Sculpture has been practised in all ages and by all races. There is no savage so untutored but can scratch a rude design upon a flat surface (the beginning of relief) or fashion a stone into the rugged semblance of a god. There are still preserved the rough experiments of palæolithic man, which in character and expression fall but little short of the misshapen images of archaic Greece. Such backward races as to-day remain in the state of barbarism from which the more highly developed emerged countless centuries ago still aim at the innocent realism of prehistoric times. But these furtive attempts have naught in common with art; their interest is anthropological; and the present article treats of sculpture as it has been pursued by craftsmen with a certain control of their material and a consciousness of the effect it is theirs to produce. The sculpture of India, for instance, is merely fantastic; its preoccupation is religious rather than artistic. When viewed in relation to the great stream of tradition which connects the work of Rodin or Gilbert with the colossal figures of Egypt, it is but a shallow back-water. But from the time when the great Sphinx was set up at Gizeh until yesterday a countless succession of men have expressed their ideals in clay, bronze, marble, and other more or less stubborn substances, with a deliberate intention and tutored sense of dignity or beauty which entitle them to be revered as artists and their works to be treasured as masterpieces. With their achievement we are alone concerned; the ingenious scratchings of the savage—whether ancient or modern—and the fantasies of the Oriental mystic are for the curious to consider.
The material of sculpture is as various as the methods of its treatment. Wood, marble, basalt, granite, bronze, gold, and ivory are but a few of the substances which have been fashioned into beautiful and stately forms. Here at once we discover one determining element of style. An artist who works in porphyry or granite cannot express his fancy with freedom. A largeness and dignity is forced upon him by the rigid substance upon which he has chosen to work. So we find in the works of ancient Egypt a severe and monumental repose which would be out of place in figures of a modest size and more malleable material. It has ever been the supreme merit of the sculptor perfectly to adapt his means to his end. The Greeks of the 5th century expressed in marble the most beautiful lines and shapes which the material could suggest. Where there was no place for common or familiar ideas all was simple and restrained. On the other hand, the artists of Tanagra, working in the ready and pliant medium of terra cotta, did not venture beyond a scale and a technique which, though perfectly consonant to their purpose, have the grace and elegance of the masterpiece in little. The sin of taste which renders the bulk of modern sculpture vain and of base effect is ignorance of the material's limitations. The Italian of to-day who esteems marble the most apt substance for the presentation of lace-frills and waistcoat-buttons wrecks his craft upon the reef of cleverness. The artist does not carve and slash his marble as though it were paper, nor does he break up its surface into a thousand furrows as though it were putty; but, still within the bounds of taste and knowledge, he gives to his work a breadth and simplicity which are at war neither with art nor with nature. Indeed the problem of sculpture may be defined as the translation of the forms of the visible world into the language suggested by the material employed. Many of the grandest sculptures that time has spared were composed to fill certain spaces in wall or pediment. Their purpose being thus decorative, it follows that there is another force by which the artist is controlled. The variety of pose and contour which distinguishes the Elgin marbles was suggested by the varying depth of the pediment they were destined to adorn. So also the flowing harmony of the Parthenon frieze pro- ceeds from the subtlest adaptation of the design to the space. It is only necessary to contrast the masterpieces of Greek art with the outrages upon taste which have defaced Westminster Abbey since the 18th century to recognise how much beauty depends upon a sense of fitness. Realism, in brief, though the final aim of savage art, is but a snare to the artist in bronze or marble. To represent chosen aspects of animal forms which are in discord neither with their material nor with the site they occupy, this is the end of the sculptor, and in its attainment a sense of beauty must always conquer the interest of facts, a respect for tradition must forbid the play of ingenious artifice.
