Marble sculpture

“ Still more secondary is the position of sculpture in the civilization of to-day. Here and there a monument or statue commemorates some great name or some great event. But these are still outside the current of our daily life. Marble is to us a gospel of death, and we grow less and less fond of its cold abstraction. The glitter of bric-à-brac, bits of color, an unexpected shimmer here and there—such are the favorite aspects of art with us. ”

“ Around the walls stand the Antinous, the Amazon, the Lycian Apollo, the Juno; all famous productions of antique sculpture, and still shining in the undiminished majesty and beauty of their ideal life, although the marble that embodies them is yellow with time, and perhaps corroded by the damp earth in which they lay buried for centuries. ”

“ All is in white marble, and the sculpture is of exquisite delicacy: foliage, figures of every description are there in lavish profusion. The pillars are coupled, some twisted, some plain. The very bases are enriched with ornament. ”

“ Those who worship here from day to day become familiar with all this sculpture, and are not distracted, if they are not aided by the beauty and the majesty of such a wealth of art. But a stranger within the gates, for a morning only, seeing it all at once for the first and the last time, would find it difficult to withdraw his soul from the marble and contemplate for an hour the unseen and eternal. ”

“ There has rarely been such a distinguished success in circumventing the great difficulty of sculpture—which is to rob marble or metal of its specific gravity and make it appear light and buoyant, just as the difficulty of the painter is to give weight and substance to his fictions. ”

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

“ This miracle is wrought by a tall looking-glass, the mystery of which they soon fathom, because Nature creates a mirror for the human face in every pool of water, and for her own great features in waveless lakes. Pleased and satisfied with gazing at themselves, they now discover the marble statue of a child in a corner of the room so exquisitely idealized that it is almost worthy to be the prophetic likeness of their first-born. Sculpture, in its highest excellence, is more genuine than painting, and might seem to be evolved from a natural germ, by the same law as a leaf or flower. ”

“ The modern sculptor, working from the background to the front plane by repeated superlayers of clay, can introduce a variety of subtly differentiated planes, and may become absorbed in this composition of light and shade, producing an effect which we can describe as full of colour and which is exceedingly beautiful. The artist of old time, however,{142} graving the marble, wood or metal, started with the form of the figures under his hand, absorbed himself in them and regarded the open spaces of his composition, when he reached them, simply as a background. ”

“ In a marble country one should be always more and more astonished at the exquisite colour and structure of marble; in a slate country one should feel as if every rock cleft itself only for the sake of being built with conveniently.
Plate X.—Marble Masonry in the Duomo of Verona.
[Pg 377]
152. Now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials—Clay, and Stone; 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. ”

“ It must be done by leaving such projection in the marble as will take the light in the same proportion as the drawing does;—and a Florentine workman could do it, for close sight, without driving one incision deeper, or raising a single surface higher, than the eighth of an inch. Indeed, no sculptor of the finest time would design such a complex cluster of leaves as this, except for bronze or iron work; they would take simpler contours for marble ”

“ And if you will kneel down and look long at the tassels of the cushion under the head, and the way they fill the angles of the stone, you will,—or may—know, from this example alone, what noble decorative sculpture is, and was, and must be, from the days of earliest Greece to those of latest Italy.
"Exquisitely sculptured fringe!" and you have just been abusing sculptors who play tricks with marble! Yes, and you cannot find a better example, in all the museums of Europe, of the work of a man who does not play tricks with it—than this tomb. ”

“ A whole class of artists, called ἀγαλμάτων ἐγκαυσταί, were occupied in colouring marble sculpture, and their services were very highly valued. [5] In some cases, probably for the sake of hiding the joints and getting a more absorbent surface, the marble, however pure and fine in texture, was covered with a thin skin of stucco made of mixed lime and powdered marble. An alabaster sarcophagus, found in a tomb near Corneto, and now in the Etruscan museum at Florence, is decorated outside with beautiful purely Greek paintings, executed on a stucco skin as hard and smooth as the alabaster. ”

“ This will prevent the artist from transferring to the canvas that which in sculpture is dependent on the material employed—marble, for instance. Many inexperienced and indeed experienced painters do not distinguish the material from the form which it expresses—the stone from the figure which is carved in it; that which the artist forces from the dead marble, from the universal laws of art which are independent of it. ”

“ I am not sure whether it is frequently enough observed that sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of anything in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. ”

“ If such a project should ever be consummated, we may confidently hope that the finest specimens of sculpture, as well as the most curious and valuable remains, will be brought to light. No place abounded with such numerous offerings to the gods, and with such splendid and beautiful representations in marble and in bronze. ”

“ The portrait busts are perfect models of iconic sculpture. In some respects the use of'burnt clay for sculpture has great advantages over that of marble; the soft clay is easily and rapidly moulded into form while the sculptor's thought is fresh in his mind, and thus works in terracotta often possess a spirit and vigour which can hardly be reproduced in laboriously finished marble. ”

