SCULPTURE. 



SCULPTURE. 



378 







sculpture ; and whatever interest they excite is derived rather from 

 the value that attaches to them in an archreological point of view, than 

 from any merit that they possess as works of art. 



It has been observed that some Etruscan works are found to differ 

 from these in the style of their execution. This is particularly ob- 

 servable in the recumbent figures that have been discovered in the 

 Volterran and other Etruscan tombs and hypogiea. Some of these are 

 small, but many are of large size, and usually decorate the lid of the 

 coffin or sarcophagus in which the ashes and sometimes the body of 

 the deceased were deposited ; closely resembling in this respect the 

 style of monumental sculpture in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries. 

 In these figures there is a totally different character, both in form and 

 expression, from the true Etruscan monuments. The heads frequently 

 possess great beauty ; there is often a strong character of nature in 

 them, and it seems probable that they were intended to be portraits of 

 those whose tombs they surmount. Many of them show marks of 

 having been painted. The age of these works is undetermined. From 

 the locality in which they have been found, and from the inscriptions 

 which they bear, they would seem to belong to remote times of 

 Etruscan dominion. In other respects, as in the general heaviness of 

 the forms and clumsiness of drapery, they call to mind the style of art 

 of a low Roman period ; to which time, indeed, some antiquaries have 

 at once assigned them. The question is not unattended with diffi- 

 culty. There is every reason to believe that the ancient tombs of 

 Etruria had been invaded, and in many instances opened and 

 plundered, long before they were rediscovered by our modern archxo- 

 logista and collectors. It is also probable that many of them have 

 been used as depositories of the dead by a people much more modem 

 than their original constructors. Objects have been found in them of 

 various ages, from which it would appear either that many of the 

 tombs and sarcophagi are really of a later date than usually has been 

 supposed, or that the ancient burying-places have been used for the 

 dead of a more modern race. 



It is worthy of remark, as it may account in a great measure for 

 the distinctive quality of Etruscan art, that Etruria, like Egypt, was 

 ruled by a powerful hierarchy. Their chiefs, Littumona, were priests 

 as well as temporal rulers, and they may, like their Egyptian brethren, 

 have exercised some influence in directing art, and in preserving from 

 innovation the forms once consecrated by religion. It is at the same 

 time probable that this influence was not so restrictive in Etruria as it 

 was in Egypt ; for the varieties that are found in works of art prove 

 that the artists here took greater liberty than was permitted to those 

 of Egypt. This appears to be the most reasonable way of accounting 

 for the continuance of a distinctive style and limited progress of design 

 among a people who were eminently clever (4>iAor<xrai) and ingenious. 

 Considered in this point of view, Etruscan sculpture holds a position 

 of great interest in the history of art. It is impossible not to recognise 

 in it the connecting link between two systems, namely, the practice of 

 art for hieratic or purely sacred purposes, and that more liberal and 

 general development of it which, under the later and more refined 

 Greeks, WAS directed to the illustration of the most poetical and sublime 

 >tions through the medium of the most beautiful forms. Of the 

 great extent of their practice in sculpture a sufficient proof is afforded 

 by the fact mentioned by historians that when after having sustained 

 long and expensive wars against the Romans, the Etrurians were 

 finally subdued by them, and became a Roman province (about 

 280 B.C.), two thousand statues were taken by the victors from Volsinii 

 alone. (Plin., Hist. Nat.,' xxxiv. 7.) 



The Etrurians were famed for their skill in making vases, and 

 different towns became celebrated for peculiarities of manufacture, 

 (Plin., ' Hist. Nat,' xxxv. 45.) There is however reason for believing 

 the greater number of painted ttrra-cntta vases, usually called Etruscan, 

 from being first discovered in Etruria, to be Greek. Their subjects, 

 their style of painting and design, evidently connect them with that 

 people ; and it has been observed, that though the Etrurians inscribed 

 every other work of art with their own characters, there is scarcely an 

 instance of a painted vase with any other than a Greek inscription : 

 OHM of these may, however, be imitations of Greek vases. The Arezzo 

 ( Arretium) vases are of a fine clay of a red colour, but the figures are 

 in relief : many of these are of a comparatively late period, and bear 

 Latin inscriptions. (Inghirami.) The arrival in Etruria of Demaratus 

 with artists from Corinth has been assigned as the date of the intro- 

 duction of the art of making vanes, and of other processes in the 

 plastic art. It is, however, more probable that they only effected some 

 changes in the style of design that already prevailed; for modern 

 discoveries seem to establish the existence in Etruria of a manufacture 

 of cinerary urns and vases long anterior to the appearance of the 

 refugees from Corinth. (Lanzi, 1. c. ; Winckelman, ' Storia della 

 Hcultura;' Mrs. H. Gray, ' Tombs of Etruria.) 



The Gallery of Antiquities at Florence contains several extremely 

 curious specimens of Etruscan sculpture, especially in some figures of 

 large size in bronze. Some of these have inscriptions on them. The 

 bronze she-wolf, preserved in the Capitol at Rome, is also a remarkable 

 example of ancient art in the Etruscan manner. The extensive dis- 

 coveries that have been made in different parts of Tuscany of late 

 years have likewise added greatly to our knowledge of the Etruscan 

 art and customs, and have enriched the museums of Rome, Naples, 

 Florence, and even England, with most interesting records of this 



remarkable people. The remains . preserved in these and in private 

 collections are well worthy of attention, but a detailed description 

 of them belongs rather to the general history of the country and its 

 antiquities. 



