library edition the complete works of john ruskin crown of wild olive time and tide queen of the air lectures on art and landscape aratra pentelici national library association new york chicago aratra pentelici. seven lectures on the elements of sculpture, given before the university of oxford in michaelmas term, . contents. page preface v lecture i. of the division of arts lecture ii. idolatry lecture iii. imagination lecture iv. likeness lecture v. structure lecture vi. the school of athens lecture vii. the relation between michael angelo and tintoret list of plates facing page i. porch of san zenone, verona ii. the arethusa of syracuse iii. the warning to the kings, san zenone, verona iv. the nativity of athena v. tomb of the doges jacopo and lorenzo tiepolo vi. archaic athena of athens and corinth vii. archaic, central and declining art of greece viii. the apollo of syracuse, and the self-made man ix. apollo chrysocomes of clazomenæ x. marble masonry in the duomo of verona xi. the first elements of sculpture. incised outline and opened space xii. branch of phillyrea xiii. greek flat relief, and sculpture by edged incision xiv. apollo and the python. heracles and the nemean lion xv. hera of argos. zeus of syracuse xvi. demeter of messene. hera of cnossus xvii. athena of thurium. siren ligeia of terina xviii. artemis of syracuse. hera of lacinian cape xix. zeus of messene. ajax of opus xx. greek and barbarian sculpture xxi. the beginnings of chivalry preface. . i must pray the readers of the following lectures to remember that the duty at present laid on me at oxford is of an exceptionally complex character. directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to be useless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study itself should be guided; and to vindicate their security against the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately incumbered a subject which all think themselves competent to discuss. the possibility of such vindication is, of course, implied in the original consent of the universities to the establishment of art professorships. nothing can be made an element of education of which it is impossible to determine whether it is ill done or well; and the clear assertion that there is a canon law in formative art is, at this time, a more important function of each university than the instruction of its younger members in any branch of practical skill. it matters comparatively little whether few or many of our students learn to draw; but it matters much that all who learn should be taught with accuracy. and the number who may be justifiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at college to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, and finally _must_ depend, on their being certified that painting and sculpture, no less than language, or than reasoning, have grammar and method,--that they permit a recognizable distinction between scholarship and ignorance, and enforce a constant distinction between right and wrong. . this opening course of lectures on sculpture is therefore restricted to the statement, not only of first principles, but of those which were illustrated by the practice of one school, and by that practice in its simplest branch, the analysis of which could be certified by easily accessible examples, and aided by the indisputable evidence of photography.[ ] the exclusion of the terminal lecture[ ] of the course from the series now published, is in order to mark more definitely this limitation of my subject; but in other respects the lectures have been amplified in arranging them for the press, and the portions of them trusted at the time to extempore delivery (not through indolence, but because explanations of detail are always most intelligible when most familiar) have been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in what i said too imperfectly, completed. . in one essential particular i have felt it necessary to write what i would not have spoken. i had intended to make no reference, in my university lectures, to existing schools of art, except in cases where it might be necessary to point out some undervalued excellence. the objects specified in the eleventh paragraph of my inaugural lecture[ ] might, i hoped, have been accomplished without reference to any works deserving of blame; but the exhibition of the royal academy in the present year showed me a necessity of departing from my original intention. the task of impartial criticism[ ] is now, unhappily, no longer to rescue modest skill from neglect; but to withstand the errors of insolent genius, and abate the influence of plausible mediocrity. the exhibition of was very notable in this important particular, that it embraced some representation of the modern schools of nearly every country in europe: and i am well assured that, looking back upon it after the excitement of that singular interest has passed away, every thoughtful judge of art will confirm my assertion, that it contained not a single picture of accomplished merit; while it contained many that were disgraceful to art, and some that were disgraceful to humanity. . it becomes, under such circumstances, my inevitable duty to speak of the existing conditions of art with plainness enough to guard the youths whose judgments i am intrusted to form, from being misled, either by their own naturally vivid interest in what represents, however unworthily, the scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly devised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements of art which has long since confessed itself to have no other object than to allure. i have, therefore, added to the second of these lectures such illustration of the motives and course of modern industry as naturally arose out of its subject; and shall continue in future to make similar applications; rarely indeed, permitting myself, in the lectures actually read before the university, to introduce, subjects of instant, and therefore too exciting, interest; but completing the addresses which i prepare for publication in these, and in any other, particulars, which may render them more widely serviceable. . the present course of lectures will be followed, if i am able to fulfill the design of them, by one of a like elementary character on architecture; and that by a third series on christian sculpture: but, in the meantime, my effort is to direct the attention of the resident students to natural history, and to the higher branches of ideal landscape: and it will be, i trust, accepted as sufficient reason for the delay which has occurred in preparing the following sheets for the press, that i have not only been interrupted by a dangerous illness, but engaged, in what remained to me of the summer, in an endeavor to deduce, from the overwhelming complexity of modern classification in the natural sciences, some forms capable of easier reference by art students, to whom the anatomy of brutal and floral nature is often no less important than that of the human body. the preparation of examples for manual practice, and the arrangement of standards for reference, both in painting and sculpture, had to be carried on, meanwhile, as i was able. for what has already been done, the reader is referred to the "catalogue of the educational series," published at the end of the spring term: of what remains to be done i will make no anticipatory statement, being content to have ascribed to me rather the fault of narrowness in design, than of extravagance in expectation. denmark hill, _ th november, ._ footnotes: [ ] photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished sculpture; but its audacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the more roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins. for the rendering of all such frank relief, and for the better explanation of forms disturbed by the luster of metal or polished stone, the method employed in the plates of this volume will be found, i believe, satisfactory. casts are first taken from the coins, in white plaster; these are photographed, and the photograph printed by the autotype process. plate xii. is exceptional, being a pure mezzotint engraving of the old school, excellently carried through by my assistant, mr. allen, who was taught, as a personal favor to myself, by my friend, and turner's fellow-worker, thomas lupton. plate iv. was intended to be a photograph from the superb vase in the british museum, no. in mr. newton's catalogue; but its variety of color defied photography, and after the sheets had gone to press i was compelled to reduce le normand's plate of it, which is unsatisfactory, but answers my immediate purpose. the enlarged photographs for use in the lecture room were made for me with most successful skill by sergeant spackman, of south kensington; and the help throughout rendered to me by mr. burgess is acknowledged in the course of the lectures; though with thanks which must remain inadequate lest they should become tedious; for mr. burgess drew the subjects of plates iii., x., and xiii.; and drew and engraved every wood-cut in the book. [ ] it is included in this edition. see lecture vii., pp. - . [ ] lectures on art, . [ ] a pamphlet by the earl of southesk, 'britain's art paradise' (edmonston and douglas, edinburgh), contains an entirely admirable criticism of the most faultful pictures of the exhibition. it is to be regretted that lord southesk speaks only to condemn; but indeed, in my own three days' review of the rooms, i found nothing deserving of notice otherwise, except mr. hook's always pleasant sketches from fisher-life, and mr. pettie's graceful and powerful, though too slightly painted, study from henry iv. aratra pentelici. lecture i. of the division of arts. _november, ._ . if, as is commonly believed, the subject of study which it is my special function to bring before you had no relation to the great interests of mankind, i should have less courage in asking for your attention to-day, than when i first addressed you; though, even then, i did not do so without painful diffidence. for at this moment, even supposing that in other places it were possible for men to pursue their ordinary avocations undisturbed by indignation or pity,--here, at least, in the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of england, only one subject, i am well assured, can seriously occupy your thoughts--the necessity, namely, of determining how it has come to pass that, in these recent days, iniquity the most reckless and monstrous can be committed unanimously, by men more generous than ever yet in the world's history were deceived into deeds of cruelty; and that prolonged agony of body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflicting willfully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and accepted portion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent persons, inhabiting the districts of the world which, of all others, as it seemed, were best instructed in the laws of civilization, and most richly invested with the honor, and indulged in the felicity, of peace. believe me, however, the subject of art--instead of being foreign to these deep questions of social duty and peril,--is so vitally connected with them, that it would be impossible for me now to pursue the line of thought in which i began these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasis would be given to every sentence by the force of passing events. it is well, then, that in the plan i have laid down for your study, we shall now be led into the examination of technical details, or abstract conditions of sentiment; so that the hours you spend with me may be times of repose from heavier thoughts. but it chances strangely that, in this course of minutely detailed study, i have first to set before you the most essential piece of human workmanship, the plow, at the very moment when--(you may see the announcement in the journals either of yesterday or the day before)--the swords of your soldiers have been sent for _to be sharpened_, and not at all to be beaten into plowshares. i permit myself, therefore, to remind you of the watchword of all my earnest writings--"soldiers of the plowshare, instead of soldiers of the sword,"--and i know it my duty to assert to you that the work we enter upon to-day is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope; the hope, namely, that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead the national passions towards the arts of peace, instead of the arts of war. i say, the work "we enter upon," because the first four lectures i gave in the spring were wholly prefatory; and the following three only defined for you methods of practice. to-day we begin the systematic analysis and progressive study of our subject. . in general, the three great, or fine, arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, are thought of as distinct from the lower and more mechanical formative arts, such as carpentry or pottery. but we cannot, either verbally, or with any practical advantage, admit such classification. how are we to distinguish painting on canvas from painting on china?--or painting on china from painting on glass?--or painting on glass from infusion of color into any vitreous substance, such as enamel?--or the infusion of color into glass and enamel from the infusion of color into wool or silk, and weaving of pictures in tapestry, or patterns in dress? you will find that although, in ultimately accurate use of the word, painting must be held to mean only the laying of a pigment on a surface with a soft instrument; yet, in broad comparison of the functions of art, we must conceive of one and the same great artistic faculty, as governing _every mode of disposing colors in a permanent relation on, or in, a solid substance_; whether it be by tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs; inlaying metals with fused flint, or coating walls with colored stone. . similarly, the word 'sculpture,'--though in ultimate accuracy it is to be limited to the development of form in hard substances by cutting away portions of their mass--in broad definition, must be held to signify _the reduction of any shapeless mass of solid matter into an intended shape_, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of the instrument employed; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece of box-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument, ax, or hammer, or chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire to fuse;--whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we do so under the laws of the one great art of sculpture. . having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we shall see that there is, in the third place, a class of work separated from both, in a specific manner, and including a great group of arts which neither, of necessity, _tint_, nor for the sake of form merely, _shape_ the substances they deal with; but construct or arrange them with a view to the resistance of some external force. we construct, for instance, a table with a flat top, and some support of prop, or leg, proportioned in strength to such weights as the table is intended to carry. we construct a ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference to certain forces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be overcome; or we construct a wall or roof with distinct reference to forces of pressure and oscillation, to be sustained or guarded against; and, therefore, in every case, with especial consideration of the strength of our materials, and the nature of that strength, elastic, tenacious, brittle, and the like. now although this group of arts nearly always involves the putting of two or more separate pieces together, we must not define it by that accident. the blade of an oar is not less formed with reference to external force than if it were made of many pieces; and the frame of a boat, whether hollowed out of a tree-trunk, or constructed of planks nailed together, is essentially the same piece of art; to be judged by its buoyancy and capacity of progression. still, from the most wonderful piece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to this simple one,[ ] the plowshare, on which it depends for its subsistence, _the putting of two or more pieces together_ is curiously necessary to the perfectness of every fine instrument; and the peculiar mechanical work of dædalus,--inlaying,--becomes all the more delightful to us in external aspect, because, as in the jawbone of a saurian, or the wood of a bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension and resistance. . and observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the simplest architecture, to the loftiest. the placing of the timbers in a ship's stem, and the laying of the stones in a bridge buttress, are similar in art to the construction of the plowshare, differing in no essential point, either in that they deal with other materials, or because, of the three things produced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it, another to divide water by advancing through it, and the third to divide water which advances against it. and again, the buttress of a bridge differs only from that of a cathedral in having less weight to sustain, and more to resist. we can find no term in the gradation, from the plowshare to the cathedral buttress, at which we can set a logical distinction. . thus then we have simply three divisions of art--one, that of giving colors to substance; another, that of giving form to it without question of resistance to force; and the third, that of giving form or position which will make it capable of such resistance. all the fine arts are embraced under these three divisions. do not think that it is only a logical or scientific affectation to mass them together in this manner; it is, on the contrary, of the first practical importance to understand that the painter's faculty, or masterhood over color, being as subtle as a musician's over sound, must be looked to for the government of every operation in which color is employed; and that, in the same manner, the appliance of any art whatsoever to minor objects cannot be right, unless under the direction of a true master of that art. under the present system, you keep your academician occupied only in producing tinted pieces of canvas to be shown in frames, and smooth pieces of marble to be placed in niches; while you expect your builder or constructor to design colored patterns in stone and brick, and your china-ware merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can paint china, but nothing else. by this division of labor, you ruin all the arts at once. the work of the academician becomes mean and effeminate, because he is not used to treat color on a grand scale and in rough materials; and your manufactures become base, because no well-educated person sets hand to them. and therefore it is necessary to understand, not merely as a logical statement, but as a practical necessity, that wherever beautiful color is to be arranged, you need a master of painting; and wherever noble form is to be given, a master of sculpture; and wherever complex mechanical force is to be resisted; a master of architecture. . but over this triple division there must rule another yet more important. any of these three arts may be either imitative of natural objects or limited to useful appliance. you may either paint a picture that represents a scene, or your street door, to keep it from rotting; you may mold a statue, or a plate; build the resemblance of a cluster of lotus stalks, or only a square pier. generally speaking, painting and sculpture will be imitative, and architecture merely useful; but there is a great deal of sculpture--as this crystal ball,[ ] for instance, which is not imitative, and a great deal of architecture which, to some extent, is so, as the so-called foils of gothic apertures; and for many other reasons you will find it necessary to keep distinction clear in your minds between the arts--of whatever kind--which are imitative, and produce a resemblance or image of something which is not present; and those which are limited to the production of some useful reality, as the blade of a knife, or the wall of a house. you will perceive also, as we advance, that sculpture and painting are indeed in this respect only one art; and that we shall have constantly to speak and think of them as simply _graphic_, whether with chisel or color, their principal function being to make us, in the words of aristotle, "[greek: theôrêtikoi tou peri sômata kallous]" (polit. . ), "having capacity and habit of contemplation of the beauty that is in material things;" while architecture, and its correlative arts, are to be practiced under quite other conditions of sentiment. . now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist either in imitation or mechanical construction, the right judgment of them must depend on our knowledge of the things they imitate, and forces they resist: and my function of teaching here would (for instance) so far resolve itself, either into demonstration that this painting of a peach[ ] does resemble a peach, or explanation of the way in which this plowshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth aside with least force of thrust. and in both of these methods of study, though of course your own diligence must be your chief master, to a certain extent your professor of art can always guide you securely, and can show you, either that the image does truly resemble what it attempts to resemble, or that the structure is rightly prepared for the service it has to perform. but there is yet another virtue of fine art which is, perhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your professor to teach you most, and which, on the contrary, is exactly that about which you must teach yourselves all that it is essential to learn. [illustration: fig. ] . i have here in my hand one of the simplest possible examples of the union of the graphic and constructive powers,--one of my breakfast plates. since all the finely architectural arts, we said, began in the shaping of the cup and the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with the platter. why has it been made round? for two structural reasons: first, that the greatest holding surface may be gathered into the smallest space; and secondly, that in being pushed past other things on the table, it may come into least contact with them. next, why has it a rim? for two other structural reasons: first, that it is convenient to put salt or mustard upon; but secondly, and chiefly, that the plate may be easily laid hold of. the rim is the simplest form of continuous handle. farther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to put this ridge beneath, round the bottom; for as the rim is the simplest possible form of continuous handle, so this is the simplest form of continuous leg. and we get the section given beneath the figure for the essential one of a rightly made platter. . thus far our art has been strictly utilitarian, having respect to conditions of collision, of carriage, and of support. but now, on the surface of our piece of pottery, here are various bands and spots of color which are presumably set there to make it pleasanter to the eye. six of the spots, seen closely, you discover are intended to represent flowers. these then have as distinctly a graphic purpose as the other properties of the plate have an architectural one, and the first critical question we have to ask about them is, whether they are like roses or not. i will anticipate what i have to say in subsequent lectures so far as to assure you that, if they are to be like roses at all, the liker they can be, the better. do not suppose, as many people will tell you, that because this is a common manufactured article, your roses on it are the better for being ill-painted, or half-painted. if they had been painted by the same hand that did this peach, the plate would have been all the better for it; but, as it chanced, there was no hand such as william hunt's to paint them, and their graphic power is not distinguished. in any case, however, that graphic power must have been subordinate to their effect as pink spots, while the band of green-blue round the plate's edge, and the spots of gold, pretend to no graphic power at all, but are meaningless spaces of color or metal. still less have they any mechanical office: they add nowise to the serviceableness of the plate; and their agreeableness, if they possess any, depends, therefore, neither on any imitative, nor any structural, character; but on some inherent pleasantness in themselves, either of mere colors to the eye, (as of taste to the tongue,) or in the placing of those colors in relations which obey some mental principle of order, or physical principle of harmony. . these abstract relations and inherent pleasantnesses, whether in space, number, or time, and whether of colors or sounds, form what we may properly term the musical or harmonic element in every art; and the study of them is an entirely separate science. it is the branch of art-philosophy to which the word 'æsthetics' should be strictly limited, being the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves are pleasant to the human senses or instincts, though they represent nothing, and serve for nothing, their only service _being_ their pleasantness. thus it is the province of æsthetics to tell you, (if you did not know it before,) that the taste and color of a peach are pleasant, and to ascertain, if it be ascertainable, (and you have any curiosity to know,) why they are so. . the information would, i presume, to most of you, be gratuitous. if it were not, and you chanced to be in a sick state of body in which you disliked peaches, it would be, for the time, to you false information, and, so far as it was true of other people, to you useless. nearly the whole study of æsthetics is in like manner either gratuitous or useless. either you like the right things without being recommended to do so, or, if you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by lectures on the laws of taste. you recollect the story of thackeray, provoked, as he was helping himself to strawberries, by a young coxcomb's telling him that "he never took fruit or sweets." "that," replied, or is said to have replied, thackeray, "is because you are a sot, and a glutton." and the whole science of æsthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by one passage of goethe's in the end of the second part of faust;--the notable one that follows the song of the lemures, when the angels enter to dispute with the fiends for the soul of faust. they enter singing--"pardon to sinners and life to the dust." mephistopheles hears them first, and exclaims to his troop, "discord i hear, and filthy jingling"--"mis-töne höre ich: garstiges geklimper." this, you see, is the extreme of bad taste in music. presently the angelic host begin strewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic crowd altogether. mephistopheles in vain calls to them--"what do you duck and shrink for--is that proper hellish behavior? stand fast, and let them strew"--"was duckt und zuckt ihr; ist das hellen-brauch? so haltet stand, und lasst sie streuen." there you have also, the extreme, of bad taste in sight and smell. and in the whole passage is a brief embodiment for you of the ultimate fact that all æsthetics depend on the health of soul and body, and the proper exercise of both, not only through years, but generations. only by harmony of both collateral and successive lives can the great doctrine of the muses be received which enables men "[greek: chairein orthôs],"--"to have pleasure rightly;" and there is no other definition of the beautiful, nor of any subject of delight to the æsthetic faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit has created, seen and felt by another of similar or equal nobility. so much as there is in you of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty, and creates none: what is human in you, in exact proportion to the perfectness of its humanity, can create it, and receive. . returning now to the very elementary form in which the appeal to our æsthetic virtue is made in our breakfast-plate, you notice that there are two distinct kinds of pleasantness attempted. one by hues of color; the other by proportions of space. i have called these the musical elements of the arts relating to sight; and there are indeed two complete sciences, one of the combinations of color, and the other of the combinations of line and form, which might each of them separately engage us in as intricate study as that of the science of music. but of the two, the science of color is, in the greek sense, the more musical, being one of the divisions of the apolline power; and it is so practically educational, that if we are not using the faculty for color to discipline nations, they will infallibly use it themselves as a means of corruption. both music and color are naturally influences of peace; but in the war trumpet, and the war shield, in the battle song and battle standard, they have concentrated by beautiful imagination the cruel passions of men; and there is nothing in all the divina commedia of history more grotesque, yet more frightful, than the fact that, from the almost fabulous period when the insanity and impiety of war wrote themselves in the symbols of the shields of the seven against thebes, colors have been the sign and stimulus of the most furious and fatal passions that have rent the nations: blue against green, in the decline of the roman empire; black against white, in that of florence; red against white, in the wars of the royal houses in england; and at this moment, red against white, in the contest of anarchy and loyalty, in all the world. . on the other hand, the directly ethical influence of color in the sky, the trees, flowers, and colored creatures round us, and in our own various arts massed under the one name of painting, is so essential and constant that we cease to recognize it, because we are never long enough altogether deprived of it to feel our need; and the mental diseases induced by the influence of corrupt color are as little suspected, or traced to their true source, as the bodily weaknesses resulting from atmospheric miasmata. . the second musical science which belongs peculiarly to sculpture, (and to painting, so far as it represents form,) consists in the disposition of beautiful masses. that is to say, beautiful surfaces limited by beautiful lines. beautiful _surfaces_, observe; and remember what is noted in my fourth lecture of the difference between a space and a mass. if you have at any time examined carefully, or practiced from, the drawings of shells placed in your copying series, you cannot but have felt the difference in the grace between the aspects of the same line, when inclosing a rounded or unrounded space. the exact science of sculpture is that of the relations between outline and the solid form it limits; and it does not matter whether that relation be indicated by drawing or carving, so long as the expression of solid form is the mental purpose; it is the science always of the beauty of relation in three dimensions. to take the simplest possible line of continuous limit--the circle: the flat disk inclosed by it may indeed be made an element of decoration, though a very meager one; but its relative mass, the ball, being gradated in three dimensions, is always delightful. here[ ] is at once the simplest, and, in mere patient mechanism, the most skillful, piece of sculpture i can possibly show you,--a piece of the purest rock-crystal, chiseled, (i believe, by mere toil of hand,) into a perfect sphere. imitating nothing, constructing nothing; sculpture for sculpture's sake of purest natural substance into simplest primary form. . again. out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster shell you might cut, at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular disks of the prettiest color and luster. to some extent, such tinsel or foil of shell _is_ used pleasantly for decoration. but the mussel or oyster becoming itself an unwilling modeler, agglutinates its juice into three dimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometrically gradated, together with the savage instinct of attributing value to what is difficult to obtain, make the little boss so precious in men's sight, that wise eagerness of search for the kingdom of heaven can be likened to their eagerness of search for _it_; and the gates of paradise can be no otherwise rendered so fair to their poor intelligence, as by telling them that every gate was of "one pearl." . but take note here. we have just seen that the sum of the perceptive faculty is expressed in these words of aristotle's, "to take pleasure rightly" or straightly--[greek: chairein orthôs]. now, it is not possible to do the direct opposite of that,--to take pleasure iniquitously or obliquely--[greek: chairein adikôs] or [greek: skoliôs],--more than you do in enjoying a thing because your neighbor cannot get it. you may enjoy a thing legitimately because it is rare, and cannot be seen often (as you do a fine aurora, or a sunset, or an unusually lovely flower); that is nature's way of stimulating your attention. but if you enjoy it because your neighbor cannot have it,--and, remember, all value attached to pearls more than glass beads, is merely and purely for that cause,--then you rejoice through the worst of idolatries, covetousness; and neither arithmetic, nor writing, nor any other so-called essential of education, is now so vitally necessary to the population of europe, as such acquaintance with the principles of intrinsic value, as may result in the iconoclasm of jewelry; and in the clear understanding that we are not, in that instinct, civilized, but yet remain wholly savage, so far as we care for display of this selfish kind. you think, perhaps, i am quitting my subject, and proceeding, as it is too often with appearance of justice alleged against me, into irrelevant matter. pardon me; the end, not only of these lectures, but of my whole professorship, would be accomplished,--and far more than that,--if only the english nation could be made to understand that the beauty which is indeed to be a joy forever, must be a joy for all; and that though the idolatry may not have been wholly divine which sculptured gods, the idolatry is wholly diabolic, which, for vulgar display, sculptures diamonds. . to go back to the point under discussion. a pearl, or a glass bead, may owe its pleasantness in some degree to its luster as well as to its roundness. but a mere and simple ball of unpolished stone is enough for sculpturesque value. you may have noticed that the quatrefoil used in the ducal palace of venice owes its complete loveliness in distant effect to the finishing of its cusps. the extremity of the cusp is a mere ball of istrian marble; and consider how subtle the faculty of sight must be, since it recognizes at any distance, and is gratified by, the mystery of the termination of cusp obtained by the gradated light on the ball. in that venetian tracery this simplest element of sculptured form is used sparingly, as the most precious that can be employed to finish the façade. but alike in our own, and the french, central gothic, the ball-flower is lavished on every line--and in your st. mary's spire, and the salisbury spire, and the towers of notre dame of paris, the rich pleasantness of decoration,--indeed, their so-called 'decorative style,'--consists only in being daintily beset with stone balls. it is true the balls are modified into dim likeness of flowers; but do you trace the resemblance to the rose in their distant, which is their intended, effect? . but, farther, let the ball have motion; then the form it generates will be that of a cylinder. you have, perhaps, thought that pure early english architecture depended for its charm on visibility of construction. it depends for its charm altogether on the abstract harmony of groups of cylinders,[ ] arbitrarily bent into moldings, and arbitrarily associated as shafts, having no _real_ relation to construction whatsoever, and a theoretical relation so subtle that none of us had seen it till professor willis worked it out for us. . and now, proceeding to analysis of higher sculpture, you may have observed the importance i have attached to the porch of san zenone, at verona, by making it, among your standards, the first of the group which is to illustrate the system of sculpture and architecture founded on faith in a future life. that porch, fortunately represented in the photograph, from which plate i. has been engraved, under a clear and pleasant light, furnishes you with examples of sculpture of every kind, from the flattest incised bas-relief to solid statues, both in marble and bronze. and the two points i have been pressing upon you are conclusively exhibited here, namely,--( ) that sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant bossiness or roundness of surface; ( ) that the pleasantness of that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective of imitation on one side, and of structure on the other. [illustration: i. porch of san zenone. verona.] [illustration: ii. the arethusa of syracuse.] [illustration: iii. the warning to the kings san zenone. verona.] . ( .) sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant bossiness or roundness of surface. if you look from some distance at these two engravings of greek coins, (place the book open, so that you can see the opposite plate three or four yards off,) you will find the relief on each of them simplifies itself into a pearl-like portion of a sphere, with exquisitely gradated light on its surface. when you look at them nearer, you will see that each smaller portion into which they are divided--cheek, or brow, or leaf, or tress of hair--resolves itself also into a rounded or undulated surface, pleasant by gradation of light. every several surface is delightful in itself, as a shell, or a tuft of rounded moss, or the bossy masses of distant forest would be. that these intricately modulated masses present some resemblance to a girl's face, such as the syracusans imagined that of the water-goddess arethusa, is entirely a secondary matter; the primary condition is that the masses shall be beautifully rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order. . ( .) it is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order and beauty of surface, apart from the imitation. but you can see there is a pretty disposition of, and relation between, the projections of a fir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates nothing. order exactly the same in kind, only much more complex; and an abstract beauty of surface rendered definite by increase and decline of light--(for every curve of surface has its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolic solid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or spherical one)--it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain; as it is the essential business of a painter to get good color, whether he imitates anything or not. at a distance from the picture, or carving, where the things represented become absolutely unintelligible, we must yet be able to say, at a glance, "that is good painting, or good carving." and you will be surprised to find, when you try the experiment, how much the eye must instinctively judge in this manner. take the front of san zenone, for instance, plate i. you will find it impossible, without a lens, to distinguish in the bronze gates, and in great part of the wall, anything that their bosses represent. you cannot tell whether the sculpture is of men, animals, or trees; only you feel it to be composed of pleasant projecting masses; you acknowledge that both gates and wall are, somehow, delightfully roughened; and only afterwards, by slow degrees, can you make out what this roughness means; nay, though here (plate iii.) i magnify[ ] one of the bronze plates of the gate to a scale, which gives you the same advantage as if you saw it quite close, in the reality,--you may still be obliged to me for the information that _this_ boss represents the madonna asleep in her little bed; and this smaller boss, the infant christ in his; and this at the top, a cloud with an angel coming out of it; and these jagged bosses, two of the three kings, with their crowns on, looking up to the star, (which is intelligible enough, i admit); but what this straggling, three-legged boss beneath signifies, i suppose neither you nor i can tell, unless it be the shepherd's dog, who has come suddenly upon the kings with their crowns on, and is greatly startled at them. . farther, and much more definitely, the pleasantness of the surface decoration is independent of structure; that is to say, of any architectural requirement of stability. the greater part of the sculpture here is exclusively ornamentation of a flat wall, or of door-paneling; only a small portion of the church front is thus treated, and the sculpture has no more to do with the form of the building than a piece of lace veil would have, suspended beside its gates on a festal day: the proportions of shaft and arch might be altered in a hundred different ways without diminishing their stability; and the pillars would stand more safely on the ground than on the backs of these carved animals. . i wish you especially to notice these points, because the false theory that ornamentation should be merely decorated structure is so pretty and plausible, that it is likely to take away your attention from the far more important abstract conditions of design. structure should never be contradicted, and in the best buildings it is pleasantly exhibited and enforced: in this very porch the joints of every stone are visible, and you will find me in the fifth lecture insisting on this clearness of its anatomy as a merit; yet so independent is the mechanical structure of the true design, that when i begin my lectures on architecture, the first building i shall give you as a standard will be one in which the structure is wholly concealed. it will be the baptistery of florence, which is, in reality, as much a buttressed chapel with a vaulted roof, as the chapter house of york;--but round it, in order to conceal that buttressed structure, (not to decorate, observe, but to _conceal_,) a flat external wall is raised; simplifying the whole to a mere hexagonal box, like a wooden piece of tunbridge ware, on the surface of which the eye and intellect are to be interested by the relations of dimension and curve between pieces of incrusting marble of different colors, which have no more to do with the real make of the building than the diaper of a harlequin's jacket has to do with his bones. . the sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoyment of such a piece of art entirely depends, is one of the æsthetic faculties which nothing can develop but time and education. it belongs only to highly trained nations; and, among them, to their most strictly refined classes, though the germs of it are found, as part of their innate power, in every people capable of art. it has for the most part vanished at present from the english mind, in consequence of our eager desire for excitement, and for the kind of splendor that exhibits wealth, careless of dignity; so that, i suppose, there are very few now even of our best trained londoners who know the difference between the design of whitehall and that of any modern club-house in pall mall. the order and harmony which, in his enthusiastic account of the theater of epidaurus, pausanias insists on before beauty, can only be recognized by stern order and harmony in our daily lives; and the perception of them is as little to be compelled, or taught suddenly, as the laws of still finer choice in the conception of dramatic incident which regulate poetic sculpture. . and now, at last, i think, we can sketch out the subject before us in a clear light. we have a structural art, divine and human, of which the investigation comes under the general term anatomy; whether the junctions or joints be in mountains, or in branches of trees, or in buildings, or in bones of animals. we have next a musical art, falling into two distinct divisions--one using colors, the other masses, for its elements of composition; lastly, we have an imitative art, concerned with the representation of the outward appearances of things. and, for many reasons, i think it best to begin with imitative sculpture; that being defined as _the art which, by the musical disposition of masses, imitates anything of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us; and does so in accordance with structural laws having due reference to the materials employed_. so that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry what the things are of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us: what, in few words,--if we are to be occupied in the making of graven images,--we ought to like to make images _of_. secondly, after having determined its subject, what degree of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in our graven image; and, lastly, under what limitations demanded by structure and material, such likeness may be obtained. these inquiries i shall endeavor to pursue with you to some practical conclusion, in my next four lectures; and in the sixth, i will briefly sketch the actual facts that have taken place in the development of sculpture by the two greatest schools of it that hitherto have existed in the world. . the tenor of our next lecture, then, must be an inquiry into the real nature of idolatry; that is to say, the invention and service of idols: and, in the interval, may i commend to your own thoughts this question, not wholly irrelevant, yet which i cannot pursue; namely, whether the god to whom we have so habitually prayed for deliverance "from battle, murder, and sudden death," _is_ indeed, seeing that the present state of christendom is the result of a thousand years' praying to that effect, "as the gods of the heathen who were but idols;" or whether--(and observe, one or other of these things _must_ be true)--whether our prayers to him have been, by this much, worse than idolatry;--that heathen prayer was true prayer to false gods; and our prayers have been false prayers to the true one? footnotes: [ ] i had a real plowshare on my lecture-table; but it would interrupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if i attempted here to illustrate by figures the relation of the colter to the share, and of the hard to the soft pieces of metal in the share itself. [ ] a sphere of rock crystal, cut in japan, enough imaginable by the reader, without a figure. [ ] one of william hunt's peaches; not, i am afraid, imaginable altogether, but still less representable by figure. [ ] the crystal ball above mentioned. [ ] all grandest effects in moldings may be, and for the most part have been, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental) section. more refined sections, as that of the fluting of a doric shaft, are only of use near the eye and in beautiful stone; and the pursuit of them was one of the many errors of later gothic. the statement in the text that the moldings, even of best time, "have no real relation to construction," is scarcely strong enough: they in fact contend with, and deny the construction, their principal purpose seeming to be the concealment of the joints of the voussoirs. [ ] some of the most precious work done for me by my assistant, mr. burgess, during the course of these lectures, consisted in making enlarged drawings from portions of photographs. plate iii. is engraved from a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of which plate i. is a reduction. lecture ii. idolatry. _november, ._ . beginning with the simple conception of sculpture as the art of fiction in solid substance, we are now to consider what its subject should be. what--having the gift of imagery--should we by preference endeavor to image? a question which is, indeed, subordinate to the deeper one--why we should wish to image anything at all. . some years ago, having been always desirous that the education of women should begin in learning how to cook, i got leave, one day, for a little girl of eleven years old to exchange, much to her satisfaction, her schoolroom for the kitchen. but as ill-fortune would have it, there was some pastry toward, and she was left unadvisedly in command of some delicately rolled paste; whereof she made no pies, but an unlimited quantity of cats and mice. now you may read the works of the gravest critics of art from end to end; but you will find, at last, they can give you no other true account of the spirit of sculpture than that it is an irresistible human instinct for the making of cats and mice, and other imitable living creatures, in such permanent form that one may play with the images at leisure. play with them, or love them, or fear them, or worship them. the cat may become the goddess pasht, and the mouse, in the hand of a sculptured king, enforce his enduring words "[greek: es eme tis horeôn eusebês estô]"; but the great mimetic instinct underlies all such purpose; and is zooplastic,--life-shaping,--alike in the reverent and the impious. . is, i say, and has been, hitherto; none of us dare say that it will be. i shall have to show you hereafter that the greater part of the technic energy of men, as yet, has indicated a kind of childhood; and that the race becomes, if not more wise, at least more manly,[ ] with every gained century. i can fancy that all this sculpturing and painting of ours may be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind of doll-making, and that the words of sir isaac newton may be smiled at no more: only it will not be for stars that we desert our stone dolls, but for men. when the day comes, as come it must, in which we no more deface and defile god's image in living clay, i am not sure that we shall any of us care so much for the images made of him, in burnt clay. . but, hitherto, the energy of growth in any people may be almost directly measured by their passion for imitative art; namely, for sculpture, or for the drama, which is living and speaking sculpture, or, as in greece, for both; and in national as in actual childhood, it is not merely the _making_, but the _making-believe_; not merely the acting for the sake of the scene, but acting for the sake of acting, that is delightful. and, of the two mimetic arts, the drama, being more passionate, and involving conditions of greater excitement and luxury, is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating strength in the people; while fine sculpture, requiring always submission to severe law, is an unfailing proof of their being in early and active progress. _there is no instance of fine sculpture being produced by a nation either torpid, weak, or in decadence._ their drama may gain in grace and wit; but their sculpture, in days of decline, is _always_ base. . if my little lady in the kitchen had been put in command of colors, as well as of dough, and if the paste would have taken the colors, we may be sure her mice would have been painted brown, and her cats tortoiseshell; and this, partly indeed for the added delight and prettiness of color itself, but more for the sake of absolute realization to her eyes and mind. now all the early sculpture of the most accomplished nations has been thus colored, rudely or finely; and therefore you see at once how necessary it is that we should keep the term 'graphic' for imitative art generally; since no separation can at first be made between carving and painting, with reference to the mental powers exerted in, or addressed by, them. in the earliest known art of the world, a reindeer hunt may be scratched in outline on the flat side of a clean-picked bone, and a reindeer's head carved out of the end of it; both these are flint-knife work, and, strictly speaking, sculpture: but the scratched outline is the beginning of drawing, and the carved head of sculpture proper. when the spaces inclosed by the scratched outline are filled with color, the coloring soon becomes a principal means of effect; so that, in the engraving of an egyptian-color bas-relief (s. ), rosellini has been content to miss the outlining incisions altogether, and represent it as a painting only. its proper definition is, 'painting accented by sculpture;' on the other hand, in solid colored statues,--dresden china figures, for example,--we have pretty sculpture accented by painting; the mental purpose in both kinds of art being to obtain the utmost degree of realization possible, and the ocular impression being the same, whether the delineation is obtained by engraving or painting. for, as i pointed out to you in my fifth lecture, everything is seen by the eye as patches of color, and of color only;--a fact which the greeks knew well; so that when it becomes a question in the dialogue of minos, "[greek: tini onti tê opsei horatai ta horômena]," the answer is "[greek: aisthêsei tautê tê dia tôn ophthalmôn dêlousê hêmin ta chrômata]."--"what kind of power is the sight with which we see things? it is that sense which, through the eyes, can reveal _colors_ to us." . and now observe that, while the graphic arts begin in the mere mimetic effort, they proceed, as they obtain more perfect realization, to act under the influence of a stronger and higher instinct. they begin by scratching the reindeer, the most interesting object of sight. but presently, as the human creature rises in scale of intellect, it proceeds to scratch, not the most interesting object of sight only, but the most interesting object of imagination; not the reindeer, but the maker and giver of the reindeer. and the second great condition for the advance of the art of sculpture is that the race should possess, in addition to the mimetic instinct, the realistic or idolizing instinct; the desire to see as substantial the powers that are unseen, and bring near those that are far off, and to possess and cherish those that are strange. to make in some way tangible and visible the nature of the gods--to illustrate and explain it by symbols; to bring the immortals out of the recesses of the clouds, and make them penates; to bring back the dead from darkness, and make them lares. . our conception of this tremendous and universal human passion has been altogether narrowed by the current idea that pagan religious art consisted only, or chiefly, in giving personality to the gods. the personality was never doubted; it was visibility, interpretation, and possession that the hearts of men sought. possession, first of all--the getting hold of some hewn log of wild olive-wood that would fall on its knees if it was pulled from its pedestal--and, afterwards, slowly clearing manifestation; the exactly right expression is used in lucian's dream,--[greek: pheidias edeixe ton dia]; "showed[ ] zeus;" manifested him; nay, in a certain sense, brought forth, or created, as you have it, in anacreon's ode to the rose, of the birth of athena herself,-- [greek: polemoklonon t' athênên koryphês edeiknye zeus.] but i will translate the passage from lucian to you at length--it is in every way profitable. . "there came to me, in the healing[ ] night, a divine dream, so clear that it missed nothing of the truth itself; yes, and still after all this time, the shapes of what i saw remain in my sight, and the sound of what i heard dwells in my ears"--(note the lovely sense of [greek: enaulos]--the sound being as of a stream passing always by in the same channel)--"so distinct was everything to me. two women laid hold of my hands and pulled me, each towards herself, so violently, that i had like to have been pulled asunder; and they cried out against one another,--the one, that she resolved to have me to herself, being indeed her own; and the other, that it was vain for her to claim what belonged to others;--and the one who first claimed me for her own was like a hard worker, and had strength as a man's; and her hair was dusty, and her hand full of horny places, and her dress fastened tight about her, and the folds of it loaded with white marble-dust, so that she looked just as my uncle used to look when he was filing stones: but the other was pleasant in features, and delicate in form, and orderly in her dress; and so, in the end, they left it to me to decide, after hearing what they had to say, with which of them i would go; and first the hard-featured and masculine one spoke:-- . "'dear child, i am the art of image-sculpture, which yesterday you began to learn; and i am as one of your own people, and of your house, for your grandfather' (and she named my mother's father) 'was a stone-cutter; and both your uncles had good name through me: and if you will keep yourself well clear of the sillinesses and fluent follies that come from this creature,' (and she pointed to the other woman,) 'and will follow me, and live with me, first of all, you shall be brought up as a man should be, and have strong shoulders; and, besides that, you shall be kept well quit of all restless desires, and you shall never be obliged to go away into any foreign places, leaving your own country and the people of your house; _neither shall all men praise you for your talk_.[ ] and you must not despise this rude serviceableness of my body, neither this meanness of my dusty dress; for, pushing on in their strength from such things as these, that great phidias revealed zeus, and polyclitus wrought out hera, and myron was praised, and praxiteles marveled at: therefore are these men worshiped with the gods.'" . there is a beautiful ambiguity in the use of the preposition with the genitive in this last sentence. "pushing on from these things" means indeed, justly, that the sculptors rose from a mean state to a noble one; but not as _leaving_ the mean state,--not as, from a hard life, attaining to a soft one,--but as being helped and strengthened by the rough life to do what was greatest. again, "worshiped with the gods" does not mean that they are thought of as in any sense equal to, or like to, the gods, but as being on the side of the gods against what is base and ungodly; and that the kind of worth which is in them is therefore indeed worshipful, as having its source with the gods. finally, observe that every one of the expressions used of the four sculptors is definitely the best that lucian could have chosen. phidias carved like one who had seen zeus, and had only to _reveal_ him; polyclitus, in labor of intellect, completed his sculpture by just law, and _wrought_ out hera; myron was of all most _praised_, because he did best what pleased the vulgar; and praxiteles the most _wondered at_, or admired, because he bestowed utmost exquisiteness of beauty. . i am sorry not to go on with the dream: the more refined lady, as you may remember, is liberal or gentlemanly education, and prevails at last; so that lucian becomes an author instead of a sculptor, i think to his own regret, though to our present benefit. one more passage of his i must refer you to, as illustrative of the point before us; the description of the temple of the syrian hieropolis, where he explains the absence of the images of the sun and moon. "in the temple itself," he says, "on the left hand as one goes in, there is set first the throne of the sun; but no form of him is thereon, for of these two powers alone, the sun and the moon, they show no carved images. and i also learned why this is their law, for they say that it is permissible, indeed, to make of the other gods, graven images, since the forms of them are not visible to all men. but helios and selenaia are everywhere clear-bright, and all men behold them; what need is there therefore for sculptured work of these, who appear in the air?" . this, then, is the second instinct necessary to sculpture; the desire for the manifestation, description, and companionship of unknown powers; and for possession of a bodily substance--the 'bronze strasbourg,' which you can embrace, and hang immortelles on the head of--instead of an abstract idea. but if you get nothing more in the depth of the national mind than these two feelings, the mimetic and idolizing instincts, there may be still no progress possible for the arts except in delicacy of manipulation and accumulative caprice of design. you must have not only the idolizing instinct, but an [greek: êthos] which chooses the right thing to idolize! else, you will get states of art like those in china or india, non-progressive, and in great part diseased and frightful, being wrought under the influence of foolish terror, or foolish admiration. so that a third condition, completing and confirming both the others, must exist in order to the development of the creative power. . this third condition is that the heart of the nation shall be set on the discovery of just or equal law, and shall be from day to day developing that law more perfectly. the greek school of sculpture is formed during, and in consequence of, the national effort to discover the nature of justice; the tuscan, during, and in consequence of, the national effort to discover the nature of justification. i assert to you at present briefly, what will, i hope, be the subject of prolonged illustration hereafter. . now when a nation with mimetic instinct and imaginative longing is also thus occupied earnestly in the discovery of ethic law, that effort gradually brings precision and truth into all its manual acts; and the physical progress of sculpture, as in the greek, so in the tuscan, school, consists in gradually _limiting_ what was before indefinite, in _verifying_ what was inaccurate, and in _humanizing_ what was monstrous. i might perhaps content you by showing these external phenomena, and by dwelling simply on the increasing desire of naturalness, which compels, in every successive decade of years, literally, in the sculptured images, the mimicked bones to come together, bone to his bone; and the flesh to come up upon them, until from a flattened and pinched handful of clay, respecting which you may gravely question whether it was intended for a human form at all;--by slow degrees, and added touch to touch, in increasing consciousness of the bodily truth,--at last the aphrodite of melos stands before you, a perfect woman. but all that search for physical accuracy is merely the external operation, in the arts, of the seeking for truth in the inner soul; it is impossible without that higher effort, and the demonstration of it would be worse than useless to you, unless i made you aware at the same time of its spiritual cause. . observe farther; the increasing truth in representation is correlative with increasing beauty in the thing to be represented. the pursuit of justice which regulates the imitative effort, regulates also the development of the race into dignity of person, as of mind; and their culminating art-skill attains the grasp of entire truth at the moment when the truth becomes most lovely. and then, ideal sculpture may go on safely into portraiture. but i shall not touch on the subject of portrait sculpture to-day; it introduces many questions of detail, and must be a matter for subsequent consideration. . these, then, are the three great passions which are concerned in true sculpture. i cannot find better, or, at least, more easily remembered, names for them than 'the instincts of mimicry, idolatry, and discipline;' meaning, by the last, the desire of equity and wholesome restraint, in all acts and works of life. now of these, there is no question but that the love of mimicry is natural and right, and the love of discipline is natural and right. but it looks a grave question whether the yearning for idolatry (the desire of companionship with images) is right. whether, indeed, if such an instinct be essential to good sculpture, the art founded on it can possibly be 'fine' art. . i must now beg for your close attention, because i have to point out distinctions in modes of conception which will appear trivial to you, unless accurately understood; but of an importance in the history of art which cannot be overrated. when the populace of paris adorned the statue of strasbourg with immortelles, none, even the simplest of the pious decorators, would suppose that the city of strasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost of the city, was actually there, sitting in the place de la concorde. the figure was delightful to them as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts about strasbourg; but never for a moment supposed to _be_ strasbourg. similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue purporting to represent a river instead of a city,--the rhine, or garonne, suppose,--and have been touched with strong emotion in looking at it, if the real river were dear to them, and yet never think for an instant that the statue _was_ the river. and yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they might take delight in the beautiful image of a god, because it gathered and perpetuated their thoughts about that god; and yet never suppose, nor be capable of being deceived by any arguments into supposing, that the statue _was_ the god. on the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in the sight of a savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it aside in some, to him, sacred place, and believe the _stone itself_ to be a kind of god, and offer prayer and sacrifice to it. in like manner, any other strange or terrifying object, such, for instance, as a powerfully noxious animal or plant, he would be apt to regard in the same way; and very possibly also construct for himself frightful idols of some kind, calculated to produce upon him a vague impression of their being alive; whose imaginary anger he might deprecate or avert with sacrifice, although incapable of conceiving in them any one attribute of exalted intellectual or moral nature. . if you will now refer to §§ - of my introductory lectures, you will find this distinction between a resolute conception, recognized for such, and an involuntary apprehension of spiritual existence, already insisted on at some length. and you will see more and more clearly as we proceed, that the deliberate and intellectually commanded conception is not idolatrous in any evil sense whatever, but is one of the grandest and wholesomest functions of the human soul; and that the essence of evil idolatry begins only in the idea or belief of a real presence of any kind, in a thing in which there is no such presence. . i need not say that the harm of the idolatry must depend on the certainty of the negative. if there be a real presence in a pillar of cloud, in an unconsuming flame, or in a still small voice, it is no sin to bow down before these. but, as matter of historical fact, the idea of such presence has generally been both ignoble and false, and confined to nations of inferior race, who are often condemned to remain for ages in conditions of vile terror, destitute of thought. nearly all indian architecture and chinese design arise out of such a state: so also, though in a less gross degree, ninevite and phoenician art, early irish, and scandinavian; the latter, however, with vital elements of high intellect mingled in it from the first. but the greatest races are never grossly subject to such terror, even in their childhood, and the course of their minds is broadly divisible into three distinct stages. . (i.) in their infancy they begin to imitate the real animals about them, as my little girl made the cats and mice, but with an under-current of partial superstition--a sense that there must be more in the creatures than they can see; also they catch up vividly any of the fancies of the baser nations round them, and repeat these more or less apishly, yet rapidly naturalizing and beautifying them. they then connect all kinds of shapes together, compounding meanings out of the old chimeras, and inventing new ones with the speed of a running wildfire; but always getting more of man into their images, and admitting less of monster or brute; their own characters, meanwhile, expanding and purging themselves, and shaking off the feverish fancy, as springing flowers shake the earth off their stalks. . (ii.) in the second stage, being now themselves perfect men and women, they reach the conception of true and great gods as existent in the universe; and absolutely cease to think of them as in any wise present in statues or images; but they have now learned to make these statues beautifully human, and to surround them with attributes that may concentrate their thoughts of the gods. this is, in greece, accurately the pindaric time, just a little preceding the phidian; the phidian is already dimmed with a faint shadow of infidelity; still, the olympic zeus may be taken as a sufficiently central type of a statue which was no more supposed to _be_ zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks it was made of; but in which the most splendid powers of human art were exhausted in representing a believed and honored god to the happy and holy imagination of a sincerely religious people. . (iii.) the third stage of national existence follows, in which, the imagination having now done its utmost, and being partly restrained by the sanctities of tradition, which permit no farther change in the conceptions previously created, begins to be superseded by logical deduction and scientific investigation. at the same moment, the elder artists having done all that is possible in realizing the national conceptions of the gods, the younger ones, forbidden to change the scheme of existing representations, and incapable of doing anything better in that kind, betake themselves to refine and decorate the old ideas with more attractive skill. their aims are thus more and more limited to manual dexterity, and their fancy paralyzed. also in the course of centuries, the methods of every art continually improving, and being made subjects of popular inquiry, praise is now to be got, for eminence in these, from the whole mob of the nation; whereas intellectual design can never be discerned but by the few. so that in this third era we find every kind of imitative and vulgar dexterity more and more cultivated; while design and imagination are every day less cared for, and less possible. . meanwhile, as i have just said, the leading minds in literature and science become continually more logical and investigative; and once that they are established in the habit of testing facts accurately, a very few years are enough to convince all the strongest thinkers that the old imaginative religion is untenable, and cannot any longer be honestly taught in its fixed traditional form, except by ignorant persons. and at this point the fate of the people absolutely depends on the degree of moral strength into which their hearts have been already trained. if it be a strong, industrious, chaste, and honest race, the taking its old gods, or at least the old forms of them, away from it, will indeed make it deeply sorrowful and amazed; but will in no whit shake its will, nor alter its practice. exceptional persons, naturally disposed to become drunkards, harlots, and cheats, but who had been previously restrained from indulging these dispositions by their fear of god, will, of course, break out into open vice, when that fear is removed. but the heads of the families of the people, instructed in the pure habits and perfect delights of an honest life, and to whom the thought of a father in heaven had been a comfort, not a restraint, will assuredly not seek relief from the discomfort of their orphanage by becoming uncharitable and vile. also the high leaders of their thought gather their whole strength together in the gloom; and at the first entrance to this valley of the shadow of death, look their new enemy full in the eyeless face of him, and subdue him, and his terror, under their feet. "metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,... strepitumque acherontis avari." this is the condition of national soul expressed by the art, and the words, of holbein, dürer, shakspeare, pope, and goethe. . but if the people, at the moment when the trial of darkness approaches, be not confirmed in moral character, but are only maintaining a superficial virtue by the aid of a spectral religion; the moment the staff of their faith is broken, the character of the race falls like a climbing plant cut from its hold: then all the earthliest vices attack it as it lies in the dust; every form of sensual and insane sin is developed; and half a century is sometimes enough to close in hopeless shame the career of the nation in literature, art, and war. . notably, within the last hundred years, all religion has perished from the practically active national mind of france and england. no statesman in the senate of either country would dare to use a sentence out of their acceptedly divine revelation, as having now a literal authority over them for their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for their contemplation. england, especially, has cast her bible full in the face of her former god; and proclaimed, with open challenge to him, her resolved worship of his declared enemy, mammon. all the arts, therefore, founded on religion and sculpture chiefly, are here in england effete and corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the history of mankind; and it is possible to show you the condition of sculpture living, and sculpture dead, in accurate opposition, by simply comparing the nascent pisan school in italy with the existing school in england. . you were perhaps surprised at my placing in your educational series, as a type of original italian sculpture, the pulpit by niccola pisano in the duomo of siena. i would rather, had it been possible, have given the pulpit by giovanni pisano in the duomo of pisa; but that pulpit is dispersed in fragments through the upper galleries of the duomo, and the cloister of the campo santo; and the casts of its fragments now put together at kensington are too coarse to be of use to you. you may partly judge, however, of the method of their execution by the eagle's head, which i have sketched from the marble in the campo santo (edu., no. ), and the lioness with her cubs (edu., no. , more carefully studied at siena); and i will get you other illustrations in due time. meanwhile, i want you to compare the main purpose of the cathedral of pisa, and its associated bell tower, baptistery, and holy field, with the main purpose of the principal building lately raised for the people of london. in these days, we indeed desire no cathedrals; but we have constructed an enormous and costly edifice, which, in claiming educational influence over the whole london populace, and middle class, is verily the metropolitan cathedral of this century,--the crystal palace. . it was proclaimed, at its erection, an example of a newly discovered style of architecture, greater than any hitherto known,--our best popular writers, in their enthusiasm, describing it as an edifice of fairyland. you are nevertheless to observe that this novel production of fairy enchantment is destitute of every kind of sculpture, except the bosses produced by the heads of nails and rivets; while the duomo of pisa, in the wreathen work of its doors, in the foliage of its capitals, inlaid color designs of its façade, embossed panels of its baptistery font, and figure sculpture of its two pulpits, contained the germ of a school of sculpture which was to maintain, through a subsequent period of four hundred years, the greatest power yet reached by the arts of the world, in description of form, and expression of thought. . now it is easy to show you the essential cause of the vast discrepancy in the character of these two buildings. in the vault of the apse of the duomo of pisa was a colossal image of christ, in colored mosaic, bearing to the temple, as nearly as possible, the relation which the statue of athena bore to the parthenon; and in the same manner, concentrating the imagination of the pisan on the attributes of the god in whom he believed. in precisely the same position with respect to the nave of the building, but of larger size, as proportioned to the three or four times greater scale of the whole, a colossal piece of sculpture was placed by english designers, at the extremity of the crystal palace, in preparation for their solemnities in honor of the birthday of christ, in december or . that piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a pantomime, some twelve feet high from brow to chin, which face, being moved by the mechanism which is our pride, every half-minute opened its mouth from ear to ear, showed its teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of these periodical seasons of expression being increased and explained by the illuminated inscription underneath, "here we are again." . when it is assumed, and with too good reason, that the mind of the english populace is to be addressed, in the principal sacred festival of its year, by sculpture such as this, i need scarcely point out to you that the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence by collecting within this building (itself devoid absolutely of every kind of art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it are continually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it together,) examples of sculpture filched indiscriminately from the past work, bad and good, of turks, greeks, romans, moors, and christians, miscolored, misplaced, and misinterpreted;[ ] here thrust into unseemly corners, and there mortised together into mere confusion of heterogeneous obstacle; pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable in weariness, until any kind of relief is sought from it in steam wheelbarrows or cheap toyshops; and most of all in beer and meat, the corks and the bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp deal flooring of the english fairy palace. . but you will probably think me unjust in assuming that a building prepared only for the amusement of the people can typically represent the architecture or sculpture of modern england. you may urge that i ought rather to describe the qualities of the refined sculpture which is executed in large quantities for private persons belonging to the upper classes, and for sepulchral and memorial purposes. but i could not now criticise that sculpture with any power of conviction to you, because i have not yet stated to you the principles of good sculpture in general. i will, however, in some points, tell you the facts by anticipation. . we have much excellent portrait sculpture; but portrait sculpture, which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, even when produced by men of genius;--nor does it in the least require men of genius to produce it. to paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts of painting; but any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can carve a satisfactory bust. . of our powers in historical sculpture, i am, without question, just, in taking for sufficient evidence the monuments we have erected to our two greatest heroes by sea and land; namely, the nelson column, and the statue of the duke of wellington opposite apsley house. nor will you, i hope, think me severe,--certainly, whatever you may think me, i am using only the most temperate language, in saying of both these monuments, that they are absolutely devoid of high sculptural merit. but consider how much is involved in the fact thus dispassionately stated, respecting the two monuments in the principal places of our capital, to our two greatest heroes. . remember that we have before our eyes, as subjects of perpetual study and thought, the art of all the world for three thousand years past; especially, we have the best sculpture of greece, for example of bodily perfection; the best of rome, for example of character in portraiture; the best of florence, for example of romantic passion; we have unlimited access to books and other sources of instruction; we have the most perfect scientific illustrations of anatomy, both human and comparative; and we have bribes for the reward of success, large in the proportion of at least twenty to one, as compared with those offered to the artists of any other period. and with all these advantages, and the stimulus also of fame carried instantly by the press to the remotest corners of europe, the best efforts we can make, on the grandest of occasions, result in work which it is impossible in any one particular to praise. now consider for yourselves what an intensity of the negation of the faculty of sculpture this implies in the national mind! what measure can be assigned to the gulf of incapacity, which can deliberately swallow up in the gorge of it the teaching and example of three thousand years, and produce, as the result of that instruction, what it is courteous to call 'nothing'? . that is the conclusion at which we arrive on the evidence presented by our historical sculpture. to complete the measure of ourselves, we must endeavor to estimate the rank of the two opposite schools of sculpture employed by us in the nominal service of religion, and in the actual service of vice. i am aware of no statue of christ, nor of any apostle of christ, nor of any scene related in the new testament, produced by us within the last three hundred years, which has possessed even superficial merit enough to attract public attention. whereas the steadily immoral effect of the formative art which we learn, more or less apishly, from the french schools, and employ, but too gladly, in manufacturing articles for the amusement of the luxurious classes, must be ranked as one of the chief instruments used by joyful fiends and angry fates for the ruin of our civilization. if, after i have set before you the nature and principles of true sculpture, in athens, pisa, and florence, you consider these facts,--(which you will then at once recognize as such),--you will find that they absolutely justify my assertion that the state of sculpture in modern england, as compared with that of the great ancients, is literally one of corrupt and dishonorable death, as opposed to bright and fameful life. . and now, will you bear with me while i tell you finally why this is so? the cause with which you are personally concerned is your own frivolity; though essentially this is not your fault, but that of the system of your early training. but the fact remains the same, that here, in oxford, you, a chosen body of english youth, in nowise care for the history of your country, for its present dangers, or its present duties. you still, like children of seven or eight years old, are interested only in bats, balls, and oars: nay, including with you the students of germany and france, it is certain that the general body of modern european youth have their minds occupied more seriously by the sculpture and painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all the divinest workmanship and passionate imagination of greece, rome, and mediæval christendom. . but the elementary causes, both of this frivolity in you, and of worse than frivolity in older persons, are the two forms of deadly idolatry which are now all but universal in england. the first of these is the worship of the eidolon, or fantasm of wealth; worship of which you will find the nature partly examined in the thirty-seventh paragraph of my 'munera pulveris'; but which is briefly to be defined as the servile apprehension of an active power in money, and the submission to it as the god of our life. . the second elementary cause of the loss of our nobly imaginative faculty, is the worship of the letter, instead of the spirit, in what we chiefly accept as the ordinance and teaching of deity; and the apprehension of a healing sacredness in the act of reading the book whose primal commands we refuse to obey. no feather idol of polynesia was ever a sign of a more shameful idolatry than the modern notion in the minds of certainly the majority of english religious persons, that the word of god, by which the heavens were of old, and the earth, standing out of the water and in the water,--the word of god which came to the prophets, and comes still forever to all who will hear it (and to many who will forbear); and which, called faithful and true, is to lead forth, in the judgment, the armies of heaven,--that this 'word of god' may yet be bound at our pleasure in morocco, and carried about in a young lady's pocket, with tasseled ribbons to mark the passages she most approves of. . gentlemen, there has hitherto been seen no instance, and england is little likely to give the unexampled spectacle, of a country successful in the noble arts, yet in which the youths were frivolous, the maidens falsely religious; the men, slaves of money, and the matrons, of vanity. not from all the marble of the hills of luini will such a people ever shape one statue that may stand nobly against the sky; not from all the treasures bequeathed to them by the great dead, will they gather, for their own descendants, any inheritance but shame. footnotes: [ ] glance forward at once to § , read it, and return to this. [ ] there is a primary and vulgar sense of 'exhibited' in lucian's mind; but the higher meaning is involved in it. [ ] in the greek, 'ambrosial.' recollect always that ambrosia, as food of gods, is the continual restorer of strength; that all food is ambrosial when it nourishes, and that the night is called 'ambrosial' because it restores strength to the soul through its peace, as, in the d psalm, the stillness of waters. [ ] i have italicized this final promise of blessedness, given by the noble spirit of workmanship. compare carlyle's fifth latter-day pamphlet, throughout; but especially pp. - , in the first edition. [ ] "falsely represented," would be the better expression. in the cast of the tomb of queen eleanor, for a single instance, the gothic foliage, of which one essential virtue is its change over every shield, is represented by a repetition of casts from one mold, of which the design itself is entirely conjectural. lecture iii. imagination. _november, ._ . the principal object of the preceding lecture, (and i choose rather to incur your blame for tediousness in repeating, than for obscurity in defining it,) was to enforce the distinction between the ignoble and false phase of idolatry, which consists in the attribution of a spiritual power to a material thing; and the noble and truth-seeking phase of it, to which i shall in these lectures[ ] give the general term of imagination;--that is to say, the invention of material symbols which may lead us to contemplate the character and nature of gods, spirits, or abstract virtues and powers, without in the least implying the actual presence of such beings among us, or even their possession, in reality, of the forms we attribute to them. [illustration: fig. .] . for instance, in the ordinarily received greek type of athena, on vases of the phidian time, (sufficiently represented in the following wood-cut,) no greek would have supposed the vase on which this was painted to be itself athena, nor to contain athena inside of it, as the arabian fisherman's casket contained the genie; neither did he think that this rude black painting, done at speed as the potter's fancy urged his