The History of Sculpture

ONE realizes only with great difficulty that the recovery of Greek art in sculpture is practically an achievement of this century. The bas-reliefs of the Campo Santo that awakened the genius of Niccola Pisano, the marbles and gems that Donatello and Brunelleschi unearthed at Rome, and nearly all the treasures that the ancient baths and villas yielded, during the Renaissance, to blend with other powerful influences in shaping a great age were feeble and scanty in comparison with the precious finds of our time, that now fill the metropolitan museums. In fact, it needs a book like Mrs. Mitchell’s,¹ grouping and correlating the superabundant material of the separate monographs on Mycenæ, Olympia, Pergamon, Assos, and the like, to convince us by a single wide survey of the field that one of the famous exploits of this century, and of our generation in it, is in a region so remote from materialism. The expansion of our knowledge in respect to the past of our race has, in some semi-barbarous lands like Asia Minor, been more rapid than the spread of our civilization. Enough has already been discovered to prove that the history of Greek culture, from its diffusion under Alexander to its decadence under the Cæsars, has been grossly misconceived, and must be rewritten, just as was the case with Roman provincial history in the north. In the latter instance, our gain has been in the knowledge of institutions; in the former, it seems likely to be in that of art. 1 A History of Ancient Sculpture. By LUCY M. MITCHELL,. With, numerous illustrations, including six plates in phototype. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co. 1883.

So much is indicated, at least, by our present information as summarized in these chapters on the Hellenistic age; for, in so brief a notice as this must be, it is necessary to pass over at once the account of oriental art, of the sources of Greek art, and of the nobler Parthenon period, as having been from time to time treated of in our pages. The hints afforded by the Pergamon marbles, for example, are perhaps more interesting than either the fuller records of the previous century, or the scantier monuments of prehistoric Chaldee ; certainly this is the case for such as have a penchant for imagining history by the help of possible inferences and contingent analogies. The development of the Greek genius in sculpture, after it had passed its first maturity in Phidias and his immediate successors, apparently presented the same characteristic signs as are shown in other modes of artistic expression in other nations. A reasoned conception of the ends and means, a trained appreciation of form, a complete mastery of technique, were inherited by the sculptors of Pergamon. The purpose being fixed and the tools perfected, no originality was allowed them except in style; and consequently we see in their work, as in the last dramas of Shakespeare, or in the creations of Browning or Carlyle, an excess of subject (if the phrase may be used), an effort to put the utmost of muscular action, of narrative import, of allegorized truth, into their marbles. And yet, in connection with this intensity, as it is called, it cannot fail to be observed that their creations (herein touched with the decadence) breathe the self-glorifying spirit of triumphant skill, rather than the overmastering idealism of the earlier patriotic and religious motives. In this, as in the pictorial composition and landscape backgrounds, one is tempted to discern the harmful influence of that so vaguely known school of painting that flourished in the preceding period, and to piece out by conjecture our fragmentary conceptions of its manner. It is complained now that our sculpture is too pictorial ; almost as soon as the art was recovered in Italy it fell into the same error, particularly in relief work ; but in Greece the profuse use of color on the marble, as ground and also for direct decoration, together with the employment of metals and jewels as additional adornments, must have brought the two arts so closely together that the transference of modes of treatment was inevitable. The striking thing is that painting, then as now, seems by its greater compass to overpower its more hampered rival.

