and the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. Hebecame Græculus esuriens, little, and hungry, and every man'serrand-boy, by his iniquity, and his competition, and his love of talk. But his Græcism was in having done, at least at one period of hisdominion, more than anybody else, what was modest, useful, and eternallytrue; and as a workman, he verily did, or first suggested the doing of, everything possible to man. 

Take Dædalus, his great type of the practically executive craftsman, andthe inventor of expedients in craftsmanship, (as distinguished fromPrometheus, the institutor of moral order in art). Dædalus invents, --he, or his nephew, The potter's wheel, and all work in clay; The saw, and all work in wood; The masts and sails of ships, and all modes of motion; (wings only proving too dangerous!) The entire art of minute ornament; And the deceptive life of statues. 

By his personal toil, he involves the fatal labyrinth for Minos; buildsan impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines; adorns healing baths amongthe wild parsley-fields of Selinus; buttresses the precipices of Eryx, under the temple of Aphrodite; and for her temple itself--finishes inexquisiteness the golden honeycomb. 

207. Take note of that last piece of his art: it is connected with manythings which I must bring before you when we enter on the study ofarchitecture. That study we shall begin at the foot of the Baptistery ofFlorence, which, of all buildings known to me, unites the most perfectsymmetry with the quaintest [Greek: poikilia]. Then, from the tomb ofyour own Edward the Confessor, to the farthest shrine of the oppositeArabian and Indian world, I must show you how the glittering andiridescent dominion of Dædalus prevails; and his ingenuity in division, interposition, and labyrinthine sequence, more widely still. Only thislast summer I found the dark red masses of the rough sandstone ofFurness Abbey had been fitted by him, with no less pleasure than he hadin carving them, into wedged hexagons--reminiscences of the honeycomb ofVenus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the framework of all thenoblest things; and yet the brightness of it has a lurid shadow. Thespot of the fawn, of the bird, and the moth, may be harmless. ButDædalus reigns no less over the spot of the leopard and snake. Thatcruel and venomous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, byhis invention of the saw from the serpent's tooth; and his seekingrefuge, under blood-guiltiness, with Minos, who can judge evil, andmeasure, or remit, the penalty of it, but not reward good; Rhadamanthusonly can measure _that_; but Minos is essentially the recognizer of evildeeds "conoscitor delle peccata, " whom, therefore, you find in Danteunder the form of the [Greek: erpeton]. "Cignesi con la coda tantevolte, quantunque gradi vuol che giu sia messa. "

And this peril of the influence of Dædalus is twofold; first, in leadingus to delight in glitterings and semblances of things, more than intheir form, or truth;--admire the harlequin's jacket more than thehero's strength; and love the gilding of the missal more than itswords;--but farther, and worse, the ingenuity of Dædalus may even becomebestial, an instinct for mechanical labor only, strangely involved witha feverish and ghastly cruelty:--(you will find this distinct in theintensely Dædal work of the Japanese); rebellious, finally, against thelaws of nature and honor, and building labyrinths for monsters, --notcombs for bees. 

208. Gentlemen, we of the rough northern race may never, perhaps, beable to learn from the Greek his reverence for beauty; but we may atleast learn his disdain of mechanism:--of all work which he felt to bemonstrous and inhuman in its imprudent dexterities. 

We hold ourselves, we English, to be good workmen. I do not think Ispeak with light reference to recent calamity, (for I myself lost ayoung relation, full of hope and good purpose, in the foundered ship_London_, ) when I say that either an Æginetan or Ionian shipwright builtships that could be fought from, though they were under water; andneither of them would have been proud of having built one that wouldfill and sink helplessly if the sea washed over her deck, or turnupside-down if a squall struck her topsail. 

Believe me, gentlemen, good workmanship consists in continence andcommon sense, more than in frantic expatiation of mechanical ingenuity;and if you would be continent and rational, you had better learn more ofArt than you do now, and less of Engineering. What is taking place atthis very hour, [40] among the streets, once so bright, and avenues, onceso pleasant, of the fairest city in Europe, may surely lead us all tofeel that the skill of Dædalus, set to build impregnable fortresses, isnot so wisely applied as in framing the [Greek: trêton ponon], --thegolden honeycomb. 

FOOTNOTES:

[37] The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine, though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to myclass, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do notchoose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined infuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the SixthLecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of thepublished course on Florentine Sculpture. 

[38] These plates of coins are given for future reference andexamination, not merely for the use made of them in this place. TheLacinian Hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be verynoble; her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape ofstorms, though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes onits altar. (Livy, xxiv. 3. )

[39] 'Ancient Cities and Kings, ' Plate IV. , No. 20. 

[40] The siege of Paris, at the time of the delivery of this Lecture, was in one of its most destructive phases. 

LECTURE VII. 

THE RELATION BETWEEN MICHAEL ANGELO AND TINTORET. [41]

209. In preceding lectures on sculpture I have included references tothe art of painting, so far as it proposes to itself the same object assculpture, (idealization of form); and I have chosen for the subject ofour closing inquiry, the works of the two masters who accomplished orimplied the unity of these arts. Tintoret entirely conceives his figuresas solid statues: sees them in his mind on every side; detaches eachfrom the other by imagined air and light; and foreshortens, interposes, or involves them as if they were pieces of clay in his hand. On thecontrary, Michael Angelo conceives his sculpture partly as if it werepainted; and using (as I told you formerly) his pen like a chisel, usesalso his chisel like a pencil; is sometimes as picturesque as Rembrandt, and sometimes as soft as Correggio. 

It is of him chiefly that I shall speak to-day; both because it is partof my duty to the strangers here present to indicate for them some ofthe points of interest in the drawings forming part of the Universitycollections; but still more, because I must not allow the second year ofmy professorship to close, without some statement of the mode in whichthose collections may be useful or dangerous to my pupils. They seem atpresent little likely to be either; for since I entered on my duties, nostudent has ever asked me a single question respecting these drawings, or, so far as I could see, taken the slightest interest in them. 

