184G.] 



THE CnaL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



15^ 



Art and the immortal in tliought. In the progress of his labour, Mr. 

 Lucas has maile sure acquaintance with principles which are likely to 

 have an elevating elfect on all his future works ; anil, better still, uhat he 

 has found, he has commemorated — embodying, for the use of others, the 

 instruction which he sought for himself. We have here, by his means, 

 the text of the Parthenon restored, with fewer conjectural readings (and 

 those, certainly, for the most part, true in their character) than might have 

 been hoped ; and, in this view of the matter, we rejoice that the British 

 Museum has purchased the model of the completed building — to stand in 

 the Elgin Gallery, as a key to the matchless remains which are so many 

 of the original parts, and an important element of this restoration. 



The faded and, to the uninstructed eye, some%vhat enigmatical character 

 of these remains will be more fully understood by the public, and more 

 readily by the artist, in this easy reference to their context ; the meaning 

 of the restored whole more readily suggests the meanings of the several 

 parts. The amateur may here catch the full expressions, and the artist 

 the true canon, of Greek sculpture. In this point of view, the reading- 

 made-easy of the Parthenon, with its sculptures, is an invaluable lesson 

 set up in our schools of Arts. While the mere sentiments of the Arts 

 finds here its full satisfaction in perfect beauty of forms, the intefligent 

 student perceives how little the secret of that satisfaction is dependent 

 upon the forms themselves. The principles of art are all summed up in 

 this great and perfect work ; yet the work, while involving all the truths 

 vrhich |are necessary to perfection, is not the truth itself, but only one 

 perfect and harmonious form of its expression. The careful reader of this 

 magnificent poem, with the full epic before him — who sees how its endless 

 varieties of detail all tend to the production of one great unity of thought, 

 cannot overlook the leading .secret which lies at the bottom of all excel- 

 lence in Art, — and so takes a lesson which has been greatly needed in the 

 modern schools. In every page of this matchless book is enforced the 

 great and eternal principle of Jit ness. No single word has the chisel 

 written on this immortal volume which has not a meaning — and those 

 meanings are one, and such as could be directly understood and fully 

 tasted by the national heart to which ihey are addressed. He who takes 

 these mere forms, and reconstructs them in the heart of London, is but the 

 anatomist of sculpture — and scarcely that ; the resurrectionist who pro- 

 duces from its tomb the skeleton of Art — a worthless thing, now the living 

 soul is gone out of it. The secret of their meaning in Greece is that of 

 their no-meaning here : and the sculptor learns, from such works them- 

 selves, that he can, for the most part, only adopt the principles of the 

 Greek by rejecting his combinations. The language of Art, when rightly 

 learnt, will be found to be universal — and, therefore, universally intelli- 

 gible; but he who has wholly different things to express must seek wholly 

 different expressions. The Gods of Greece, who were all at home upon 

 their own Athenian hill, are strangers, every one, in the streets of London 

 and Paris. The true teaching of Greek sculpture forbids to copy it. 

 The letter of Greek Art is a dead thing, amid the changes of the world ; 

 but its spirit is immortal amid the ruins — and speaks and breathes from 

 every mutilated page of this great book. 



The materials which Mr. Lucas has had to assist him in his work of 

 restoration are the drawings made by Carrey, in 1675, for the Marquis de 

 Nointel, before the Parthenon sulTered its last great dilapidations at the 

 bands of the Venetians — the work of Stuart and Kevett on Athens, who 

 saw the ruin in 17.il, when the Ilissus and the Torso of the group of Ce- 

 crops and Agraulaus maintained their place in the western pediment — the 

 comparatively perfect condition of the eastern pediment itself, as drawn 

 by all these artists ; from which Mr. Lucas has deduced very ingenious 

 consequences of his own for a restoration of the eastern pediment, in oppo. 

 sitinn to those of Quatremere de Quincy and Edouard Gerhard, and dif- 

 fering from those of Lusieri and Mr. Cockerell — the scanty hints of Pau- 

 sanias — the works of Spon and Whelcr, the Chevalier Brondsted and Pro- 

 fessor M^elcker — the advice and arguments of Colonel Leake, Professor 

 Cockerell, Mr. Hawkins, and Mr. Pittakis, the present curator of the 

 Parthenon — and the most invaluable document of all, the actual remains 

 in the Elgin Uoom of the British Museum. The principal question which 

 presented itself for solution was that of the eastern pediment — of which 

 Pausanias merely says that it related to the creation of Minerva; while 

 the western had reference to the contest of that goddess with Neptune for 

 the territory of Attica. In the latter case, however, the drawings of Car- 

 rey, made from the sculptures themselves when the pediment was nearly 

 perfect, are better evidence of the intentions of Phidias than the casual 

 remark of Pausanias, — and demonstrate that his expression will not strictly 

 describe their subject. It is evident that the victory of Minerva in this 

 contest, rather than the actual contest itself, is expressed in the pediment 

 in question : and Mr. Lncas demands merely a similar latitude in the cor- 

 rection of the loose language of Pausanias, as the basis of his restoration 

 of the eastern pediment. A liberal construction of the word yivems,he 

 contends, will render it unnecessary to suppose that the very act of the. 