Besides this tendency to overtax the power of expression by the weight of subject, and this pride in mere technique in close association with a humiliating imitation of a different art, these Pergamon sculptures display other marks of being essentially quite modern. Their realism is especially noticeable. The Greeks of the elder time, it must be acknowledged, were remarkably fortunate in that their realistic spirit fell in with an actual existence which itself appealed to the imagination in many ways. In the Athenian prime the life that lessoned Sophocles and Agathon was heroic or idyllic, and needed hardly a touch to exalt its elements into the most imaginative idealism. When Plato could not write a dialogue without making a drama, nor Aristophanes compose a comedy without breaking into the sweetest lyric song, nor Phidias chisel a flying fold except for eternity, there was a presence on earth and a spirit in men that made realism not less trustworthy as a guide to sculptors than is the “ Look into thy heart and write ” as a maxim for poets like Sidney. But when the barbarians broke in from the north upon Asia Minor, and the luxury of oriental manners and the fantasies of oriental mind stole upon the old order and changed it, to study the real was not necessarily to achieve the beautiful. The barbarians chiseled by the Pergamon sculptors are very different from those that once adorned the Parthenon : they are fierce, ugly, portrait-like, studied from the life. The giants, too, by the same artists are not even altogether human, as in the older reliefs, but many are monstrous, conglomerates of snaky folds and Titanic limbs and ox necks, finny wings, pointed ears, horns, and such Egyptian and Assyrian confusions. For this debasement of the type, few will consider the wonderful finish, the minute and successful imitation of fur, scale, and stuff, a compensation. So, too, the representation of mortal agony is, in these works, carried to an extreme of truthfulness that is upon the verge of the revolting. This new bent of realism, which, ceasing to select from the beautiful in life, now takes these three directions.— toward the portraiture of types not noble, toward the close copying of accessories not important, and toward the reproduction of shocking aspects of existence, — this essential difference between the art of Athens and of Pergamon, it would be but too easy to parallel in more than one province of our own intellectual life. All these remarks, though they were not meant to point such a moral, incidentally illustrate how misleading is the word “ ancient ” when applied to the Greeks. Wherever approached, they are as level to our own times in thought and deed as any of the so-called moderns ; and though their language, in its former dialect, is dead, its golden words always fall upon our ears as if from the lips of some wiser contemporary. In looking on these recovered marble fragments, just as in reading the Antigone or Alcestis, the centuries seem meaningless.

To conclude this hasty examination of a small portion of the work under review, Mrs. Mitchell deserves very great commendation for the scholarly character of the volume,—a quality seldom found in compendiums, and still more seldom united with the philosophic spirit which seeks to show in every human activity an illustration of the whole social state whence it springs. The book is careful and exhaustive, both as an outline of historic, tendencies and as a descriptive catalogue of the principal sculptural works from ancient times; it is, besides, profusely illustrated with many excellent and some inferior woodcuts, which add clearness and interest to the text. It is instructive to note in so comprehensive a narrative, and actually to see by the accompanying designs, how very slow was the progress of man in sculpture even after the rise of the Greeks ; how very few and persistent were the motives of the art, how swift its extinction. The tomb, the palace, and the temple wear its whole history inscribed on them in a few changes in the pose, the proportions, the draperies, and the face ; yet in one or two generations this hardly acquired skill of many ages slipped away unheeded. But if Mrs. Mitchell helps the man of only general culture to grasp at once the whole course of the art, her book is not less serviceable by impressing on the mind the necessity of still further excavation ; for the gaps of knowledge here shown are great. Mycenæ, Olympia, Pergamon, Assos, are names of honor to our time, as has been said; to let the list end would be a disgrace. It is to be hoped, therefore, that this volume will be widely read by men and women interested in intellectual matters; for it shows at once the great value, the probable success, and the need of continuing the investigations on ancient sites.

In comparison with the Greek, the Italian sculpture of the Renaissance has a secondary place, though in shorter time it repeated the same history ; but Mr. Perkins’ work ² is a very different one from Mrs. Mitchell’s. It is, as it is entitled, a simple handbook, and is condensed from other works of the author. No attempt is made to give anything except information as to names and dates, some biographical details, and a general and usually perplexing account of the manner of the different schools and the masters in each. In fact, the author does not seem to have been guided by any one purpose, or to have proportioned his chapters upon any definite plan. His remarks upon the sculptor whom he variously designates as Michael Angelo, Michel Angelo, and Michelangelo deal much more with that personage’s biography in general than with his career in this special art; and a similar fault — a lack of concentration and of lucidity — characterizes the whole work. The footnotes are learned; but it is not to a compendium of this kind that a scholar goes, and except for him they are needless. It must be added, too, that the cuts are disgracefully bad (from such publishers), and the proof-reading such as to draw anathemas from the intelligent. Mr. Perkins’ authority in art is deservedly great, and it is a matter for regret that he should have allowed a volume with so strong an appearance of being manufactured to come from his hand.