210. There are several causes for this which might be obviated--there isone which cannot be. The collection, as exhibited at present, includes anumber of copies which mimic in variously injurious ways the charactersof Michael Angelo's own work; and the series, except as material forreference, can be of no practical service until these are withdrawn, andplaced by themselves. It includes, besides, a number of originaldrawings which are indeed of value to any laborious student of MichaelAngelo's life and temper; but which owe the greater part of thisinterest to their being executed in times of sickness or indolence, whenthe master, however strong, was failing in his purpose, and, howeverdiligent, tired of his work. It will be enough to name, as an example ofthis class, the sheet of studies for the Medici tombs, No. 45, in whichthe lowest figure is, strictly speaking, neither a study nor a workingdrawing, but has either been scrawled in the feverish languor ofexhaustion, which cannot escape its subject of thought; or, at best, inidly experimental addition of part to part, beginning with the head, andfitting muscle after muscle, and bone after bone, to it, thinking oftheir place only, not their proportion, till the head is only aboutone-twentieth part of the height of the body: finally, something betweena face and a mask is blotted in the upper left-hand corner of the paper, indicative, in the weakness and frightfulness of it, simply of mentaldisorder from over-work; and there are several others of this kind, among even the better drawings of the collection, which ought never tobe exhibited to the general public. 

211. It would be easy, however, to separate these, with the acknowledgedcopies, from the rest; and, doing the same with the drawings of Raphael, among which a larger number are of true value, to form a connectedseries of deep interest to artists, in illustration of the incipient andexperimental methods of design practiced by each master. 

I say, to artists. Incipient methods of design are not, and ought not tobe, subjects of earnest inquiry to other people; and although there-arrangement of the drawings would materially increase the chance oftheir gaining due attention, there is a final and fatal reason for thewant of interest in them displayed by the younger students;--namely, that these designs have nothing whatever to do with present life, withits passions, or with its religion. What their historic value is, andrelation to the life of the past, I will endeavor, so far as timeadmits, to explain to-day. 

212. The course of Art divides itself hitherto, among all nations of theworld that have practiced it successfully, into three great periods. 

The first, that in which their conscience is undeveloped, and theircondition of life in many respects savage; but, nevertheless, in harmonywith whatever conscience they possess. The most powerful tribes, in thisstage of their intellect, usually live by rapine, and under theinfluence of vivid, but contracted, religious imagination. The earlypredatory activity of the Normans, and the confused minglings ofreligious subjects with scenes of hunting, war, and vile grotesque, intheir first art, will sufficiently exemplify this state of a people;having, observe, their conscience undeveloped, but keeping their conductin satisfied harmony with it. 

The second stage is that of the formation of conscience by the discoveryof the true laws of social order and personal virtue, coupled withsincere effort to live by such laws as they are discovered. 

All the Arts advance steadily during this stage of national growth, andare lovely, even in their deficiencies, as the buds of flowers arelovely by their vital force, swift change, and continent beauty. 

213. The third stage is that in which the conscience is entirely formed, and the nation, finding it painful to live in obedience to the preceptsit has discovered, looks about to discover, also, a compromise forobedience to them. In this condition of mind its first endeavor isnearly always to make its religion pompous, and please the gods bygiving them gifts and entertainments, in which it may piously andpleasurably share itself; so that a magnificent display of the powers ofart it has gained by sincerity, takes place for a few years, and is thenfollowed by their extinction, rapid and complete exactly in the degreein which the nation resigns itself to hypocrisy. 

The works of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Tintoret belong to this periodof compromise in the career of the greatest nation of the world; and arethe most splendid efforts yet made by human creatures to maintain thedignity of states with beautiful colors, and defend the doctrines oftheology with anatomical designs. 

Farther, and as an universal principle, we have to remember that theArts express not only the moral temper, but the scholarship, of theirage; and we have thus to study them under the influence, at the samemoment of, it may be, declining probity, and advancing science. 

214. Now in this the Arts of Northern and Southern Europe stand exactlyopposed. The Northern temper never accepts the Catholic faith with forcesuch as it reached in Italy. Our sincerest thirteenth-century sculptoris cold and formal compared with that of the Pisani; nor can anyNorthern poet be set for an instant beside Dante, as an exponent ofCatholic faith: on the contrary, the Northern temper accepts thescholarship of the Reformation with absolute sincerity, while theItalians seek refuge from it in the partly scientific and completelylascivious enthusiasms of literature and painting, renewed underclassical influence. We therefore, in the north, produce our Shakspeareand Holbein; they their Petrarch and Raphael. And it is nearlyimpossible for you to study Shakspeare or Holbein too much, or Petrarchand Raphael too little. 

I do not say this, observe, in opposition to the Catholic faith, or toany other faith, but only to the attempts to support whatsoever thefaith may be, by ornament or eloquence, instead of action. Every man whohonestly accepts, and acts upon, the knowledge granted to him by thecircumstances of his time, has the faith which God intends him tohave;--assuredly a good one, whatever the terms or form of it--every manwho dishonestly refuses, or interestedly disobeys the knowledge open tohim, holds a faith which God does not mean him to hold, and therefore abad one, however beautiful or traditionally respectable. 

215. Do not, therefore, I entreat you, think that I speak with anypurpose of defending one system of theology against another; least ofall, reformed against Catholic theology. There probably never was asystem of religion so destructive to the loveliest arts and theloveliest virtues of men, as the modern Protestantism, which consists inan assured belief in the Divine forgiveness of all your sins, and theDivine correctness of all your opinions. But in the first searching andsincere activities, the doctrines of the Reformation produced the mostinstructive art, and the grandest literature, yet given to the world;while Italy, in her interested resistance to those doctrines, pollutedand exhausted the arts she already possessed. Her iridescence of dyingstatesmanship--her magnificence of hollow piety, --were represented inthe arts of Venice and Florence by two mighty men on either side--Titianand Tintoret, --Michael Angelo and Raphael. Of the calm and bravestatesmanship, the modest and faithful religion, which had been herstrength, I am content to name one chief representative artist atVenice, John Bellini. 

216. Let me now map out for you roughly the chronological relations ofthese five men. It is impossible to remember the minor years, in dates;I will give you them broadly in decades, and you can add what finesseafterwards you like. 

Recollect, first, the great year 1480. Twice four's eight--you can'tmistake it. In that year Michael Angelo was five years old; Titian, three years old; Raphael, within three years of being born. 

So see how easily it comes. Michael Angelo five years old--and youdivide six between Titian and Raphael, --three on each side of yourstandard year, 1480. 

Then add to 1480, forty years--an easy number to recollect, surely; andyou get the exact year of Raphael's death, 1520. 

In that forty years all the new effort and deadly catastrophe tookplace. 1480 to 1520. 

