210 ON TASTE IN ORNAMENTAL DESIGN. Paet II. 



•But when metal, stone, and similar materials are employed 

 to represent landscapes, or a number of distant figures in 

 bas-relief, they attempt what is out of their province : the 

 absence of aerial perspective in the metal or stone confuses 

 the foreground with the distance, and they both continue 

 to appear (as they are) on the same plane. Sculpture, 

 therefore, should abstain from a mode of treatment beyond 

 its own sphere. It has its own vocation distinct from that of 

 painting, and it only injures its own credit by aiming at one 

 which belongs to the sister art. 



The error abounded in the middle ages ; but the Greeks 

 were satisfied in bas-relief with figures in the foreground ; 

 and the same maxim recommended by Horace for the stage, 

 — "Nee quartet loqui persona laboret? — led them to avoid 

 the introduction of figures four deep upon the stone. They 

 had no bas-relief in marble or bronze representing the battle 

 of Marathon, still less that of Salamis : similar subjects were 

 reserved for painting ; and it was for the tasteless Eomans 

 to disregard that principle, by representing the confusion of 

 battles upon such unsuitable materials.] Adaptability is to be 

 consulted in all cases. What is pleasing in one place is not 

 always so in another; and experience tells a painter that 

 even a view which looks well in nature is not always suited 

 for a picture. A ship is a beautiful object, but it is out of 

 place in sculpture ; and if its presence were required to il- 

 lustrate some important event in the life of a naval hero, 

 the sculptor would do well to transfer the treatment of that 

 subject to the painter, and select some other record of him 

 more suited to his art. If it must be introduced, it should 

 be done in the least intrusive manner, and with the least 

 appearance of detail ; and a Greek in representing the de- 

 parture from Troy would prefer to introduce a small portion 

 of a ship, rather than the number of such unsuitable objects 