hand, represented anything like the form or aspect of the goddess herself. nor would he have thought so, even had the image been ever so beautifully wrought. the goddess might, indeed, visibly appear under the form of an armed virgin, as she might under that of a hawk or a swallow, when it pleased her to give such manifestation of her presence; but it did not, therefore, follow that she was constantly invested with any of these forms, or that the best which human skill could, even by her own aid, picture of her, was, indeed, a likeness of her. the real use, at all events, of this rude image, was only to signify to the eye and heart the facts of the existence, in some manner, of a spirit of wisdom, perfect in gentleness, irresistible in anger; having also physical dominion over the air which is the life and breath of all creatures, and clothed, to human eyes, with ægis of fiery cloud, and raiment of falling dew. [illustration: fig. .] . in the yet more abstract conception of the spirit of agriculture, in which the wings of the chariot represent the winds of spring, and its crested dragons are originally a mere type of the seed with its twisted root piercing the ground, and sharp-edged leaves rising above it, we are in still less danger of mistaking the symbol for the presumed form of an actual person. but i must, with persistence, beg of you to observe that in all the noble actions of imagination in this kind, the distinction from idolatry consists, not in the denial of the being, or presence, of the spirit, but only in the due recognition of our human incapacity to conceive the one, or compel the other. . farther--and for this statement i claim your attention still more earnestly. as no nation has ever attained real greatness during periods in which it was subject to any condition of idolatry, so no nation has ever attained or persevered in greatness, except in reaching and maintaining a passionate imagination of a spiritual estate higher than that of men; and of spiritual creatures nobler than men, having a quite real and personal existence, however imperfectly apprehended by us. and all the arts of the present age deserving to be included under the name of sculpture have been degraded by us, and all principles of just policy have vanished from us,--and that totally,--for this double reason; that we are, on one side, given up to idolatries of the most servile kind, as i showed you in the close of the last lecture,--while, on the other hand, we have absolutely ceased from the exercise of faithful imagination; and the only remnants of the desire of truth which remain in us have been corrupted into a prurient itch to discover the origin of life in the nature of the dust, and prove that the source of the order of the universe is the accidental concurrence of its atoms. . under these two calamities of our time, the art of sculpture has perished more totally than any other, because the object of that art is exclusively the representation of form as the exponent of life. it is essentially concerned only with the human form, which is the exponent of the highest life we know; and with all subordinate forms only as they exhibit conditions of vital power which have some certain relation to humanity. it deals with the "particula undique desecta" of the animal nature, and itself contemplates, and brings forward for its disciples' contemplation, all the energies of creation which transform the [greek: pêlos], or, lower still, the [greek: borboros] of the _trivia_, by athena's help, into forms of power;--([greek: to men holon architektôn autos ên syneirgazeto de toi kai hê 'athêna empneousa ton pêlon kai empsycha poiousa einai ta plasmata;])[ ]--but it has nothing whatever to do with the representation of forms not living, however beautiful (as of clouds or waves); nor may it condescend to use its perfect skill, except in expressing the noblest conditions of life. these laws of sculpture, being wholly contrary to the practice of our day, i cannot expect you to accept on my assertion, nor do i wish you to do so. by placing definitely good and bad sculpture before you, i do not doubt but that i shall gradually prove to you the nature of all excelling and enduring qualities; but to-day i will only confirm my assertions by laying before you the statement of the greeks themselves on the subject; given in their own noblest time, and assuredly authoritative, in every point which it embraces, for all time to come. . if any of you have looked at the explanation i have given of the myth of athena in my 'queen of the air,' you cannot but have been surprised that i took scarcely any note of the story of her birth. i did not, because that story is connected intimately with the apolline myths; and is told of athena, not essentially as the goddess of the air, but as the goddess of art-wisdom. you have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or avoided thinking of it, as revolting. it is, indeed, one of the most painful and childish of sacred myths; yet remember, ludicrous and ugly as it seems to us, this story satisfied the fancy of the athenian people in their highest state; and if it did not satisfy, yet it was accepted by, all later mythologists: you may also remember i told you to be prepared always to find that, given a certain degree of national intellect, the ruder the symbol, the deeper would be its purpose. and this legend of the birth of athena is the central myth of all that the greeks have left us respecting the power of their arts; and in it they have expressed, as it seemed good to them, the most important things they had to tell us on these matters. we may read them wrongly; but we must read them here, if anywhere. . there are so many threads to be gathered up in the legend, that i cannot hope to put it before you in total clearness, but i will take main points. athena is born in the island of rhodes; and that island is raised out of the sea by apollo, after he had been left without inheritance among the gods. zeus[ ] would have cast the lot again, but apollo orders the golden-girdled lachesis to stretch out her hands; and not now by chance or lot, but by noble enchantment, the island rises out of the sea. physically, this represents the action of heat and light on chaos, especially on the deep sea. it is the "fiat lux" of genesis, the first process in the conquest of fate by harmony. the island is dedicated to the nymph rhodos, by whom apollo has the seven sons who teach [greek: sophôtata noêmata]; because the rose is the most beautiful organism existing in matter not vital, expressive of the direct action of light on the earth, giving lovely form and color at once, (compare the use of it by dante, as the form of the sainted crowd in highest heaven); and remember that, therefore, the rose is, in the greek mind, essentially a doric flower, expressing the worship of light, as the iris or ion is an ionic one, expressing the worship of the winds and dew. . to understand the agency of hephæstus at the birth of athena, we must again return to the founding of the arts on agriculture by the hand. before you can cultivate land, you must clear it; and the characteristic weapon of hephæstus,--which is as much his attribute as the trident is of poseidon, and the rhabdos of hermes, is not, as you would have expected, the hammer, but the clearing-ax--the double-edged [greek: pelekys], the same that calypso gives ulysses with which to cut down the trees for his home voyage; so that both the naval and agricultural strength of the athenians are expressed by this weapon, with which they had to hew out their fortune. and you must keep in mind this agriculturally laborious character of hephæstus, even when he is most distinctly the god of serviceable fire; thus horace's perfect epithet for him, "avidus," expresses at once the devouring eagerness of fire, and the zeal of progressive labor, for horace gives it to him when he is fighting against the giants. and this rude symbol of his cleaving the forehead of zeus with the ax, and giving birth to athena, signifies indeed, physically, the thrilling power of heat in the heavens, rending the clouds, and giving birth to the blue air; but far more deeply it signifies the subduing of adverse fate by true labor; until, out of the chasm, cleft by resolute and industrious fortitude, springs the spirit of wisdom. [illustration: fig. .] . here (fig. ) is an early drawing of the myth, to which i shall have to refer afterwards in illustration of the childishness of the greek mind at the time when its art-symbols were first fixed; but it is of peculiar value, because the physical character of vulcan, as fire, is indicated by his wearing the [greek: endromides] of hermes, while the antagonism of zeus, as the adverse chaos, either of cloud or of fate, is shown by his striking at hephæstus with his thunderbolt. but plate iv. gives you (as far as the light on the rounded vase will allow it to be deciphered) a characteristic representation of the scene, as conceived in later art. . i told you in a former lecture of this course[ ] that the entire greek intellect was in a childish phase as compared to that of modern times. observe, however, childishness does not necessarily imply universal inferiority: there may be a vigorous, acute, pure, and solemn childhood, and there may be a weak, foul, and ridiculous condition of advanced life; but the one is still essentially the childish, and the other the adult phase of existence. . you will find, then, that the greeks were the first people that were born into complete humanity. all nations before them had been, and all around them still were, partly savage, bestial, clay-incumbered, inhuman; still semi-goat, or semi-ant, or semi-stone, or semi-cloud. but the power of a new spirit came upon the greeks, and the stones were filled with breath, and the clouds clothed with flesh; and then came the great spiritual battle between the centaurs and lapithæ; and the living creatures became "children of men." taught, yet by the centaur--sown, as they knew, in the fang--from the dappled skin of the brute, from the leprous scale of the serpent, their flesh came again as the flesh of a little child, and they were clean. fix your mind on this as the very central character of the greek race--the being born pure and human out of the brutal misery of the past, and looking abroad, for the first time, with their children's eyes, wonderingly open, on the strange and divine world. [illustration: iv. the nativity of athena.] . make some effort to remember, so far as may be possible to you, either what you felt in yourselves when you were young, or what you have observed in other children, of the action of thought and fancy. children are continually represented as living in an ideal world of their own. so far as i have myself observed, the distinctive character of a child is to live always in the tangible present, having little pleasure in memory, and being utterly impatient and tormented by anticipation: weak alike in reflection and forethought, but having an intense possession of the actual present, down to the shortest moments and least objects of it; possessing it, indeed, so intensely that the sweet childish days are as long as twenty days will be; and setting all the faculties of heart and imagination on little things, so as to be able to make anything out of them he chooses. confined to a little garden, he does not imagine himself somewhere else, but makes a great garden out of that; possessed of an acorn-cup, he will not despise it and throw it away, and covet a golden one in its stead: it is the adult who does so. the child keeps his acorn-cup as a treasure, and makes a golden one out of it in his mind; so that the wondering grown-up person standing beside him is always tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, "what would you have more than these?" but "what possibly can you see _in_ these?" for, to the bystander, there is a ludicrous and incomprehensible inconsistency between the child's words and the reality. the little thing tells him gravely, holding up the acorn-cup, that "this is a queen's crown," or "a fairy's boat," and, with beautiful effrontery, expects him to believe the same. but observe--the acorn-cup must be _there_, and in his own hand. "give it me; then i will make more of it for myself." that is the child's one word, always. . it is also the one word of the greek--"give it me." give me _any_ thing definite here in my sight, then i will make more of it. i cannot easily express to you how strange it seems to me that i am obliged, here in oxford, to take the position of an apologist for greek art; that i find, in spite of all the devotion of the admirable scholars who have so long maintained in our public schools the authority of greek literature, our younger students take no interest in the manual work of the people upon whose thoughts the tone of their early intellectual life has exclusively depended. but i am not surprised that the interest, if awakened, should not at first take the form of admiration. the inconsistency between an homeric description of a piece of furniture or armor, and the actual rudeness of any piece of art approximating, within even three or four centuries, to the homeric period, is so great, that we at first cannot recognize the art as elucidatory of, or in any way related to, the poetic language. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: v. tomb of the doges jacopo and lorenzo tiepolo.] . you will find, however, exactly the same kind of discrepancy between early sculpture, and the languages of deed and thought, in the second birth, and childhood, of the world, under christianity. the same fair thoughts and bright imaginations arise again; and, similarly, the fancy is content with the rudest symbols by which they can be formalized to the eyes. you cannot understand that the rigid figure ( ) with checkers or spots on its breast, and sharp lines of drapery to its feet, could represent, to the greek, the healing majesty of heaven: but can you any better understand how a symbol so haggard as this (fig. ) could represent to the noblest hearts of the christian ages the power and ministration of angels? yet it not only did so, but retained in the rude undulatory and linear ornamentation of its dress, record of the thoughts intended to be conveyed by the spotted ægis and falling chiton of athena, eighteen hundred years before. greek and venetian alike, in their noble childhood, knew with the same terror the coiling wind and congealed hail in heaven--saw with the same thankfulness the dew shed softly on the earth, and on its flowers; and both recognized, ruling these, and symbolized by them, the great helpful spirit of wisdom, which leads the children of men to all knowledge, all courage, and all art. . read the inscription written on the sarcophagus (plate v.), at the extremity of which this angel is sculptured. it stands in an open recess in the rude brick wall of the west front of the church of st. john and paul at venice, being the tomb of the two doges, father and son, jacopo and lorenzo tiepolo. this is the inscription:-- "quos natura pares studiis, virtutibus, arte edidit, illustres genitor natusque, sepulti hâc sub rupe duces. venetum charissima proles theupula collatis dedit hos celebranda triumphis. omnia presentis donavit predia templi dux jacobus: valido fixit moderamine leges urbis, et ingratam redimens certamine jadram dalmatiosque dedit patrie post, marte subactas graiorum pelago maculavit sanguine classes. suscipit oblatos princeps laurentius istros, et domuit rigidos, ingenti strage cadentes, bononie populos. hinc subdita cervia cessit. fundavere vias pacis; fortique relictâ re, superos sacris petierunt mentibus ambo. dominus jachobus hobiit[ ] m. ccli. dominus laurentius hobiit m. cclxxviii." you see, therefore, this tomb is an invaluable example of thirteenth-century sculpture in venice. in plate vi., you have an example of the (coin) sculpture of the date accurately corresponding in greece to the thirteenth century in venice, when the meaning of symbols was everything, and the workmanship comparatively nothing. the upper head is an athena, of athenian work in the seventh or sixth century--(the coin itself may have been struck later, but the archaic type was retained). the two smaller impressions below are the front and obverse of a coin of the same age from corinth, the head of athena on one side, and pegasus, with the archaic koppa, on the other. the smaller head is bare, the hair being looped up at the back and closely bound with an olive branch. you are to note this general outline of the head, already given in a more finished type in plate ii., as a most important elementary form in the finest sculpture, not of greece only, but of all christendom. in the upper head the hair is restrained still more closely by a round helmet, for the most part smooth, but embossed with a single flower tendril, having one bud, one flower, and, above it, two olive leaves. you have thus the most absolutely restricted symbol possible to human thought of the power of athena over the flowers and trees of the earth. an olive leaf by itself could not have stood for the sign of a tree, but the two can, when set in position of growth. i would not give you the reverse of the coin on the same plate, because you would have looked at it only, laughed at it, and not examined the rest; but here it is, wonderfully engraved for you (fig. ): of it we shall have more to say afterwards. [illustration: vi. archaic athena of athens and corinth.] . and now as you look at these rude vestiges of the religion of greece, and at the vestiges still ruder, on the ducal tomb, of the religion of christendom, take warning against two opposite errors. there is a school of teachers who will tell you that nothing but greek art is deserving of study, and that all our work at this day should be an imitation of it. whenever you feel tempted to believe them, think of these portraits of athena and her owl, and be assured that greek art is not in all respects perfect, nor exclusively deserving of imitation. [illustration: fig. .] there is another school of teachers who will tell you that greek art is good for nothing; that the soul of the greek was outcast, and that christianity entirely superseded its faith, and excelled its works. whenever you feel tempted to believe _them_, think of this angel on the tomb of jacopo tiepolo; and remember that christianity, after it had been twelve hundred years existent as an imaginative power on the earth, could do no better work than this, though with all the former power of greece to help it; nor was able to engrave its triumph in having stained its fleets in the seas of greece with the blood of her people, but between barbarous imitations of the pillars which that people had invented. . receiving these two warnings, receive also this lesson. in both examples, childish though it be, this heathen and christian art is alike sincere, and alike vividly imaginative: the actual work is that of infancy; the thoughts, in their visionary simplicity, are also the thoughts of infancy, but in their solemn virtue they are the thoughts of men. we, on the contrary, are now, in all that we do, absolutely without sincerity;--absolutely, therefore, without imagination, and without virtue. our hands are dexterous with the vile and deadly dexterity of machines; our minds filled with incoherent fragments of faith, which we cling to in cowardice, without believing, and make pictures of in vanity, without loving. false and base alike, whether we admire or imitate, we cannot learn from the heathen's art, but only pilfer it; we cannot revive the christian's art, but only galvanize it; we are, in the sum of us, not human artists at all, but mechanisms of conceited clay, masked in the furs and feathers of living creatures, and convulsed with voltaic spasms, in mockery of animation. . you think, perhaps, that i am using terms unjustifiable in violence. they would, indeed, be unjustifiable, if, spoken from this chair, they were violent at all. they are, unhappily, temperate and accurate,--except in shortcoming of blame. for we are not only impotent to restore, but strong to defile, the work of past ages. of the impotence, take but this one, utterly humiliatory, and, in the full meaning of it, ghastly, example. we have lately been busy embanking, in the capital of the country, the river which, of all its waters, the imagination of our ancestors had made most sacred, and the bounty of nature most useful. of all architectural features of the metropolis, that embankment will be, in future, the most conspicuous; and in its position and purpose it was the most capable of noble adornment. for that adornment, nevertheless, the utmost which our modern poetical imagination has been able to invent, is a row of gas-lamps. it has, indeed, farther suggested itself to our minds as appropriate to gas-lamps set beside a river, that the gas should come out of fishes' tails; but we have not ingenuity enough to cast so much as a smelt or a sprat for ourselves; so we borrow the shape of a neapolitan marble, which has been the refuse of the plate and candlestick shops in every capital in europe for the last fifty years. we cast _that_ badly, and give luster to the ill-cast fish with lacquer in imitation of bronze. on the base of their pedestals, towards the road, we put, for advertisement's sake, the initials of the casting firm; and, for farther originality and christianity's sake, the caduceus of mercury: and to adorn the front of the pedestals, towards the river, being now wholly at our wits' end, we can think of nothing better than to borrow the door-knocker which--again for the last fifty years--has disturbed and decorated two or three millions of london street-doors; and magnifying the marvelous device of it, a lion's head with a ring in its mouth, (still borrowed from the greek,) we complete the embankment with a row of heads and rings, on a scale which enables them to produce, at the distance at which only they can be seen, the exact effect of a row of sentry-boxes. . farther. in the very center of the city, and at the point where the embankment commands a view of westminster abbey on one side, and of st. paul's on the other,--that is to say, at precisely the most important and stately moment of its whole course,--it has to pass under one of the arches of waterloo bridge, which, in the sweep of its curve, is as vast--it alone--as the rialto at venice, and scarcely less seemly in proportions. but over the rialto, though of late and debased venetian work, there still reigns some power of human imagination: on the two flanks of it are carved the virgin and the angel of the annunciation; on the keystone, the descending dove. it is not, indeed, the fault of living designers that the waterloo arch is nothing more than a gloomy and hollow heap of wedged blocks of blind granite. but just beyond the damp shadow of it, the new embankment is reached by a flight of stairs, which are, in point of fact, the principal approach to it, afoot, from central london; the descent from the very midst of the metropolis of england to the banks of the chief river of england; and for this approach, living designers _are_ answerable. . the principal decoration of the descent is again a gas-lamp, but a shattered one, with a brass crown on the top of it, or, rather, half-crown, and that turned the wrong way, the back of it to the river and causeway, its flame supplied by a visible pipe far wandering along the wall; the whole apparatus being supported by a rough cross-beam. fastened to the center of the arch above is a large placard, stating that the royal humane society's drags are in constant readiness, and that their office is at , trafalgar square. on each side of the arch are temporary, but dismally old and battered boardings, across two angles capable of unseemly use by the british public. above one of these is another placard, stating that this is the victoria embankment. the steps themselves--some forty of them--descend under a tunnel, which the shattered gas-lamp lights by night, and nothing by day. they are covered with filthy dust, shaken off from infinitude of filthy feet; mixed up with shreds of paper, orange-peel, foul straw, rags, and cigar-ends, and ashes; the whole agglutinated, more or less, by dry saliva into slippery blotches and patches; or, when not so fastened, blown dismally by the sooty wind hither and thither, or into the faces of those who ascend and descend. the place is worth your visit, for you are not likely to find elsewhere a spot which, either in costly and ponderous brutality of building, or in the squalid and indecent accompaniment of it, is so far separated from the peace and grace of nature, and so accurately indicative of the methods of our national resistance to the grace, mercy, and peace of heaven. . i am obliged always to use the english word 'grace' in two senses, but remember that the greek [greek: charis] includes them both (the bestowing, that is to say, of beauty and mercy); and especially it includes these in the passage of pindar's first ode, which gives us the key to the right interpretation of the power of sculpture in greece. you remember that i told you, in my sixth introductory lecture (§ ), that the mythic accounts of greek sculpture begin in the legends of the family of tantalus; and especially in the most grotesque legend of them all, the inlaying of the ivory shoulder of pelops. at that story pindar pauses,--not, indeed, without admiration, nor alleging any impossibility in the circumstances themselves, but doubting the careless hunger of demeter,--and gives his own reading of the event, instead of the ancient one. he justifies this to himself, and to his hearers, by the plea that myths have, in some sort, or degree, ([greek: pou ti],) led the mind of mortals beyond the truth; and then he goes on:-- "grace, which creates everything that is kindly and soothing for mortals, adding honor, has often made things, at first untrustworthy, become trustworthy through love." . i cannot, except in these lengthened terms, give you the complete force of the passage; especially of the [greek: apiston emêsato piston]--"made it trustworthy by passionate desire that it should be so"--which exactly describes the temper of religious persons at the present day, who are kindly and sincere, in clinging to the forms of faith which either have long been precious to themselves, or which they feel to have been without question instrumental in advancing the dignity of mankind. and it is part of the constitution of humanity--a part which, above others, you are in danger of unwisely contemning under the existing conditions of our knowledge, that the things thus sought for belief with eager passion, do, indeed, become trustworthy to us; that, to each of us, they verily become what we would have them; the force of the [greek: mênis] and [greek: mnêmê] with which we seek after them, does, indeed, make them powerful to us for actual good or evil; and it is thus granted to us to create not only with our hands things that exalt or degrade our sight, but with our hearts also, things that exalt or degrade our souls; giving true substance to all that we hoped for; evidence to things that we have not seen, but have desired to see; and calling, in the sense of creating, things that are not, as though they were. . you remember that in distinguishing imagination from idolatry, i referred[ ] you to the forms of passionate affection with which a noble people commonly regards the rivers and springs of its native land. some conception of personality, or of spiritual power in the stream, is almost necessarily involved in such emotion; and prolonged [greek: charis], in the form of gratitude, the return of love for benefits continually bestowed, at last alike in all the highest and the simplest minds, when they are honorable and pure, makes this untrue thing trustworthy; [greek: apiston emêsato piston], until it becomes to them the safe basis of some of the happiest impulses of their moral nature. next to the marbles of verona, given you as a primal type of the sculpture of christianity, moved to its best energy in adorning the entrance of its temples, i have not unwillingly placed, as your introduction to the best sculpture of the religion of greece, the forms under which it represented the personality of the fountain arethusa. but without restriction to those days of absolute devotion, let me simply point out to you how this untrue thing, made true by love, has intimate and heavenly authority even over the minds of men of the most practical sense, the most shrewd wit, and the most severe precision of moral temper. the fair vision of sabrina in 'comus,' the endearing and tender promise, "fies nobilium tu quoque fontium," and the joyful and proud affection of the great lombard's address to the lakes of his enchanted land,-- "te, lari maxume, teque fluctibus et fremitu assurgens, benace, marino," may surely be remembered by you with regretful piety, when you stand by the blank stones which at once restrain and disgrace your native river, as the final worship rendered to it by modern philosophy. but a little incident which i saw last summer on its bridge at wallingford, may put the contrast of ancient and modern feeling before you still more forcibly. . those of you who have read with attention (none of us can read with too much attention), molière's most perfect work, 'the misanthrope,' must remember celimène's description of her lovers, and her excellent reason for being unable to regard with any favor, "notre grand flandrin de vicomte,--depuis que je l'ai vu, trois quarts d'heure durant, cracher dans un puits pour faire des ronds." that sentence is worth noting, both in contrast to the reverence paid by the ancients to wells and springs, and as one of the most interesting traces of the extension of the loathsome habit among the upper classes of europe and america, which now renders all external grace, dignity, and decency impossible in the thoroughfares of their principal cities. in connection with that sentence of molière's you may advisably also remember this fact, which i chanced to notice on the bridge of wallingford. i was walking from end to end of it, and back again, one sunday afternoon of last may, trying to conjecture what had made this especial bend and ford of the thames so important in all the anglo-saxon wars. it was one of the few sunny afternoons of the bitter spring, and i was very thankful for its light, and happy in watching beneath it the flow and the glittering of the classical river, when i noticed a well-dressed boy, apparently just out of some orderly sunday-school, leaning far over the parapet; watching, as i conjectured, some bird or insect on the bridge-buttress. i went up to him to see what he was looking at; but just as i got close to him, he started over to the opposite parapet, and put himself there into the same position, his object being, as i then perceived, to spit from both sides upon the heads of a pleasure party who were passing in a boat below. . the incident may seem to you too trivial to be noticed in this place. to me, gentlemen, it was by no means trivial. it meant, in the depth of it, such absence of all true [greek: charis], reverence, and intellect, as it is very dreadful to trace in the mind of any human creature, much more in that of a child educated with apparently every advantage of circumstance in a beautiful english country town, within ten miles of our university. most of all is it terrific when we regard it as the exponent (and this, in truth, it is) of the temper which, as distinguished from former methods, either of discipline or recreation, the present tenor of our general teaching fosters in the mind of youth;--teaching which asserts liberty to be a right, and obedience a degradation; and which, regardless alike of the fairness of nature and the grace of behavior, leaves the insolent spirit and degraded senses to find their only occupation in malice, and their only satisfaction in shame. . you will, i hope, proceed with me, not scornfully any more, to trace, in the early art of a noble heathen nation, the feeling of what was at least a better childishness than this of ours; and the efforts to express, though with hands yet failing, and minds oppressed by ignorant fantasy, the first truth by which they knew that they lived; the birth of wisdom and of all her powers of help to man, as the reward of his resolute labor. . "[greek: haphaiston technaisi]." note that word of pindar in the seventh olympic. this ax-blow of vulcan's was to the greek mind truly what clytemnestra falsely asserts hers to have been, "[greek: tês de dexias cheros, ergon, dikaias tektonos]"; physically, it meant the opening of the blue through the rent clouds of heaven, by the action of local terrestrial heat (of hephæstus as opposed to apollo, who shines on the surface of the upper clouds, but cannot pierce them); and, spiritually, it meant the first birth of prudent thought out of rude labor, the clearing-ax in the hand of the woodman being the practical elementary sign of his difference from the wild animals of the wood. then he goes on, "from the high head of her father, athenaia rushing forth, cried with her great and exceeding cry; and the heaven trembled at her, and the earth mother." the cry of athena, i have before pointed out, physically distinguishes her, as the spirit of the air, from silent elemental powers; but in this grand passage of pindar it is again the mythic cry of which he thinks; that is to say, the giving articulate words, by intelligence, to the silence of fate. "wisdom crieth aloud, she uttereth her voice in the streets," and heaven and earth tremble at her reproof. . uttereth her voice in the "streets." for all men, that is to say; but to what work did the greeks think that her voice was to call them? what was to be the impulse communicated by her prevailing presence; what the sign of the people's obedience to her? this was to be the sign--"but she, the goddess herself, gave to them to prevail over the dwellers upon earth, _with best-laboring hands in every art. and by their paths there were the likenesses of living and of creeping things_; and the glory was deep. for to the cunning workman, greater knowledge comes, undeceitful." . an infinitely pregnant passage, this, of which to-day you are to note mainly these three things: first, that athena is the goddess of doing, not at all of sentimental inaction. she is begotten, as it were, of the woodman's ax; her purpose is never in a word only, but in a word and a blow. she guides the hands that labor best, in every art. . secondly. the victory given by wisdom, the worker, to the hands that labor best, is that the streets and ways, [greek: keleuthoi], shall be filled by likenesses of living and creeping things. things living, and creeping! are the reptile things not alive then? you think pindar wrote that carelessly? or that, if he had only known a little modern anatomy, instead of 'reptile' things, he would have said 'monochondylous' things? be patient, and let us attend to the main points first. sculpture, it thus appears, is the only work of wisdom that the greeks care to speak of; they think it involves and crowns every other. image-making art; _this_ is athena's, as queenliest of the arts. literature, the order and the strength of word, of course belongs to apollo and the muses; under athena are the substances and the forms of things. . thirdly. by this forming of images there is to be gained a 'deep'--that is to say, a weighty, and prevailing, glory; not a floating nor fugitive one. for to the cunning workman, greater knowledge comes, 'undeceitful.' "[greek: daenti;]" i am forced to use two english words to translate that single greek one. the 'cunning' workman, thoughtful in experience, touch, and vision of the thing to be done; no machine, witless, and of necessary motion; yet not cunning only, but having perfect habitual skill of hand also; the confirmed reward of truthful doing. recollect, in connection with this passage of pindar, homer's three verses about getting the lines of ship-timber true, (il. xv. ): "[greek: 'all' hôste stathmê dory nêion exithynei tektonos en palam si daêmonos, hoo rha te pasês eu eidê sophiês, hypothêmosynêsin 'athênês]," and the beautiful epithet of persephone,--"[greek: daeira]," as the tryer and knower of good work; and remembering these, trust pindar for the truth of his saying, that to the cunning workman--(and let me solemnly enforce the words by adding--that to him _only_,) knowledge comes undeceitful. . you may have noticed, perhaps, and with a smile, as one of the paradoxes you often hear me blamed for too fondly stating, what i told you in the close of my third introductory lecture,[ ] that "so far from art's being immoral, little else except art is moral." i have now farther to tell you, that little else, except art, is wise; that all knowledge, unaccompanied by a habit of useful action, is too likely to become deceitful, and that every habit of useful action must resolve itself into some elementary practice of manual labor. and i would, in all sober and direct earnestness, advise you, whatever may be the aim, predilection, or necessity of your lives, to resolve upon this one thing at least, that you will enable yourselves daily to do actually with your hands, something that is useful to mankind. to do anything well with your hands, useful or not; to be, even in trifling, [greek: palamêsi daêmôn], is already much. when we come to examine the art of the middle ages, i shall be able to show you that the strongest of all influences of right then brought to bear upon character was the necessity for exquisite manual dexterity in the management of the spear and bridle; and in your own experience most of you will be able to recognize the wholesome effect, alike on body and mind, of striving, within proper limits of time, to become either good batsmen or good oarsmen. but the bat and the racer's oar are children's toys. resolve that you will be men in usefulness, as well as in strength; and you will find that then also, but not till then, you can become men in understanding; and that every fine vision and subtle theorem will present itself to you thence-forward undeceitfully, [greek: hypothêmosynêsin athênês]. . but there is more to be gathered yet from the words of pindar. he is thinking, in his brief intense way, at once of athena's work on the soul, and of her literal power on the dust of the earth. his "[greek: keleuthoi]" is a wide word, meaning all the paths of sea and land. consider, therefore, what athena's own work _actually is_--in the literal fact of it. the blue, clear air _is_ the sculpturing power upon the earth and sea. where the surface of the earth is reached by that, and its matter and substance inspired with and filled by that, organic form becomes possible. you must indeed have the sun, also, and moisture; the kingdom of apollo risen out of the sea: but the sculpturing of living things, shape by shape, is athena's, so that under the brooding spirit of the air, what was without form, and void, brings forth the moving creature that hath life. . that is her work then--the giving of form; then the separately apolline work is the giving of light; or, more strictly, sight: giving that faculty to the retina to which we owe not merely the idea of light, but the existence of it; for light is to be defined only as the sensation produced in the eye of an animal, under given conditions; those same conditions being, to a stone, only warmth or chemical influence, but not light. and that power of seeing, and the other various personalities and authorities of the animal body, in pleasure and pain, have never, hitherto, been, i do not say, explained, but in anywise touched or approached by scientific discovery. some of the conditions of mere external animal form and of muscular vitality have been shown; but for the most part that is true, even of external form, which i wrote six years ago. "you may always stand by form against force. to a painter, the essential character of anything is the form of it, and the philosophers cannot touch that. they come and tell you, for instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle, as in a gier-eagle. very good: that is so, and it is very interesting. it requires just as much heat as will boil the kettle, to take the gier-eagle up to his nest, and as much more to bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. but we painters, acknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our principal interest to the difference in their forms. for us, the primarily cognizable facts, in the two things, are, that the kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak; the one a lid on its back, the other a pair of wings; not to speak of the distinction also of volition, which the philosophers may properly call merely a form or mode of force--but then, to an artist, the form or mode is the gist of the business."[ ] . as you will find that it is, not to the artist only, but to all of us. the laws under which matter is collected and constructed are the same throughout the universe: the substance so collected, whether for the making of the eagle, or the worm, may be analyzed into gaseous identity; a diffusive vital force, apparently so closely related to mechanically measurable heat as to admit the conception of its being itself mechanically measurable, and unchanging in total quantity, ebbs and flows alike through the limbs of men and the fibers of insects. but, above all this, and ruling every grotesque or degraded accident of this, are two laws of beauty in form, and of nobility in character, which stand in the chaos of creation between the living and the dead, to separate the things that have in them a sacred and helpful, from those that have in them an accursed and destroying, nature; and the power of athena, first physically put forth in the sculpturing of these [greek: zôa] and [greek: herpeta], these living and reptile things, is put forth, finally, in enabling the hearts of men to discern the one from the other; to know the unquenchable fires of the spirit from the unquenchable fires of death; and to choose, not unaided, between submission to the love that cannot end, or to the worm that cannot die. . the unconsciousness of their antagonism is the most notable characteristic of the modern scientific mind; and i believe no credulity or fallacy admitted by the weakness (or it may sometimes rather have been the strength) of early imagination, indicates so strange a depression beneath the due scale of human intellect, as the failure of the sense of beauty in form, and loss of faith in heroism of conduct, which have become the curses of recent science,[ ] art, and policy. . that depression of intellect has been alike exhibited in the mean consternation confessedly felt on one side, and the mean triumph apparently felt on the other, during the course of the dispute now pending as to the origin of man. dispute for the present not to be decided, and of which the decision is, to persons in the modern temper of mind, wholly without significance: and i earnestly desire that you, my pupils, may have firmness enough to disengage your energies from investigation so premature and so fruitless, and sense enough to perceive that it does not matter how you have been made, so long as you are satisfied with being what you are. if you are dissatisfied with yourselves, it ought not to console, but humiliate you, to imagine that you were once seraphs; and if you are pleased with yourselves, it is not any ground of reasonable shame to you if, by no fault of your own, you have passed through the elementary condition of apes. . remember, therefore, that it is of the very highest importance that you should know what you _are_, and determine to be the best that you may be; but it is of no importance whatever, except as it may contribute to that end, to know what you have been. whether your creator shaped you with fingers, or tools, as a sculptor would a lump of clay, or gradually raised you to manhood through a series of inferior forms, is only of moment to you in this respect--that in the one case you cannot expect your children to be nobler creatures than you are yourselves--in the other, every act and thought of your present life may be hastening the advent of a race which will look back to you, their fathers (and you ought at least to have attained the dignity of desiring that it may be so,) with incredulous disdain. . but that you _are_ yourselves capable of that disdain and dismay; that you are ashamed of having been apes, if you ever were so; that you acknowledge, instinctively, a relation of better and worse, and a law respecting what is noble and base, which makes it no question to you that the man is worthier than the baboon,--_this_ is a fact of infinite significance. this law of preference in your hearts is the true essence of your being, and the consciousness of that law is a more positive existence than any dependent on the coherence or forms of matter. . now, but a few words more of mythology, and i have done. remember that athena holds the weaver's shuttle, not merely as an instrument of _texture_, but as an instrument of _picture_; the ideas of clothing, and of the warmth of life, being thus inseparably connected with those of graphic beauty, and the brightness of life. i have told you that no art could be recovered among us without perfectness in dress, nor without the elementary graphic art of women, in divers colors of needlework. there has been no nation of any art-energy, but has strenuously occupied and interested itself in this household picturing, from the web of penelope to the tapestry of queen matilda, and the meshes of arras and gobelins. . we should then naturally ask what kind of embroidery athena put on her own robe; "[greek: peplon heanon, poikilon, hon r' autê poiêsato kai kame chersin]." the subject of that [greek: poikilia] of hers, as you know, was the war of the giants and gods. now the real name of these giants, remember, is that used by hesiod, '[greek: pêlogonoi],' 'mud-begotten,' and the meaning of the contest between these and zeus, [greek: pêlogonôn elatêr], is, again, the inspiration of life into the clay, by the goddess of breath; and the actual confusion going on visibly before you, daily, of the earth, heaping itself into cumbrous war with the powers above it. . thus, briefly, the entire material of art, under athena's hand, is the contest of life with clay; and all my task in explaining to you the early thought of both the athenian and tuscan schools will only be the tracing of this battle of the giants into its full heroic form, when, not in tapestry only, but in sculpture, and on the portal of the temple of delphi itself, you have the "[greek: klonos en teichesi lainoisi gigantôn]," and their defeat hailed by the passionate cry of delight from the athenian maids, beholding pallas in her full power, "[greek: leussô pallad' eman theon]," my own goddess. all our work, i repeat, will be nothing but the inquiry into the development of this one subject, and the pressing fully home the question of plato about that embroidery--"and think you that there is verily war with each other among the gods? and dreadful enmities and battles, such as the poets have told, and such as our painters set forth in graven scripture, to adorn all our sacred rites and holy places; yes, and in the great panathenaea themselves, the peplus, full of such wild picturing, is carried up into the acropolis--shall we say that these things are true, oh euthuphron, right-minded friend?" . yes, we say, and know, that these things are true; and true forever: battles of the gods, not among themselves, but against the earth-giants. battle prevailing age by age, in nobler life and lovelier imagery; creation, which no theory of mechanism, no definition of force, can explain, the adoption and completing of individual form by individual animation, breathed out of the lips of the father of spirits. and to recognize the presence in every knitted shape of dust, by which it lives and moves and has its being--to recognize it, revere, and show it forth, is to be our eternal idolatry. "thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them." "assuredly no," we answered once, in our pride; and through porch and aisle, broke down the carved work thereof, with axes and hammers. who would have thought the day so near when we should bow down to worship, not the creatures, but their atoms,--not the forces that form, but those that dissolve them? trust me, gentlemen, the command which is stringent against adoration of brutality, is stringent no less against adoration of chaos, nor is faith in an image fallen from heaven to be reformed by a faith only in the phenomenon of decadence. we have ceased from the making of monsters to be appeased by sacrifice;--it is well,--if indeed we have also ceased from making them in our thoughts. we have learned to distrust the adorning of fair fantasms, to which we once sought for succor;--it is well, if we learn to distrust also the adorning of those to which we seek, for temptation; but the verity of gains like these can only be known by our confession of the divine seal of strength and beauty upon the tempered frame, and honor in the fervent heart, by which, increasing visibly, may yet be manifested to us the holy presence, and the approving love, of the loving god, who visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him, and shows mercy unto thousands of them that love him, and keep his commandments. footnotes: [ ] i shall be obliged in future lectures, as hitherto in my other writings, to use the terms idolatry and imagination in a more comprehensive sense; but here i use them for convenience' sake, limitedly, to avoid the continual occurrence of the terms noble and ignoble, or false and true, with reference to modes of conception. [ ] "and in sum, he himself (prometheus) was the master-maker, and athena worked together with him, breathing into the clay, and caused the molded things to have soul (psyche) in them."--lucian, _prometheus._ [ ] his relations with the two great titans, themis and mnemosyne, belong to another group of myths. the father of athena is the lower and nearer physical zeus, from whom metis, the mother of athena, long withdraws and disguises herself. [ ] _ante_, § . [ ] the latin verses are of later date; the contemporary plain prose retains the venetian gutturals and aspirates. [ ] _ante_, § . [ ] "lectures on art," § . [ ] "ethics of the dust," lecture x. [ ] the best modern illustrated scientific works show perfect faculty of representing monkeys, lizards, and insects; absolute incapability of representing either a man, a horse, or a lion. lecture iv. likeness. _november, ._ . you were probably vexed, and tired, towards the close of my last lecture, by the time it took us to arrive at the apparently simple conclusion that sculpture must only represent organic form, and the strength of life in its contest with matter. but it is no small thing to have that "[greek: leussô pallada]" fixed in your minds, as the one necessary sign by which you are to recognize right sculpture; and, believe me, you will find it the best of all things, if you can take for yourselves the saying from the lips of the athenian maids, in its entirety, and say also--[greek: leussô pallad' eman theon]. i proceed to-day into the practical appliance of this apparently speculative, but in reality imperative, law. . you observe, i have hitherto spoken of the power of athena, as over painting no less than sculpture. but her rule over both arts is only so far as they are zoographic;--representative, that is to say, of animal life, or of such order and discipline among other elements, as may invigorate and purify it. now there is a speciality of the art of painting beyond this, namely, the representation of phenomena of color and shadow, as such, without question of the nature of the things that receive them. i am now accordingly obliged to speak of sculpture and painting as distinct arts: but the laws which bind sculpture, bind no less the painting of the higher schools, which has, for its main purpose, the showing beauty in human or animal form; and which is therefore placed by the greeks equally under the rule of athena, as the spirit, first, of life, and then of wisdom in conduct. . first, i say, you are to 'see pallas' in all such work, as the queen of life; and the practical law which follows from this, is one of enormous range and importance, namely, that nothing must be represented by sculpture, external to any living form, which does not help to enforce or illustrate the conception of life. both dress and armor may be made to do this, by great sculptors, and are continually so used by the greatest. one of the essential distinctions between the athenian and florentine schools is dependent on their treatment of drapery in this respect; an athenian always sets it to exhibit the action of the body, by flowing with it, or over it, or from it, so as to illustrate both its form and gesture; a florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery to conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental emotion; but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body or soul; donatello and michael angelo, no less than the sculptors of gothic chivalry, ennoble armor in the same way; but base sculptors carve drapery and armor for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only, and forget the body beneath. the rule is so stern, that all delight in mere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly forbidden to sculpture;--for instance, in _painting_ the branch of a tree, you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it, but a sculptor must not touch one of them: they are inessential to the tree's life,--he must give the flow and bending of the branch only, else he does not enough 'see pallas' in it. or, to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little painted poem, by edward frere; a cottage interior, one of the thousands which within the last two months[ ] have been laid desolate in unhappy france. every accessory in the painting is of value--the fireside, the tiled floor, the vegetables lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the roof. but not one of these accessories would have been admissible in sculpture. you must carve nothing but what has life. "why?" you probably feel instantly inclined to ask me.--you see the principle we have got, instead of being blunt or useless, is such an edged tool that you are startled the moment i apply it. "must we refuse every pleasant accessory and picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures?" even so: i would not assert it on my own authority. it is the greeks who say it, but whatever they say of sculpture, be assured, is true. . that then is the first law--you must see pallas as the lady of life; the second is, you must see her as the lady of wisdom; or [greek: sophia]--and this is the chief matter of all. i cannot but think that, after the considerations into which we have now entered, you will find more interest than hitherto in comparing the statements of aristotle, in the ethics, with those of plato in the polity, which are authoritative as greek definitions of goodness in art, and which you may safely hold authoritative as constant definitions of it. you remember, doubtless, that the [greek: sophia], or [greek: aretê pechnês], for the sake of which phidias is called [greek: sophos] as a sculpture, and polyclitus as an image-maker, eth. . . (the opposition is both between ideal and portrait sculpture, and between working in stone and bronze), consists in the "[greek: nous tôn timiôtatôn t ê physei]," "the mental apprehension of the things that are most honorable in their nature." therefore, what is indeed most lovely, the true image-maker will most love; and what is most hateful, he will most hate; and in all things discern the best and strongest part of them, and represent that essentially, or, if the opposite of that, then with manifest detestation and horror. that is his art wisdom; the knowledge of good and evil, and the love of good, so that you may discern, even in his representation of the vilest thing, his acknowledgment of what redemption is possible for it, or latent power exists in it; and, contrariwise, his sense of its present misery. but, for the most part, he will idolize, and force us also to idolize, whatever is living, and virtuous, and victoriously right; opposing to it in some definite mode the image of the conquered [greek: herpeton]. . this is generally true of both the great arts; but in severity and precision, true of sculpture. to return to our illustration: this poor little girl was more interesting to edward frere, he being a painter, because she was poorly dressed, and wore these clumsy shoes, and old red cap, and patched gown. may we sculpture her so? no. we may sculpture her naked, if we like; but not in rags. but if we may not put her into marble in rags, may we give her a pretty frock with ribbons and flounces to it, and put her into marble in that? no. we may put her simplest peasant's dress, so it be perfect and orderly, into marble; anything finer than that would be more dishonorable in the eyes of athena than rags. if she were a french princess, you might carve her embroidered robe and diadem; if she were joan of arc, you might carve her armor--for then these also would be "[greek: tôn timiôtatôn]," not otherwise. . is not this an edge-tool we have got hold of, unawares? and a subtle one too; so delicate and cimeter-like in decision. for note that even joan of arc's armor must be only sculptured, _if she has it on_; it is not the honorableness or beauty of it that are enough, but the direct bearing of it by her body. you might be deeply, even pathetically, interested by looking at a good knight's dinted coat of mail, left in his desolate hall. may you sculpture it where it hangs? no; the helmet for his pillow, if you will--no more. you see we did not do our dull work for nothing in last lecture. i define what we have gained once more, and then we will enter on our new ground. . the proper subject of sculpture, we have determined, is the spiritual power seen in the form of any living thing, and so represented as to give evidence that the sculptor has loved the good of it and hated the evil. "_so_ represented," we say; but how is that to be done? why should it not be represented, if possible, just as it is seen? what mode or limit of representation may we adopt? we are to carve things that have life;--shall we try so to imitate them that they may indeed seem living,--or only half living, and like stone instead of flesh? it will simplify this question if i show you three examples of what the greeks actually did: three typical pieces of their sculpture, in order of perfection. . and now, observe that in all our historical work, i will endeavor to do, myself, what i have asked you to do in your drawing exercises; namely, to outline firmly in the beginning, and then fill in the detail more minutely. i will give you first, therefore, in a symmetrical form, absolutely simple and easily remembered, the large chronology of the greek school; within that unforgettable scheme we will place, as we discover them, the minor relations of arts and times. i number the nine centuries before christ thus, upwards, and divide them into three groups of three each. { a. archaic. { { ---- { b. best. { { ---- { c. corrupt. { { then the ninth, eighth, and seventh centuries are the period of archaic greek art, steadily progressive wherever it existed. the sixth, fifth, and fourth are the period of central greek art; the fifth, or central, century producing the finest. that is easily recollected by the battle of marathon. and the third, second, and first centuries are the period of steady decline. learn this a b c thoroughly, and mark, for yourselves, what you, at present, think the vital events in each century. as you know more, you will think other events the vital ones; but the best historical knowledge only approximates to true thought in that matter; only be sure that what is truly vital in the character which governs events, is always expressed by the art of the century; so that if you could interpret that art rightly, the better part of your task in reading history would be done to your hand. . it is generally impossible to date with precision art of the archaic period--often difficult to date even that of the central three hundred years. i will not weary you with futile minor divisions of time; here are three coins (plate vii.) roughly, but decisively, characteristic of the three ages. the first is an early coin of tarentum. the city was founded, as you know, by the spartan phalanthus, late in the eighth century. i believe the head is meant for that of apollo archegetes; it may however be taras, the son of poseidon; it is no matter to us at present whom it is meant for, but the fact that we cannot know, is itself of the greatest import. we cannot say, with any certainty, unless by discovery of some collateral evidence, whether this head is intended for that of a god, or demigod, or a mortal warrior. ought not that to disturb some of your thoughts respecting greek idealism? farther, if by investigation we discover that the head is meant for that of phalanthus, we shall know nothing of the character of phalanthus from the face; for there is no portraiture at this early time. . the second coin is of Ænus in macedonia; probably of the fifth or early fourth century, and entirely characteristic of the central period. this we know to represent the face of a god--hermes. the third coin is a king's, not a city's. i will not tell you, at this moment, what king's; but only that it is a late coin of the third period, and that it is as distinct in purpose as the coin of tarentum is obscure. we know of this coin, that it represents no god nor demigod, but a mere mortal; and we know precisely, from the portrait, what that mortal's face was like. [illustration: vii. archaic, central and declining art of greece.] . a glance at the three coins, as they are set side by side, will now show you the main differences in the three great greek styles. the archaic coin is sharp and hard; every line decisive and numbered, set unhesitatingly in its place; nothing is wrong, though everything incomplete, and, to us who have seen finer art, ugly. the central coin is as decisive and clear in arrangement of masses, but its contours are completely rounded and finished. there is no character in its execution so prominent that you can give an epithet to the style. it is not hard, it is not soft, it is not delicate, it is not coarse, it is not grotesque, it is not beautiful; and i am convinced, unless you had been told that this is fine central greek art, you would have seen nothing at all in it to interest you. do not let yourselves be anywise forced into admiring it; there is, indeed, nothing more here than an approximately true rendering of a healthy youthful face, without the slightest attempt to give an expression of activity, cunning, nobility, or any other attribute of the mercurial mind. extreme simplicity, unpretending vigor of work, which claims no admiration either for minuteness or dexterity, and suggests no idea of effort at all; refusal of extraneous ornament, and perfectly arranged disposition of counted masses in a sequent order, whether in the beads, or the ringlets of hair; this is all you have to be pleased with; neither will you ever find, in the best greek art, more. you might at first suppose that the chain of beads round the cap was an extraneous ornament; but i have little doubt that it is as definitely the proper fillet for the head of hermes, as the olive for zeus, or corn for triptolemus. the cap or petasus cannot have expanded edges; there is no room for them on the coin; these must be understood, therefore; but the nature of the cloud-petasus is explained by edging it with beads, representing either dew or hail. the shield of athena often bears white pellets for hail, in like manner. . the third coin will, i think, at once strike you by what we moderns should call its 'vigor of character.' you may observe also that the features are finished with great care and subtlety, but at the cost of simplicity and breadth. but the _essential_ difference between it and the central art, is its disorder in design--you see the locks of hair cannot be counted any longer--they are entirely disheveled and irregular. now the individual character may, or may not, be a sign of decline; but the licentiousness, the casting loose of the masses in the design, is an infallible one. the effort at portraiture is good for art if the men to be portrayed are good men, not otherwise. in the instance before you, the head is that of mithridates vi. of pontus, who had, indeed, the good qualities of being a linguist and a patron of the arts; but, as you will remember, murdered, according to report, his mother, certainly his brother, certainly his wives and sisters, i have not counted how many of his children, and from a hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand persons besides; these last in a single day's massacre. the effort to represent this kind of person is not by any means a method of study from life ultimately beneficial to art. . this, however, is not the point i have to urge to-day. what i want you to observe is, that though the master of the great time does not attempt portraiture, he _does_ attempt animation. and as far as his means will admit, he succeeds in making the face--you might almost think--vulgarly animated; as like a real face, literally, 'as it can stare.' yes: and its sculptor meant it to be so; and that was what phidias meant his jupiter to be, if he could manage it. not, indeed, to be taken for zeus himself; and yet, to be as like a living zeus as art could make it. perhaps you think he tried to make it look living only for the sake of the mob, and would not have tried to do so for connoisseurs. pardon me; for real connoisseurs he would, and did; and herein consists a truth which belongs to all the arts, and which i will at once drive home in your minds, as firmly as i can. . all second-rate artists--(and remember, the second-rate ones are a loquacious multitude, while the great come only one or two in a century; and then, silently)--all second-rate artists will tell you that the object of fine art is not resemblance, but some kind of abstraction more refined than reality. put that out of your heads at once. the object of the great resemblant arts is, and always has been, to resemble; and to resemble as closely as possible. it is the function of a good portrait to set the man before you in habit as he lived, and i would we had a few more that did so. it is the function of a good landscape to set the scene before you in its reality; to make you, if it may be, think the clouds are flying, and the streams foaming. it is the function of the best sculptor--the true dædalus--to make stillness look like breathing, and marble look like flesh. . and in all great times of art, this purpose is as naïvely expressed as it is steadily held. all the talk about abstraction belongs to periods of decadence. in living times, people see something living that pleases them; and they try to make it live forever, or to make something as like it as possible, that will last forever. they paint their statues, and inlay the eyes with jewels, and set real crowns on the heads; they finish, in their pictures, every thread of embroidery, and would fain, if they could, draw every leaf upon the trees. and their only verbal expression of conscious success is that they have made their work 'look real.' . you think all that very wrong. so did i, once; but it was i that was wrong. a long time ago, before ever i had seen oxford, i painted a picture of the lake of como, for my father. it was not at all like the lake of como; but i thought it rather the better for that. my father differed with me; and objected particularly to a boat with a red and yellow awning, which i had put into the most conspicuous corner of my drawing. i declared this boat to be 'necessary to the composition.' my father not the less objected, that he had never seen such a boat, either at como or elsewhere; and suggested that if i would make the lake look a little more like water, i should be under no necessity of explaining its nature by the presence of floating objects. i thought him at the time a very simple person for his pains; but have since learned, and it is the very gist of all practical matters, which, as professor of fine art, i have now to tell you, that the great point in painting a lake is--to get it to look like water. . so far, so good. we lay it down for a first principle that our graphic art, whether painting or sculpture, is to produce something which shall look as like nature as possible. but now we must go one step farther, and say that it is to produce what shall look like nature to people who know what nature is like! you see this is at once a great restriction, as well as a great exaltation of our aim. our business is not to deceive the simple; but to deceive the wise! here, for instance, is a modern italian print, representing, to the best of its power, st. cecilia, in a brilliantly realistic manner. and the fault of the work is not in its earnest endeavor to show st. cecilia in habit as she lived, but in that the effort could only be successful with persons unaware of the habit st. cecilia lived in. and this condition of appeal only to the wise increases the difficulty of imitative resemblance so greatly, that, with only average skill or materials, we must surrender all hope of it, and be content with an imperfect representation, true as far as it reaches, and such as to excite the imagination of a wise beholder to complete it; though falling very far short of what either he or we should otherwise have desired. for instance, here is a suggestion, by sir joshua reynolds, of the general appearance of a british judge,--requiring the imagination of a very wise beholder indeed to fill it up, or even at first to discover what it is meant for. nevertheless, it is better art than the italian st. cecilia, because the artist, however little he may have done to represent his knowledge, does, indeed, know altogether what a judge is like, and appeals only to the criticism of those who know also. . there must be, therefore, two degrees of truth to be looked for in the good graphic arts; one, the commonest, which, by any partial or imperfect sign, conveys to you an idea which you must complete for yourself; and the other, the finest, a representation so perfect as to leave you nothing to be farther accomplished by this independent exertion; but to give you the same feeling of possession and presence which you would experience from the natural object itself. for instance of the first, in this representation of a rainbow,[ ] the artist has no hope that, by the black lines of engraving, he can deceive you into any belief of the rainbow's being there, but he gives indication enough of what he intends, to enable you to supply the rest of the idea yourself, providing always you know beforehand what a rainbow is like. but in this drawing of the falls of terni,[ ] the painter has strained his skill to the utmost to give an actually deceptive resemblance of the iris, dawning and fading among the foam. so far as he has not actually deceived you, it is not because he would not have done so if he could; but only because his colors and science have fallen short of his desire. they have fallen so little short, that, in a good light, you may all but believe the foam, and the sunshine are drifting and changing among the rocks. . and after looking a little while, you will begin to regret that they are not so: you will feel that, lovely as the drawing is, you would like far better to see the real place, and the goats skipping among the rocks, and the spray floating above the fall. and this is the true sign of the greatest art--to part voluntarily with its greatness;--to make _itself_ poor and unnoticed; but so to exalt and set forth its theme, that you may be fain to see the theme instead of it. so that you have never enough admired a great workman's doing, till you have begun to despise it. the best homage that could be paid to the athena of phidias would be to desire rather to see the living goddess; and the loveliest madonnas of christian art fall short of their due power, if they do not make their beholders sick at heart to see the living virgin. . we have then, for our requirement of the finest art, (sculpture, or anything else,) that it shall be so like the thing it represents as to please those who best know or can conceive the original; and, if possible, please them deceptively--its final triumph being to deceive even the wise; and (the greeks thought) to please even the immortals, who were so wise as to be undeceivable. so that you get the greek, thus far entirely true, idea of perfectness in sculpture, expressed to you by what phalaris says, at first sight of the bull of perilaus, "it only wanted motion and bellowing to seem alive; and as soon as i saw it, i cried out, it ought to be sent to the god,"--to apollo, for only he, the undeceivable, could thoroughly understand such sculpture, and perfectly delight in it. . and with this expression of the greek ideal of sculpture, i wish you to join the early italian, summed in a single line by dante--"non vide me' di me, chi vide 'l vero." read the twelfth canto of the purgatory, and learn that whole passage by heart; and if ever you chance to go to pistoja, look at la robbia's colored porcelain bas-reliefs of the seven works of mercy on the front of the hospital there; and note especially the faces of the two sick men--one at the point of death, and the other in the first peace and long-drawn breathing of health after fever--and you will know what dante meant by the preceding line, "morti li morti, e i vivi parèn vivi." . but now, may we not ask farther,--is it impossible for art such as this, prepared for the wise, to please the simple also? without entering on the awkward questions of degree, how many the wise can be, or how much men should know, in order to be rightly called wise, may we not conceive an art to be possible, which would deceive _everybody_, or everybody worth deceiving? i showed you at my first lecture, a little ringlet of japan ivory, as a type of elementary bas-relief touched with color; and in your rudimentary series you have a drawing, by mr. burgess, of one of the little fishes enlarged, with every touch of the chisel facsimiled on the more visible scale; and showing the little black bead inlaid for the eye, which in the original is hardly to be seen without a lens. you may, perhaps, be surprised when i tell you that (putting the question of _subject_ aside for the moment, and speaking only of the mode of execution and aim at resemblance,) you have there a perfect example of the greek ideal of method in sculpture. and you will admit that, to the simplest person whom we could introduce as a critic, that fish would be a satisfactory, nay, almost a deceptive, fish; while, to any one caring for subtleties of art, i need not point out that every touch of the chisel is applied with consummate knowledge, and that it would be impossible to convey more truth and life with the given quantity of workmanship. . here is, indeed, a drawing by turner, (edu. ), in which, with some fifty times the quantity of labor, and far more highly educated faculty of sight, the artist has expressed some qualities of luster and color which only very wise persons indeed could perceive in a john dory; and this piece of paper contains, therefore, much more, and more subtle, art, than the japan ivory; but are we sure that it is therefore _greater_ art? or that the painter was better employed in producing this drawing, which only one person can possess, and only one in a hundred enjoy, than he would have been in producing two or three pieces on a larger scale, which should have been at once accessible to, and enjoyable by, a number of simpler persons? suppose, for instance, that turner, instead of faintly touching this outline, on white paper, with his camel's-hair pencil, had struck the main forms of his fish into marble, thus, (fig. ); and instead of coloring the white paper so delicately that, perhaps, only a few of the most keenly observant artists in england can see it at all, had, with his strong hand, tinted the marble with a few colors, deceptive to the people, and harmonious to the initiated; suppose that he had even conceded so much to the spirit of popular applause as to allow of a bright glass bead being inlaid for the eye, in the japanese manner; and that the enlarged, deceptive, and popularly pleasing work had been carved on the outside of a great building,--say fishmongers' hall,--where everybody commercially connected with billingsgate could have seen it, and ratified it with a wisdom of the market;--might not the art have been greater, worthier, and kinder in such use? [illustration: fig. .] . perhaps the idea does not at once approve itself to you of having your public buildings covered with ornaments; but, pray remember that the choice of _subject_ is an ethical question, not now before us. all i ask you to decide is whether the method is right, and would be pleasant, in giving the distinctiveness to pretty things, which it has here given to what, i suppose it may be assumed, you feel to be an ugly thing. of course, i must note parenthetically, such realistic work is impossible in a country where the buildings are to be discolored by coal-smoke; but so is all fine sculpture whatsoever; and the whiter, the worse its chance. for that which is prepared for private persons, to be kept under cover, will, of necessity, degenerate into the copyism of past work, or merely sensational and sensual forms of present life, unless there be a governing school addressing the populace, for their instruction, on the outside of buildings. so that, as i partly warned you in my third lecture, you can simply have _no_ sculpture in a coal country. whether you like coals or carvings best, is no business of mine. i merely have to assure you of the fact that they are incompatible. but, assuming that we are again, some day, to become a civilized and governing race, deputing ironmongery, coal-digging, and lucre-digging, to our slaves in other countries, it is quite conceivable that, with an increasing knowledge of natural history, and desire for such knowledge, what is now done by careful, but inefficient, wood-cuts, and in ill-colored engravings, might be put in quite permanent sculptures, with inlay of variegated precious stones, on the outside of buildings, where such pictures would be little costly to the people; and in a more popular manner still, by robbia ware and palissy ware, and inlaid majolica, which would differ from the housewife's present favorite decoration of plates above her kitchen dresser, by being every piece of it various, instructive, and universally visible. . you hardly know, i suppose, whether i am speaking in jest or earnest. in the most solemn earnest, i assure you; though such is the strange course of our popular life that all the irrational arts of destruction are at once felt to be earnest; while any plan for those of instruction on a grand scale, sounds like a dream, or jest. still, i do not absolutely propose to decorate our public buildings with sculpture wholly of this character; though beast, and fowl, and creeping things, and fishes, might all find room on such a building as the solomon's house of a new atlantis; and some of them might even become symbolic of much to us again. passing through the strand, only the other day, for instance, i saw four highly finished and delicately colored pictures of cock-fighting, which, for imitative quality, were nearly all that could be desired, going far beyond the greek cock of himera; and they would have delighted a greek's soul, if they had meant as much as a greek cock-fight; but they were only types of the "[greek: endomachas alektôr]," and of the spirit of home contest, which has been so fatal lately to the bird of france; and not of the defense of one's own barnyard, in thought of which the olympians set the cock on the pillars of their chariot course; and gave it goodly alliance in its battle, as you may see here, in what is left of the angle of moldering marble in the chair of the priest of dionusos. the cast of it, from the center of the theater under the acropolis, is in the british museum; and i wanted its spiral for you, and this kneeling angel of victory;--it is late greek art, but nobly systematic flat bas-relief. so i set mr. burgess to draw it; but neither he nor i, for a little while, could make out what the angel of victory was kneeling for. his attitude is an ancient and grandly conventional one among the egyptians; and i was tracing it back to a kneeling goddess of the greatest dynasty of the pharaohs--a goddess of evening, or death, laying down the sun out of her right hand;--when, one bright day, the shadows came out clear on the athenian throne, and i saw that my angel of victory was only backing a cock at a cock-fight. . still, as i have said, there is no reason why sculpture, even for simplest persons, should confine itself to imagery of fish, or fowl, or four-footed things. we go back to our first principle: we ought to carve nothing but what is honorable. and you are offended, at this moment, with my fish, (as i believe, when the first sculptures appeared on the windows of this museum, offense was taken at the unnecessary introduction of cats,) these dissatisfactions being properly felt by your "[greek: nous tôn timiôtatôn]." for indeed, in all cases, our right judgment must depend on our wish to give honor only to things and creatures that deserve it. . and now i must state to you another principle of veracity, both in sculpture, and all following arts, of wider scope than any hitherto examined. we have seen that sculpture is to be a true representation of true internal form. much more is it to be a representation of true internal emotion. you must carve only what you yourself see as you see it; but, much more, you must carve only what you yourself feel, as you feel it. you may no more endeavor to feel through other men's souls, than to see with other men's eyes. whereas generally now, in europe and america, every man's energy is bent upon acquiring some false emotion, not his own, but belonging to the past, or to other persons, because he has been taught that such and such a result of it will be fine. every attempted sentiment in relation to art is hypocritical; our notions of sublimity, of grace, or pious serenity, are all secondhand: and we are practically incapable of designing so much as a bell-handle or a door-knocker, without borrowing the first notion of it from those who are gone--where we shall not wake them with our knocking. i would we could. . in the midst of this desolation we have nothing to count on for real growth but what we can find of honest liking and longing, in ourselves and in others. we must discover, if we would healthily advance, what things are verily [greek: timiôtata] among us; and if we delight to honor the dishonorable, consider how, in future, we may better bestow our likings. now it appears to me, from all our popular declarations, that we, at present, honor nothing so much as liberty and independence; and no person so much as the free man and self-made man, who will be ruled by no one, and has been taught, or helped, by no one. and the reason i chose a fish for you as the first subject of sculpture, was that in men who are free and self-made, you have the nearest approach, humanly possible, to the state of the fish, and finely organized [greek: herpeton]. you get the exact phrase in habakkuk, if you take the septuagint text,--"[greek: poiêseis tous anthrôpous hôs tous ichthyas tês thalassês, kai hôs ta herpeta ta ouk echonta hêgoumenon]." "thou wilt make men as the fishes of the sea, and as the reptile things, _that have no ruler over them_." and it chanced that as i was preparing this lecture, one of our most able and popular prints gave me a wood-cut of the 'self-made man,' specified as such, so vigorously drawn, and with so few touches, that phidias or turner himself could scarcely have done it better; so that i had only to ask my assistant to enlarge it with accuracy, and it became comparable with my fish at once. of course it is not given by the caricaturist as an admirable face; only, i am enabled by his skill to set before you, without any suspicion of unfairness on _my_ part, the expression to which the life we profess to think most honorable, naturally leads. if we were to take the hat off, you see how nearly the profile corresponds with that of the typical fish. . such, then, being the definition, by your best popular art, of the ideal of feature at which we are gradually arriving by self-manufacture: when i place opposite to it (in plate viii.) the profile of a man not in anywise self-made, neither by the law of his own will, nor by the love of his own interest--nor capable, for a moment, of any kind of 'independence,' or of the idea of independence; but wholly dependent upon, and subjected to, external influence of just law, wise teaching, and trusted love and truth, in his fellow-spirits;--setting before you, i say, this profile of a god-made, instead of a self-made, man, i know that you will feel, on the instant, that you are brought into contact with the vital elements of human art; and that this, the sculpture of the good, is indeed the only permissible sculpture. . a god-made _man_, i say. the face, indeed, stands as a symbol of more than man in its sculptor's mind. for as i gave you, to lead your first effort in the form of leaves, the scepter of apollo, so this, which i give you as the first type of rightness in the form of flesh, is the countenance of the holder of that scepter, the sun-god of syracuse. but there is nothing in the face (nor did the greek suppose there was) more perfect than might be seen in the daily beauty of the creatures the sun-god shone upon, and whom his strength and honor animated. this is not an ideal, but a quite literally true, face of a greek youth; nay, i will undertake to show you that it is not supremely beautiful, and even to surpass it altogether with the literal portrait of an italian one. it is in verity no more than the form habitually taken by the features of a well-educated young athenian or sicilian citizen; and the one requirement for the sculptors of to-day is not, as it has been thought, to invent the same ideal, but merely to see the same reality. [illustration: viii. the apollo of syracuse, and the self-made man.] [illustration: ix. apollo chrysocomes of clazomenÆ.] now, you know i told you in my fourth lecture[ ] that the beginning of art was in getting our country clean and our people beautiful, and you supposed that to be a statement irrelevant to my subject; just as, at this moment, you perhaps think i am quitting the great subject of this present lecture--the method of likeness-making,--and letting myself branch into the discussion of what things we are to make likeness of. but