Now, you have only to fasten to those forty years, the life of Bellini, who represents the best art before them, and of Tintoret, who representsthe best art after them. 

217. I cannot fit you these on with a quite comfortable exactness, butwith very slight inexactness I can fit them firmly. 

John Bellini was ninety years old when he died. He lived fifty yearsbefore the great forty of change, and he saw the forty, and died. ThenTintoret is born; lives eighty[42] years after the forty, and closes, indying, the sixteenth century, and the great arts of the world. 

Those are the dates, roughly; now for the facts connected with them. 

John Bellini precedes the change, meets, and resists it victoriously tohis death. Nothing of flaw or failure is ever to be discerned in him. 

Then Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Titian, together, bring about thedeadly change, playing into each other's hands--Michael Angelo being thechief captain in evil; Titian, in natural force. 

Then Tintoret, himself alone nearly as strong as all the three, standsup for a last fight; for Venice, and the old time. He all but wins it atfirst; but the three together are too strong for him. Michael Angelostrikes him down; and the arts are ended. "Il disegno di MichaelAgnolo. " That fatal motto was his death-warrant. 

218. And now, having massed out my subject, I can clearly sketch for youthe changes that took place from Bellini, through Michael Angelo, toTintoret. 

The art of Bellini is centrally represented by two pictures at Venice:one, the Madonna in the Sacristy of the Frari, with two saints besideher, and two angels at her feet; the second, the Madonna with fourSaints, over the second altar of San Zaccaria. 

In the first of these, the figures are under life size, and itrepresents the most perfect kind of picture for rooms; in which, sinceit is intended to be seen close to the spectator, every right kind offinish possible to the hand may be wisely lavished; yet which is not aminiature, nor in any wise petty, or ignoble. 

In the second, the figures are of life size, or a little more, and itrepresents the class of great pictures in which the boldest execution isused, but all brought to entire completion. These two, having everyquality in balance, are as far as my present knowledge extends, and asfar as I can trust my judgment, the two best pictures in the world. 

219. Observe respecting them--

First, they are both wrought in entirely consistent and permanentmaterial. The gold in them is represented by painting, not laid on withreal gold. And the painting is so secure, that four hundred years haveproduced on it, so far as I can see, no harmful change whatsoever, ofany kind. 

Secondly, the figures in both are in perfect peace. No action takesplace except that the little angels are playing on musical instruments, but with uninterrupted and effortless gesture, as in a dream. A choir ofsinging angels by La Robbia or Donatello would be intent on their music, or eagerly rapturous in it, as in temporary exertion: in the littlechoirs of cherubs by Luini in the Adoration of the Shepherds, in theCathedral of Como, we even feel by their dutiful anxiety that theremight be danger of a false note if they were less attentive. ButBellini's angels, even the youngest, sing as calmly as the Fates weave. 

220. Let me at once point out to you that this calmness is the attributeof the entirely highest class of art: the introduction of strong orviolently emotional incident is at once a confession of inferiority. 

Those are the two first attributes of the best art. Faultlessworkmanship, and perfect serenity; a continuous, not momentary, action, --or entire inaction. You are to be interested in the livingcreatures; not in what is happening to them. 

Then the third attribute of the best art is that it compels you to thinkof the spirit of the creature, and therefore of its face, more than ofits body. 

And the fourth is that in the face you shall be led to see only beautyor joy;--never vileness, vice, or pain. 

Those are the four essentials of the greatest art. I repeat them, theyare easily learned. 

1. Faultless and permanent workmanship. 

2. Serenity in state or action. 

3. The Face principal, not the body. 

4. And the Face free from either vice or pain. 

221. It is not possible, of course, always literally to observe thesecond condition, that there shall be quiet action or none; butBellini's treatment of violence in action you may see exemplified in anotable way in his St. Peter Martyr. The soldier is indeed striking thesword down into his breast; but in the face of the Saint is onlyresignation, and faintness of death, not pain--that of the executioneris impassive; and, while a painter of the later schools would havecovered breast and sword with blood, Bellini allows no stain of it; butpleases himself by the most elaborate and exquisite painting of a softcrimson feather in the executioner's helmet. 

222. Now the changes brought about by Michael Angelo--and permitted, orpersisted in calamitously, by Tintoret--are in the four points these:

 1st. Bad workmanship. 

 The greater part of all that these two men did is hastily and incompletely done; and all that they did on a large scale in color is in the best qualities of it perished. 

 2d. Violence of transitional action. 

 The figures flying, --falling, --striking, --or biting. Scenes of Judgment, --battle, --martyrdom, --massacre; anything that is in the acme of instantaneous interest and violent gesture. They cannot any more trust their public to care for anything but that. 

 3d. Physical instead of mental interest. The body, and its anatomy, made the entire subject of interest: the face, shadowed, as in the Duke Lorenzo, [43] unfinished, as in the Twilight, or entirely foreshortened, backshortened, and despised, among labyrinths of limbs, and mountains of sides and shoulders. 

 4th. Evil chosen rather than good. On the face itself, instead of joy or virtue, at the best, sadness, probably pride, often sensuality, and always, by preference, vice or agony as the subject of thought. In the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, and the Last Judgment of Tintoret, it is the wrath of the Dies Iræ, not its justice, in which they delight; and their only passionate thought of the coming of Christ in the clouds, is that all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. 

Those are the four great changes wrought by Michael Angelo. I repeatthem:

 Ill work for good. Tumult for Peace. The Flesh of Man for his Spirit. And the Curse of God for His blessing. 

223. Hitherto, I have massed, necessarily, but most unjustly, MichaelAngelo and Tintoret together, because of their common relation to theart of others. I shall now proceed to distinguish the qualities of theirown. And first as to the general temper of the two men. 

Nearly every existing work by Michael Angelo is an attempt to executesomething beyond his power, coupled with a fevered desire that his powermay be acknowledged. He is always matching himself either against theGreeks whom he cannot rival, or against rivals whom he cannot forget. Heis proud, yet not proud enough to be at peace; melancholy, yet notdeeply enough to be raised above petty pain; and strong beyond all hiscompanion workmen, yet never strong enough to command his temper, orlimit his aims. 

