PLASTIC PLATA. 



579 



Presden an<l Mntirid are collections of his casts, 

 uikeu from the finest works of the plastic art in 

 Italy. (See Mengs.) 3. Wax. The same Lysistra- 

 tus invented the art of casting figures of wax. The 

 Roman images were formed of wax, and numberless 

 figures, parts of bodies, &c., are made of it at pre- 

 sent in Catholic countries, as offerings to be pre- 

 sented to saints. 4. Wood. The Greeks made many 

 works of wood, from the earliest times to the most 

 flourishing period of art. Wooden statues were 

 erected to the victors in the Olympic games. 5. 

 Ivory. The use of this material for plastic works 

 is also very old, and the Greeks continued to use it 

 much in tlie times of their highest perfection. The 

 naked parts of the Olympian Jupiter and Minerva, 

 in the Parthenon, were of ivory. 6. Stone, (a) Mar- 

 ble. Among the ancients, the Pentelican and Parian 

 marbles were the most celebrated. Under Vespa- 

 sian were discovered the Lunensian quarries, at pre- 

 sent called Carrara quarries, the marble of which is 

 whiter than the Greek. The Vatican Apollo is 

 made of it. (6) Alabaster. The Etrurians worked 

 much in it: the Indian was most esteemed, (c) 

 Basalt, (d) Granite. Only the Egyptians worked 

 in this ; their statues and obelisks are generally of 

 granite and sienite. There are two sorts of the gra- 

 nite, a red and a bluish sort, (e) Porphyry, of which 

 there are also two sorts, one red, the other greenish, 

 with golden spots. This, the hardest of all stones, 

 was yet frequently wrought by the ancients into 

 statues, as well as vases. (/) Egyptian lime-stone, 

 soft and white, or dark green. 7. Glass, the inven- 

 tion of which is very old. The ancients made of 

 glass not only many utensils for domestic purposes, 

 but also urns of the dead, and great drinking ves- 

 sels, ornamented with raised work, or cut. Obsidian 

 must be mentioned here, a kind of mountain-crystal, 

 discovered by a certain Obsidius. (See Pitchstone.) 

 8. Murrhinum. (See Murrhine fuses.) It is pro- 

 bable that it was a kind of Chinese steatite. 9. 

 Metal, (a) Gold, partly employed for entire statues, 

 partly for the covering of ivory statues, (b) Silver. 

 (c) Bronze. This metal was very much used ; the 

 best ore for preparing it was obtained by the Greeks 

 from the islands of Delos and JEgina. ; at a later 

 period, the Corinthian became the most popular. 

 The most common mixture was 12 parts tin to 100 

 copper. Metals were at first wrought with the ham- 

 mer; at a later period they were cast. At first, 

 figures were cast in several pieces, which were 

 united by swallow (ails, so called, shaped thus, ^; 

 at length the art of casting whole figures was in- 

 vented, but it afterwards went out of use ; and it 

 was not till the sixteenth century that the Italians 

 began again to cast large bronze figures. The first 

 large statue cast in Italy was that of Pope Paul III. 

 by Guglielmo della Porta. In 1699, the first great 

 work in bronze was cast in Paris. The first of all 

 the figures cast in bronze is ascribed by the Greeks 

 to Rhoecus and Theodoros of Samos. (d) Iron, which 

 was the last used for plastic purposes. Glaucus 

 discovered the art of casting iron ; at Delphi were 

 consecrated offerings made by him. Never was the 

 art of casting in iron carried to greater perfection 

 than in our times, particularly at Berlin. See 

 Sculpture. 



Plastic, in its narrowest sense, signifying that 

 which is fit to be represented in forms, or is well 

 represented in forms, is opposed to picturesque 

 in its widest sense, signifying that which is fit to 

 be represented, or is well represented, in paint- 

 ing. Intimately connected with the general dif- 

 ference between the spirit of ancient and that of 

 modern art, to which we have already often alluded, 

 is the circumstance that the Greeks hud a much 



greater disposition to express their ideas in forms 

 than in pictures, so far as the fine arts are made use 

 of for the expression of ideas. They accordingly 

 carried the arts which speak through the form to 

 the highest perfection ; i. e. the plastic arts. The 

 religion and prevailing sentiments of the Greek led 

 him to view this life as the most important part of 

 his existence, and the perfection of this life as the 

 chief perfection to which he could aspire ; whilst 

 the modern, or Christian, considers every thing with 

 reference to a future life, to which he aspires. The 

 chief aim of the latter, in the fine arts, therefore, is 

 the expression of glowing feeling. He makes the 

 forms and beings which he finds on the earth express 

 his views of a more perfect and purer world for 

 which he longs (and colours and tones are the most 

 ready means of so doing), whilst the Greek embo- 

 dies all his ideas in forms to which he does not at- 

 tempt to give an expression superior in kind to the 

 terrestrial, like the Christian, but merely idealizes 

 them, i. e. developes their excellences so as to give 

 them what would be terrestrial perfection. On the 

 whole, we may say the ancients strove much more 

 to represent the beautiful for its own sake, whilst 

 with the moderns it is made subsidiary to the ex- 

 pression of feeling. Hence the necessary conse- 

 quence that, wherever it was admissible, the Greeks 

 represented naked human beauty, the most perfect 

 in creation ; and to such a degree did that gifted 

 and finely organized people develope their sense of 

 beauty, and the power of embodying it in forms, 

 that they have ever since remained the models of 

 successive ages. So great and general, indeed, was 

 the sense for plastic beauty with the Greeks, that it 

 influenced most of the other branches of art, as 

 painting, which has with the Greeks a decidedly 

 plastic character ; and Schlegel is quite correct 

 when he says that, in order to understand perfectly 

 well the tragedy of the Greeks, it is necessary to be 

 thoroughly acquainted with their plastic art, because 

 the mind of the Greek has, in every thing connected 

 with the beautiful, an eminently plastic turn ; and 

 the poet does not develope before our eyes great and 

 peculiar characters by a series of events and actions, 

 nor does he present views which are the consequence 

 of connecting all our present existence with another 

 world ; but he conceives the existing world idealized, 

 perfected by its own laws, and, if he composes for 

 representation, this view closely allies itself to the 

 spirit which pervades the sculpture of his country. 



Plastic is also used in praise of modern poems or 

 historical writing, if they are so well executed that 

 they represent characters or actions as expressively 

 as a sculptor would do by a fine statue. 



PLATA, Rio DE LA (that is, river of silver); a 

 large river of South America, which flows into the 

 Atlantic ocean between latitude 34 55' and 36 21' 

 S. It is formed by the union of the Parana and 

 Uruguay. The former rises in Brazil, and receives 

 the Paraguay coming from the same country, after 

 which it unites with the Uruguay, also coming from 

 Brazil, at about 175 miles from the ocean. At this 

 point the Plata is thirty miles wide, at its mouth 

 about 100 miles. The Paraguay rises in latitude 13 

 30' S., and receives the large rivers Pilcomayo and 

 Vermejo from the west. The whole length of the 

 Plata, trom the head waters of the Paraguay to the 

 ocean, is about 2300 miles. The basin which it 

 drains extends from lat. 13" to 38 S., and from 

 Ion. 51 to 74 W., and is therefore about 1800 miles 

 from north to south, by 1500 from east to west. 

 Excepting the Amazon, it has the largest volume of 

 water of any river in the world. The navigation of 

 the Paraguay is difficult on account of the shoals and 

 falls. The Parana is deeper than the Plata, and is 

 2o 2 