you shall see hereafter that the method of imitating a beautiful thing must be different from the method of imitating an ugly one; and that, with the change in subject from what is dishonorable to what is honorable, there will be involved a parallel change in the management of tools, of lines, and of colors. so that before i can determine for you _how_ you are to imitate, you must tell me what kind of face you wish to imitate. the best draughtsman in the world could not draw this apollo in ten scratches, though he can draw the self-made man. still less this nobler apollo of ionian greece (plate ix.), in which the incisions are softened into a harmony like that of correggio's painting. so that you see the method itself,--the choice between black incision or fine sculpture, and perhaps, presently, the choice between color or no color, will depend on what you have to represent. color may be expedient for a glistening dolphin or a spotted fawn;--perhaps inexpedient for white poseidon, and gleaming dian. so that, before defining the laws of sculpture, i am compelled to ask you, _what you mean to carve_; and that, little as you think it, is asking you how you mean to live, and what the laws of your state are to be, for _they_ determine those of your statue. you can only have this kind of face to study from, in the sort of state that produced it. and you will find that sort of state described in the beginning of the fourth book of the laws of plato; as founded, for one thing, on the conviction that of all the evils that can happen to a state, quantity of money is the greatest! [greek: meizon kakon, hôs epos eipein, polei ouden an gignoita, eis gennaiôn kai dikaiôn êthôn ktêsin], "for, to speak shortly, no greater evil, matching each against each, can possibly happen to a city, as adverse to its forming just or generous character," than its being full of silver and gold. . of course the greek notion may be wrong, and ours right, only--[greek: hôs epos eipein]--you can have greek sculpture only on that greek theory: shortly expressed by the words put into the mouth of poverty herself, in the plutus of aristophanes, "[greek: tou ploutou parechô beltionas andras, kai tên gnômên, kai tên idean]," "i deliver to you better men than the god of money can, both in imagination and feature." so, on the other hand, this ichthyoid, reptilian, or monochondyloid ideal of the self-made man can only be reached, universally, by a nation which holds that poverty, either of purse or spirit,--but especially the spiritual character of being [greek: ptôchoi tô pneumati],--is the lowest of degradations; and which believes that the desire of wealth is the first of manly and moral sentiments. as i have been able to get the popular ideal represented by its own living art, so i can give you this popular faith in its own living words; but in words meant seriously, and not at all as caricature, from one of our leading journals, professedly æsthetic also in its very name, the _spectator_, of august , . "mr. ruskin's plan," it says, "would make england poor, in order that she might be cultivated, and refined, and artistic. a wilder proposal was never broached by a man of ability; and it might be regarded as a proof that the assiduous study of art emasculates the intellect, _and even the moral sense_. such a theory almost warrants the contempt with which art is often regarded by essentially intellectual natures, like proudhon" (sic). "art is noble as the flower of life, and the creations of a titian are a great heritage of the race; but if england could secure high art and venetian glory of color only by the sacrifice of her manufacturing supremacy, and _by the acceptance of national poverty_, then the pursuit of such artistic achievements would imply that we had ceased to possess natures of manly strength, _or to know the meaning of moral aims_. if we must choose between a titian and a lancashire cotton mill, then, in the name of manhood and of morality, give us the cotton mill. only the dilettanteism of the studio; that dilettanteism which loosens the moral no less than the intellectual fiber, and which is as fatal to rectitude of action as to correctness of reasoning power, would make a different choice." you see also, by this interesting and most memorable passage, how completely the question is admitted to be one of ethics--the only real point at issue being, whether this face or that is developed on the truer moral principle. . i assume, however, for the present, that this apolline type is the kind of form you wish to reach and to represent. and now observe, instantly, the whole question of manner of imitation is altered for us. the fins of the fish, the plumes of the swan, and the flowing of the sun-god's hair are all represented by incisions--but the incisions do sufficiently represent the fin and feather,--they _in_sufficiently represent the hair. if i chose, with a little more care and labor, i could absolutely get the surface of the scales and spines of the fish, and the expression of its mouth; but no quantity of labor would obtain the real surface of a tress of apollo's hair, and the full expression of his mouth. so that we are compelled at once to call the imagination to help us, and say to it, _you_ know what the apollo chrysocomes must be like; finish all this for yourself. now, the law under which imagination works, is just that of other good workers. "you must give me clear orders; show me what i have to do, and where i am to begin, and let me alone." and the orders can be given, quite clearly, up to a certain point, in form; but they cannot be given clearly in color, now that the subject is subtle. all beauty of this high kind depends on harmony; let but the slightest discord come into it, and the finer the thing is, the more fatal will be the flaw. now, on a flat surface, i can command my color to be precisely what and where i mean it to be; on a round one i cannot. for all harmony depends, first, on the fixed proportion of the color of the light to that of the relative shadow; and therefore if i fasten my color, i must fasten my shade. but on a round surface the shadow changes at every hour of the day; and therefore all coloring which is expressive of form, is impossible; and if the form is fine, (and here there is nothing but what is fine,) you may bid farewell to color. . farewell to color; that is to say, if the thing is to be seen distinctly, and you have only wise people to show it to; but if it is to be seen indistinctly, at a distance, color may become explanatory; and if you have simple people to show it to, color may be necessary to excite _their_ imaginations, though not to excite yours. and the art is great always by meeting its conditions in the straightest way; and if it is to please a multitude of innocent and bluntly-minded persons, must express itself in the terms that will touch them; else it is not good. and i have to trace for you through the history of the past, and possibilities of the future, the expedients used by great sculptors to obtain clearness, impressiveness, or splendor; and the manner of their appeal to the people, under various light and shadow, and with reference to different degrees of public intelligence: such investigation resolving itself again and again, as we proceed, into questions absolutely ethical; as, for instance, whether color is to be bright or dull,--that is to say, for a populace cheerful or heartless;--whether it is to be delicate or strong,--that is to say, for a populace attentive or careless; whether it is to be a background like the sky, for a procession of young men and maidens, because your populace revere life--or the shadow of the vault behind a corpse stained with drops of blackened blood, for a populace taught to worship death. every critical determination of rightness depends on the obedience to some ethic law, by the most rational and, therefore, simplest means. and you see how it depends most, of all things, on whether you are working for chosen persons, or for the mob; for the joy of the boudoir, or of the borgo. and if for the mob, whether the mob of olympia, or of st. antoine. phidias, showing his jupiter for the first time, hides behind the temple door to listen, resolved afterwards "[greek: rhythmizein to agalma pros to tois pleistois dokoun, ou gar hêgeito mikran einai symboulên dêmou tosoutou]," and truly, as your people is, in judgment, and in multitude, so must your sculpture be, in glory. an elementary principle which has been too long out of mind. . i leave you to consider it, since, for some time, we shall not again be able to take up the inquiries to which it leads. but, ultimately, i do not doubt that you will rest satisfied in these following conclusions: . not only sculpture, but all the other fine arts, must be for the people. . they must be didactic to the people, and that as their chief end. the structural arts, didactic in their manner; the graphic arts, in their matter also. . and chiefly the great representative and imaginative arts--that is to say, the drama and sculpture--are to teach what is noble in past history, and lovely in existing human and organic life. . and the test of right manner of execution in these arts, is that they strike, in the most emphatic manner, the rank of popular minds to which they are addressed. . and the test of utmost fineness in execution in these arts, is that they make themselves be forgotten in what they represent; and so fulfill the words of their greatest master, "the best, in this kind, are but shadows." footnotes: [ ] see date of delivery of lecture. the picture was of a peasant girl of eleven or twelve years old, peeling carrots by a cottage fire. [ ] in dürer's 'melancholia.' [ ] turner's, in the hakewill series. [ ] "lectures on art," § . lecture v. structure. _december, ._ . on previous occasions of addressing you, i have endeavored to show you, first, how sculpture is distinguished from other arts; then its proper subjects; then its proper method in the realization of these subjects. to-day, we must, in the fourth place, consider the means at its command for the accomplishment of these ends; the nature of its materials; and the mechanical or other difficulties of their treatment. and however doubtful we may have remained as to the justice of greek ideals, or propriety of greek methods of representing them, we may be certain that the example of the greeks will be instructive in all practical matters relating to this great art, peculiarly their own. i think even the evidence i have already laid before you is enough to convince you that it was by rightness and reality, not by idealism or delightfulness only, that their minds were finally guided; and i am sure that, before closing the present course, i shall be able so far to complete that evidence, as to prove to you that the commonly received notions of classic art are, not only unfounded, but even, in many respects, directly contrary to the truth. you are constantly told that greece idealized whatever she contemplated. she did the exact contrary: she realized and verified it. you are constantly told she sought only the beautiful. she sought, indeed, with all her heart; but she found, because she never doubted that the search was to be consistent with propriety and common sense. and the first thing you will always discern in greek work is the first which you _ought_ to discern in all work; namely, that the object of it has been rational, and has been obtained by simple and unostentatious means. . "that the object of the work has been rational"! consider how much that implies. that it should be by all means seen to have been determined upon, and carried through, with sense and discretion; these being gifts of intellect far more precious than any knowledge of mathematics, or of the mechanical resources of art. therefore, also, that it should be a modest and temperate work, a structure fitted to the actual state of men; proportioned to their actual size, as animals,--to their average strength,--to their true necessities,--and to the degree of easy command they have over the forces and substances of nature. . you see how much this law excludes! all that is fondly magnificent, insolently ambitious, or vainly difficult. there is, indeed, such a thing as magnanimity in design, but never unless it be joined also with modesty, and _equ_animity. nothing extravagant, monstrous, strained, or singular, can be structurally beautiful. no towers of babel envious of the skies; no pyramids in mimicry of the mountains of the earth; no streets that are a weariness to traverse, nor temples that make pigmies of the worshipers. it is one of the primal merits and decencies of greek work, that it was, on the whole, singularly small in scale, and wholly within reach of sight, to its finest details. and, indeed, the best buildings that i know are thus modest; and some of the best are minute jewel cases for sweet sculpture. the parthenon would hardly attract notice, if it were set by the charing cross railway station: the church of the miracoli, at venice, the chapel of the rose, at lucca, and the chapel of the thorn, at pisa, would not, i suppose, all three together, fill the tenth part, cube, of a transept of the crystal palace. and they are better so. . in the chapter on power in the 'seven lamps of architecture,' i have stated what seems, at first, the reverse of what i am saying now; namely, that it is better to have one grand building than any number of mean ones. and that is true: but you cannot command grandeur by size till you can command grace in minuteness; and least of all, remember, will you so command it to-day, when magnitude has become the chief exponent of folly and misery, coördinate in the fraternal enormities of the factory and poorhouse,--the barracks and hospital. and the final law in this matter is that, if you require edifices only for the grace and health of mankind, and build them without pretense and without chicanery, they will be sublime on a modest scale, and lovely with little decoration. . from these principles of simplicity and temperance, two very severely fixed laws of construction follow; namely, first, that our structure, to be beautiful, must be produced with tools of men; and, secondly, that it must be composed of natural substances. first, i say, produced with tools of men. all fine art requires the application of the whole strength and subtlety of the body, so that such art is not possible to any sickly person, but involves the action and force of a strong man's arm from the shoulder, as well as the delicatest touch of his fingers: and it is the evidence that this full and fine strength has been spent on it which makes the art executively noble; so that no instrument must be used, habitually, which is either too heavy to be delicately restrained, or too small and weak to transmit a vigorous impulse; much less any mechanical aid, such as would render the sensibility of the fingers ineffectual.[ ] . of course, any kind of work in glass, or in metal, on a large scale, involves some painful endurance of heat; and working in clay, some habitual endurance of cold; but the point beyond which the effort must not be carried is marked by loss of power of manipulation. as long as the eyes and fingers have complete command of the material, (as a glass-blower has, for instance, in doing fine ornamental work,)--the law is not violated; but all our great engine and furnace work, in gun-making and the like, is degrading to the intellect; and no nation can long persist in it without losing many of its human faculties. nay, even the use of machinery other than the common rope and pulley, for the lifting of weights, is degrading to architecture; the invention of expedients for the raising of enormous stones has always been a characteristic of partly savage or corrupted races. a block of marble not larger than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and a cross-beam, with a couple of pulleys, raise, is as large as should generally be used in any building. the employment of large masses is sure to lead to vulgar exhibitions of geometrical arrangement,[ ] and to draw away the attention from the sculpture. in general, rocks naturally break into such pieces as the human beings that have to build with them can easily lift; and no larger should be sought for. . in this respect, and in many other subtle ways, the law that the work is to be with tools of men is connected with the farther condition of its modesty, that it is to be wrought in substance provided by nature, and to have a faithful respect to all the essential qualities of such substance. and here i must ask your attention to the idea, and, more than idea,--the fact, involved in that infinitely misused term, 'providentia,' when applied to the divine power. in its truest sense and scholarly use, it is a human virtue, [greek: promêtheia]; the personal type of it is in prometheus, and all the first power of [greek: technê], is from him, as compared to the weakness of days when men without foresight "[greek: ephyron eikê panta]." but, so far as we use the word 'providence' as an attribute of the maker and giver of all things, it does not mean that in a shipwreck he takes care of the passengers who are to be saved, and takes none of those who are to be drowned; but it _does_ mean that every race of creatures is born into the world under circumstances of approximate adaptation to its necessities; and, beyond all others, the ingenious and observant race of man is surrounded with elements naturally good for his food, pleasant to his sight, and suitable for the subjects of his ingenuity;--the stone, metal, and clay of the earth he walks upon lending themselves at once to his hand, for all manner of workmanship. . thus, his truest respect for the law of the entire creation is shown by his making the most of what he can get most easily; and there is no virtue of art, nor application of common sense, more sacredly necessary than this respect to the beauty of natural substance, and the ease of local use; neither are there any other precepts of construction so vital as these--that you show all the strength of your material, tempt none of its weaknesses, and do with it only what can be simply and permanently done. . thus, all good building will be with rocks, or pebbles, or burnt clay, but with no artificial compound; all good painting with common oils and pigments on common canvas, paper, plaster, or wood,--admitting sometimes, for precious work, precious things, but all applied in a simple and visible way. the highest imitative art should not, indeed, at first sight, call attention to the means of it; but even that, at length, should do so distinctly, and provoke the observer to take pleasure in seeing how completely the workman is master of the particular material he has used, and how beautiful and desirable a substance it was, for work of that kind. in oil painting, its unctuous quality is to be delighted in; in fresco, its chalky quality; in glass, its transparency; in wood, its grain; in marble, its softness; in porphyry, its hardness; in iron, its toughness. in a flint country, one should feel the delightfulness of having flints to pick up, and fasten together into rugged walls. in a marble country, one should be always more and more astonished at the exquisite color and structure of marble; in a slate country, one should feel as if every rock cleft itself only for the sake of being built with conveniently. . now, for sculpture, there are, briefly, two materials--clay, and stone; for glass is only a clay that gets clear and brittle as it cools, and metal a clay that gets opaque and tough as it cools. indeed, the true use of gold in this world is only as a very pretty and very ductile clay, which you can spread as flat as you like, spin as fine as you like, and which will neither crack nor tarnish. all the arts of sculpture in clay may be summed up under the word 'plastic,' and all of those in stone, under the word 'glyptic.' . sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast brickwork, pottery, and tile-work[ ]--a somewhat important branch of human skill. next to the potter's work, you have all the arts in porcelain, glass, enamel, and metal,--everything, that is to say, playful and familiar in design, much of what is most felicitously inventive, and, in bronze or gold, most precious and permanent. . sculpture in stone, whether granite, gem, or marble, while we accurately use the general term 'glyptic' for it, may be thought of with, perhaps, the most clear force under the english word 'engraving.' for, from the mere angular incision which the greek consecrated in the triglyphs of his greatest order of architecture, grow forth all the arts of bas-relief, and methods of localized groups of sculpture connected with each other and with architecture: as, in another direction, the arts of engraving and wood-cutting themselves. . over all this vast field of human skill the laws which i have enunciated to you rule with inevitable authority, embracing the greatest, and consenting to the humblest, exertion; strong to repress the ambition of nations, if fantastic and vain, but gentle to approve the efforts of children, made in accordance with the visible intention of the maker of all flesh, and the giver of all intelligence. these laws, therefore, i now repeat, and beg of you to observe them as irrefragable. . that the work is to be with tools of men. . that it is to be in natural materials. . that it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at no quality inconsistent with them. . that its temper is to be quiet and gentle, in harmony with common needs, and in consent to common intelligence. we will now observe the bearing of these laws on the elementary conditions of the art at present under discussion. . there is, first, work in baked clay, which contracts, as it dries, and is very easily frangible. then you must put no work into it requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elaborate that it would be a great loss if it were broken; but as the clay yields at once to the hand, and the sculptor can do anything with it he likes, it is a material for him to sketch with and play with,--to record his fancies in, before they escape him,--and to express roughly, for people who can enjoy such sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. the clay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line; being easily frangible, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, so that a blunt and massive rendering of graceful gesture will be its natural function: but as it can be pinched, or pulled, or thrust in a moment into projection which it would take hours of chiseling to get in stone, it will also properly be used for all fantastic and grotesque form, not involving sharp edges. therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal, for painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors; they are all most precious materials for true masters, but tempt the false ones into fatal license; and to judge rightly of terra-cotta work is a far higher reach of skill in sculpture-criticism than to distinguish the merits of a finished statue. . we have, secondly, work in bronze, iron, gold, and other metals; in which the laws of structure are still more definite. all kinds of twisted and wreathen work on every scale become delightful when wrought in ductile or tenacious metal; but metal which is to be _hammered_ into form separates itself into two great divisions--solid, and flat. a. in solid metal-work, _i.e._, metal cast thick enough to resist bending, whether it be hollow or not, violent and various projection may be admitted, which would be offensive in marble; but no sharp edges, because it is difficult to produce them with the hammer. but since the permanence of the material justifies exquisiteness of workmanship, whatever delicate ornamentation can be wrought with rounded surfaces may be advisedly introduced; and since the color of bronze or any other metal is not so pleasantly representative of flesh as that of marble, a wise sculptor will depend less on flesh contour, and more on picturesque accessories, which, though they would be vulgar if attempted in stone, are rightly entertaining in bronze or silver. verrocchio's statue of colleone at venice, cellini's perseus at florence, and ghiberti's gates at florence, are models of bronze treatment. b. when metal is beaten thin, it becomes what is technically called 'plate,' (the _flattened_ thing,) and may be treated advisably in two ways: one, by beating it out into bosses, the other by cutting it into strips and ramifications. the vast schools of goldsmiths' work and of iron decoration, founded on these two principles, have had the most powerful influences over general taste in all ages and countries. one of the simplest and most interesting elementary examples of the treatment of flat metal by cutting is the common branched iron bar, fig. , used to close small apertures in countries possessing any good primitive style of ironwork, formed by alternate cuts on its sides, and the bending down of the severed portions. the ordinary domestic window balcony of verona is formed by mere ribbons of iron, bent into curves as studiously refined as those of a greek vase, and decorated merely by their own terminations in spiral volutes. all cast work in metal, unfinished by hand, is inadmissible in any school of living art, since it cannot possess the perfection of form due to a permanent substance; and the continual sight of it is destructive of the faculty of taste: but metal stamped with precision, as in coins, is to sculpture what engraving is to painting. . thirdly. stone-sculpture divides itself into three schools: one in very hard material; one in very soft; and one in that of centrally useful consistence. [illustration: fig. .] a. the virtue of work in hard material is the expression of form in shallow relief, or in broad contours: deep cutting in hard material is inadmissible; and the art, at once pompous and trivial, of gem engraving, has been in the last degree destructive of the honor and service of sculpture. b. the virtue of work in soft material is deep cutting, with studiously graceful disposition of the masses of light and shade. the greater number of flamboyant churches of france are cut out of an adhesive chalk; and the fantasy of their latest decoration was, in great part, induced by the facility of obtaining contrast of black space, undercut, with white tracery easily left in sweeping and interwoven rods--the lavish use of wood in domestic architecture materially increasing the habit of delight in branched complexity of line. these points, however, i must reserve for illustration in my lectures on architecture. to-day, i shall limit myself to the illustration of elementary sculptural structure in the best material,--that is to say, in crystalline marble, neither soft enough to encourage the caprice of the workman, nor hard enough to resist his will. . c. by the true 'providence' of nature, the rock which is thus submissive has been in some places stained with the fairest colors, and in others blanched into the fairest absence of color that can be found to give harmony to inlaying, or dignity to form. the possession by the greeks of their [greek: leukos lithos] was indeed the first circumstance regulating the development of their art; it enabled them at once to express their passion for light by executing the faces, hands, and feet of their dark wooden statues in white marble, so that what we look upon only with pleasure for fineness of texture was to them an imitation of the luminous body of the deity shining from behind its dark robes; and ivory afterwards is employed in their best statues for its yet more soft and flesh-like brightness, receptive also of the most delicate color--(therefore to this day the favorite ground of miniature painters). in like manner, the existence of quarries of peach-colored marble within twelve miles of verona, and of white marble and green serpentine between pisa and genoa, defined the manner both of sculpture and architecture for all the gothic buildings of italy. no subtlety of education could have formed a high school of art without these materials. . next to the color, the fineness of substance which will take a perfectly sharp edge, is essential; and this not merely to admit fine delineation in the sculpture itself, but to secure a delightful precision in placing the blocks of which it is composed. for the possession of too fine marble, as far as regards the work itself, is a temptation instead of an advantage to an inferior sculptor; and the abuse of the facility of undercutting, especially of undercutting so as to leave profiles defined by an edge against shadow, is one of the chief causes of decline of style in such incrusted bas-reliefs as those of the certosa of pavia and its contemporary monuments. but no undue temptation ever exists as to the fineness of block fitting; nothing contributes to give so pure and healthy a tone to sculpture as the attention of the builder to the jointing of his stones; and his having both the power to make them fit so perfectly as not to admit of the slightest portion of cement showing externally, and the skill to insure, if needful, and to suggest always, their stability in cementless construction. plate x. represents a piece of entirely fine lombardic building, the central portion of the arch in the duomo in verona, which corresponds to that of the porch of san zenone, represented in plate i. in both these pieces of building, the only line that traces the architrave round the arch, is that of the masonry joint; yet this line is drawn with extremest subtlety, with intention of delighting the eye by its relation of varied curvature to the arch itself; and it is just as much considered as the finest pen-line of a raphael drawing. every joint of the stone is used, in like manner, as a thin black line, which the slightest sign of cement would spoil like a blot. and so proud is the builder of his fine jointing, and so fearless of any distortion or strain spoiling the adjustment afterwards, that in one place he runs his joint quite gratuitously through a bas-relief, and gives the keystone its only sign of preëminence by the minute inlaying of the head of the lamb into the stone of the course above. . proceeding from this fine jointing to fine draughtsmanship, you have, in the very outset and earliest stage of sculpture, your flat stone surface given you as a sheet of white paper, on which you are required to produce the utmost effect you can with the simplest means, cutting away as little of the stone as may be, to save both time and trouble; and above all, leaving the block itself, when shaped, as solid as you can, that its surface may better resist weather, and the carved parts be as much protected as possible by the masses left around them. [illustration: x. marble masonry in the duomo of verona.] [illustration: xi. the first elements of sculpture. incised outline and opened space.] . the first thing to be done is clearly to trace the outline of subject with an incision approximating in section to that of the furrow of a plow, only more equal-sided. a fine sculptor strikes it, as his chisel leans, freely, on marble; an egyptian, in hard rock, cuts it sharp, as in cuneiform inscriptions. in any case, you have a result somewhat like the upper figure, plate xi., in which i show you the most elementary indication of form possible, by cutting the outline of the typical archaic greek head with an incision like that of a greek triglyph, only not so precise in edge or slope, as it is to be modified afterwards. . now, the simplest thing we can do next is to round off the flat surface _within_ the incision, and put what form we can get into the feebler projection of it thus obtained. the egyptians do this, often with exquisite skill, and then, as i showed you in a former lecture, color the whole--using the incision as an outline. such a method of treatment is capable of good service in representing, at little cost of pains, subjects in distant effect; and common, or merely picturesque, subjects even near. to show you what it is capable of, and what colored sculpture would be in its rudest type, i have prepared the colored relief of the john dory[ ] as a natural history drawing for distant effect. you know, also, that i meant him to be ugly--as ugly as any creature can well be. in time, i hope to show you prettier things--peacocks and kingfishers, butterflies and flowers,--on grounds of gold, and the like, as they were in byzantine work. i shall expect you, in right use of your æsthetic faculties, to like those better than what i show you to-day. but it is now a question of method only; and if you will look, after the lecture, first at the mere white relief, and then see how much may be gained by a few dashes of color, such as a practiced workman could lay in a quarter of an hour,--the whole forming, if well done, almost a deceptive image,--you will, at least, have the range of power in egyptian sculpture clearly expressed to you. . but for fine sculpture, we must advance by far other methods. if we carve the subject with real delicacy, the cast shadow of the incision will interfere with its outline, so that, for representation of beautiful things you must clear away the ground about it, at all events for a little distance. as the law of work is to use the least pains possible, you clear it only just as far back as you need, and then, for the sake of order and finish, you give the space a geometrical outline. by taking, in this case, the simplest i can,--a circle,--i can clear the head with little labor in the removal of surface round it; (see the lower figure in plate xi.) . now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed bas-relief. the mass you have to treat consists of a piece of stone which, however you afterwards carve it, can but, at its most projecting point, reach the level of the external plane surface out of which it was mapped, and defined by a depression round it; that depression being at first a mere trench, then a moat of a certain width, of which the outer sloping bank is in contact, as a limiting geometrical line, with the laterally salient portions of sculpture. this, i repeat, is the primal construction of good bas-relief, implying, first, perfect protection to its surface from any transverse blow, and a geometrically limited space to be occupied by the design, into which it shall pleasantly (and as you shall ultimately see, ingeniously,) contract itself: implying, secondly, a determined depth of projection, which it shall rarely reach, and never exceed: and implying, finally, the production of the whole piece with the least possible labor of chisel and loss of stone. . and these, which are the first, are very nearly the last constructive laws of sculpture. you will be surprised to find how much they include, and how much of minor propriety in treatment their observance involves. in a very interesting essay on the architecture of the parthenon, by the professor of architecture of the École polytechnique, m. Émile boutmy, you will find it noticed that the greeks do not usually weaken, by carving, the constructive masses of their building; but put their chief sculpture in the empty spaces between the triglyphs, or beneath the roof. this is true; but in so doing, they merely build their panel instead of carving it; they accept, no less than the goths, the laws of recess and limitation, as being vital to the safety and dignity of their design; and their noblest recumbent statues are, constructively, the fillings of the acute extremity of a panel in the form of an obtusely summited triangle. . in gradual descent from that severest type, you will find that an immense quantity of sculpture of all times and styles may be generally embraced under the notion of a mass hewn out of, or, at least, placed in, a panel or recess, deepening, it may be, into a niche; the sculpture being always designed with reference to its position in such recess: and, therefore, to the effect of the building out of which the recess is hewn. but, for the sake of simplifying our inquiry, i will at first suppose no surrounding protective ledge to exist, and that the area of stone we have to deal with is simply a flat slab, extant from a flat surface depressed all round it. . a _flat_ slab, observe. the flatness of surface is essential to the problem of bas-relief. the lateral limit of the panel may, or may not, be required; but the vertical limit of surface _must_ be expressed; and the art of bas-relief is to give the effect of true form on that condition. for observe, if nothing more were needed than to make first a cast of a solid form, then cut it in half, and apply the half of it to the flat surface;--if, for instance, to carve a bas-relief of an apple, all i had to do was to cut my sculpture of the whole apple in half, and pin it to the wall, any ordinarily trained sculptor, or even a mechanical workman, could produce bas-relief; but the business is to carve a _round_ thing out of a _flat_ thing; to carve an apple out of a biscuit!--to conquer, as a subtle florentine has here conquered,[ ] his marble, so as not only to get motion into what is most rigidly fixed, but to get boundlessness into what is most narrowly bounded; and carve madonna and child, rolling clouds, flying angels, and space of heavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of an inch thick where it is thickest. . carried, however, to such a degree of subtlety as this, and with so ambitious and extravagant aim, bas-relief becomes a tour-de-force; and, you know, i have just told you all tours-de-force are wrong. the true law of bas-relief is to begin with a depth of incision proportioned justly to the distance of the observer and the character of the subject, and out of that rationally determined depth, neither increased for ostentation of effect, nor diminished for ostentation of skill, to do the utmost that will be easily visible to an observer, supposing him to give an average human amount of attention, but not to peer into, or critically scrutinize, the work. . i cannot arrest you to-day by the statement of any of the laws of sight and distance which determine the proper depth of bas-relief. suppose that depth fixed; then observe what a pretty problem, or, rather, continually varying cluster of problems, will be offered to us. you might, at first, imagine that, given what we may call our scale of solidity, or scale of depth, the diminution from nature would be in regular proportion, as, for instance, if the real depth of your subject be, suppose, a foot, and the depth of your bas-relief an inch, then the parts of the real subject which were six inches round the side of it would be carved, you might imagine, at the depth of half an inch, and so the whole thing mechanically reduced to scale. but not a bit of it. here is a greek bas-relief of a chariot with two horses (upper figure, plate xxi.) your whole subject has therefore the depth of two horses side by side, say six or eight feet. your bas-relief has, on this scale,[ ] say the depth of a third of an inch. now, if you gave only the sixth of an inch for the depth of the off horse, and, dividing him again, only the twelfth of an inch for that of each foreleg, you would make him look a mile away from the other, and his own forelegs a mile apart. actually, the greek has made the _near leg of the off horse project much beyond the off leg of the near horse_; and has put nearly the whole depth and power of his relief into the breast of the off horse, while for the whole distance from the head of the nearest to the neck of the other, he has allowed himself only a shallow line; knowing that, if he deepened that, he would give the nearest horse the look of having a thick nose; whereas, by keeping that line down, he has not only made the head itself more delicate, but detached it from the other by giving no cast shadow, and left the shadow below to serve for thickness of breast, cutting it as sharp down as he possibly can, to make it bolder. . here is a fine piece of business we have got into!--even supposing that all this selection and adaptation were to be contrived under constant laws, and related only to the expression of given forms. but the greek sculptor, all this while, is not only debating and deciding how to show what he wants, but, much more, debating and deciding what, as he can't show everything, he will choose to show at all. thus, being himself interested, and supposing that you will be, in the manner of the driving, he takes great pains to carve the reins, to show you where they are knotted, and how they are fastened round the driver's waist, (you recollect how hippolytus was lost by doing that); but he does not care the least bit about the chariot, and having rather more geometry than he likes in the cross and circle of one wheel of it, entirely omits the other! . i think you must see by this time that the sculptor's is not quite a trade which you can teach like brickmaking; nor its produce an article of which you can supply any quantity 'demanded' for the next railroad waiting-room. it may perhaps, indeed, seem to you that, in the difficulties thus presented by it, bas-relief involves more direct exertion of intellect than finished solid sculpture. it is not so, however. the questions involved by bas-relief are of a more curious and amusing kind, requiring great variety of expedients; though none except such as a true workmanly instinct delights in inventing, and invents easily; but design in solid sculpture involves considerations of weight in mass, of balance, of perspective and opposition, in projecting forms, and of restraint for those which must not project, such as none but the greatest masters have ever completely solved; and they, not always; the difficulty of arranging the composition so as to be agreeable from points of view on all sides of it, being, itself, arduous enough. . thus far, i have been speaking only of the laws of structure relating to the projection of the mass which becomes itself the sculpture. another most interesting group of constructive laws governs its relation to the line that contains or defines it. in your standard series i have placed a photograph of the south transept of rouen cathedral. strictly speaking, all standards of gothic are of the thirteenth century; but, in the fourteenth, certain qualities of richness are obtained by the diminution of restraint; out of which we must choose what is best in their kinds. the pedestals of the statues which once occupied the lateral recesses are, as you see, covered with groups of figures, inclosed each in a quatrefoil panel; the spaces between this panel and the inclosing square being filled with sculptures of animals. you cannot anywhere find a more lovely piece of fancy, or more illustrative of the quantity of result, than may be obtained with low and simple chiseling. the figures are all perfectly simple in drapery, the story told by lines of action only in the main group, no accessories being admitted. there is no undercutting anywhere, nor exhibition of technical skill, but the fondest and tenderest appliance of it; and one of the principal charms of the whole is the adaptation of every subject to its quaint limit. the tale must be told within the four petals of the quatrefoil, and the wildest and playfulest beasts must never come out of their narrow corners. the attention with which spaces of this kind are filled by the gothic designers is not merely a beautiful compliance with architectural requirements, but a definite assertion of their delight in the restraint of law; for, in illuminating books, although, if they chose it, they might have designed floral ornaments, as we now usually do, rambling loosely over the leaves, and although, in later works, such license is often taken by them, in all books of the fine time the wandering tendrils are inclosed by limits approximately rectilinear, and in gracefulest branching often detach themselves from the right line only by curvature of extreme severity. . since the darkness and extent of shadow by which the sculpture is relieved necessarily vary with the depth of the recess, there arise a series of problems, in deciding which the wholesome desire for emphasis by means of shadow is too often exaggerated by the ambition of the sculptor to show his skill in undercutting. the extreme of vulgarity is usually reached when the entire bas-relief is cut hollow underneath, as in much indian and chinese work, so as to relieve its forms against an absolute darkness; but no formal law can ever be given; for exactly the same thing may be beautifully done for a wise purpose, by one person, which is basely done, and to no purpose, or to a bad one, by another. thus, the desire for emphasis itself may be the craving of a deadened imagination, or the passion of a vigorous one; and relief against shadow may be sought by one man only for sensation, and by another for intelligibility. john of pisa undercuts fiercely, in order to bring out the vigor of life which no level contour could render; the lombardi of venice undercut delicately, in order to obtain beautiful lines and edges of faultless precision; but the base indian craftsmen undercut only that people may wonder how the chiseling was done through the holes, or that they may see every monster white against black. . yet, here again we are met by another necessity for discrimination. there may be a true delight in the inlaying of white on dark, as there is a true delight in vigorous rounding. nevertheless, the general law is always, that, the lighter the incisions, and the broader the surface, the grander, cæteris paribus, will be the work. of the structural terms of that work you now know enough to understand that the schools of good sculpture, considered in relation to projection, divide themselves into four entirely distinct groups:-- st. flat relief, in which the surface is, in many places, absolutely flat; and the expression depends greatly on the lines of its outer contour, and on fine incisions within them. d. round relief, in which, as in the best coins, the sculptured mass projects so as to be capable of complete modulation into form, but is not anywhere undercut. the formation of a coin by the blow of a die necessitates, of course, the severest obedience to this law. d. edged relief. undercutting admitted, so as to throw out the forms against a background of shadow. th. full relief. the statue completely solid in form, and unreduced in retreating depth of it, yet connected locally with some definite part of the building, so as to be still dependent on the shadow of its background and direction of protective line. . let me recommend you at once to take what pains may be needful to enable you to distinguish these four kinds of sculpture, for the distinctions between them are not founded on mere differences in gradation of depth. they are truly four species, or orders, of sculpture, separated from each other by determined characters. i have used, you may have noted, hitherto in my lectures, the word 'bas-relief' almost indiscriminately for all, because the degree of lowness or highness of relief is not the question, but the _method_ of relief. observe again, therefore-- [illustration: xii. branch of phillyrea.] a. if a portion of the surface is absolutely flat, you have the first order--flat relief. b. if every portion of the surface is rounded, but none undercut, you have round relief--essentially that of seals and coins. c. if any part of the edges be undercut, but the general protection of solid form reduced, you have what i think you may conveniently call foliate relief,--the parts of the design overlapping each other, in places, like edges of leaves. d. if the undercutting is bold and deep, and the projection of solid form unreduced, you have full relief. learn these four names at once by heart:-- flat relief. round relief. foliate relief. full relief. and whenever you look at any piece of sculpture, determine first to which of these classes it belongs; and then consider how the sculptor has treated it with reference to the necessary structure--that reference, remember, being partly to the mechanical conditions of the material, partly to the means of light and shade at his command. [illustration: fig. .] . to take a single instance. you know, for these many years, i have been telling our architects, with all the force of voice i had in me, that they could design nothing until they could carve natural forms rightly. many imagined that work was easy; but judge for yourselves whether it be or not. in plate xii., i have drawn, with approximate accuracy, a cluster of phillyrea leaves as they grow, now, if we wanted to cut them in bas-relief, the first thing we should have to consider would be the position of their outline on the marble;--here it is, as far down as the spring of the leaves. but do you suppose that is what an ordinary sculptor could either lay for his first sketch, or contemplate as a limit to be worked down to? then consider how the interlacing and springing of the leaves can be expressed within this outline. it must be done by leaving such projection in the marble as will take the light in the same proportion as the drawing does;--and a florentine workman could do it, for close sight, without driving one incision deeper, or raising a single surface higher, than the eighth of an inch. indeed, no sculptor of the finest time would design such a complex cluster of leaves as this, except for bronze or iron work; they would take simpler contours for marble; but the laws of treatment would, under these conditions, remain just as strict: and you may, perhaps, believe me now when i tell you that, in any piece of fine structural sculpture by the great masters, there is more subtlety and noble obedience to lovely laws than could be explained to you if i took twenty lectures to do it in, instead of one. [illustration: xiii. greek flat relief, and sculpture by edged incision.] . there remains yet a point of mechanical treatment on which i have not yet touched at all; nor that the least important,--namely, the actual method and style of handling. a great sculptor uses his tool exactly as a painter his pencil, and you may recognize the decision of his thought, and glow of his temper, no less in the workmanship than the design. the modern system of modeling the work in clay, getting it into form by machinery, and by the hands of subordinates, and touching it at last, if indeed the (so-called) sculptor touch it at all, only to correct their inefficiencies, renders the production of good work in marble a physical impossibility. the first result of it is that the sculptor thinks in clay instead of marble, and loses his instinctive sense of the proper treatment of a brittle substance. the second is that neither he nor the public recognize the touch of the chisel as expressive of personal feeling of power, and that nothing is looked for except mechanical polish. . the perfectly simple piece of greek relief represented in plate xiii., will enable you to understand at once,--examination of the original, at your leisure, will prevent you, i trust, from ever forgetting,--what is meant by the virtue of handling in sculpture. the projection of the heads of the four horses, one behind the other, is certainly not more, altogether, than three-quarters of an inch from the flat ground, and the one in front does not in reality project more than the one behind it, yet, by mere drawing,[ ] you see the sculptor has got them to appear to recede in due order, and by the soft rounding of the flesh surfaces, and modulation of the veins, he has taken away all look of flatness from the necks. he has drawn the eyes and nostrils with dark incision, careful as the finest touches of a painter's pencil: and then, at last, when he comes to the manes, he has let fly hand and chisel with their full force; and where a base workman, (above all, if he had modeled the thing in clay first,) would have lost himself in laborious imitation of hair, the greek has struck the tresses out with angular incisions, deep driven, every one in appointed place and deliberate curve, yet flowing so free under his noble hand that you cannot alter, without harm, the bending of any single ridge, nor contract, nor extend, a point of them. and if you will look back to plate ix. you will see the difference between this sharp incision, used to express horse-hair, and the soft incision with intervening rounded ridge, used to express the hair of apollo chrysocomes; and, beneath, the obliquely ridged incision used to express the plumes of his swan; in both these cases the handling being much more slow, because the engraving is in metal; but the structural importance of incision, as the means of effect, never lost sight of. finally, here are two actual examples of the work in marble of the two great schools of the world; one, a little fortune, standing tiptoe on the globe of the earth, its surface traced with lines in hexagons; not chaotic under fortune's feet; greek, this, and by a trained workman;--dug up in the temple of neptune at corfu;--and here, a florentine portrait-marble, found in the recent alterations, face downwards, under the pavement of sta. maria novella; both of them first-rate of their kind; and both of them, while exquisitely finished at the telling points, showing, on all their unregarded surfaces, the rough furrow of the fast-driven chisel, as distinctly as the edge of a common paving-stone. . let me suggest to you, in conclusion, one most interesting point of mental expression in these necessary aspects of finely executed sculpture. i have already again and again pressed on your attention the beginning of the arts of men in the make and use of the plowshare. read more carefully--you might indeed do well to learn at once by heart,--the twenty-seven lines of the fourth pythian, which describe the plowing of jason. there is nothing grander extant in human fancy, nor set down in human words: but this great mythical expression of the conquest of the earth-clay and brute-force by vital human energy, will become yet more interesting to you when you reflect what enchantment has been cut, on whiter clay, by the tracing of finer furrows;--what the delicate and consummate arts of man have done by the plowing of marble, and granite, and iron. you will learn daily more and more, as you advance in actual practice, how the primary manual art of engraving, in the steadiness, clearness, and irrevocableness of it, is the best art-discipline that can be given either to mind or hand;[ ] you will recognize one law of right, pronouncing itself in the well-resolved work of every age; you will see the firmly traced and irrevocable incision determining, not only the forms, but, in great part, the moral temper, of all vitally progressive art; you will trace the same principle and power in the furrows which the oblique sun shows on the granite of his own egyptian city,--in the white scratch of the stylus through the color on a greek vase--in the first delineation, on the wet wall, of the groups of an italian fresco; in the unerring and unalterable touch of the great engraver of nuremberg,--and in the deep-driven and deep-bitten ravines of metal by which turner closed, in embossed limits, the shadows of the liber studiorum. learn, therefore, in its full extent, the force of the great greek word [greek: charassô];--and give me pardon, if you think pardon needed, that i ask you also to learn the full meaning of the english word derived from it. here, at the ford of the oxen of jason, are other furrows to be driven than these in the marble of pentelicus. the fruitfulest, or the fatalest, of all plowing is that by the thoughts of your youth, on the white field of its imagination. for by these, either down to the disturbed spirit, "[greek: kekoptai kai charassetai pedon];" or around the quiet spirit, and on all the laws of conduct that hold it, as a fair vase its frankincense, are ordained the pure colors, and engraved the just characters, of Æonian life. footnotes: [ ] nothing is more wonderful, or more disgraceful, among the forms of ignorance engendered by modern vulgar occupations in pursuit of gain, than the unconsciousness, now total, that fine art is essentially athletic. i received a letter from birmingham, some little time since, inviting me to see how much, in glass manufacture, "machinery excelled rude hand-work." the writer had not the remotest conception that he might as well have asked me to come and see a mechanical boat-race rowed by automata, and "how much machinery excelled rude arm-work." [ ] such as the sculptureless arch of waterloo bridge, for instance, referred to in the third lecture, § . [ ] it is strange, at this day, to think of the relation of the athenian ceramicus to the french tile-fields, tileries, or tuileries: and how these last may yet become--have already partly become--"the potter's field," blood-bought. (_december, ._) [ ] this relief is now among the other casts which i have placed in the lower school in the university galleries. [ ] the reference is to a cast from a small and low relief of florentine work in the kensington museum. [ ] the actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above the twentieth of an inch, but i magnified it in photograph, for this lecture, so as to represent a relief with about the third of an inch for maximum projection. [ ] this plate has been executed from a drawing by mr. burgess, in which he has followed the curves of incision with exquisite care, and preserved the effect of the surface of the stone, where a photograph would have lost it by exaggerating accidental stains. [ ] that it was also, in some cases, the earliest that the greeks gave, is proved by lucian's account of his first lesson at his uncle's; the [greek: enkopeus], literally 'in cutter'--being the first tool put into his hand, and an earthenware tablet to cut upon, which the boy, pressing too hard, presently breaks;--gets beaten--goes home crying, and becomes, after his dream above quoted, (§§ , ,) a philosopher instead of a sculptor. lecture vi. the school of athens. _december, ._ . it can scarcely be needful for me to tell even the younger members of my present audience, that the conditions necessary for the production of a perfect school of sculpture have only twice been met in the history of the world, and then for a short time; nor for short time only, but also in narrow districts,--namely, in the valleys and islands of ionian greece, and in the strip of land deposited by the arno, between the apennine crests and the sea. all other schools, except these two, led severally by athens in the fifth century before christ, and by florence in the fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect; and the best of them are derivative: these two are consummate in themselves, and the origin of what is best in others. . and observe, these athenian and florentine schools are both of equal rank, as essentially original and independent. the florentine, being subsequent to the greek, borrowed much from it; but it would have existed just as strongly--and, perhaps, in some respects more nobly--had it been the first, instead of the latter of the two. the task set to each of these mightiest of the nations was, indeed, practically the same, and as hard to the one as to the other. the greeks found phoenician and etruscan art monstrous, and had to make them human. the italians found byzantine and norman art monstrous, and had to make them human. the original power in the one case is easily traced; in the other it has partly to be unmasked, because the change at florence was, in many points, suggested and stimulated by the former school. but we mistake in supposing that athens taught florence the laws of design; she taught her, in reality, only the duty of truth. . you remember that i told you the highest art could do no more than rightly represent the human form. this is the simple test, then, of a perfect school,--that it has represented the human form, so that it is impossible to conceive of its being better done. and that, i repeat, has been accomplished twice only: once in athens, once in florence. and so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, that it cannot be said of either of them that they represented the entire human form. the greeks perfectly drew, and perfectly molded, the body and limbs; but there is, so far as i am aware, no instance of their representing the face as well as any great italian. on the other hand, the italian painted and carved the face insuperably; but i believe there is no instance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, by command of his religion, it became his pride to despise and his safety to mortify. . the general course of your study here renders it desirable that you should be accurately acquainted with the leading principles of greek sculpture; but i cannot lay these before you without giving undue prominence to some of the special merits of that school, unless i previously indicate the relation it holds to the more advanced, though less disciplined, excellence of christian art. in this and the last lecture of the present course,[ ] i shall endeavor, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and diagram-like outline as may be possible or intelligible, the main characteristics of the two schools, completing and correcting the details of comparison afterwards; and not answering, observe, at present, for any generalization i give you, except as a ground for subsequent closer and more qualified statements. and in carrying out this parallel, i shall speak indifferently of works of sculpture, and of the modes of painting which propose to themselves the same objects as sculpture. and this, indeed, florentine, as opposed to venetian, painting, and that of athens in the fifth century, nearly always did. . i begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the simplest kind--engravings, or, at least, linear drawings both; one on clay, one on copper, made in the central periods of each style, and representing the same goddess--aphrodite. they are now set beside each other in your rudimentary series. the first is from a patera lately found at camirus, authoritatively assigned by mr. newton, in his recent catalogue, to the best period of greek art. the second is from one of the series of engravings executed, probably, by baccio bandini, in , out of which i chose your first practical exercise--the scepter of apollo. i cannot, however, make the comparison accurate in all respects, for i am obliged to set the restricted type of the aphrodite urania of the greeks beside the universal deity conceived by the italian as governing the air, earth, and sea; nevertheless, the restriction in the mind of the greek, and expatiation in that of the florentine, are both characteristic. the greek venus urania is flying in heaven, her power over the waters symbolized by her being borne by a swan, and her power over the earth by a single flower in her right hand; but the italian aphrodite is rising out of the actual sea, and only half risen: her limbs are still in the sea, her merely animal strength filling the waters with their life; but her body to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky; her hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth. . the venus urania of the greeks, in her relation to men, has power only over lawful and domestic love; therefore, she is fully dressed, and not only quite dressed, but most daintily and trimly: her feet delicately sandaled, her gown spotted with little stars, her hair brushed exquisitely smooth at the top of her head, trickling in minute waves down her forehead; and though, because there is such a quantity of it, she can't possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she has fastened it in with her broad fillet. of course she is married, so she must wear a cap with pretty minute pendent jewels at the border; and a very small necklace, all that her husband can properly afford, just enough to go closely round her neck, and no more. on the contrary, the aphrodite of the italian, being universal love, is pure-naked; and her long hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea. these primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are only because the artists are thinking of separate powers: they do not necessarily involve any national distinction in feeling. but the differences i have next to indicate are essential, and characterize the two opposed national modes of mind. . first, and chiefly. the greek aphrodite is a very pretty person, and the italian a decidedly plain one. that is because a greek thought no one could possibly love any but pretty people; but an italian thought that love could give dignity to the meanest form that it inhabited, and light to the poorest that it looked upon. so his aphrodite will not condescend to be pretty. . secondly. in the greek venus the breasts are broad and full, though perfectly severe in their almost conical profile;--(you are allowed on purpose to see the outline of the right breast, under the chiton;)--also the right arm is left bare, and you can just see the contour of the front of the right limb and knee; both arm and limb pure and firm, but lovely. the plant she holds in her hand is a branching and flowering one, the seed-vessel prominent. these signs all mean that her essential function is child-bearing. on the contrary, in the italian venus the breasts are so small as to be scarcely traceable; the body strong, and almost masculine in its angles; the arms meager and unattractive, and she lays a decorative garland of flowers on the earth. these signs mean that the italian thought of love as the strength of an eternal spirit, forever helpful; and forever crowned with flowers, that neither know seedtime nor harvest; and bloom where there is neither death nor birth. . thirdly. the greek aphrodite is entirely calm, and looks straight forward. not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to have been subject to emotion. the italian aphrodite looks up, her face all quivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. the greek one is quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied: the italian incapable of rest; she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has been bound by a fillet like the greek's; but it is now all fallen loose, and clotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress of it is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, and lifted, in the place where the tongues of fire rest on the brows, in the early christian pictures of pentecost, and the waving fires abide upon the heads of angelico's seraphim. . there are almost endless points of interest, great and small, to be noted in these differences of treatment. this binding of the hair by the single fillet marks the straight course of one great system of art method, from that greek head which i showed you on the archaic coin of the seventh century before christ, to this of the fifteenth of our own era;--nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of the head depends on one lock of hair falling back from the ear, which it does in compliance with the old greek observance of its being bent there by the pressure of the helmet. that rippling of it down her shoulders comes from the athena of corinth; the raising of it on her forehead, from the knot of the hair of diana, changed into the vestal fire of the angels. but chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, and their anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the characteristic difference in every conception of the schools, the greek never representing expression, the italian primarily seeking it; but far more, mark for us here the utter change in the conception of love; from the tranquil guide and queen of a happy terrestrial domestic life, accepting its immediate pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of an infinite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love divine in jealousy, crying, "set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm; for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave." [illustration: xiv. apollo and the python. heracles and the nemean lion.] the vast issues dependent on this change in the conception of the ruling passion of the human soul, i will endeavor to show you on a future occasion: in my present lecture, i shall limit myself to the definition of the temper of greek sculpture, and of its distinctions from florentine in the treatment of any subject whatever, be it love or hatred, hope or despair. these great differences are mainly the following. . first. a greek never expresses momentary passion; a florentine looks to momentary passion as the ultimate object of his skill. when you are next in london, look carefully in the british museum at the casts from the statues in the pediment of the temple of minerva at Ægina. you have there greek work of definite date--about b. c., certainly before --of the purest kind; and you have the representation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of the Æacidæ at troy, with athena herself looking on. but there is no attempt whatever to represent expression in the features, none to give complexity of action or gesture; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visible temporary exertion of muscles. there are fallen figures, one pulling a lance out of his wound, and others in attitudes of attack and defense; several kneeling to draw their bows. but all inflict and suffer, conquer or expire, with the same smile. . plate xiv. gives you examples, from more advanced art, of true greek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leading import to the greek heart--that of apollo with the python, and of hercules with the nemean lion. you see that in neither case is there the slightest effort to represent the [greek: lyssa], or agony of contest. no good greek artist would have you behold the suffering either of gods, heroes, or men; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue of their contest with evil beasts, or evil spirits. all such lower sources of excitement are to be closed to you; your interest is to be in the thoughts involved by the fact of the war; and in the beauty or rightness of form, whether active or inactive. i have to work out this subject with you afterwards, and to compare with the pure greek method of thought that of modern dramatic passion, ingrafted on it, as typically in turner's contest of apollo and the python: in the meantime, be content with the statement of this first great principle--that a greek, as such, never expresses momentary passion. [illustration: xv. hera of argos. zeus of syracuse.] [illustration: xvi. demeter of messene. hera of cnossus.] [illustration: xvii. athena of thurium. siren ligeia of terina.] . secondly. the greek, as such, never expresses personal character, while a florentine holds it to be the ultimate condition of beauty. you are startled, i suppose, at my saying this, having had it often pointed out to you, as a transcendent piece of subtlety in greek art, that you could distinguish hercules from apollo by his being stout, and diana from juno by her being slender. that is very true; but those are general distinctions of class, not special distinctions of personal character. even as general, they are bodily, not mental. they are the distinctions, in fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician,--between a matron and a huntress; but in nowise distinguish the simple-hearted hero from the subtle master of the muses, nor the willful and fitful girl-goddess from the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. but judge for yourselves. in the successive plates, xv.-xviii., i show you,[ ] typically represented as the protectresses of nations, the argive, cretan, and lacinian hera, the messenian demeter, the athena of corinth, the artemis of syracuse; the fountain arethusa of syracuse, and the siren ligeia of terina. now, of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature than the rest, and some softer in expression: in other respects, can you trace any distinction between the goddesses of earth and heaven, or between the goddess of wisdom and the water nymph of syracuse? so little can you do so, that it would have remained a disputed question--had not the name luckily been inscribed on some syracusan coins--whether the head upon them was meant for arethusa at all; and, continually, it becomes a question respecting finished statues, if without attributes, "is this bacchus or apollo--zeus or poseidon?" there is a fact for you; noteworthy, i think! there is no personal character in true greek art:--abstract ideas of youth and age, strength and swiftness, virtue and vice,--yes: but there is no individuality; and the negative holds down to the revived conventionalism of the greek school by leonardo, when he tells you how you are to paint young women, and how old ones; though a greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age as the italian is in his canon of it,--"old women should be represented as passionate and hasty, after the manner of infernal furies." . "but at least, if the greeks do not give character, they give ideal beauty?" so it is said, without contradiction. but will you look again at the series of coins of the best time of greek art, which i have just set before you? are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful? certainly the junos are not. certainly the demeters are not. the siren, and arethusa, have well-formed and regular features; but i am quite sure that if you look at them without prejudice, you will think neither reaches even the average standard of pretty english girls. the venus urania suggests at first the idea of a very charming person, but you will find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, looked at closely. and remember, these are chosen examples,--the best i can find of art current in greece at the great time; and if even i were to take the celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant, not one of them excels the venus of melos; and she, as i have already asserted, in the 'queen of the air,' has nothing notable in feature except dignity and simplicity. of athena i do not know one authentic type of great beauty; but the intense ugliness which the greeks could tolerate in their symbolism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coin represented in plate vi. you need only look at two or three vases of the best time to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popular art, not only unattained, but unattempted; and, finally,--and this you may accept as a conclusive proof of the greek insensitiveness to the most subtle beauty,--there is little evidence even in their literature, and none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty in infancy, or early childhood. . the greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give character, do not give refined or naïve beauty. but you may think that the absence of these is intended to give dignity to the gods and nymphs; and that their calm faces would be found, if you long observed them, instinct with some expression of divine mystery or power. i will convince you of the narrow range of greek thought in these respects, by showing you, from the two sides of one and the same coin, images of the most mysterious of their deities, and the most powerful,--demeter, and zeus. remember that just as the west coasts of ireland and england catch first on their hills the rain of the atlantic, so the western peloponnese arrests, in the clouds of the first mountain ranges of arcadia, the moisture of the mediterranean; and over all the plains of elis, pylos, and messene, the strength and sustenance of men was naturally felt to be granted by zeus; as, on the east coast of greece, the greater clearness of the air by the power of athena. if you will recollect the prayer of rhea, in the single line of callimachus--[greek: "taia philê, teke kai su; teai d' ôdines elaphrai]," (compare pausanias, iv. , at the beginning,)--it will mark for you the connection, in the greek mind, of the birth of the mountain springs of arcadia with the birth of zeus. and the centers of greek thought on this western coast are necessarily elis, and, (after the time of epaminondas,) messene. [illustration: xviii. artemis of syracuse. hera of lacinian cape.] . i show you the coin of messene, because the splendid height and form of mount ithome were more expressive of the physical power of zeus than the lower hills of olympia; and also because it was struck just at the time of the most finished and delicate greek art--a little after the main strength of phidias, but before decadence had generally pronounced itself. the coin is a silver didrachm, bearing on one side a head of demeter, (plate xvi., at the top); on the other a full figure of zeus aietophoros, (plate xix., at the top); the two together signifying the sustaining strength of the earth and heaven. look first at the head of demeter. it is merely meant to personify fullness of harvest; there is no mystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which we should have looked for in any effort to realize the greek thoughts of the earth mother, as we find them spoken by the poets. but take it merely as personified abundance,--the goddess of black furrow and tawny grass,--how commonplace it is, and how poor! the hair is grand, and there is one stalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate the goddess who is meant; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it shows that the artist could only inform you that this was demeter by such a symbol. how easy it would have been for a great designer to have made the hair lovely with fruitful flowers, and the features noble in mystery of gloom, or of tenderness. but here you have nothing to interest you, except the common greek perfections of a straight nose and a full chin. . we pass, on the reverse of the die, to the figure of zeus aietophoros. think of the invocation to zeus in the suppliants, ( ,) "king of kings, and happiest of the happy, perfectest of the perfect in strength, abounding in all things, jove--hear us, and be with us;" and then, consider what strange phase of mind it was, which, under the very mountain-home of the god, was content with this symbol of him as a well-fed athlete, holding a diminutive and crouching eagle on his fist. the features and the right hand have been injured in this coin, but the action of the arm shows that it held a thunderbolt, of which, i believe, the twisted rays were triple. in the presumably earlier coin engraved by millingen, however,[ ] it is singly pointed only; and the added inscription "[greek: ithÔm]," in the field, renders the conjecture of millingen probable, that this is a rude representation of the statue of zeus ithomates, made by ageladas, the master of phidias; and i think it has, indeed, the aspect of the endeavor, by a workman of more advanced knowledge, and more vulgar temper, to put the softer anatomy of later schools into the simple action of an archaic figure. be that as it may, here is one of the most refined cities of greece content with the figure of an athlete as the representative of their own mountain god; marked as a divine power merely by the attributes of the eagle and thunderbolt. . lastly. the greeks have not, it appears, in any supreme way, given to their statues character, beauty, or divine strength. can they give divine sadness? shall we find in their art-work any of that pensiveness and yearning for the dead which fills the chants of their tragedy? i suppose, if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in after-life is to be found in greek legend, you might look for it in the stories about the island of leuce, at the mouth of the danube, inhabited by the ghosts of achilles, patroclus, ajax the son of oïleus, and helen; and in which the pavement of the temple of achilles was washed daily by the sea-birds with their wings, dipping them in the sea. now it happens that we have actually on a coin of the locrians the representation of the ghost of the lesser ajax. there is nothing in the history of human imagination more lovely than their leaving always a place for his spirit, vacant in their ranks of battle. but here is their sculptural representation of the phantom, (lower figure, plate xix.); and i think you will at once agree with me in feeling that it would be impossible to conceive anything more completely unspiritual. you might more than doubt that it could have been meant for the departed soul, unless you were aware of the meaning of this little circlet between the feet. on other coins you find his name inscribed there, but in this you have his habitation, the haunted island of leuce itself, with the waves flowing round it. [illustration: xix. zeus of messene. ajax of opus.] . again and again, however, i have to remind you, with respect to these apparently frank and simple failures, that the greek always intends you to think for yourself, and understand, more than he can speak. take this instance at our hands, the trim little circlet for the island of leuce. the workman knows very well it is not like the island, and that he could not make it so; that, at its best, his sculpture can be little more than a letter; and yet, in putting this circlet, and its encompassing fretwork of minute waves, he does more than if he had merely given you a letter l, or written 'leuce.' if you know anything of beaches and sea, this symbol will set your imagination at work in recalling them; then you will think of the temple service of the novitiate sea-birds, and of the ghosts of achilles and patroclus appearing, like the dioscuri, above the storm-clouds of the euxine. and the artist, throughout his work, never for an instant loses faith in your sympathy and passion being ready to answer his;--if you have none to give, he does not care to take you into his counsel; on the whole, would rather that you should not look at his work. . but if you have this sympathy to give, you may be sure that whatever he does for you will be right, as far as he can render it so. it may not be sublime, nor beautiful, nor amusing; but it will be full of meaning, and faithful in guidance. he will give you clue to myriads of things that he cannot literally teach; and, so far as he does teach, you may trust him. is not this saying much? and as he strove only to teach what was true, so, in his sculptured symbol, he strove only to carve what was--right. he rules over the arts to this day, and will forever, because he sought not first for beauty, not first for passion, or for invention, but for rightness; striving to display, neither himself nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with, in its simplicity. that is his specific character as a greek. of course every nation's character is connected with that of others surrounding or preceding it; and in the best greek work you will find some things that are still false, or fanciful; but whatever in it is false, or fanciful, is not the greek part of it--it is the phoenician, or egyptian, or pelasgian part. the essential hellenic stamp is veracity:--eastern nations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the greeks drew them with two;--egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the greeks drew them with men's; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, and indefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing and exalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable truth. . and now, having cut away the misconceptions which incumbered our thoughts, i shall be able to put the greek school into some clearness of its position for you, with respect to the art of the world. that relation is strangely duplicate; for, on one side, greek art is the root of all simplicity; and, on the other, of all complexity. on one side, i say, it is the root of all simplicity. if you were for some prolonged period to study greek sculpture exclusively in the elgin room of the british museum, and were then suddenly transported to the hôtel de cluny, or any other museum of gothic and barbarian workmanship, you would imagine the greeks were the masters of all that was grand, simple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pettiness of the toys of the rest of mankind. [illustration: xx. greek and barbarian sculpture.] . on one side of their work they are so. from all vain and mean decoration--all wreak and monstrous error, the greeks rescue the forms of man and beast, and sculpture them in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the fire of their living soul. distinctively from other races, as i have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the work of the greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastisement to what was untrue. so far as this is found in any other school, hereafter, it belongs to them by inheritance from the greeks, or invests them with the brotherhood of the greek. and this is the deep meaning of the myth of dædalus as the giver of motion to statues. the literal change from the binding together of the feet to their separation, and the other modifications of action which took place, either in progressive skill, or often, as the mere consequence of the transition from wood to stone, (a figure carved out of one wooden log must have necessarily its feet near each other, and hands at its sides,) these literal changes are as nothing, in the greek fable, compared to the bestowing of apparent life. the figures of monstrous gods on indian temples have their legs separate enough; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude figures at branchidæ sitting with their hands on their knees. and, briefly, the work of dædalus is the giving of deceptive life, as that of prometheus the giving of real life; and i can put the relation of greek to all other art, in this function, before you, in easily compared and remembered examples. . here, on the right, in plate xx., is an indian bull, colossal, and elaborately carved, which you may take as a sufficient type of the bad art of all the earth. false in form, dead in heart, and loaded with wealth, externally. we will not ask the date of this; it may rest in the eternal obscurity of evil art, everywhere, and forever. now, beside this colossal bull, here is a bit of dædalus-work, enlarged from a coin not bigger than a shilling: look at the two together, and you ought to know, henceforward, what greek art means, to the end of your days. . in this aspect of it, then, i say it is the simplest and nakedest of lovely veracities. but it has another aspect, or rather another pole, for the opposition is diametric. as the simplest, so also it is the most complex of human art. i told you in my fifth lecture, showing you the spotty picture of velasquez, that an essential greek character is a liking for things that are dappled. and you cannot but have noticed how often and how prevalently the idea which gave its name to the porch of polygnotus, "[greek: stoa poikilê]," occurs to the greeks as connected with the finest art. thus, when the luxurious city is opposed to the simple and healthful one, in the second book of plato's polity, you find that, next to perfumes, pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it "[greek: poikilia]," which observe, both in that place and again in the third book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but the idea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight and sound--the "ravishing division to the lute," as in pindar's "[greek: poikiloi hymnoi]"--runs through the compass of all greek art-description; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles, you were to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, for instance, to plate iv. here,) your impression of it would be, instead of breadth and simplicity, one of universal spottiness and checkeredness, "[greek: en angeôu herkesin pampoikilois];" and of the artist's delighting in nothing so much as in crossed or starred or spotted things; which, in right places, he and his public both do unlimitedly. indeed they hold it complimentary even to a trout, to call him a 'spotty.' do you recollect the trout in the tributaries of the ladon, which pausanias says were spotted, so that they were like thrushes, and which, the arcadians told him, could speak? in this last [greek: poikilia], however, they disappointed him. "i, indeed, saw some of them caught," he says, "but i did not hear any of them speak, though i waited beside the river till sunset." . i must sum roughly now, for i have detained you too long. the greeks have been thus the origin, not only of all broad, mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is divided, delicate, and tremulous; "variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made." to them, as first leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the arabian roof,--quartering of the christian shield,--rubric and arabesque of christian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution of adorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainous pillars of agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the pisan chapel of the thorn. [illustration: xxi. the beginnings of chivalry.] and in their doing all this, they stand as masters of human order and justice, subduing the animal nature, guided by the spiritual one, as you see the sicilian charioteer stands, holding his horse-reins, with the wild lion racing beneath him, and the flying angel above, on the beautiful coin of early syracuse; (lowest in plate xxi.) and the beginnings of christian chivalry were in that greek bridling of the dark and the white horses. . not that a greek never made mistakes. he made as many as we do ourselves, nearly;--he died of his mistakes at last--as we shall die of them; but so far as he was separated from the herd of more mistaken and more wretched nations--so far as he was greek--it was by his rightness. he lived, and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land, and the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. he became græculus esuriens, little, and hungry, and every man's errand-boy, by his iniquity, and his competition, and his love of talk. but his græcism was in having done, at least at one period of his dominion, more than anybody else, what was modest, useful, and eternally true; and as a workman, he verily did, or first suggested the doing of, everything possible to man. take dædalus, his great type of the practically executive craftsman, and the inventor of expedients in craftsmanship, (as distinguished from prometheus, the institutor of moral order in art). dædalus invents,--he, or his nephew, the potter's wheel, and all work in clay; the saw, and all work in wood; the masts and sails of ships, and all modes of motion; (wings only proving too dangerous!) the entire art of minute ornament; and the deceptive life of statues. by his personal toil, he involves the fatal labyrinth for minos; builds an impregnable fortress for the agrigentines; adorns healing baths among the wild parsley-fields of selinus; buttresses the precipices of eryx, under the temple of aphrodite; and for her temple itself--finishes in exquisiteness the golden honeycomb. . take note of that last piece of his art: it is connected with many things which i must bring before you when we enter on the study of architecture. that study we shall begin at the foot of the baptistery of florence, which, of all buildings known to me, unites the most perfect symmetry with the quaintest [greek: poikilia]. then, from the tomb of your own edward the confessor, to the farthest shrine of the opposite arabian and indian world, i must show you how the glittering and iridescent dominion of dædalus prevails; and his ingenuity in division, interposition, and labyrinthine sequence, more widely still. only this last summer i found the dark red masses of the rough sandstone of furness abbey had been fitted by him, with no less pleasure than he had in carving them, into wedged hexagons--reminiscences of the honeycomb of venus erycina. his ingenuity plays around the framework of all the noblest things; and yet the brightness of it has a lurid shadow. the spot of the fawn, of the bird, and the moth, may be harmless. but dædalus reigns no less over the spot of the leopard and snake. that cruel and venomous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him, by his invention of the saw from the serpent's tooth; and his seeking refuge, under blood-guiltiness, with minos, who can judge evil, and measure, or remit, the penalty of it, but not reward good; rhadamanthus only can measure _that_; but minos is essentially the recognizer of evil deeds "conoscitor delle peccata," whom, therefore, you find in dante under the form of the [greek: erpeton]. "cignesi con la coda tante volte, quantunque gradi vuol che giu sia messa." and this peril of the influence of dædalus is twofold; first, in leading us to delight in glitterings and semblances of things, more than in their form, or truth;--admire the harlequin's jacket more than the hero's strength; and love the gilding of the missal more than its words;--but farther, and worse, the ingenuity of dædalus may even become bestial, an instinct for mechanical labor only, strangely involved with a feverish and ghastly cruelty:--(you will find this distinct in the intensely dædal work of the japanese); rebellious, finally, against the laws of nature and honor, and building labyrinths for monsters,--not combs for bees. . gentlemen, we of the rough northern race may never, perhaps, be able to learn from the greek his reverence for beauty; but we may at least learn his disdain of mechanism:--of all work which he felt to be monstrous and inhuman in its imprudent dexterities. we hold ourselves, we english, to be good workmen. i do not think i speak with light reference to recent calamity, (for i myself lost a young relation, full of hope and good purpose, in the foundered ship _london_,) when i say that either an Æginetan or ionian shipwright built ships that could be fought from, though they were under water; and neither of them would have been proud of having built one that would fill and sink helplessly if the sea washed over her deck, or turn upside-down if a squall struck her topsail. believe me, gentlemen, good workmanship consists in continence and common sense, more than in frantic expatiation of mechanical ingenuity; and if you would be continent and rational, you had better learn more of art than you do now, and less of engineering. what is taking place at this very hour,[ ] among the streets, once so bright, and avenues, once so pleasant, of the fairest city in europe, may surely lead us all to feel that the skill of dædalus, set to build impregnable fortresses, is not so wisely applied as in framing the [greek: trêton ponon],--the golden honeycomb. footnotes: [ ] the closing lecture, on the religious temper of the florentine, though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to my class, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which i do not choose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined in fuller sequence. the present volume, therefore, closes with the sixth lecture, and that on christian art will be given as the first of the published course on florentine sculpture. [ ] these plates of coins are given for future reference and examination, not merely for the use made of them in this place. the lacinian hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be very noble; her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape of storms, though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes on its altar. (livy, xxiv. .) [ ] 'ancient cities and kings,' plate iv., no. . [ ] the siege of paris, at the time of the delivery of this lecture, was in one of its most destructive phases. lecture vii. the relation between michael angelo and tintoret.