Tintoret, on the contrary, works in the consciousness of supremestrength, which cannot be wounded by neglect, and is only to be thwartedby time and space. He knows precisely all that art can accomplish undergiven conditions; determines absolutely how much of what can be done hewill himself for the moment choose to do; and fulfills his purpose withas much ease as if, through his human body, were working the greatforces of nature. Not that he is ever satisfied with what he has done, as vulgar and feeble artists are satisfied. He falls short of his ideal, more than any other man; but not more than is necessary; and is contentto fall short of it to that degree, as he is content that his figures, however well painted, do not move nor speak. He is also entirelyunconcerned respecting the satisfaction of the public. He neither caresto display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them; when hefinishes his work, it is because he is in the humor to do so; and thesketch which a meaner painter would have left incomplete to show howcleverly it was begun, Tintoret simply leaves because he has done asmuch of it as he likes. 

224. Both Raphael and Michael Angelo are thus, in the most vital of allpoints, separate from the great Venetian. They are always in dramaticattitudes, and always appealing to the public for praise. They are theleading athletes in the gymnasium of the arts; and the crowd of thecircus cannot take its eyes away from them, while the Venetian walks orrests with the simplicity of a wild animal; is scarcely noticed in hisoccasionally swifter motion; when he springs, it is to please himself;and so calmly, that no one thinks of estimating the distance covered. 

I do not praise him wholly in this. I praise him only for thewell-founded pride, infinitely nobler than Michael Angelo's. You do nothear of Tintoret's putting any one into hell because they had foundfault with his work. Tintoret would as soon have thought of putting adog into hell for laying his paws on it. But he is to be blamed inthis--that he thinks as little of the pleasure of the public, as oftheir opinion. A great painter's business is to do what the public askof him, in the way that shall be helpful and instructive to them. Hisrelation to them is exactly that of a tutor to a child; he is not todefer to their judgment, but he is carefully to form it;--not to consulttheir pleasure for his own sake, but to consult it much for theirs. Itwas scarcely, however, possible that this should be the case betweenTintoret and his Venetians; he could not paint for the people, and insome respects he was happily protected by his subordination to theSenate. Raphael and Michael Angelo lived in a world of court intrigue, in which it was impossible to escape petty irritation, or refusethemselves the pleasure of mean victory. But Tintoret and Titian, evenat the height of their reputation, practically lived as craftsmen intheir workshops, and sent in samples of their wares, not to be praisedor caviled at, but to be either taken or refused. 

225. I can clearly and adequately set before you these relations betweenthe great painters of Venice and her Senate--relations which, inmonetary matters, are entirely right and exemplary for all time--byreading to you two decrees of the Senate itself, and one petition to it. The first document shall be the decree of the Senate for giving help toJohn Bellini, in finishing the compartments of the great CouncilChamber; granting him three assistants--one of them Victor Carpaccio. 

The decree, first referring to some other business, closes in theseterms:[44]

 "There having moreover offered his services to this effect our most faithful citizen, Zuan Bellin, according to his agreement employing his skill and all speed and diligence for the completion of this work of the three pictures aforesaid, provided he be assisted by the under-written painters. 

 "Be it therefore put to the ballot, that besides the aforesaid Zuan Bellin in person, who will assume the superintendence of this work, there be added Master Victor Scarpaza, with a monthly salary of five ducats; Master Victor, son of the late Mathio, at four ducats per month; and the painter, Hieronymo, at two ducats per month; they rendering speedy and diligent assistance to the aforesaid Zuan Bellin for the painting of the pictures aforesaid, so that they be completed well and carefully as speedily as possible. The salaries of the which three master painters aforesaid, with the costs of colors and other necessaries, to be defrayed by our Salt Office with the moneys of the great chest. 

 "It being expressly declared that said pensioned painters be tied and bound to work constantly and daily, so that said three pictures may be completed as expeditiously as possible; the artists aforesaid being pensioned at the good pleasure of this Council. 

 "Ayes 23

 "Noes 3

 "Neutrals 0"

This decree is the more interesting to us now, because it is theprecedent to which Titian himself refers, when he first offers hisservices to the Senate. 

The petition which I am about to read to you, was read to the Council ofTen, on the last day of May, 1513, and the original draft of it is yetpreserved in the Venice archives. 

 "'Most Illustrious Council of Ten. "'Most Serene Prince and most Excellent Lords. 

 "'I, Titian of Serviete de Cadore, having from my boyhood upwards set myself to learn the art of painting, not so much from cupidity of gain as for the sake of endeavoring to acquire some little fame, and of being ranked amongst those who now profess the said art. 

 "'And altho heretofore, and likewise at this present, I have been earnestly requested by the Pope and other potentates to go and serve them, nevertheless, being anxious as your Serenity's most faithful subject, for such I am, to leave some memorial in this famous city; my determination is, should the Signory approve, _to undertake, so long as I live, to come and paint in the Grand Council with my whole soul and ability_; commencing, provided your Serenity think of it, with the battle-piece on the side towards the "Piaza, " that being the most difficult; nor down to this time has any one chosen to assume so hard a task. 

 "'I, most excellent Lords, should be better pleased to receive as recompense for the work to be done by me, such acknowledgments as may be deemed sufficient, and much less; but because, as already stated by me, I care solely for my honor, and mere livelihood, should your Serenity approve, you will vouchsafe to grant me for my life, the next brokers-patent in the German factory, [45] by whatever means it may become vacant; notwithstanding other expectancies; with the terms, conditions, obligations, and exemptions, as in the case of Messer Zuan Bellini; besides two youths whom I purpose bringing with me as assistants; they to be paid by the Salt Office; as likewise the colors and all other requisites, as conceded a few months ago by the aforesaid most Illustrious Council to the said Messer Zuan; for I promise to do such work and with so much speed and excellency as shall satisfy your lordships to whom I humbly recommend myself. '"

226. "This proposal, " Mr. Brown tells us, "in accordance with thepetitions presented by Gentil Bellini and Alvise Vivarini, wasimmediately put to the ballot, " and carried thus--the decision of theGrand Council, in favor of Titian, being, observe, by no meansunanimous:

 "Ayes 10

 "Noes 6

 "Neutrals 0"

Immediately follows on the acceptance of Titian's services, thispractical order:

 "We, Chiefs of the most Illustrious Council of Ten, tell and inform you Lords Proveditors for the State; videlicet the one who is cashier of the Great Chest, and his successors, that for the execution of what has been decreed above in the most Illustrious Council aforesaid, you do have prepared all necessaries for the above written Titian according to his petition and demand, and as observed with regard to Juan Bellini, that he may paint ut supra; paying from month to month the two youths whom said Titian shall present to you at the rate of four ducats each per month, as urged by him because of their skill and sufficiency in said art of painting, tho' we do not mean the payment of their salary to commence until they begin work; and thus will you do. Given on the 8th of June, 1513. "

This is the way, then, the great workmen wish to be paid, and that isthe way wise men pay them for their work. The perfect simplicity of suchpatronage leaves the painter free to do precisely what he thinks best:and a good painter always produces his best, with such license. 

