30 
ART NOTES FROM PARIS. 
[Nature and Art, January 1, 1867. 
art in which we are further in arrear of the ancients than 
in bas-relief. The opinions of an artist of the experience of 
M. Guillaume are peculiarly welcome. Bas-relief, as M. 
Guillaume says, has no type in nature : it is a form created 
by art ; but it is a convention so natural that it has appeared 
at every epoch of art, and amongst all civilised nations. 
Bas-relief is essentially monumental and decorative, and can 
scarcely be separated from architecture as a part of which it 
first appeared. Its first object is decoration ; its second to 
express facts and ideas by means of the human figure. “ The 
first condition,” says M. Guillaume, “is that, as ornament, 
it should properly fill the space allotted to it according to 
the rules of art. Setting aside the consideration of 
ornament, and looking at bas-relief only as a means of 
representing subjects by means of the human figure, it must 
be regarded in the light of an inscription. It is a style of 
wilting, a language which, conforming to a certain extent 
to the rules of lapidary style, abridges and condenses ideas, 
reduces them to the most simple form, and appeals to the 
eye by the aid of instinctive or understood abstractions with 
concision and clearness.” 
“ To be clear and concise,” repeats M. Guillaume 
emphatically, “ is, in short, the law of bas-relief. Everything 
in the composition must, in the first place, submit to this 
principle.” These dicta will scarcely be questioned ; and 
when we reflect how modern sculptors have misunderstood, 
or how far they have diverged from, these principles, it is 
not surprising how rare is good or even inoffensive bas-relief. 
M. Guillaume points out the error which existed in archaic 
times, when the upper part of a figure was often shown in 
full-face, while the lower was executed in profile, and 
remarks, that in the best epochs of the art the sculptor con- 
fined himself almost invariably to profile. Speaking of the 
conventional methods of representing some of the elements 
of the design, he adds : — “ Water and flame may be 
indicated by undulations ; as to smoke and clouds, they 
cannot be fully represented in bas-relief : the positive spirit 
of sculpture refuses to represent the impalpable. This 
applies to sculpture in general ; but we note the fact here, 
because the accessories are more important and play a 
greater part in bas-relief than in the round.” M. Guillaume 
insists on the rule that bas-relief should never include more 
than two or three superposed planes in the composition, and 
points out how the Greeks sometimes diminished the 
thickness of the figures in front in order to prevent their 
shadows diminishing the effect of the figures in the rear, 
and indicates the frieze of the Parthenon as furnishing 
the most admirable examples of this and other artistic 
arrangements. 
In dealing with the subject of light and shadow, M. 
Guillaume touches on the question of coloured sculpture. 
He says : — “ Finally, the bright and contrasted colouring 
which the ancients applied to monumental sculpture was not 
intended to l'ival what was actually painted, but simply to 
augment the clearness of the figures, and to give them a 
fixedness independent of the play of light and shadow.” 
This view is equally a recognition of the value of colour in 
bas-reliefs, and a condemnation of it in the case of isolated 
statues, the conditions of which are diametrically opposed 
to those of bas-relief ; the play of light and shade which 
produces confusion in the conventional composition being 
the glory, the harmony, the life of the statue. 
The young sculptor would do well not to forget the follow- 
ing simple warning : — “ As bas-reliefs are executed in marble, 
in stone, in terra cotta, in ivory, in metal, each of these 
substances has its own exigencies and capabilities, and, so 
to speak, a peculiar genius which the artist should study to 
take advantage of.” 
“This art always,” says M. Guillaume, “bears the imprint 
of a certain archaic and conventional character. Its effect 
is to give power and fulness to whatever it represents. In 
some of the finest works of the Athenian school we find 
figures whose proportions and forms are expressly made 
more robust and less slender than those of statues. Lastly, 
in ancient works the adherence of the subject to the back- 
ground is always well maintained, the result of whioh is a 
solidity which harmonises well with architecture, and whioh, 
united with simplicity and power, gives a monumental 
character to sculpture.” 
M. Guillaume designates the genius of the Greeks, “ full 
of poetry and logic,” as specially calculated to make them 
pre-eminent in this branch of art ; and he quotes their legend 
of its invention as having a deep significance. Dibutade, a 
potter of Corinth, say they, created bas-relief by placing 
clay within a space already prepared — thus intimating that 
the art proceeded fundamentally from drawing. “ The 
Dorian and Ionian schools, with different aspirations, in 
their turn gave it impulse ; but from the first essays to the 
chefs-d’oeuvre of the Parthenon, from the jutting fronton 
even to the small sketches freely traced with a light point 
on marble vases and funereal urns, the uninterrupted 
tradition of the artist was the concise clearness of the 
idea, the simplicity of the plans, and the perfection of the 
contours. In their hands (the Greeks’) the bas-relief is a 
language concise without obscurity, and of severe elegance ; 
elegance, which by the manner of presenting the subject, 
the luminous purity of the form, and the intelligent pre- 
servation of the expression, realizes in a plastic form the 
most delicate qualities of the art of speaking well. And 
the sculptors thus produced exquisite works, the contem- 
plation of which delights the imagination, while the study 
of them will ripen our judgment.” 
M. Guillaume points out how the Romans failed to seize 
the true principle of bas-relief, made it subservient to the 
political and religious demands of the moment, applied it to 
pomps and triumphs, and produced generally nothing' but 
showy ornaments. They missed the conventional sense of 
the art. But M. Guillaume says, that the theory of the art 
was never entirely lost, in spite of the imperfections of its 
application ; and the image-makers of the middle ages, 
although wanting the sense of beauty possessed so eminently 
by the Greeks, executed bas-reliefs on true principles, but 
the artists of the renaissance were so carried away by the love 
of painting and the application of perspective, that sculpture 
suffered severely, and bas-reliefs grew to be nothing more 
than pictures in sculpture. Deploring the failure of the 
great artists of Italy and France with respect to bas-relief, 
M. Guillaume pays a just tribute to Jean Goujon, who, by 
the force of his own genius, broke through the false practice, 
and “ produced works which, as regards the skill in the 
treatment of the plan, rival the finest productions that 
Athens has bequeathed us.” This is only justice to the 
great sculptor, who, in an age of passion, violence, and false 
taste, seemed to have possessed the gift of almost absolute 
purity and grace. It is only necessary to study one of his 
nymphs of the Fountain of the Innocents, to see that the 
sculptors since his time are at least as far inferior to him 
in this respect as he was to the Athenians. 
The distinctive difference between painting and sculpture 
in bas-relief is well expressed in the following lines : — 
“ Bas-relief starts from a positive imitation of objects, 
while painting depends upon the optical illusions ; so that, 
if design applied to the latter is an incessant employment 
of the rules of perspective, the design appropriate to bas- 
relief is in its essence purely geometrical.” 
In spite of the talent of the artists, the principles of bas- 
relief were utterly neglected in Italy under the influence of 
Bernin, and in France under that of Lebrun, and the evil 
had grown to its height when accident turned back the 
current into the right direction. “ David, in founding his 
teaching on ancient sculpture, forced back bas-relief into 
the true path. About the same time the admirable works 
of the School of Phidias were discovered at Athens. Still 
later, Lord Elgin carried a considerable number of these to 
London, and the models were multiplied by casts — happy 
concurrence of events which, by the force at once of 
reason and examples, carried back bas-relief to the purest 
source.” 