[ ] . in preceding lectures on sculpture i have included references to the art of painting, so far as it proposes to itself the same object as sculpture, (idealization of form); and i have chosen for the subject of our closing inquiry, the works of the two masters who accomplished or implied the unity of these arts. tintoret entirely conceives his figures as solid statues: sees them in his mind on every side; detaches each from the other by imagined air and light; and foreshortens, interposes, or involves them as if they were pieces of clay in his hand. on the contrary, michael angelo conceives his sculpture partly as if it were painted; and using (as i told you formerly) his pen like a chisel, uses also his chisel like a pencil; is sometimes as picturesque as rembrandt, and sometimes as soft as correggio. it is of him chiefly that i shall speak to-day; both because it is part of my duty to the strangers here present to indicate for them some of the points of interest in the drawings forming part of the university collections; but still more, because i must not allow the second year of my professorship to close, without some statement of the mode in which those collections may be useful or dangerous to my pupils. they seem at present little likely to be either; for since i entered on my duties, no student has ever asked me a single question respecting these drawings, or, so far as i could see, taken the slightest interest in them. . there are several causes for this which might be obviated--there is one which cannot be. the collection, as exhibited at present, includes a number of copies which mimic in variously injurious ways the characters of michael angelo's own work; and the series, except as material for reference, can be of no practical service until these are withdrawn, and placed by themselves. it includes, besides, a number of original drawings which are indeed of value to any laborious student of michael angelo's life and temper; but which owe the greater part of this interest to their being executed in times of sickness or indolence, when the master, however strong, was failing in his purpose, and, however diligent, tired of his work. it will be enough to name, as an example of this class, the sheet of studies for the medici tombs, no. , in which the lowest figure is, strictly speaking, neither a study nor a working drawing, but has either been scrawled in the feverish languor of exhaustion, which cannot escape its subject of thought; or, at best, in idly experimental addition of part to part, beginning with the head, and fitting muscle after muscle, and bone after bone, to it, thinking of their place only, not their proportion, till the head is only about one-twentieth part of the height of the body: finally, something between a face and a mask is blotted in the upper left-hand corner of the paper, indicative, in the weakness and frightfulness of it, simply of mental disorder from over-work; and there are several others of this kind, among even the better drawings of the collection, which ought never to be exhibited to the general public. . it would be easy, however, to separate these, with the acknowledged copies, from the rest; and, doing the same with the drawings of raphael, among which a larger number are of true value, to form a connected series of deep interest to artists, in illustration of the incipient and experimental methods of design practiced by each master. i say, to artists. incipient methods of design are not, and ought not to be, subjects of earnest inquiry to other people; and although the re-arrangement of the drawings would materially increase the chance of their gaining due attention, there is a final and fatal reason for the want of interest in them displayed by the younger students;--namely, that these designs have nothing whatever to do with present life, with its passions, or with its religion. what their historic value is, and relation to the life of the past, i will endeavor, so far as time admits, to explain to-day. . the course of art divides itself hitherto, among all nations of the world that have practiced it successfully, into three great periods. the first, that in which their conscience is undeveloped, and their condition of life in many respects savage; but, nevertheless, in harmony with whatever conscience they possess. the most powerful tribes, in this stage of their intellect, usually live by rapine, and under the influence of vivid, but contracted, religious imagination. the early predatory activity of the normans, and the confused minglings of religious subjects with scenes of hunting, war, and vile grotesque, in their first art, will sufficiently exemplify this state of a people; having, observe, their conscience undeveloped, but keeping their conduct in satisfied harmony with it. the second stage is that of the formation of conscience by the discovery of the true laws of social order and personal virtue, coupled with sincere effort to live by such laws as they are discovered. all the arts advance steadily during this stage of national growth, and are lovely, even in their deficiencies, as the buds of flowers are lovely by their vital force, swift change, and continent beauty. . the third stage is that in which the conscience is entirely formed, and the nation, finding it painful to live in obedience to the precepts it has discovered, looks about to discover, also, a compromise for obedience to them. in this condition of mind its first endeavor is nearly always to make its religion pompous, and please the gods by giving them gifts and entertainments, in which it may piously and pleasurably share itself; so that a magnificent display of the powers of art it has gained by sincerity, takes place for a few years, and is then followed by their extinction, rapid and complete exactly in the degree in which the nation resigns itself to hypocrisy. the works of raphael, michael angelo, and tintoret belong to this period of compromise in the career of the greatest nation of the world; and are the most splendid efforts yet made by human creatures to maintain the dignity of states with beautiful colors, and defend the doctrines of theology with anatomical designs. farther, and as an universal principle, we have to remember that the arts express not only the moral temper, but the scholarship, of their age; and we have thus to study them under the influence, at the same moment of, it may be, declining probity, and advancing science. . now in this the arts of northern and southern europe stand exactly opposed. the northern temper never accepts the catholic faith with force such as it reached in italy. our sincerest thirteenth-century sculptor is cold and formal compared with that of the pisani; nor can any northern poet be set for an instant beside dante, as an exponent of catholic faith: on the contrary, the northern temper accepts the scholarship of the reformation with absolute sincerity, while the italians seek refuge from it in the partly scientific and completely lascivious enthusiasms of literature and painting, renewed under classical influence. we therefore, in the north, produce our shakspeare and holbein; they their petrarch and raphael. and it is nearly impossible for you to study shakspeare or holbein too much, or petrarch and raphael too little. i do not say this, observe, in opposition to the catholic faith, or to any other faith, but only to the attempts to support whatsoever the faith may be, by ornament or eloquence, instead of action. every man who honestly accepts, and acts upon, the knowledge granted to him by the circumstances of his time, has the faith which god intends him to have;--assuredly a good one, whatever the terms or form of it--every man who dishonestly refuses, or interestedly disobeys the knowledge open to him, holds a faith which god does not mean him to hold, and therefore a bad one, however beautiful or traditionally respectable. . do not, therefore, i entreat you, think that i speak with any purpose of defending one system of theology against another; least of all, reformed against catholic theology. there probably never was a system of religion so destructive to the loveliest arts and the loveliest virtues of men, as the modern protestantism, which consists in an assured belief in the divine forgiveness of all your sins, and the divine correctness of all your opinions. but in the first searching and sincere activities, the doctrines of the reformation produced the most instructive art, and the grandest literature, yet given to the world; while italy, in her interested resistance to those doctrines, polluted and exhausted the arts she already possessed. her iridescence of dying statesmanship--her magnificence of hollow piety,--were represented in the arts of venice and florence by two mighty men on either side--titian and tintoret,--michael angelo and raphael. of the calm and brave statesmanship, the modest and faithful religion, which had been her strength, i am content to name one chief representative artist at venice, john bellini. . let me now map out for you roughly the chronological relations of these five men. it is impossible to remember the minor years, in dates; i will give you them broadly in decades, and you can add what finesse afterwards you like. recollect, first, the great year . twice four's eight--you can't mistake it. in that year michael angelo was five years old; titian, three years old; raphael, within three years of being born. so see how easily it comes. michael angelo five years old--and you divide six between titian and raphael,--three on each side of your standard year, . then add to , forty years--an easy number to recollect, surely; and you get the exact year of raphael's death, . in that forty years all the new effort and deadly catastrophe took place. to . now, you have only to fasten to those forty years, the life of bellini, who represents the best art before them, and of tintoret, who represents the best art after them. . i cannot fit you these on with a quite comfortable exactness, but with very slight inexactness i can fit them firmly. john bellini was ninety years old when he died. he lived fifty years before the great forty of change, and he saw the forty, and died. then tintoret is born; lives eighty[ ] years after the forty, and closes, in dying, the sixteenth century, and the great arts of the world. those are the dates, roughly; now for the facts connected with them. john bellini precedes the change, meets, and resists it victoriously to his death. nothing of flaw or failure is ever to be discerned in him. then raphael, michael angelo, and titian, together, bring about the deadly change, playing into each other's hands--michael angelo being the chief captain in evil; titian, in natural force. then tintoret, himself alone nearly as strong as all the three, stands up for a last fight; for venice, and the old time. he all but wins it at first; but the three together are too strong for him. michael angelo strikes him down; and the arts are ended. "il disegno di michael agnolo." that fatal motto was his death-warrant. . and now, having massed out my subject, i can clearly sketch for you the changes that took place from bellini, through michael angelo, to tintoret. the art of bellini is centrally represented by two pictures at venice: one, the madonna in the sacristy of the frari, with two saints beside her, and two angels at her feet; the second, the madonna with four saints, over the second altar of san zaccaria. in the first of these, the figures are under life size, and it represents the most perfect kind of picture for rooms; in which, since it is intended to be seen close to the spectator, every right kind of finish possible to the hand may be wisely lavished; yet which is not a miniature, nor in any wise petty, or ignoble. in the second, the figures are of life size, or a little more, and it represents the class of great pictures in which the boldest execution is used, but all brought to entire completion. these two, having every quality in balance, are as far as my present knowledge extends, and as far as i can trust my judgment, the two best pictures in the world. . observe respecting them-- first, they are both wrought in entirely consistent and permanent material. the gold in them is represented by painting, not laid on with real gold. and the painting is so secure, that four hundred years have produced on it, so far as i can see, no harmful change whatsoever, of any kind. secondly, the figures in both are in perfect peace. no action takes place except that the little angels are playing on musical instruments, but with uninterrupted and effortless gesture, as in a dream. a choir of singing angels by la robbia or donatello would be intent on their music, or eagerly rapturous in it, as in temporary exertion: in the little choirs of cherubs by luini in the adoration of the shepherds, in the cathedral of como, we even feel by their dutiful anxiety that there might be danger of a false note if they were less attentive. but bellini's angels, even the youngest, sing as calmly as the fates weave. . let me at once point out to you that this calmness is the attribute of the entirely highest class of art: the introduction of strong or violently emotional incident is at once a confession of inferiority. those are the two first attributes of the best art. faultless workmanship, and perfect serenity; a continuous, not momentary, action,--or entire inaction. you are to be interested in the living creatures; not in what is happening to them. then the third attribute of the best art is that it compels you to think of the spirit of the creature, and therefore of its face, more than of its body. and the fourth is that in the face you shall be led to see only beauty or joy;--never vileness, vice, or pain. those are the four essentials of the greatest art. i repeat them, they are easily learned. . faultless and permanent workmanship. . serenity in state or action. . the face principal, not the body. . and the face free from either vice or pain. . it is not possible, of course, always literally to observe the second condition, that there shall be quiet action or none; but bellini's treatment of violence in action you may see exemplified in a notable way in his st. peter martyr. the soldier is indeed striking the sword down into his breast; but in the face of the saint is only resignation, and faintness of death, not pain--that of the executioner is impassive; and, while a painter of the later schools would have covered breast and sword with blood, bellini allows no stain of it; but pleases himself by the most elaborate and exquisite painting of a soft crimson feather in the executioner's helmet. . now the changes brought about by michael angelo--and permitted, or persisted in calamitously, by tintoret--are in the four points these: st. bad workmanship. the greater part of all that these two men did is hastily and incompletely done; and all that they did on a large scale in color is in the best qualities of it perished. d. violence of transitional action. the figures flying,--falling,--striking,--or biting. scenes of judgment,--battle,--martyrdom,--massacre; anything that is in the acme of instantaneous interest and violent gesture. they cannot any more trust their public to care for anything but that. d. physical instead of mental interest. the body, and its anatomy, made the entire subject of interest: the face, shadowed, as in the duke lorenzo,[ ] unfinished, as in the twilight, or entirely foreshortened, backshortened, and despised, among labyrinths of limbs, and mountains of sides and shoulders. th. evil chosen rather than good. on the face itself, instead of joy or virtue, at the best, sadness, probably pride, often sensuality, and always, by preference, vice or agony as the subject of thought. in the last judgment of michael angelo, and the last judgment of tintoret, it is the wrath of the dies iræ, not its justice, in which they delight; and their only passionate thought of the coming of christ in the clouds, is that all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. those are the four great changes wrought by michael angelo. i repeat them: ill work for good. tumult for peace. the flesh of man for his spirit. and the curse of god for his blessing. . hitherto, i have massed, necessarily, but most unjustly, michael angelo and tintoret together, because of their common relation to the art of others. i shall now proceed to distinguish the qualities of their own. and first as to the general temper of the two men. nearly every existing work by michael angelo is an attempt to execute something beyond his power, coupled with a fevered desire that his power may be acknowledged. he is always matching himself either against the greeks whom he cannot rival, or against rivals whom he cannot forget. he is proud, yet not proud enough to be at peace; melancholy, yet not deeply enough to be raised above petty pain; and strong beyond all his companion workmen, yet never strong enough to command his temper, or limit his aims. tintoret, on the contrary, works in the consciousness of supreme strength, which cannot be wounded by neglect, and is only to be thwarted by time and space. he knows precisely all that art can accomplish under given conditions; determines absolutely how much of what can be done he will himself for the moment choose to do; and fulfills his purpose with as much ease as if, through his human body, were working the great forces of nature. not that he is ever satisfied with what he has done, as vulgar and feeble artists are satisfied. he falls short of his ideal, more than any other man; but not more than is necessary; and is content to fall short of it to that degree, as he is content that his figures, however well painted, do not move nor speak. he is also entirely unconcerned respecting the satisfaction of the public. he neither cares to display his strength to them, nor convey his ideas to them; when he finishes his work, it is because he is in the humor to do so; and the sketch which a meaner painter would have left incomplete to show how cleverly it was begun, tintoret simply leaves because he has done as much of it as he likes. . both raphael and michael angelo are thus, in the most vital of all points, separate from the great venetian. they are always in dramatic attitudes, and always appealing to the public for praise. they are the leading athletes in the gymnasium of the arts; and the crowd of the circus cannot take its eyes away from them, while the venetian walks or rests with the simplicity of a wild animal; is scarcely noticed in his occasionally swifter motion; when he springs, it is to please himself; and so calmly, that no one thinks of estimating the distance covered. i do not praise him wholly in this. i praise him only for the well-founded pride, infinitely nobler than michael angelo's. you do not hear of tintoret's putting any one into hell because they had found fault with his work. tintoret would as soon have thought of putting a dog into hell for laying his paws on it. but he is to be blamed in this--that he thinks as little of the pleasure of the public, as of their opinion. a great painter's business is to do what the public ask of him, in the way that shall be helpful and instructive to them. his relation to them is exactly that of a tutor to a child; he is not to defer to their judgment, but he is carefully to form it;--not to consult their pleasure for his own sake, but to consult it much for theirs. it was scarcely, however, possible that this should be the case between tintoret and his venetians; he could not paint for the people, and in some respects he was happily protected by his subordination to the senate. raphael and michael angelo lived in a world of court intrigue, in which it was impossible to escape petty irritation, or refuse themselves the pleasure of mean victory. but tintoret and titian, even at the height of their reputation, practically lived as craftsmen in their workshops, and sent in samples of their wares, not to be praised or caviled at, but to be either taken or refused. . i can clearly and adequately set before you these relations between the great painters of venice and her senate--relations which, in monetary matters, are entirely right and exemplary for all time--by reading to you two decrees of the senate itself, and one petition to it. the first document shall be the decree of the senate for giving help to john bellini, in finishing the compartments of the great council chamber; granting him three assistants--one of them victor carpaccio. the decree, first referring to some other business, closes in these terms:[ ] "there having moreover offered his services to this effect our most faithful citizen, zuan bellin, according to his agreement employing his skill and all speed and diligence for the completion of this work of the three pictures aforesaid, provided he be assisted by the under-written painters. "be it therefore put to the ballot, that besides the aforesaid zuan bellin in person, who will assume the superintendence of this work, there be added master victor scarpaza, with a monthly salary of five ducats; master victor, son of the late mathio, at four ducats per month; and the painter, hieronymo, at two ducats per month; they rendering speedy and diligent assistance to the aforesaid zuan bellin for the painting of the pictures aforesaid, so that they be completed well and carefully as speedily as possible. the salaries of the which three master painters aforesaid, with the costs of colors and other necessaries, to be defrayed by our salt office with the moneys of the great chest. "it being expressly declared that said pensioned painters be tied and bound to work constantly and daily, so that said three pictures may be completed as expeditiously as possible; the artists aforesaid being pensioned at the good pleasure of this council. "ayes "noes "neutrals " this decree is the more interesting to us now, because it is the precedent to which titian himself refers, when he first offers his services to the senate. the petition which i am about to read to you, was read to the council of ten, on the last day of may, , and the original draft of it is yet preserved in the venice archives. "'most illustrious council of ten. "'most serene prince and most excellent lords. "'i, titian of serviete de cadore, having from my boyhood upwards set myself to learn the art of painting, not so much from cupidity of gain as for the sake of endeavoring to acquire some little fame, and of being ranked amongst those who now profess the said art. "'and altho heretofore, and likewise at this present, i have been earnestly requested by the pope and other potentates to go and serve them, nevertheless, being anxious as your serenity's most faithful subject, for such i am, to leave some memorial in this famous city; my determination is, should the signory approve, _to undertake, so long as i live, to come and paint in the grand council with my whole soul and ability_; commencing, provided your serenity think of it, with the battle-piece on the side towards the "piaza," that being the most difficult; nor down to this time has any one chosen to assume so hard a task. "'i, most excellent lords, should be better pleased to receive as recompense for the work to be done by me, such acknowledgments as may be deemed sufficient, and much less; but because, as already stated by me, i care solely for my honor, and mere livelihood, should your serenity approve, you will vouchsafe to grant me for my life, the next brokers-patent in the german factory,[ ] by whatever means it may become vacant; notwithstanding other expectancies; with the terms, conditions, obligations, and exemptions, as in the case of messer zuan bellini; besides two youths whom i purpose bringing with me as assistants; they to be paid by the salt office; as likewise the colors and all other requisites, as conceded a few months ago by the aforesaid most illustrious council to the said messer zuan; for i promise to do such work and with so much speed and excellency as shall satisfy your lordships to whom i humbly recommend myself.'" . "this proposal," mr. brown tells us, "in accordance with the petitions presented by gentil bellini and alvise vivarini, was immediately put to the ballot," and carried thus--the decision of the grand council, in favor of titian, being, observe, by no means unanimous: "ayes "noes "neutrals " immediately follows on the acceptance of titian's services, this practical order: "we, chiefs of the most illustrious council of ten, tell and inform you lords proveditors for the state; videlicet the one who is cashier of the great chest, and his successors, that for the execution of what has been decreed above in the most illustrious council aforesaid, you do have prepared all necessaries for the above written titian according to his petition and demand, and as observed with regard to juan bellini, that he may paint ut supra; paying from month to month the two youths whom said titian shall present to you at the rate of four ducats each per month, as urged by him because of their skill and sufficiency in said art of painting, tho' we do not mean the payment of their salary to commence until they begin work; and thus will you do. given on the th of june, ." this is the way, then, the great workmen wish to be paid, and that is the way wise men pay them for their work. the perfect simplicity of such patronage leaves the painter free to do precisely what he thinks best: and a good painter always produces his best, with such license. . and now i shall take the four conditions of change in succession, and examine the distinctions between the two masters in their acceptance of, or resistance to, them. (i.) the change of good and permanent workmanship for bad and insecure workmanship. you have often heard quoted the saying of michael angelo, that oil-painting was only fit for women and children. he said so, simply because he had neither the skill to lay a single touch of good oil-painting, nor the patience to overcome even its elementary difficulties. and it is one of my reasons for the choice of subject in this concluding lecture on sculpture, that i may, with direct reference to this much quoted saying of michael angelo, make the positive statement to you, that oil-painting is the art of arts;[ ] that it is sculpture, drawing, and music, all in one, involving the technical dexterities of those three several arts; that is to say--the decision and strength of the stroke of the chisel;--the balanced distribution of appliance of that force necessary for graduation in light and shade;--and the passionate felicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, which on an instrument produce right sound, and on canvas, living color. there is no other human skill so great or so wonderful as the skill of fine oil-painting; and there is no other art whose results are so absolutely permanent. music is gone as soon as produced--marble discolors,--fresco fades,--glass darkens or decomposes--painting alone, well guarded, is practically everlasting. of this splendid art michael angelo understood nothing; he understood even fresco, imperfectly. tintoret understood both perfectly; but he--when no one would pay for his colors (and sometimes nobody would even give him space of wall to paint on)--used cheap blue for ultramarine; and he worked so rapidly, and on such huge spaces of canvas, that between damp and dry, his colors must go, for the most part; but any complete oil-painting of his stands as well as one of bellini's own: while michael angelo's fresco is defaced already in every part of it, and lionardo's oil-painting is all either gone black, or gone to nothing. . (ii.) introduction of dramatic interest for the sake of excitement. i have already, in the _stones of venice_, illustrated tintoret's dramatic power at so great length, that i will not, to-day, make any farther statement to justify my assertion that it is as much beyond michael angelo's as shakspeare's is beyond milton's--and somewhat with the same kind of difference in manner. neither can i speak to-day, time not permitting me, of the abuse of their dramatic power by venetian or florentine; one thing only i beg you to note, that with full half of his strength, tintoret remains faithful to the serenity of the past; and the examples i have given you from his work in s. ,[ ] are, one, of the most splendid drama, and the other, of the quietest portraiture ever attained by the arts of the middle ages. note also this respecting his picture of the judgment, that, in spite of all the violence and wildness of the imagined scene, tintoret has not given, so far as i remember, the spectacle of any one soul under infliction of actual pain. in all previous representations of the last judgment there had at least been one division of the picture set apart for the representation of torment; and even the gentle angelico shrinks from no orthodox detail in this respect; but tintoret, too vivid and true in imagination to be able to endure the common thoughts of hell, represents indeed the wicked in ruin, but not in agony. they are swept down by flood and whirlwind--the place of them shall know them no more, but not one is seen in more than the natural pain of swift and irrevocable death. . (iii.) i pass to the third condition; the priority of flesh to spirit, and of the body to the face. in this alone, of the four innovations, michael angelo and tintoret have the greeks with them;--in this, alone, have they any right to be called classical. the greeks gave them no excuse for bad workmanship; none for temporary passion; none for the preference of pain. only in the honor done to the body may be alleged for them the authority of the ancients. you remember, i hope, how often in my preceding lectures i had to insist on the fact that greek sculpture was essentially [greek: aprosôpos];--independent, not only of the expression, but even of the beauty of the face. nay, independent of its being so much as seen. the greater number of the finest pieces of it which remain for us to judge by, have had the heads broken away;--we do not seriously miss them either from the three fates, the ilissus, or the torso of the vatican. the face of the theseus is so far destroyed by time that you can form little conception of its former aspect. but it is otherwise in christian sculpture. strike the head off even the rudest statue in the porch of chartres and you will greatly miss it--the harm would be still worse to donatello's st. george:--and if you take the heads from a statue of mino, or a painting of angelico--very little but drapery will be left;--drapery made redundant in quantity and rigid in fold, that it may conceal the forms, and give a proud or ascetic reserve to the actions, of the bodily frame. bellini and his school, indeed, rejected at once the false theory, and the easy mannerism, of such religious design; and painted the body without fear or reserve, as, in its subordination, honorable and lovely. but the inner heart and fire of it are by them always first thought of, and no action is given to it merely to show its beauty. whereas the great culminating masters, and chiefly of these, tintoret, correggio, and michael angelo, delight in the body for its own sake, and cast it into every conceivable attitude, often in violation of all natural probability, that they may exhibit the action of its skeleton, and the contours of its flesh. the movement of a hand with cima or bellini expresses mental emotion only; but the clustering and twining of the fingers of correggio's s. catherine is enjoyed by the painter just in the same way as he would enjoy the twining of the branches of a graceful plant, and he compels them into intricacies which have little or no relation to st. catherine's mind. in the two drawings of correggio (s. and ) it is the rounding of limbs and softness of foot resting on cloud which are principally thought of in the form of the madonna; and the countenance of st. john is foreshortened into a section, that full prominence may be given to the muscles of his arms and breast. so in tintoret's drawing of the graces (s. ), he has entirely neglected the individual character of the goddesses, and been content to indicate it merely by attributes of dice or flower, so only that he may sufficiently display varieties of contour in thigh and shoulder. . thus far, then, the greeks, correggio, michael angelo, raphael in his latter design, and tintoret in his scenic design (as opposed to portraiture), are at one. but the greeks, correggio, and tintoret, are also together in this farther point; that they all draw the body for true delight in it, and with knowledge of it living; while michael angelo and raphael draw the body for vanity, and from knowledge of it dead. the venus of melos,--correggio's venus, (with mercury teaching cupid to read),--and tintoret's graces, have the forms which their designers truly _liked_ to see in women. they may have been wrong or right in liking those forms, but they carved and painted them for their pleasure, not for vanity. but the form of michael angelo's night is not one which he delighted to see in women. he gave it her, because he thought it was fine, and that he would be admired for reaching so lofty an ideal.[ ] . again. the greeks, correggio, and tintoret, learn the body from the living body, and delight in its breath, color, and motion.[ ] raphael and michael angelo learned it essentially from the corpse, and had no delight in it whatever, but great pride in showing that they knew all its mechanism; they therefore sacrifice its colors, and insist on its muscles, and surrender the breath and fire of it, for what is--not merely carnal,--but osseous, knowing that for one person who can recognize the loveliness of a look, or the purity of a color, there are a hundred who can calculate the length of a bone. the boy with the doves, in raphael's cartoon of the beautiful gate of the temple, is not a child running, but a surgical diagram of a child in a running posture. farther, when the greeks, correggio, and tintoret, draw the body active, it is because they rejoice in its force, and when they draw it inactive, it is because they rejoice in its repose. but michael angelo and raphael invent for it ingenious mechanical motion, because they think it uninteresting when it is quiet, and cannot, in their pictures, endure any person's being simple-minded enough to stand upon both his legs at once, nor venture to imagine anyone's being clear enough in his language to make himself intelligible without pointing. in all these conditions, the greek and venetian treatment of the body is faithful, modest, and natural; but michael angelo's dishonest, insolent, and artificial. . but between him and tintoret there is a separation deeper than all these, when we examine their treatment of the face. michael angelo's vanity of surgical science rendered it impossible for him ever to treat the body as well as the greeks treated it; but it left him wholly at liberty to treat the face as ill; and he did: and in some respects very curiously worse. the greeks had, in all their work, one type of face for beautiful and honorable persons; and another, much contrary to it, for dishonorable ones; and they were continually setting these in opposition. their type of beauty lay chiefly in the undisturbed peace and simplicity of all contours; in full roundness of chin; in perfect formation of the lips, showing neither pride nor care; and, most of all, in a straight and firm line from the brow to the end of the nose. the greek type of dishonorable persons, especially satyrs, fauns, and sensual powers, consisted in irregular excrescence and decrement of features, especially in flatness of the upper part of the nose, and projection of the end of it into a blunt knob. by the most grotesque fatality, as if the personal bodily injury he had himself received had passed with a sickly echo into his mind also, michael angelo is always dwelling on this satyric form of countenance;--sometimes violently caricatures it, but never can help drawing it; and all the best profiles in this collection at oxford have what mr. robinson calls a "nez retroussé;" but what is, in reality, the nose of the greek bacchic mask, treated as a dignified feature. . for the sake of readers who cannot examine the drawings themselves, and lest i should be thought to have exaggerated in any wise the statement of this character, i quote mr. robinson's description of the head, no. --a celebrated and entirely authentic drawing, on which, i regret to say, my own pencil comment in passing is merely "brutal lower lip, and broken nose":-- "this admirable study was probably made from nature, additional character and more powerful expression having been given to it by a slight exaggeration of details, bordering on caricature (observe the protruding lower lip, 'nez retroussé,' and overhanging forehead). the head, in profile, turned to the right, is proudly planted on a massive neck and shoulders, and the short tufted hair stands up erect. the expression is that of fierce, insolent self-confidence and malevolence; it is engraved in facsimile in ottley's 'italian school of design,' and it is described in that work, p. , as 'finely expressive of scornfulness and pride, and evidently a study from nature.' "michel angelo has made use of the same ferocious-looking model on other occasions--see an instance in the well-known 'head of satan' engraved in woodburn's lawrence gallery (no. ), and now in the malcolm collection. "the study on the reverse of the leaf is more lightly executed; it represents a man of powerful frame, carrying a hog or boar in his arms before him, the upper part of his body thrown back to balance the weight, his head hidden by that of the animal, which rests on the man's right shoulder. "the power displayed in every line and touch of these drawings is inimitable--the head was in truth one of the 'teste divine,' and the hand which executed it the 'mano terribile,' so enthusiastically alluded to by vasari." . passing, for the moment, by no. , a "young woman of majestic character, marked by a certain expression of brooding melancholy," and "wearing on her head a fantastic cap or turban;"--by no. , a bearded man, "wearing a conical phrygian cap, his mouth wide open," and his expression "obstreperously animated;"--and by no. , "a middle-aged or old man, with a snub nose, high forehead, and thin, scrubby hair," we will go on to the fairer examples of divine heads in no. . "this splendid sheet of studies is probably one of the 'carte stupendissime di teste divine,' which vasari says (vita, p. ) michel angelo executed, as presents or lessons for his artistic friends. not improbably it is actually one of those made for his friend tommaso dei cavalieri, who, when young, was desirous of learning to draw." but it is one of the chief misfortunes affecting michael angelo's reputation, that his ostentatious display of strength and science has a natural attraction for comparatively weak and pedantic persons. and this sheet of vasari's "teste divine" contains, in fact, not a single drawing of high quality--only one of moderate agreeableness, and two caricatured heads, one of a satyr with hair like the fur of animals, and one of a monstrous and sensual face, such as could only have occurred to the sculptor in a fatigued dream, and which in my own notes i have classed with the vile face in no. . . returning, however, to the divine heads above it, i wish you to note "the most conspicuous and important of all," a study for one of the genii behind the sibylla libyca. this genius, like the young woman of a majestic character, and the man with his mouth open, wears a cap, or turban; opposite to him in the sheet, is a female in profile, "wearing a hood of massive drapery." and, when once your attention is directed to this point, you will perhaps be surprised to find how many of michael angelo's figures, intended to be sublime, have their heads bandaged. if you have been a student of michael angelo chiefly, you may easily have vitiated your taste to the extent of thinking that this is a dignified costume; but if you study greek work, instead, you will find that nothing is more important in the system of it than a finished disposition of the hair; and as soon as you acquaint yourself with the execution of carved marbles generally, you will perceive these massy fillets to be merely a cheap means of getting over a difficulty too great for michael angelo's patience, and too exigent for his invention. they are not sublime arrangements, but economies of labor, and reliefs from the necessity of design; and if you had proposed to the sculptor of the venus of melos, or of the jupiter of olympia, to bind the ambrosial locks up in towels, you would most likely have been instantly bound, yourself; and sent to the nearest temple of Æsculapius. . i need not, surely, tell you,--i need only remind,--how in all these points, the venetians and correggio reverse michael angelo's evil, and vanquish him in good; how they refuse caricature, rejoice in beauty, and thirst for opportunity of toil. the waves of hair in a single figure of tintoret's (the mary magdalen of the paradise) contain more intellectual design in themselves alone than all the folds of unseemly linen in the sistine chapel put together. in the fourth and last place, as tintoret does not sacrifice, except as he is forced by the exigencies of display, the face for the body, so also he does not sacrifice happiness for pain. the chief reason why we all know the "last judgment" of michael angelo, and not the "paradise" of tintoret, is the same love of sensation which makes us read the _inferno_ of dante, and not his _paradise_; and the choice, believe me, is our fault, not his; some farther evil influence is due to the fact that michael angelo has invested all his figures with picturesque and palpable elements of effect, while tintoret has only made them lovely in themselves and has been content that they should deserve, not demand, your attention. . you are accustomed to think the figures of michael angelo sublime--because they are dark, and colossal, and involved, and mysterious--because in a word, they look sometimes like shadows, and sometimes like mountains, and sometimes like specters, but never like human beings. believe me, yet once more, in what i told you long since--man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. he cannot raise his form into anything better than god made it, by giving it either the flight of birds or strength of beasts, by enveloping it in mist, or heaping it into multitude. your pilgrim must look like a pilgrim in a straw hat, or you will not make him into one with cockle and nimbus; an angel must look like an angel on the ground, as well as in the air; and the much-denounced pre-raphaelite faith that a saint cannot look saintly unless he has thin legs, is not more absurd than michael angelo's, that a sybil cannot look sibylline unless she has thick ones. . all that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you look into it, is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. light is, in reality, more awful than darkness--modesty more majestic than strength; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of antæus, or thunder-clouds of Ætna. now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, tintoret is entirely carried away by his sympathy with michael angelo, and conquers him in his own field;--outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy, and outflames him in rage,--he can be just as gentle as he is strong: and that paradise, though it is the largest picture in the world, without any question, is also the thoughtfulest, and most precious. the thoughtfulest!--it would be saying but little, as far as michael angelo is concerned. . for consider of it yourselves. you have heard, from your youth up (and all educated persons have heard for three centuries), of this last judgment of his, as the most sublime picture in existence. the subject of it is one which should certainly be interesting to you, in one of two ways. if you never expect to be judged for any of your own doings, and the tradition of the coming of christ is to you as an idle tale--still, think what a wonderful tale it would be, were it well told. you are at liberty, disbelieving it, to range the fields--elysian and tartarean--of all imagination. you may play with it, since it is false; and what a play would it not be, well written? do you think the tragedy, or the miracle play, or the infinitely divina commedia of the judgment of the astonished living who were dead;--the undeceiving of the sight of every human soul, understanding in an instant all the shallow, and depth of past life and future,--face to face with both,--and with god:--this apocalypse to all intellect, and completion to all passion, this minute and individual drama of the perfected history of separate spirits, and of their finally accomplished affections!--think you, i say, all this was well told by mere heaps of dark bodies curled and convulsed in space, and fall as of a crowd from a scaffolding, in writhed concretions of muscular pain? but take it the other way. suppose you believe, be it never so dimly or feebly, in some kind of judgment that is to be;--that you admit even the faint contingency of retribution, and can imagine, with vivacity enough to fear, that in this life, at all events, if not in another--there may be for you a visitation of god, and a questioning--what hast thou done? the picture, if it is a good one, should have a deeper interest, surely on _this_ postulate? thrilling enough, as a mere imagination of what is never to be--now, as a conjecture of what _is_ to be, held the best that in eighteen centuries of christianity has for men's eyes been made;--think of it so! . and then, tell me, whether you yourselves, or any one you have known, did ever at any time receive from this picture any, the smallest vital thought, warning, quickening, or help? it may have appalled, or impressed you for a time, as a thunder-cloud might: but has it ever taught you anything--chastised in you anything--confirmed a purpose--fortified a resistance--purified a passion? i know that, for you, it has done none of these things; and i know also that, for others, it has done very different things. in every vain and proud designer who has since lived, that dark carnality of michael angelo's has fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination. daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting--landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they have the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true painters of them, being taught, from their youth up, to look for and learn the body instead of the spirit, have learned it, and taught it to such purpose, that at this hour, when i speak to you, the rooms of the royal academy of england, receiving also what of best can be sent there by the masters of france, contain _not one_ picture honorable to the arts of their age; and contain many which are shameful in their record of its manners. . of that, hereafter. i will close to-day giving you some brief account of the scheme of tintoret's paradise, in justification of my assertion that it is the thoughtfulest as well as mightiest picture in the world. in the highest center is christ, leaning on the globe of the earth, which is of dark crystal. christ is crowned with a glory as of the sun, and all the picture is lighted by that glory, descending through circle beneath circle of cloud, and of flying or throned spirits. the madonna, beneath christ, and at some interval from him, kneels to him. she is crowned with the seven stars, and kneels on a cloud of angels, whose wings change into ruby fire, where they are near her. the three great archangels meeting from three sides, fly towards christ. michael delivers up his scales and sword. he is followed by the thrones and principalities of the earth; so inscribed--throni--principatus. the spirits of the thrones bear scales in their hands; and of the princedoms, shining globes: beneath the wings of the last of these are the four great teachers and lawgivers, st. ambrose, st. jerome, st. gregory, st. augustine, and behind st. augustine stands his mother, watching him, her chief joy in paradise. under the thrones, are set the apostles, st. paul separated a little from the rest, and put lowest, yet principal; under st. paul, is st. christopher, bearing a massive globe, with a cross upon it; but to mark him as the christ-bearer, since here in paradise he cannot have the child on his shoulders, tintoret has thrown on the globe a flashing stellar reflection of the sun the head of christ. all this side of the picture is kept in glowing color,--the four doctors of the church have golden miters and mantles; except the cardinal, st. jerome, who is in burning scarlet, his naked breast glowing, warm with noble life,--the darker red of his robe relieved against a white glory. . opposite to michael, gabriel flies towards the madonna, having in his hand the annunciation lily, large, and triple-blossomed. above him, and above michael, equally, extends a cloud of white angels, inscribed "serafini;" but the group following gabriel, and corresponding to the throni following michael, is inscribed "cherubini." under these are the great prophets, and singers and foretellers of the happiness or of the sorrow of time. david, and solomon, and isaiah, and amos of the herdsmen. david has a colossal golden psaltery laid horizontally across his knees;--two angels behind him dictate to him as he sings, looking up towards christ; but one strong angel sweeps down to solomon from among the cherubs, and opens a book, resting it on the head of solomon, who looks down earnestly unconscious of it;--to the left of david, separate from the group of prophets, as paul from the apostles, is moses, dark-robed; in the full light, withdrawn far behind him, abraham, embracing isaac with his left arm, and near him, pale st. agnes. in front, nearer, dark and colossal, stands the glorious figure of santa giustina of padua; then a little subordinate to her, st. catherine, and, far on the left, and high, st. barbara leaning on her tower. in front, nearer, flies raphael; and under him is the four-square group of the evangelists. beneath them, on the left, noah; on the right, adam and eve, both floating unsupported by cloud or angel; noah buoyed by the ark, which he holds above him, and it is _this_ into which solomon gazes down, so earnestly. eve's face is, perhaps, the most beautiful ever painted by tintoret--full in light, but dark-eyed. adam floats beside her, his figure fading into a winged gloom, edged in the outline of fig-leaves. far down, under these, central in the lowest part of the picture, rises the angel of the sea, praying for venice; for tintoret conceives his paradise as existing now, not as in the future. i at first mistook this soft angel of the sea for the magdalen, for he is sustained by other three angels on either side, as the magdalen is, in designs of earlier time, because of the verse, "there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth." but the magdalen is on the right, behind st. monica; and on the same side, but lowest of all, rachel, among the angels of her children, gathered now again to her forever. . i have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be by far the most precious work of art of any kind whatsoever, now existing in the world; and it is, i believe, on the eve of final destruction; for it is said that the angle of the great council-chamber is soon to be rebuilt; and that process will involve the destruction of the picture by removal, and, far more, by repainting. i had thought of making some effort to save it by an appeal in london to persons generally interested in the arts; but the recent desolation of paris has familiarized us with destruction, and i have no doubt the answer to me would be, that venice must take care of her own. but remember, at least, that i have borne witness to you to-day of the treasures that we forget, while we amuse ourselves with the poor toys, and the petty or vile arts, of our own time. the years of that time have perhaps come, when we are to be taught to look no more to the dreams of painters, either for knowledge of judgment, or of paradise. the anger of heaven will not longer, i think, be mocked for our amusement; and perhaps its love may not always be despised by our pride. believe me, all the arts, and all the treasures of men, are fulfilled and preserved to them only, so far as they have chosen first, with their hearts, not the curse of god, but his blessing. our earth is now incumbered with ruin, our heaven is clouded by death. may we not wisely judge ourselves in some things now, instead of amusing ourselves with the painting of judgments to come? footnotes: [ ] note.--the separate edition of this lecture was prefaced by the following note:-- "i have printed this lecture separately, that strangers visiting the galleries may be able to use it for reference to the drawings. but they must observe that its business is only to point out what is to be blamed in michael angelo, and that it assumes the facts of his power to be generally known. mr. tyrwhitt's statement of these, in his 'lectures on christian art,' will put the reader into possession of all that may justly be alleged in honor of him. "_corpus christi college, st may, ._" [ ] if you like to have it with perfect exactitude, recollect that bellini died at true ninety,--tintoret at eighty-two; that bellini's death was four years before raphael's, and that tintoret was born four years before bellini's death. [ ] julian, rather. _see_ mr. tyrwhitt's notice of the lately discovered error, in his _lectures on christian art_. [ ] from the invaluable series of documents relating to titian and his times, extricated by mr. rawdon brown from the archives of venice, and arranged and translated by him. [ ] fondaco de tedeschi. i saw the last wrecks of giorgione's frescoes on the outside of it in . [ ] i beg that this statement may be observed with attention. it is of great importance, as in opposition to the views usually held respecting the grave schools of painting. [ ] the upper photograph in s. is, however, not taken from the great paradise, which is in too dark a position to be photographed, but from a study of it existing in a private gallery, and every way inferior. i have vainly tried to photograph portions of the picture itself. [ ] he had, indeed, other and more solemn thoughts of the night than correggio; and these he tried to express by distorting form, and making her partly medusa-like. in this lecture, as above stated, i am only dwelling on points hitherto unnoticed of dangerous evil in the too much admired master. [ ] tintoret dissected, and used clay models, in the true academical manner, and produced academical results thereby; but all his fine work is done from life, like that of the greeks. proofreading team. search of gravestones old and curious. with one hundred and two illustrations by w. t. vincent, president of the woolwich district antiquarian society; author of "the records of the woolwich district," etc., etc. london: mitchell & hughes, , wardour street. . in search of gravestones old and curious. _frontispiece_. [illustration: an early sample at higham.] (page .) contents. chapter i. old gravestones ii. the evolution of gravestones iii. artistic gravestones iv. professional gravestones v. a typical tramp in kent vi. more typical tramps vii. earlier gravestones viii. reform among the gravestones ix. preserving the gravestones x. old gravestones in ireland xi. old gravestones in scotland xii. old gravestones abroad xiii. very old gravestones xiv. the regulation of gravestones index to the right honourable earl stanhope, f.s.a., lord lieutenant of kent, president of the kent archÆological society, etc., this collection of old and curious gravestones is by special permission respectfully dedicated. illustrations of gravestones. an early example at higham and , newhaven , widcombe; , newhaven; , lewes , plumstead; and , dartford , frankfort; , east wickham , ridley; , hoo , erith; , high halstow , frindsbury; , higham , shorne and chalk , meopham; , stanstead; , old romney , crayford; , shoreham , lewisham; , hornsey , teddington; , finchley; , farnborough , chiselhurst; , hartley , west wickham; , hornsey , horton kirby; , cliffe , darenth; , kingsdown , fawkham; , swanscombe , ashford; , cooling , hendon; , east wickham , snargate; , east ham , wilmington; , wanstead; , southfleet; , wilmington , lewisham; , bunhill fields , woolwich; , longfield , lydd; , bermondsey , richmond; , ripley , cobham; , barnes , frindsbury; , sutton at hone , bromley; , beckenham , greeenford; , west ham , lee; , orpington , st. mary cray; , st. paul's cray , foot's cray; , bexley , barking; , woolwich , deptford; , west ham , and , wanstead , walthamstow; , broxbourne , stapleford tawney; , shorne , bethnal green; , plumstead , cheshunt; , hatfield , northolt; , twickenham , high barnet; , kingston-on-thames , swords , drogheda , bangor; , muckross and queenstown , inverness; , braemar , stirling , blairgowrie , laufen , neuhausen , heidelberg; , lucerne , the bressay stone; , lunnasting and kilbar stones preface. i am a gravestone rambler, and i beg you to bear me company. this book is not a sermon. it is a lure to decoy other ramblers, and the bait is something to ramble for. it also provides a fresh object for study. old-lore is an evergreen tree with many branches. this is a young shoot. it is part of an old theme, but is itself new. books about tombs there are many, and volumes of epitaphs by the hundred. but of the common gravestones--the quaint and curious, often grotesque, headstones of the churchyard--there is no record. these gravestones belong to the past, and are hastening to decay. in one or two centuries none will survive unless they be in museums. to preserve the counterfeit presentment of some which remain seems a duty. many may share the quest, but no one has yet come out to start. let your servant shew the way. i begin my book as i began my rambles, and pursue as i have pursued. william thomas vincent. [illustration: fig. . newhaven.] [illustration: fig. . newhaven.] in search of gravestones old and curious. chapter i. old gravestones. i was sauntering about the churchyard at newhaven in sussex, reading the inscriptions on the tombs, when my eyes fell upon a headstone somewhat elaborately carved. although aged, it was in good preservation, and without much trouble i succeeded in deciphering all the details and sketching the subject in my note-book. it is represented in fig. . fig. --at newhaven, sussex. the inscription below the design reads as follows: "here lyeth the remains of andrew brown, who departed this life the th day of january , aged years. also of mary his wife, who departed this life the d day of july , aged years." this was the first time i had been struck by an allegorical gravestone of a pronounced character. the subject scarcely needs to be interpreted, being obviously intended to illustrate the well-known passage in the burial service: "for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised ... then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. o death, where is thy sting? o grave, where is thy victory?" the reference in another ritual to the lord of life trampling the king of terrors beneath his feet seems also to be indicated, and it will be noticed that the artist has employed a rather emphatic smile to pourtray triumph. it was but natural to suppose that this work was the production of some local genius of the period, and i searched for other evidences of his skill. not far away i found the next design, very nearly of the same date. fig. .--at newhaven, sussex. the words below were: "to the memory of thomas, the son of thomas and ann alderton, who departed this life the th day of april , in the th year of his age." the same artist almost of a certainty produced both of these figurative tombstones. the handicraft is similar, the idea in each is equally daring and grotesque, and the phraseology of the inscriptions is nearly identical. i thought both conceptions original and native to the place, but i do not think so now. in point of taste, the first, which is really second in order of date, is perhaps less questionable than the other. the hope of a joyful resurrection, however rudely displayed, may bring comfort to wounded hearts; but it is difficult to conceive the feelings of bereaved parents who could sanction the representation of a beloved boy, cut off in the brightest hour of life, coffined and skeletoned in the grave! [illustration: fig. . widcombe.] [illustration: fig. . newhaven.] [illustration: fig. . lewes.] above the coffin on alderton's headstone is an ornament, apparently palms. it is not unusual to find such meaningless, or apparently meaningless, designs employed to fill in otherwise blank spaces, though symbols of death, eternity, and the future state are in plentiful command for such purposes. something like this same ornament may be found on a very old flat stone in the churchyard of widcombe, near bath. it stretches the full width of the stone, and is in high relief, which has preserved it long after the accompanying inscription has vanished. the probable date may be about . fig. .--at widcombe, near bath. in newhaven churchyard, though there are but these two striking examples of the allegorical gravestone, there is one other singular exemplification of the graver's skill and ingenuity, but it is nearly a score of years later in date than the others, and probably by another mason. it represents the old and extinct bridge over the sussex avon at newhaven, and it honours a certain brewer of the town, whose brewery is still carried on there and is famous for its "tipper" ale. allowing that it was carved by a different workman, it is only fair to suppose that it may have been suggested by its predecessors. its originality is beyond all question, which can very rarely be said of an old gravestone, and, as a churchyard record of a local institution, i have never seen it equalled or approached. fig. .--at newhaven, sussex. under the design is the following inscription: "to the memory of thomas tipper, who departed this life may y'e th, , aged years. "reader, with kind regard this grave survey nor heedless pass where tipper's ashes lay. honest he was, ingenuous, blunt, and kind; and dared do, what few dare do, speak his mind. philosophy and history well he knew, was versed in physick and in surgery too. the best old stingo he both brewed and sold, nor did one knavish act to get his gold. he played through life a varied comic part, and knew immortal hudibras by heart. reader, in real truth, such was the man, be better, wiser, laugh more if you can." that these were all the especial eccentricities of this burial-place disappointed me, but, with my after-knowledge, may say that three such choice specimens from one enclosure is a very liberal allowance. suspecting that sculptors of the quality necessary for such high-class work would be unlikely to dwell in a small and unimportant fisher-village such as newhaven was in the middle of the eighteenth century, i went over to lewes, the county town being only seven miles by railway. but i found nothing to shew that lewes was the seat of so much skill, and i have since failed to discover the source in brighton or any other adjacent town. indeed, it may be said at once that large towns are the most unlikely of all places in which to find peculiar gravestones. at lewes, however, i lighted on one novelty somewhat to my purpose, and, although a comparatively simple illustration, it is not without its merits, and i was glad to add it to my small collection. the mattock and spade are realistic of the grave; the open book proclaims the promise of the heaven beyond. [illustration: fig. . plumstead.] [illustration: fig. . dartford.] [illustration: fig. . dartford.] fig. .--at lewes. "to samuel earnes, died may th, , aged years." the coincidence of date would almost warrant a belief that this piece of imagery may have emanated from the same brain and been executed by the same hands as are accountable for the two which we have seen seven miles away, but the workmanship is really not in the least alike, and i have learnt almost to discard in this connection the theory of local idiosyncrasies. even when we find, as we do find, similar, and almost identical, designs in neighbouring churchyards, or in the same churchyard, it is safer to conjecture that a meaner sculptor has copied the earlier work than that the first designer would weaken his inventive character by a replication. the following, which cannot be described as less than a distortion of a worthier model, is to be found in many places, and in such abundance as to suggest a wholesale manufacture. fig. .--at plumstead, kent. "to elizabeth bennett, died , aged years." it is obvious that the idea intended to be represented is figurative of death in infancy or childhood, and illustrates the well-known words of the saviour, "suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of god," quoted on the stone itself. in this and many similar cases in which the design and text are used for old or elderly people, they have been certainly strained from their true significance. the figure of a little child is, however, employed occasionally to represent the soul, and may also be taken to indicate the "new birth." there is an almost exact reproduction of the foregoing example in the same churchyard, even more remarkably at variance with scriptural interpretation. it is dedicated "to john clark, died , aged years; and rebecca his wife, died , aged years." the inscription adds: "what manner of persons these were the last day will discover." gravestone plagiarism of this sort is very common, and there is to be found at west ham, essex, the same symbolical flight of the angel and child repeated as many as five times. the pilfering is not so weak and lamentable when the copyist appropriates merely the idea and works it out in a new fashion. the term new can hardly be attributed to the notion of a plucked flower as a type of death, but it occurs in so many varieties as almost to redeem its conventionality. the sculptor of a stone which is in dartford burial-ground probably had the suggestion from a predecessor. fig. .--at dartford. "to james terry, died , aged years." but not far from it in the same burial-ground, which is really a cemetery separated from the parish church, and one of the oldest cemeteries in england, is another imitation quite differently brought out, but in principle essentially the same. fig. .--at dartford. "to....callow, died.... ...." at the churchyard of stone (or greenhithe), two or three miles from dartford, both these floral emblems are reproduced with strict fidelity. this first chapter and the sketches which illustrate it will serve to introduce and explain my work and its scope. in pursuing my investigations it was soon evident that the period of the allegorical gravestone was confined sharply and almost exclusively to the eighteenth century. i have seldom met one earlier than , and those subsequent to are very rare. of gravestones generally it may almost be said that specimens of seventeenth-century date are exceedingly few. there are reasons for this, as will afterwards appear. but the endurance even of the longest-lived of all the old memorials cannot be very much longer extended, and this may be my excuse for preserving and perpetuating the features of some of them as a not uninteresting phase of the vanishing past. i do not claim for my subject any great importance, but present it as one of the small contributions which make up history. one other plea i may urge in my defence. this is a branch of study which, so far as i can ascertain, has been quite neglected. there are books by the score dealing with the marble, alabaster, and other tombs within the churches, there are books of epitaphs and elegies by the hundred, and there are meditations among the graves sufficient to satisfy the most devout and exacting of readers, but the simple gravestone of the churchyard as an object of sculptured interest has i believe found hitherto no student and is still looking for its historian. chapter ii. the evolution of gravestones. although there may be no expectation of discovering the germ of the pictorial or allegorical gravestone, a section of the samples collected for this essay may be displayed to shew the earlier forms in which the ruder class of masons prepared their sculptured monuments for the churchyard. there is little doubt that the practice originated in an endeavour to imitate on the common gravestone the nobler memorials of the churches and cathedrals, the effort being more or less successful in proportion to the individual skill of the artist. the influence of locality, however, must always be a factor in this consideration; for, as a rule, it will be found that the poorest examples come from essentially secluded places, while localities of earlier enlightenment furnish really admirable work of much prior date. take, for instance, that most frequent emblem, the skull. i have not sought for the model by which the village sculptor worked, but i have in my note-book this sketch of a skull, copied from a sixteenth-century tomb at frankfort on the maine, and there are doubtless a vast number equal to it in english cathedrals and churches of the same period. fig. .--at frankfort, germany. regarding this as our ideal, the primitive work which we find in rural localities must be pronounced degenerated art. generally speaking we may assume that the carver of the stately tomb within the church had no hand in the execution of the outer gravestone; but that quite early there were able masons employed upon the decoration of the churchyard headstone is shewn in many instances, of which the one presented in fig. may serve as a very early specimen. fig. .--at east wickham. "to eliza and lydia, the two wives of anthony neighbours, died th nov. and th march ." the dates are remarkable in connection with such an elaborate work. east wickham is little more than a village even now, and this carving is very creditable in comparison with other attempts of the same early period; but the high road from london to dover runs through the parish, and may have carried early cultivation into the district. all the rougher illustrations which i have found have been in remote and isolated spots, or spots that were remote and isolated when the stones were set up. the first of these which i discovered was in the little churchyard of ridley in kent, "far from the haunts of men." fig. .--at ridley. "to the three sons of will. deane, died , , and , aged weeks, years, and years." it is difficult to believe that the face here delineated was meant to represent a skull, and yet, judging by the many equally and more absurd figures which i have since met with, there is little doubt that a skull was intended by the engraver, for this and all others of the class are incised, simply scratched or cut into the stone; nothing so poor in drawing have i ever found which has risen to the eminence of relief. it may, of course, be also surmised that the face here cut into the stone is meant for a portrait or to represent an angelic being. the radial lines may have been intended for a halo of glory or a frilled cap, but, as will be seen by comparison, the whole thing is easily to be classed with the skull series. [illustration: fig. . frankfort.] [illustration: fig. . east wickham.] it will be noticed that we have in this instance a form of headstone differing materially from those of later times, and wherever we find the rude _incised_ figure we nearly always have the stone of this shape. such homely memorials are distinguished in nearly every instance by dwarfishness and clumsiness. they are seldom more than feet in height, and are often found to measure from inches to inches in thickness. a prolific field for them is the great marshland forming the hundred of hoo, below gravesend, the scene of many incidents in the tale by charles dickens of "great expectations." it is called by the natives "the dickens country," for the great author dwelt on the hilly verge of it and knew it well. the frontispiece shews the general view of one of these old stones at higham, in the hoo district. frontispiece.--at higham. "to philip hawes, died june , , aged years." in this case the top space is occupied, not by a head or skull, but by two hearts meeting at their points--a not unusual illustration. at hoo is one of the coarsest exemplifications of masonic incompetency i have ever encountered. fig. .--at hoo, near rochester "to robert scott, yeoman, died dec. , aged years." the nimbus or nightcap again appears as in the ridley specimen, but, whatever it be, the teeth are undoubtedly the teeth of the skeleton head. this stone has another claim to our notice beyond the inartistic design. it marks one of the very rare efforts in this direction of the seventeenth century. the prevalent shape of these old memorials and their almost contemporary dates seem to indicate a fashion of the period, but they are met with in other places of various conformations. there is one at erith almost square-headed, only feet high, foot inches wide, and inches thick. fig. .--at erith. it may be noted that this also is of the seventeenth century, and the mode of describing john green's age is, i think, unique. high halstow is a neighbour of hoo, and has only of late been penetrated by the railway to port victoria. from high halstow we have another curious and almost heathenish specimen, in which we see the crossbones as an addition to the "skull," if "skull" it can be considered, with its eyes, eyebrows, and "cheeks." [illustration: fig. . ridley.] [illustration: fig. . hoo.] [illustration: fig. . erith.] [illustration: fig. . high halstow.] [illustration: fig. . frindsbury.] [illustration: fig. . higham.] fig. .--at high halstow. "to susan barber." the date is buried, but there is a similar stone close by dated . nearer rochester, at frindsbury, there is the next illustration, still like a mask rather than a death's head, but making its purpose clear by the two bones, such as are nearly always employed in more recent productions. fig. .--at frindsbury. "to william david jones, died ." there is, however, another at higham of about the same date, in which, supposing a skull to be intended, the inspiration of the bones appears not to have caught the artist. the portrait theory may possibly better fit this case. fig. .--at higham. "to mr wm boghurst, died th of april , aged ." that some of the carvings were meant for portraits cannot be denied, and, in order to shew them with unimpeachable accuracy, i have taken rubbings off a few and present an untouched photograph of them just as i rubbed them off the stones (fig. ). the whole of the originals are to be found in the neighbouring churchyards of shorne and chalk, two rural parishes on the rochester road, and exhibit with all the fidelity possible the craftsmanship of the village sculptors. they will doubtless also excite some speculation as to their meaning. my belief, as already expressed, is that the uppermost four are the embodiment of the rustic yearning for the ideal; in other words, attempts to represent the emblem of death--the skull. nos. and are from shorne; nos. , , and from the churchyard at chalk. in no. we have, perhaps, the crudest conception extant of the skeleton head. the lower bars are probably meant for teeth; what the radial lines on the crown are supposed to be is again conjecture. perhaps a nimbus, perhaps hair or a cap, or merely an ornamental finish. the inscription states that the stone was erected to the memory of "thomas vdall," who died in , aged years. no. has the inscription buried, but it is of about the same date, judging by its general appearance. the strange feature in this case is the zig-zag "toothing" which is employed to represent the jaws. doubtless the artist thought that anything he might have lost in accuracy he regained in the picturesque. no. , in which part of the inscription "here lyeth" intrudes into the arch belonging by right to the illustration, is equally primitive and artless. the eyebrows, cheeks--in fact all the features--are evidently unassisted studies from the living, not the dead, frontispiece of humanity; but what are the serifs, or projections, on either side? wondrous as it is, there can be only one answer. they must be meant for _ears_! this curious effigy commemorates mary, wife of william greenhill, who died in , aged years. no. is one of the rude efforts to imitate the skull and crossbones of which we find many examples. it is dedicated to one grinhill (probably a kinsman of the greenhills aforesaid), who died in , aged years. most strange of all is no. , in which the mason leaps to the real from the emblematic, and gives us something which is evidently meant for a portrait of the departed. the stone records that mary, wife of thomas jackson, died in , aged years. it is one of the double tombstones frequently met with in kent and some other counties. the second half, which is headed by a picture of two united hearts, records that the widower thomas jackson followed his spouse in , aged years. upon a stone adjacent, to mary london, who died in , there has been another portrait of a lady with braided hair, but time has almost obliterated it. i mention the circumstance to shew that this special department of obituary masonry, as all others, was prone to imitations. i may also remark that intelligent inhabitants and constant frequenters of these two churchyards have informed me that in all the hundreds of times of passing these stones they never observed any of their peculiarities. it ought, however, to be said that these primitive carvings or scratchings are not often conspicuous, and generally require some seeking. they are always on a small scale of drawing, in nearly every instance within the diminished curve of the most antiquated form of headstone (such as is shewn in the frontispiece), and as a rule they are overgrown with lichen, which has to be rubbed off before the lines are visible. it may safely be averred, on the other hand, that the majority of the old stones when found of this shape contain or have contained these remarkable figures, and in some places, particularly in kent, they literally swarm. there is a numerous assortment of them at meopham, a once remote hamlet, now a station on the london, chatham, and dover railway. i have copied only one--an early attempt apparently to produce a cherub resting with outstretched wings upon a cloud, but there are a good many of the same order to keep it in countenance. fig. .