PROFESSIONAL INSTITUTIONS. 561* 



and composers of hymns as well as to those of the plastic artists, 

 says that "the service of the temple comprehends the whole 

 variety of these efforts," also says that "the earliest sculptors 

 were persons of a sacerdotal character." On another page he 

 adds, concerning sculpture 



"... in this domain of artistic activity, all things were bound by the 

 decrees of the priests and by close relations with religion. . . . They 

 [artists] were regarded as persons in the service of the divine religion." 

 The extent to which sculpture subserved religious purposes may 

 he judged from the s1>atement of Mahaffy that 



'' The greatest sculptors, painters, and architects had lavished labor 

 and design upon the buildings [of the oracle at Delphi]. Though Nero 

 had carried off 500 bronze statues, the traveler estimated the remaining 

 works of art at 3,000, and yet these seem to have been almost all statues." 

 As showing the course of professional development it may be 

 remarked that though, in archaic Greek sculpture, the modes of 

 representing the various deities were, as in Egypt and India, so 

 completely fixed in respect of attitudes, clothing, and appurte- 

 nances that change was sacrilege, the art of the sculptor, thus 

 prevented from growing while his semi-priestly function was 

 under priestly control, simultaneously began to acquire freedom 

 and to lose its sacred character when in such places as the pedi- 

 ments of temples, figures other than divine, and subjects other 

 than those of worship, came to be represented. Apparently 

 through transitions of this kind it was that sculpture became 

 secularized. Men engaged in chiseling out statues and reliefs 

 in fulfillment of priestly dictates were regarded simply as a 

 superior class of artisans, and did not receive credit as artists. 

 But when, no longer thus entirely controlled, they executed works 

 independently, they gained applause by their artistic skill and 

 " became prominent celebrities, whose studios were frequented by 

 kings. 



To the reasons, already more than once suggested, why in 

 Rome the normal development of the professions was broken or 

 obscured, may be added, in respect of the profession of sculptor, 

 a special reason. Says IMommsen : 



" The original Roman worship had no images of the gods or houses set 

 apart for them ; and although the god was at an early period worshiped 

 in Latium, probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and 

 had a little chapel (aedicula) built for him, such a figurative representation 

 was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa." 



The appended remark that the representation of the gods was 

 "generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation " ap- 

 pears to be in harmony with the statement of Duruy. 



" Even after the Tarquins, the images of the gods, the work of Etruscan 

 artists, were still made only in wood or clay, like that of Jupiter in the 

 Capitol, and like the qiiadriga placed on the top of the temple." 



VOL, XLVIII. 40* 