227. And now I shall take the four conditions of change in succession, and examine the distinctions between the two masters in their acceptanceof, or resistance to, them. 

(I. ) The change of good and permanent workmanship for bad and insecureworkmanship. 

You have often heard quoted the saying of Michael Angelo, thatoil-painting was only fit for women and children. 

He said so, simply because he had neither the skill to lay a singletouch of good oil-painting, nor the patience to overcome even itselementary difficulties. 

And it is one of my reasons for the choice of subject in this concludinglecture on Sculpture, that I may, with direct reference to this muchquoted saying of Michael Angelo, make the positive statement to you, that oil-painting is the Art of arts;[46] that it is sculpture, drawing, and music, all in one, involving the technical dexterities of thosethree several arts; that is to say--the decision and strength of thestroke of the chisel;--the balanced distribution of appliance of thatforce necessary for graduation in light and shade;--and the passionatefelicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, which on aninstrument produce right sound, and on canvas, living color. There isno other human skill so great or so wonderful as the skill of fineoil-painting; and there is no other art whose results are so absolutelypermanent. Music is gone as soon as produced--marble discolors, --frescofades, --glass darkens or decomposes--painting alone, well guarded, ispractically everlasting. 

Of this splendid art Michael Angelo understood nothing; he understoodeven fresco, imperfectly. Tintoret understood both perfectly; buthe--when no one would pay for his colors (and sometimes nobody wouldeven give him space of wall to paint on)--used cheap blue forultramarine; and he worked so rapidly, and on such huge spaces ofcanvas, that between damp and dry, his colors must go, for the mostpart; but any complete oil-painting of his stands as well as one ofBellini's own: while Michael Angelo's fresco is defaced already in everypart of it, and Lionardo's oil-painting is all either gone black, orgone to nothing. 

228. (II. ) Introduction of dramatic interest for the sake of excitement. I have already, in the _Stones of Venice_, illustrated Tintoret'sdramatic power at so great length, that I will not, to-day, make anyfarther statement to justify my assertion that it is as much beyondMichael Angelo's as Shakspeare's is beyond Milton's--and somewhat withthe same kind of difference in manner. Neither can I speak to-day, timenot permitting me, of the abuse of their dramatic power by Venetian orFlorentine; one thing only I beg you to note, that with full half of hisstrength, Tintoret remains faithful to the serenity of the past; and theexamples I have given you from his work in S. 50, [47] are, one, of themost splendid drama, and the other, of the quietest portraiture everattained by the arts of the Middle Ages. 

Note also this respecting his picture of the Judgment, that, in spiteof all the violence and wildness of the imagined scene, Tintoret has notgiven, so far as I remember, the spectacle of any one soul underinfliction of actual pain. In all previous representations of the LastJudgment there had at least been one division of the picture set apartfor the representation of torment; and even the gentle Angelico shrinksfrom no orthodox detail in this respect; but Tintoret, too vivid andtrue in imagination to be able to endure the common thoughts of hell, represents indeed the wicked in ruin, but not in agony. They are sweptdown by flood and whirlwind--the place of them shall know them no more, but not one is seen in more than the natural pain of swift andirrevocable death. 

229. (III. ) I pass to the third condition; the priority of flesh tospirit, and of the body to the face. 

In this alone, of the four innovations, Michael Angelo and Tintoret havethe Greeks with them;--in this, alone, have they any right to be calledclassical. The Greeks gave them no excuse for bad workmanship; none fortemporary passion; none for the preference of pain. Only in the honordone to the body may be alleged for them the authority of the ancients. 

You remember, I hope, how often in my preceding lectures I had to insiston the fact that Greek sculpture was essentially [Greek:aprosôpos];--independent, not only of the expression, but even of thebeauty of the face. Nay, independent of its being so much as seen. Thegreater number of the finest pieces of it which remain for us to judgeby, have had the heads broken away;--we do not seriously miss themeither from the Three Fates, the Ilissus, or the Torso of the Vatican. The face of the Theseus is so far destroyed by time that you can formlittle conception of its former aspect. But it is otherwise in Christiansculpture. Strike the head off even the rudest statue in the porch ofChartres and you will greatly miss it--the harm would be still worse toDonatello's St. George:--and if you take the heads from a statue ofMino, or a painting of Angelico--very little but drapery will beleft;--drapery made redundant in quantity and rigid in fold, that it mayconceal the forms, and give a proud or ascetic reserve to the actions, of the bodily frame. Bellini and his school, indeed, rejected at oncethe false theory, and the easy mannerism, of such religious design; andpainted the body without fear or reserve, as, in its subordination, honorable and lovely. But the inner heart and fire of it are by themalways first thought of, and no action is given to it merely to show itsbeauty. Whereas the great culminating masters, and chiefly of these, Tintoret, Correggio, and Michael Angelo, delight in the body for its ownsake, and cast it into every conceivable attitude, often in violation ofall natural probability, that they may exhibit the action of itsskeleton, and the contours of its flesh. The movement of a hand withCima or Bellini expresses mental emotion only; but the clustering andtwining of the fingers of Correggio's S. Catherine is enjoyed by thepainter just in the same way as he would enjoy the twining of thebranches of a graceful plant, and he compels them into intricacies whichhave little or no relation to St. Catherine's mind. In the two drawingsof Correggio (S. 13 and 14) it is the rounding of limbs and softness offoot resting on cloud which are principally thought of in the form ofthe Madonna; and the countenance of St. John is foreshortened into asection, that full prominence may be given to the muscles of his armsand breast. 

So in Tintoret's drawing of the Graces (S. 22), he has entirelyneglected the individual character of the Goddesses, and been content toindicate it merely by attributes of dice or flower, so only that he maysufficiently display varieties of contour in thigh and shoulder. 

230. Thus far, then, the Greeks, Correggio, Michael Angelo, Raphael inhis latter design, and Tintoret in his scenic design (as opposed toportraiture), are at one. But the Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, arealso together in this farther point; that they all draw the body fortrue delight in it, and with knowledge of it living; while MichaelAngelo and Raphael draw the body for vanity, and from knowledge of itdead. 