The Egyptians, as they were the first, were also the most prolific sculptors. Their temples and palaces were covered with reliefs; innumerable statues of gods and heroes stood upon their plains. The Sphinx (q.v.), which M. Maspero places many centuries before Menes—who flourished some 4000 years before Christ—is the product of an art already mistress of her resources. There is not a tentative touch in this noble monument; it is not an experiment like the seated figures from Branchidæ, which only preceded the efflorescence of Greek sculpture by a few centuries, but a work as finished in its grand impassiveness as the Theseus (so called) of the Parthenon. But Egyptian art, as it seems perfect in the beginning, knew no progress but decay. Its purpose was consistently the same. It did not advance, like Greek sculpture, from naïveté to accomplishment, from hieratic restraint to artistic enfranchisement. The school of Memphis is already a school of the decadence. And yet its artists are still for the most part bound in the chains of hieratic tradition. Their seated figures are always posed in the attitudes sanctioned by custom, the elbows firmly planted against the sides, the hands set forward upon the knees. Their reliefs also are stiff and archaic. While they display a knowledge of anatomy and an observation of the human figure in action, the head and legs are presented in profile, while the upper part of the body faces the spectator. This peculiarity was the result not of incompetence, but of a fierce conservatism. The reliefs, the figures of which either project from the ground or are depressed beneath it, were always coloured: indeed polychromy was invariable when the material was not naturally veined or coloured. But excavations at Boulak have shown that under the Memphis dynasty, despite the influence of the ancient school, realistic portraiture was practised with amazing success. Such a figure as the wooden Sheik-el-beled (see Vol. IV. p. 236) is neither stately nor beautiful, yet there is little doubt that it is a speaking likeness; and so much may be said for a dozen masterpieces treasured at Boulak. The first Theban school, which flourished from the 10th to the 16th dynasty, drew its inspiration from the school of Memphis. The same respect for tradition, the same interest in portraiture were piously preserved. Indeed Egyptian art clung to the ideals of grandeur and formality until the advance of Greece introduced a fresh science and a fresh civilisation. By its very austerity no less than by its balanced union of observation and convention the sculpture of Egypt displays a grandeur and impressiveness which it shares with no other manifestation of art. Its hybrid colossi and monstrous deities, hewn out of the stubbornest material, are still noble in spite of their ugliness; and that even the formal Egyptian was not incapable of representing graceful types the portrait of Meneptah and Queen Taia remain to show. And yet from the classical period the Sphinx alone survives (see figures in the article EGYPT, and at Vol. I. p. 22).
Assyrian sculpture, which grew out of the ruder art of Chaldea, like Egyptian, knew neither progress nor development. Its earliest monuments date from the 12th century B.C., but the magnificent series of reliefs in the British Museum are not earlier than the 9th and 8th centuries, and they display the inflexible characteristics of the most ancient period. The kings and viziers, who figure in the reliefs, conform to an invariable type. The monarch is recognised by his square-cut beard and jewelled tiara. He is often represented, like the figures of Egyptian reliefs, partly fronting the spectator, partly in profile. There is no attempt at portraiture, not a suggestion of naturalism. But in the treatment of animals the Assyrian allowed himself complete freedom. The lion-hunts are masterpieces of observation and execution. The finest reliefs prove that even before the matchless frieze of the Parthenon there were artists who could model the horse with animation and understanding. The Assyrians delighted also in hybrid forms; the portals of their palaces were guarded by colossal winged bulls with human heads, admirable specimens of which may be seen at the British Museum from the palace of Sargon (721-705 B.C.). Assyrian art in fine, despite its many conventions and inveterate symbolism, lacked the grandeur and the nobility of Egyptian sculpture. On the other hand, the artists of Assyria display a sense of life and movement, especially in their treatment of animals, unknown before them (see figures at Vol. I. pp. 517, 519, 633).
