1850.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



373 



— the use of the nudo, and the nudo with draper}' — not as belonging' 

 to any particular age or country, but as beini; universal in their 

 tendencies, and appreciable of every nation — by all nations — a 

 double power, by which character is not only illustrated to the 

 nation in which it was produced, but in an equal dejjree to 

 •foreij^ners without the necessity of a translation. Our advocacy 

 of these principles, however, must be precisely understood to l)e 

 in their application to a hig;h class of character; the application 

 of truth to deformity or malformation would be to the depression 

 not the exaltation of good feeling. It might give opportunity to 

 malignancy; it certainly would be antagonistic to the genius of 

 high art, which reserves itself as the exponent of that exalted 

 personality which rises far above ordinary humanity— such as the 

 hero of a people, the representative of their patriotism — a charac- 

 ter sublimed and deified during a lapse of ages, whose example has 

 during these ages fired the generous minded to excel in personal, 

 and to achieve national, distinction, — whose acts were the theme 

 of poets, whose name was the household word of the peasant, — the 

 spell of victory to his countrymen in battle, their shield and spear 

 to sustain them in misfortune — a legacy of worth of character, not 

 honour which would make a man of the same country degenerate. 

 — This class of character the Greeks deified — of these were the 

 demi-gods of the ancients, and to illustrate which no power exists 

 but the nudo. Emperors and kings, on the other hand, being dif- 

 ferent from the nobility of God's creation, are to be represented 

 in their conventional costume, which is unlike an ordinary dress. 

 It is not an uniform; the royal robes of sovereignty are distinctive 

 of an office, differing in different sovereignties, and they stand in 

 lieu of personal superiority, ever but when in those rare instances 

 mind and intellect emancipate the man from the trammels of sta- 

 tion, and bring him within the fluctuations of general life to be 

 the benefactor or the scourge of mankind. We meddle not with 

 this section of art: we merely note our recognition of it to pre- 

 vent mistake as to our meaning elsewhere; neither do we interfere 

 with that class of character to which private or even corporate 

 esteem dedicates statues. The limits of the sphere of operation 

 which have governed that character must determine how far con- 

 ventionality is to be followed; or, as in the event of grace and 

 beauty being concerned, the true art should be called upon. These 

 being questions secondary to our present object, can ever be safely 

 left to the individual artist, but in whose mind the true principle 

 ought ever to have a fixed station; as the misapplication of a high 

 standard has done already infinite harm, and no doubt has opposed 

 the progress of truth in the public mind, as the visitors to our 

 public monuments in St. Paul's and ^V'estminster can too truly 

 bear witness. 



The lecturer then went on to repudiate the principle that 

 sculptors should execute men for their costume, and that a great 

 art should be made a medium for carrying down to posterity a 

 knowledge of the costume of a period. In these details the painter 

 had an advantage which the sculptor did not possess. The sculptor 

 meets the painter in the grand arena; he has nothing to do with 

 secondary art; the very materials he employs are unfit to produce 

 a result in tinsel, colour, embroidery, or texture. He can produce 

 at the best but weak imitation. When necessity compels liim, he 

 can carve a chain, but it has no texture or colour; he can imitate 

 by a trick of the chisel the appearance of silk, which demands, 

 however, that the statue have always a layer of dust in his flat 

 effects; he may carve a piece of white lace, for there colour is 

 co-assistant; but in all these he is limited; and the best he does 

 is but an apology, and should never be made much of. Grand folds 

 in drapery are his power; graceful, elegant, and beautiful arrange- 

 ment, his charm. If he succeeds in that he can afford to want lace 

 on its edges; and if he can model a noble statue nudo., he can afford 

 the clothes to the ship figure-head maker. Whenever the sculptor, 

 as he generally does, idealises the costume, by so much does he 

 acknowledge his error in using it at all. A\'hen he clings to form, 

 only using a few wrinkles at the knees, ankles, and elbows, he must 

 know that he is neither serving God nor JManimon. Controlled by 

 his employer on one side, and his own aspirations on the other, he 

 produces a work incongruous and unsatisfactory to the very spirit 

 of the age which coerced him. 



Mr. Park then pointed out the relation between a true spirit in 

 sculpture and an elevated style of historic painting, referiring to 

 the restoration of the Antique in the Cinquecento as the origin of 

 that spirit which produced Alichael Angelo and Raphael, and the 

 schools of Florence and Bologna. AV'henever the people had their 

 minds familiarised with a high class of sculpture in our public 

 monuments, the painter might prepare his colours, and cheer up 

 his heart with the knowledge that his efforts would be appreciated, 



and that he would no longer be called upon to paint down to the 

 public taste. Good sense would then be heard reasoning justly on 

 the power of art when it became truthful. 



