Statue

“ A great statue of gold towered noble and marvellous with uplifted arms, holding high the emblems of its spirit and power, and at the end of this vista, through the archway, and between the line of columns bearing statues poised against the background of sky, he caught glimpses of the lake's scintillating blue. ”

“ The mouth, with its full yet delicate lips, seems so really to smile outright, that it calls forth a responsive smile. The whole statue—unlike anything else that ever was wrought in the severe material of marble—conveys the idea of an amiable and sensual creature, easy, mirthful, apt for jollity, yet not incapable of being touched by pathos. ”

“ For observe, to that sculpture the spectator is usually brought in a tranquil or prosaic state of mind; he sees it associated rather with what is sumptuous than sublime, and under circumstances which address themselves more to his comfort than his curiosity. The statue which is to be pathetic, seen between the flashes of footmen's livery round the dining-table, must have strong elements of pathos in itself; and the statue which is to be awful, in the midst of the gossip of the drawing- room, must have the elements of awe wholly in itself. ”

“ Even as the cunning workman brings to pass The sculptor's thought from out the unwieldy mass Of shapeless marble, so Time lops away The stony crust of falsehood that concealed His just proportions, and, at last revealed, The statue issues to the light of day, Most beautiful, most human. ”

“ Like those of horsemen thundering in the charge.
God's own Knight-Errant! There his figure stands!
Our souls are full—our bonnets in our hands!
When the fierce torrent—lava-like—of bronze
To mould this statue burst it furnace bonds,
When it out-thundered in its liquid flow,
With splendid flame and scintillating glow,
'Twas in its wild tumultuous throb and storm
Type of the age which moulded into form
The god-like character of him sublime,
Whose name is reared a statue for all time
In the great minster of the whole world's heart.
* * * * *
I've called his name a statue. ”

“ A statue stands before us, the soul incarnate in ideal form, fixed and frozen for eternity. The picture is a reflection cast upon a magic glass; not less permanent, but reduced to a shadow of reality. ”

“ Every statue was hurled from its niche, every picture torn from the wall, every wonderfully painted window shivered to atoms, every ancient monument shattered, every sculptured decoration, however inaccessible in appearance, hurled to the ground. ”

“ In this "translation" of a Greek statue into an English picture, no less than in the bust of Clytie, we see how in the hands of a great artist painting and sculpture may become as sister arts indeed, yet without invasion or confusion; how, without any forced alliance of form and colour, a picture may share the gracious grandeur of a statue, a statue may catch something of the subtle bloom of beauty proper to a picture. ”

“ He bade his dream in the rock expand.
And lo! from the broken and shapeless mass
That grieved and doubted, it came to pass
That a glorious statue of priceless worth
And infinite beauty adorned the earth. ”

“ It is considered sound rhetoric to speak of the statue as existing in the block of marble before the sculptor touches it. How easy to fall into such false analogies! Can we say that the music existed in the flute or in the violin before the musician touches them? The statue in the form of an idea or a conception exists in the mind of the sculptor, and he fashions the marble accordingly. Does the book exist in the pot of printer's ink? Living things exist in the germ, the oak in the acorn, the chick in the egg, but from the world of dead matter there is no resurrection or evolution. ”

“ It is not so much in the statue itself that the beauty lies, but in the wonderfully natural arrangement of the robe which flows behind in billowy folds, until one touches it and marvels that it is really marble and not heavy satin. ”

“ sculptural and exquisite—such was Fantine; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul. ”

“ The cold, relentless marble statue, that stalks with thundering foot-fall into the middle of his solitary orgies alter him, is the stern embodiment of custom and convention, which he defies to the end, and boldly grasps the proffered stony hand, from an impulse stronger than his terrors. ”

“ Let his successors, who daily behold this monument, consider that it was not built to entertain the eye, but to instruct the mind ! Let them reflect, that their conduct will make it their glory or their reproach. Let them feel that similarity of manners, not proximity of blood, gives them an interest in this statue. ”

“ But after looking at it a little while the spectator ceases to think of it as a marble statue; it comes to life, and you see that the princely figure is brooding over some great design, which, when he has arranged in his own mind, the world will be fain to execute for him. No such grandeur and majesty has elsewhere been put into human shape. It is all a miracle; the deep repose, and the deep life within it. It is as much a miracle to have achieved this as to make a statue that would rise up and walk. ”

“ In the midst stood a stone statue of a venerable man, wrought in the best of mediæval sculpture, with robe and ruff, and tunic and venerable beard, resting on a staff, and holding what looked like a clasped book in his hand. ”

“ Again following the example of the ancients, the sculptor has delicately touched with gold her tiara, her sandals, and her ornaments, and has carried a graceful coloured border round the edges of her robe. The whole of the statue is in ivory, the throne, embossed with figures, in bronze, and the base of marble—a combination harmonious to the eye and well suited to the subject. The execution is most careful and delicate. It is impossible to imagine anything more true to nature than the bosom—which seems almost to heave with the last struggling breath—or the arm falling at her side. ”

“ The statue--unlike the monument, which at once arouses spontaneous emotions in the spectator--should express the human being, his sensations, his affections, his passions and struggles, and should arouse an enthusiasm of admiration while it awakens sympathetic echoes in the heart of the observer. ”

“ How steeped now in the stillness of moonlight are all those pale, pillared Churches, Courts and Cloisters, Shrines and Altars, with here and there a Statue standing in the shade, or Monument sacred to the memory of the pious—the immortal dead. ”

