94 Mr Wilson on the State of the Arts in Italy. 



sculpture in Italy, England could boast a succession of very 

 eminent sculptors. I may mention the estimation in which 

 our great Flaxman is held in Italy. " Flaxman," said a dis- 

 tinguished artist to me on one occasion, " was the greatest 

 sculptor the world has known since the time of the Greeks ;" 

 and this opinion is very general in Italy. I touched shortly 

 on the state of painting in the different Italian capitals. I shall 

 pursue the same course with sculpture, but more briefly still, 

 merely remarking that, with one or two exceptions, there are 

 no Italian sculptors of eminence out of Rome. 



In connection with the arts of painting and sculpture, we 

 may now consider mosaic work and cameo-cutting as practised 

 in Rome. The art of mosaic work has been known in Rome 

 since the days of the republic. The severe rulers of that period 

 forbade the introduction of foreign marbles, and the republi- 

 can mosaics are all in black and white. Under the empire the 

 art was greatly improved, and not merely by the introduction 

 of marbles of various colours, but by the invention of artificial 

 stones, termed by the Italians smalti, which can be made of 

 every variety of tint. 



This art was never entirely lost. On the introduction of 

 pictures into Christian temples, they were first made of mosaic ; 

 remaining specimens of these are rude, but profoundly inter- 

 esting in a historical point of view. When art was restored 

 in Italy, mosaic also was improved, but it attained its greatest 

 perfection in the last and present century. Roman mosaic, as 

 now practised, may be described as being the production of 

 pictures by connecting together numerous minute pieces of 

 coloured marble or artificial stones ; these are attached to a 

 ground of copper by means of a strong cement of gum mastic, 

 and other materials, and are afterwards ground and polished 

 as a stone would be to a perfectly level surface ; by this art 

 not only are ornaments made on a small scale, but pictures of 

 the largest size are copied. In former times the largest cupolas 

 of churches, and not unfrequently the entire walls, were en- 

 crusted with mosaic. The most remarkable modern works are 

 the copies which have been executed of some of the most im- 

 portant works of the great masters for the altars in St Peter's. 

 These are in every respect perfect imitations of the originals ; 