The Venus of Melos, --Correggio's Venus, (with Mercury teaching Cupid toread), --and Tintoret's Graces, have the forms which their designerstruly _liked_ to see in women. They may have been wrong or right inliking those forms, but they carved and painted them for their pleasure, not for vanity. 

But the form of Michael Angelo's Night is not one which he delighted tosee in women. He gave it her, because he thought it was fine, and thathe would be admired for reaching so lofty an ideal. [48]

231. Again. The Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, learn the body from theliving body, and delight in its breath, color, and motion. [49]

Raphael and Michael Angelo learned it essentially from the corpse, andhad no delight in it whatever, but great pride in showing that they knewall its mechanism; they therefore sacrifice its colors, and insist onits muscles, and surrender the breath and fire of it, for what is--notmerely carnal, --but osseous, knowing that for one person who canrecognize the loveliness of a look, or the purity of a color, there area hundred who can calculate the length of a bone. 

The boy with the doves, in Raphael's cartoon of the Beautiful Gate ofthe Temple, is not a child running, but a surgical diagram of a child ina running posture. 

Farther, when the Greeks, Correggio, and Tintoret, draw the body active, it is because they rejoice in its force, and when they draw it inactive, it is because they rejoice in its repose. But Michael Angelo and Raphaelinvent for it ingenious mechanical motion, because they think ituninteresting when it is quiet, and cannot, in their pictures, endureany person's being simple-minded enough to stand upon both his legs atonce, nor venture to imagine anyone's being clear enough in his languageto make himself intelligible without pointing. 

In all these conditions, the Greek and Venetian treatment of the body isfaithful, modest, and natural; but Michael Angelo's dishonest, insolent, and artificial. 

232. But between him and Tintoret there is a separation deeper than allthese, when we examine their treatment of the face. Michael Angelo'svanity of surgical science rendered it impossible for him ever to treatthe body as well as the Greeks treated it; but it left him wholly atliberty to treat the face as ill; and he did: and in some respects verycuriously worse. 

The Greeks had, in all their work, one type of face for beautiful andhonorable persons; and another, much contrary to it, for dishonorableones; and they were continually setting these in opposition. Their typeof beauty lay chiefly in the undisturbed peace and simplicity of allcontours; in full roundness of chin; in perfect formation of the lips, showing neither pride nor care; and, most of all, in a straight and firmline from the brow to the end of the nose. 

The Greek type of dishonorable persons, especially satyrs, fauns, andsensual powers, consisted in irregular excrescence and decrement offeatures, especially in flatness of the upper part of the nose, andprojection of the end of it into a blunt knob. 

By the most grotesque fatality, as if the personal bodily injury he hadhimself received had passed with a sickly echo into his mind also, Michael Angelo is always dwelling on this satyric form ofcountenance;--sometimes violently caricatures it, but never can helpdrawing it; and all the best profiles in this collection at Oxford havewhat Mr. Robinson calls a "nez retroussé;" but what is, in reality, thenose of the Greek Bacchic mask, treated as a dignified feature. 

233. For the sake of readers who cannot examine the drawings themselves, and lest I should be thought to have exaggerated in any wise thestatement of this character, I quote Mr. Robinson's description of thehead, No. 9--a celebrated and entirely authentic drawing, on which, Iregret to say, my own pencil comment in passing is merely "brutal lowerlip, and broken nose":--

 "This admirable study was probably made from nature, additional character and more powerful expression having been given to it by a slight exaggeration of details, bordering on caricature (observe the protruding lower lip, 'nez retroussé, ' and overhanging forehead). The head, in profile, turned to the right, is proudly planted on a massive neck and shoulders, and the short tufted hair stands up erect. The expression is that of fierce, insolent self-confidence and malevolence; it is engraved in facsimile in Ottley's 'Italian School of Design, ' and it is described in that work, p. 33, as 'Finely expressive of scornfulness and pride, and evidently a study from nature. '

 "Michel Angelo has made use of the same ferocious-looking model on other occasions--see an instance in the well-known 'Head of Satan' engraved in Woodburn's Lawrence Gallery (No. 16), and now in the Malcolm Collection. 

 "The study on the reverse of the leaf is more lightly executed; it represents a man of powerful frame, carrying a hog or boar in his arms before him, the upper part of his body thrown back to balance the weight, his head hidden by that of the animal, which rests on the man's right shoulder. 

 "The power displayed in every line and touch of these drawings is inimitable--the head was in truth one of the 'teste divine, ' and the hand which executed it the 'mano terribile, ' so enthusiastically alluded to by Vasari. "

234. Passing, for the moment, by No. 10, a "young woman of majesticcharacter, marked by a certain expression of brooding melancholy, " and"wearing on her head a fantastic cap or turban;"--by No. 11, a beardedman, "wearing a conical Phrygian cap, his mouth wide open, " and hisexpression "obstreperously animated;"--and by No. 12, "a middle-aged orold man, with a snub nose, high forehead, and thin, scrubby hair, " wewill go on to the fairer examples of Divine heads in No. 32. 

 "This splendid sheet of studies is probably one of the 'carte stupendissime di teste divine, ' which Vasari says (Vita, p. 272) Michel Angelo executed, as presents or lessons for his artistic friends. Not improbably it is actually one of those made for his friend Tommaso dei Cavalieri, who, when young, was desirous of learning to draw. "

But it is one of the chief misfortunes affecting Michael Angelo'sreputation, that his ostentatious display of strength and science has anatural attraction for comparatively weak and pedantic persons. And thissheet of Vasari's "teste divine" contains, in fact, not a single drawingof high quality--only one of moderate agreeableness, and two caricaturedheads, one of a satyr with hair like the fur of animals, and one of amonstrous and sensual face, such as could only have occurred to thesculptor in a fatigued dream, and which in my own notes I have classedwith the vile face in No. 45. 