“ A statue stands now where her ashes were gathered to be cast into the Seine, but her fittest monument is the little fountain beneath it, the emblem of her innocence, of her inspiration, drawn not from court, or castle, or cloister, but from the inscrutable depths of that old human nature and that heaven common to us all—an emblem, no less, that the memory of a devoted life is a spring where all coming times may drink the holy waters of gratitude and aspiration. ”

“ Not from all the marble of the hills of Luini will such a people ever shape one statue that may stand nobly against the sky; not from all the treasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they gather, for their own descendants, any inheritance but shame. ”

“ Exquisitely, perfectly beautiful is the intense repose of her lovely countenance, in what I must ever feel to be the most beautiful and impressive statue in the world. The statue of the King is very fine too, but in her angelic presence he is forgotten. ”

“ The extreme beauty of the leg and foot, the pulpiness of the arms, the expressive sweetness of the face, and the resemblance of the marble to wax in point of mellowness, gives to this beautiful statue the appearance of a living female brunette. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here is whatever the lower people's interest, or the man of taste's curiosity can desire. The first object that presents itself to the eye, on entering into this noble hall, which is no less spacious than splendid, is the statue of the founder, inviting the lovers of literature to make use of the helps which she has provided for them. This statue is of white marble, as large as life, and entirely worthy of Mr More, the artist; who has improved the exact likeness with an air of grandeur and benevolence, dignity and affability. ”

“ With beauty borrowed from its place of birth.
Hence has the lute its song, the scroll its line;
Hence stands the statue glorious as its shrine;
Hence the fair picture, kings are fain to win,
The mind's creations from the world within. ”

“ At the upper end, raised by a single step from the other pavement, stood a statue of the Virgin—one of those exquisite conceptions to which an artist has given the beauty of genius developed by the labour of a life—one of those forms, which the modeller may frame, and then die.
Sculpture never seems to me like the representation of human life: its forms—pale, pure, and cold—have the shape, not the likeness, of our nature. ”

“ It is wonderful how, for the day or two after death, all that was lovely in life comes back to the face; the pure marble whiteness of the skin, the closed eyes, the features in such deep stillness, like those of a statue wrought in the highest ideal of art, but with that impressed upon them which was never yet the work of mortal hand. ”

“ It is, indeed, too picturesque, one may feel—with too expanded a composition and too much play of movement, to satisfy its architectonic function of relieving by a vertical line the horizontal of the balustrade. But, however that may be, as the portrait of a great musician and an idealisation of his art, it is a statue full of suggestion—a work of imagination, elevated, tender, deep and true. ”

“ A statue is the presentation, not of the human body, but of the human form, and more than that, of what the form expresses. When I am talking with my friend I am aware of his physical presence detaching itself from the background of the room in which we are. ”

“ Surely the sculptor has more prospect of making a fine statue out of a block of pure white Parian marble than out of an old black rock seamed and cracked with the storms of a half century. Surely upon a clean, white sheet of paper it is easier to write a deed or a will than upon a sheet of paper all scribbled and blotted and torn from top to bottom. ”

“ Nothing could be more graceful, more effective than the curtains held apart by the angels, or more delightfully touching than the slight shadow thus cast upon the recumbent statue, lending it something of the immediate stillness and impressiveness of recent death. ”

“ The sculptor feels that the statue is already lying in the marble awaiting only his creative touch to bring it forth. The metal is alive in the worker's hands, coaxing him to make of it something beautiful. ”

“ The smith who has beaten a ploughshare out of rough iron can give us the history of the share because he made it. The sculptor who calls into shape and form a beautiful statue knows the day and hour when the statue ceased to be a thing of the imagination only by the first application of his chisel. ”

“ That inevitable period has come,—for I have found it inevitable, in regard to all my works,—when I look at what I fancied to be a statue, lacking only breath to make it live, and find it a mere lump of senseless stone, into which I have not really succeeded in moulding the spiritual part of my idea. ”

“ It is obvious that a statue is intended to imitate a living man, that a picture is designed to represent real persons in real attitudes, or the interior of a house, or a landscape, such as it exists in nature. And it is no less clear that a novel or drama endeavours to represent with accuracy real characters, actions, and words, giving as precise and faithful an image of them as possible. ”

“ Instead of demanding such prosaic record, how much better it would be to call upon the sculptor to create out of his imagination some subject that may represent or symbolise the greatness of the hero and appeal to the imagination of succeeding generations, meanwhile gladdening all who pass and repass it daily with its essential beauties. Have you not seen a trousered, frock-coated statue against the pedestal of which are a row of seats and sitters with their back to the man that is to be remembered? ”

“ Now we could not without cracks or distorting of anatomies or complete remodelling change the pose of a statue even if it was modelled in some easily malleable substance; and the plastic change from stillness to motion in a figure, which we presume to be a memory, is wonderful when we think of it, as wonderful as if the little Tanagra in clay upon my shelf should change from its cast solidity and walk up and down before me. ”

“ To their tastes nothing beyond what we have described remains to witness, save a marble head crowned with laurel, two heads of aged women, and some crushed fragments of a large and exquisitely chiselled statue. ”

“ Take an illustration from another art. A statue has the symmetry of solid form. You can look at it from all sides, and from every side you can see the balance and rhythm of the parts. In a photograph this solidity of form disappears. You see only a flat surface. But you still recognize it as the reflection of a statue.
The Psalms were undoubtedly written, in the original Hebrew, according to a system of versification, and perhaps to some extent with forms of rhyme. ”