B A S 



8 



B A S 



The ordinary stylo of mezto-rilievowai also used for gems, 

 and indeed for all work* in this branch of sculpture winch 

 required clow inspection, and needed no conventional eon- 

 (rn.ir.ii-. A Hal style of relief, which it oractimos oliserv- 

 ablc in cameo*, wa* adopted only for the take of displaying a 

 ubiect on a different coloured ground ; the layers of colour 

 in the stone employed, generally the inrdonvx, being very 

 thin. The difference of colour in the ground has, however, 

 V.-i-i nf giving roundness to the figures relieved on it, 

 la if. their whole effect becoming apparent, the internal 

 markings disappeared. The figures on the Portland Vase 

 are treated on this principle ; and as it was intended to 

 imitate a precious stone (for which indeed it was at first 

 taken), the thinness of the outer layer of colour is also 

 imitated. Such works, however, reduced to one colour in 

 a cast or copy, ore totally, wanting in effect and style. The 

 impressions from intogli, or en graved gems, which were used 

 for seals, are never in the Hat style of relief ; but however 

 slightly raised, are on the principle of mezzo- rilievo as above 

 defined. The gems of Dioscorides, the finest of antiquity, 

 are in mezzo-rilievo, and often of the fullest kind ; as for 

 instance, the heads of Demosthenes and lo, and the figures 

 of Mercury and Perseus. The same may be observed of 

 other celebrated gems, such as the Medusa of Solon, the 

 Hercules of Cneius, &c. It is supposed that the same 

 artists who engraved on gems, and who frequently inscribed 

 their names, also executed the dies for coins. The hitter 

 are among the finest antique works of art ; but of the many 

 thousand existing specimens there is but one which bears 

 the name of the artist, viz., the coin of Cydonia in Crete, the 

 inscription on which proves it to be the work of Ncvantus. 

 It was observed, that in the antique coins the least important 

 parts are the most raised, and the reasons which dictated 

 this practice limited the view of the head to the profile ; 

 but as the same reasons were no longer applicable in en- 

 graved gems, the impressions from which could be renewed 

 at pleasure, the front, or nearly front view of the bead was 

 occasionally attempted, and seems to have been preferred by 

 Dioscorides and his school. The head of lo before men- 

 tioned, considered with reference to this specific propriety 

 of its style, as well as with regard to its general merits, is 

 placed by Visconti in the first class of antique engraved 

 gems. Thus the most skilful artists of antiquity seemed 

 to consider the style of any one of the arts to consist chiefly 

 in those points which were unattainable by its rivals. It 

 may be here observed too, that they generally limited their 

 representation to the most worthy object, viz., the human 

 figure, when the dimensions on which they were employed 

 were necessarily confined. Indeed the principles of imita- 

 tion itself were, as it were, condensed, and true character 

 often exaggerated as the materials appeared less promising ; 

 so that the genius of antient art is as conspicuous in minute 

 engraved gems as in colossal sculpture. 



Mezzo-rilievo of the fullest kind was also fitly employed 

 (as well as alto-rilievo, when in situations not exposed to 

 accidents) to ornament tombs and sarcophagi. These 

 works, placed in the open air, decorated the approaches to 

 cities, as the sepulchres were always without the walls. 

 The Appian Way was I he most magnificent of these streets 

 of tombs in the neighbourhood of Rome, and must have 

 exhibited, literally, thousands of sepulchral monuments. 

 Though generally the work of Greek artisU, and often 

 interesting from being copies of better works now lost, the 

 haste and inattention with which such prodigious numbers 

 were executed, tended to degrade the style of their sculp- 

 ture. In these rilievi, even in lh<* better specimens, build- 

 ings and other object* are occasionally introduced In-hind 

 the figures, thus approaching the spurious style of relief 

 in which the effects uf i are attempted to be 



expressed : a great variety, of various degrees of excellence, 

 are to be seen in the British Museum. The greater part 

 of what are culled Roman bassi-rihcvi arc of this kind, 

 and may be considered a middle style between the pure 

 Greek rilievo and the modern Italian. It was from antique 

 sarcophagi, fine in execution, but with these defects in style, 

 that Niccola da Pisa, in the 13th century, first caught 

 the spirit of antient an. Many of the works from \\ In.-h 

 he is believed to have studied are still preserved in Pisa. 

 D Agincourt gives a representation of one of the best. 

 In imitating the simplicity of arrangement, and, in a remote 

 degree, the purity of forms which these works exhibited, 

 the artist was not likely to correct the defects alluded to 

 which had been already practised in Italy and elsewhere. 