The works in sculpture of the Etrurians are chiefly in terra-eotla, 

 stone, and bronze ; and the most ancient tombs have supplied some 

 exquisitely worked ornaments in gold, as well as larger pieces of 

 armour of the same costly material. 



Greek Sculpture. la the preceding pages [we have had rather to 

 notice its existence than to trace the progress of sculpture ; for, with 

 very limited exceptions, its practice was under circumstances so' little 

 favourable for its improvement, that it is scarcely possible to connect 

 it, in any way, with the refined pursuit which it afterwards became in 

 the hands of the Greeks. In other countries it never advanced 

 beyond certain limits ; mere representations of objects were produced 

 seldom elevated by sentiment or feeling ; and if, sometimes, the rude- 

 ness of first attempts at form was overcome, the art still remained in 

 fetters. In Greece, on the other hand, sculpture soon rose superior to 

 all those prejudices that would have restricted its advancement. With 

 this gifted people it became something more than a merely mechanical 

 pursuit. It was here that the conceptions of sublime and glowing 

 fancies were embodied in the productions of what may truly be termed 

 a race of poet-artists. Writers have endeavoured to account in 

 various ways for this universally admitted superiority of the Greeks 

 over every other nation among whom the fine arts had been practised, 

 and usually have attributed their success to such physical causes as a 

 fine climate, or the prevalence of beautiful forms, or to the public 

 exercises so general in that country ; or to the kind of government in 

 those communities in which the arts were most successfully cultivated. 

 Valuable as some of these conditions must be allowed to be towards 

 the perfection of art, they are by no means sufficient to account for an 

 excellence which, even amongst the Greeks, was both extremely partial 

 with respect to locality and extent, and limited as to its duration. Nor 

 were those particular states in which the arts of design most flourished 

 peculiarly favoured beyond others in the causes supposed to contri- 

 bute to that excellence. The climate of Attica, it is admitted, was 

 unequal ; and though vegetation appeared in the greatest luxuriance 

 in some spots, in others the soil was barren and naked. With regard 

 to beauty, too, there is no reason to believe that the people who most 

 excelled in the fine arts (namely, the Athenians) were distinguished 

 beyond all other Grecians for this quality. Cicero, indeed, makes a 

 very remarkable observation which would go far to prove that the 

 contrary was the fact. He says, speaking of the crowd of young 

 men whom he saw at Athens, how few there were who were really 

 handsome. (' De Nat. Deor.,' lib. ii., c. 79.) And it is curious also 

 that of all the women whose celebrity for beauty has reached us, not 

 one appears to support in this respect the honour of Athens. Pliryne 

 was a native of Thebes, Glycera of Thespitc, Aspasia was born at 

 Miletus, and when Zeuxis, the painter, desired to procure the most 

 beautiful models for his Aphrodite, it is said he produced his master- 

 piece from the study of seven virgins of Crotona. It is not intended 

 to deny the existence of beautiful forms amongst the Athenians, but 

 Hint ply to show that it is not to this exclusive possession that their 

 success in the imitative arts can justly be attributed. The admiration 

 of beauty amongst the Lacedaemonians is admitted ( yElian, ' Var. 

 Hist.,' xiv. 27 ; and ' Athen.,' xii. 12) ; but the fine arts were not per- 

 mitted to be practised in Sparta. In other parts of Greece also 

 personal beauty conferred a title to distinction; the priests of the 

 young Zeus at vEgiuin in Acluca, those of the Ismenian Apollo, and 

 the boys who walked in procession at the festivals in honour of 

 Hermes at Tanagra, were youths to whom a prize of beauty had been 

 awarded (Pans., vii. 24 ; ix. 10. 22) ; but no school of art arose out of 

 this which at any period equalled, or attempted to equal, that of 

 Athens. It is scarcely necessary to allude to the question of govern- 

 ment. The arts flourished where the most different forms existed. 

 Corinth held a secondary rank among the cities of art, while Athens 

 and Sicyon were in the first. Indeed, if wealth, pomp, and luxury had 

 been necessary, or alone favourable, for the success of art, it would 

 have been exhibited among the splendid communities of Asia, and not 

 been left to its comparatively tardy development in the small, 

 scattered, and often disturbed states of Greece. It was not to any of 

 these accidents, either singly or collectively, that the perfection of 

 Greek sculpture was owing. It was the principle upon which, among 

 that people, imitative art was founded (and upon which it was prac- 

 tised throughout all its stages), that led to its excellence. The whole 

 secret of the superiority of the best schools of Greece was in their 

 making nature, in her most perfect forms, their model, the only 

 means by which perfection in art can be attained. As soon as they 

 acted upon this knowledge, their sculpture became almost as divine as 

 their great examplar. 



Judging from their poetry, and from their art, whether in their 

 sculpture or their painting, it would seem that the Greeks had an 

 intuitive sympathy with beauty. The artists seem to have been 

 careful never to lose sight of this principle, by expressing any passion 

 or feeling under forms at variance with the simple laws of beauty. All 

 extremes of expression are studiously avoided, and they appear to have 

 chosen only those subjects for representation which allowed them to 

 keep within these bounds. Pliny (' Hist. Nat.,' xxx. 37) mentions an 