“ All work cut out in a solid material, in imitation of natural objects, is called sculpture. Thus carvings in wood, ivory-stone, marble, metal, and works moulded from wax and clay, come under the head of sculpture.
But sculpture, as we are about to consider it, is to be distinguished by the term statuary from all carved work belonging to ornamental art and glyptics. It must be borne in mind, however, that the sculptor does not ordinarily carve his work directly out of the marble; he first makes his statue, or bas relief, in clay or wax. ”

“ But if you carve in the marble what will break with a touch, or mould in the metal what a stain of rust or verdigris will spoil, it is your fault—not mine."
These are the main principles in this matter; which, like nearly all other right principles in art, we moderns delight in contradicting as directly and specially as may be. We continually look for, and praise, in our exhibitions the sculpture of veils, and lace, and thin leaves, and all kinds of impossible things pushed as far as possible in the fragile stone, for the sake of showing the sculptor's dexterity. ”

“ Marble Bust, unfinished.—This is an experiment in sculpture by our distinguished painter. I find it a very interesting one, and (pace the professional sculptors) a remarkable success. The head reverts over the right shoulder with a graceful and energetic turn; and these qualities, especially that of energy, are preserved in all points of view. The modelling of the bust and arms is pulpy and creased—more comparable in tendency to that of the Elgin Marbles than of later Greek sculpture. ”

“ Of course if one were to judge by the pictures in the Sunday supplements, all sculptors carve their marbles themselves; they seem to do little else. That is not true, alas. Certainly a189 busy sculptor may well save himself for other matters besides roughing-out a block of marble. ”

“ Though we know that sculpture was not left to the cold embrace of white marble, but must have been beautiful in colour as it now is in form, the genius of sculpture seems to dominate here. Greek architecture, too, only repeats in stone and marble and on a large scale the primitive construction of wood ”

“ The sculpture of the façade itself is remarkable. In most countries where granite abounds sculpture is coarse and rude, but here the reverse is the case, in spite of the fact that it is the work of the eleventh century. All the statues are semi-relief, the white marble being encrusted as it were upon the granite walls. ”

“ Such buildings as Santa Sophia in the Eastern Empire and the basilicas of Ravenna in the Western, stand to witness that the artistic sense itself was still alive. But no great political or social force called forth the craftsmanship of the sculptor. As the Dark Ages drew to a close, however, a change came about. Mankind once more sought to find expression for its deepest imaginations and beliefs through sculptured marble and bronze.
We may roughly fix the date of the rebirth of sculpture at 1000 a.d. ”

“ No subtlety of education could have formed a high school of art without these materials.
160. Next to the color, the fineness of substance which will take a perfectly sharp edge, is essential; and this not merely to admit fine delineation in the sculpture itself, but to secure a delightful precision in placing the blocks of which it is composed. For the possession of too fine marble, as far as regards the work itself, is a temptation instead of an advantage to an inferior sculptor ”

“ It is necessary to get rid of the idea, purely literary and traditional, that marble and bronze are the materials that must be used in great sculpture. The sculptor may use twenty materials in one work if required to express his idea. ”

“ Anyone accustomed to deal with marble blocks as vehicles of artistic expression, would avoid unnecessary projections as these cause great waste of material and expenditure of time. When plastering clay or wax on a flexible armature this consideration is not present, and modelled figures will naturally be freer in action than carved ones. As will presently be seen, certain marked differences in the treatment of relief sculpture depend on these same considerations of material and technique. ”

“ Hence the human figure came to be imitated by a process which was not sculpture in the literal sense of carving. It is significant that the Latin word whence we get effigy has also given us fictile, the making of statues being thus connected with the making of pots; and that the whole vocabulary of ancient authors shows that they thought of statuary not as akin to cutting and chiselling, but to moulding (πλάσσω = fingo) , shaping out of clay on the wheel or with the modelling tool.13 It seems probable that marble-work was but rarely used for the round until the sixth century ”

“ To succeed with a figure in marble the art requires a good craftsman first to set up a little model about two palms high, and in this model he carefully thinks out the pose, making his figure draped or nude as the case may be. After this he makes a second model of the size his marble is to be; & if he wants it to be particularly good he must finish the large [136] model much more carefully than the small one. ”

“ I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heart-throbs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses. ”

“ Besides her skill in sculpture, which is executive and technical rather than creative, she has exhibited talents for designing and constructing machinery, and devising new processes, especially in connection with her own art, such as a method of converting the ordinary limestone of Italy into marble, and a peculiar process of modelling, in which the rough shape of a statue is first made in plaster, on which a coating of wax is laid for working out the finer forms. ”

“ In their structure some are very compact and break with a smooth surface. Those capable of a fine polish are called marble, the more common uses of which are well known. The purest crystalline limestone is used in sculpture ”

“ Even the feelings aroused by this mystery of mysteries—death—were not beyond the cold stone and hot chisel of the sculptor. Allied to this faith—that there was no thought too profound for marble to express—was his favourite fancy that the form of his finished work dwelt in the rough block. His chisel did but release it from its marble tomb. He was not the author, only the agent through whom his work saw the light. As he himself wrote in one of the sonnets:
“The best of artists hath no thought to show Which the rough stone in its superfluous shell Doth not include ”