The origins of Greek sculpture are still in dispute. Some there are who would have us believe that the art which culminated in Phidias derived directly from Egypt or Assyria; others assert that it was autochthonous. The question does not admit of a positive answer. That the archaic Greeks were influenced by the art of the Orient is incontestable, but it seems no less certain that, the influence being superficial, Greek sculpture followed a natural course of development. In the treasure-house at Mycenæ are certain scabbards and sword-hilts of eastern design, if not of eastern workmanship, and there is no reason why the Phœnicians, the bagmen of antiquity, should not have carried these precious wares to Argolis. The famous Lion-gate, too, is Assyrian in character, and many examples of primitive Greek art are conspicuously Oriental. But both history and common sense are opposed to the view that the early masters of Selinus or the authors of the primitive Apollo statues (so called) owed a direct debt to Egypt. It has been pointed out that Egyptian art, when we first meet it, was finished and complete; its ideal was attained in obedience to hieratic laws. The sculptors of archaic Greece were too naïve to be the mere imitators of a classical style. Their aim was realism, so far as their limited resources and control of marble or bronze would carry them. The early history of Greek art is shrouded by the Greeks themselves in a veil of legend. With characteristic anthropomorphism the ancient critics were wont to represent each epoch in the development of art by a purely mythical hero. The Cyclopes, the Telchines, Dædalus, Butades, and Kore, to whom the invention of modelling is ascribed, are one and all very pretty fictions. Even Rhœcus and Theodorus, the inventors of bronze-casting, and Glaucus, who invented the soldering of iron (σιδήρου κόλλησιν), are names and no more. Indeed it is impossible until a comparatively late period to connect extant works with the name of their authors. When we examine the archaic monuments, such as the earliest metopes of Selinus, which are as old perhaps as 600 B.C., we find a style awkward and ingenuous even to barbarity. While the figures of Perseus and
Medusa front the spectator, the feet are planted from left to right, and the mason, so far from aiming at symmetry of design, was doubtless content with a vague semblance of humanity. The seated figures from Branchidæ, which may be as late as 540 B.C., are merely blocked out, and the seated Athena, ascribed to Endœus (550 B.C.), gives no promise of the golden age which followed less than a century later. The celebrated Lycian reliefs, known as the Harpy Tomb, mark a distinct step in advance. There is charm and dignity in their stiff elegance and beautiful drapery; and yet are they not still marred by the clumsy ingenuousness of the true primitive? At Athens art was born late and lived a brief, if brilliant, life. Nor is the stèle of Aristocles much better than an archaic experiment; though the relief of a woman stepping into a chariot, which may have been a metope of the Hecatompædon, has at least the suggestion of freedom and mastery. There exists a group of statues—called Apollo—which were fashioned in obedience to the same convention. They are rigid and clumsy in handling; the arms are fixed firmly to the side; and yet the surface is treated with breadth and simplicity, and there is an unmistakable Hellenism in the flow of the lines. That of Orchomenus is probably the most ancient, and may date from the 7th century; the most advanced in style is the so-called Strangford Apollo—now in the British Museum—which is doubtless not much older than the Ægina pediments.
The marble statues which adorned the gable-ends of the temple of Athena at Ægina, and are now the chief ornament of the Glyptothek at Munich, form the first great monument of Greek art which has come down to us. Each pediment represented the struggle of two opposing forces over a dead warrior. Though there is an archaic touch in the spare proportions and rigid attitudes of the figures, they are evidently the work of a master who understood his craft, and it is possible that the stern handling and the archaic smile were deliberate. The author is unknown. The eastern pediment is freer, and possibly later than the western, and the historians have ascribed it to Onatas, a sculptor whose name is preserved in the texts. But there is not a shred of definite evidence, and we can only describe these fine statues as the best specimen of Greek sculpture half a century before the advent of Phidias. The style of Myron and Polycletus is known to us only by copies; that of Kalamis not at all, unless the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo (so called) be a copy of his famous Apollo Alcxikakos. All three were older contemporaries of Phidias, and concerning them all the ancient critics waxed eloquent. If we may believe a hundred epigrams, Myron aimed at realism and illusion rather than at beauty. His disc-thrower has been celebrated through all the ages, although, if the copy be accurate, Quintilian described it accurately as distortum et elaboratum. Polycletus, on the other hand, was a true academic, and would have imposed a canon on the world. The well-known Doryphorus and Diadumenus are copies of his works; and though we may not determine therefrom his technique, we may at least realise the square proportion to which he bade his contemporaries conform.