Various degrees of relief, background figures and obiecN. 

 and occasional attempts at perspective, are to be found 

 in the works of the 1'isaui and their scholars ; yet their 

 works, which are to be regarded as the infancy of Italian 

 art, and which undoubtedly art rude enough in work- 

 manship and imitation, are purer in style than those of 

 the succeeding Florentine masters, who attained so much 

 general perfection in sculpture. The rilievi of Donatella 

 are mostly in the style culled by the Italians stiar 

 the flattest kind of mezzo-rilievo, according to the definition 

 before given, which he probably adopted, as he worked in 

 bronze, from the facility of casting; yet in such a style, 

 commanding little distinctness from its inconsiderable pro- 

 jection, he introduced buildings, landscape, and the usual 

 accessories of a picture. But this misapplication of 

 nuity was carried still farther by Lorenzo Ghiberti, . 

 celebrated bronze doors of the baptistery, or church of San 

 Giovanni, at Florence, which exhibited such skilful < 

 positions, in which the stories are so well told, and in which 

 the single figures are so full of appropriate action. In these 

 works the figures gradually emerge from the ttim-riatu 

 style to alto-rilievo. They ore among the best specimens of 

 that mixed stile, or union of basso-rilievo with the prin- 

 ciples of painting, which the sculptors of the fifteenth 

 tury and their imitators imagined to be an improvement on 

 the well-considered simplicity of the antients. In these and 

 similar specimens the unreal forms of perspective buil'i 

 and diminished or foreshortened figures, w Inch in pi< 

 create illusion when aided by appropriate light and shade, 

 and variety of hue, arc unintelligible or distorted in a real 

 material, where it is immediately evident that the objects 

 are all on the same solid plane. Even Vasari, who wrote 

 when this mixed style of rilievo was generally practised, 

 remarks the absurdity of representing the plane on which 

 the figures stand ascending towards the horizon, according 

 to the laws of perspective ; in consequence of which ' we 

 often sec,' he says, ' the point of the foot of a figure, 

 standing with its back to the spectator, touching the middle 

 of the leg,' owing to the rapid ascent or foreshortening of 

 the ground. Such errors, he adds, are to be seen ' even 

 in the doors of San Giovanni.' Lorenzo Ghiberti, like other 

 Florentine sculptors, first learnt the practice uf his art from 

 a goldsmith, and the designs of the artists who competed 

 with him for the honour of executing tho doors of San Gio- 

 vanni were submitted to the judgment of goldsmiths and 

 painters as well as sculptors. 



The taste of the Florentines in basso-rilievo was thus greatly 

 influenced by the prevalence of a style most applicable to 

 the precious metals, in which a general sparkling ctl> 

 best insured by avoiding uniformly violent relief, which 

 projects considerable shadows, and especially by avoiding 

 unbroken flatness. The background is thus filled with 

 slightly relieved distant objects, so as to produce everywhere 

 a more or less roughened or undulating surface. The same 

 end seems to have been attained in the antique silver vases, 

 by the introduction of foliage. The style continued to be 

 practised with occasionally greater absurdities than those 

 before alluded to, and perhaps less redeeming excellence, till 

 the close of the last century. The sculptor Falconet says 

 of the antique bassi-rilievi, that ' however noble their compo- 

 sition may be, it does not in any way tend to the illusion of 

 a picture, and a basso-rilievo ought always to aim at this illu- 

 sion.' He leaves no doubt as to the literal meaning he intends 

 by citing the Italian writers who applied the term tjuadro 

 indiscriminately to picture and basso-rilievo. Sculpture in 

 this country was indebted principally to Flaxtnan for the 

 re\i\:il of a puier taste in the application of basso-rilicvo 

 to architecture. In works of decoration, intended to bo 

 executed in the precious metals, in which, as before ob- 

 served, moderately embossed and general richness of surface 

 is so desirable, in order to display the material as well as 

 the work, he, however, united his own purity of taste and 

 composition with an approach to the mixed style of relief 

 practised by the Florentine masters, who. in this branch of 

 sculpture, perhaps never equalled his shield of Achilles. 



BAS8OMP1BRRE. FRANCOIS DE, Marshal of 

 Frame, and Captain-General of 'the Swiss Guards, was 

 born in Lorraine, on the 12th of February, l'i/"'.i. The 

 family name was originally Betstem, or, as Mr. Croker con- 

 jectures, Bassenstein gallicised into BtMompierre. His 

 education was, all things considered, excellent for the limes 

 in which he lived: it reminds us, in many particulars, of 

 Montaigne's education, which that amusing writer lias 