--at meopham. "to sarah edmeades, died , aged years." in the churchyards of hawkhurst, benenden, bodiam, cranbrook, goudhurst, and all through the great weald these incised stones are to be discovered by hundreds, very much of one type perhaps, but displaying nevertheless some extraordinary variations. i know of no district so fruitful of these examples as the weald of kent. even when the rude system of cutting into the stone ceased to be practised and relief carving became general, grossness of idea seems to have survived in many rural parishes. one specimen is to be seen in the churchyard of stanstead in kent, and is, for relief work, childish. fig. .--at stanstead. "to william lock, died , aged years." however, the vast number of gravestones carved in relief are, on the whole, creditable, especially if we consider the difficulty which met the workmen in having to avoid giving to their crossbones and other ornaments the appearance of horns growing out of their skulls. [illustration: fig. . meopham.] [illustration: fig. . stanstead.] [illustration: fig. . old romney.] [illustration: fig. . crayford.] [illustration: fig. . shoreham.] [illustration: fig. . lewisham.] [illustration: fig. . hobnsey.] fig. .--at old romney. "to william dowll, died , aged years." the winged skull probably typifies flight above. fig. .--at crayford. "to john farrington, died dec. , , aged above fourty years." in the appropriate design from shoreham the same idea is better conveyed both by the winged head and by the torch, which when elevated signifies the rising sun, and when depressed the setting sun. the trumpet in this case would seem to mean the summons. the two little coffins are eloquent without words. fig. .--at shoreham. "the children of thomas and jane stringer, died sept'r , aged and years." in lewisham churchyard is one of the death's head series almost _sui generis_. fig. .--at lewisham. "to richard evens, died may , , aged years." the chaplet of bay-leaves or laurel doubtless indicates "victory." not only is this an early and well-accomplished effort, but it is remarkable for the presence of a lower jaw, which is seldom seen on a gravestone. the skull turned up by the sexton is usually the typical object, and to that we may presume the nether jaw is not often attached. it is found, however, on a headstone of a somewhat weak design in old hornsey churchyard. fig. .--at hornsey. "to mr john gibson, whipmaker, died oct. , , aged years." the hand seems to be pointing to the record of a well-spent life which has won the crown of glory. there is another of the lower jaw series at teddington, which is also, in all probability, the only instance of a man's nightcap figuring in such gruesome circumstances. fig. .--at teddington. "to sarah lewis, died june , , aged years." the emblem of death was quite early crowned with laurel to signify glory, and associated with foliage and flowers in token of the resurrection. one at finchley is, for its years, well preserved. fig. .--at finchley. "to richard scarlett, died july , ." another at farnborough is, considering the date, of exceptional merit. fig. .--at farnborough. "to elizabeth stow, died , aged years." [illustration: fig. . teddington.] [illustration: fig. . finchley.] [illustration: fig. . farnborough.] [illustration: fig. . chiselhurst.] [illustration: fig. . hartley.] [illustration: fig. . west wickham.] [illustration: fig. . hornsey.] a few others of the skull pattern with various additaments may conclude this chapter. the cup in the chiselhurst case is somewhat uncommon. fig. .--at chiselhurst. name obliterated; date nov. . the conventional symbols in the next example are clearly to be read. fig. .--at hartley. "to eliza andersen, died , aged years." the west wickham specimen has its prototype in the old churchyard at hackney, and in other places. fig. .--at west wickham. "to richard whiffen, died , aged years." in fig. , from hornsey, the two skulls present the appearance of having been pitched up from the grave. fig. .--at hornsey. "to william fleetwood, died jan. , , aged months." chapter iii. artistic gravestones. in the later half of the eighteenth century greater pains and finer workmanship appear to have been bestowed upon the symbolic figurement of the gravestone, and the more elaborate allegorical representations of which a few sketches have been given came into vogue and grew in popular favour until the century's end. nor did the opening of a new century altogether abolish the fashion; perhaps it can hardly be said to have been abolished even now at the century's close, but the evidences extant combine to shew that the flourishing period of the pictorial headstone lay well within the twenty-five years preceding anno domini . for the sake of comparison one with another, i have taken, in addition to the sketch at page (fig. ), three examples of the device which seems most frequently to typify the resurrection of the dead. in two of these the illustration is accompanied by a quotation explanatory of its subject, but the words are not the same in both cases. the stone at horton kirby, near dartford, depicted in fig. , shews the inscription clearly. fig. .--at horton kirby. "to john davidge. died april , , aged years." [illustration: fig. . horton kirby.] [illustration: fig. . cliffe.] in the second instance, at cliffe, the inscription has been in great part obliterated by time, but the words written were evidently those of the chapter from corinthians which is part of the burial service: "o death, where is thy sting? o grave, where is thy victory?" they are, however, almost illegible, and i have made no attempt to reproduce them in the picture. fig. .--at cliffe. "to mary jackson, died march , ." there is a second stone of similar pattern in cliffe churchyard, dated . it differs from the foregoing only in having the spear broken. the sculptor of another specimen at darenth, near dartford, thought the subject worthy of broader treatment, and transferred it to a stone about double the ordinary width, but did not vary the idea to any great extent. indeed, horton kirby and darenth, being next-door neighbours, have most features in common; the falling tower, which symbolizes the day of judgment, appearing in both, while it is absent from the more distant examples at cliffe and newhaven. the introduction of the omniscient eye in the cliffe case is, however, a stroke of genius compared with the conventional palm branches at horton kirby, or the flight through mid-air of the tower-tops both at horton kirby and at darenth. fig. .--at darenth. "to john millen, died june th, , aged years." outside the county of kent i have met with nothing of this pattern, and pictorial art on a similar scale is seldom seen on the gravestones anywhere. specimens from lee, cheshunt, stapleford tawney, and elsewhere, will, however, be seen in subsequent pages. the day of joyful resurrection is prefigured possibly in more acceptable shape in the next instance, no imitation of which i have seen in any of my rambles. fig. .--at kingsdown. "to ann charman, died , aged years." no one to whom i have shewn this sketch has given a satisfactory interpretation of it, but it will be allowed that the design is as graceful as it is uncommon. that it also in all likelihood refers to the day of judgment may perhaps be regarded as a natural supposition. even the open or half-open coffin, shewing the skeleton within, may possibly have some reference to the rising at the last day. we have this figure employed in a comparatively recent case at fawkham in kent, being one example of nineteenth-century sculpture. fig. .--at fawkham. "thomas killick, died , aged month day." a crown is usually the emblem of victory, but held in the hand, as in this instance, it indicates, i am told, an innocent life. other coffins displaying wholly or partly the corpse or skeleton within are perhaps not intended to convey any such pious or poetic thought as do the two foregoing, but simply to pourtray the ghastliness of death, a kind of imagery much fancied by the old stonemasons. [illustration: fig. . darenth.] [illustration: fig. . kingsdown.] [illustration: fig. . fawkham.] [illustration: fig. . swanscombe.] [illustration: fig. . ashford.] [illustration: fig. . cooling.] [illustration: fig. . hendon.] [illustration: fig. . east wickham.] [illustration: fig. . snargate.] [illustration: fig. . east ham.] fig. .--at swanscombe. "to elizabeth hall, died , aged years." fig. .--at ashford. "to stephen kennedy, died sept. , aged years." in the latter illustration there are three stars to which i can give no signification. the snake-ring is, of course, eternity, and the book, as before surmised, may stand for the record of a good life. more ingenious, more didactic, and altogether more meritorious than these is another series of designs belonging to the same period of time. they are not only as a rule conceived in better taste, but are, almost consequently, better in their execution. the following example from cooling, a small village in the medway marshes, is an excellent specimen of its class, and a very exceptional "find" for a spot so remote. fig. .--at cooling. "to m'r richard prebble of cliffe, died april ." one of later date at hendon, middlesex, is also to be commended. the lyre, cornet, and tambourine speak of music, and the figures of fame and hope are hardly to be misunderstood, but the large box in the background is not quite certain of correct interpretation. fig. .--at hendon. "to ludwig august leakfield, esq., died nov. , , aged years." the following is rougher in form, but seems to have suffered from the weather. it needs no explanation. fig. .--at east wickham. "to thomas vere of woolwich, shipwright, died th august, ." the two next subjects are to be found in many variations. the angel with the cross in each case may represent salvation proclaimed. fig. .--at snargate. "to edward wood, died sept. , aged years." fig. .--at east ham. "to mr richard wright, died july , , aged years." the winged scroll in fig. is unfolded to display, we may suppose, a register of good and holy deeds done in an extended life. the scythes and the reversed torches may be taken at their usual significance, which is death. this is copied from a stone in the churchyard of wilmington by dartford heath. [illustration: fig. . wilmington.] [illustration: fig. . wanstead.] [illustration: fig. . southfleet.] [illustration: fig. . wilmington.] [illustration: fig. . lewisham.] [illustration: fig. . bunhill fields.] fig. .--at wilmington. "to richard barman, died , aged years." more elegant testimony is paid by the figure of a winged urn in wanstead old churchyard, the flame which burns above indicating, it would seem, that though the body be reduced to ashes, the soul survives. fig. .--at wanstead. "to william cleverly, died , aged years." eternity is usually, as we have seen, represented by an endless ring--often as a serpent. it is so in the southfleet sketch, in which appear the two horns of the archangels, and the living torch, with some other objects which are not quite clearly defined. fig. .--at southfleet. "to john palmer, died , aged years." in another selection from wilmington the winged hour-glass may be read as the flight of time, the cloud is probably the future life, and the bones below convey their customary moral. fig. .--at wilmington. "to ann parsons, died nov. , , aged years." sometimes, but not often, will be found engraved on a stone the suggestive fancy of an axe laid at the foot of a tree, or some metaphorical figure to the same intent. an instance occurs at lewisham in which the idea is conveyed by the pick and shovel under a flourishing palm. fig. .--at lewisham. "to thomas lambert, died nov. , , aged years." a symbol so simple and yet so significant as this is scarcely to be surpassed. one almost in the same category is the following, a small anaglyph in bunhill fields burial-ground, london. fig. .--at bunhill fields, london. "to elizabeth sharp, who died oct. , , aged years." it is easy to read in this illustration the parable of death destroying a fruitful vine, and as a picture it is not inelegant. it is more remarkable as being, so far as i can find, the one solitary instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the city road. strictly speaking, death's heads and crossbones are allegorical, but these must be excepted for their very abundance and their lack of novelty. possibly, also, the lichen, damp, and london climate, which have obliterated many of the inscriptions in this old cemetery, may have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work of the kind under consideration. but bunhill fields and similar places in and near london and other great towns have taught me the law to which i have already referred--the law that the picture-tombstone was country bred, and could never have endured under the modern conditions of life in or near the centres of civilization. there are exceptions, perhaps many, to this ruling, as there are exceptions to every other. for instance, a stone at the grave of a royal artillery officer in woolwich churchyard combines the emblems of his earthly calling with those of his celestial aspirations in a medley arrangement not unusual in rural scenes, but hardly to be reconciled with the education and refinement of a large garrison and school of military science which woolwich was in . this must be set down as one of the exceptions which prove the rule. fig. .--at woolwich. "to lieut. thomas sanders, late of the royal regiment of artillery, who died march , aged (?) years." there is a more recent case in which the same idea is pourtrayed in somewhat different fashion on a headstone in the obsolete graveyard of st. oswald, near the barracks at york. it is dedicated to john kay, a private in the royal scots greys, who died july , , aged years. but, on the whole, it may be accepted as an axiom that originality has shunned the town churchyards, and the absence of curious varieties of the gravestone among the well-sown acres of bunhill fields and such-like places of the period at which they were by comparison so abundant in less considered localities admits of a simple explanation. in the eighteenth century town and country were much more divided than they are now. london and the rural districts were not on their present level. taste in art and in the ordinary affairs of life was being cultivated in town; it was not even encouraged in the country. education and refinement were not thought to be desirable accomplishments in a rustic population, but dwellers in cities had been for generations improving their manners, and thus it was that no such provincial vulgarity as a decorated tombstone could be tolerated in the choice metropolis. the clergy were always the masters in such matters, and their influence is seen in many places, even in the villages, in keeping the churchyard free from ridicule; but, broadly speaking, there is no doubt that the rectors and vicars in london and other large cities began quite a hundred years earlier than those of the villages that control and supervision over the carving and inscriptions on the tombstone which is now the almost universal rule. it was unquestionably the adoption of this practice by the country parson, late in the eighteenth century or early in the nineteenth century, that put an end in rural places to the "period" of illustrated epitaphs which had long gone out of fashion, or, more likely, had never come into being, among the busier hives of humanity. a rare variety of the cloud-and-angel series, which are so frequent, is seen in longfield churchyard on the maidstone road. trumpets of the speaking or musical order are frequently introduced to typify the summons to resurrection, but here we have the listener pourtrayed by the introduction of an ear-trumpet. [illustration: fig. . woolwich.] [illustration: fig. . longfield.] fig. .--at longfield. "to mary davidge, died , aged years." allegorical gravestones of recent date, that is of the time which we call the present day, are very seldom seen, and such as there are do not come within the scope of this work. there is one in west wickham churchyard devoted to a chorister, and sculptured with a representation of the church organ-pipes. memorials to deceased freemasons are perhaps the most frequent of late carvings, as in the sketch from lydd in the romney marsh district. fig. .--at lydd. "to john finn, died june th, , aged years." occasionally, too, some plain device appears on even a modern headstone, such as the following, which is one of the few i have from the london area. the graves of the same half-century may be searched without finding many carvings more ambitious than this. fig. .--at st. james's, bermondsey. "to charles thomas henry evans, died ." churchyards beside the upper thames are nearly all prolific in old gravestones, the riparian settlements having been well populated during the favourable period. this is especially the case at richmond and twickenham, but of the great number of eighteenth-century stones in both churchyards there are few very remarkable. richmond has a rare specimen of the _full-relief_ skull. the death's head has on either side of it the head of an angel in half-relief. the stone is a double one, and i have never met its fellow. fig. .--at richmond. "to annie smedley (?), died , aged years." as companions to this i present a pair of dwarf stones with full-relief heads of seraphs and cherubs--an agreeable change--from the same county. fig. .--at ripley. "to sarah wife of henry bower, died . to henry bower, died march rd, ." the rector of the parish passed as i was sketching these interesting objects, and was surprised to find that he had anything so unusual in his churchyard. [illustration: fig. . lydd.] [illustration: fig. . bermondsey.] [illustration: fig. . richmond.] [illustration: fig. . ripley.] [illustration: fig. . cobham.] [illustration: fig. . barnes.] chapter iv. professional gravestones. it is more than likely that somewhere will be found a pictorial accompaniment to the verse which has been often used as an epitaph for a village blacksmith. i have met with the lines in two or three versions, of which the following, copied in the churchyard at aberystwith, appears to be the most complete: "my sledge and hammer lie reclined; my bellows too have lost their wind; my fire extinct, my forge decay'd, and in the dust my vice is laid. my coal is spent, my iron's gone; my nails are drove, my worck is done." there are many instances in which the implements of his craft are depicted upon an artizan's tomb; these also for the most part being of the eighteenth century. in the churchyard at cobham, a village made famous by the posthumous papers of the pickwick club, is a gravestone recording the death of a carpenter, having at the head a shield bearing three compasses to serve as his crest, and under it the usual tools of his trade--square, mallet, compasses, wedge, saw, chisel, hammer, gimlet, plane, and two-foot rule. fig. .--at cobham, kent. "to richard gransden, carpenter, died th march, ." this one may serve as a fair sample of all the trade memorials to which carpenters have been, before all classes of mechanics, the most prone. the carvings bear the same strong resemblance to each other that we find in other series of gravestones, but have occasional variations, as in the following specimen, which mixes up somewhat grotesquely the emblems of death and eternity with the mundane instruments of skill and labour, including therein a coffin lid to shew maybe that the man, besides being a carpenter, was also an undertaker. fig. .--at barnes. "to henry mitchell, died , aged years." it was only to be expected that the prominent agriculturists of rural districts would be figuratively represented on their gravestones, and this will be found to be the case in a number of instances. the following illustration is from the churchyard of frindsbury, a short distance out of rochester and on the edge of the medway meadows. fig. .--at frindsbury. the inscription is effaced, but the date appears to be . the overturned sheaf presumably refers metaphorically to the fate of the farmer whom the stone was set up to commemorate. the old-fashioned plough is cut only in single profile, but is not an ineffective emblem. i imagine that the ribbon above the plough bore at one time some inscribed words which time has obliterated. [illustration: fig. . frindsbury.] [illustration: fig. . sutton at hone.] [illustration: fig. . bromley.] [illustration: fig. . beckenham.] the design invented by the sculptor at sutton at hone, near dartford, is less original and also less striking. fig. .--at sutton at hone. "to richard northfield, died oct. , , aged years." in the case of john bone, bricklayer, of bromley, kent, it would probably be wrong to associate with his calling the tools engraved on his headstone. they were probably meant with the rest of the picture to represent the emblems of mortality. fig. .--at bromley. "to john bone, bricklayer, died dec. , , aged years." there is, however, one stone which may be included in the category of trade memorials, though its subject was not a mechanic. mr. john cade was a schoolmaster at beckenham, and appears to have been well liked by his pupils, who, when he prematurely died, placed a complimentary epitaph over his grave. the means by which he had imparted knowledge are displayed upon the stone, and below are the lines hereinafter set forth. fig. .--at beckenham. "to the memory of john cade, of this parish, schoolmaster. one skilled in his profession and of extensive ingenuity. as he lived universally beloved, so he died as much lamented, august th, , aged years. several of his scholars, moved by affection and gratitude, at their own expense erected this in remembrance of his worth and merit. "virtue, good nature, learning, all combined to render him belov'd of human kind." greenford, near harrow-on-the-hill, had quite recently a worthy inhabitant who was a gardener and presumably a beekeeper also. accordingly a beehive appropriately decorates his gravestone. fig. .--at greenford. "to william king, upwards of years gardener of this parish, died dec. th, , aged years." the next problem is rather more doubtful, and in considering the possibility of the memorial indicated being "professional," we must remember that the parish of west ham, now a populous place, was quite out of town and almost undiscovered until a comparatively recent time. its eighteenth-century gravestones are consequently for the most part rustic and primitive. the skull and other bones here depicted, decked with wheat-ears and other vegetation, probably have some literal reference to the agricultural pursuits of the deceased, although of course they may be only poetical allusions to the life to come. fig. .--at west ham. "to andrew james, died , aged years." chapter v. a typical tramp in kent. this unpretentious work makes no claim to deal with the whole subject which it has presumed to open. its aim is rather to promote in others the desire which actuates the author to follow up and develop the new field of antiquarian research which it has attempted to introduce. as old weever says, in his quaint style:--"i have gained as much as i have looke for if i shall draw others into this argument whose inquisitive diligence and learning may finde out more and amende mine." this book, then, is not a treatise, but simply a first collection of churchyard curiosities, the greater number of which have been gathered within a comparatively small radius. it is only the hoard of one collector and the contents of one sketch-book, all gleaned in about a hundred parishes. many collectors may multiply by thousands these results, bring out fresh features, and possibly points of high importance. two chief purposes therefore animate my desire to publish this work. one is to supply such little information as i have gleaned on a subject which has by some singular chance escaped especial recognition from all the multitude of authors, antiquarians, and literary men. i have searched the museum libraries, and consulted book-collectors, well-read archaeologists, and others likely to know if there is any work descriptive of old gravestones in existence, and nothing with the remotest relation thereto can i discover.[ ] there are, of course, hundreds of books of epitaphs, more or less apocryphal, but not one book, apocryphal or otherwise, regarding the allegories of the churchyard. can it be that the subject is bereft of interest? if so, i have made my venture in vain. but i trust that it is not so. [footnote : the rev. charles boutell published, in , parts and of a periodical work entitled "christian monuments in england and wales," proposing to complete the same in five sections; the fifth to treat of headstones and other churchyard memorials, with some general observations on modern monuments. the two parts brought the subject down to the fifteenth century, and were so ably written and beautifully illustrated as to intensify our regret at the incompletion of the task.] the second object is to recommend to others a new and delightful hobby, and possibly bring to bear upon my theme an accumulation of knowledge and combination of light. gravestone hunting implies long walks in rural scenes, with all the expectations, none of the risks, and few of the disappointments of other pursuits. from ten to fifteen miles may be mapped out for a fair day's trudge, and will probably embrace from three to six parish churchyards, allowing time to inspect the church as well as its surroundings. saturdays are best for these excursions, for then the pew-openers are dusting out the church, and the sexton is usually about, sweeping the paths or cutting the grass. the church door will in most cases be open, and you can get the guidance you want from the best possible sources. a chat with the village sexton is seldom uninviting, and he can generally point out everything worth your observation. but the faculty of finding that of which you are in search will soon come to you. in the first place, the new portion of a churchyard--there is nearly always a new portion--may be left on one side. you will certainly find no ancient memorials there. in the next place, you may by a little observation pick out the eighteenth-century stones by their shape, which is as a rule much more ornamented and curvilinear than those of later date. they may also be detected very often by the roughness of their backs as well as by their weather-beaten complexions, and with a little experience and practice the student may guess correctly within a few years the age of any particular one seen even in the distance. [illustration: fig. . geeenford.] [illustration: fig. . west ham.] to tempt the reader therefore to take up the study which i have found so pleasant, so healthful, and so interesting, i now propose to place in order the proceeds of a few of my rambles, and shew how much success the reader may also expect in similar expeditions. his or her stock-in-trade should consist of a good-sized note-book or sketch-book of paper not too rough for fine lines, a b b pencil of reliable quality, and a small piece of sandstone or brick to be used in rubbing off the dirt and moss which sometimes obscure inscriptions. no kind of scraper should ever be employed, lest the crumbling memorial be damaged; but a bit of brick or soft stone will do no harm, and will often bring to view letters and figures which have apparently quite disappeared. if a camera be taken, a carpenter's pencil may be of service in strengthening half-vanished lines, and a folded foot-rule should always be in the pocket. a mariner's compass is sometimes useful in strange places, but the eastward position of a church will always give the bearings, and a native is usually to be found to point the way. a road map of the county which you are about to explore, or, if in the vicinity of london, one of those admirable and well-known handbooks of the field paths, is useful, and the journey should be carefully plotted out before the start. a friend and companion of congenial tastes adds, i need not say, to the enjoyment of the excursion. my constant associate has happily a craze for epitaphs, but does not fancy sketching even in the rough style which answers well enough for my work, and i have had therefore no competitor. together we have scoured all the northern part of kent and visited every kentish church within twenty miles of london. the railway also will occasionally land us near some old church which we may like to visit, and it was while waiting half an hour for a train at blackheath station that i picked up the accompanying choice specimen in the ancient burial-ground of lee. fig. .--at lee. "to eliza drayton, died th may, ." in this allegory time appears to be commanding death to extinguish the lamp of life. the sun may mean the brighter life beyond. the building to the right is an enigma. often the first six or seven miles have to be encountered before we reach unexplored ground. the cray valley, for instance, may be cited for one day's experience. first a walk of seven miles to orpington, one of the five sister churches of the crays--all said to be anglo-saxon and of about one date. i must not digress to speak of churches, but it is only reasonable to suppose that the student who is capable of taking up as a pastime the investigation of churchyards has previously acquired something more or less of archaeological taste, and will not fail to notice the churches.[ ] we reach the churchyard of orpington, visit the church, and then my companion and i separate for our respective duties. i am not fortunate in securing any special prize, but it is well to select some object if only as a souvenir of the visit, and i jot down the following, which may be classed among the commonest order of all figurative headstones, but is nevertheless noticeable as a variant. [footnote : there are several handbooks of church architecture, and the rudiments of the various orders and dates are easily acquired.] [illustration: fig. . lee.] [illustration: fig. . orpington.] fig. .--at orpington, kent. "to hosa mansfield, daughter of john and martha mansfield, died th may , aged years. also james mansfield, son of john and martha mansfield, died th dec'r , aged years." the work in this instance is crude, and apparently done by an inexpert craftsman. the stone is, however, decayed, and it is possible that it is the draughtsman who has blundered. the two skulls, being of different sizes, suggest the male and female occupants of the grave, and would therefore assign the production to the later rather than the earlier date. the two bones are not often found in so lateral a position, and the vampire wings are clumsy in the extreme. i have collected varieties of the skull and crossbone character in many places, and seen the eccentricities of many masons in the way of wings, but have met with very few so far astray as these. while i am engaged in transferring the specimen to my book, our epitaph hunter has been round and discovered a treasure. i shall not trouble the reader with him henceforth, but i may note just this one of his successes as a sample of the rewards which attend his part in the pilgrimage. he has found a stone thus inscribed: "here lyeth the body of mary, the wife of john smith: she died march th, , aged years. "here lyeth mary, never was contrary to me nor her neighbours around her; like turtle and dove we lived in love, and i left her where i may find her. "also john smith, husband of the above." (date sunk underground.) a short walk through the village and by the cray river brings us to the church of st. mary cray, where i secure a new species, in which death is doubly symbolized by the not infrequent scythe and possibly also by the pierced heart. the latter might refer to the bereaved survivor, but, being a-flame, seems to lend itself more feasibly to the idea of the immortal soul. the trumpet and the opening coffin indicate peradventure the resurrection. fig. .--at st. mary cray. "to thomas abbott, died may , , aged years." [illustration: fig. . st. mary cray.] [illustration: fig. . st. paul's cray.] only a short distance farther, for the churches are small, we reach st. paul's cray, the burial-ground of which shews that the foregoing allegory was immediately duplicated, apparently by another hand, with just a little variation to redeem the piracy. the coffin is quite opened and empty, instead of being slightly open and tenanted, which is almost the only difference between the may and the september work. fig. .--at st. paul's cray. "to john busbey, died st sept'r , aged years." foot's cray is a good long step beyond and does not yield much profit, but i select the most novel specimen, which is a combination of ordinary emblems, with little attempt at symmetry, or even arrangement, other than the awkward juxtaposition of the cherubins' inner wings. fig. .--at foot's cray. "to elizabeth wood, died february , - , aged years." the churchyard at north cray added nothing at all to my collection. this was the only blank drawn that day, but a beautifully kept ground surrounding a delightful church well repaid the visit. a call at old bexley church completed the day's work, and gave me one of the few sketches belonging to the nineteenth century which i have made. fig. .--at old bexley. "to susannah, wife of henry humphrey, died th december , aged years." the anchor stands for hope, the draped urn signifies mourning for the dead, and the figure reading the holy book suggests consolation. from bexley church to the railway station was but a brief space. the day's tramp was ended. [illustration: fig. . foot's cray.] [illustration: fig. . bexley.] chapter vi. more typical tramps. how far county divisions might affect the early fashions in gravestones was one of my first questions, and, having seen much of kent, time was soon found for a scamper through the country bordering epping forest and along the backbone of essex. at barking, just within the old abbey gate, i came upon an enigmatical illustration. fig. .--at barking. inscription illegible. date appears to be . the signification of the four balls i am unable to suggest, unless they be connected in some way with the planetary system and point man's insignificance. they appear to emanate from a cloud resting upon the hour-glass, and may help the other emblems in symbolizing time and eternity. the nickering candle is also of doubtful interpretation. it may mean the brevity of life; it can hardly be needed, in the presence of the skull, to indicate death. the candle is sometimes employed alone, occasionally extinguished. at woolwich there is an instance in which the candle is in the act of being put out. fig. .--at woolwich. "to siston champion, died th feb. - (a few days after the birth of her child), aged years." the candle is indeed commonly used as a simile of life's uncertainty in all countries, and it may be that where it is represented in a state of burning it may be meant as a lesson on the number of our days. it is seen with the skulls in the churchyard of st. nicholas, deptford, and other places. fig. .--at deptford. "to william firth, died , aged years." in west ham churchyard may be seen the figure of the kissing cherubs rather prettily rendered, but to be found in various forms in many places, and always expressive of affection. fig. .--at west ham. "to sarah moore, died ." wanstead churchyard is remarkable for the abundance and originality of its old gravestones. here is one (fig. ) which carries more distinctly the fanciful idea suggested at west ham (page , fig. ); flowers and foliage, and even fruit, combining with the lowered torch and summoning trumpet to tell of life beyond the grave. fig. .--at wanstead. "to william bosely, died , aged ." [illustration: fig. . barking.] [illustration: fig. . woolwich.] [illustration: fig. . deptford.] [illustration: fig. . west ham.] [illustration: fig. . wanstead.] [illustration: fig. . wanstead.] there are several other variations of the same symbol in the elegant enclosure at wanstead church; but the most remarkable of the old stones is one which has at the top corners two projecting skulls, the one facing nearly to the front and the other in profile, both standing out in full relief, carefully and accurately sculptured, but too ghastly to be beautiful. this one, the richmond example, and the two at ripley constitute my entire experience of full relief work on a mere gravestone. fig. .--at wanstead. "to william swan, died , aged years." other churchyards in the locality we found less fruitful, and taking rail to buckhurst hill, we struck across epping forest to chingford, also without profit, and walked on to walthamstow, where another of the enfoliated death's-head pictures was found; the novelty being two skulls with ivy sprays, symbolical of evergreen recollections. fig. .--at walthamstow. "to jane redfern, died , aged years," in the broxbourne example on the same plate (fig. ) branches of oak, bearing leaves and acorns, are used with good decorative effect on either side of a porch in which is seated a mourning figure, but i cannot undertake to explain the symbolical significance of the oak in sepulchral masonry. fig. .--at broxbourne. "to mrs rowe, widow, died may ." my excursions into essex have been too limited in scope to trace or test peculiarities in that county, but i have found by observation in a number of counties that, although there are occasional evidences of local invention, or at least of local modification, in certain districts, the same set of types which prevails in one county serves pretty well for all the rest. it is well therefore to guard against disappointment. pilgrimages like ours, having for their real purpose healthy exercise and physical enjoyment, are not to be counted failures when their ostensible errand seems to have borne no result. it is necessary for the pilgrim to be armed with some such reflection as this against the shafts of discomfiture. there have been occasions when, at the close of the day, conscious as i might be of the pleasant hours past, the freshened brain and the body reinvigorated, i have yet covetously mourned the scanty and valueless additions to my note-book. other pilgrims may therefore take warning, be prepared for blank days in barren coverts, and sully not their satisfaction with regrets. but it will be a blank day indeed which does not carry its pleasures with it and store the mind with happy recollections. one walk on a winter's day over the hills from high barnet to edgware i reckoned sadly unproductive of the special novelties i sought, but it afforded me the contemplation of some landscapes which i can never forget, and it printed on my brain a little _papier-maché_-like church at totteridge which was worth going miles to see. better fortune next time should be the beacon of the gentle tramp. the long jaunt i had from chigwell lane station through the pretty but unpopulous country west of theydon bois, uneventful as it was, made an ineffaceable mark on my memory. i picture now the long and solitary walk across fields and woodlands, with never a soul to tell the way for miles and miles, crossing and recrossing the winding roden, startling the partridges from the turnips, and surprising, at some sudden bend in the footpath, the rabbits at their play. it is not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken ground by chart and compass. these needful guides then prove their value, and in a hilly country an altitude-barometer is a friend not to be despised. it is not without some pride in one's self-reliance to find one's self five miles from a railway station, as i did at stapleford abbotts; and, though my special quest was all in vain at several halting-places that day, i met with a norman doorway at lambourn church which archaeologists would call a dream, the axe-work of the old masons as clean cut and as perfect as though it had been done last week; and in taking a near cut at a guess across country for stapleford tawney i mind me that i lost my way, or thought i had, but the mariner's needle was true, and emerging in a green avenue i saw before me a finger-post marked "to tawney church." i took off my hat and respectfully saluted that finger-post, and was soon in the churchyard, where i haply lighted upon one of the gems of my collection, the headstone sculpture of "the good samaritan." [illustration: fig. . walthamstow.] [illustration: fig. . broxbourne.] fig. .--at stapleford tawney. "to richard wright, died d march , aged years." i have, however, an earlier study of the same subject from the churchyard at shorne village, near gravesend, which, is here given for comparison, and i have seen two others at cranbrook. they all have some features alike, but there are differences in the treatment of details in each case. fig. .--at shorne. "to mary layton, died jan. , ; joseph layton, died may , ; and will. holmes, died aug. , ." the stone at shorne being close to the church door is well known to the villagers, by whom it is regarded as a curiosity. the schoolmaster was good enough to give me a photograph from which my sketch is made. but such rarities are seldom esteemed by, or even known to, the inhabitants of a place, and are passed by without heed by the constant congregation of the church. at stapleford tawney, just named, a native, the first i had seen for a mile or two, stopped at the unwonted sight of a stranger sketching in the churchyard, and i consulted him as to application of the parable of the good samaritan in the case under notice. his reply was that, though he had lived there "man and boy for fifty year," he had "never see'd the thing afore." he condescended, however, to take an interest in my explanations, and seemed to realize that it was worth while to seek for objects of interest even in a churchyard. this was decidedly better than the behaviour on another occasion of two rustics at southfleet. they had passed my friend jotting down an epitaph, and the turn of a corner revealed me sketching a tombstone, when one to the other exclaimed, "land sikes, bill, if 'ere ain't another on em!" [illustration: fig. . stapleford tawney.] [illustration: fig. . shorne.] chapter vii. earlier gravestones. although memorials of the dead in one shape or another have apparently existed in all eras of ethnological history, it would seem that the upright gravestone of our burial-grounds has had a comparatively brief existence of but a few hundred years. this, however, is merely an inference based on present evidences, and it may be erroneous. but they cannot have existed in the precincts of the early christian churches of this country, because the churches had no churchyards for several centuries. the romans introduced into britain their law of the ten tables, by which it was ordained that "all burnings or burials" should be "beyond the city,"[ ] and the system continued to prevail long after the roman evacuation. it was not until a.d. that cuthbert, eleventh archbishop of canterbury, brought from rome the newer custom of burying around the churches, and was granted a papal dispensation for the practice. the churchyards even then were not enclosed, but it was usual to mark their sacred character by erecting stone crosses, many of which, or their remains, are still in existence. yet it was a long time before churchyard interments became general, the inhabitants clinging to the pagan habit of indiscriminate burial in their accustomed places. we hear nothing of headstones in the early days of christianity, but there are occasionally found in certain localities inscribed stones which bear the appearance of rude memorials, and these have been regarded as relics of our national church in its primitive state. it is also suggested that these stones may be of druidical origin, but there is nothing to support the theory. among the aboriginal britons the custom of simple inhumation was probably prevalent, but there are not wanting evidences in support of the belief that cremation also was sometimes practised in prehistoric times. an instance of early interment was discovered in a tumulus at gusthorp, near scarborough, in . in a rude coffin scooped out of the trunk of an oak-tree lay a human skeleton, which had been wrapped or clothed in the skin of some wild animal, fastened at the breast with a pin or skewer of wood. in the coffin were also a bronze spearhead and several weapons of flint--facts which all go to establish a remote date. the absence of pottery is also indicative of a very early period. regarding the skins, however, it may be remarked that cæsar says of the britons, when he invaded the island, that "the greater part within the country go clad in skins." [footnote : the ancient jewish burial-ground had to be no less than cubits (or about a mile) from the levitical city.] christian burials, as we have seen, cannot be dated in england earlier than the eighth century, and monuments at the grave may have possibly originated about the same period, but there is nothing whatever to sustain such a belief, and we cannot assign the earliest of existing memorials to a time prior to the eleventh century. indeed it is very significant to find that the tombs within the churches are only a trifle older than the gravestones outside, scarcely any of them being antecedent to the sixteenth century. as burials inside churches were not permitted until long after the churchyards were used for the purpose,[ ] it is indeed possible that no memorials were placed in the edifice until tudor days; but this is scarcely feasible, and the more probable explanation is that all the earlier ones have disappeared. those which can boast an antiquity greater than that of the common gravestone are very few indeed. it might have been supposed that the sculptured shrine under the roof of the sanctuary, reverently tended and jealously watched, might have stood for a thousand years, while the poor gravestone out in the churchyard, exposed to all weathers and many kinds of danger, would waste away or meet with one of the ordinary fates which attend ill-usage, indifference, or neglect. this indeed has happened in a multitude of places. who has not seen in ancient churchyards the headstones leaning this way and that, tottering to their fall? are there not hundreds of proofs that the unclaimed stones have been used, and still serve, for the floors of the churches, and actually for the paving of the churchyard paths? it was not thought strange, even within the memory of the present generation, to advertise for owners of old graves, with an intimation that on a certain date the stones would be removed; and vast numbers of them were thus got rid of--broken up perhaps to mend the roads. but still greater perils have been survived by the earlier of those memorials which remain to us, both without and within the churches. the dissolution of the papal power in great britain was the cause of one of these hazards; for, towards the latter end of henry viii.'s reign, likewise during the reign of edward vi., and again in the beginning of elizabeth's, commissioners in every county were vested with authority to destroy "all graven images" and everything which seemed to savour of "idolatry and superstition." under colour of this order, these persons, and those who sympathized in their work, gave vent to their zeal in many excesses, battering down and breaking up everything of an ornamental or sculptured character, including tombs and even the stained windows. moreover we are told by weever[ ] that the commission was made the excuse for digging up coffins in the hope of finding treasure. elizabeth soon perceived the evil that was being done by the barbarous rage and greediness of her subjects, and issued a proclamation under her own hand restraining all "ignorant, malicious, and covetous persons" from breaking and defacing any monument, tomb, or grave, under penalty of fine or imprisonment. this checked, but did not wholly cure, the mischief; and, although in her fourteenth year of sovereignty she issued another and sterner edict on the subject, the havoc was perpetuated chiefly by a sect or party whom weever describes as "a contagious brood of scismaticks," whose object was not only to rob the churches, but to level them with the ground, as places polluted by all the abominations of babylon. these people were variously known as brownists, barrowists, martinists, prophesyers, solisidians, famelists, rigid precisians, disciplinarians, and judaical thraskists. some who overstepped the mark paid the penalty with their lives. one man, named hachet, not content with destroying gravestones and statuary, thrust an iron weapon through a picture of the queen, and he was hanged and quartered. another, john penry, a welshman, was executed in , and of him was written: "the welshman is hanged who at our kirke flanged and at her state banged, and brened are his buks. and though he be hanged yet he is not wranged, the de'ul has him fanged in his kruked kluks." [footnote : the unhealthy practice of using churches for this purpose was continued some way into the nineteenth century. the still more objectionable plan of depositing coffins containing the dead in vaults under churches still lingers on. in i attended the funeral (so-called) of a public man, whose coffin was borne into the vaults of a town church, and left there, with scores of others piled in heaps in recesses which looked like wine-cellars. not one of the many mourners who shared in that experience failed to feel horrified at the thought of such a fate. some of the old coffins were tumbling to pieces, and the odour of the place was beyond description. in the words of edmund burke: "i would rather sleep in the southern corner of a country churchyard than in the tomb of the capulets."] [footnote : weever's "funeral monuments," a.d. .] and there was a danger to be encountered far later than that which was due to the anti-popery zealots of the tudor dynasty. on the introduction of the commonwealth there arose such a crusade against all forms and emblems of doctrinal import as to affect not only the ornaments of the churches, but the gravestones in the churchyards, many of which were removed and put to other uses or sold. the puritans, as is well known, went to the extremity of abolishing all ceremony whatever at the burial of the dead.[ ] the beautiful service in the book of common prayer, now used more or less by all the reformed christian denominations of england, was abolished by parliament in --that and the prayer book together at one stroke. in lieu of the prayer book a "directory" was issued on the conduct of public worship, in which it was said: [footnote : there does not appear to have been any form of prayer for the dead prior to the issue of gaskell's "prymer" in . the service now in use dates from .] "concerning burial of the dead, all customs of praying, reading, and singing, both in going to or from the grave, are said to have been greatly abused. the simple direction is therefore given, that when any person departeth this life, let the body upon the day of burial be decently attended from the house to the place appointed for public burial, and there immediately interred without any ceremony." penalties were at the same time imposed for using the book of common prayer in any place of worship or in any private family within the kingdom--the fine being £ for a first offence, £ for a second, and a year's imprisonment for the third. the puritans, however, are to be thanked for stopping the then common practice of holding wakes and fairs in the churchyards--a practice traceable no doubt to the celebration of saints' days in the churches, and for that reason suppressed as remnants of popery in - . it need not be said that the burial service and the prayer book came back with the restoration, but the discontinuance of fairs in churchyards seems to have been permanent. many instances, however, have occurred in later years of desecration by pasturing cattle in the churchyards,[ ] and offences of this nature have been so recent that the practice cannot be said with confidence to have even now entirely ceased. but we return to the gravestones. [footnote : at the archbishop's court at colchester in it was reported that at a certain church "the hogs root up the graves and beasts lie in the porch."] from one cause or another it is pretty certain that for every old gravestone now to be seen twenty or more have disappeared. in gough's "sepulchral monuments of great britain" many instances are given of the wanton and wholesale destruction of church and churchyard memorials, even late in the eighteenth century. in some cases the church officers, as already stated, gave public notice prior to removal of gravestones, in order that persons claiming an interest in the remains might repair and restore them; but more frequently the stones were cleared away and destroyed, or put somewhere out of sight without observation. sometimes this was the act of the rector; at other times individuals, exercising rights of ownership, have done the disgraceful work, and occasionally the whole of the parishioners have been implicated. gough says that the inhabitants of letheringham in suffolk, being under the necessity of putting their church into decent order, chose to rebuild it, and sold the whole fabric, monuments and all, to the building contractor, who beat the stones to powder, and sold as much at three shillings a pound for terrace (?) as came to eighty guineas. a portion of the fragments was rescued by the rev. mr. clubbe, and erected in form of a pyramid in the vicarage garden of brandeston, in the same county, with this inscription: [transcriber's note: the following is enclosed in a narrow border] indignant reader! these monumental remains are not, as thou mayest suppose, the ruins of time, but were destroyed in an irruption of the goths so late in the christian era as . credite posteri! chapter viii. reform among the gravestones. that the state of the old churchyards in this country, down to the middle of the nineteenth century, was a public scandal and disgrace, is a remark which applies especially to london, where burial-grounds, packed full of human remains, were still made available for interments on a large scale until or later. the fact was the more discreditable in contrast with the known example of paris, which had, as early as , closed all the city graveyards, and established cemeteries beyond the suburbs. one of the laws passed at the same time by the parliament of paris directed that the graves in the cemeteries should not be marked with stones, and that all epitaphs and inscriptions should be placed on the walls, a regulation which appears to have been greatly honoured in the breach. in louis xvi., recognizing the benefit which paris had derived from the city decree, prohibited graveyards in all the cities and towns of france, and rendered unlawful interments in churches and chapels; and in the national assembly passed an act commanding that all the old burial-grounds, even in the villages, should be closed, and others provided at a distance from habitations.[ ] other states of europe took pattern by these enlightened proceedings, and america was not slow in making laws upon the subject; but great britain, and its worst offender, london, went on in the old way, without let or hindrance, until , for fifteen years prior to that date there had been in progress an agitation against the existing order of things, led by dr. g.a. walker, a drury lane surgeon, living in a very nest of churchyard fevers, who wrote a book and several pamphlets, delivered public lectures, and raised a discussion in the public press. the london city corporation petitioned parliament in for the abolition of burials within the city, and a select committee of the house of commons was at once entrusted with an enquiry on the subject. [footnote : in france in - , in order to check the pestilence, the remains of more than six millions of people were disinterred from the urban churchyards and reburied far away from the dwelling-places. the cemetery of père la chaise was a later creation, having been consecrated in .] the following were the official figures shewing the burials in the london district[ ] from to , and it was asserted that many surreptitious interments were unrecorded: from to , " to , " to , " to , total , , in the same year ( ) a export was presented to parliament by the select committee on "the improvement of the health of towns," and especially on "the effect of the interment of bodies in towns." its purport may be summed up in the following quotation: "the evidence ... gives a loathsome picture of the unseemly and demoralizing practices which result from the crowded condition of the existing graveyards--practices which could scarcely have been thought possible in the present state of society.... we cannot arrive at any other conclusion than that the nuisance of interments in great towns and the injury arising to the health of the community are fully proved." [footnote : london was much increased in area by the passing of sir benjamin hall's "metropolis local management act of ."] among the witnesses examined were sir benjamin brodie and dr. g.r. williams. in a bill was prepared to deal with the matter, but it was not until that an act was passed "to make better provision for the interment of the dead in and near the metropolis." powers were conferred upon the general board of health to establish cemeteries or enlarge burial-grounds, and an order in council was made sufficient for closing any of the old churchyards either wholly or with exceptions to be stipulated in the order. one month's notice was all that was needed to set the act in operation, and in urgent cases seven days; but it was found necessary in to pass another act for the purpose of raising funds; and in a more stringent act was put upon the statute book to deal summarily with the churchyards. this was, in the the following session, extended to england and wales, the general board of health having reported strongly in favour of a scheme for "extra-mural sepulture" in the country towns, declaring that the graveyards of these places were in no better condition than those of london. consequently, in the years which followed , a general closing of churchyards took place throughout the metropolis, and to a lesser extent throughout the kingdom, and an active crusade against all similar burial-grounds was instituted, which may be said to be still in operation. the substitution of new cemeteries in remote and mostly picturesque places was of immediate advantage in many ways, but it did little or nothing to remedy the dilapidated appearance of the old graveyards, which indeed, now that they brought in no revenues, became in many cases painfully neglected, dejected, and forlorn. happily, in , the metropolitan public gardens association was established, and its influence has been very marked in the improvement of the old enclosures and their conversion into recreation grounds. the metropolitan board of works, the london county council, the city corporation, public vestries, and private persons, have shared in the good work, but the chief instrument has been the public gardens association. of old burial-grounds now open as public gardens in the london district there are more than a hundred. care is always taken to preserve the sacred soil from profane uses, games being prohibited, and the improvements confined to paths and seats, levelling the ground and planting with trees and flowers. the gravestones, though removed to the sides of the enclosure, are numbered and scheduled, and all in which any living person can claim an interest are left untouched. no stones are ever destroyed in the process of reformation, but previous ill-usage and natural decay have rendered very many of them illegible, and in another century or so all these once fond memorials will probably have become blank and mute. to the middle of the nineteenth century may also be assigned the change which we now see in the character of our gravestones. quite in the beginning of the century the vulgar and grotesque carvings and scriptural barbarisms of the eighteenth century had given place to a simple form of memorial in which it was rare to find the least effort at ornament; but, as soon as the burial acts were passed and the old churchyards were succeeded by the new cemeteries, the tasteful and elegant designs which are to be seen in every modern burial-ground were introduced, founded in great measure upon the artistic drawings of mr. d.a. clarkson, whose manifold suggestions, published in , are still held in the highest admiration. chapter ix. preserving the gravestones. mankind in all ages and in all places has recognized the sanctity of the burial-place. among the new zealanders, when they were first revealed to europeans as savages, the place of interment was _tapu_, or holy. the wild and warlike afghanistans have also a profound reverence for their burial-grounds, which they speak of expressively as "cities of the silent." among the turks the utmost possible respect is paid to the resting-places of the dead, and nowhere, perhaps (says mrs. stone in "god's acre"), are the burial-places so beautiful. the great and increasing size of turkish cemeteries is due to the repugnance of the people to disturbing the soil where once a body has been laid. the chinese and the inhabitants of the sunda isles (says the authority just quoted) seem to vie with each other in the reverence with which they regard the burial-places of their ancestors, which almost invariably occupy the most beautiful and sequestered sites. the graves are usually overgrown with long grasses and luxuriantly flowering plants. in like manner the moors have a particular shrub which overspreads their graves, and no one is permitted to pluck a leaf or a blossom. the simple breton people are deeply religious, and their veneration for the dead is intense. they are frequently to be seen--men, women, and children--kneeling on the ground in their churchyards, praying among the graves. it may therefore be well believed that in the period of burial reform which overspread the continent in the earlier part of the nineteenth century there was great opposition in brittany to the establishment of remote cemeteries. the thought of burying elsewhere than in the parish churchyard was to the minds of the parishioners a species of impiety. when reasoned with they would answer: "our fathers were buried here, and you would separate us from our dead. let us be buried here, where our kinsfolk can see our graves from their windows, and the children can come at evening to pray." in vain they were shewn the danger of accumulating corpses in a place which was usually in the centre of the population. they shook their heads and cried: "death comes only by the will of god." possibly, to some extent, this feeling is universal among mankind. there is in our hearts an innate reverence for the burial-place; we tread by instinct lightly over the sleeping-places of the dead, and look with silent awe upon their tombs. the feeling being part of our humanity, we might suppose it to be universal, and be apt to conclude that, in our more primitive churchyards at least, we should find some effort to preserve the whole or a large proportion of the memorials which are there dedicated to departed merit, hallowed by love and made sacred by sorrow. but it may truthfully be said that of all the headstones (not to speak alone of _decorated_ headstones) which were set up prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century, by far the greater number have disappeared! indeed the cases in which the old churchyards have been the objects of any care whatever are lamentably few, while attempts to preserve the old gravestones are almost unknown. the ordinary experience is to find the churchyard more or less neglected and forgotten, and the grey and aged stones either sinking into the earth or tottering to their fall. it cannot be imagined that the clergy, the wardens, and the sextons have failed to see these things; but they have, presumedly, more pressing matters to attend to, and it seems to be nobody's business to attend to such ownerless and worthless objects. some gravediggers will tell you that the natural destiny of the gravestone is the grave! they will shew you the old fellows slowly descending into the ground, and they have heard the parson say perhaps that the "trembling of the earth" will in time shake them all inevitably out of sight. i have heard it mentioned as an article of belief among sextons that a hundred years is the fair measure of a head-stone's "life" above ground, but this reckoning is much too short for the evidences, and makes no allowance for variable circumstances. in some places, keston for instance, the church is founded upon a bed of chalk, and out of the chalk the graves are laboriously hewn. it is obvious therefore that the nature of the soil, as it is yielding or impervious, must be a prime factor in the question of survival. it may be granted, however, that our progenitors in selecting their burial-grounds had the same preference for a suitable site as we have in our own day, and, notwithstanding exceptions which seem to shew that the church and not the churchyard was the one thing thought of, the law of a light soil for interments is sufficiently regular to give us an average duration of a gravestone's natural existence. the term "natural" will apply neither to those fortunate ones whose lives are studiously prolonged, nor of course to the majority whose career is wilfully, negligently, or accidentally shortened. but that, under ordinary circumstances, the stones gradually sink out of sight, and at a certain rate of progression, is beyond a doubt. two illustrations may help the realization of this fact, such as may be seen in hundreds of our churchyards. [illustration: fig. . bethnal green. illustration: fig. . plumstead. sinking gravestones.] the sketch of bethnal green (fig. ) was made just as the churchyard was about to undergo a healthy conversion, and it marks a very long period of inaction. the plumstead case (fig. ), though less extreme, is even more informing, as it seems to measure the rate at which the disappearance goes on; the dates on the three stones coinciding accurately with their comparative depths in the ground. whether the motion of the earth has any influence in this connection need not now be discussed, because the burying of the gravestones may be accounted for in a simple and feasible manner, without recourse to scientific argument. it is undoubtedly the burrowing of the worms, coupled with the wasting action of rain and frost, which causes the phenomenon. instead, however, of the sexton's supposititious century, the period required for total disappearance may more accurately be regarded as from to years. it has been found by careful observation in a few random cases that the stones subside at the rate of about one foot in forty or fifty years, and, as their ordinary height is from feet to feet inches, we can readily tell, providing the rate rules evenly, the date when any particular stone may be expected to vanish. in confirmation of this theory is the fact that scarcely any headstones are discoverable of a date earlier than , and whenever they have been left to their fate the veterans of years have scarcely more than their heads above ground. wherever we find otherwise, it may be assumed that conscientious church officers or pious parishioners have bethought them of the burial-ground, lifted up the old stones and set them once more on their feet. of recent years there has grown up and been fostered a better feeling for the ancient churchyards, and the ivy-clad churches of hornsey and hendon may be cited as examples familiar to londoners in which the taste engendered by a beautiful edifice has influenced for good its surroundings. in both churchyards are many eighteenth-century stones in excellent preservation. neither place, however, has yet been "restored" or "reformed" in the modern sense, and there is no reason why it should be. in many places, as the town grows and spreads, it is well to convert the ancient graveyard into a public garden, so that it be decently and reverently done. but this ought never to be undertaken needlessly or heedlessly. there are scruples of individuals to be regarded, and a strong case ought always to exist before putting into effect such a radical change. but it usually happens that transformation is the only remedy, and nothing short of a thorough reaction will rescue god's acre from the ruin and contempt into which it has fallen. yet we should ever remember that, whatever we may do to the surface, it is still the place where our dead fathers rest. "earth to earth and dust to dust, here lie the evil and the just, here the youthful and the old, here the fearful and the bold, here the matron and the maid, in one silent bed are laid." the utilitarian impulse, though frequently blamed for the "desecration" of our churchyards, is really less accountable for these conversions than the culpable neglect which in too many cases has forced the only measure of correction. therefore they who would keep the sacred soil unmolested should take heed that it be properly maintained. a churchyard is in hopeful case when we see the mounds carefully levelled, the stones set up in serried ranks, and the turf between rolled smooth and trimmed and swept. there is no outrage in levelling the ground. the christian feeling which clings to the grave, and even to the gravestone, does not attach to the mound of earth which is wrongly called the grave. this mound is not even a christian symbol. it is a mere survival of paganism, being a small copy of the barrow or tumulus, of which we have specimens still standing in various parts of our islands and the continent, to mark the sepulchres of prehistoric and possibly savage chieftains. no compunction should be, and probably none is, suffered when we remove the grave-mounds, which is indeed the first essential to the protection and beautification of an obsolete burial-place. but, if possible, let the churchyard remain a churchyard; for, of all the several methods which are usually resorted to for "preservation," the best from the sentimental view is that which keeps the nearest to the first intent. there can be no disputing that a churchyard is in its true aspect when it looks like a churchyard, providing it be duly cared for. some persons of practical ideas will, however, favour such improvements as will banish the least elegant features of the place and range the more sightly ones midst lawns and flowers; while others, still more thorough, will be satisfied with nothing short of sweeping away all traces of the graves, and transforming the whole space at one stroke into a public playground. the choice of systems is in some degree a question of environment. wherever open ground is needed for the health and enjoyment of dwellers in towns, it is now generally conceded that, with certain reservations and under reasonable conditions, disused churchyards--especially such as are neglected and deformed--shall in all possible cases be transferred from the closed ledger of the dead to the current account of the living. the following lines, which were written upon the restoration of cheltenham churchyard, may be applied to most of such instances: "sleep on, ye dead! 'tis no rude hand disturbs your resting-place; but those who love the spot have come at length to beautify your long-neglected homes. how loud ye have been speaking to us all! but the mammon and the fading pleasures of this busy world hath made us deaf. * * * forgive the past! henceforth flowers shall bloom upon the surface of your dwellings. the lilac in the spring shall blossom, and the sweet briar shall exhale its fragrant smell. e'en the drooping fuchsia shall not be wanting to adorn your tombs; while the weeping willow, pointing downwards, speaks significantly to the living, that a grave awaits us all." [illustration: fig. . cheshunt.] [illustration: fig. . hatfield.] but in rural spots, where there is abundance of room and almost superfluity of nature, a well-kept churchyard, with all its venerable features, studiously protected and reverently cared for, is one of the best inheritances of a country life. illustrations of this may occur to most observers, but as a case in point i may refer to cheshunt, on the borders of hertfordshire. some distance from the town-fringed highway, the village church, ancient and picturesque, stands amidst its many generations of people--living and dead--hard by a little street of old-world cottages. the spot and its surroundings are beautiful, and the churchyard alone gives proof that the locality has been under the influence of culture from generation to generation. in few places are there so many and such artistic specimens of allegorical carvings on the headstones. the usual experience is to find one or two, seldom more than a dozen, of these inventions worth notice, and only in rare instances to light upon anything of the kind distinctly unique; but at cheshunt there are more than a hundred varieties of sculptured design and workmanship, all the stones standing at the proper angle, and all in good condition. fig. .--at cheshunt. "to mary lee, died july, , aged years." in the illustration i selected at cheshunt the left half of the picture appears to denote life and the right half death. in the former are the vigorous tree, the towers and fortresses, the plans and working implements of an active existence. in the latter the withered tree, with the usual emblems of death and eternity, emphasizes the state beyond the grave, and in the centre are mushrooms, probably to point the lesson of the new life out of decay. hatfield is another instance of preservation without change, none of the old stones having, so far as one can judge, been allowed to sink into the earth, nor, as is too often the case, to heel over, to be then broken up, carted away, or put to pave the church and churchyard. there is quite a collection of primitive and diminutive headstones, carefully ranged against the south wall of hatfield church, dating from to ; and the specimens of carving in the older parts of the churchyard are of great number and many designs. the one which appears in the sketch (fig. ) is curious by reason of the peculiar decoration which fringes the upper edge of the stone. it is somewhat worn away, and i cannot discover whether the ornament was intended for some sort of aigrette, or, which it closely resembles at the present time, a string of skulls. fig. .--at hatfield. "to the wife of john malsty (?), died ." there appears here, as elsewhere, to have been a tendency at times to repeat unduly such familiar figures as the open book, but, as a whole, hatfield is a good example of a country churchyard. there are many other old burial-grounds thoughtfully kept in as good, or even better, order than the two here quoted; but it is for the respect shewn to the ancient memorials of the village fathers, rather than the churchyards themselves, that i have ventured to select them as patterns for imitation. there is another curious border on a stone in the secluded but well-kept country churchyard of northolt, middlesex. [illustration: fig. northolt.] fig. .--at northolt. "to william cob, died th september , aged years." twickenham, in the same county, but now grown into a town, has modified its churchyard to its needs, without much change, and i give it a sketch in recognition of a sufficient and not excessive well-doing. neither of these two examples call for other remark, being of simple interpretation. [illustration: fig. . twickenham.] fig. .--at twickenham. "to elizabeth (?) haynes, died , aged years." but while we find the few to be commended, what a common experience it is, on the other hand, to come upon a neglected churchyard; the crippled stones bending at all angles, many of them cracked, chipped, and otherwise disfigured, and the majority half hidden in rank weeds and grass. in some places, owing to climatic conditions, moss or lichen has effaced every sign of inscription or ornament from the old stones; and there are localities which appear to be really unfortunate in their inability to resist the destructive influence of the weather upon their tombs, which, perhaps because they are of unsuitable material, go to decay in, comparatively speaking, a few years. as a rule, however, these relics of our ancestors need not and ought not to prematurely perish and disappear from the face of the earth. where the graveyard is still used as a place of interment, or remains as it was when closed against interments, the sexton or a labourer should have it in perpetual care. the grass and weeds should be kept in constant check, and the tombs of all kinds preserved at the proper perpendicular. if not too much to ask, the application of a little soap and water at long intervals might be recommended in particular instances; but all such details depend upon circumstances, and may be left to the individual judgment. provided there is the disposition, there will always be found the way and the means to make the holy ground a decent and a pleasant place. reverence for the dead, especially among their known descendants, will generally operate as a check upon hasty or extravagant "improvements," and it may be expected that those responsible for the administration of local affairs will, for the most part, when they set about the beautification of their churchyard, decide to do what is necessary with no needless alterations. this plan of preservation, as already intimated, is probably the most desirable. but we know instances, especially in and around london, where good work has been done by judiciously thinning out the crop of tombstones, clearing away the least presentable features of the place, and making the ground prim with flower-beds and borders. to do this much, and to introduce a few seats, will leave the graveyard still a graveyard in the old sense, and requires no authority outside the church. it may be prudent to take a vote of the vestry on the subject as a defence against irate parishioners, but, if nothing be done beyond a decorous renovation of the burial-ground, the matter is really one which is entirely within the functions of the parson and churchwardens. moreover, although it is not generally known, the expenses of such works are a legal charge against the parish, provided the churchwardens have had the previous countenance of their colleagues the overseers. the account for the due and proper maintenance of the disused churchyard may be sent to the burial board, if there be such a board, and, if not, to the overseers, and the cost will in any case fall upon the poor-rate. converting the ground absolutely into a public garden is quite a different matter, and, notwithstanding its difficulties, it is the course usually adopted. first, the consent of the vestry is imperative, and every step is carefully measured by a stringent act of parliament. a petition for a faculty must be presented to the bishop of the diocese, and before it can be granted there must be an official enquiry in public before the diocesan chancellor--always a profound lawyer, learned in ecclesiastical jurisprudence. everybody who has any claim or objection as to any particular grave-space, or to the whole scheme altogether, has a right to be heard; all reasonable requests are usually granted, and the closing order, if made, is mostly full of conditions and reservations in favour of surviving relatives and others who have shewn cause for retaining this tomb and that stone undisturbed. in practice it is found that there are not very many such claims, but it sometimes happens that serious obstacles are left standing in the way of the landscape gardener. one almost invariable regulation requires that places shall be found within the enclosure for all the old stones in positions where they can be seen and their inscriptions read; to range them in one or more rows against the interior of the boundary fence is usually accepted as compliance with this rule. injudicious arrangement occasionally obscures some of the inscriptions, but they are all accessible if required, and anything is better than extinction. it is earnestly to be hoped that at least equal care is taken of the memorials in burial-grounds which are less ceremoniously closed. where the work is thoughtfully conceived and discreetly accomplished, much good and little harm is done to a populous place by clearing the ground, laying out footpaths, and planting trees and flowers. but the gravestone, the solemn witness "sacred to the memory" of the dead, is a pious trust which demands our respect and protection, at least so long as it is capable of proclaiming its mission. when it has got past service and its testimony has been utterly effaced by time, it is not so easy to find arguments for its preservation. there is no sense or utility in exhibiting a blank tablet, and i have seen without scruple or remorse such superannuated vestiges employed in repairing the church fabric. but this, be it understood, is only when the stone is irretrievably beyond _memento mori_ service, and on the clear condition that it is employed in the furtherance of religious work. it is true that a stone is only a stone, whatever it may have been used for, but a peculiar sanctity is in most minds associated with the grave, and we ought not to run the risk of shocking tender-hearted people by degrading even the dead memorial of the dead to profane and secular purposes. and yet, what has become in too many cases of the old gravestones? the very old ones we may perhaps account for, but where are the middle-aged ones of the eighteenth century? it cannot be doubted, alas, that they have in many churchyards been deliberately taken away and destroyed to make room for new ones. districts comprising many parishes may be pointed out with all their old churches in the midst of their old churchyards, but without one old gravestone standing. the rule and practice have been to quietly remove the relics of the forgotten sires in order to dig new graves for a new generation. the habit, as just said, rules by districts, and this is the case in most matters connected with the subject of this essay. it is a general and remarkable truth that "good" and "bad" churchyards abound in groups. the force of example or the instinct of imitation may explain the fact, but it affords a sad reflection upon the morality of the burial-place. kirke white asks: "who would lay his body in the city burial-place, to be cast up again by some rude sexton?" in my experience the chief sinner is not the city, but the country, sexton. other memorials than the headstone are scarcely included in my subject. few of the slate slabs which answer the purpose in wales and some of the bordering counties can maintain their inscriptions in legible condition for a very long period, and they are in all respects inferior to stone in durability. this thought would have given no anxiety to the writer of some chapters on churchyards which appeared in "blackwood's magazine" about . said he: "in parts of warwickshire and some of the adjacent counties, more especially in the churchyards of the larger towns, the frightful fashion of black tombstones is almost universal--black tombstones, tall and slim, and lettered in gold, looking for all the world like upright coffin-lids.... some village burial-grounds here have, however, escaped this treatment, and within the circuit of a few miles round warwick itself are many small hamlet churches each surrounded by its lowly flock of green graves and grey headstones.... some half sunk into the churchyard mould, many carved out into cherubins with their trumpeter's cheeks and expanded wings, or with the awful emblems, death's heads and bones and hour-glasses." of the so-called black tombstones i have seen none other than slate. in a short tour through wales, in , i found very few old headstones. most of the memorials in the churchyards were constructed of slate, which abundant material is devoted to every conceivable purpose. there is a kind of clay-slate more durable than some of the native stones, and even the poorer slate which perisheth is lasting in comparison with the wooden planks which have been more or less adopted in many burial-places, but can never have been expected to endure more than a few brief years. wherever seen they are usually in decay, and under circumstances so forlorn that it is an act of mercy to end their existence. fig. .--at high barnet. i conclude my english illustrations of the gravestones with one selected from the churchyard at kingston-on-thames, and i leave its interpretation to the reader. [illustration: fig. . high barnet.] [illustration: fig. . kingston-on-thames.] fig. .--at kingston-on-thames. "to thomas bennett, died th dec. , aged years." the remainder of my unambitious book will be mostly devoted to impressions gained in ireland and scotland and on the continent in my autumn holidays. chapter x. old gravestones in ireland. [illustration: fig. . swords.] in entering upon a chapter dealing with "old gravestones in ireland," one is tempted to follow a leading case and sum up the subject in the words: "there are no old gravestones in ireland." but this would be true only in a sense. of those primitive and rustic carvings, which are so distinctive of the eighteenth-century memorials in england, i have found an almost entire absence in my holiday-journey ings about ireland--the churchyards of which i have sampled, wherever opportunity was afforded me, from belfast and portrush in the north, down to killarney and queenstown in the south. but there are unquestionably old gravestones of quite a different order of simplicity in the irish burial-places, the most common type being the rough slab of stone, several of which are here sketched at random from the graveyard of the large village or little town of swords, ten miles or so north of dublin (fig. ). very few of these stones bear any inscription, and, according to the belief of the local residents, never have been carved or even shaped in any way. in one or two instances, however, the effort of trimming the edges of the stone is clearly visible, and in rare cases we see the pious but immature attempts of the amateur mason to perpetuate, if only by initials, the memory of the deceased.