In Phidias the art of sculpture culminated. Born at the most fortunate moment of the world's history, the artist of the Parthenon was a worthy contemporary of Sophocles and Plato. To his personal genius must be ascribed the marvellous efflorescence of art which conferred a unique glory upon the 5th century B.C. Cupidity and barbarism have effaced the monumental Chryselephantine (q.v.) figures of Athena and Zeus, which antiquity esteemed his masterpieces. The bronze colossus—Athena Promachos—no longer stands upon the Acropolis to strike fear into the heart of invading Goths. But the sculptured decorations of the Parthenon have been preserved, though not unhurt by time, for our admiration. In style there is a profound difference between the metopes, which are marked by a dry archaism, and the magnificent works which are still the supreme expression of the art. Maybe the metopes preceded the rest by some years, and there is at least a mastery and sureness in their handling which separates them by a long interval from the Æginetan sculptures. But the frieze and such groups from the pediments as have survived the shocks and explosions of history are the work of a hand and brain balanced and complete. Here breadth, simplicity, and finish unite; there is ever an exquisite quality of surface; plane is related to plane with amazing subtlety; the accidental is rigidly excluded; nature and the convention of the art are happily blent; a sense of dignity, beauty, and control is everywhere apparent; not only is each figure perfect in itself, but each is perfectly adapted to the space it fills; the structure of the pediment compelled the sculptor to set his figures in exquisitely varied pose, so that the composition of the groups—which represented episodes in Athena's career—was at once flowing and coherent. The march of the frieze—a procession in the Panathenaic festival—is as large and stately as its details are exquisite (see Vol. IV. p. 293). Phidias (q.v.) is to-day, as at his advent, incomparably the greatest sculptor of the world; and his school handed on the torch he had given into their hands. The restrained elegance of the Caryatides of the Erechtheum, the graceful Victories, with their beautiful draperies, which adorned the temple of Nike Apterous, the refined grandeur of a dozen stelæ, the charming movement of the Phigalian frieze, are the outcome of Phidias' serene example. The sculptured figures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, the shrine of the gold and ivory statue, are an interlude in the history of art. Legend in ascribing the east pediment to Pæonius (the author of the famous Nike), the west to Alcamenes, is almost certainly false; and, if judgment may be based upon style, these figures are earlier in date than the Parthenon. The so-called Neo-Attic school marks the decadence. Still beautiful in their decay, the works of Scopas (390-350), and of Praxiteles, his contemporary, have already declined from the austere and classic style of Phidias. Their works lack something of the repose and impartiality which distinguish the masterpieces of the Parthenon. Though both produced an immense quantity of works, we know little else than copies and the ancient texts can tell us. The one undoubted work of Praxiteles which still remains to us is the Hermes, discovered at Olympia in 1877; while the handiwork of Scopas may be seen in the sculptures of the Mausoleum. To the same period perhaps belong the incomparable Venus of Milo (see MELOS), and the grave Demeter of Cnidos now in the British Museum. Lysippus, the court sculptor of Alexander, followed with his new canon of small heads and jimp figures, and then the school of Pergamum, beginning the revolt against Attic repose, inflicted an irremediable injury upon the art of sculpture. The school of Rhodes, with its much bepraised Laocoön (q.v.), the school of Tralles, with its impossible Farnese bull, completed the glory of the unsculpturesque. The capital of art was then shifted from Athens to Rome, and the industrious band of Græculi esurientes fashioned for us the excellent if uninspired copies to which we owe so much of our knowledge of Greek sculpture. To catalogue their names were superfluous; they were not wont to sign them themselves. But they preserved for future ages such admirable works as the Amazon and the Doryphorus; and if the Apollo (q.v.) Belvedere and the Venus de Medici have since been monstrously overrated, their authors are not to blame. Lastly, mention must be made of Pasioteles, who, in the time of Pompey, made a determined effort—like the Pre-Raphaelites of England—to revive an archaic style, and even succeeded in establishing a school.