235. Returning, however, to the divine heads above it, I wish you tonote "the most conspicuous and important of all, " a study for one of theGenii behind the Sibylla Libyca. This Genius, like the young woman of amajestic character, and the man with his mouth open, wears a cap, orturban; opposite to him in the sheet, is a female in profile, "wearing ahood of massive drapery. " And, when once your attention is directed tothis point, you will perhaps be surprised to find how many of MichaelAngelo's figures, intended to be sublime, have their heads bandaged. Ifyou have been a student of Michael Angelo chiefly, you may easily havevitiated your taste to the extent of thinking that this is a dignifiedcostume; but if you study Greek work, instead, you will find thatnothing is more important in the system of it than a finisheddisposition of the hair; and as soon as you acquaint yourself with theexecution of carved marbles generally, you will perceive these massyfillets to be merely a cheap means of getting over a difficulty toogreat for Michael Angelo's patience, and too exigent for his invention. They are not sublime arrangements, but economies of labor, and reliefsfrom the necessity of design; and if you had proposed to the sculptor ofthe Venus of Melos, or of the Jupiter of Olympia, to bind the ambrosiallocks up in towels, you would most likely have been instantly bound, yourself; and sent to the nearest temple of Æsculapius. 

236. I need not, surely, tell you, --I need only remind, --how in allthese points, the Venetians and Correggio reverse Michael Angelo's evil, and vanquish him in good; how they refuse caricature, rejoice in beauty, and thirst for opportunity of toil. The waves of hair in a single figureof Tintoret's (the Mary Magdalen of the Paradise) contain moreintellectual design in themselves alone than all the folds of unseemlylinen in the Sistine chapel put together. 

In the fourth and last place, as Tintoret does not sacrifice, except ashe is forced by the exigencies of display, the face for the body, soalso he does not sacrifice happiness for pain. The chief reason why weall know the "Last Judgment" of Michael Angelo, and not the "Paradise"of Tintoret, is the same love of sensation which makes us read the_Inferno_ of Dante, and not his _Paradise_; and the choice, believe me, is our fault, not his; some farther evil influence is due to the factthat Michael Angelo has invested all his figures with picturesque andpalpable elements of effect, while Tintoret has only made them lovely inthemselves and has been content that they should deserve, not demand, your attention. 

237. You are accustomed to think the figures of Michael Angelosublime--because they are dark, and colossal, and involved, andmysterious--because in a word, they look sometimes like shadows, andsometimes like mountains, and sometimes like specters, but never likehuman beings. Believe me, yet once more, in what I told you longsince--man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. He cannot raise hisform into anything better than God made it, by giving it either theflight of birds or strength of beasts, by enveloping it in mist, orheaping it into multitude. Your pilgrim must look like a pilgrim in astraw hat, or you will not make him into one with cockle and nimbus; anangel must look like an angel on the ground, as well as in the air; andthe much-denounced pre-Raphaelite faith that a saint cannot looksaintly unless he has thin legs, is not more absurd than MichaelAngelo's, that a Sybil cannot look Sibylline unless she has thick ones. 

238. All that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you lookinto it, is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. Light is, in reality, more awful than darkness--modesty more majestic thanstrength; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, orthe sweet virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of Antæus, orthunder-clouds of Ætna. 

Now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, Tintoret is entirelycarried away by his sympathy with Michael Angelo, and conquers him inhis own field;--outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy, and outflames him in rage, --he can be just asgentle as he is strong: and that Paradise, though it is the largestpicture in the world, without any question, is also the thoughtfulest, and most precious. 

The Thoughtfulest!--it would be saying but little, as far as MichaelAngelo is concerned. 

239. For consider of it yourselves. You have heard, from your youth up(and all educated persons have heard for three centuries), of this LastJudgment of his, as the most sublime picture in existence. 

The subject of it is one which should certainly be interesting to you, in one of two ways. 

If you never expect to be judged for any of your own doings, and thetradition of the coming of Christ is to you as an idle tale--still, think what a wonderful tale it would be, were it well told. You are atliberty, disbelieving it, to range the fields--Elysian and Tartarean--ofall imagination. You may play with it, since it is false; and what aplay would it not be, well written? Do you think the tragedy, or themiracle play, or the infinitely Divina Commedia of the Judgment of theastonished living who were dead;--the undeceiving of the sight of everyhuman soul, understanding in an instant all the shallow, and depth ofpast life and future, --face to face with both, --and with God:--thisapocalypse to all intellect, and completion to all passion, this minuteand individual drama of the perfected history of separate spirits, andof their finally accomplished affections!--think you, I say, all thiswas well told by mere heaps of dark bodies curled and convulsed inspace, and fall as of a crowd from a scaffolding, in writhed concretionsof muscular pain?

But take it the other way. Suppose you believe, be it never so dimly orfeebly, in some kind of Judgment that is to be;--that you admit even thefaint contingency of retribution, and can imagine, with vivacity enoughto fear, that in this life, at all events, if not in another--there maybe for you a Visitation of God, and a questioning--What hast thou done?The picture, if it is a good one, should have a deeper interest, surelyon _this_ postulate? Thrilling enough, as a mere imagination of what isnever to be--now, as a conjecture of what _is_ to be, held the best thatin eighteen centuries of Christianity has for men's eyes beenmade;--Think of it so!

240. And then, tell me, whether you yourselves, or any one you haveknown, did ever at any time receive from this picture any, the smallestvital thought, warning, quickening, or help? It may have appalled, orimpressed you for a time, as a thunder-cloud might: but has it evertaught you anything--chastised in you anything--confirmed apurpose--fortified a resistance--purified a passion? I know that, foryou, it has done none of these things; and I know also that, for others, it has done very different things. In every vain and proud designer whohas since lived, that dark carnality of Michael Angelo's has fosteredinsolent science, and fleshly imagination. Daubers and blockheads thinkthemselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if theyknow how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men withcapacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) intopetty felicities and innocencies of genre painting--landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if theyhave the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true paintersof them, being taught, from their youth up, to look for and learn thebody instead of the spirit, have learned it, and taught it to suchpurpose, that at this hour, when I speak to you, the rooms of the RoyalAcademy of England, receiving also what of best can be sent there by themasters of France, contain _not one_ picture honorable to the arts oftheir age; and contain many which are shameful in their record of itsmanners. 

241. Of that, hereafter. I will close to-day giving you some briefaccount of the scheme of Tintoret's Paradise, in justification of myassertion that it is the thoughtfulest as well as mightiest picture inthe world. 

In the highest center is Christ, leaning on the globe of the earth, which is of dark crystal. Christ is crowned with a glory as of the sun, and all the picture is lighted by that glory, descending through circlebeneath circle of cloud, and of flying or throned spirits. 

The Madonna, beneath Christ, and at some interval from Him, kneels toHim. She is crowned with the Seven stars, and kneels on a cloud ofangels, whose wings change into ruby fire, where they are near her. 

