369 



SCULPTURE. 



SCULPTURE. 



370 



cypress, cedar, ebony, and box, for their capability of resisting the 

 injuries of time. (Plin., ' Hist. Nat. ,' xvi. 40.) Pausanias saw several 

 statues of wood during his travels in Greece, and the following 

 instances will serve to show that this apparently humble material was 

 employed for representing the most elevated personages in the 

 ancient mythology. The statue of Apollo Archegetes was composed 

 of ebony, as was the statue of Diana Limnitis. At Lacedsemon the 

 statue of Venus was of cedar. A statue of Apollo made of box 

 adorned the treasury of the Sicyonians in the Altis. In the temple of 

 Castor and Pollux at Argos were their statues, those of their children, 

 and of their mothers, all made of ebony. All these works in wood 

 have perished, notwithstanding Pliny's observation, " Materia; ipsa; 

 seternitas " (' Hist. Nat.,' xiii. 5). A few however of smaller dimen- 

 sions have been found in tombs. They are chiefly figures of Egyptian 

 idols ; and the wood of which they are made seems to be sycamore. 

 Gold, silver, iron, tin, copper, lead (and their compounds), wax, and 

 plaster, were all used for the purpose of casting. [BRONZE ; FOUNDING.] 

 A mixture of gold and silver, in the proportion of one to five, formed 

 a composition termed Electrum. According to Homer, Helen presented 

 to the temple of Minerva at Lindus, in Rhodes, a cup made of 

 electrum, of the exact form and size of one of her own breasts. A 

 mixture of copper and tin, with sometimes, but not always, small 

 portions of other metals, formed what the Greeks called Chaleos 

 (x<t\nos); the Romans, Ji ; and modern artists (from the Italians), 



There was a statue of Augustus of amber ; and at the celebration of 

 funeral ceremonies, as those in honour of Sulla, statues were some- 

 times made of </MI and an/motif*, as well as of other materials of the 

 most combustible nature, as, for instance, of hay. Among the strange 

 conceits of artists there is mention of a statue of the goddess of Love 

 made of loadttont, which attracted a Mars of iron. 



The union, or rather, combination of different marbles in the same 

 work was called peifK&ie sculpture. When painting or colouring was 

 resorted to, it was termed polychromie sculpture. These mixtures, 

 which modern taste disapproves, were resorted to by the most cele- 

 brated artists of antiquity, and during the most flourishing period of 

 sculpture and architecture in Greece. The various architectural 

 members of their temples were picked out in red and blue ; and the 

 backgrounds, and frequently parts also of the sculpture itself, especi- 

 ally of rilievi, were coloured, to give further effect to the design. 

 There can be no doubt that the peculiar circumstances of the climate 

 must materially affect the appearance of this kind of decoration. 

 What in the dull atmosphere of northern countries would, at the best 

 of times, appear cither dingy or tawdry, might easily be imagined to 

 have a very different effect when seen clearly defined and relieved 

 against a cloudless blue sky, and by the bright glare of a southern sun. 

 The combination, under such favourable circumstances, of white 

 marble, of which the temples were usually constructed, with simple 

 though brilliant colours to indicate the moulding* or smaller members of 

 the architecture and sculpture, sparkling with gold ornaments, certainly 

 offers to the fancy a spectacle of surpassing splendour. It is not quite 

 so easy to reconcile with our notions of propriety or good taste the 

 mixture of materials for sculpture irithin buildings, where space, and 

 sometimes light, if the temple were not open Jin the roof, would be 

 wanting to dissipate the heaviness of effect which it is conceived such 

 works would have. The introduction of foreign substances, either 

 metal, precious stones, paste or glass, for eyes in statues and busts (of 

 which examples occur in works even of the best period of art), is a 

 species of barbarism that is quite unaccountable, and which the most 

 zealous admiration of the genius of the Greeks cannot qualify or 

 excuse. Such instances may however be considered exceptions to the 

 rule of pure taste and simple feeling which in exhibited in the greater 

 number of works by the sculptors of Greece ; and modern experience 

 will probably afford the best solution of what would otherwise seem 

 an anomaly, by suggesting that the artists, even of those times, were 

 occasionally dictated to, and their own better taste overruled by the 

 caprice of their employers. It seems difficult to account otherwise 

 for the strange circumstance of the lips as well as the eyes being inlaid. 

 There is more than one example of this among the fine bronzes pre- 

 served at Naples. 



Inscriptions were sometimes inserted into bronze statues ; the 

 letters being of a different metal from the figure. Cicero (' In Verr.,' 

 Orat. iv.) speaks of an Apollo inscribed with the name of Myron. In 

 the collection at Paris is a statue of a youth in bronze, on the left foot 

 of which are the remains of two Greek words, A0ANAIA . AEKATAN, 

 in silver letters. 



There was a very peculiar combination, rather referred to than 

 described by ancient authors, by which shades or tints of colour were 

 produced. Plutarch (' Symp.,' lib. v.) says that the sculptor Silanion 

 made a statue of Jocaata, the wife of Laius, king of Thebes, in which 

 she wan represented dying. To increase the intensity of the expres- 

 sion of the countenance, the artist by an ingenious mixture of the 

 metals of which the statue was composed, had produced a pallid 

 appearance. This, he says, was effected by the addition of silver. 