 creation was intended to be described as the subject, — and will let in any 

 of the incidents attendant upon that great mythological event, the advent 

 of Minerva. But it is to be observed, that it is not in the mere idle spirit 

 of speculative amendment that this correction is proposed, but under the 

 compulsion of the principles on which Phidias wrought, ss written in 

 every other part of this great work. " Keeping," says the sculptor, in 

 some printed remarks on the Parthenon, wherein he has very ably stated 

 his own views, " stedfastly in our minds the means by which Phidias has 

 produced so sublime a result in^he western pediment, we will endeavour 



to approach the eastern one in the same spirit. The manner and method 

 in wiiich the myth was rei)resenled in the western pediment open to us the 

 understanding of the caster pediraental composition ; and if we apply this 

 mode of viewing the subject to this eastern pediment (of which we have 

 noticed tlie entire destruction of the central portion in the early times), we 

 may feel quite sure that the myth must have been treated in a manner 

 equally satisfactory. . . Hence we have little doubt that the resto- 

 ration of the eastern pediment, proposed by Brondsted and executed by 

 Quatrenicie de (Ouincy, where Vulcan is represented as having cleft open 

 the head of Jupiter, and one of the two goddesses who preside over births 

 is drawing out a little figure of Minerva, while the other is supporting Ju- 

 piter as though he were fainting under the agonies of child-birth, can 

 never be an adequate expression of Phidias'sown design. It may be said 

 that Homer's description is sufficient warrant for Q. de Quincy's restora- 

 tion ; yet still we feel that the strict letter of the poet is inapplicable to pe- 

 dimental composition. Homer describes the glorious form of Minerva as 

 rising from the brain of Jupiter, and all Nature struck with awe at the 

 splendour of her form and golden plumage; but in the adaptation of that 

 moment to sculpture, the glorious form of \\'isdom sinks into an insigni- 

 ficant puppet. And hence we have no reason to suppose that the exist- 

 ence of such a subject on a patera (itself taken from a picture) was any 

 motive with Phidias for the selection of that which, as well from scanti- 

 ness of space as from unlitness of material, could not be treated with pro- 

 priety. Nor did the incongruity of the French conception of the subject 

 escape the eye of Flaxman; who, in his lectures, observes, that the com- 

 position was no doubt filled, not by a representation of the actual birth of 

 Minerva, but rather, as would be far more fitting in a temple peculiarly 

 dedicated to her honour, by tlie introduction of the goddess to the august 

 assemblage of the gods on Olympus — a subject in the highest degree im- 

 posing, and admitting of a sculptural treatment of the greatest majesty. 

 And this view of the subject is also taken by Mr. Cockerell ; who has de- 

 monstrated that the fragment on the floor of the Elgin Room was the base 

 of the statue of Minerva in the eastern pediment — a judgment in which 

 M. Welcker entirely coincides with him. ' 



This view of the matter Blr. Lucas has himself adopted ; and out of such 

 fragments as remain, with what we know positively from Carrey of their 

 place, — supplying the blanks from inferences and reasonings whose artis- 

 tic soundness are deserving of great commendation — he has reconstructed 

 the whole into a splendid composition ; which, if not the true one, is cer- 

 tainly in a Greek spirit, — and where the parts filled up offer no discord 

 with what remains of the ancient text. 



One valuable lesson Mr. Lucas has drawn from the consideration Of 

 these pediments — which we must not omit. The sculptures that adorn 

 them — or rather of which they are composed — so far from being arbitrarily 

 confined within the pedimental lines, as barriers which the genius of the 

 sculptor must not venture to infringe — a practice that gives to the figures 

 on pediments in general the charatiler of mere after-thoughts for the em- 

 bellishment of the building, are here, by latitude in the size and projection 

 of the figures, not only made to seem an original and expressive part of 

 the great intention, but the effect of a bold and beautiful variety to the eye 

 is thus obtained by the same simple act of mastery which gives this addi- 

 tion to the unity of the thought. " I have the highest authority," says Mr. 

 Lucas, '* for stating that not one modern pediment has been constructed in 

 accordance with the rules which this pediment of Phidias prescribes to us; 

 and as to the sufficiency of this example as a rule, we have the united tes- 

 timony of all authorities on the subject, that this pedimental construc- 

 tion contained the result of seven hundred years' experience, — and that 

 used by the discretion of Phidias." 



We cannot follow iNIr. Lucas at length, through all the parts of his res- 

 toration. The frieze is reconiposed in its entirety, on the outer wall of the 

 cellar — the existing parts being made to suggest the lost. The columns 

 are restored to the interior in a double row, Mr. Lucas having finally de- 

 cided, as a choice amongst difficulties (for this is the point on which the evi- 

 dence is most contradictory and the decision the least satisfactory), on Co- 

 rinthian placed above Ionic. The Goddess is replaced in the glorions 

 shrine which was built up for the sole purpose of containing her idea, hi 

 her garment of ivory and gold, and with her rich sculptural accessories, 

 as described by Pausanias and seen on ancient coins and gems. The 

 missing metopes are restored, the subjects supplied being in every case 

 sought from coins and vases, and for this purpose on a principle of con- 

 nexion suggested by a judicious consideration of those which exist, in fact or 

 in drawing. Even the shields, of whose former presence on the exterior of 

 the temple the traces remain, are here replaced, — though nothing can be 

 known of the devices which they contained — that no feature maybe wanting 

 to convey the general effect of the whole. The adoption of these devices is, 

 therefore, confessedly, quite conjectural — but not quite arbitrary, notwith- 

 standing. They have been selected from vases, coins, and the work Monv- 

 mnes Im'dits, published by the Institute of Rome, which contains a large 

 number of the shields of Minerva. Mothing has been left out that could be 

 authenticated, — or restored upon presumptive testimony furnished by the 

 temple itself. Only in the case of the Polychromatic adjuncts, of which 

 evidence is supposed to exist, has Mr. Lucas (with that same sobriety of 

 judgment whicli has ruled his enthusiasm throughout this work, — and which 

 is but the deep passion for his theme, chastened by the reverence with 

 which he approaches it,) refrained — because, as he says, it cannot be demon- 

 strated that they were as early as the period of Phidias — and because, " as 

 it appeared to me to impair the chasteness of the temple, I am not called on 