The three great Archangels meeting from three sides, fly towards Christ. Michael delivers up his scales and sword. He is followed by the Thronesand Principalities of the Earth; so inscribed--Throni--Principatus. TheSpirits of the Thrones bear scales in their hands; and of thePrincedoms, shining globes: beneath the wings of the last of these arethe four great teachers and lawgivers, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Augustine, and behind St. Augustine stands his mother, watching him, her chief joy in Paradise. 

Under the Thrones, are set the Apostles, St. Paul separated a littlefrom the rest, and put lowest, yet principal; under St. Paul, is St. Christopher, bearing a massive globe, with a cross upon it; but to markhim as the Christ-bearer, since here in Paradise he cannot have theChild on his shoulders, Tintoret has thrown on the globe a flashingstellar reflection of the sun the head of Christ. 

All this side of the picture is kept in glowing color, --the four Doctorsof the church have golden miters and mantles; except the Cardinal, St. Jerome, who is in burning scarlet, his naked breast glowing, warm withnoble life, --the darker red of his robe relieved against a white glory. 

242. Opposite to Michael, Gabriel flies towards the Madonna, having inhis hand the Annunciation lily, large, and triple-blossomed. Above him, and above Michael, equally, extends a cloud of white angels, inscribed"Serafini;" but the group following Gabriel, and corresponding to theThroni following Michael, is inscribed "Cherubini. " Under these are thegreat prophets, and singers and foretellers of the happiness or of thesorrow of time. David, and Solomon, and Isaiah, and Amos of theherdsmen. David has a colossal golden psaltery laid horizontally acrosshis knees;--two angels behind him dictate to him as he sings, looking uptowards Christ; but one strong angel sweeps down to Solomon from amongthe cherubs, and opens a book, resting it on the head of Solomon, wholooks down earnestly unconscious of it;--to the left of David, separatefrom the group of prophets, as Paul from the apostles, is Moses, dark-robed; in the full light, withdrawn far behind him, Abraham, embracing Isaac with his left arm, and near him, pale St. Agnes. Infront, nearer, dark and colossal, stands the glorious figure of SantaGiustina of Padua; then a little subordinate to her, St. Catherine, and, far on the left, and high, St. Barbara leaning on her tower. In front, nearer, flies Raphael; and under him is the four-square group of theEvangelists. Beneath them, on the left, Noah; on the right, Adam andEve, both floating unsupported by cloud or angel; Noah buoyed by theArk, which he holds above him, and it is _this_ into which Solomon gazesdown, so earnestly. Eve's face is, perhaps, the most beautiful everpainted by Tintoret--full in light, but dark-eyed. Adam floats besideher, his figure fading into a winged gloom, edged in the outline offig-leaves. Far down, under these, central in the lowest part of thepicture, rises the Angel of the Sea, praying for Venice; for Tintoretconceives his Paradise as existing now, not as in the future. I atfirst mistook this soft Angel of the Sea for the Magdalen, for he issustained by other three angels on either side, as the Magdalen is, indesigns of earlier time, because of the verse, "There is joy in thepresence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth. " But the Magdalenis on the right, behind St. Monica; and on the same side, but lowest ofall, Rachel, among the angels of her children, gathered now again to herforever. 

243. I have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be by far themost precious work of art of any kind whatsoever, now existing in theworld; and it is, I believe, on the eve of final destruction; for it issaid that the angle of the great council-chamber is soon to be rebuilt;and that process will involve the destruction of the picture by removal, and, far more, by repainting. I had thought of making some effort tosave it by an appeal in London to persons generally interested in thearts; but the recent desolation of Paris has familiarized us withdestruction, and I have no doubt the answer to me would be, that Venicemust take care of her own. But remember, at least, that I have bornewitness to you to-day of the treasures that we forget, while we amuseourselves with the poor toys, and the petty or vile arts, of our owntime. 

The years of that time have perhaps come, when we are to be taught tolook no more to the dreams of painters, either for knowledge ofJudgment, or of Paradise. The anger of Heaven will not longer, I think, be mocked for our amusement; and perhaps its love may not always bedespised by our pride. Believe me, all the arts, and all the treasuresof men, are fulfilled and preserved to them only, so far as they havechosen first, with their hearts, not the curse of God, but His blessing. Our Earth is now incumbered with ruin, our Heaven is clouded by Death. May we not wisely judge ourselves in some things now, instead of amusingourselves with the painting of judgments to come?

FOOTNOTES:

[41] NOTE. --The separate edition of this lecture was prefaced by thefollowing note:--

"I have printed this Lecture separately, that strangers visiting theGalleries may be able to use it for reference to the drawings. But theymust observe that its business is only to point out what is to be blamedin Michael Angelo, and that it assumes the facts of his power to begenerally known. Mr. Tyrwhitt's statement of these, in his 'Lectures onChristian Art, ' will put the reader into possession of all that mayjustly be alleged in honor of him. 

"_Corpus Christi College, 1st May, 1872. _"

[42] If you like to have it with perfect exactitude, recollect thatBellini died at true ninety, --Tintoret at eighty-two; that Bellini'sdeath was four years before Raphael's, and that Tintoret was born fouryears before Bellini's death. 

[43] Julian, rather. _See_ Mr. Tyrwhitt's notice of the latelydiscovered error, in his _Lectures on Christian Art_. 

[44] From the invaluable series of documents relating to Titian and histimes, extricated by Mr. Rawdon Brown from the archives of Venice, andarranged and translated by him. 

[45] Fondaco de Tedeschi. I saw the last wrecks of Giorgione's frescoeson the outside of it in 1845. 

[46] I beg that this statement may be observed with attention. It is ofgreat importance, as in opposition to the views usually held respectingthe grave schools of painting. 

[47] The upper photograph in S. 50 is, however, not taken from the greatParadise, which is in too dark a position to be photographed, but from astudy of it existing in a private gallery, and every way inferior. Ihave vainly tried to photograph portions of the picture itself. 

[48] He had, indeed, other and more solemn thoughts of the Night thanCorreggio; and these he tried to express by distorting form, and makingher partly Medusa-like. In this lecture, as above stated, I am onlydwelling on points hitherto unnoticed of dangerous evil in the too muchadmired master. 

[49] Tintoret dissected, and used clay models, in the true academicalmanner, and produced academical results thereby; but all his fine workis done from life, like that of the Greeks.