[ ] some such records still remain, but many have doubtless perished, for the material is only the soft freestone so easily obtainable in the district, and the rains and frosts of no great number of years have sufficed to obliterate all such shallow carvings; the surfaces of the laminated rock being even now in process of peeling off before our eyes. [footnote : in a barren record of facts, such as this chapter is meant to be, i avoid as far as possible deductions and reflections apart from my immediate subject; but it is impossible to pursue an investigation of this character without being deeply interested both in the past history and present life of the people. i cannot help saying that in one day's walk from malahide to balbriggan i learnt far more of the irish peasantry, the irish character, and the irish "problem" than i had been able to acquire in all my reading, supported by not a little experience in the capital and great towns of ireland. the village streets, the cabins, the schools, the agriculture and the land, the farmer and the landlord, the poverty and the hospitality of the people, were all to be studied at first hand; and there were churches by the way at swords and rush which the archaeologist will seek in vain to match in any other country. the bound tower (celtic no doubt) at the former place, and the battlemented fortalice, which is more like a castle than a church, at rush, are both worth a special visit.] the cross and "t.l." scratched on one of the stones appears to be recent work, and the wonderful preservation of the stone to lawrence paine, of , can only be accounted for by the supposition that it has long lain buried, and been lately restored to the light. the stone is of the same perishable kind as the others, and it is certain that it could not have survived exposure to the atmosphere, as its date would imply, for upwards of years. it may even be found that the weather has chipped off the edges of the stones which now appear so jagged, shapeless, and grotesque; but, from recent evidences gathered elsewhere, it is but too probable that these rude pillars have been, and still are, set up as they come from the quarry, without dressing and free from any carving or attention whatever. many instances may be found in which slabs of stone, or even slate, have been erected quite recently, the edges untrimmed, and the name of the deceased simply _painted_ upon them more or less inartistically, as in the sketch from drogheda (fig. ). such crude examples are the more remarkable in a busy and thriving port like drogheda, and amid many handsome monuments, than among the peasantry of the villages; and it is easy to imagine that if nothing more durable than paint has been employed to immortalize the dead in past times all traces must have speedily disappeared. the illustrations from drogheda give the whole inscription in each case, neither having date nor age, nor any other particular beyond the name. the memorial on the left hand is of slate--the other two of freestone; and the slate in the northern parts of ireland is the preferable of the two materials. [illustration: fig. . drogheda.] there are at bangor, ten miles west of belfast, many such slate records, which have endured for more than a century, and are still in excellent preservation. one which attracted my especial notice at bangor was of the professional character here depicted, and in memory of one of those bold privateers who were permitted to sail the seas on their own account in the old war times. fig. .--at bangor, ireland. the following is the epitaph, as clearly to be read now as on the day when it was carved on this slab of irish slate, more than a century since: "born to a course of manly action free, i dauntless trod ye fluctuating sea in pompous war or happier peace to bring joy to my sire and honour to my king. and much by favour of the god was done ere half the term of human life was run. one fatal night, returning from the bay where british fleets ye gallic land survey, whilst with warm hope my trembling heart beat high, my friends, my kindred, and my country nigh, lasht by the winds the waves arose and bore our ship in shattered fragments to the shore. there ye flak'd surge opprest my darkening sight, and there my eyes for ever lost the light. "captain george colvill of the private ship of war 'amazon,' and only son of robert colvill of bangor, was wrecked near this ground th february , in ye nd year of his age." a possible explanation of the long endurance of this slate slab may be found in the practice which prevails in this and some other churchyards of giving all such memorials a periodical coat of paint; of which, however, in the case here quoted there is no remaining trace. altogether, primitive as they may be, the gravestones of the last century in ireland, so far as i have seen them, compare favourably with the works of the hedge-mason in england which we have seen in earlier chapters. even the poor pillar of rough stone, unhewn, ungarnished, and bare as it is, represents an affectionate remembrance of the dead which is full of pathos, and has a refinement in its simplicity which commands our sympathy far above the semi-barbarous engravings of heads and skulls which we have previously pictured. the immaturity of provincial art in ireland is at least redeemed by an absence of such monstrous figures and designs as we at the present day usually associate with the carvings of savages in the african interior. but the eighteenth-century gravestones in ireland are not all of the primitive kind--many of them being as artistic and well-finished as any to be found in other parts of the british isles. the predominant type is the "i.h.s.," surmounted by the cross, which appears on probably four-fifths of the inscribed stones of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in ireland. the only instances which came under my notice bearing any resemblance to the incipient notions of human heads so frequently met with in certain parts of england were the three here copied (fig. ). nos. and are taken from gravestones in the old churchyard near queenstown, and the other appears in duplicate on one stone at muckross abbey by the lakes of killarney.[ ] the stately wreck of muckross abbey has in its decay enclosed within its walls the tombs of knights and heroes whose monuments stand in gorgeous contrast to the desolation which is mouldering around them; while on the south side of the ancient edifice is the graveyard in which the peasant-fathers of the hamlet sleep, the green mounds which cover them in some instances marked by carved stones taken from the adjacent ruins. both abbey and grounds are still used for interments, together with the enclosure about the little church of killaghie on the neighbouring eminence--a church which (like a few others) enjoys the reputation of being the smallest in the kingdom. [footnote : the muckross stone (no. ) was overgrown with ivy which quite covered up the inscription, but its date was probably about . of the two from queenstown, no. is to mary gammell, , aged ; and no. to roger brettridge, , aged .] [illustration: fig. . bangor, ireland.] [illustration: fig. . muckross and queenstown.] i leave to the ethnologists the task of accounting for these abnormal carvings in the south of ireland, and associating them with the like productions of the same period in the south of england. or perhaps i ought rather to excuse my insufficient researches, which, though spread over a broad area, are yet confined to but a few of the many spots available, and may very probably have passed by unexplored the fruitful fields. but, in the words of professor stephens, the apostle of runic monuments, i claim for this work that it is "only a beginning, a breaking of the ice, a ground upon which others may build." my pages are but "feelers groping out things and thoughts for further examination." chapter xi. old gravestones in scotland. a very peculiar interest attaches to the old stones which survive in the burial-grounds of scotland. regarded generally they are of a description quite apart from the prevalent features of their english and irish prototypes. taking the same period as hitherto in limiting our purview of the subject, that is from the latter part of the seventeenth to the early part of the nineteenth century, it may perhaps be said that the scottish headstones are tablets of scottish history and registers of scottish character during a long and memorable time. the one all-prevalent feature everywhere is indicative of the severe piety and self-sacrifice of an age and a people remarkable for one of the simplest professions of faith that has ever existed under the christian dispensation. the rigid discipline, contempt for form, and sustained humility of the old covenanters are written deeply in the modest stones which mark the green graves of their faithful dead during a period of fully two hundred years. the vainglory of a graven stone to exalt the virtues of imperfect men and women was to them a forbidden thing; the ostentation even of a name carved on a slab was at variance with doctrine; the cravings of a poor humanity to be remembered after death had to be satisfied with bare initials, and initials are all that were written on the gravestones in many thousands of cases, probably ninety per cent, of the whole, throughout the eighteenth century and approximate years. but the rule was not without its exceptions, often of novel and peculiar description. the skull and crossbone series, so common in the south, have no place in north britain; while the symbol of the cross, so frequent in ireland, is very rarely to be found in any shape whatever within the boundaries of a scottish burial-place. i present four specimen types from the old chapel-yard at inverness. [illustration: fig. . inverness.] [illustration: fig. . braemar.] fig. .--at inverness. on the stone no. the tailor's tools--shears, goose, and bodkin--are clear enough, and i was told that the figures on the stone in the lower left-hand corner (no. ) are locally recognized as the shuttle and some other requisite of the weaver's trade. inverness had spinning and weaving for its staple industries when pennant visited the place in . its exports of cordage and sacking were considerable, and (says pennant) "the linen manufacture saves the town above £ a year, which used to go to holland." in the example (no. ) the short "and" (&) leaves no doubt that w.f. & j. mcp. (probably mcpherson and his wife) are there buried; and the similar information is almost as certainly conveyed in the manifold cases in which appears the sign which occupies the same position in the two lower stones (nos. and ). these, however, are all of later date, and may be set down as developments, or rather corruptions, of the original form. the same signs, however, constantly occur in all the northern graveyards. scotland has also its cruder form of memorial in the rough unhewn slabs of native freestone, which are used in all parts of the british isles wherever such material is readily procurable. fig. .--at braemar. two of these slabs of different degrees are seen in my braemar sketch, but both seem of one family and serve to shew us the unconscious evolution of a doctrinal law into a national custom. the employment of initials, originally the sacrifice and self-denial of a dissentient faith, is here, as in other instances, combined with the catholic emblem of the cross. this little graveyard of braemar, lying among the moors and mountains which surround balmoral, and accustomed to receiving illustrious pilgrims whose shoe-string the poor gravestone tramp is not worthy to unloose, is still used for indiscriminate burials, and furnishes several examples of roman catholic interments. wherever such are found in scotland, bearing dates of the eighteenth century, they are usually of the rough character depicted in the sketch. the recumbent slab in the same drawing is given to illustrate the table or altar stone, which throughout scotland has been used all through the covenantic period to evade the covenantic rule of the simple anonymous gravestone, for such memorials are almost invariably engraved and inscribed with designs and epitaphs, sometimes of the most elaborate character. but these are not mere gravestones: they are "tombs." [illustration: fig. . stirling] fig. .--at stirling. in all parts of scotland at which we find departures from the conventional simplicity of the gravestone, the variation inclines abundantly towards the symbols of trade and husbandry. at stirling, in the noble churchyard perched on the castle rock, the weaver's shuttle noticed at inverness appears in many varieties, for pennant tells us that in stirling, with only inhabitants, was an important factory of "tartanes and shalloons," and employed about thirty looms in making carpets.[ ] occasionally the bobbin is represented alone, but the predominant fashion is the shuttle open and revealing the bobbin in its place. this is as it appears in no. of the four sketches from stirling, where it seems to indicate, with the shovel and rake, a mingling of weaver and agriculturist. the other trade emblems speak for themselves, excepting the reversed figure in the stone of (no. ). this sign has been variously interpreted, but the most reliable authorities say that it is a merchant's mark used not only in stirling but in other parts of scotland, if not of england. there are in howff burial-ground, dundee, and in many country churchyards round about that town and stirling, numerous varieties of this figure, some having the " " in the ordinary unreversed shape, some with and some without the *, some of both shapes resting on the letter "m," and others independent of any support whatever. it has also been supposed to have some connection with the masons' marks frequently to be seen in old churches, and is even regarded as possibly of prehistoric origin.[ ] [footnote : pennant pronounced the view from stirling heights "the finest in scotland."] [footnote : the vulgar explanation of the sign is " d. discount on the shilling," and some of the guide-books are not much better informed when they assume that it marks stirling as the fourth city of scotland, for in the old roll of scottish burghs stirling stands fifth.] fig. .--at blairgowrie. the stone copied at blairgowrie is an enigma which i scarcely dare to unravel, but it will admit of several interpretations. "i.e." probably stands for john elder and "m.h." for his "spouse," but to set out john elder's name in full, and at the same time to insert his initials, shews either a misconception of, or disregard for, the principles and usages of the presbytery. otherwise, in some respects, this example is almost worthy to be classed with the more degenerate forms of churchyard sculpture in england; the skull, the crown, the hour-glass, the coffin, and the bones being all well-known and conventional signs. the compasses may stand for john elder's profession, but the figure which resembles a cheese-cutter, just below the crown, can only be a subject of conjecture. this stone, which is one of the least artistic i have met with in scotland, is an evidence to shew that the rural sculptor was as ready in the north as in the south to blossom forth had he not been checked by the rigours of the church. at times indeed the mortal passion for a name to live to posterity was too strong to be altogether curbed, as we may see manifested even in the prescribed initials when they are moulded of heroic size, from to inches being no uncommon height. remarkable also is the fact just mentioned (page ) that, concurrently with the erection of these dumb headstones, there were flat or table stones[ ] allowed, upon which not only were the names and virtues of the departed fully set forth, but all sorts of emblematical devices introduced. the table tomb was probably in itself a vanity, and, the boundary passed, there appears to have been no limit to its excesses. there are a great many instances of this at inverness, aberdeen, keith, dunblane, and elsewhere, and the stone which appears in the sketch from braemar is only one of several in that very limited space. such exceptional cases seem to indicate some local relaxation from the austerity of the period, which was apparently most intense in the centres of population. humility at the grave extended even to the material of the gravestone. at aberdeen, the granite city, few of the last-century gravestones are of any better material than the soft sandstones which must have been imported from elgin or the south. the rule of initials was almost universal. in like manner, when it became the custom to purchase grave-spaces, the simplest possible words were employed to denote the ownership. i noticed one stone in aberdeen bearing on its face the medallion portrait of a lady, and only the words of isaiah, chapter xl. verse : "the voice said, all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field." at the back of the stone is written: "this burying ground, containing two graves, belongs to william rait, merchant. aberdeen, ." the practice of carving on both faces of the headstone is very common in scotland, and, so far as i have observed, in scotland alone; but, strange as it may seem, scotland and ireland when they write gravestone inscriptions have one habit in common, that of beginning their epitaphs, not with the name of the deceased person, but with the name of the person who provides the stone. thus:-- erected by william brown to his father john brown, etc., etc. [footnote : it has been suggested to me that these "tombs" were the luxuries of the wealthier inhabitants.] [illustration: fig. . blairgowrie.] [illustration: fig. . laufen. . cut into stone. . anchor of iron on dwarf stone pillar. . heart and anchor of thin iron on dwarf stone pillar. . iron plate and rod. . wooden cross. . wooden cross.] chapter xii. old gravestones abroad. "abroad" is a big place, and no sufficient treatment under the head of this chapter is possible except to one who has had very great experience and extended research. nevertheless i may, with all due diffidence and modesty, tell the little i know on the subject. my opportunities of investigation have been few, and restricted to a limited area--so restricted and so limited that i cannot tell whether or not the observations i have made may be taken as indications of national habits or merely as idiosyncrasies of the people inhabiting the particular localities which i was able to visit. all the churchyards which i have seen in france, belgium, germany, and switzerland very much resemble each other, and are altogether unlike the graveyards of great britain and her children. it is to the villages we should naturally go for primitive memorials of the dead, but in all the continental villages which i have visited memorials of a permanent character, either old or new, are scarcely to be seen. occasionally a stone slab may be encountered, but almost always of recent date. at laufen in the canton of zurich, near the falls of the rhine, i selected almost at random the examples of memorials shewn in my sketch (fig. ), one or other of which was at the head of nearly every grave. fig. .--at laufen. the average height of these mementoes was about feet, and all the dates which i saw were of the last twenty-five years. permanence indeed is apparently not considered as it is with us in the like circumstances. the british gravestone is trusted to perpetuate at least the names of our departed friends down to the days of our posterity, but the provision made by our neighbours seems to have been for the existing generation only. posterity does not trouble the villagers of switzerland nor their prototypes of other nations around them. this fact was strongly exemplified at neuhausen, a small place on the other bank of the rhine, "five minutes from germany" we were told. fig. .--at neuhausen. in the churchyard at this place was one handsome tombstone, shewn in the drawing, erected apparently in . this was evidence of somewhat ancient art, and i looked about for the old gravestones which should have kept it company. erect in its place there was not one, but in the remotest corner of the enclosure i came upon several stones lying flat, one upon another, the uppermost and only visible inscription bearing the recent date of ! only twenty years or so "on sentry" at the grave, and already relieved from duty! there was likewise a miscellaneous heap of old crosses, etc., of iron and wood, the writing on which had disappeared, and they might reasonably have been condemned as of no further service; but that gravestones in perfect preservation should have been thought to have served their full purpose in a little over twenty years, and be cast aside as no longer requisite, was a remarkable lesson in national character. all the graves were flat, and at the head of every recent one was a small iron slab bearing a number. many of those which had crosses were hung with immortelles, composed generally of glass-beads. [illustration: fig. . neuhausen.] in neuhausen graveyard, at the end of the row of graves, are seen two rings protruding from the ground. lying near is an iron shield with two similar rings surmounting it. it is readily supposed that the first-named rings are also attached to a shield buried in the earth, and so it proves. in order that no space may be lost between the graves, the shields are used alternately to serve as the dividing wall, and are then drawn out, thus enabling the sexton to pack the coffins close together. the towns and cities abroad have their cemeteries beyond the outskirts, as is the practice here. occasionally an old churchyard is to be met with, but never an old gravestone as we know it. still there are instances in which ancient carvings of the same character have been saved by attachment to the church or churchyard wall. several such are to be seen in german churchyards long since converted to purposes of recreation, and one at heidelberg may be taken as an example. fig. .--at heidelberg to "barbara fosterii," died , aged . beneath is the text from the first epistle of peter, chapter i. verses and . "all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the lord endureth for ever." at lucerne, tinder similar conditions, the striking figures of two skeletons, partly in military garb, keep guard over the tablet which records the virtues of a departed hero. he was probably a soldier, but the figure of a _lictor_ on the left with his _fasces_ of axe and rods seems to betoken some civil employment. in ancient times the _lictors_ walked in advance of the magistrates, and executed sentence when pronounced. [illustration: fig. . lucerne.] [illustration: fig. . heidelberg.] fig. .--at lucerne. to "iodoco bernardo hartman," died , aged years. the two last-given illustrations may possibly belong to the category of mural tablets rather than that of gravestones, being fixed apparently by original design, and not by afterthought, as in our "converted" burial-grounds, against the outer walls of the church. there are, however, no other remains which i could discover bearing any resemblance to the old british headstone, and the evanescent character which seems to have attached for a certain period to the memorials of the dead among our neighbours abroad forbids the expectation that any such as those which have appeared in our earlier chapters are to be found in europe outside the boundaries of our empire. in more modern observances, especially in the centres of population, english and continental manners more nearly approximate; and in the many new cemeteries which are now to be found adjacent to the cities and large towns of western europe there are tombs and gravestones as many and as costly as are to be found in any round london. in germany the present practice appears to be single interments, and one inscription only on the stone, and that studiously brief. thus: [transcriber's note: inscriptions below enclosed in a border] eduard schmidt geb d. oct., . gest d. jan., . this i copied in the cemetery at schaffhausen. but at hendon, a north-west suburb of london, has recently been placed against the church wall a still simpler memorial, a small slab of marble, inscribed: carl richard loose b. . . : d. . . . for brevity _in excelsis_ the following, from the cemetery at heidelberg, can hardly be eclipsed: michael seiler .-- . sometimes the asterisk is used by the germans to denote birth, and the dagger (or cross) for death, thus: hier risht in gott natalie brethke * ± chapter xiii. very old gravestones. although, for reasons already explained or surmised, the gravestones in our burial-grounds seldom exceed an age of years, there has probably been no time and no race of men in which such memorials were unknown. professor dr. john stuart, the scottish antiquary,[ ] opines that "the erection of stones to the memory of the dead has been common to all the world from the earliest times," and there are many instances recorded in the old testament, as when rachel died and jacob "set a pillar upon her grave" (genesis, chapter xxxv. verse ); and another authority, mr. r. r. brash,[ ] in a similar strain, comments on the sentiment which appears to have been common to human nature in all ages, and among all conditions of mankind, namely a desire to leave after him something to perpetuate his memory, something more durable than his frail humanity. this propensity doubtless led him in his earliest and rudest state to set on end in the earth the rough and unhewn pillar stone which he found lying prostrate on the surface, and these hoar memorials exist in almost every country. [footnote : "the sculptured stones of scotland" (two volumes), by john stuart, ll.d., secretary to the scottish society of antiquaries.] [footnote : "ogam inscribed monuments," by r.r. brash; edited by g.m. atkinson.] a remarkable instance is afforded by absalom, the son of david, who himself set up a stone to record his memory: "now absalom in his lifetime had taken and reared up for himself a pillar, which is in the king's dale: for he said, i have no son to keep my name in remembrance: and he called the pillar after his own name: and it is called unto this day, absalom's place" ( samuel, chapter xviii. verse ). professor stuart indeed declares that there is no custom in the history of human progress which serves so much to connect the remote past with the present period as the erection of pillar stones. we meet with it, he says, in the infancy of history, and it is even yet, in some shape or other, the means by which man hopes to hand down his memory to the future. the sculptured tombs of early nations often furnish the only key to their modes of life; and their memorial stones, if they may not in all cases be classed with sepulchral records, must yet be considered as remains of the same early period when the rock was the only book in which an author could convey his thoughts, and when history was to be handed down by memorials which should always meet the eye and prompt the question, "what mean ye by these stones?" to such remote antiquity, however, it is probably undesirable to follow our subject. it will no doubt be thought sufficient for this essay if we leave altogether out of view the researches which have been made in the older empires of the earth, and confine ourselves to the records of our own country. of these, however, there are many, and they are full of interest. in date they probably occupy a period partly pagan and partly christian, and it has been conjectured that all or most of those discovered had their source in ireland, with a possibility of an earlier importation into ireland by icelandic, danish, or other peoples. many of these stones have been found buried in the ruins of old churches, and most of them may be supposed to owe their preservation to some such protection. the drawings of one or two may be given as samples. those here sketched (figs. and ) are in the national museum of antiquities of scotland, and occupy with others a considerable space, being well displayed to shew the inscriptions on both sides.[ ] it is by the fact of both sides being written upon that we assign to them the character of gravestones, that is upright gravestones; but it is also well authenticated by historical records that the memorial of a pagan chief in ireland was a cairn with a pillar stone standing upon it, and there is little doubt that the irish invaders carried the practice with them into scotland. it is indeed in scotland that a large proportion of these stones have been discovered, and there are more than a hundred of them in the edinburgh museum. in the museum at dublin there is also a good collection, conveniently arranged; but the british museum in london has less than half a dozen--only five--specimens. the number in each of the three museums fairly represents the relative abundance of such remains in england, scotland, and ireland. marked on a chart the discoveries are thickly grouped in the north-western parts of scotland, in the south of ireland, and on the south-western promontory of wales. in cornwall and devonshire, along the coast line, there have been found a goodly few, and the others are dotted sparsely over the whole kingdom--england, as just indicated, furnishing only a modicum. [footnote : the national museum of antiquities in queen street, edinburgh, is unequalled by any other collection of british and celtic remains. all these memorial stones are carefully catalogued, and have, moreover, the advantage of being described at length, with full illustration, in professor stuart's copious work (previously mentioned) on "the sculptured stones of scotland."] [illustration: the bressay stone fig. . lunnasting and kilbar stones. fig. . ogam and runic inscriptions.] the inscriptions upon such stones, when they are inscribed, are usually in ogam or runic characters. an example of the ogam writing is shewn on the edges of the bressay stone (fig. ), and also on the front side of the lunnasting stone (fig. a). the ogam style was used by the ancient irish and some other celtic nations, and the "ogams," or letters, consist principally of lines, or groups of lines, deriving their signification from their position on a single stem, or chief line, over, under, or through which they are drawn, perpendicularly or obliquely. curves rarely occur; but some are seen in the inscription on the bressay stone, which has been thus interpreted by dr. graves, bishop of limerick: "bentire, or the son of the druid, lies here." "the cross of nordred's daughter is here placed." this stone was found by a labourer about , while digging in a piece of waste ground near the ruinous church of culbinsgarth at bressay, shetland. the design is said to be thoroughly irish, and the inscription a mixture of irish and icelandic. the stone measures ft. by ft. - / in. by in. it is attributed to the ninth century. the stone a is a slab of brownish sandstone, in. by in. by / in., from lunnasting, also in shetland. it was found five feet below the surface in , and, having probably lain there for centuries, was in excellent preservation. the authorities, however, are unable to make a satisfactory translation. the cross or dagger is also of doubtful explanation; and mr. gilbert goudie thinks it is a mere mason's mark. it is, however, admitted on all hands that the stone is of christian origin, and probably of the period just subsequent to the termination of the roman rule in britain. it has been suggested that most of these ancient gravestones were carved and set up by the irish missionary monks not earlier than a.d. . the ogam inscription on the lumasting stone has been made by one expert to read: eattuicheatts maheadttannn hccffstff ncdtons. a strange and inexplicable aggregation of consonants. the stone represented below, _b_, bears an inscription in runic characters. runic is a term applied to any mysterious writing; but there were three leading classes of "runes"--scandinavian, german, and anglo-saxon--all agreeing in certain features, and all ascribed by some authorities to the phoenicians. the stone _b_ was found in , at kilbar, barra, a remote island of the outer hebrides, off the north-west coast of scotland. it measures ft. - / in. in height, and its greatest width is - / inches. mr. carmichael has conjectured that it was probably brought from iona about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and erected in barra at the head of a grave made by a son of mcneil for himself. but it is believed to have been in any case a norse memorial in the first instance, though certainly christian, for it reads: "ur and thur gared set up the stones of riskar.[ ] may christ guard his soul." [footnote : riskar, or raskar, is a surname of the norwegians, who were early settled in the western islands and adopted the christian faith.--"old northern runic monuments of scandinavia and england," by dr. george stephens, f.s.a.] the barra stone has on the reverse side a large cross, carved in plaited bands. dr. petrie has pointed out that the cross is not necessarily indicative of belief, the ancient danes and other peoples having used various signs--the cross frequently--to mark their boundaries, their cattle, and their graves.[ ] there is little doubt, however, that in most of these british and irish memorials, although the stones may originally have been pagan, the cross is typical of christianity. we are told that it was not unusual for st. patrick to dedicate pagan monuments to the honour of the true god. on one occasion, it is related, on the authority of an ancient life of the saint, that, on coming to the plain of magh solga, near elphin, he found three pillar stones which had been raised there by the pagans, either as memorials of events or for the celebration of pagan rites, on one of which he inscribed the name of jesus, on another soter, and on the third salvator, along probably with the cross, such as is seen on nearly every christian monument in ireland. in the same way on two of five upright pillars in the parish of maroun, isle of man, are crosses deeply incised. this spot is traditionally associated with st. patrick as the place where he preached, and the stones appear to be remains of a druidical circle. [footnote : "christian inscriptions in the irish language." collected by george petrie, and edited by miss m. stokes.] this practice is quite consistent with the principles upon which the christian conversion was established by the early missionaries. thus, gregory, in a letter from rome, in , directed that the idolatrous temples in england should not be destroyed, but turned into christian churches, in order that the people might be induced to resort to their customary places of worship; and they were even allowed to kill cattle as sacrifices to god, as had been their practice in their previous idolatry. hence also arose the system of establishing new churches on the sites previously held as consecrated by heathen worship. of the five old gravestones in the british museum, four are from ireland and one from fardell in devonshire. the fardell stone was found about the year , acting as a footbridge across a small brook at fardell, near ivybridge, devonshire--a district once inhabited by a celtic tribe. it is of coarse granite, ft. in. high, ft. in. broad, and from to inches thick. it bears an ogam inscription on two angles of the same face, and debased roman characters on the front and back. it reads, according to mr. brash, in the ogam, "safagguc the son of cuic;" and, in the roman, "fanon the son of rian." the three irish ogam stones were presented to the british museum by colonel a. lane fox, f.s.a., who dug them out of an ancient fort at roovesmore, near kilcrea, on the cork railway, where they were forming the roof of a subterranean chamber. no. cannot be positively deciphered or translated; no. is inscribed to "the son of falaman," who lived in the eighth century, and also to "the son of erca," one of a family of kings and bishops who flourished in the ancient kingdom of ireland; and no. , which is damaged, is supposed to have been dedicated to a bishop usaille, about a.d. . all the stones came probably from some cemetery in the district in which they were found. it has been remarked that the distribution of these old stones marks clearly the ancient history of our islands; their frequency or rarity in each case corresponding accurately with the relations existing in remote times between ireland on the one side, and wales, cornwall, and scotland on the other. further enquiry into the subject is scarcely to be expected in this rudimentary work. to seek for the germ of the gravestone is indeed a far quest. like the _ignis fatuus_, it recedes as we seem to approach it. in the sculpture galleries of the british museum there are several examples preserved to us from the ancient empire of assyria, and one described as the "monolith of shahnaneser ii., king of assyria, b.c. ," is almost the exact counterpart of the headstones which are in vogue to-day. it stands ft. in. high, is ft. in. wide, and inches thick. like the scottish stones of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it is inscribed on both faces. chapter xiv. the regulation of gravestones. it has been already pointed out, and is probably well known, that the clergyman of the parish church has possessed from immemorial time the prerogative of refusing to allow in the churchyard under his control any monument, gravestone, design, or epitaph which is, in his opinion, irreverent, indecorous, or in any way unbecoming the solemnity and sanctity of the place. this authority, wherever exercised, has been subject to the higher jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop, and presumably to the rule of the ecclesiastical courts; but, as we have seen, the authority has been but indifferently employed, and the inference is that the clergy have in times past been wofully ignorant or lamentably careless as to their powers and obligations. a more healthy system now prevails, and we seldom or never find anything in the way of ornament, emblem, or inscription of an offensive or ridiculous character placed in any of our burial-grounds, the burial boards being as strict and watchful over the cemeteries as the rectors and vicars are in the management of the churchyards. nor has there been, so far as we have gone, any difficulty in reconciling this stringency of supervision with the acts of parliament which have been passed in recognition of religious equality at the grave; and it is not too much to hope that there is in the present day such universal prevalence of good taste and propriety under the solemnity of death as to ensure concurrence among all sects and parties in securing decorum in all things relating to interments. to the incongruities which have been left to us as legacies from our ancestors we may be indulgent. they are landmarks of the generations which created them, and records of times and manners which we would fain believe that we have left behind in these days of better education and better thought. they are therefore of value to us as items of history, and, though we would not repeat many of them, we shall preserve them, not only because we reverence the graves of our forefathers, but because they are entitled to our protection as ancient monuments. however uncouth they may be in design or expression, they must be tolerated for their age. it cannot be denied that some of them try our patience, in the epitaphs even more perhaps than in the carvings, and "merely mock whom they were meant to honour." two out of a vast number may be selected as painful evidences of a departed century's tombstone ribaldry. the first, from a village near bath, is a deplorable mixture of piety and profanity, sentiment and vulgarity: "to the memory of thomas and richard fry, stonemasons, who were crushed to death, aug. the th, , by the slipdown of a wall they were in the act of building. thomas was and richard years. "they were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in death were not divided. "blessed are they that die in the lord, for their works follow them. "a sacred truth: now learn our awful fate. "dear friends, we were first cousins, and what not: to toil as masons was our humble lot. as just returning from a house of call, the parson bade us set about his wall. flush'd with good liquor, cheerfully we strove to place big stones below and big above; we made too quick work--down the fabric came; it crush'd our vitals: people call'd out shame! but we heard nothing, mute as fish we lay, and shall lie sprawling till the judgment day. from our misfortune this good moral know-- never to work too fast nor drink too slow." the other is at cray ford, and is as follows: "here lieth the body of peter isnet, years clerk of this parish. he lived respected as a pious and a mirthful man, and died on his way to church to assist at a wedding on the st day of march , aged years. the inhabitants of crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory and as a tribute to his long and faithful services. "the age of this clerk was just three score and ten, nearly half of which time he had sung out _amen!_ in his youth he was married, like other young men, but his wife died one day, and he chanted _amen!_ a second he took. she departed: what then? he married and buried a third, with _amen!_ thus his joys and his sorrows were _treble_, but then, his voice was deep _bass_ as he sung out _amen!_ on the horn he could blow as well as most men, so his horn was exalted in blowing _amen!_ but he lost all his wind after three score and ten, and here with three wives he waits till again the trumpet shall rouse him to sing out _amen!_" the habit of imitation which we have noticed in the masonry of the gravestone is even more pronounced in the epitaphs. one of the most familiar verses is that which usually reads: "affliction sore long time i bore, physicians were in vain, till death did seize and god did please to ease me of my pain." these lines, however, have undergone variations out of number, a not infrequent device being to adapt them to circumstances by such changes as-- "affliction sore short time i bore," etc. the same idea has an extended application at the grave of joseph crate, who died in , aged years, and is buried at hendon churchyard: "affliction sore long time i bore, physicians were in vain: my children dear and wife, whose care assuaged my every pain, are left behind to mourn my fate: then christians let them find that pity which their case excites and prove to them most kind." but the most startling perversion of the original text i saw in the churchyard at saundersfoot, south wales, where the stone-carver had evidently had his lesson by dictation, and made many original mistakes, the most notable of which was in the second line:-- "affliction sore long time i bore, _anitions_ were in vain," etc. the following from hyden, yorkshire, is remarkable: "william strutton, of padrington, buried th may, , aged years, who had by his first wife children, by his second, : was own father to , grandfather to , great-grandfather to ; in all children." witty tombstones, even when they are not vulgar, are always in bad taste. two well-known instances may suffice-- on dr. walker, who wrote a book on english particles: "here lie walker's particles." on dr. fuller: "here lies fuller's earth." the same misplaced jocularity must be accountable for an enigmatical inscription at st. andrew's, worcester, on the tomb of a man who died in , aged years: "h.l.t.b.o. r.w. i.h.o.a.j.r." this, we are told, should be read as follows: "here lyeth the body of richard weston in hope of a joyful resurrection." rhymed epitaphs have a history almost contemporaneous with that of the old gravestones, having their flourishing period between the middle of the seventeenth century and the early part of the nineteenth century. they were little used in england prior to the reign of james the first, and it is supposed that mary, queen of scots, brought the custom from france. she is also said to have been an adept at composing epitaphs, and some attributed to her are extant. it may be suspected also that other inventors have written a vast number of the more or less apocryphal elegies which go to make up the many books of epitaphs which have been published; but this is a point wide of our subject, and we must be careful in our rambles that we do not go astray. index. abbotts, stapleford, . aberdeen, . aberystwith, . absalom's pillar, . acts of parliament, , . afghanistan, . agricultural gravestones, , , . "amazon," privateer ship, . america, . anglo-saxon churches, . artizaus' gravestones, . ashford, . assyrian tomb, . atkinson, g. m., on "ogams." . balbriggan, . bangor, ireland, , . barking, . barnes, . barnet, , . barra, , . bath, . beckenham, . belfast, . belgium, . benenden, . bermondsey, . bethnal green, . bexley, , . bishop of diocese, . black gravestones, . blackheath, . blacksmith, village, . "blackwood's magazine," . blairgowrie, . board of health, . bodiam, . book of common prayer, . boutell's "monuments," . braemar, , . brandeston, suffolk, . brash on "ogams," , . bressay stone, . bretons, , . bricklayer's gravestone, . british museum, , , . britons, aboriginal, . bromley, . broxbourne, . buckhurst hill, . bunhill fields graveyard, , . burial in churches, . burial service, . burke, edmund, . cæesar, . carmichael, mr., . carpenters' gravestones, , . cattle in churchyards, . chalk, parish of, , . champion, s., . cheltenham, . cheshunt, , . chigwell, . chinese, . chingford, . chiselhurst, . christian burial, . city corporation, . clarkson, d.a., . cliffe, . closing graveyards, , . clubbe, rev. mr., . cobham, . colchester, court at, . colvill, capt., . commonwealth, . continental gravestones, . cooling parish, . cornwall, , . covenanters, , . cranbrook, , . crayford, , . cray valley, . culbinsgarth, shetland, . cuthbert, archbishop, . darenth, . dartford, , , , , . deptford, . destruction of gravestones, . devonshire, , . dickens country, . diocesan chancellor, . disused graveyards, . drogheda, . drury lane, . dublin, ; museum, . dunblane, . dundee, . early churchyards, . east ham, . east wickham, , . edgware, . edinburgh museum, . edward vi., . elgin, . elizabeth, queen, . elphin, . epitaphs, , , . epping forest, , . erith, . essex, , . evolution of gravestones, . expense of preserving graveyards, . fardell stone, . farnborough, . fawkham, . figure reversed, . finchley, . foot's cray, . fox, col., . france, , ; graveyards in, . freemasons, . frindsbury, , . fuller, dr., epitaph, . gardener's gravestone, . gaskell's "prymer," . germany, , , , . goudhurst, . goudie, g, . gravediggers, . graves, dr., . gravesend, , . gravestones, abroad, ; agricultural, ; artizans', ; bricklayer's, ; black, ; carpenters', , ; evolution of, ; destruction of, ; gardener's, ; grotesque, - ; hunting, ; incised, ; kentish, peculiar, ; neglected, , ; ornamented, , , ; preservation of, , ; primitive, ; professional, ; rough, , ; schoolmaster's, ; sinking, ; unhewn, , ; very old, . graveyards, closing of, ; disused, ; early, ; preserving, ; preservation expenses, . greenford, . gregory, pope, . grotesque gravestones, - . gusthorp, ancient coffin at, . ham, east, . ham, west, , , . harrow-on-the-hill, . hartley, kent, . hatfield, . hawkhurst, . hebrides, . heidelberg, , . hendon, , , , , . henry viii., . higham, , . high halstow, , . hoo, , . hornsey, , , . horton kirby, , . house of commons, . howff, dundee, . hunting gravestones, . hyden, yorkshire, . incised stones, . inverness, , . iona, . ireland, , , , , , . irish monuments, . isle of man, . isnet, peter, . ivybridge, devonshire, . jacob and rachel, . james i., . jaw, the lower, , . jewish burial-ground, . keith, scotland, . kent, tramps in, . kentish gravestones, peculiar, . keston, . kilbar, barra, . killaghie, . killarney, , . kingsdown, . kingston-on-thames, , . kirke white, . lambourn, . laufen, zurich, , . lee, kent, , . letheringham, suffolk, . lewes, sussex, , . lewisham, , . limerick, bishop of, . london, , , , , , . london county council, . longfield, , . louis xvi., . lucerne, . lunnasting, shetland, . lydd, . magh solga, . malahide, . maroun, isle of man, . mary, queen of scots, . medway marshes, . meopham, . metropolitan board of works, . moorish graveyards, . muckross abbey, . neglected gravestones, , . neuhausen, , . newhaven, , , , , . new zealand, . nightcap on skull, . norse memorial, . north cray, . northolt, middlesex, . ogam inscriptions, , , . old romney, . ornaments on gravestones, , , . orpington, , . padrington, . paganism, , , , . paris, burial reform, . pennant, , . penry, j., a welshman, . père la chaise, . petrie, dr., . phoenicians, . pickwick papers, . plumstead, , . portrush, . port victoria, . prayer book, . preservation of gravestones, , . primitive gravestones, . professional gravestones, . public gardens association, . puritans, , . queen elizabeth, . queen of scots, mary, . queenstown, , . rachel and jacob, . rector's prerogative, , . reform of graveyards, , . rhine falls, . richmond, , , . ridley, . ripley, , . rochester, , . roden, river, . roman catholic gravestones in scotland, . romans, , . romney marsh, . romney, old, . roovesmore, ireland, . rough gravestones, , . round tower, . royal artillery, . rubbings of gravestones, . runic inscriptions, , , , . rush, ireland, . st. mary cray, . st. oswald, york, . st. patrick, . st. paul's cray, . saundersfoot, wales, . scandinavia, . schaffhausen, . schoolmaster's gravestone, . scotland, , , ; antiquities, ; sculptured stones of, . scots greys, . sculptured stones of scotland, . sects of sixteenth century, . sexton, the village, , , . shahnaneser ii. of assyria, . shetland, . shoreham, . shorne, , , , . sinking gravestones, . sir benjamin brodie, . sir benjamin hall's act, . skulls, grotesque, . slate slabs, , . snargate, . southfleet, , . stanstead, . stapleford abbotts, . stapleford tawney, , , . stephens, dr. g., , . stirling, scotland, , . stokes, miss m., . stone's (mrs.) "god's acre," . stuart, professor j., , , . sunda isles, . sutton at hone, . swanscombe, . switzerland, , . swords, ireland, . table tombs, , . tawney, stapleford, , , . teddington, . thames, upper, . theydon bois, . tipper ale, . tombs, age of, . totteridge, . tramps in kent, . tramps, typical, , . turks' graveyards, . twickenham, , . usaille, bishop, . very old gravestones, . victory over death, , , . villages and cities, . wales, , , , . walker, dr., epitaph, . walker, dr. g.a., . walthamstow, . wanstead, , , . warwickshire, . weald of kent, . weever, antiquary, , , . west ham, , , . west wickham, , . white, kirke, . wickham, east, , . wickham, west, , . widcombe, bath, . wilmington, , ( ). woolwich, , , , . worcester, . york, . zurich, canton, . * * * * * now ready, in eighteen one shilling parts, or bound in two handsome volumes at s. the records of the woolwich district. by w.t. vincent, _president of the woolwich antiquarian society_. comprising woolwich, plumstead, charlton, shooters' hill, westcombe park, eltham, abbey wood, belvedere, erith, and bexley. with five hundred illustrations. the work is dedicated, by permission, to h.r.h. prince arthur, duke of connaught, and has been graciously accepted by her majesty the queen and h.r.h. the prince of wales. it has also been universally extolled in the press, from which the following are a few extracts:-- "the records of woolwich.--mr. freeman long ago suggested that it would be a useful division of labour if separate towns and districts were described by those in the several localities who had special knowledge on the subject, and he himself led the way in carrying out the design. of local guide-books so called there is no end, but what is wanted in each case is an exhaustive history of the district, its natural formation, its antiquities, and the many objects of interest that are sure to abound, and that only want to be brought to light in order to form material for the future historian of the english nation. this labour mr. w.t. vincent proposes to perform for woolwich in a work which he entitles 'the records of the woolwich district.' mr. vincent has been engaged in the task for twelve years. this is the work of a writer who has studied his subject in all the places where information can be obtained. the preface alone will gain the reader's attention, even if the locality itself had no interest for him. it appears that mr. vincent had scented out the existence of a sealed packet of papers having reference to woolwich, and, after a long hunt, ran the packet to earth in the british museum. it was not until the authorities of the war office had deliberated for a month on the subject that mr. vincent was allowed to see and open the packet, which was more than a hundred years old, and contained maps, plans, and views, several of which he produces."--_the times_. "we must resist the temptation to extract, and conclude this notice by expressing our approval of the numerous _facsimile_ reproductions of old prints illustrative of the text, each on a leaf of plate paper, while vignettes, maps, and plans are liberally dispersed through the letterpress, which is executed by messrs. virtue and co., the well-known printers of the _art journal_. as to the text, the industry, care, research, and observation expended shew that it has been a labour of love. no prospect of profit could urge the production of such a work. it is, therefore, doubly reliable as a contribution to the antiquarian, topographical, anecdotal, pictorial, and descriptive history of an interesting locality, executed by a writer who is 'to the manner born.' we fully hope that mr. thomas vincent, whose name is not unknown in the literary world, will reap his reward of fame and respect from his townsmen, and of fair profit, which his public spirit deserves."--_the morning advertiser_. "'the records of the woolwich district' deal with all the parishes which surround shooters' hill, necessarily dwelling most fully upon the northern slope. of shooters' hill itself, and of all the other suburbs, some novel and attractive tidings may be expected."--_the kentish independent._ "there can be no doubt that such a work, adequately and conscientiously executed, is much needed, and may be of great value. it has been undertaken by mr. vincent, well known as a journalist in the locality, and as the author of that useful directory 'warlike woolwich.' ... the printing has been entrusted to messrs. virtue and co., the proprietors of the _art journal_, a sufficient guarantee for its quality. we are notified that there are over five hundred illustrations to be introduced, including a series of maps and drawings, included in the 'sealed packet,' and a hundred and fifty portraits of public persons, past and present. ... we hope the publication will command the success it deserves. the object of the author is evidently not mere money-making; he has undertaken the work from an earnest and enthusiastic desire to supply a worthy history of the locality with which he has been for his life connected, and we congratulate him upon the excellent promise of his first number."--_the kentish mercury_. "the elegance of the illustrations at once attracts attention. the pictures, not only in their abundance and their interest, but in their exquisite presentment, are really excellent. take the first of them, the charming view of 'pleasant little woolwich,' a steel plate engraved in , and now reproduced by photographic process. the scene which it presents at a time when the author tells us this brick-covered, hard-working, dingy old town was a pretty village, and actually a fashionable watering-place, to which people came from london to recruit health, as they now go to malvern and scarborough, is delightful and refreshing beyond measure. the whole of these illustrations are indeed full of agreeable contemplation and fruitful in speculation.... he may honestly be congratulated on the product of his labours, which, he tells us, have been his recreation for many years. we can well believe it, and assure him, if he has any regrets at the impossibility of a pecuniary return, that the satisfaction which his book will give will be a full reward. such books seldom pay; they are not expected to do so, and any one may tell that there is no profit in the venture. but it will supply a need, and the writer's name will be handed down to posterity as having provided a very agreeable book."--_the woolwich gazette_. "the neighbourhood, rich as it is in historical material, has hitherto met with scanty recognition from historians, and we welcome mr. vincent's efforts to supply the need, and the generous spirit of his labours. he has spared no pains to make the records complete. patient research and much literary skill are combined in the letterpress and woodcuts, engravings, drawings, and photographs, with maps and plans, which have been lavishly introduced by way of illustration.... we content ourselves now with pointing out its great value and entertaining power. the style is easy, and the writer is happily successful in his endeavour to avoid any appearance of merely dry-as-dust research."--_the eltham, sidcup, and district times_. "it is a work which should prove of vast interest in our district, and we ought to say very far beyond it, for there must be many who, though not now residing in the area comprised in the 'records,' would be glad to possess the book on its existence becoming known."--_the erith times_. "mr. w.t. vincent's 'records of the woolwich district' is undoubtedly the first volume which pretends to give a full and concise history of the whole district."--_the bexley heath and erith observer_. * * * * * order of mr. w.t. vincent, burrage road, woolwich; of messrs. mitchell and hughes, wardour street, london, w.; or of any bookseller. now ready, volume ii. of the kentish note book. a record of men, manners, things, and events connected with the county of kent. edited by g.o. howell. elegantly printed on toned paper, and handsomely bound in green cloth, gilt lettered, pages, demy octavo, with frontispiece and several illustrations. post free for s. d., from g.o. howell, eglinton road, plumstead, kent. * * * * * extracts from press notices. "one of the best works of the kind that has yet been given to us by the press."--_the kentish independent_. "edited by mr. g.o. howell, which is in itself a guarantee of its excellence."--_rochester and chatham times_. "the editor deserves to be complimented on the excellence of his production."--_gravesend and dartford reporter_. "few antiquarian publications with which we are acquainted are more generally interesting or better conducted."--_cardiff weekly mail_. "the information is gathered from all points of the compass in the county, and is arranged with the care of a skilful and experienced hand." --_chatham and rochester news_. 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"_nulla dies sine linea._" within these years, among other works of less importance, he successively executed a basso-relievo of the baptism of our lord, a portrait statue of pius ix. for the cathedral of piacenza, one of victor emmanuel for the public square at trapani, one of raimondo lullo for a chapel in the island of majorca, and one of st francis of assisi which now adorns the front of the cathedral at assisi. this was the last statue which he ever made. the model he had completed in clay and cast in plaster, and had somewhat advanced in executing it in marble, when death arrested his hand. it was finished by his daughter amalia, who had for years been his loving and faithful pupil, and who had already won distinction for herself as a sculptor. in this his last work he found a peculiar attractiveness, and his heart and hand were earnestly given to it. "i am most happy," he says in his reply to the authorities of assisi, who gave him this order, "that the commission has thought of me,--not so much on account of what little talent i may possess, as for the love i bear to religious art." the statue itself is very simple, and informed by a deep religious sentiment. it is clothed in the dress of the order which st francis founded, the hands crossed over the breast, the cowl falling behind, the head bent, and the eyes cast down in an attitude of submission and devotion. the statue had not only deeply interested all his feelings and sympathies, but in its treatment and sentiment he seems to have been satisfied. a singular presentiment, however, came over him as he was showing it to a friend upon its completion. "it will be a triumph to you and a glory to assisi," said his friend. "ah," he answered, "who knows that it may not be the last!" so indeed it proved. but a few days after this conversation he was seized by an attack of peritonitis. from this, however, he recovered, as well as from a second attack, which shortly afterwards followed. as he was recovering from this second attack he wrote to monsignore andrea ulli: "the doctor has no doubt that i shall get well, and in a few days i hope he will allow me to return to my studio. but how i have suffered!--doubly suffered from having been deprived of the occupation that most delights me. this is my joy and my life. what a happy day it will be when i am permitted to put my foot again into my studio, and to resume my work and my st francis." his hopes, however, were fated to be disappointed. although he sufficiently recovered to go to his studio, he was able to do but little work; and shortly afterwards--on the st of january--he was again prostrated by a third attack of the same disease. his death, he felt, was now certain; but he met its approach with the courage, resignation, and piety that had always characterised him, looking forward with certainty to a reunion with the dear ones who had gone before him--luisina, his daughter, whose loss he had so bitterly felt, and his wife marina, his steadfast help and loving companion for so many years, who had died seven years previously. one regret constantly possessed him during these last days, that he should not be able, as he had projected, to model the statue of the madonna for the duomo at florence, upon which he had set his heart. one day when he gave expression to this feeling, his daughter amalia sought to console him by saying, "but you have already made her statue, and it is so beautiful--the _addolorata_ for santa croce." "ah!" he answered, "but i desired to model her as queen of florence." this apparently was the only desire that haunted him during his last attack. in regard to all other things he was resigned; and after lingering in almost constant pain for ten days, he expired on the th of january , at the age of sixty-five. the announcement of his death was received everywhere in italy with the warmest expressions of sorrow. it was felt to be a national loss. his life had been so pure, so conscientious, and so animated by high purpose--his temper and character had been so blameless and free from envy and stain of any kind--he had been so generous and kindly in all the varied relations of life, as a son, as a husband, as a father, as a friend,--and he had so greatly distinguished himself as a sculptor, that over his grave the carping voice of criticism was hushed, and a universal voice of praise and sorrow went up everywhere. all classes united to do him reverence, from the highest to the lowest. funeral ceremonies were celebrated in his honour, not only in florence, where a great procession accompanied his remains to the church where the last rites were performed, but also in siena, his birthplace, in fiesole, where he was buried in the family chapel, and in antella and agnone. the press of his native country gave expression to high eulogiums on him as an artist and as a man. public honours were decreed to him. in front of the house where he was born in siena, the municipality placed this inscription: "this humble abode, in which was born giovanni duprè, honour of art and italy, may teach the sons of the people what height can be reached by the force of genius and will." in the parrocchial church dell'onda (in siena) was placed a bust of the artist executed by his daughter amalia; and in florence, over the house where he had passed a large portion of his life, a tablet is inserted, on which is inscribed these words: "the municipality of florence, in whose council sat giovanni duprè, has placed this memorial on the house where for twenty years lived the great sculptor, glory of italy and of art, and in which he died on the th day of ." during his life, honours had been showered upon him at home and abroad--honours well deserved and meekly borne, without vanity or pretension. he had been made a knight and counsellor of the civil order of savoy, a member of the institute of france, a knight of the tuscan order of merit and of the legion of honour in france, an officer of the brazilian order of the rose, a commander of the order of the corona d'italia, mexico and guadaloupe, an associate of the academy of st luke, and of various other academies in italy and elsewhere. the municipal council of siena also commissioned his friend and pupil, tito sarrocchi, to execute for it a bust of his master in marble during his lifetime, on which was this inscription: "to giovanni duprè of siena, who to the glories of italian art has added, by the wonders of his chisel, new and immortal glories. the city of siena--xii. july ." his life was a busy and an earnest one. during his forty years of patient labour he executed about a hundred works in the round and in relief, including a considerable number of busts and statuettes. of these, perhaps the most important are: the statues of cain and abel, the original bronzes of which are in the pitti palace in florence, and by which he leaped at once to fame as a sculptor; the group of the pietà in the cemetery of siena; the large bas-relief of the triumph of the cross on the façade of the church of santa croce in florence; the monument to cavour at milan; the ferrari monument in san lorenzo, with the angel of the resurrection; the sappho; the pedestal for the colossal egyptian tazza, with its alto-reliefs, representing thebes, imperial rome, papal rome, and tuscany, each with its accompanying genius; the portrait statue of giotto; the ideal statue of st francis; and the risen christ. the tazza, the pietà, the triumph of the cross, and the risen christ, were selected by him out of all his works to send to the french exposition of , and it may therefore be supposed that he considered them as the best representatives of his genius and power. indeed, in a letter to professor pietro dotto ( ) he mentions particularly these last three as the statues which in conception he considers to be the most worthy of praise of all his works. this selection also indicates the religious character of his mind and his works. at this exposition he was one of the jury on sculpture, and though he gave his own vote in favour of the eminent sculptor signor vela of milan, who exhibited on that occasion his celebrated statue of the last hours of napoleon i., to his surprise the grand medal of honour was awarded to himself. he had scarcely dared to hope for this; and in his letters to his family he wrote that he considered it certain that the distinction would be conferred upon signor vela. when the award was made to him, he wrote a most characteristic letter to his daughter, announcing the result. "mia cara beppina," he says, "i have just returned from the sitting of the jury, and hasten at once to answer your dear letter. it is true that the napoleon i. of vela is a beautiful statue. there is always a crowd about it, and consequently every one thought it would receive the first prize. i have given him my vote; but the public and i and you, beppina, were wrong. the first prize has come to me, your father! vela received two votes with mine. you see, my dear, how the holy virgin has answered your and our prayer. let us seek to render ourselves worthy of her powerful protection." it was toward the close of his life, as has already been said, that he wrote his 'biographical reminiscences and thoughts upon art,' of which the present book is a translation. it was at once received by the italian public with great favour, and is by no means the least remarkable of his works. it would be difficult for any autobiography to be more simple, honest, frank, and fearless. the whole character of the man is in it. it is an unaffected and unpretending record of his life and thoughts. he has no concealment to make, no glosses to put upon the real facts. he speaks to the public as if he were talking to a friend, never posing for effect, never boasting of his successes, never exaggerating his powers, never assailing his enemies and detractors, never depreciating his fellow-artists, but ever striving to be generous and just to all. there is no bitterness, no envy, no arrogance to deform a single page; but, on the contrary, a simplicity, a _naïveté_, a sincerity of utterance, which are remarkable. the history of his early struggles and poverty, the pictures of his childhood and youth, are eminently interesting; and the story of his love, courtship, and early married life is a pure italian idyl of the middle class of society in florence, which could scarcely be surpassed for its truth to nature and its rare delicacy and gentleness of feeling. if the 'thoughts upon art' do not exhibit any great profundity of thinking, they are earnest, instructive, and characteristic. his descriptions of his travels in france and england; his criticisms and anecdotes of artists and persons in florence; his account of his daily life in his studio and at his home,--are lively and amusing. altogether, the book has a special charm which it is not easy to define. in reading it, we feel that we are in the presence and taken into the confidence of a person of great simplicity and purity of character, of admirable instincts and perceptions, of true kindness of heart, and of a certain childlike _naïveté_ of feeling and expression, which is scarcely to be found out of italy. in respect of style, this autobiography resembles more the spoken than the written literary language of italy. it is free, natural, unstudied, and often careless. but its very carelessness has a charm. duprè was not a scholar nor a literary man. he was not bound by the rigid forms of what is called in italy "_lo stile_," which but too often is the enemy of natural utterance. undoubtedly this book needs compression; but no exactness of style and form could compensate for the absence of that unstudied natural ease and familiarity which are among its greatest charms. the writer, fortunately for the reader, is as unconscious of elaborated style as monsieur jourdain was that he was talking prose. the character of duprè's writing has been admirably caught and reproduced by madame peruzzi, in the translation to which these few words may serve as preface. as an artist, duprè was not endowed with a great creative or imaginative power. his spirit never broke out of the roman church in which he was brought up, and all that he did and thought was coloured by its influence. the subjects which he chose in preference to all others were of a religious character, and his works are animated by a spirit of humility and devotion, rather than of power and intensity. his piety--and he was a truly pious man--narrowed the field of his imagination, and restricted the flights of his genius. "but even his failings leaned to virtue's side," and what he lacked in breadth of conception, was compensated by his deep sincerity of purpose and religious feeling. he was not a daring creator--not an originator of ideas--not a bold discoverer. he hugged the shore of his church. he wanted the passion and overplus of nature that might have borne him to new heights, and new continents of thought and feeling. his cain, almost alone of all his works, breathes a spirit of defiance and rebellion, and breaks through the limitations of his usual conceptions. but it was not in harmony with his genius; and in natural expression it falls so far below his previous statue of abel, that it was epigrammatically said that his abel killed his cain. there was undoubtedly a certain truth in this criticism, for though the cain is vigorously conceived and admirably executed, the heart of the man was not in it, as it was in the gentle and placid figure of abel. in mastery of modelling and truth to nature, this latter statue could scarcely be surpassed. indeed, so remarkable was it for these qualities, that it gave rise in florence to the scandalous calumny that it had been cast, not modelled, from nature,--a calumny which, it is scarcely necessary to add, was as false in fact as it was inconsistent with the honest and lofty spirit of duprè; and which, though intended as a reproach, proved to be the highest testimonial to the extraordinary skill of the artist. within the bounded domain of thought and conception which his religious faith had set for him, he worked with great earnestness and devotion of spirit. though he created no works which are stamped by the audacity of genius, or intensified by passion, or characterised by bold originality and reach of power, yet the work he did do is eminently faithful, admirably executed, and informed by knowledge as well as feeling. his artistic honesty cannot be too highly praised. he spared no pains to make his work as perfect as his powers would permit. he had an accurate eye, a remarkable talent for modelling from nature, and an indefatigable perseverance. he never lent his hand to low, paltry, and unworthy work. art and religion went hand in hand in all he did. he sought for the beautiful and the noble--sought it everywhere with an inquiring and susceptible spirit; despised the brutal, the low, and the trifling; never truckled to popularity, or sought for fame unworthily; and scorned to degrade his art by sensuality. as the man was, so his work was--pure, refined, faithful to nature and to his own nature. he pandered to no low passions; he modelled no form, he drew no line, that dying he could wish to blot; and the world of art is better that he has lived. while he bent his head to nature, the whole stress of his life as an artist was to realise his favourite motto, "_il vero nel bello_"--the true in the beautiful. his last letter, written only three days before his final attack, was addressed to his friend professor giambattista giuliani, and as it breathes the whole spirit of the man, it may form a fit conclusion to these few words: "my excellent friend,--we also, amalia and i, wish you truly from our hearts, now and always, every good from our blessed god--perfect health, elevation of spirit, serene affections, peace of heart in the contemplation of the beautiful and the good, and the immortal hope of a future life, that supreme good that the modern sadducees deny--unhappy beings!" w. w. story. preface. "do you know," i said to a friend six months ago, while i was looking over the rough draft of my memoirs, "that i have decided to print them?" "you will do well," he answered; "but you must write a preface--a bit of a preface is necessary." "i do not think so," i said. "in my opinion the few words on the first page will suffice." my friend read over the first page and replied, "that's enough." now, however, a couple of words do not seem to me superfluous,--first, in order that i may express my surprise and pleasure that my book, written just as it came to me, has been received with so much kindness; and then to explain that this second edition has been enlarged by some additions and necessary notes. the additions do not form an appendix, but are inserted in the chapters, each in its proper place. it did not seem advisable to me, as it did to some other persons, to enlarge this book by letters, documents, and other writings of mine. i thought this would interfere with the simplicity and brevity of my first plan. in re-reading this book, i admit that i have found passages here and there which i felt tempted to correct, or rather to polish and improve in style, but i have let them go. who knows that i should not have made them worse? it seems to me (perhaps i am wrong) not to perceive in good writers the labour, the smoothing, and the transposition of words, and so on, but a rapid and broad embodiment of the idea in the words that were born with it. one last and most essential word i have reserved for the end as a _bonne bouche_. some persons have excusably and pleasantly observed that to write a book about one's self while the author is living is both very difficult and rather immodest. i replied to them, both by word of mouth and through the press, that although on account of my life and works i had studied to be as temperate and unpretentious as the truth and the facts would allow, still here and there my narrative with regard to some persons might not be agreeable, and therefore after my death it might be discredited or denied. no, this must not be, i said, and say again. i am alive, and am here to correct everything at variance with the truth, and also (i wish to be just) what is wanting in chivalrousness. _note by translator._ in making the present translation of the memoirs of giovanni duprè, one of two courses had to be taken--either to turn the whole into pure idiomatic english, or to follow, with a certain degree of literalness, the peculiar forms of expression, and the characteristic style, or absence of style, of the original. i have chosen the latter course, in order, as far as in me lay, to convey the individuality of the author, and the local colour and character of his book. this would to a great degree have been lost had i attempted to render into purely english idiom a work that is not only written in a careless, familiar, and conversational form, and abounds in turns of expression which are essentially florentine, but derives its interest, in part at least, from this very peculiarity. e. m. p. contents. chapter i. page my motive for writing these memoirs--my father's family--removal of the family to florence--my childhood--my father takes me to pistoia, but i run away from his house to return to my mother--from pistoia i go with my father to prato--my first study in drawing--strong impression made upon me by an old print--my father's opposition to my studies--my sorrow at being so far from my mother--i run the risk of being burnt--having grown tall, fears are entertained for my health--i return to my mother at florence and work with ammanati--i go to siena and study ornate design in the academy--carlo pini gives me lessons in drawing the human figure--signor angelo barbetti's prophecy--i run away from siena, and on foot go to my mother at florence--signor paolo sani--death of my sister clementina--my mother's infirmity of eyesight--my brother lorenzo goes to the poorhouse--my aversion to learn reading and writing--my first library, and inexperience of books, chapter ii. without knowing it, i was doing what leonardo advises--new way of decorating the walls of one's house--i wish to study design at the academy, but cannot carry this into effect--a bottle of anise-seed cordial--intelligent people are benevolent, not so those of mediocre minds--the statues in the piazza della signoria and alabaster figures--the discovery of a hidden well--my father returns home without work, and leaves for rome--young signor emilio del fabris--sea-baths and cholera at leghorn--with help i save a woman from drowning--i go to san piero di bagno--my uncle the provost dies--my father returns from rome, and settles in florence--my work, a group of a holy family, is stolen--description of this group, chapter iii. a punishment well deserved, and my satisfaction--different times, different customs--the use of the birch given up in schools--a portrait--companions and bad habits--how i became acquainted with my dear marina--my first time of speaking with her--difficulty to obtain my mother's consent to our marriage--she makes trouble, thinking to do well--i am sent away from my betrothed, and return to bad habits--an escapade--the public baths of vaga-loggia--my clothes stolen, chapter iv. return to the house of my betrothed, and put an end to my thoughtless ways--a talking parrot--he who does not wish to read these pages knows what he has to do--how i went to prison, and how i passed my time there--"the death of ferruccio," by the painter bertoli--signor luigi magi, the sculptor--how i learnt to become economical--shirts with plaited wrist-bands--the first love-kiss, and a little bunch of lemon-verbena--my marriage--my wife has doubts as to my resolution of studying sculpture--pacetti's shop in palazzo borghese--i sell the "santa filomena" to a russian, who re-christens her "hope"--i begin to work on marble--i make a little crucifix in boxwood, which is bought by cav. emanuel fenzi--verses by giovanni battista niccolini, chapter v. a warning to young artists--professor cambi's propositions--a financial problem: to increase gain by diminishing the means that produce it--i leave sani's shop to have more time and liberty to study--an imitation is not so bad, but a falsification is indeed an ugly thing--the marchesa poldi and a casket, supposed to be an antique--how a master should be--the death of my mother, september --opinion of the academy--the "tipsy bacchante"--a divided vote--the "cariatidi" of the rossini theatre at leghorn, chapter vi. an unjust law--the "abel"--brina the model and i in danger of being asphyxiated--my first request--benvenuti wishes to change the name of my abel for that of adonis--i invite bartolini to decide on the name of my statue--bartolini at my studio--his advice and corrections on the abel--lorenzo bartolini--giuseppe sabatelli--exhibition of the abel--it is said to be cast from life--i ask for a small studio, but do not obtain it--my second and last request--the president antonio montalvo--i don't succeed somehow in doing anything as i should--i talk over matters at home--count del benino a true friend and true benefactor--his generous action, chapter vii. the grand duchess maria of russia and the commission for the cain and abel--the prince of leuchtenberg and a plate of _caviale_ at caffè doney--an unusual amusement that did some good--again the generosity of count del benino--bartolini's hunchback, and in consequence a return to the abel--bartolini gets angry with me--examination of the materialistic or realistic in art--effects of the realistic--do not have girls alone by themselves for models--subscription got up by the sienese to have my abel executed in marble--a new way of curing a cough--signora letizia's receipt, who sent it and paid for it herself--one must never offer works gratis, for they are not accepted--the grand duchess marie antoinetta orders the "giotto" for the uffizi--has abel killed cain?--statue of pius ii.--a foolish opinion and impertinent answer--i defy the law that prohibits eating, chapter viii. _literati_ at my studio, and their influence on my work--calamatta's opinion of tenerani, of bartolini, and of myself--his defence of my abel in paris--pius ii.--academicians and "naturalisti"--luigi venturi--prince anatolia demidoff and the princess matilde--the statuette in clay of the princess matilde is destroyed--our minister nigra presents me to the emperor napoleon iii.--beauty does not exist outside of nature--praise puts one to sleep--the incoherence of bartolini, chapter ix. the political reforms of the year in tuscany--my first scholars--ciseri, prati, aleardi, fusinato, coletti, and chiarini the _improvisatore_--inedited verses by prati--giuseppe verdi--a digression on artistic individuality--the emperor of russia's visit to my studio--reactionary movement of the th of april --i am in danger of my life--the return of the grand duke, chapter x. my wife, my little girls, and my work--death of my brother lorenzo--death of lorenzo bartolini--the base for the "tazza"--eight years of work, only to obtain a living--mussini and his school--pollastrini--the school in via sant'apollini--prince demidoff and the monument by bartolini--the nymph of the scorpion and the nymph of the serpent, by bartolini--marchese ala--count arese--the four statuettes for demidoff--amerigo of the prince corsinis--his royal highness count of syracuse, a sculptor--"sant'antonino" statue at the uffizi, chapter xi. close imitation from life--my illness--i am in danger of losing my life--luigi del punta, head physician at court--the grand duke furnishes me with the means for going to naples--i leave for naples--a beggar impostor--another and my boots--sorrento--my neapolitan friends--professor tartaglia and the hydropathic cure--the museum at naples--let us study the good wherever it is to be found--a strange presentation, chapter xii. pompeii--a cameo--sketch for the bacco della crittogama--professor angelini the sculptor--one must not offer one's hand with too much freedom to ladies--a hard-hearted woman with small intelligence--the san carlo, the san carlino, the fenice, and the sebeto--monument by donatello at naples--the barocco and mistaken opinions--_dilettanti_ in the fine arts--prince don sebastian of bourbon--is the beard a sign of being legitimist or liberal?--i am taken for a prince or something like one--"the bottle" for doorkeepers and _custodi_ of the public museums of naples--phidias, demosthenes, and cicero all against ruggero bonghi, chapter xiii. never make a present of your works--pope rezzonico by canova--tenerani--overbeck's theories--minardi and his school--a woman from the trastevere who looked like the venus of milo--conventionalists and realists--an ambitious question and bitter answer--filippo gualterio, chapter xiv. the nude--the statue of david--rauch--the base of the tazza--the chapel of the madonna del soccorso--sepulchral monuments for san lorenzo--the th of april --count scipione borghesi--a group of the deluge--competition for wellington's monument, and a great help, chapter xv. patience a most essential virtue--trust was a good man, but trust-no-one a better--a competition either attracts or drives away men of talent--a study from life of a lion by marrocchetti--assistant modellers--sydenham and its wonders--one of "abel's" fingers--new judgment of solomon--an important question--an indian who speaks about things as they are--professor papi and the failure of the first cast in bronze of the "abel"--a medicine not sold by the chemist, chapter xvi. on the study of expression from life--the care one must take in making studies from life--a _genre_ picture and raphael's cartoon of the "massacre of the innocents"--i lose myself in london--the housemaid at hotel granara--the inconvenience of being ignorant and absent-minded--ristori and piccolomini in london--the cartoons of raphael at hampton court--fantasy runs away with me--a curious but just law--the result of fasting--the villa of quarto and a prince's "early hour"--again of prince demidoff, chapter xvii. my father's death--a turn in the omnibus--the ferrari monument--i keep the "sappho" for myself--the "tired bacchante" and the little model--raphael and the fornarina--the madonna and bas-reliefs at santa croce and cavaliere sloane--my daughter amalia and her works--my daughter beppina--description of the bas-relief on the façade of santa croce--i am taken for the wrong person by the holy father pius ix.