Having argued, in defence of the nifrfo, that the Greeks or Ro- 

 mans did not walk about or fight naked any more than the 

 moderns, but yet that their sculptors, with a just perception of the 

 great in art, adopted the mido, or the nudo with drapery, in repre- 

 senting them, Mr. Park contended for the application of the prin- 

 ciple in the present day to characters of a high class, in illustra- 

 tion of which he referred to Thorwaldsen's statue of Poniatowsky, 

 in which the nudo and di-apery are admirably combined; and the 

 statue of Napoleon by Canova, now in the possession of the Duke 

 of AVellington. The treatment of this great statue, he remarked, 

 has subjected Canova to much animadversion, gradually receding, 

 however, in virulence up to the present day, when few will be 

 found to maintain the opinions they may have been anxious to 

 advance twenty years ago. That Canova was right, every day 

 adds its evidence, and ignorance is gradually but surely yielding to 

 the force of true judgment. The imitation of the cocked hat, 

 surtout, and jack-boots, which illustrate the Vendome Pillar, is 

 neither that of the man or the hero which will give satisfaction to 

 posterity. Little models of the Parisian statue, glittering in 

 paint, niay be seen fulfilling their destiny by giving light to cigar- 

 smokers in tobacconists' shops: never shall we see the heroic figure 

 desecrated to so ignoble a purpose. Future ages will see Canova's 

 work enshrined wherever intellectual power is reverenced, and 

 artistic apprehension of the true and grand is honoured as its 

 exponent. ^V'hen the Vendome column shall be coined into sous, 

 or re-moulded into its original cannon, the caricature of its art will 

 only facilitate its fall; while, for its great art, Canova's statue 

 must become a treasure to the world. Entirely nudo does the 

 sculptor represent the hero, with the addition of an imperial robe 

 hanging from his arm, and which supports the marble. In one 

 hand is held the long rod of empire; the outstretched palm of the 

 other holds the globe and laurel-bestowing victory. The head, 

 modelled from the period of his great Italian campaigns, is full of 

 that beauty immortalised in the medals of the time, and is crowned 

 with laurel. The expression is noble and melancholy, and with it 

 the whole frame is in unison and grace. This statue is the ab- 

 straction of the thought and power of an empire — the statue of the 

 Vendome is that of the buffo of the guard-room. 



The lecturer then gave a humourous instance of the easy man- 

 ner in which a person in modern costume might be modelled as 

 compared with the modelling of a figure 7iudo or nudo with dra- 

 pery; and expressed his conviction that to model a man as God 

 made him, and the same man as the tailor and shoemaker make 

 him, requires, in point of time, twelve months for the former to 

 one week for the latter, and in point of skill that of a man to that 

 of a child. 



ilr. Park then shortly alluded to the history of the art in Scot- 

 land, where, he said, the people hardly knew what a statue meant 

 until about thirty years ago, when Macdonald so honourably to 

 himself produced his heroic models in this city. His era, he cha- 

 racterised as the spark of the flint and steel of the workmen and 

 educated classes in Scotland, and he saw every reason to hope that 

 the fire he kindled was not extinct. The generality of the work- 

 ing classes are yet untainted by dilletantisni; they have not to 

 unlearn old prejudices, they are open to receive just impressions, 

 and the lower classes in Scotland have ever shown a quick appre- 

 hension of the right and the true. To them principally would he 

 appeal; to the wise and reflective of all classes would he be urgent 

 that the bond of as|iiring hopes and love of country should prompt 

 them to leave behind those slow men or those prejudiced men, 

 whose pride prevents improvement. In this question in a remark- 

 able degree, there is a junction of extremes between the higher 

 and lower classes. Both are less artificial than the middle classes. 

 They have less thought on their minds than the money-making 

 portion of the community, who, whatever may be the substratum of 

 their nature, are in the majority, of necessity absorbed in commer- 

 cial pursuits, and as a class are undivided in the race for wealth, 

 and cannot spare the time necessary to study a subject like art and 

 its relation to nature. The higher and lower classes, again, love 

 nature; both love to look on a man and manly power; athletic 

 exercise is common to both; beauty and grace in the poetry of 

 Burns is felt as deei)ly by the peasant as the lays of the trouba- 

 dours were by the knights. The man who admires the boxer out 

 of his lumbering clothes, and can dispute points in his condition, 

 and calculate events from his perfect or imperfect symmetry — who 

 is accustomed to see the brawn and muscle of the stone and ham- 

 mer thrower, to watch the agility of the racer or the litheness of 