 Callixtratus admires a bronze statue of Cupid by Praxiteles, for its 

 elegant position, for the arrangement of the hair, its smile, the fire in 

 its eyes, and, he adds, there was in its countenance a vivid blush. He 

 observe* the same thing, and with equal admiration and astonishment, 



ARTS AHD 8CI. DIV. VOI-. VII. 



of a statue by Lysippus. After describing the work generally, he 

 says, the cheeks were coloured like the rose, and those who saw it 

 were struck with surprise at seeing the bronze imitate the appearance 

 of nature. The same remarkable effect is noticed in a bronze statue 

 of Bacchus by Praxiteles. To these may be added a statue of Athamas 

 at Delphi, mentioned by Pliny. He was represented sitting after the 

 murder of his son Learchus, whom he had precipitated from a rock. 

 This work, he says, was not entirely of iron ; for the artist, Aristonidas, 

 wishing to express the effect of confusion and remorse in the counte- 

 nance of the king, used a mixture of iron and bronze, which should 

 imitate in some measure the blush of shame. (Plin., ' Hist. Nat.,' 

 xxxiv. 14.) Other notices might be quoted of this practice of the 

 ancients. The writers who refer to these effects describe them as the 

 result of study and intention on the part of the artists, and do not 

 allow us to suppose that the mere accident of oxidation and decom- 

 position produced them. The art seems to be quite distinct from that 

 called toreutic ; the latter being the union of distinct materials, easily 

 removable, while the former is described as effecting an amalgama- 

 tion which produced shades or tints. The few writers who speak of 

 it are certainly general in their observations, and give no technical 

 details of the manner of effecting these combinations ; but this hardly 

 justifies the entire rejection of their testimony as to what they saw. 

 It is most probable that they coloured the statues after they were cast, 

 as Pliny says was done in Egypt (xxxiii. 9). The different compart- 

 ments and objects in the shield of Achilles (' Iliad,' xviii.) are described 

 as exhibiting different colours. This however, whether the passage be 

 Homeric and genuine, or interpolated at a later though ancient period, 

 may have been a specimen of toreutic art. That the ancient sculptors 

 increased, or imagined they increased, the effect of their produc- 

 tions in marble by adding colour, not only tradition but existing 

 monuments testify. It is therefore not only possible but highly pro- 

 bable that they had some process with which we are unacquainted, by 

 which they were able to produce some similar effects in their metal 

 works. 



Sculpture, as it was practised by the most ancient nations, must be 

 viewed in a very different light from that in which we consider its 

 employment in more modern times. With a comparatively uncivilised 

 and unlettered people sculpture and typical art were the only means 

 of representing ideas, and it had its origin almost in the wants of man. 

 With later nations (even of a remote antiquity) art became in a degree 

 a refinement; and then the various changes and improvements were 

 adopted that now occasion the difficulty in distinguishing between 

 original and engrafted styles. 



The few notices that are scattered over the writings of the ancients 

 are quite inconclusive as to a common origin of art ; although certain 

 received opinions upon the subject are occasionally met with. The 

 very late date of the oldest of these writers, compared with the 

 undoubted antiquity of the arts of design, accounts sufficieutly for 

 the difficulties they laboured under in collecting any trustworthy 

 evidence on such points, and for the fables, exaggerations, and con- 

 tradictions that abound in their statements. The adventures and works 

 attributed to Daedalus, for instance, are a proof of the limited know- 

 ledge that existed of the first artist whose, name occurs in the annals of 

 Greek sculpture. The inventions and improvements in various useful 

 arts due to a series of artists, and for which a single life would be 

 insufficient, are nevertheless all ascribed to this one individual, who, 

 after all, bore a name that in all probability was merely a general 

 appellation given in early times to any skilful workman or artificer. 

 In the same manner we find the introduction into Italy of the plastic; 

 art (simple modelling) attributed by Pliny to a refugee from Corinth at 

 so late a date as about 600 B.C. The arrival in Etruria of Demaratus 

 may have introduced changes or improvements in the fabric and 

 decoration of vases. The names of the artists who are said to have 

 accompanied him, Eucheir and Eugrammus, sound like epithets 

 indicative of skill, rather than simple names of persons. Some writers 

 speak of images having fallen from heaven. These several instances 

 are referred to in order to show that even where tradition had supplied 

 scattered and undefined notices of works of art of a remote date, they 

 had become so subject to change and misrepresentation as succeeding 

 generations received and in their turn again recorded them, that it 

 would be vain to place any dependence upon them for a history of the 

 origin of art. The inquiry into the precise time, the country, the 

 circumstances when the first efforts in sculpture were made, must 

 therefore be attended with almost insuperable difficulties. Not so the 

 establishment, at a later period, of epochs marked by changes in style, 

 and what artists call treatment. 



The desire to perpetuate the memory of extraordinary events, of 

 remarkable persons, or of their actions ; to honour heroes and bene- 

 factors even during their lives, and to hand down to future ages the 

 fame of their exploits, has been universal, and has rendered the arts by 

 which such an end could be attained objects of universal interest. 

 The first works applied to this purpose were no doubt marked by the 

 greatest simplicity. The oldest and most authentic histories speak of 

 monuments erected to mark the scene of any remarkable incident ; 

 and although, at the early periods referred to, these monuments were 

 only composed of rude blocks, or mere heaps of stones, still to such a 

 simple commencement may doubtless, in a great measure, be traced 

 the origin of sculpture. Jacob set up a heap of stones at Bethel t 



