’ SCULPTURE. © 55 
talent, is said to have sculptured a head in marble when only ten years old, 
and he certainly had a brilliant reputation both as sculptor and architect. 
His genius, which spurned all bounds, gave itself up to the quaintest con- 
ceits, utterly disregarding all the laws of true art and beauty, and every rule 
of good taste in sculpture. Hence he exerted a most deplorable influence 
on the entire plastic art of the 17th century, the effects of which reached far 
into the 18th century. His works are not creations of inspiration, but of a 
heated jejune fancy ; accordingly they all betray more or less of affectation, 
and there prevails in all his works, in consequence of his preference for the 
pictorial principle, a mode of treatment that violates all the laws of the 
plastic art. So little did he care for truth to nature, that he even set 
himself to work to improve nature according to his perverted ideas, and so 
presented a phantom in place of the truth. As a specimen of his mode of 
composition we have copied his marble group of Apollo and Daphne ( pl. 7, 
Jig. 14), which is equally destitute of natural truth and of artistic inspira- 
tion. To the better class of his works, which unfortunately are too 
numerous in Rome, belong the immense figures of Constantine in the 
Vatican, and of Longinus in St. Peter’s, as also the more delicate ones of St. 
Theresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria, and of St. Bibiena in the church 
dedicated to that saint. The tabernacle 90 feet in height over the high altar 
of St. Peter’s church is a model of tastelessness ; but what causes the greatest 
regret in connexion with this wretched production is the fact that to furnish 
the materials for casting it, the beautiful portico of the Pantheon wes robbed 
of its pannelled ceiling and beams of bronze. Of Bernini’s career as an 
architect in Rome and in Paris, where he was received with almost super- 
stitious reverence, but where, nevertheless, his plans were not put into 
execution, we have already spoken under the head of Architecture. 
5. Moprern Towss. 
At the close of the precedirg period we found that art in Italy had again 
begun seriously to decline; since the supremacy acquired by Bernini and 
his adherents, in consequence of the great favor showp them by the Pope, 
had sufficed to obliterate the impressions produced by the noble exertions 
of the true artists of the previous century, and to introduce into the plastic 
art a tasteless, unnatural, affected style, which robbed it of all its sublimity 
and its charms. It will now be our office to show how the various nations 
of modern times again discarded that periwig-style, and how the truly 
beautiful combined with the simplicity and sublimity of the antique have 
again attained the ascendency, so that now in more countries than one there 
are executed works of plastic art that deserve an honorable place beside the 
finest productions of classical antiquity. 
A. Italy. 
So powerful was the pernicious influence of Lorenzo Bernini in his day, 
‘that it had the effect of turning aside from their path even such masters as 
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