And then the art of sculpture suffered eclipse. In the early centuries of Christianity the attempt to model the human form was condemned as idolatrous, and such poor barbarous experiments as were made may be passed over in silence. In the 6th century a revival was inaugurated at Byzantium, and flatterers compared a monument erected by Justinian in 534 A.D., in honour of a victory over the Persians, to the masterpieces of Phidias. But the Christian spirit invading, Byzantine sculpture, truly the very lees of classicism, must needs take refuge in an elaborate symbolism. The use of gems and precious metals gave a certain splendour to the best examples of Byzantine art, and its influence was universal. No country in Europe escaped it, and until the 12th century its reign was undisputed. In the Gothic period sculpture was, as it were, rediscovered. Commonly somewhat rude and barbarous, often resigned to a vigorous realism, it was not an art deliberate and complete as was the sculpture of the Greeks. Its conventions grew up with its growth, and save in France it was rarely emancipated from the fetters of experiment. In England such monumental sculpture as belongs to the Gothic period is undistinguished and maladroit. William Torell's Queen Eleanor (13th century) will serve as an example as well as another, and the sculptured decoration of Henry VII.'s chapel at Westminster shows the Gothic style as it was before the Renaissance reached England. In France there is another tale to tell. The manifold figures which adorn the cathedrals of Chartres and Rheims, though Gothic in spirit, were produced under the influence of classical art. Their freedom and simplicity is a complete contrast to the barbarous productions of the previous century. However, there is no difficulty in the supposition that the French artists of the 13th century were familiar with Roman art, and to this acquaintance with a good school they owed their superiority both to their predecessors and to their contemporaries in other parts of Europe. The 14th and 15th centuries were a period of decline; the northern spirit gained a complete ascendancy, and with the exception of the works of Claus Sluter, which may be studied at Dijon, there is little to note before the Renaissance. Germany escaped from the thralldom of Byzantium in the 12th century, but she produced little work in the Gothic period that is either beautiful or sculpturesque. Not until the 15th century, when Syrlyn, Dürer, and Wohlgemut practised wood-carving, is there any notable advance. To Adam Krafft (1430-1507) a feeling of beauty and rhythm was denied. His figures are square and squat, his drapery is arranged after the German method in stiff, hard-cornered folds. The Visscher family—Peter Visscher (1455-1529) was the greatest—made no conspicuous progress. They were still true to the Gothic ideal, and though their best work, such as Peter Visscher's portrait of himself, displays a bluff realism, it was based upon an inartistic convention and possessed no vital inspiration.
In Italy the classical tradition did not die, and such Gothic sculpture as the Italians produced was either of foreign origin or tinctured strongly with a feeling of classicism. Niccolo Pisano, who was born in 1205, was a devout student of classical models. In much of his work the two styles were ingeniously blent—in the pulpit at Pisa, for instance—and he was profoundly influenced by Roman sarcophagi. Niccolo's son, Giovanni, followed in his father's steps, and, though still a primitive, conferred fresh glory upon the Pisan school, which the ingenious Orcagna (born 1329) brought to an end. Giacomo della Quercia (born 1374), the author of the celebrated Fonte Gaja at Siena, marks the transition from the old to the new, from the middle ages to the Renaissance. A student of nature, he only half understood the possibilities of the great revival, but his design for the gate of the baptistery at Florence (1401) was placed next in order after the designs of Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, and therefore he may be said to have heralded the re-birth of art. In Italy, where the Goth had never dominated, the Renaissance was a development rather than a revolution. The spirit had always been the same, and Ghiberti (born 1381), the first master of the new school, may hardly be called an innovator. His famous gates at Florence occupied the larger part of his life. The first was begun in 1403; the second was not finished until 1452. The work is marked by a snavity of line and a certain elegance in individual figures. But it is entirely pictorial; the design is rarely thought out with reference to the necessities and limitations of the art of sculpture, and there is scarce a panel in either gate that is not overcrowded with figures.