--marshal haynau--professor bezzuoli and haynau's portrait, chapter xviii. one of my colleagues--a mysterious voice--the group of the "pietà"--very clear latin--a professor who ignores the 'divina commedia'--composition of the group of the "pietà"--digression--a good lesson and nervous attack--mancinelli and celentano, chapter xix. a prophetic dream--giovanni strazza--signor vonwiller and societies for promoting art--return from naples to rome, and my daughter luisina's illness--our return to florence--death of tria the model--the mossotti monument at pisa--how it was that i did not make the portrait of his majesty the king--the competition for cavour's monument--i go to turin to pass judgment on it--the "christ after the resurrection," a commission of signor filippi di buti--religious art and alessandro manzoni and gino capponi--thought is not free--cavour's monument--the description of it, chapter xx. allegories in art--the monga monument at verona--of my late daughter luisina--her death--how i was robbed--monsignore archbishop limberti's charitable project--one of my colleagues--nicolô puccini and the statue of cardinal forteguerri--cesare sighinolfi--cardinal corsi, archbishop of pisa, chapter xxi. the universal exhibition at paris in --the imitators of vela--inedited music by rossini and gustave doré--domenico morelli--group of prince trabia's children and the thieves--"stick no bills"--the statue of marshal pallavicini--the empress maria teresa and marshal pallavicini--a memorial monument to fra girolamo savonarola--the universal exhibition at vienna--a tiny room--excellent and very dear--on harmony of sounds--on the harmony in the animal world--the harmony of the human form as manifested by the inner beauty of the soul--the campanile of st stephen's and canova's monument, chapter xxii. the palace of the exhibition at vienna--why, with my attributes of president, i was in such haste--michael angelo and garibaldi--a viennese cabman--the camerini monument--duke camerini--an anecdote of his life--statue of michael angelo in the future--the centenary festival of michael angelo--signora adelina patti--a greedy young man of little judgment--the favard monument, chapter xxiii. pius ix. objects to having me make his bust--i go to rome to see the pope--the exhibition at naples--again on idealism and naturalism--the masters of italian melody--vincenzo bellini and his monument--conclusion, index, autobiographical memoirs of giovanni duprÈ. chapter i. my motive for writing these memoirs--my father's family--removal of the family to florence--my childhood--my father takes me to pistoia, but i run away from his house to return to my mother--from pistoia i go with my father to prato--my first study in drawing--strong impression made upon me by an old print--my father's opposition to my studies--my sorrow at being so far from my mother--i run the risk of being burnt--having grown tall, fears are entertained for my health--i return to my mother at florence and work with ammanati--i go to siena and study ornate design in the academy--carlo pini gives me lessons in drawing the human figure--signor angelo barbetti's prophecy--i run away from siena, and on foot go to my mother at florence--signor paolo sani--death of my sister clementina--my mother's infirmity of eyesight--my brother lorenzo goes to the poorhouse--my aversion to learn reading and writing--my first library, and inexperience of books. i have often thought that perhaps it would be well for me to leave some written memoirs of my life--not only for the sake of my family, but also for the young artists of the future; but i have hitherto been deterred from so doing by the fear lest i might seem to have been prompted by pride and vanity. since, however, various notices of my life and my doings in art have been made public, it may not be either without interest, or indeed without a certain utility, if i venture now to speak at length on these subjects; for it seems to me that these memoirs may not only serve as an encouragement to timid but well-disposed youths, but may at the same time be a severe admonition to those who, presuming too much on themselves, imagine that with little study and great boldness they can wing their way up the steps of art instead of laboriously climbing them. [sidenote: my father's family.] my father was francesco duprè, the youngest son of lorenzo duprè, who came to siena with the princes of lorraine. my grandfather kept a draper's shop in the piazza del campo, where at first, through his activity and honesty, his business so prospered that he was able to give his family a good education; and my father was just entering on the course of studies that his brothers had already finished, when my grandfather, through the ignorance and bad faith of his debtors and his own determination to be honest himself, was reduced to poverty. in consequence of this, my father was obliged to discontinue his studies, and to set to work to learn a trade, in order that he might earn his bread as soon as possible; and thinking to derive some advantage from the studies he had already made in drawing, he apprenticed himself to a wood-carver. later he married victoria lombardi of siena, and she was my mother. i was born on the st of march , in via san salvadore, in the contrada dell'onda, and lived in siena until i was four years old. my family then removed to florence, where my father went, at the request of the wood-carver, signor paolo sani, to help him in the execution of some _intaglio_ decorations in the palazzo borghese, which the prince was anxious to have finished within the shortest possible time. my recollections of those early days are not worth recording. i grew up from a little boy going with my father to the shop. i had a few lessons in the catechism and in reading from a schoolmistress who lodged in our house. in the evening my _babbo_[ ] used to read and explain some latin book (i do not remember what it was), perhaps for the innocent satisfaction of letting us know that he had studied that language, but certainly with no profit to me, who understood nothing and was greatly bored. when, however, he gave me some of his designs of ornamentation, such as leaves, arabesques, and friezes, to copy, i was very happy. the time passed without my knowing it; and such was my delight in this occupation, that i often put off the hour of supper or sleep and gave up any amusement for it. at home we lived very poorly. my father earned little, for his work was badly paid, and by nature he was slow. this poverty of our daily life began to disturb the relations between my father and mother. the family had increased, and besides my eldest sister clementina, who died soon afterwards, were born lorenzo and maddalena. i remember the sharpness of the tones, but not the sense of the words that passed between my parents; and the tears of my mother and sullen silence of my father frightened us little ones, and filled us with sadness. [ ] "babbo" is the familiar word for father in tuscany. [sidenote: family and childhood.] it was impossible that such a state of things could last long, and my father decided to leave florence and go to pistoia, where he thought he could earn more money. i was destined to follow him, while the others remained with my mother. for more than three years i stayed with him. my life was sad for me here, as the distance from my mother made it almost unbearable; and all the more so because my father, whenever he went to florence to see her, as he sometimes did, always left me behind him, alone, at pistoia. once, when i was barely seven years old, i ran away from the house, and went on foot to florence, although i knew for a certainty that i should have to pay dearly for the kisses and caresses of my mother by a thrashing from the _babbo_. nor was i mistaken: i got the thrashing, and was brought back. [sidenote: longing to be an artist.] about this time there awoke in me a certain sentiment and longing to try to draw the human figure--leaves and _grumoli_ had begun to weary me; and this desire was developed in an odd way. there was in pistoia, in the house of a certain gilder named canini, a little theatre for puppets, and one of the characters, which was wanted for a certain performance, happened to be missing. canini, who was a friend of my father, was much put out by this loss, and came to beg my father to make the head and hands for the puppet. he answered that he could not do this, as he had never attempted anything in the way of figures; and the poor gilder, who was director and proprietor of the company, was at a loss to know where to turn. i, with the utmost effrontery, then offered to make the head and hands myself; and as canini was hopeful as well as incredulous, and my father gave a sort of half consent, i set to work, and succeeded so well that my puppet turned out to be the most beautiful "personage" of the company. the happy result encouraged me to go on, and i remade almost all the puppets. i also made some small ducks in cork, that were to appear in a pond, and were moved about here and there by silk threads. it was a pleasure to see the little creatures--they turned out so well, and had such a look of reality; and this i was enabled to give them because in the court of our house there were some ducks which i could copy from life. ah, nature! not only is it a great help, but it is the principal foundation of art! [sidenote: i go to prato.] [sidenote: my first drawings.] from pistoia the _babbo_ took me to prato, where he had been requested to go by the gilder signor stefano mazzoni. there we took up our abode in a street and court called il giuggiolo. in the same house, and almost with us, lived a man from lucca, who made little plaster-images, and was one of the many who go about the streets selling little coloured figures for a few sous. this connection, ridiculous as it may appear, inspired me more and more with a desire for the study of figures. it is true these figures and parrots and clowns were ugly; but, at the same time, their innocent ugliness attracted me, and filled me with a longing, not indeed to imitate them, but to do something better. in turning over my father's papers and designs, i found a quantity of prints, fashion-plates of dresses, landscapes, and animals, and particularly (i remember it so well that i could draw it now) a large print representing the building of the temple of jerusalem. in the distance you saw the building just begun, and rising a little above its foundations. carts loaded with heavy materials and tall straight timber (the cedars of lebanon) were dragged along by a great many oxen and camels, amid a vast number of people and things. on all sides were workmen of every kind, some carving the columns, some putting up a jamb and squaring it, some sawing timber, and some busied in making ditches; others were talking, or listening, or admiring: and all the scene was animated with a truly marvellous life. in the foreground you saw the majestic figure of solomon, surrounded by his ministers and soldiers, showing his architect (with his scholars) the designs of the temple. in fact, it was a wonderful thing to behold, and i was so enchanted that i could not sleep for thinking of it, for it seemed to me impossible that any man could imagine and execute anything so marvellous. my little head seemed on fire, it was so full of these figures. i tried at first to copy in part this print, which, above all the others, had taken my fancy; but i did not succeed, and i was so discouraged that i sat down and cried. and not for this only i cried, but also because my father looked with so unfavourable eye on these efforts of mine--they seeming to him quite unnecessary for an _intagliatore_--that, in order to go on with these studies, i was obliged to hide myself almost, and to work in spare moments. finding this print so complicated that i could in no way copy it, i then undertook to copy the little costume-figures that i found amongst the prints. these, one by one, i drew during the evening, after my father had gone to bed and was asleep; and sometimes it happened that i fell asleep over my drawing, and on waking found myself in the dark, with the little lamp gone out. this constant exercise, to which i gave myself every day with great ardour, so trained my hand and practised my eye, that my last drawings were made with little or no erasures. but though i derived a good deal of satisfaction from these small drawings, my heart was still oppressed at being so far from my mother. i longed to see her, and have her near me, and begged my father to take me to her, or at least to send me to her by the carrier; but wishes and prayers were useless. my father went sometimes, it is true, to see her; but although i was only seven or eight years of age, i had to remain behind at prato to look after the house. i do not wish to blame my father, but neither then nor since have i been able to understand his notions of things; and certainly, to keep a little boy alone by himself in a house, and often for several days together, is not to be recommended. one evening i remember, when, having fallen asleep while reading at the table, with my head bent near the lamp, my little cap caught on fire, and i woke up with my hair in flames. but this adventurous life--beaten about, thwarted in all my wishes and in all my affections--formed my character. i became accustomed to suffer, to persevere, and to obey, while i always kept alive those desires and affections which my conscience assured me were good. [sidenote: an accident--delicate health.] about this time, what with continuous study, hardish work in my father's shop, and the melancholy that weighed upon me because i could not see my mother, my health began to fail. even before this, and indeed from my birth, i had always been delicate, but now i became so pale and weak that every one called me _il morticino_ (the little dead fellow). a physician who examined me about this time talked seriously to my father about me on the subject, telling him that i ought to rest longer in the mornings (my father rose very early, and i had to get up to go with him to the shop), and eat more nourishing food; and he explained what it should be. amongst other things, i remember he ordered me to drink goat's milk, milked and drunk on the spot, as soon as i got out of bed, before leaving my room. this treatment succeeded marvellously. every day i gained strength, colour, and flesh. the little goat that came every morning to my room to pay me a visit, and brought me her milk, sweet, warm, and light, will be always remembered by me; and i still have a feeling for the little creature, even after half a century, which i cannot well define. [sidenote: academy at siena.] restored to health, i was taken to see my mother in florence. my own great joy, as well as her caresses and petitions that i might be left with her, it is impossible to describe. she insisted that she would find me a shop where i could go and continue to learn the art of wood-carving. thank god, this time my mother's tenderness overcame my father's tenacity (loving though it was), and i was allowed to remain with her. they both looked about to find me a shop, and i was finally placed in borgo sant' jacopo, with the wood-carvers gaetano ammanati and luigi pieraccini, who worked together. they were both very able men, certainly much more so than my father, who, poor man, owing to the constant requirements of the family, had never been able to perfect himself in his art. in this shop figures were carved, so that i had before me models and teachers, as well as incitement to work. my principals liked me, and i them; and i should have remained with them who knows how long, had i not been carried off by another _intagliatore_. and the way in which it happened was this: signor paolo sani, a carver in wood who sometimes came on business or for other reasons to ammanati's, seeing that my work was fairly good, and that i worked with goodwill, determined, if possible, to take me away to work for him. he wrote, therefore, to my father, who had returned to siena, asking him to remove me from ammanati's shop, and send me to him, binding himself to pay me double the salary that i was then receiving. as he did not wish, however, to appear to act underhandedly (though this was really the case), he persuaded my father to take me to siena, and place me at the academy of fine arts, to study drawing; and he promised, after i had passed some months there, to take me to work in his own shop. my father accepted the offer, and i was obliged to go to siena, where i studied in the academy at the school of "ornato," which was then under the direction of professor dei. out of school hours my father let me work upon anything i liked--such as children's heads, angels, and even crucifixes. god knows what rubbish they were! i also took lessons, in drawing the human figure, of signor carlo pini, then the _custode_ of the academy, and afterwards one of the most distinguished annotators of vasari, and keeper of the drawings by the old masters in the royal gallery of the uffizi. [sidenote: angelo barbetti's prophecy.] at that time signor angelo barbetti, a very skilful wood-carver, was at siena, and my father wished to place me in his shop, which was in the piazza di san giovanni. but signor angelo was as irascible and fault-finding as he was intelligent; and one day, when i had not succeeded in executing some work that he had given me, he struck me on the head, accompanying the blow with these words, which hurt me more than the blow itself--"you will always be an ass, harnessed and shod, even when the beard is on your chin." afterwards i was sent to signor antonio manetti, who not only carved ornaments and figures in wood, but also worked in marble, and was occupied in restoring the façade of the cathedral. signor manetti was a man of no common genius--he designed and sculptured ornaments and figures with much facility and cleverness. but even with him i was not fortunate. he gave me a little napoleonic eagle with thunderbolts in his claws to execute. for what it was intended i do not remember, but apparently i did not succeed in satisfying him. in this case, however, there were neither blows on the head nor bitter words, but, with a certain haughty dignity, he took my poor little eaglet in his hand, and dashed it to the ground, breaking it to atoms in spite of the thunderbolts. viewed from this long distance of time, this scene has a somewhat comic character, and must seem especially so to one who hears it described. but for me, a poor little boy, anxious to learn and get on, so as to lighten, as far as possible, the burden on my father--who, poor man, earned little, and of that little was obliged to send a portion to his family in florence--it was quite another thing; and though i felt within myself that i was not a complete donkey, still to see my work thrown thus brutally on the ground was so painful to me that it took away all my little strength. i wept in secret; and as the time assigned by signor paolo sani and my father for my return had arrived, i begged my father to send me back to florence. he wished, however, to keep me with him still longer, and so i occupied myself in making angels and seraphim heads for churches. [sidenote: i run away from siena.] [sidenote: weariness and remorse.] i begged and begged my father to take me to florence, to see my mother. he promised to do so at easter. meanwhile, i contented myself with this hope; but on the eve of easter he told me he could not go, on account of his engagements, which would detain him at siena, and also for many other reasons that i could not and would not understand. now, however, my patience gave way before my loving desire to see my mother; and without saying a word, i rose early and ran away from the house. passing out of the porta camollia, i set off on my walk with only a bit of bread in my pocket, in the boyish hope of reaching my destination the same day, and so passing my easter with my mother, without reflecting that, by so doing, i should pass it neither with my father nor my mother. i was about nine years old, and walked on with courage beyond my strength. so great was my desire to get to florence, that i passed staggia and poggibonsi without feeling tired; but near barberino--which is about twenty miles from siena, and half-way to florence--my mind misgave me that i should not be able to arrive in florence that evening; and then my strength abandoned me, and i was so overcome with fatigue that i could not get up from a little wall on which i had seated myself to rest. i had not a penny. no carts or carriages were passing that way. it was easter, and every one was at home resting for his holiday; and i, there i was alone in the middle of the road, oppressed with weariness and remorse for having left my father in such anxiety. at times i hoped that he might come after me with a carriage to take me up, and i quite resigned myself to a sound beating; but even this hope was vain, and i had to continue my walk. how many sad thoughts passed one after another through my little tired head! what will my mother, who is expecting us, do or say? what will my _babbo_ think, left alone, and not knowing where i am? he will be certainly looking for me, and asking after me from every one in siena. what will become of me in the middle of the road if night overtakes me? this thought gave strength and energy to my will, and on i went. i don't think that i was frightened. at length my strength was exhausted; the sun began to set; i was seven or eight miles from san casciano, and i could not be certain of arriving even there to pass the night. i stopped at a wretched little house to rest, and asked for a glass of water. a man, a woman, and several children were eating. they asked me where i came from, and i told them. with expressions of compassion, especially from the woman, they gathered round me, gave me some bread, a hard-boiled egg, and a little wine, and i thanked them with emotion. they wanted me to stay with them until the next day--and tired out as i was, i should have stayed and accepted their kindly offer; but at this moment a _vettura_ for florence passed by, and with my eyes full of tears i told them how infinitely grateful i should be if i could be allowed to fasten myself in any way on to the carriage. the driver, who had stopped to get a glass of wine, seeing the state i was in, and hearing my story from these good country people, took me up on the box by his side, and carried me to florence, where we arrived in less than three-quarters of an hour, an hour after nightfall. as my mother and the other children lived in via toscanelli, when we were near the sdrucciolo de' pitti the good driver set me down there. i descended from the box and ran--no, i could not run, for my feet were swollen, and my sides numb, but my heart was glad, exultant, and throbbing. i knocked; my mother came to the window and saw me, but she did not recognise me until i spoke, and then she gave a scream and came down. what followed i cannot recount. those who have a heart will imagine it better than i can tell it. neither the good family who welcomed and refreshed me, nor the honest humane carrier, have i ever seen, for i remained in florence, and did not return to siena until many years after. then i made all possible researches to find both the one and the other, but i could never find them. not, indeed, that i wished to remunerate them with money (the price of charity has not yet been named), but i wished to express to them my gratitude; and this is the only recompense acceptable to charitable hearts. [sidenote: i reach florence--my mother.] [sidenote: paolo sani's shop.] the day after, as i hoped and feared, the _babbo_ arrived, and as soon as he saw me, his expression, anxious and grieved as it was, became threatening. his few ill-repressed words were the sure sign of the blows to come, and he was just going to strike me when my mother, with indescribable tenderness, caught me in her arms and pressed me to her, with her face and eyes turned towards my father, without uttering a word. softened by this, he then began a long speech on the obedience and submission due from children to the holy parental authority, not omitting to censure my mother's indulgence and petting. after this i begged his pardon, and all was at an end. my father returned to siena, and i went to signor sani's shop (built with his own money), in the piazza di san biagio, under the piatti printing-office. signor paolo sani was a man of about fifty, thin, pale, and exceedingly active. he had a great deal of work to do, and was employed by the court and first houses in florence. his taste was not exquisite, but he understood effects and proportions, so that his decorative carving, either in the way of furniture, caskets, frames, chandeliers, or ornamental work for churches, was greatly in demand. he had many men, and the works succeeded each other with great rapidity. in his house he had portfolios full of designs, and the walls of his shop were covered with plaster casts, bas-reliefs of figures, and ornaments, animals, arabesques, flowers, angels, &c., making a strange fantastic medley full of attraction for me. when the master was not there, the men at their work used to talk and sing; but when any one saw him coming, the scene changed, and there was perfect silence. i came into the shop as an apprentice and errand-boy; so that although i had my little bench, with my tools and work, yet, if there was any glue to be heated or made, or the tools were to be taken to the grinder, or the breakfast to be brought for the men, this duty always fell upon me. but i did not in the least complain. it is true that amongst these duties there was one for which i had a dislike, although i did not show it, and this was carrying a basket full of shavings on my back to the master's house in the borgo sant' jacopo. to go there i had to pass through the mercato nuovo and over ponte vecchio, which is much frequented at all hours, as every one knows; and during this year i went there with the basket of shavings on my back. notwithstanding this, i was well off in the shop, and was light-hearted from being near my mother and sisters. one of my sisters--my elder by a year--died soon after my return from my wanderings with my father. poor clementina! she was so good, delicate in health, and suffering. indeed, we all suffered because of our poverty. father sent us little, for he earned little, and our bread was often wet with tears because we could not help our mother as we wished. added to this, she could do almost nothing herself on account of her infirmity of eyesight, which little by little so increased, that at last she was no longer able to see us; and as i have already said, clementina died. god willed it so--to shorten her road, which was too full of thorns and danger, to one pretty as she was, artless, away from the father's watchful eye, and with her mother blind. my other smaller sister maddalena accompanied her mother when she went out, as she did in the endeavour to earn something by buying and selling women's old clothes. my brother lorenzo (perhaps because he was too quick-tempered) was obliged to go to the poorhouse, and here he learnt the art of carpet-maker. after a short time, however, he came out and returned to parenti, who had a carpet manufactory in the ancient refectory of the monks of santa croce, where he remained for some time. [sidenote: death of my sister.] but all these difficulties and sorrows one feels less in early years, and in spite of them i was light-hearted. i had the master's goodwill, and the men in the shop treated me with the open cordial heartiness belonging to that class in those days. my love for the study of design increased, and in the off-hours of work i used to stay behind in the shop and eat a bit of bread there, and draw from some of the casts hanging on the walls, without taking them down or even dusting them. i began with little things such as leaves, branches, small figures, capitals of columns, heads of animals, and so on and so on, until i got to figures. in the shop there were two beautiful bas-reliefs from the pulpit in santa croce, two from the doors of the sacristy of the duomo by luca della robbia, and several of those little figures by ghiberti which surround the principal door of san giovanni. all these casts i drew during this period--badly, as one may imagine, and without guide or method; but still, this served to occupy me pleasantly, and also to keep alive within me the craving to learn and advance myself, so as to be able to do other and more important work in the shop, and thus gain distinction. [sidenote: backwardness at school.] [sidenote: my first library.] [sidenote: books at church.] this desire of distinguishing myself has always been very strong in me; and through all my privations, discomforts, loss of sleep, harsh corrections, irony, and scorn, i was borne up by this desire to do myself credit, and see my father and mother rejoice in me and for me; and also, i must confess, by the hope of seeing the rage of those who had treated me with irony and scorn. but if i learned, more and more every day, how to design and to carve in wood--for this was very attractive to me--in everything else i was perfectly ignorant. i had not even learned to read well, and could not write at all. my father had tried placing me at a public school, but i learned absolutely nothing there. the rudiments of writing and arithmetic were so irksome to me that the master in despair sent me home again, and would have nothing to do with such a little dunce. for all this, i had my little library at home, which i kept with great care locked up in a small box in my room, and it was composed of seven or eight books. these i had bought in the streets from book-stalls set against old walls, and they were as follows: a volume of the 'capitoli of berni,' 'paul and virginia,' and 'atala and chatta' (translations of course), a volume of the comedies of alberto nota, and the 'jerusalem liberated,' 'guerrino meschino agli alberi del sole,' 'oreste,' and the 'pazzi conspiracy.' at first i understood almost nothing excepting some of the adventures of guerrino. afterwards 'atala and chatta' and 'paul and virginia' became my favourite reading; and so much did i like them, and so often did i read them, that whole pages remained in my memory. then i fell in love with the 'jerusalem,' and this my memory more easily retained. some of the verses i tried to write from memory, in a little running hand, copying the letters from my father's writing, for, as i have said before, i never learnt the rudiments of writing; and those pot-hooks, and big letters between two lines, never were to my taste. as to other things, i had the innocence and good faith belonging to my age and the imperfect education i had received. i thought all books good--good because they were printed--and not only good at home, but good everywhere else; and so i used to take my books to read in church during the mass. one day (it was sunday) at mid-day mass in sant' jacopo, while i was reading the 'conspiracy of the pazzi,' my master, signor sani, who lived opposite the church, and was also at mass, observed me, and suspecting that the book i was reading was not a proper one to take to church, stopped me as he was going out and asked to see it, and finding what it was, told me that i was not to bring it again to church, as it was not a book of prayers. more also he added that i did not understand, especially when he wanted to explain to me the verses-- "il putrido annoso tronco, a cui s'appoggia fraude."[ ] [ ] "the rotten knotted trunk on which fraud leans." i obeyed, however, and never took this or any of my other books to church; and so i learnt that books you can read at home you cannot read in church. later i learnt there are others not to be read anywhere. chapter ii. without knowing it, i was doing what leonardo advises--new way of decorating the walls of one's house--i wish to study design at the academy, but cannot carry this into effect--a bottle of anise-seed cordial--intelligent people are benevolent, not so those of mediocre minds--the statues in the piazza della signoria and alabaster figures--the discovery of a hidden well--my father returns home without work, and leaves for rome--young signor emilio del tabris--sea-baths and cholera at leghorn--with help i save a woman from drowning--i go to san piero di bagno--my uncle the provost dies--my father returns from rome, and settles in florence--my work, a group of a holy family, is stolen--description of this group. how dear to me is the remembrance of those times! my goodwill and desire to learn were indeed above my very poor condition. the difficulties of my profession did not discourage me; on the contrary, i felt a pleasurable though distant hope of surpassing my companions in figure-work that they did so badly and laboriously. for this purpose, from that time i gave all my efforts to the study of the human figure. i bought an album and kept it always with me, begged my friends to stand as models, and drew their portraits. at first my attempts were not happy; but i was never tired, and after a time i acquired so much freedom that with a few strokes i could make a fair likeness. i was always at work, and the walls of our kitchen and dining-room were all smudged over with charcoal. naturally, there was no one to scold me for this unusual way of adorning the walls, for the mother, poor dear, was blind, my father was not there, and as i was the eldest, i was, as it were, the head of the family. besides, though my mother could not see, she still knew of this strange practice of mine, and thought it better for me thus to occupy myself than to be playing with the boys in the street. [sidenote: longing to be an artist.] in the meantime, however, many doubts and self-questionings arose within me. i knew that there was a school where one could really learn to draw and paint and make statues. heavens, how delightful it would be to know how to make statues! in fact, i understood there was the academy of fine arts, for so i had been told, and some of the fortunate young men who frequented this academy were my acquaintances, and had shown me their designs, which seemed to me, as my friend dotti would say, _most stupendous!_ i was no longer happy. the academy appeared to me in the most splendid and glowing colours; it seemed to me the haven, the landmark, the temple of glory, the throne of my golden dreams. i spoke of it to my mother with tears in my eyes. she mingled her tears with mine, but not, perhaps, so much from being persuaded of the necessity of such studies as from a desire to soothe me. she spoke about it to signor sani, who, i shall always remember, with his eyes fixed fiercely on me, made even more formidable under his silver spectacles, replied, that to do all that was to be done in his shop, it was enough to remain in the shop and have the wish to learn--of this he was certain; but as to the work in the academy, he did not feel so sure, for, on the contrary, that would fill me with desires and cravings that i could not satisfy, owing to the poverty of my family, even admitting that i had the disposition to enable me to master these studies; and finally, he hinted at the danger there was of my being contaminated by my companions. my mother did not answer him. she said good-bye to me, and in her sightless eyes i saw the sadness within. she went out, and i set myself to work. [sidenote: a flask of anise-seed.] i resigned myself, but continued always to study by myself. as luigi, the master's eldest son, was studying design at professor gaspero martellini's school, which was in the fondacci di santo spirito, he gave me some of his designs to copy. not only did professor martellini give him lessons in drawing, but also in modelling in clay, and sani was one of the most assiduous of his scholars. i remember to have pounded his clay for him many times, in a room on the ground-floor in his house in borgo sant' jacopo. this little room was used as a storehouse for all sorts of odds and ends, and amongst these i once found a flask of anise-seed cordial, that (to confess the truth) i tasted sometimes. one morning, having finished what i had to do, and having gone up-stairs to take the key of the room, one of the master's daughters (he had four) smelt in my breath the odour of anise-seed, and said to me-- "who has given you anise-seed?" "no one," i answered. "you smell of anise-seed; who has given it to you? mind, don't tell lies." then i told everything. "i don't believe you. you are a liar." "no; come and see." "certainly i wish to see." she then came down, and taking the flask in her hand, looked at it, smelled it, and tasted it. apparently she must have drunk a little, for as soon as she had put down the flask and shut up the room, she began to totter, and could not stand on her feet. with difficulty i succeeded in getting her up-stairs, where, as soon as her mother saw her in that state, there ensued a serious scene. they all talked and scolded at once--the three girls who had not drank the anise-seed, as well as the mamma; and when i tried to explain how the thing had happened, i felt two slaps in the face, which were given with such force that i was stunned. my ideas became so confused that i was not able to say anything. fortunately the girl spoke, and said-- "nanni is not at fault." at these words the mistress said-- "go at once to the shop. master shall know everything this evening." i did not breathe a word, and even she said nothing about it to the master, nor was i scolded by him, or by the signora carolina (the mistress). some days after i returned to knead the clay, but the flask of cordial had disappeared. about this time there was a _residenza_[ ] to be made in the shop for some church, where, in the midst of the clouds that supported the _ostensorio_, were a quantity of seraphim. this work was required to be done at once without delay; and as bartolommeo bianciardi, who did this kind of work in the shop, could not alone do all that was required of him, i proposed to the master to make one of the seraphim myself, and i succeeded so well that he was entirely satisfied. after that i made others, and always better and better. from that time, when similar work came to the shop, i was always employed on it together with the other workman, and sometimes in preference to him. in the meantime i continued to make progress in the art of wood-carving, and the best and most skilful workmen flattered me and helped me with their advice, but the others looked upon me with an evil eye. i could not understand this difference, nor can i understand it now; but as i have since met with this, and felt it always at every time and everywhere, it must be in the natural order of bad things. [ ] the throne on which the monstrance is placed when exposition of the sacrament takes place. [sidenote: artistic longings.] but there was always a thorn in my heart. the seraphim were not enough to satisfy me, nor even the large masks and heads of medusa with all their serpents. and when i passed through the piazza della signoria and saw the david, the perseus, and the group of the sabines, i thought that by going to the academy of fine arts one might learn how to make such works! heavens, how grand a thing it would be to be able to go to the academy! but it was useless even to think of this, for my father had declared himself opposed to it. therefore peace be to it, and let me have patience. at least those pretty little alabaster figures that are shown in the shop windows of pisani on the prato, and bazzanti on the lung'arno, those i should be able to do with time and study and a firm will. for after all, it is only a question of changing the material, of substituting alabaster for wood, a seraphim or an angel for a little venus or apollo--there is nothing to create. those who make these figures, also copy them from others in alabaster, plaster, or bronze, as i do; and even now i invent my little seraphim, and no longer look at flammingo's little boys as i did at first--i do them from memory, making them either leaner or fatter, or more smiling or more sad, as best i feel inclined. so i reasoned and persuaded myself that in the end, one day or other, i also should be able to make one of those graceful little statuettes. [sidenote: a practical joke.] in this way i consoled myself, and went on with courage and hopefulness. here some one may say, this artist in his old age gives us a picture of himself as a boy where there is too much fancy. the portrait is beautiful, but is it a likeness? has not the love of beauty seduced him? what is the truth? who ever saw a boy who was always obedient, studious, patient, constant, &c. &c.? slowly, my good sirs--slowly; have a little patience. some scrapes even i have got into, and for the love of truth i must not pass them by in silence. but everything has its place, and here, for instance, _is_ the place for one of these scrapes. in the shop where i was employed, close to my bench there was a great plaster pillar rising from the floor to the ceiling. neither i nor any one had ever thought or inquired for what purpose it had been made. in this pillar was a sort of little niche, into which was walled up a phial of oil kept for sharpening our tools. now it happened that this phial got broken, and in consequence it became necessary to knock down the rest of the little niche in order to put in a new one; but in performing this operation, i perceived that the wall was thin under the hammer, as if it were hollow, so i began to think what this could mean. the others also wondered, and some said one thing, and some said another. in the meantime, as i continued to hammer on the wall in the interior of the niche, a brick fell down, the wall gave way, and we looked into a hollow space. taking a stick to measure the depth, we found it was considerable; but we could not understand what the meaning of this could be. i have already said, in the beginning of these memoirs, that our shop was under the piatti printing-office--and so it is, for the printing-office is on the first floor over it; but the building is very high, and above that floor are others occupied by lodgers. suddenly, as we stood still, perplexed and wondering what could be the use of this hollow pillar, i, being nearest the spot, heard a noise within like a rustling or rubbing of something which we could not explain. [sidenote: the "souls of purgatory."] for a while i stood still, thinking, when suddenly i guessed what it was, and said to my companions-- "in a moment, if i succeed, you will witness a scene that will make you laugh." "what do you mean to do?" "you will see." taking a long piece of beaten iron wire, i bent it into the form of a mark of interrogation, and fastening the straight end of it firmly to a bit of wood, when i heard the noise again i thrust it to the opposite side of the hole, and again and again tried if i could catch hold of anything within. at last, when i thought i had grappled hold of something, i pulled it up, and found it to be a rope. as soon as the rope was caught, we heard several voices scolding, calling, and disputing--amongst others, a woman's voice shouting, "no, i tell you there are no other lodgers; pull away, the bucket must have got into some hole." then the poor woman pulled, and every time she pulled i gave a loud groan. at last, apparently the woman's strength failed, the mistress herself or some one else pulled at it, for i could feel she had no more strength to pull, and then cried out with an impertinent voice, worthy of greater success, "who is there?" "the souls of purgatory," i shouted out lugubriously, and instantly felt the rope fall down. to say the truth, i was then a little alarmed through fear of being discovered, so i pushed forward the iron hook, and the rope fell, bucket and all, into the well. my companions laughed at the scene, but i did not; and thinking the joke might be found out, i hastened to close up again the hole with a brick, set the little bottle of oil into it, restore the niche as it was, smudge it over well that it might appear old and as if it had never been touched, sweep away all traces of the plaster that had been used, straighten out the instrument i had used, and apply myself to my work in serious rather than hilarious mood. [sidenote: my father goes to rome.] about this time my father, failing to get work, came to florence, hoping to find something to do; but his hopes proved vain. he stayed there a little while, but at last determined to go away, and this time for a more distant place. my mother and all of us tried to dissuade him, telling him to have patience, that some way would be found, that we would do all we could to help, and although we were very poor, still we should all be together. but it seemed to him that we could not get on in this way, and accordingly he left for rome. so long as he was at siena and wrote to us, and sometimes sent us a few _sous_, it was not so bad, and we were accustomed to it; but now, who could say how we should get on? so far away, without any one to help him, without acquaintances, and with so imperious a character, what would become of him? fortunately, however, he found employment, and he wrote that he was well, and hoped in a short time to be able to send us something. god knows there was need of it. meanwhile i had become tolerably skilful. i was no longer a boy; i earned about three _pauls_ a-day, and nearly all this i gave to my mother, reserving for myself only a few _sous_ to buy paper, pencils, and books. beyond these things i wanted nothing, for my mother took care to keep me cleanly and decently dressed. [sidenote: discontent.] as my face, my way of speaking, and my manners were not vulgar, many of the customers who came to our shop took me for the son of the principal instead of an apprentice. they readily addressed themselves to me; i took their messages, and sometimes their orders for the work, and the older and more skilful workmen showed no ill-feeling about it. amongst other customers who had a liking for me, i remember signor emilio de fabris, who at that time was the head workman in baccani's studio. he used to come to direct and urge on the work. he used to talk with me, and to make his observations on the work; and as he even then had an easy and graceful way of talking, i listened to him with attention. he was a thin, tall, refined young man, admirably educated, and courteous in his manners. to-day he is one of the most famous masters of architecture, president of our academy of fine arts, and my good friend. but although i had many reasons for being contented,--for at home, thanks to the small wages of my brother lorenzo, the few _sous_ that came from rome, and the earnings, meagre though they were, of my mother, we were able, by putting all together, to live tolerably though poorly, and in the shop i was liked and esteemed by my master, by the men, by all,--still i was not contented. i felt there was a void, a feeling of uneasiness, and a melancholy that i could neither explain to myself, nor could others explain to me except by jestingly calling me "the poet." and this was the truth, for the poet is eminently a dreamer whose dreams are more joyous and smiling than any reality, and i dreamed--yes, but not of a smiling future when i should be rich and famous, but of any sort of way by which i could find vent for that inward longing to distinguish myself above others, and to distinguish myself especially in figure-work, though it should be only in wood; but it was not possible for me to satisfy this longing in the shop. here i was obliged to work at all sorts of things--chandeliers, frames, mask-heads, everything; and i not only felt unhappy, but was unhappy, and my health began to fail. i was advised to take sea-baths; but in leghorn the cholera was raging, and it would have been imprudent to go there, and so another year passed in the midst of desires and hopes and fears and ill-health. but at last i went to the baths. i had scarcely arrived there, however, when that terrible disease reappeared and raged furiously: the inhabitants and strangers hastened to fly from it; all business was suspended; movement and gaiety almost entirely disappeared; the shops were shut; and in a short time leghorn became deserted, sad, and oppressed with fear. [sidenote: cholera at leghorn.] my mother wrote to me from florence urging my immediate return; but i--i know not why--felt myself, as it were, riveted to leghorn. it may have been perhaps on account of the effect of the sea air, the novelty of the life, and the excitement produced in me by the danger to which my life was exposed, which i not only did not fear, but even felt strong enough almost to challenge, and more than all, the notable improvement that i daily felt in my health, which decided me to remain. i had found some friends even gayer and more thoughtless than myself. we went to the fish-market and bought the best fish for almost nothing--fresh red mullet for two or three _soldi_ a pound--for there were no purchasers. it was generally believed that the disease came from the sea, and was brought on by eating fish; but we ate and drank and smoked merrily. in a few days i recovered my health, got a good colour, gained strength, and melancholy went to the devil. i also found some work to do. the few _soldi_ that i had brought with me rapidly disappeared. i worked but little, only doing so much day by day as would enable me to live merrily. by one o'clock my day of work was over, and then began that of amusement--which consisted of dinner, walks in the country sometimes as far as montenero, towards evening a good swim in the sea, then to the _café_, and late to bed. leading as i did this happy life, one can readily imagine that my letters home breathed trust, courage, and tranquillity of spirit, so that my mother, although she never ceased to beg me to return, did so in less pressing terms and with gentler expressions. [sidenote: amusements--cacciucco.] [sidenote: i save a drowning woman.] one day when i had gone with my friends on board one of those small vessels which are stationed at the "anelli," and while we were eating a dish of fresh fish called _cacciucco_, which the sailors excel in making, a woman who was walking by the shore fell or threw herself into the sea. for a short time she floated, sustained by her clothes, which puffed up into a sort of bell; then she began to waver to and fro, and down she went. we looked at each other, and then about us to see if any of the sailors on the neighbouring ships had seen the woman and were moving to the rescue, and those on board our boat only shrugged their shoulders as if she were a dog. "down with you! throw yourself in! you know how to swim!" "i, of course; but don't you swim better than i?" "i! no; but yes----" and at this one of us, a fellow nicknamed braccio di ferro--i don't remember his real name--taking off jacket and boots, shouted out, "hold your tongues, cowards!" and plunged in head first with his hands above his head. at the word cowards, made even more telling by the brave act of the man, i felt my face suffused with shame; and although i was not such an expert swimmer as braccio di ferro, i also took off my jacket and shoes, and gathering my loins tightly together, with my hands under my feet, jumped in. under water one could see quite as clearly as above, for the rays of the sun penetrated obliquely and lighted up all the space about me. i saw my friend diving down to touch bottom, which meant that he had seen that poor woman, but i had to come up to the surface to take breath. as soon as i had done so once or twice, i made a somersault, and away i went, striking out with my hands in the water. my friend, however, had found the woman, and had seized hold of her by her foot. swimming around, i caught hold of her skirts,--and just in time; for poor braccio di ferro was blown, and who knows how much water he would have drunk if i had not come. leaving the woman to me, he made a curve in the water, and went to the surface to breathe, plunging his head under again to look after us. the two boats that had come to get the poor woman were ready. braccio di ferro mounted into one to help me pull her in. with one hand i caught hold of the boat, and with the other i clung on to the woman's dress, who was at once dragged out, placed on her face that she might throw up the water she had swallowed, taken to land, and escorted to her house, which was not far off. we mounted upon our vessel amidst the applause of the people and of our friends who were waiting for us; they took off some of their clothes to cover us as best they could, and we hung ours out to dry on one of the cords of the ship. we drank some _pipiona_ wine, finished our repast, and each of us returned home. i remained about a month longer in leghorn; and if it had not been for my mother, who pressed me to return, i should have stayed who knows how long. i found also something to do which was to my taste; i made three heads of medusa to ornament the panels of a chemist's bench. it was a new chemist's shop that was to be opened in those days. who knows what they have done with those poor heads of mine! [sidenote: a drop too much.] i have just said that when we returned to the ship after having got hold of the woman who was drowning, we drank some _pipiona_ wine; and now i must stop and put others who may intend to drink of this _pipiona_ on their guard. it is wretched wine, or perhaps we drank a drop too much, for we, who might have had the medal awarded to courage, went home almost drunk. and whereas an hour before we had been honoured and applauded, on our return we ran the risk of being scorned. so it is; a drop of wine too much may serve one such a turn that i, as a good christian, warn my equals, and especially inexperienced young men who find themselves in the company of merry companions, against it. i returned to florence, and never heard anything more of my livornese friends. part of them were in magagnini's shop, who was then a cabinet-maker, and is now a much-esteemed architect. others--and amongst these braccio di ferro--were with ricciardelli, cabinet-maker in via dell'angiolo. i returned home, therefore, and found the mother always dear and loving, who clasped me in her arms. the day following, i went back to the shop so brisk and well that the principal and all the men were rejoiced. [sidenote: atanasio duprÈ's death.] about this time my uncle, on my father's side, atanasio duprè, provost at san piero di bagno, died. they wrote to us from there to bring my father to take possession of the inheritance of his brother; and as he was in rome, by my mother's advice i left at once for bagno. according to my habit, and also to save a few _soldi_, i left towards evening on foot, and walked all night. it was winter, beautiful weather, cold, and with clear moonlight. in the middle of the night i met no one, and only towards daybreak some few carts passed me near borgo alla collina and bibbiena, where i stopped at the inn, as i could not go on any farther, having come thirty-six miles without halting. i rested there some hours; but in order to pursue my journey, i hired a mount and guide, because it was necessary to go along the dry river-bed of the corsalone for some miles, and cross it several times. through this plain, which was flooded over at times, the river ordinarily kept to a narrow tortuous channel, which, seen from the heights of bibbiena, produced a wonderful effect. it looked like an enormous serpent with golden scales when lighted up by the rays of the sun. having gone over this strange and fatiguing road, leaving to the right la vernia, abode and sanctuary of the "poor one" of assisi, i mounted the apennines, and descended again, arriving towards evening at san piero di bagno. i went at once to my poor uncle's residence, where i found a woman and some priests, who showed me our inheritance. it was little enough, to speak truly--some modest furniture, a little linen, and a little money. what was really of value was the library; but this he had left to the eremo of camaldoli, from whence it originally came, as, at the time of the suppression of convents, he had taken it to save it from the thieving hands of the governors and partisans of napoleon i. in order to understand how my uncle was able to save a great part of the books and precious manuscripts belonging to the library at camaldoli, it is enough to know that he was one of the fathers of that hermitage, and when at the suppression they were all expelled, my uncle became a priest, and was made provost of san piero di bagno, where he remained until his death. [sidenote: a group of the holy family.] my father hastened at once to florence, where i found him at home, after i had stopped a few days at san piero. he went there and took possession of those few things, and afterwards returned to florence, and from that time forward never left it. he opened a little shop himself, and i used to help him in spare moments with certain kinds of work that he was unable to do,--such as little figures, animals, and other things. it is a great comfort to me to remember those days. i had the will and the ability to help my father to do work that was appreciated and liked as if it were really his, and so increase his reputation and obtain his affection. it happened once, however, that a most miserable man took advantage of my father's good faith about a piece of work that had cost me not a little time and study. this was what occurred:-- one day a man presented himself to my father, and said that he had a commission to have a group made in wood of not very large dimensions, that should represent the sacred family--the virgin mary, st joseph, the infant jesus, and st john--and that it had come into his head to come to him, whom he knew to be so clever at figure-work. my father tried in some way to excuse himself, feeling that the work would be a long one, and not wishing to take too much advantage of my hours of rest and study. but there was no way of avoiding it, and he had to yield and take the order for this work, without even speaking of the price, "for" (so said this man) "the person who gives the order is both intelligent and rich, and will not question the price." having pledged himself in this way, he spoke to me about it, and said, "here is a fine opportunity. it is true you will have to work hard, but you will be recompensed. the money for this will belong entirely to you, as i can do absolutely nothing on it." i said yes, to satisfy him; but in reality i intended to leave the gain to him, only taking something not to humiliate him. [sidenote: the group is stolen.] the work was begun: i made a little model in clay, gave it a great deal of study, and took much interest in it. i got on with it very well, but slowly, as is natural; and the man in question came almost every week to see it and hurry on the work, saying the person who had given the commission was most desirous of seeing it, and that we must let him know when it would be in a condition to be seen,--in brief, when the little group would be nearly finished. to say the truth, it was entirely finished; but as then a doubt came up as to whether, in order to finish it entirely, it would be well to put the lamb at st john's feet, and as he would not decide upon so important a matter, he proposed to my father--i was not present--to show it to the person who had commissioned it at his house, as he could not come to see it at the shop; and he also congratulated my father on his work, which he felt sure was most praiseworthy. "the house is not far off--a mere step or two for me there and back--and so the question about the lamb will be decided." so saying, he took the little group, wrapped it up in a handkerchief, and begging my father not to move from the shop, that on his return he might not be kept outside waiting with the group, he went away, and never more was seen. i need not say how my father felt: as for me, for more than a year my fixed idea was, could i but only meet the man who had robbed me! i looked for him in the streets, in the market-places, in the churches--yes, even in the churches. for had he not stolen a holy family from me? he might also steal a lamp or a candle hung before some image. the ardent desire i felt to find the thief, was not to put him into the hands of justice--for, more than the actual loss of the money, i felt roused by the insult and mockery of it. i wanted to teach him what a lamb was! i! yes indeed; for although i was young then, i was not at all weak, and there was more than enough strength in me to break his nose and give him a black eye. i foresaw all the consequences, even to my imprisonment, which would undoubtedly have followed, for i was fully aware that one cannot administer justice on one's own account. it did not matter to me; i felt i must break his nose with my own fists! as these were my thoughts then, i am obliged to narrate them as they are, though god forgive me! all this, however, was useless, for i never saw him again. [sidenote: description of the group.] as wood is not wax, this group must be somewhere now, and will last for some time to come; so i leave the description of it, that he who is the present owner may know that its first possessor was a thief. the little group is a little more than a palm in height; it is of linden wood, and is composed of four figures in high relief. the madonna is seated, with the infant jesus in her arms, who, with both his arms around the virgin's neck, is in the act of reaching up to kiss her, and she presses him to her bosom with one hand, whilst the other hangs down on her left side. st joseph is bent forward and kneeling, with an expression of love and adoration; and little st john, also on his knees, behind the virgin, is pulling aside her mantle that he may see this touching scene. st joseph is at the right and st john on the left of the virgin. chapter iii. a punishment well deserved, and my satisfaction--different times, different customs--the use of the birch given up in schools--a portrait--companions and bad habits--how i became acquainted with my dear marina--my first time of speaking with her--difficulty to obtain my mother's consent to our marriage--she makes trouble, thinking to do well--i am sent away from my betrothed, and return to bad habits--an escapade--the public baths of vaga-loggia--my clothes stolen. perhaps some one may think, "how is it that, after so many years, you have been able to remember the composition of your work?" to say the truth, even i am surprised; but it must be taken into consideration that, besides being gifted with a most tenacious memory, the first efforts of the mind remain more firmly engraved thereon, being produced by the workings of one's whole soul. so it is with one's affections and one's hopes. add, therefore, to this, the brutality of the offence, and it will be seen that i could not forget it in any way. in the meantime, in sani's shop i had made for myself an almost enviable position. all the works of a certain importance were given to me. the principal placed entire confidence in my judgment and skill--so much so, that he put me at the head of the young men in the shop, and delegated to me the direction of the great works that were being executed at that time for the approaching nuptials of the grand duke leopold ii. with the princess antoinetta of naples. i had even the satisfaction of directing a certain saladini, a young sienese who had come to help us, and whom i had known at siena at the academy of fine arts. there we had been companions and fellow-students, sharing the same desk; but to say the truth, he drew better than i did, which irritated me, and one day we came to words, and i said boastfully that i defied him to draw with me, and could easily beat him. [sidenote: bragging and birching.] it appears that the master heard loud words, and from the glass bull's-eye in the door of the room from which he dominated the whole school, he saw me standing by the desk with one leg in the air, my arm passed under my thigh, making a drawing of a corinthian capital. i could not see the master, as my back was turned to him; neither did i perceive how silent the school was, nor the singular attention my rival was devoting to his work. the reason of it all, however, i soon discovered, or rather felt, from a sharp switch on my back, and before i could put my leg down, three or four good blows, accompanied with these words, "and this is the prize for those who are skilful in drawing from under their legs." these words were accompanied by the general ill-repressed hilarity of the school, and especially of my rival saladini. i confess the blows, and even the laughter of my companions which made them more stinging, were well merited; but i remember that i took it in bad part, especially as my friend saladini, who certainly had seen the master, had not warned me, as i felt i should have done in his place. for this reason i rejoiced when he came to florence to work in our shop, and was put by the principal under my direction, when i could and was obliged to correct him and say, "no, it is not right in this way; you must do so and so." i must add, however, that i did not make any abuse of my power, that saladini had no reason to complain, and that we became good friends. [sidenote: the birch at school.] it now occurs to me to make an observation. i had a switching, therefore the "birch" existed in our schools. the master could administer it and the scholar receive it _coram populo_ officially, according to the natural order of things, as a legitimate correction; but i ask, if to-day a master in our academy, or in fact in any academy in italy, gave four blows on the back of a young man, be his fault even much greater than mine, what would happen? the heavens would fall; there would be a revolution in the school and shouts without, and a scandal for the master. the ill-advised master would be reprimanded by the head-master; a report made to the minister of public instruction; the master dismissed altogether or sent elsewhere; and perhaps even, if the ministry be _progressista_, all would lose their places. so it is. "_o tempora! o mores!_" but is it, after all, a bad thing to administer a good whipping to a rascal who, instead of studying himself, annoys those who are really working, instigates them to leave school, and leads them to do wrong by using bad and obscene words, swearing, and drawing and writing improper things on the academy walls? they can be sent away from school, but they must not be beaten, is the answer. but the fact is, that though they ought to be sent away, they are always allowed to remain. would it not, therefore, be better to administer a little corporal punishment with the "birch" before arriving at this finale? where is the harm of it? i have had it myself, and at fifty years of age am well and strong. but enough of this. [sidenote: saladini--bad companions.] the good saladini, therefore, was placed under me. he endured and even appeared to enjoy my corrections. in fact, he had a character and temperament that prevented his feeling anything. he was a young fellow about eighteen or nineteen, older than i was, small, fat, with good colouring, chestnut hair, and light eyes which never grew animated and moved slowly, seeing little and being surprised at nothing. he never got angry, and laughed in the same way when he heard of an accident as when he heard a joke. it was not that he was stupid, for his words, though few, were not devoid of sense. he ate more than i did, and drank more too, and retired to bed early, being an enemy of walks, of discussions, and merrymaking even of the most discreet and proper kind. he lived but a short time, and died as soon as he returned to siena, i don't know of what malady. not of disease of the heart, however; for although his heart was not bad, yet it seemed a useless part of him, never beating with any feeling of emotion or passion: there it was, quite stock-still, seeming even dead, like the hearts of stoics or stupid people, which are about the same thing. those, however, who have the misfortune to be made in this way, live a long time, eat much, drink much, and sleep--above all things sleep--profoundly; and so did he, though only for a short time, because he died. it was better so, for who knows whether his heart would not have waked up some day, repented the time lost in sleeping, and quickened its beat? therefore it was better so. may the earth weigh lightly on you, my friend, and the peace of the lord rejoice your spirit! [sidenote: i first see my wife.] by this time i had grown to be a young man beloved by my friends, who were not many, and not all of them excellent. some were a little too full of life, like myself, and these gay young fellows used sometimes to drag me to places where young men of good repute should never go--i mean to _osterias_ and billiard-rooms. in such places there is loss of time, loss of health, and loss of morals. vaguely i felt, even then, the impropriety of such places, and an internal sense of dissatisfaction warned me to break off from these habits and to avoid these friends. indeed at home i was no longer like the same person. i was restless, intolerant, despising the naturally frugal meals of the family; and my mother, my poor mother, suffered for this, but my father was angry, and sometimes with loving words and sometimes with severe ones he reproached me for my crabbedness and caprices, and i then felt sincere regret, and my heart softened, and quite overcome i embraced my mother. for all this, the road that i had taken was a slippery one. i no longer studied anything or drew as i had always done before. i read very little, and that little was rubbish. praised and cajoled by my companions, quite satisfied with the kind of superiority i had acquired amongst them in the shop, i might have fallen very low, and have become a good-for-nothing man, and perhaps a despicable one; but god willed it otherwise. and now that i must begin to speak of her who saved me and loved me, and whom i loved and esteemed always, because she was so rich in all true virtues, i feel my hand tremble, and the fulness of my love confuses my ideas. one day as i was standing by my work-bench, i saw a young girl pass with quick short footsteps, quite concentrated in herself. it was but a fugitive impression, but so vivid that every now and then that vision came back to me and seemed to comfort me. i had not seen the features of her face, nor her eyes, which she kept on the ground; and yet that upright modest little figure, those quick little footsteps, had taken my fancy. i desired to see her again. every now and then i looked up from my work, in the hope of seeing the person that i had been so struck by; but i did not see her again during that day or the following ones. [sidenote: mass at santi apostoli.] the second _festa_ of easter i was at mass in the church of the santi apostoli near by. suddenly lifting my eyes, i saw facing me the dear young girl on her knees. her face was in shadow, as it was bent down, and the church was rather dark, but the features and general expression were chaste and sweet. i stayed there enchanted. that figure in her modest dress and humble attitude, so still, so serene, enraptured me. when mass was finished, the people began to go away, but she still remained on her knees. at last she rose and went out, and i followed her from afar. she stopped at a house on the door of which i saw the sign of "laundress." i could not believe that such a modest serious young girl could be so employed; for as a general thing, laundresses are rather frisky and provocative, turning their heads and glancing about, and sometimes very slovenly in their dress--in fact, the opposite of all that dear good creature was. from the first moment that i saw her i felt for her a respectful admiration, a tranquil serene brotherly affection and trust. i was seized with an irresistible desire to love her, to possess her, and to have my love returned. often without her knowing it, i followed her at a distance, to assure myself of her bearing and her ways, and always observed in her a chaste, serious, and modest nature. at last i attempted to follow her nearer; and when she became aware of it, she hastened her steps and crossed to the other side of the street. i was disconcerted, but at the same time felt contented. one day, however, i decided at any cost to speak to her, and to open my heart to her; and as i knew the hour when she was in the habit of passing by the piazza di san biagio, where i was at work, i held myself in readiness, and as soon as i saw her, went out and followed her, that i might draw this thorn out of my heart. yes, i somehow thought she would not take my offer amiss. she crossed the loggia del mercato and took the via di baccano and condotta, and turned into the piazzetta de' giuochi, and i always followed her nearer and nearer. at last she became aware of this, stopped suddenly, turned, and without looking me in the face, said, "i want no one to follow me." [sidenote: i follow marina--her rebuke.] i stammered a few words, but with so much emotion in my voice, that she again stopped, looked at me a moment, and said, "go home to your mother, and do not stop me again in the streets." i gave her a grateful look, and we parted. i returned to the shop with my heart overflowing with love and hope. from that day a great change took place in me: companions, rioting, and billiards disappeared as by enchantment from my life. that same evening i went to the laundry. i saw the mistress of it, and with an excuse of having some work to give her, i spoke to her casually, and in a general way, of the young girl (whose name i did not know); but she being very sharp, smiled and said-- "ah yes; marina--certainly--i understand. but take care and mind what i say; marina is such a well-conducted girl that she will not give heed to you." "but i did not say that i wanted to make love to her." "i know; but i understood it, and i repeat that she will not listen to you,--and if you want to do well, you will never come here again. here there is work and not love-making to be done. but if you like, you might go to her house and speak with her mother. perhaps then--who knows? but i should say that nothing would come of it, and it would be better so. you are too young, and so is she. now you understand. so go away, and good-bye." [sidenote: i go to see marina.] "thank you, i understand; but where is marina's house?" "it is in the via dell'ulivo, near san piero." "good-bye, signora maestra." "your servant." the day after this i went to marina's house and found her mother regina. the house was a small one, but very clean. in a few words i opened my heart to her and told her all, even of my having stopped marina in the piazzetta de' giuochi. regina was a woman of about forty years of age, and a widow. she listened quietly to me until i got to the end, and then only blamed me for having stopped her daughter in the street. she added that she would think about it; but she did not conceal from me that she thought me too young. i hastened to tell her how much i made by my day's work, and that i had a settled occupation. she then wished to hear about my family, and showed a desire to know my mother; and after having spoken to marina, she said she would allow me to come to the house of an evening two or three times a-week. so far things went well; but at home i had as yet said nothing, and this i was obliged to do, as it was the first condition made before i could go to the girl's house. i was not afraid of my father, because, single or married, it was the same to him, as long as i continued to help him in the work he required of me; but as regards my mother, it was quite another "pair of sleeves." as soon as i had opened my mouth i saw a frown on her beautiful forehead, and she would not let me go on to the end, saying that i was doing wrong, that i was too young, that i ought to think of the shop, of my family, and make for myself a standing. not without tears she made me feel that she looked upon this determination of mine as a sign of want of love for her. i attempted in every way to persuade her that i always cared the same for her, and that this new affection would in no wise diminish my love for her; that the young girl was an angel; that she would be pleased by her, and love her like a daughter. i embraced her, and wept, and she took pity on me, poor mother! she condescended to make the girl's acquaintance, and so we went to her house. the two mothers talked a long time together, whilst marina put some things in order here and there about the room, without going away; and you could see the embarrassment of the poor girl. i held one of my mother's hands in mine, and kept my eyes on marina, who never looked at me once. [sidenote: opposition to my marriage.] it was settled that i could go to the house two or three times a-week without speaking of the time that was to elapse before the day of the wedding. yes, i really was too young, as i was only eighteen. all these particulars may seem superfluous, and for most people they certainly are so; but i meant, and i said so from the first, that these memoirs should be destined for my family and for young artists, to whom i desire to show myself such as i am, even in all the truth and purity of the most tender of affections. then it is with a feeling of tender gratitude and painful sadness that i go back in memory to those days of my meeting with her, the difficulties that arose to prevent our union, and the very great influence she had over me. from these pictures interpolated now and then amongst these papers, young men of good intentions will feel the charm that surrounds the sanctity of domestic affections. every other evening i saw the good and charming girl. i remained for only about an hour or so--such was her mother's desire. whilst both of them worked--the mother spinning and the daughter sewing together their long braids of straw--i talked to them of my work in the shop, of my studies, and of my hopes. again returned to me stronger than ever the desire to do figure-work, and a vague, persistent, and fierce hope to become a sculptor in marble. when in various forms i expressed these my thoughts, marina, who was listening to me with her eyes on her work, looked up to me and seemed to search in mine for the meaning of my words. poor marina, you did not then understand what agitated the heart of your young friend. later you understood; and although full of fears, you did not discourage him. but enough--do not let us anticipate. although my poor mother had yielded to my prayers, and had convinced herself that marina was a well-conducted girl, industrious, docile, and honest, yet she could not, as she said, be persuaded that she would have to lose me; and every evening when i returned home and tried to speak to her of marina, she would be troubled, and break off the conversation as if it annoyed her. already, unknown to me, she had gone several times to the mother of the young girl, and said that i was too young--that i ought to think more of my studies than taking to myself a wife, of whom in the end i should tire; and poor little marina would be sure to suffer, in the first place because she cared for me, and in the second place because, if abandoned by me, she would find it hard to get a husband. all these things were said by my poor mother for love for me and through the fear of losing me. i knew it some time after. but now let us see what were the fruits of these words of hers. one morning--it was sunday--i went to marina's house feeling more light-hearted than usual. it was about one o'clock, after mass. i went up-stairs, knocked, and regina opened the door to me; but as i entered i heard a rustling sound, and saw marina retiring into her little room. her mother was more serious than usual, but seemed not to wish to show it. i perceived at once that there must be something the matter, and wished to clear it up. so i began-- [sidenote: i am sent away.] "marina--where is she? is she not at home?" "yes; she is in her room." "does she feel ill? i hope not." "she has nothing the matter with her, thank god; but as i have something to say to you, and as she knows what it is i want to say, she would not remain, and has retired to her room." after this preamble, although there was nothing that i could reproach myself with, i felt quite frozen up. "what is it then that you have to say to me?" "listen, and don't take it ill; in fact, i have already told you from the first that you are too young, and who knows when you will be able to marry my daughter? from now until then some time must elapse, and i have no wish that you should occupy that time sitting about on my chairs. _then_, too, you may change--your companions may put you up to this; and we are poor people but honest, and i don't want my marina to be courted by one who----" "enough, regina--enough. it is true i am too young, but you knew it when you allowed me to come to the house. my earnings seemed then sufficient; and if no date was fixed for the marriage, it was because it was not asked. i am decided, if it so pleases marina, to take her home in a year or a year and a half's time. your words are the result of the tittle-tattle of people who wish us ill." [sidenote: temporary separation.] "no," regina hastened to say--"no, they are not ill wishes of you or of us. but you understand me quite well, that if i speak in this manner to you, it is for the good name of my daughter. nothing is damaged by it. for the present you will be so good as not to come to the house. if it is a rose, as they say, it will blossom; and when you return and say, next month, i want to marry marina, you need have no fears; she will wait for you." i remained silent and sad, and then said--"is this also marina's wish?" "it is." "will you allow me to say one word to her before going?" "say it, certainly." i went to her door and pushed it open a little. she was standing with one hand leaning on the back of a chair; her eyes were cast down, but the expression of her face seemed tranquil. "marina," i said, "your mother has sent me away, and she has told me that this is also your wish." she lifted her eyes and moved a little. "i therefore obey, but be sure that i will never look into the face of another young girl until i come to claim you for mine. do you accept my promise willingly?" "yes," she answered, with a steadfast quiet voice. then i stepped nearer to her and put out my hand. first she looked towards her mother, and then she put her hand in mine, and we looked at each other, and in her eyes i saw a little tear, and her faith in my promise. i went away pierced to the heart, but firm in my resolve. neither at home nor at the shop could they understand what was the matter with me, for my whole character had so changed. i think my mother understood what it was, for she caressed me more than usual, and asked me no questions; and i set my heart at rest, because i trusted in the strength of character and true nature of the girl. although it was prohibited me to go to her house, yet i made it a study how to meet her out of doors, and, without being seen, to see her, and even follow her from a distance. i was not at peace, however--not because i had any fears as regards her, but i was afraid of myself. i felt an aching void within me that nothing would fill. i saw smiling dreams of fame and honour vanish little by little. i heard a voice whispering within me--"put an end, poor fool, to your melancholy; you were born poor and ignorant, and so you will die. qualities are required to lift one's self above others that you are entirely wanting in. genius is necessary, and you cannot say that you have it. education is necessary, and you have none. money is necessary, and you have not a farthing. above all, a strong will is needed, and yours is most variable, transient, and weak, bending to the slightest breath of a contrary wind. put an end to it all, and do as i say: enjoy day by day whatever is given to you to enjoy. amuse yourself with friends your equals, and whenever any of these thoughts oppress you, drown them in a glass of wine. as to your young girl, remember it is as her mother has said, 'if it is a rose, it will blossom.' up! up! _viva!_ and keep a light heart." i already felt myself half yielding to these suggestions. i was down-hearted, and had not the strength to shake myself free from this strait of discouragement and desolation. [sidenote: i resume my bad habits.] i had but little religion in me, which alone could have comforted my soul with constancy and faith in these first ebullitions of life; so it is not to be wondered at if, in this state of languor and discontent, i again turned to the amusements of my friends, losing not a few hours in the public billiard-rooms. i returned to one of the worst of habits, for him who has a home--that of going to the _osteria_; and i remember to have felt humiliated on finding myself in the midst of that noisy, vulgar merriment, and hearing the coarse words uttered in those taverns, where the air was heavy with wine, food, and cigar-smoke. the chaste image and simple gentle words of my good marina came back to me, and i felt troubled, and, shaking myself, i used to rise abruptly and go away. [sidenote: quarrel and fight.] yes, truly the image of that gentle being aroused me, and made me return to myself with a feeling of shame, and a determination to put an end to all this. it was providential, however, that not only her image but she herself appeared to arrest me on the brink where i had allowed myself to be dragged, and my meeting with her deserves to be narrated. months had passed since i had been sent away from my marina's house. it happened one day, it being a _festa_, that i had promised to go out of the porta san miniato to meet some friends and eat a fresh plate of salad; and when i was near the church of san niccolo, i could not cross the street on account of the procession that was just coming out of the church. i think it was during the octave of corpus domini: there were many people, and i waited until the procession had passed; then, perhaps because i was in such a hurry to overtake my friends, in passing by i inadvertently knocked against two women who were in the company of a young man. they took it in ill part, and the young man, thinking perhaps that i had knocked against them on purpose, said-- "has the boor passed by?" "you are a boor yourself," i answered. "pass on, if you want to." and he gave me a push. i turned around on him and hit him a blow in the face, and from that instant i had all three, the youth and the girls, down on me. but they got little good out of it: the young fellow, who was rather slight than otherwise, was put at once out of fighting condition by two blows of my fist in the face; and i freed myself from the girls, who seemed like infuriated harpies. in an instant lace, ribbon, and feathers flew in the air like dry leaves scattered by the wind. [sidenote: escape from the police.] a space was cleared around me, and some said, "oh, what a scandal!" others, "_bravo!