In 1386 was born Donatello, by far the greatest sculptor of the 15th century. Endowed richly with the artistic temperament, learned in all the new learning, Donatello was also an indefatigable observer of nature and a master of design. His work is Greek in the best sense; large, simple, and restrained. He did not, like Ghiberti, overstep the limits of his art; he did not, like Michelangelo, a man of far rarer genius, use sculpture to express the passions of a violent brain. Content to aim at perfection in his art, he produced a series of masterpieces, which for feeling of rhythm, sense of proportion, and architectural adaptation may scarce be matched save in the golden age of Athenian sculpture. Simplicity of plane, breadth of style, harmony of line, dignity of pose—these are the qualities which confer everlasting distinction on his St George, his equestrian statue of Gattamelata, and his incomparable reliefs. Michelangelo (1475–1564) has been discussed at length under his own name, and no more need be said of him here than that his gigantic personality has dominated the modern world; that his knowledge of the antique was so profound, his technical mastery so complete, that nothing save restraint was impossible to him; that he produced a series of extraordinary masterpieces in paint and marble; and that he founded a school which, beggared of his genius, did but exaggerate his more obvious faults. Luca della Robbia, the author of the 'Singing Boys' (1399–1482), is better known as the inventor of the famous Robbia ware than as a sculptor; while Benvenuto Cellini (1500–71), though he modelled the Perseus, is chiefly eminent as goldsmith and swashbuckler. The school of Michelangelo culminated in that most accomplished craftsman and mediocre artist Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), whose love of exaggerated forms and fantastic devices rendered his indubitable talent of no avail, though the unbounded influence which he exerted upon his contemporaries easily compassed the triumph of lawlessness and vulgar taste. Meanwhile the influence of the Renaissance was felt throughout Europe. In the 16th century, while Goujon imitated Cellini in France, Torrigiano in- spired the English with an admirable taste in decoration, and Adrian de Vries reproduced in Germany the unchastened vigour of Giovanni da Bologna. In the 17th century there followed a universal decadence. Bernini's theatricality bore abundant fruit. Coyzevox, Clodion, Adam, the Coustous, Pigalle, and the rest, in spite of their eminent talent, always suffered from lack of repose and the lust of effect. Yet are they by far the most distinguished sculptors of the 17th century. In England nothing memorable was produced save the still-life of Grinling Gibbons (q.v.; 1648–1721); while Andreas Schlüter (1662–1714) best represents the art as it was pursued in Germany. The flamboyant style lived through the first half of the 18th century. A group of foreigners—Roubiliac, Scheemakers, and Rysbrack—practised their trade in England with a certain success. But the one great artist of the age was a Frenchman, Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741–1828). This distinguished artist, despite his education, avoided on the one hand the dry frigidity of effete classicism, on the other the cheap ingenuity of the imitators of Bernini. A naturalist, he never surrendered the dignity of his art to catch a fleeting resemblance. Above all he was from first to last a sculptor. His modelling is always large and simple; and though in his bust of Glick he attempted to reproduce the texture of a mottled skin, he was justified by the event. He was the greatest portrait-sculptor of his own or indeed of any age; he invented the type of Molière, and the great men of the great age live to-day as he created them. And then came Canova (1757–1822), who drove sculpture back into an antique channel. Neglecting the achievement of the Renaissance, he revived the Græco-Roman style with an insipid triviality, which has been a law to several generations of industrious workmen. In England Gibson, Macdowell, Chantrey, Wyatt, and a hundred others proceeded from Flaxman and the new classic school. In France Chaudet, Pradier, and Rude (by far the most accomplished of them all) neglected Houdon for Canova. Thorwaldsen, relying upon this false example, built up an amazing reputation, which is already shattered. A tasteless imitation, an incapacity to observe, a flabby modelling mark out the achievement of the whole school as a warning to sculptors, and serve to prove that salvation never came by an unthinking adherence to a dead tradition. The 19th century, however, has revolted against Canova and all his works. In Alfred Stevens, the author of the superb monument to the Duke of Wellington, who to a profound study of Michelangelo added an unfailing sense of decoration, England found her greatest sculptor and the present generation has witnessed a sudden efflorescence. The France of to-day is also singularly rich in sculptors. Barye, the greatest animalier of modern times, belongs to a past generation, but, amid a mass of sculpture which is wholly unsculpturesque, the works of Dalou, Guillaume, and Rodin are evidence of a revival. M. Auguste Rodin exercises the most powerful influence. An artist of markedly individual talent and a master of technique, he would claim Donatello as his exemplar, but he has carried the art of sculpture further than the Florentine.
See Schnaase, Geschichte der Bildenden Künste, and Lübke's History of Sculpture (Eng. trans.); for Egyptian sculpture, Maspero's text-books; for Greek sculpture, Overbeck's Geschichte der Griechischen Plastik, Brunn's Geschichte der Griechischen Künstler, Murray's History of Greek Sculpture, and the works by Collignon (vol. i. Paris, 1892) and Furtwängler (1894; trans. 1895). W. B. Scott's British School of Sculpture will be found useful, as also Eméric David's Histoire de la Sculpture Française. For Italian sculpture the reader may refer to Mr C. C. Perkins's handbooks. See also the monographs cited in the articles on the great sculptors in this work.