_" some ran away, some laughed, and the soldiers came to clear the place and quell the tumult, and the _sbirri_ (for there were _sbirri_ then) to make arrests. a mounted dragoon stationed himself in front of the church. a strong-built young man, then practitioner at the hospital, and now a distinguished physician--doctor gozzini--seeing the bad plight i was in, and having been one of those who had called out "bravo!" came quickly to me, and taking me by the arm, hid me amongst the crowd, and took me with him behind the mounted dragoon. there we stood quite still, and saw them arrest the poor young fellow with his broken nose, and the girls with their crushed hats. i was not discovered that evening. they found me, however, easily enough next morning at the shop; but i will speak of this later. and now i feel in duty bound to assert that that was the last escapade of that kind that i was guilty of. i feel strong enough (or, as some may think, weak enough) now to bear quietly similar words and acts that so outraged me then. ah! indeed age and experience are, as one may say, like the grindstone that rounds and softens down the asperities and impetuosities of early youth to form the character. not to excuse the affair nor the violence of my ways, but for the love of truth, i feel bound to narrate another adventure that happened to me on the morning of that same day, which had perhaps served to exasperate my already irritable state of mind. about mid-day i had betaken myself to the public baths of vaga-loggia, a bathing-place which was formed out of that part of the canal called the macinante running between the franzoni palace and the palace belonging to the baroness favard. it was covered in by a framework of wood, with awnings, and the entrance was by a little door and through a narrow corridor that went along the side of the canal. at the end of this passage was a sort of stand, and a room that was used for undressing, and where, for a few _soldi_, an _employé_ of the municipality was stationed, who furnished towels, and took charge of the clothes and other effects belonging to the bathers. for those also who could not or would not pay, below the steps leading to the baths there was a sort of small amphitheatre with a little wall around it, and in this wall niches to put one's clothes in. it seems to me that i have seen a something of the same kind that was used for a similar purpose at pompeii, only there they were hot baths. [sidenote: clothes stolen at bath.] i chose this second-named place, which was more economical certainly, but not so safe, as you will see. after having bathed, on coming out of the water i went to my little niche and found it empty. i looked about, inquired, and swore. no one knew anything about my clothes. at first i thought it was a joke, to keep me some time naked; but at last i was convinced, and the other bathers as well, that my things had all been stolen. [sidenote: i borrow another dress.] what was there then to do? nothing had been left--they had taken everything; and to say the truth, it did not seem at all comic to me, however others might laugh. a friend relieved me from my embarrassment. he dressed himself in haste, went home to his house, which was on the prato, and brought me all i required, from my shoes to my hat. i dressed myself, went home in the worst of tempers, and i have already described what followed. chapter iv. return to the house of my betrothed, and put an end to my thoughtless ways--a talking parrot--he who does not wish to read these pages knows what he has to do--how i went to prison, and how i passed my time there--"the death of ferruccio," by the painter bertoli--signor luigi magi, the sculptor--how i learnt to become economical--shirts with plaited wrist-bands--the first love-kiss, and a little bunch of lemon-verbena--my marriage--my wife has doubts as to my resolution of studying sculpture--pacetti's shop in palazzo borghese--i sell the "santa filomena" to a russian, who re-christens her "hope"--i begin to work on marble--i make a little crucifix in boxwood, which is bought by cav. emanuel fenzi--verses by giovanni battista niccolini. and now to return to my unfortunate escapade, which, so to speak, was the cause of my good fortune. whilst they were looking for me, hidden in the crowd, i got away by slow degrees to the porta san miniato, and, keeping close to the walls up the hillside, escaped the observation of the police; and then, on thinking over the danger i had run, and the scandal i had created by my folly, i resolved to mend my ways. here the remembrance of the dear gentle maiden came over me, and i thought if i had been with her and had not been driven away, this disturbance would never have taken place. her presence, her words, the desire of possessing her, and being loved and esteemed by her, were necessary to me. at last i returned to town by the same road, and, going up by the renai, i crossed the ponte alle grazie, and near there i saw marina and her mother walking before me. my heart leaped within me! had they been to the procession? did they know what had happened, and had they seen me? what a start it gave me! to appear such a poor creature in her eyes was intolerable: what others might say was nothing compared to her condemnation; and, let alone condemnation, what i feared was the loss of her esteem. under the influence of this fear, i had not the courage to address her; but at last, this uncertainty seeming too bitter to bear, i went up to her mother's side and said, "good evening, regina." [sidenote: i return to marina's house.] "oh, see who is here! good evening," she replied, with a joyful face. i felt a new life come to me. "what! have you been to the procession?" she said. i looked both straight in the face and answered, "i come from that direction. i have been out of the gate of san miniato." "have you heard that there has been a disturbance in the piazza di san niccolò?" "i believe so; but it was a mere nothing." "ah, not so much of a mere nothing. they came to blows; there were some women among them; the soldiers came--the dragoons. i tell you it was a great row. besides, some have been arrested, and will be taken to prison; and it serves them right. pretty business, such a scandal as this!" after a pause, i began again, turning to marina-- "where were you when you saw the procession?" "we!" answered marina--"we were in the church. we saw it go out, and a little after the disturbance occurred. i had such a fright!" [sidenote: story of a parrot.] having ascertained that they knew nothing of my doings, i was consoled, changed the conversation, and accompanied them down from santa croce to their house. when we were on the threshold i sadly said good-night; but regina, to my great surprise and pleasure, said to me, "won't you come up for a little while?" "well, if you will permit me, i will stop a little while with the greatest pleasure." and looking into the face of my good marina, her eyes seemed to say, "yes, i am most happy." we then went up-stairs, and i remained there only a short time, so as not to appear to presume upon their kindness; but in taking leave, i told the mother that i should return the next day, for i had something to say to her. my resolution was taken. have you done at last with all your childish follies, your tiresome tirades, your colourless love, fit only for collegians? you promised to give us your memoirs, and we supposed that you had something of importance and interest to tell us. are these, then, your memoirs? and do you really and seriously think that such things as this are of the least interest to anybody? listen, dear reader. you have a thousand good reasons to think so, after your mode of viewing things; but i have quite as many on my side, as i will now prove to you. but first let me tell you a little story. there was once a parrot trained to put together certain words and make a little speech, almost as if it was his own. one day the servant (who was new to the house where the parrot was, and had never seen such a bird before) was struck with astonishment at hearing him, and was so delighted that he stretched out his hand to touch him. as he did this, the bold and loquacious bird opened his beak and said, "what do you want?" the astonished servant at once withdrew his hand, and, lifting his cap, answered, "excuse me, sir, but i took you for a beast!" [sidenote: am arrested and sent to prison.] i find myself now in the opposite case, and say to you, "excuse me, i took you for a man"--that is to say, i imagined that you sympathised with me, and even appreciated a man who promises to tell the truth, and to narrate things just as they really were and are; and this i am doing, and mean to do to the end, without caring who likes great effects of light and shade, fearful shadows, and mere inventions, more or less romantic. if you don't like my way of doing this, you know very well what to do--shut the book and lay it aside, or skip what bores you, and perhaps you may find here and there something which pleases you. but i wish to give you fair warning, that these memoirs refer to and describe in part that very love which, though it may seem to you perfectly colourless, was none the less living, deep, and holy, and that retained its warmth and vividness of light for forty years, until she who was its object disappeared from this earth, leaving in my heart the memory of her rare virtues, a love which is ever alive, and the hope that i may again see her. and now again i take up the thread of my narrative. truly, when i said to regina that i should return the next day to speak with her, i counted without my host, as the saying goes. the next day i found myself in "quod"--for but a short time, if you please, but still in prison for fourteen hours from morning to evening. but i was very well off there, as i shall now explain. the morning after, on monday--i was at my post, the first bench in sani's shop--a person, after walking for some time up and down before the shop windows, came in and said, "be so kind as to come with me to the commissary of santo spirito, and---- do not be alarmed; it is nothing. the signor commissario wishes to learn from you something about the disturbance that occurred yesterday at san niccolò after the procession." [sidenote: examination by the commissario.] "but i--be assured----" "don't stop to deny anything. the signor commissario knows all. your name is giovanni duprè. you live in via del gelsomino, which is precisely in our quarter; and i did not go to look for you at your house, in order not to disturb the family. but i can assure you that it is a matter of no importance--perhaps a scolding, but nothing more." i resigned myself, and went with him. this person was not absolutely a _sbirro_, but something of that kind; and out of a sense of delicacy, and divining my thoughts, he said to me-- "go on before me. you know the way. i will keep behind you in the distance, and no one will perceive that we are together." this i did, and arriving at the commissariato, was immediately introduced to the commissario. the commissario was in those days a sort of justice of the peace, who possessed certain attributes and powers, by which he was enabled to adjudge by himself certain causes, and to punish by one day's imprisonment in the commissariato itself. if the affair after the interrogatory required a longer punishment, the accused party was conducted to the bargello. the interrogatory then took place; and after severely blaming me for my conduct, he told me that the matter in itself was very grave, both on account of the assault and the injuries done by me to these persons, and also of the tumult which had been occasioned on a _fête_ which was not only public but sacred, and that therefore it was beyond his power to deal with such an offence. i felt myself grow cold, and had scarcely breath to speak, so completely had the idea of being sent to the bargello overwhelmed me. but the good magistrate hastened to add, "however, do not fear. the single deposition of only one of the _corrisanti_ is not in itself sufficient, and therefore it may be assumed that the provocation came from their side, and that you acted in legitimate self-defence. but as there was disorder, and injuries were received, you must be content to pass the day shut up in one of our cells." thus saying, he rang his bell, and said to a _sbirro_ who appeared at the door, "conduct this gentleman out, and lock him up;" and as i went out he added, "another time be cautious, and remember that you might fall into the hands of some one whose name is not entered here;" and he laid his hand upon a large book which he had on the table. i bowed, went out, and the _sbirro_ opened a door in the court of the commissariato, made a gesture to me to enter, and shut me in. [sidenote: my prison walls.] the room in which i found myself was tolerably large, with a fair amount of light, which came in from a high iron-barred window. in one corner was a heap of charcoal; and from this, perhaps, the room had received the name of the carbonaia. the walls were dirty, and covered with obscene inscriptions. there was a bench to sit upon, a closet, and nothing else. i remained standing and looking about, but i saw nothing. my thoughts were wandering sadly and confusedly from one thing to another, and fixed themselves with fear and sorrow upon my mother and marina, who, in the state in which i found myself, seemed to me more than ever dear and worthy of honour. i thought of their grief, and felt a shudder of emotion come over me. but the assurance that i should soon be free, and should not pass the night there, strengthened me and gave me courage, and i walked up and down the room humming to myself. then, not knowing what to do, and how to occupy the time, which is always so long and tedious when one has nothing to do, i caught sight of the charcoal, and my spirits rose, and i said, "now i have nothing to fear, for here is an occupation which will last me as long as there is light;" and i began to draw upon the wall a composition of figures almost as large as life, the subject of which was the death of ferruccio. this was a composition which i had seen at about that time in the exhibition of the academy of fine arts, in a picture which had struck my fancy. it represented ferruccio lying on the ground mortally wounded, and wrapped in the flag of the commune. with a fierce and scornful look he seemed to be saying to maramaldo, who was giving orders to finish killing him, "you kill a dead man." the author of this picture was the painter bertoli, a young man of great promise, and who unhappily died not long afterwards in the insane asylum. the drawing that i made upon the wall was a reminiscence of that composition, and there was nothing of mine in it beyond an effort of memory. [sidenote: drawing on prison walls.] my poor mother, having been informed by the people of the shop, came to the commissario, in the hope of obtaining my liberation, but she could not even obtain permission to see me. the only thing allowed to her was permission to bring me my dinner--that is, to give it to some one to bring in to me, all but the wine; and this she did. oh, my sweet mother, may god grant thee the reward of thy love! in the meantime the evening drew nigh; the walls were covered with my poor drawings, and my hands and face and handkerchief were all black. i would willingly have remained in prison till another day in order to finish a little less badly the ferruccio; but to stay there for long hours in the dark, and with nothing to do, so irritated and disquieted me, that i began to cry out, and beat on the door, asking for a light at my own expense. but no one heeded me; and as i continued to drum loudly on the door, and had even taken the bench to hammer with, a voice different from the others called out to me, "sir, for your own good i pray you to stop. the rules forbid lights; and if you go on in this way, i promise you that you shall sleep to-night in the bargello." never did so short a speech produce the desired effect like this. i hastened to answer that i would be absolutely quiet. i put back my bench in its place, and seated myself upon it, in the attitude perhaps of marius sitting on the ruins of carthage; and there i remained until eleven o'clock at night. the door was then opened, and i was told to go to the signor commissario to thank him. this i did, and he repeated to me the sermon of the morning, and added that i owed to him the mildness of my sentence. i renewed my thanks to him, and ran home, where i found my mother and father awaiting me--he with a severe face, and she with tears in her eyes. [sidenote: release from prison.] the day after, i went to the house of marina--for i invented some sort of lie to explain why i had not come the day before, as i had promised--and taking aside regina (as marina had established a school in the house), i expressed to her my desire to be married as soon as possible. it was rather soon, i confess; but for me there was no other safety. with her--with my good marina--i felt that i should cut short the too excited kind of life i was then leading, and which carried me into company and into gambling, and down that decline which leads every one knows where. that very evening i returned and insisted on acquainting the dear girl with my determination, at which she showed herself modestly happy. the true affection that i felt for that good creature, and the solemn pledge that i then took, put an absolute end to the thoughtless life which i had been leading. stronger than ever came back to me my love for study, and i began to turn over in my mind how to occupy myself in marble work, even though it should be as a simple workman. at that time i made the acquaintance of signor luigi magi, who was in the studio ricci, in via s. leopoldo, now via cavour, and i opened my mind to him, and he did not dissuade me from my purpose. but he advised me first to learn how to draw well and to model, and after going through a certain course of these studies, then to attempt to work in marble. he offered to procure for me copies to draw from; and then, as he intended to set up a studio for himself, he offered to give me lessons in modelling in clay. this being agreed upon, i returned home happy in the hope of carrying out this plan. but the many little things that i had to think of, and not the least of which was to save all the time i could in order to provide for the unusual expenses of my marriage, upset entirely for several months this ambitious project. [sidenote: little economies.] the ideas of wise economy which have up to the present time always accompanied me, i owe to my most excellent marina. one day she said to me, "you make four _pauls_ a-day, and two you spend on the house. what do you do with the other two?" "i dress, buy cigars, and i don't know what else." "see," she answered, "on your dress it is evident that you don't spend much; your cigars are a small matter; so it seems to me that you might put a part aside to supply what we most need." [sidenote: marina--and a pot of verbena.] "the fact is, that i cannot keep the money." "if you like, i will keep it for you." i accepted with pleasure, and every week brought her the surplus; and i strove that it should not be small, for she knew pretty well what i had over. at the end of a few weeks i found that i had a package of six or eight beautiful shirts with plaited cuffs, such as i had always worn ever since i was a boy. an intelligent economy saves us from need, and even in narrow circumstances makes life easy. i owe to this wise woman the exact and judicious regulation of my family, as well in the first years of our marriage--when we were very much restricted in means--as in those which came after. my eagerness to see her every evening, my exactness in carrying her all my savings, and the respect which i showed her by my words and acts, made me dearer to her eyes than i ever was before. one evening we were standing at the window of our little parlour, which overlooked a garden which was not ours. on its ledge were some pots of flowers reaching out over the windows, and among the flowers was a plant of verbena, which she liked above all things. i talked to her of my studies, of my hopes, of the happiness i felt in being near her; and all the time i was so close to her, that our two breathings were mingled together. she was silent, her face and eyes lifted to the starry heavens. the perfume of the flowers, the silence of the evening, and her sweet and chaste ecstasy so touched me, that, impelled by an irresistible force, i reached my lips towards hers. my movement was instantaneous, but i failed to carry out my purpose; she turned away her face, and my lips only brushed against a lock of her hair, and then she immediately moved away and seated herself beside her mother. after forty years this comes back to me as if it had just happened. her face had an expression neither of displeasure nor of joy; but a certain somewhat of sorrow was there, which seemed an answer to all that i had been saying. when she perceived that i was serious and a little mortified, she said with calm benignity-- [sidenote: my marriage.] "do you like verbena?" "oh yes; i like it so much." then quickly rising, she cut off a sprig, put it in the buttonhole of my coat, and said-- "there, that looks well!" i took my leave, and on going away said to her _addio_, and not a _rivederla_. the th of december , on the vigil of the immaculate conception of the virgin mary, i married my good marina in the church of st ambrogio. this was, in truth, the great event of my life, and that which exercised the most salutary influence over my studies, over my peace, and over the prosperity and morality of my family. we were married in the evening, not only to screen ourselves from the curious, but also because our joy was as secret as it was great. our witnesses were luigi sani, son of my chief--he for whom (as i hope my reader has not forgotten) i used when a boy to prepare his clay--and bartolomeo bianciardi, who was a workman in the shop of sani. at our modest supper, besides the witnesses, were my father and mother. my new existence being thus assured, i began to think seriously how to carry out and give real form to the dream of all my life, which resolved itself into this--_to be a sculptor_. my young wife was timid, and sought to persuade me that i was very well as i was. my father openly blamed me, and kept repeating in his beloved latin, "multi sunt vocati pauci vero electi" (many are called but few chosen). this i knew as well as he; but he referred it to my desire to be an artist, and my ambition did not reach further than merely to be a workman in marble. my mother listened to me kindly, and half sympathised with me in my bold hope of becoming a workman in some sculptor's studio. to my dear wife (for she above all others was nearest my heart, and on her account it behoved me to take care what i was doing) i kept repeating-- [sidenote: copying designs and drawings.] "my good marina, listen. i risk nothing. i do not lose my skill as a wood-carver, and if i only study sculpture in the off-hours of my work, this very study may be useful to me as a carver; and if i succeed in becoming a sculptor, i shall be able to earn more, and acquire reputation, and enable you to live well and to give up your trade. say, would not this be a good thing?" and she would look at me sadly, and gently smiling would say-- "but we are very well off as we are." in the meantime, in view of an offer of signor magi to give me some drawings and designs to copy, i went, according to our agreement, to his studio in the licei di candeli, and begged him to fulfil his promise; and a few days after he gave me some heads in light and dark from the "transfiguration" of raphael, which i copied, working at them early in the morning and in the evenings. having finished these rapidly and to his satisfaction, he gave me plate by plate the whole course of anatomy of professor sabatelli, done in red chalk. in this task i was so interested that i worked till very late at night, until i had attained such facility and knowledge, that after sketching in the general outlines, i at once finished them without requiring to make a rough copy. magi was surprised that i was able so easily to turn off every day a copy of one of these drawings of legs, arms, and _torsi_, which were of life size. afterwards he gave me a number of the so-called _accademie_, which are nude studies of the entire figure--and these, too, i drew rapidly and with increasing taste; and so enamoured was i of them, that i afterwards repeated them at the shop upon any fragment of paper or wood, drawing them in all their attitudes from memory. [sidenote: anxieties and struggles.] i made, as i was well aware, very rapid progress, and i longed for the moment when the master should say to me that it was time to begin to model. in fact, he soon suggested this. however, as it was necessary to have a certain apparatus and help, i could only begin to model in the studio of magi. it was therefore arranged that i should go to him during all the off-hours of my work; and this i did. i will not stop to note the number of hands, feet, and heads that he made me copy; i will only say that my life was most exhausting, and my wife, poor dear, had to suffer for it. she had to wait for dinner, and i was often so late, that i had only time to swallow a little soup and a piece of bread, and then to rush back to the shop. when i remember this life of mine, with its painful anxieties and struggles, it makes me angry to see some of the youths of to-day, with every opportunity and all their time, and without a care in the world, either for their family or any thing or person, who rot in idleness, assume airs of scorn for others, even for their masters, and then swear out against adverse fortune, and deplore their genius crushed and unrecognised, and similar insipidities. my two hours of rest during the day, which were from one to three o'clock, were thus occupied: one hour was given to study, and the other was but just sufficient to enable me to go from my shop in the piazza di san biagio to the liceo di candeli, and there take my dinner, and then return to the shop. i was punctual too, for i was determined to do my duty, and to keep my promise to my wife never to allow my study of sculpture to interfere with my regular occupation. [sidenote: a home-picture.] it was indeed a life full of agitations, anxieties, fears, and privations, but animated with what joyous hopes! every evening when i came back from my work, i devoted myself at home to making anatomical drawings from casts, while my wife did her ironing in the same room; and i drew until the hour of supper came. it was a pure sweet pleasure to me to see that strong and lively creature coming and going with her flat-irons from the fireplace to the table, and gaily ironing, and singing "muskets and broadswords; fire--fire--poum!"[ ] as she smoothed and beat with the flat-iron on the linen, while her mother sat silently spinning in the corner. truly that blessed woman was right when she said, "we are so happy as we are"--for one of the purest joys that cheers my present life is the memory of those days. no joy is purer than that which comes from the memory of that past time of work, of study, and of domestic peace. those days of narrow means and agitations now shine upon me with a serene and lovely light; and i bless the lord, who softens by his grace the bitterness of poverty and the harshness of fatigue, and so preserves this sweetness of remembrance in the heart, that neither time nor fortune has the power to extinguish it, or even to diminish it. [ ] "schioppi, sciabola; fuoco--puhm!" in the opinion of my master, signor magi, i had arrived at that point in my studies that i could be permitted to make portraits from life. accordingly he proposed that i should find some friend who had time and patience to stand for me as a model. i soon found one, and his was the first bust i modelled. the likeness was good, and magi and the others began to have a strong faith in my future. encouraged by this trial from life, i determined to make a statuette of small dimensions. the subject which was given to me by magi was santa filomena standing with her head and eyes turned to heaven, one hand on her breast and the other holding a bunch of lilies, while the anchor, the sign of her martyrdom, lay at her feet. the statuette was liked; and i pleased myself with executing it in wood, and finished it with great care of handling and delicacy of detail. it was exhibited at the accademia delle belle arti in ; was praised by distinguished artists, such as benvenuti and bartolini; and the latter recalled it to me when, some time afterwards, i went to ask for work in his studio, and said-- [sidenote: statuette of santa filomena.] "believe me, my dear sir, if i had any work to give you to do, i would give it with pleasure, for i have seen that statuette of yours, which shows that you have intelligence and love." my santa filomena was liked--liked by artists and by those who were not artists; but no purchaser presented himself, and i was anxious to sell it, not only for the sake of a little money, which would have been very opportune, but still more for the satisfaction of my _amore proprio_ as an artist. but the purchaser did not come, and i was obliged to place my statuette in the magazine of antiquities of the brothers pacetti, on the ground-floor of the borghese palace in the via del palagio. it did not long remain here, however. it was frequented by many strangers, who found there a great number of things which were curious, and some of which were really beautiful. in this magazine there were, first of all, old pictures of our florentine school: whence they had been excavated i know not, but the exportation of them out of the country was not as difficult as it now is. there were also _terre cotte_ of the school of luca della robbia, statuettes in bronze, marble busts of the roman school, to ornament halls or staircases in palaces; chests of ebony inlaid with _pietra dura_, ivory, tortoise-shell, &c. specially rich was it in venetian glass, antique plates, enamels, laces, &c., &c. there, among all these antiquities, figured my santa filomena, which seemed more pure and white from contrast with all the chests of drawers, and stuffs, and tapestries which formed its background. [sidenote: santa filomena.] a russian gentleman asked the price; and it being stated to him, without refusing to take it, he made a strange condition of purchase. he would not have it a saint, and in consequence he exacted that all the attributes which belonged to santa filomena should be removed. i took great pains to make him see that this could not be done, and that the statuette would in so doing lose much of its artistic value. if the lilies were taken from the hand, it would be perfectly meaningless and idle, and would injure the expression of the figure. he seemed to a certain extent persuaded, but he still persisted that he would not have it as a saint; and after thinking for a long time how he could change the name, and seeing that there was an anchor at her feet, he said that it might be called hope. i remained between yes and no, and only observed to him that hope ought to hold the anchor in her hand, and not leave it on the ground as if she had forgotten it. "no matter," he answered, "i insist on calling it hope; but the lilies must be removed." [sidenote: christ on the cross.] i answered that they would rather help the subject, and it might be called the virgin, hope. "_oh! c'est très-bien_," he replied. there remained the crown of roses on her head, but in regard to this everything was easy. roses are the symbol of joy, and hope in the purity of its aspirations is crowned with joy. truly that day i was a more eloquent orator than artist. the russian, quite content (and i more than he), counted me out the price of the statuette in golden napoleons, and before it was boxed up, had inscribed on the base of the filomena these words--_la vera speranza_. after this work, magi advised me to begin to work in marble. this cost me little trouble, practised as i was in carving wood, which, though it is a softer material, is more ungrateful and irresponsive. after a few weeks' practice, i was able to execute some works, and to assure myself that henceforward, whenever i wished, i could go from one material to the other. remember, however, that i then did not even dream of becoming an artist. i only hoped to succeed as a workman in marble, as i then was in wood. the idea of being an artist came to me afterwards, slowly and by degrees--the appetite growing, as the saying is, by eating; or i should rather say, i was driven and drawn to it, out of pique and self-assertion (_punto d'onore_). but let us proceed regularly. about this time signor sani received an order from certain nuns--i do not now remember whom--to make a christ upon the cross, which was to be of small size and executed in boxwood. naturally sani thought of me, and gave it to me to execute. i set to work upon it with such love and such a desire to do well, that i neglected nothing. after making studies of parts from life, and pilfering here and there, i succeeded in making an _ensemble_, movement, character, and expression appropriate to the subject, and this i executed with patience and intelligence. but the excellence of the work was superior to the importance of the commission. let me explain myself. the time it cost me, and consequently the price i was paid by my principal for my weeks of labour, far exceeded that which had been agreed upon by the persons giving the commission. sani, a little grudgingly, but still feeling that it did honour to his shop, showed himself half pleased and half annoyed; and when other persons afterwards came to urge forward the work on which he was engaged for them, and praised this christ of mine, sani took all the praise to himself as if it belonged to him. nor was he to blame for this. the christ, however, on account of the difference of price, remained in his shop shut up in his chest. but as it had been somewhat noised about, many came expressly to see it. among these was the cavaliere professore giuseppe martelli, who lately died, and who having seen it, told sani that he hoped to induce the cavaliere priore emanuel fenzi to buy it. he was then putting in order the principal suite of rooms in the palace of the via san gallo for the wedding of the cavaliere fenzi's eldest son, orazio, with the noble lady emilia de' conte della gherardesca, and he hoped to place this christ at the head of the bed of this young couple. and this in fact happened. the christ was seen and bought, and i believe that it is still in that house. i saw it there myself when poor orazio, who honoured me with his friendship, was alive. [sidenote: the "christ" sold.] i shall again refer to this christ; but for the present, let us go on. i had a great desire to give up once for all this working in wood--not because i thought that material less worthy than marble, for the excellence of a work depends upon the skill and knowledge of the artist, and not upon the material which he has used. very worthless statues have been seen, and still may be seen, in beautiful marble, and, _vice versâ_, beautiful statues in simple _terra cotta_ or wood. [sidenote: work at magi's.] "you will be noble if you are virtuous," answered d'azeglio to his son, when the latter asked him, with the ingenuousness of a child, if their family was noble. let us then understand that the nobility of any one is founded upon his deeds, and the excellence of a work depends upon the work itself, and not upon the material. we shall return to this consideration hereafter; now let us proceed. i say that i wished to give up working in wood, because it was my business at the shop to make all sorts of little things, such as candlesticks, cornices, masks, &c. naturally it fell to me to make them; and not always--on the contrary, very rarely--it happened that i had a christ, an angel, or anything of that kind to execute: and on this account i was irritable and irascible (except when i was at home) with everybody, and specially with myself. at magi's i had as much work as i wished. i had already finished for him two busts,--one of the grand duke in roman drapery, according to the style then in vogue among the academic sculptors, who dressed in roman or greek costume the portrait of their own uncle or godfather; the other of an old woman, whom i did not know. work enough i had; but naturally i wished to earn something by it, and this was soon spoken of. i understand very well that the master has a kind of right to all the profits of the first works of his pupil; but with me this went on so long, that at last he saw its impropriety; and he proposed to engage me to finish the group of charity which he had made for the chapel of the poggio imperiale, as a substitute for that wonderful work of bartolini, which is still admired in the palatine gallery. but the proposition of magi was in every way impossible to accept, as he only agreed to pay me when the work was completed--that is to say, i and my family were to go for at least a year without anything to eat. [sidenote: death of my daughter--poem.] i tried here and there; but i could not make a satisfactory arrangement, and i had to resign myself to the making of candlesticks. i had now become a father. my wife had given me a little girl, whom i lost afterwards when she was seven years old; and as i have never made mention of my dear angel, let me embellish the meagreness of my prose with the charming verses of giovanni battista niccolini, who then honoured me with his friendship, and which he wrote with his own hand under the portrait of my little child. they are as follows:-- few were the evils that life brought to thee, dear little one, ere thou from us wast torn, even as a rosebud plucked in early morn. tears thou hast left, and many a memory, to those who gave thee birth, but thou from life's short dream on earth hast waked the perfect bliss of heaven to see; and thou art safe in port, and in the tempest we. pochi a te della vita furono i mali, o pargoletta, e mori come rose ch'è colta ai primi albóri. ognor memoria e pianto al genitor sarai, benchè per sempre dal sogno della vita in ciel gia desta. tu stai nel porto e noi siamo in tempesta. chapter v. a warning to young artists--professor cambi's propositions--a financial problem: to increase gain by diminishing the means that produce it--i leave sani's shop to have more time and liberty to study--an imitation is not so bad, but a falsification is indeed an ugly thing--the marchesa poldi and a casket, supposed to be an antique--how a master should be--the death of my mother, september --opinion of the academy--the "tipsy bacchante"--a divided vote--the "cariatidi" of the rossini theatre at leghorn. let us consider for a moment the state of my mind at this time. i felt within me an unconquerable inclination for the study of sculpture; and even as a child, i gave vent to my feeling as well as i was able. as i increased in years, the more this desire was repressed and opposed, whether by my poverty or the aversion of my father, the more it developed into a settled passion. but after the progress i had made in my studies gave me a right to hope, and my masters had encouraged me, and i had acquired some skill in working the marble, no work was given me to do. nor was this all. i was humiliated at last, being told by a workman to whom i applied--who was the administrator of the studio of a foreign artist--that there was nothing for me to do there, because the work in that studio was so difficult as to be beyond my ability. i swallowed this bitter mouthful, but i did not despair. not only did i not despair, but i determined, by study and force of will, to prove that i was right and they were wrong. add to this that i was not alone; i had a wife and children. but no matter. since the first prophecies that i never should be good for anything as a wood-carver had proved false, this also, which was both a humiliation and an insult, might prove to be untrue. my poor wife saw that my mind was greatly disturbed, and, with her sweetness, strove to calm me by representing to me that we were fairly well off and without troubles, and exhorted me to drive from my head a thought which was rendering my life bitter to me. these words, dictated by love, made me still more unhappy; but dissimulating and caressing her, i told her that she was right. [sidenote: rivalship and criticism.] one day, in the studio of magi, i and another young man were modelling together a man's _torso_ which had been cast from nature. a friend of magi, a painter, as he passed by us paused, and after looking at our two copies, said, turning to my rival and patting him gently on the shoulder, "i am delighted: this is an artist!" then turning to me with an expression of regret, he said, "_a rivederla._" my good reader, do you think that made me despair? no, by the lord! i tell you rather that these words were seared upon my brain as with a red-hot iron, and there they still remain--and they did me a great deal of good. the professor who spoke them (yes, he was a professor), three years afterwards embraced me in the accademia delle belle arti before my "abel." my rival? my rival is perfectly sound in health, and is fatter and more vigorous than i am, but he is not a sculptor. so, my dear young artist, courage! in the face of poverty, and opposition, and abuse, and contempt, and even (remember this) of blandishments and flatteries, which are more destructive than even abuse and contempt. [sidenote: indications of genius.] but be careful to consider well what your vocation really is, and do not allow yourself to be deluded by false appearances. it is absolutely necessary that your calling should be imperious, tenacious, persistent; that it should enter into all your thoughts; that it should give its form and pressure to all your feelings; that it should not abandon you even in your sleep; and that it should drive from your memory your hour of dinner, your appointments, your ease, your pleasures. if, when you take a walk in the country, the hills and groves do not awaken in you in the least the idea that it would be pleasant to own them; but, instead of this, if you feel yourself enamoured by the beautiful harmony of nature, with its varied outlines, and swelling bosoms, and slopes sadly illuminated by the setting sun, and all seems to you an exquisite picture--then hope. if at the theatre you see a drama represented, and you feel impelled to judge within yourself whether this or that character is well played--whether the gestures, the expression of face, and the inflections of voice are such as properly belong to the character, and accord with the affections that move him, or the passions which agitate him--then hope. if, while you are walking along, you see the face of a beautiful woman, and if it does not immediately awaken in you the idea of a statue with its name and expression, but, on the contrary, you idly or improperly admire it--then fear. if in reading of a pathetic incident you feel your heart grow tender; if the triumph of pride and arrogance rouse your scorn--then hope. and if you do not feel your faculties debilitated by the long and thorny path of study, but, on the contrary, tempered and strengthened every day by constant and patient labour, then hope--hope--hope. if you have property, attend to the management of it. if you are poor, learn some trade. it is better to be a good carpenter than a bad artist. [sidenote: triennial competition.] in my own case, i armed myself with stout patience, and pursued my ordinary work of wood-carving; and when i returned home in the evening, i applied myself to study, and, in the simple and frank conversation of my wife, felt a calm come over my agitated mind; and my powers, enervated by ungrateful labour, were thus restored. but the opportunity which was to launch me once and for ever in art was already near, and i seized upon it with all my strength, hope, and love. many and sad were the first steps against opposition and division; but i pushed on, and i have never stopped since. professor ulisse cambi, who had seen me modelling in magi's studio, and who had his own studio close by, now began to talk to me about the triennial competition in sculpture, which took place precisely in this year, and he proposed that i should go in for it, and hoped that i should succeed; but even if i did not, he said, at all events the study incident to it would be no loss to me. flattered by this suggestion, which showed that he had some confidence in me, i replied that i would think of it, and would speak about it to magi, who might possibly lend me one of his rooms which he did not use, and also give me his assistance. i spoke to him on the subject, but i did not find him at all disposed to favour the project. in the first place, he told me that he could not give me a room; then that he did not think that i had gone on sufficiently far in my studies to be able to attempt such a competition; and finally, that he would not undertake to direct my work. this answer having been repeated to cambi, he told me that he was convinced that i should succeed, and that if magi would neither give me a room nor superintend my work, he would do both--and this he did. [sidenote: model of "judgment of paris."] the subject of the basso-relievo was "the judgment of paris," and required five figures--paris, venus, minerva, juno, and mercury. i made a sketch; but it did not please cambi, and taking a piece of paper, he sketched with a pen a new composition, saying, "that, i think, will do very well." i then made a new sketch founded upon this by cambi. some one will now say, "this is not right; you ought to have worked out an idea of your own, and not one of your master's." agreed; but these considerations will come afterwards. for the present, let us go on. in the meantime it was necessary to come to a decision, and to take into consideration that the work required much time, and could not be completed in my off-hours, as i had hitherto done with my other studies, and also that money would be required to pay the models; so that, as it would be necessary to give less time to my ordinary work, i should earn less, while i should have need of more money in order to pay the models. the problem was a difficult one, and at first sight not easily solved. the reader will remember the brothers pacetti, in whose shop i had sold the santa filomena. one of these, tonino, had often said to me that if i would work for them they would give me anything to do that i might prefer--whether cornices rich with figures and _putti_ and arabesques, or coffers and chests _all'antica_, or whatever i liked with figures, with the prices agreed upon, and liberty to work when and how i liked. the offer was excellent, as you see; but it involved leaving my old master sani, and i was affectionately attached to him, and he and all in the shop were attached to me; and on this account i felt repugnance to leaving the place and the persons who had helped me on when i was a child. so, thanking pacetti, i repeatedly refused his offer. but now it was necessary to come to a decision between two alternatives--either to abandon the competition and remain in the shop, or to abandon the shop and accept the offer of the brothers pacetti. i spoke of this to my good marina, who at first did not look upon it at all favourably, fearing that if i left the shop, which had always given me work, i should find myself left in the lurch by the other, in spite of all the fine promises of gain and liberty and the like. but at last, seeing that i was decided, she contented herself with saying, "do as you think best." o blessed woman, may god reward thee! [sidenote: modelling bas-relief for competition.] when i stated to old sani my determination to leave his shop, angry as a hornet, he said, "do as you like," and spoke to me no more the whole day. the next day, however, more softened, but still severe, he asked me the reason of this strange resolution, and i told him. then he proposed an increase of salary and a diminution of work, and at last agreed (i must do justice to this good man) to allow me to have all the hours which were necessary for the competition. but i had already made my contract with pacetti, had decided upon a work after my own choice, arranged the room given me by pacetti, and which was the hospital for horses in the old stable of the palazzo borghese, and i could not withdraw from it. i began to model the basso-relievo for the competition in the studio cambi, and my _intaglio_ work i did in the little studio or stable of the palazzo borghese. the work that i had undertaken for pacetti was curious. it had every recommendation except that of honesty. let me explain. there was at this time a great passion among strangers for antique objects: great chests, cornices, and coffers, provided they were old, were sought for and purchased; but modern works, though of incontestable merit, no one cared for, and they brought very low prices. it came into the head either of pacetti or myself--i do not remember which--to make something in imitation of the antique (and so far it was all right), and to sell it for antique, and here was the maggot. [sidenote: i carve a seicento coffer.] it was settled, then, that i should make a coffer or chest in the beautiful and rich style of the _seicento_--rectangular of form and not high. the cover was slightly pointed, with various arabesque ornaments, and in the centre of this cover in the front i carved a medusa crying out loudly; and by looking at myself in the mirror, i succeeded in giving a good deal of truth to the sad expression of this head--indeed the muscles of the face and the eyes had such a truth of expression that i would not promise to do as well again even now. this is the portion of the work which is really original; all the divisions in panels, and the external faces, were an absolute counterfeit representation of the ornaments on the bookshelves in the libreria laurenziana, which were carved by tasso the carver, the friend of benvenuto cellini, and, as some say, were designed by cellini himself. every precaution was taken--the wood was antique but not worm-eaten, so that i could carve with delicacy all the ornaments, dragons, and chimeræ; and when it was finished, here and there a worm-hole was counterfeited and filled up with wax, but so as to be visible. the hinges and ironwork were also imitations of the antique, which were first oxidated and then repolished. in a word, it was a veritable trap, and i give an account of it for the sake of the truth; and i hope that the first statement of this falsification does not come from me. but however this may be, we laughed at it, and it amused me then, though now it displeases me. [sidenote: coffer is attributed to cellini.] this coffer was seen by many persons, some of whom asked the price; but pacetti set a high value upon it, and he had spread about some sort of story that it was a work of benvenuto cellini's. finally, after some time, the marchioness poldi of milan, who had gone to florence to urge bartolini to finish the famous group of astyanax which he was making for her, saw this coffer, liked it, and took it for an antique; but in regard to the excellence of the work, and above all the name of the artist to whom it was sought to attribute it, she determined to consult bartolini himself, and if his judgment was favourable, to buy it for the price that was asked, but which naturally was not what i had been paid. bartolini decided that it was one of the finest works of tasso the _intagliatore_, made after the designs of benvenuto cellini; and the marchioness poldi then bought the coffer, and carried it to milan. four years later, i finished my "abel" and "cain." i had made a name, which had been rendered still more attractive by the curious story of my origin; for all of a sudden, while nobody knew who i was, i seemed to be an artist who had been born one morning and grown up before night. the only thing that was reported about me was, that i had never studied, and that i had suddenly leaped from the bench of the _intagliatore_ on to that of the sculptor. the reader who has thus far followed me, and who will continue with me up to the completion of my "abel" and "cain," will see with what heedlessness these reports were propagated. let us go on. the marchioness poldi came to my studio, and having heard the story of my life, which was in the hands of all, and was written in that easy, attractive, and poetic style of which farini is master, told me that she possessed a magnificent work in _intaglio_ by the famous _intagliatore_ tasso, and said that this work was imagined and executed with such grace and excellence that it might truly be called a work of art, and she added that these were the very words of bartolini. [sidenote: in the studio cambi.] the reader may imagine whether i was flattered by this; and in consequence of this praise, as well as to pluck out this thorn from my heart by a confession of my fault, i said, "i beg your pardon, signora marchesa, but that work was made by me." the marchioness looked at me with a kind of wonder, and then said, "no matter--nay, all the better." i begged her not to tell bartolini. but to return to the point where i left off to make this digression about the marchioness poldi. let me say, that if in my studio i enjoyed complete liberty of imagination and action, and if my works met with such success and were so praised as to give me consolation, matters did not go on so well in the studio cambi, where i was modelling for the competition. scarcely had i put my foot into that studio when i became timid, embarrassed, and almost fearful; for the professor would not leave me free to see and execute from the life as i saw it. i do not say that he was wrong; i only say, that thus feeling my hands bound to the will of another, rendered me hesitating and discontented. i should have preferred a studio of my own, and after i had sketched out as well as i could my own ideas, then to have my master come in to correct me. but there he was always; and he was not content with correcting me by words alone, but he would take the modelling tool and go on and model what i ought to have modelled myself. my work might be done with difficulty; but if i could have done it all myself, as i wished, i should have been much happier, and my hand would have been better seen in it--the hand of a youth without skill indeed, but still desirous to do and to learn; and i should also have been spared the annoyance of hearing that the work was not done by me, but by professor cambi. now cambi is a very dear friend of mine, and i do not mean in the least to reprove him for what he did; but it is my duty to state the facts clearly just as they are--and i take this occasion to say a few words as to what i consider a master should do in directing his young pupils. [sidenote: laws of composition and grouping.] every historical fact, in its manifestations of time, place, circumstances, and character, presents itself to the mind of each person who studies it--and far more to any one who intends to reproduce it--in an entirely different way from what it would impress another. the impression each receives depends upon his character, intelligence, temperament, and education. this being admitted, it is in the highest degree difficult to assert with assurance, "i understand and can express the fact better than you." when certain essential points are established, such as the age and character of the personages, and the costumes and style of dress, all the rest depends upon the taste of the artist, and his manner of viewing and feeling it. as to the composition and grouping of the figures, in regard to which dogmatic statements are so often laid down, this should be a free field to the artist in which he may move about as he will. the harmony of lines, the balance of parts, the equality of spaces, are all very fine words; but above all and before all, and as the base of all, there should be clear expression of the fact, truth of action, and living beauty. it is very true that sometimes, and indeed very often, the young pupil is without much study or much knowledge, and in composing his sketch he makes mistakes in the arrangement of the dresses and the character and truth of the subject he wishes to represent. then indeed the master should interpose. but how? not by taking the tool himself and saying, "you should do thus and thus"; but rather by putting his pupil on the right road, and making him clearly appreciate the story he is trying to represent, and showing him that this or that figure ought to have the dress and the character appropriate to it, and to point out the means by which he may attain this result. if after this teaching the youth is dull, he should be counselled not to go on; but if, on the contrary, he improves his sketch, the master should correct it and perfect it in its movement, in its _ensemble_, and in its expression. in this way the youth will take courage and cognisance of his own powers, and improve. [sidenote: faults of young students.] one of the commonest faults with young scholars is their slothfulness in trying to discover for themselves their own way to express their ideas. for the most part, they are completely deficient in this, and prefer to seek among the works of their master, or of some other master, for their subjects, types, and movements--and thus, with little fatigue and less honour, they only succeed in giving a colourless reminiscence of works already known; and one of the faults of the master is this--not only to allow his scholars to imitate and steal from him, but what is worse, to desire to impose upon them his own works as models. [sidenote: illness of my mother.] i return to my narrative. in my stable i pursued my artistic life freely and happily, with power to select the work i was to do, to carry out my own designs in whatever style i liked, and almost to fix their prices. in this way, with only a half-day's work, i was able to carry home my ordinary earnings for the maintenance of my family; and beyond this, i had two francs over to pay my model for the remainder of the day, which i spent on my basso-relievo. my daily life, therefore, was gay and free in my stable, timorous and gloomy in the studio cambi, and peaceful, glad, and quiet all the evening at home. but for all this, the bitterness had to come. the other competitor, ludovico caselli, was already hinting it about that the basso-relievo was not made by me, and that professor cambi worked upon it. caselli was modelling under the direction of professor pampaloni; but i never complained that pampaloni worked upon it, although there were some who affirmed that he did. i kept my peace, and resolved formally in my own mind that whatever should be the issue of this competition, i would again make an attempt the next year. when the time of the exhibition and the decision approached, i began to hear contemptuous and insolent rumours, which, whether i failed or was successful, would equally afflict me. to this is to be added, that my poor mother was suffering from a very severe illness--an illness, indeed, that carried her in a few days to her grave. i remember, as something that still pierces my heart, the interest she showed during that illness for me, for my competition, and for my triumph (as she called it); and it seemed as if this belief of my loving mother gave a certain alleviation to the terrible anguish of her disease, which every day grew worse and worse. this was in the first days of september . on sunday the th the decision was to be given, and my poor mother was at the point of death. what i felt in my heart may be imagined, it cannot be told. the instant i heard that the prize had been given to me, i ran to my mother--from whom i had of late been somewhat separated--with almost a hope that this good news might bring her back to life again. and in fact, on hearing this news her face became radiant, her cheeks glowed, her eyes, which for a time had seen nothing, became animated and seemed to gaze at me. then she stretched out her arms, and, pressing me to her, said, "now i die willingly." she lived a few days longer, and then, comforted by the sacrament of our holy religion, died. she had finished her short life of about fifty years, in the restrictions of poverty and in the bitterness of one of the greatest misfortunes--blindness. god has taken her to the joy of his infinite mercy. [sidenote: decision of the academy.] the conflict of judgment among the professors of the academy at the competition was tempestuous, and the result extraordinary. the votes were divided thus: ten votes were given for my model, four or five (if i mistake not) to that of my competitor, and there were eleven votes for a division of the prize. i thought that votes for a division could not properly be given; and at all events, as i received ten and the other four, i considered myself the superior. but no. the legal adviser declared that the number eleven was superior to the number ten, and as eleven had voted for the division, that the prize must be divided. but the matter did not end here. my competitor, not satisfied with his prize, went about saying that it was not i who had competed; that he did not know who i was, nor where i had studied; and he threatened to challenge me to i know not what trial in design or modelling. i answered that i intended to continue to study, and that naturally we should be measured against each other often, if he chose to have it so; and this put an end to it. more than this, we became friends, and still are; and i believe he is now employed in the foundry of cavaliere pietro bonini, as a designer or mechanic, i don't well know which. he is a man of talent, and has made several works of sculpture, among which are hagar and ishmael, susannah, and the statue of mascagni which is under the uffizi. [sidenote: model of youthful bacchante.] but in the opinion of the young students at that time there still remained a doubt whether that work was all grist from my mill, and in consequence i had a strong desire to do something by myself in my own studio. in order to put an end to all this gossiping, i put up a figure of life size representing a drunken and youthful bacchante leaning against the trunk of a tree as half falling, while she smiled and held to her lips a goblet. the difficulty of the subject was as great as my inexperience. the tender age of the model, who could not be made to stand still, the difficult and fatiguing attitude, my own total want of practice in setting up the irons and clay, the smallness of the room, and the deficiency of light, were obstacles which conquered at last all my poor capacity, and my figure fell, and i had not the courage to put it up again; and it was all the better that i did not. after this came new attacks, new gossip, and new affronts, all carefully covered and veiled, and, as giusti says, "_tramati in regola, alla sordina._" i have already spoken of the voting on the competition, and i may as well return to this here--for these memoirs are not solely a meagre narrative of my life, but also an examination of principles; and whenever it seems to me proper to make this examination, i shall do so, endeavouring, as usual, to be brief and clear. and first of all, you must believe that i do not return to this decision to complain that the prize was divided between me and my rival; and i wish you to understand that even had the entire prize been adjudged to me, i should equally have returned to this question. the subject i mean to examine is the false principle of a vote of division. [sidenote: votes on competitive work.] whoever undertakes to judge of the comparative merit of various works, ought, i think, to have sufficient critical ability to distinguish minutely the smallest differences between these works on various points--such as, for instance, their composition, character, proportion, movement, expression, refinement, historical accuracy in the types and fashion of the dresses, truth, style, &c. &c. now it is absolutely impossible that in all these particulars two works can be perfectly equal and of the same value; and the conclusion thus far is unavoidable, that the judge who gives his vote for a division, either has not the qualities required to discern these delicate differences, or omits through culpable negligence to make such a rigorous examination as is required to arrive at what is true and just. therefore the president should declare formally that the votes for a division will be null; and as their absence might invalidate the decision through a consequent deficiency of votes, he should invite the judges to declare for one or the other. i conclude (and with this i shall finish my disquisition on this subject of division of votes) that whoever feels inclined to give a vote in this indeterminate way, either is, or thereby declares himself to be, ignorant of the matter in regard to which he is required to have knowledge and to give judgment. the youthful bacchante fell down; and, as i have said, it was well that it did. this i say now; but then i was much vexed, both on account of the accident itself, and also for the unpleasant talk that it gave rise to. but after all, things are what they really are, and not what we think them to be. i was, however, consoled by a commission--very small indeed, but it seemed to raise my depressed spirits--and it was this, to make the four "cariatidi" of the royal box in the rossini theatre in leghorn. i should not have mentioned this humble work did it not give me occasion to note one thing which the young men of to-day seem to have forgotten. [sidenote: humble commissions.] it is common for the young sculptors of our day to scorn and sneer at any work that is offered to them which they think beneath that skill and capacity which they suppose themselves to possess; and they will not, as they say, abase themselves to mere work in plaster. if any one orders of them a bust or a statue in plaster, their pretence is so excessive that they deem it an insult. now, i say the material counts for nothing; and a plaster statue merely for decoration, well executed, is worth more than a statue in marble or bronze which is ill executed. undoubtedly, if one could choose, he would reject the statue in plaster and accept that in marble--always, however, recognising that the one essential thing is, to do his work well. but i was not given this choice, and i accepted this humble commission, and executed it with zealous love. there was this, too, of good in the commission--it might induce me to believe that i should have made a far better statue had i been given more time and more means to make one of my own selection; and i said, "if i have been able to make these statues in a month, with thirty or forty lire to pay to my models, how much better i might do in five or six months, with much more money!" the question reduces itself, then, to time and money. let the young artist consider whether my reasoning is not just; and let him also consider what is more important--that if i had not accepted this commission, i should not have come to the knowledge of the power that was in me, nor have gone through the reasoning which by strict logic induced me to make the "abel." this humble work was of great importance to me, and i recommend it to the attention of those young artists who consider themselves humiliated by small commissions. no; do not let them be alarmed either by the subject or the material, and if they should receive an order even for a great _terra cotta_ mask for a fountain, provided it be well made, they will acquire by it praise, and new and worthier orders, so long as their sole endeavour is to do their work well. chapter vi. an unjust law--the "abel"--brina the model and i in danger of being asphyxiated--my first request--benvenuti wishes to change the name of my abel for that of adonis--i invite bartolini to decide on the name of my statue--bartolini at my studio--his advice and corrections on the abel--lorenzo bartolini--giuseppe sabatelli--exhibition of the abel--it is said to be cast from life--i ask for a small studio, but do not obtain it--my second and last request--the president antonio montalvo--i don't succeed somehow in doing anything as i should--i talk over matters at home--count del benino a true friend and true benefactor--his generous action. while i was pondering a subject for a statue which should silence the idle and malevolent, it happened that a competition in sculpture was opened in siena, in which no one could compete but those who were of that country and province. naturally i determined to compete. the only other competitor was the young sculptor enea becheroni, a pupil of the academy there. another wished to enter into the competition, and this was giovanni lusini, an accomplished sculptor who had lately returned from rome, where he had been pensioned for four years, he having gained the prize at the quadrennial competition of our academy at florence. but he was not allowed to come in; for although, like becheroni and myself, he was a native of siena, he was inadmissible because he had passed the age decreed by the rules. this competition was called _biringucci_, from the name of the worthy man who by his will had founded a prize and pension for sculpture, as well as others for painting, architecture, and various sciences that i do not remember. the studies and pensions established by him had been in existence for more than years, and are still in existence, but, by one of those curious combinations that some would call a fatality, precisely in this very year, when it would have been most welcome to me, the prize for sculpture was struck out by one stroke of the pen. [sidenote: biringucci competition.] i had already for some time prepared myself for this competition, which required that the artist should be shut up in a room by himself, and there should make, in the course of one day from morning till evening, a sketch in clay of some subject drawn by him by lot at the moment of entering the studio. for a considerable time i had made nothing but sketches; and within a space of time certainly not greater than that allowed by the competition, i had in fact made some dozen, and by practice i had become so rapid in composition, that whatever subject might be given me, i felt fully equipped, so as to be able to come out of the struggle with honour. one day--it was sunday--i was standing in my little studio in the via del palagio, and modelling one of these sketches, the subject of which was elias carried away in the chariot. i was working with goodwill, and was happy and in the vein. my father had come to see me, and he was sitting and reading quietly the bible. the bell rang, and a letter was given me bearing the post-mark of siena, and i recognised the handwriting of the secretary of the competition, signor corsini. i opened the letter, and read that the government had suppressed the pension for sculpture as being superfluous, and had disposed of the sum by appropriating it to a chair at the university, and therefore the competition would not take place. i see, as if he were now before me, my father start up suddenly and exclaim--"sagratino moro moraccio" (which is, literally, "cursed moor of the blackamoors "), "what have you done?" [sidenote: i smash my sketch of elias.] with one blow of my fist i had smashed to pieces my poor elias, and he saw it on the ground between the legs of the horse. "read," i said, giving him the letter. scarcely had he fixed his eyes on it, than he grew red, stamped with his feet, and repeated his usual "sagratino moro." i was at once aware that i had acted ill in giving way thus brutally to my irritation. this i have recounted out of love of the truth, and that those who know me now may see how different i was then, and how ludicrously that excitability of character which i still feel, but which i have learned how to repress, was exhibited in the tragic destruction of that poor sketch. and this too was of advantage, just as the gossip and incredulity about the first triennial was. the refusal to give work was also of advantage, when i went seeking about from studio to studio, and it was denied to me, even in terms of scorn. it was all of advantage to me. it obliged me to concentrate myself, and, seeing myself rejected on all sides, to will and to know, and with god's assistance to make my place with my own unassisted powers. it was all right--thoroughly right; i repeat it. who can tell? the pension of siena was for ten years. may god pardon me, but i always feared that that pension might prove to me, as it had to others, a capuan idleness. i began now to turn over in my mind a new subject which should be serious and sympathetic, and into which i could put my whole heart, strength, will, hopes, and all--and i found it. among the pictures, bronzes, and _terre cotte_ of pacetti's shop, where i used often to wander about, i was struck by a group in _terra cotta_ of a _pietà_. the figure of christ specially seemed to me beautiful; and i had half a mind to make a dead christ, and went about ruminating in my mind over the composition. certainly a dead christ would be, as it always is, a very sublime theme. but yet i was not satisfied. i wished to find a new subject; and as the bible was familiar to me, the death of abel suggested itself, and i seized upon it with settled purpose. i sought for a studio to shut myself up in with the model, and i found one in the piazzetta of s. simone, opposite the church. then i put together a few _sous_ to buy me two stands, one for the living model and one for the clay. among the nude figures which i saw in the evenings when i went to draw, i selected the one that seemed to me best adapted to the subject, and i arranged with him to come to me every afternoon, as i was employed in wood-carving all the morning. i had already made several sketches, but i wished to make one from life, so as to be sure of a good movement and a true expression. it was on shrove thursday in , and all the world who could and wished to do so, were walking about in the corso. the model and i were shut up together in the studio, and it was nothing less than a miracle that that day was not the last of both of our lives. poor brina is still living, as old as i am, and he still stands as a model at our academy. [sidenote: sketch of abel.] [sidenote: i am nearly asphyxiated.] and this is the way in which we ran the risk of losing our lives. in the studio which i had hired there was no way of putting up a stove, except by carrying the tube up through the upper floor, and so out through the roof. the expense of doing this was large, and for me very large; so i determined to make a sketch from life, and from this to put up my clay, and i hoped to be able to go on with the model without fire until the warmer season came on. but these days were so extremely cold that the model could not remain naked even for a few minutes; and we determined to warm the room with a pan of coals, in which apparently there remained a residuum of the powdery dregs of charcoal. the brazier having been lighted, and at intervals stirred up, the room, which was small, was soon tolerably warm. i was intent on modelling with my tool the outline and planes of my sketch, and moving about the model to assure myself of the movement and the _ensemble_, when i felt an oppression on my head; but i attributed it to the intensity of my labour, and on i went. suddenly i saw the model make a slight movement, and draw a long deep sigh, and the eyes and the colour of his face were like those of a dead man. i ran to help him, but my legs would not hold me up. i half lost my senses, my sight grew dim. i made an effort to open the door, and fell to the ground. but i had strength enough left to drag myself along to it, and kneeling, i laid hold of the lock; but the handle would not move, and with the left thumb i was obliged to raise the spring, and with the right hand to draw the bolt, and to do it quickly. i was wrestling with death, as i well knew, and i redoubled my efforts with the determination not to die. by good fortune, by my panting i drew in a little breath of pure fresh air through the keyhole, and at last i pulled back the bolt, and threw it wide open; and there i sat drinking in full draughts of the outer air. in the streets there was not a living soul, but i could hear the joyous shouts from the races in the piazza or santa croce near by. poor brina gasped and rolled his eyes. the air which came blowing into the room revived him, but he could not rise. i had entirely recovered, except that i felt a tight band around my head. i ran to the nearest shop, got a little vinegar, mixed it with water, and dashed it over his face. we then extinguished the fire and went away. [sidenote: petition for assistance.] i began to model the statue a few days after. my mornings up to one o'clock were employed in wood-carving, and all the afternoon i modelled. in this way i went on for some time, and the statue was fairly well advanced, but i required a little more money. the want of this made me rather doubtful whether i should be able to finish the model in time for the exhibition in september. i required thirty or forty _pauls_ a-month for five months in order to go on until september. by the advice of signor antonio sferra, a publisher of prints, i made a petition, to which professor cavaliere pietro benvenuti, aristodemo costoli, giuseppe sabatelli, and emilio santarelli were kind enough to append their names. this petition, which i now have under my eye, and which i copy literally, was as follows. it was not dictated or written by me. my friend giuseppe saltini, now government physician at scrofiano, did me this favour:-- "illustrissimi signori,--the undersigned being desirous to submit to the judgment of the public a work of sculpture at the exhibition of the academy of fine arts during the current year, has begun to model for his studio a figure, of life size, representing a dying abel. family circumstances have, however, deprived him of the means which were required to bring this work to a conclusion. regretting to find his money and labour spent thus far to no purpose, he refers himself to the philanthropy of his countrymen, in the hope that they will lend him their assistance. the sum required he has calculated at only forty francs a-month until the time of the said exhibition. [sidenote: subscriptions.] "he begs to inform all those persons who will kindly lend him their aid and honour him with a visit, that the statue which he has begun is at his studio, opposite the church of s. simone, where the undersigned will be glad to express to them his gratitude, and where the undersigned professors, in attestation of their goodwill, have not disdained to honour him with their approbation.--he subscribes himself as their most devoted and obliged servant, "giovanni duprÈ. "studio, th april . "cav. pietro benvenuti. aristodemo costoli. giuseppe sabatelli. emilio santarelli." the signatures of the subscribers were as follows:-- maria bargagli, widow of rosselli del turco lire antonio sferra n. n. will pay in all as above e. merlini e. ba. m. m. will pay in all as above g. c. pays at once t. d. b. will pay up to september and thus i obtained lire and crazie a-month for five months, which were sufficient to enable me to finish the "abel." from that time forward i have troubled nobody. [sidenote: visit to bartolini.] thanks to the aid of those generous persons who assisted me, and whose names as i read them thrill me to the heart, i went on every day with my model, carefully copying him, and giving a proper expression. there was a moment when i hesitated as to the name i should give to my statue,--or i should rather say, that this hesitation was induced by the cavaliere pietro benvenuti, who thought that, in consequence of the absence of any clear attributes to explain the subject, i should rather call it an adonis. i had never been greatly impressed either by the name or story of adonis, and i never had wished to join the devotees of olympus; but my respect for this gentleman made me somewhat hesitate, and before going on further, as the difference of subject required a difference of character, expression, and style, i determined to ask the judgment of some one in whose decision i could in every way safely confide--and this person was bartolini. with this view i went one morning to his house in borgo pinti, having already informed myself that the hour when he could receive me was between half-past five and six o'clock in the afternoon. i see him as if it were now. he was seated in his garden, with a cup of coffee, which he was slowly sipping when i approached him and said, "signor maestro, would you do me the favour to visit me at my studio, and give me your opinion on a statue that i am modelling?" he answered: "you have called me _maestro_, and that is all right; but i do not know you: you are not one of my scholars at the academy. who is it, then, who supervises your statue, and who is your master?" "i had some time ago some lessons from magi and cambi, and i am not unknown to you, who had the kindness to praise a little statuette of mine in wood, the santa filomena. but i have asked neither magi nor cambi, nor any one else, to correct the statue that i am now making, and this for very good reasons." [sidenote: bartolini returns my visit.] bartolini smiled at these words, and said to me, "to-morrow at six i will come to see you. leave your name with the servants, and go in peace." in the evening, when i went home, i said to my wife: "listen. call me early to-morrow morning, for before six i must be at my studio, as a professor is coming to see my statue." and she called me, poor dear--and called me in time. how it happened i know not, but i was late, and six o'clock was striking as i passed the piazza di sta croce. when i arrived at my studio, i found in the hole of the door-lock the card of bartolini, on which he had written in pencil--"six o'clock in the morning." i ran immediately to his studio in the porta san frediano to make my excuses, and to inform him that i had been but a moment late. his carriage was still at his door. he had not taken off his coat, and he was correcting with his pencil a statue, so that the workman might see as soon as he arrived where he should work. as soon as he saw me, and before i had begun to exculpate myself, he said, "never mind; there is no harm done. i will come again to-morrow. _addio!_" it is scarcely necessary for me to say that the next morning i was at my studio by five o'clock, and at six bartolini knocked. he came in, looked at the statue, scowling, and pronouncing one of his oaths, which i will not repeat. i begged him to tell me where i was wrong, and how i could make it better. he asked me what was the subject, and i told him that i intended it for a dying abel. i then showed him the sketch, upon which was the goat-skin that as yet i had not put on the large model, in order first to study carefully the nude underneath. and then i told him the objection that benvenuti had made, and his proposal to change the subject. bartolini answered, "you will do the best possible thing not to change it, for, as far as regards the clear indication of the theme, nothing more could be done. besides, the goat-skin, which immediately denotes a shepherd, the wound on the head, and the expression of gentleness, explain that it is abel. now, i will give you a little counsel as to the unity of expression, to which you must carefully attend. the face, you see, is gentle, and is that of a just man who pardons as he dies. the limbs also correspond to this sentiment there is only one discord, and that is in the left hand. why have you closed it, while the right hand is open, and just as it should be?" [sidenote: bartolini's criticism.] "i closed it," i answered, "in order to give variety." "variety," said the master, "is good when it does not contradict unity. you will do well to open it like the other,--and i have nothing else to say." this comforted me, but wishing to draw from him something more, in an exacting tone i said, "and as to the imitation, the character, the form?" "the imitation, the character, and the form of this statue show that you are not of the academy." other words he also added, which it is not proper for me to report. as to the feet, he only made a movement with his thumb, and i said, "i understand." he looked at me, and added, "all the better for you if you have understood." this ended all the correction of my statue made by this singular man. it was the first and the last. bartolini was disdainful and unprejudiced, and called things by their real name; and if any one seemed to him an ass, he called him an ass, though he might be senator or minister. he knew that he was a great sculptor, and liked to be so recognised by all. he was often epigrammatic, and to his pungency he frequently added indecency,--liberal and charitable, jealous of the decorum and education of his family, an admirer of the code of leopold, frederic the great, napoleon the great, and the principles of eighty-nine. he liked to be called master, and detested to be called professor. he ridiculed all decorations, but what he had he wore constantly. as a sculptor he was very great. his example was better than his teaching. he restored the school of sculpture by bringing it back to the sound principles of truth. his enemies were numerous and very provoking, but he took no pains to conciliate them. when he was irritated, he struck about him right and left, lashing out fiercely, and laughing. [sidenote: bartolini's character.] i went on and finished my statue, shutting out everybody except my dearest friends, among whom was professor giuseppe sabatelli, who, after seeing my work and signing my petition for assistance, took a liking to me. and every morning, with a knock which we had agreed upon, he came to my studio to sit for a while, before going, as usual, to paint the _cupoletta_ of the chapel of the madonna in the church of san firenze. he used at once to sit down and say--"i am not ill, but i am tired." he was thin and pale, and his black moustaches made his gentle and quiet face look even paler. only few and kindly words came from his lips. as a companion, he was mild and pleasant. his memory comes over me sadly, and seems like the remembrance of something dear which has been mislaid, but not lost. [sidenote: i finish the abel.] by the first days of september i finished the abel; and the caster lelli, who was then also a beginner, undertook the casting, and gave his service in the most friendly way, so that the expense should be as small as possible. all my friends, indeed, came forward to aid me in making the mould and casting, and removing the outer mould, with that brotherly love that i still recall with emotion. they are still living: ferdinand folchi the painter, who served me as model for the hands; ulisse giusti, the carver; bartolommeo bianciardi, paolo fanfani, and michele poggi, all carvers. they came to help me to raise and turn over the mould, or to give me any other assistance. folchi and sanesi assisted me in taking off the waste mould; and, in a word, all were eager to see my work finished and put on exhibition. bartolini told me to select the place at the academy that i thought best; and that if i found any opposition, as no one but the professors had any right to make the choice of place, to come to him there in the school, and he would arrange it for me. i had no occasion to avail myself of this frank and kind offer, for no sooner had benvenuti seen me and the statue than he said, "select the place and the light that you prefer." as soon as the exhibition was opened there was a crowd about my statue. its truth to nature, its appropriateness of expression, and the novelty and sympathetic character of the subject, made a great impression, and every day the crowd about the statue increased. but little by little it began to be whispered about, first in undertones, and then more openly and authoritatively, that the statue was worth nothing, because it was not really a work of art, but merely a cast from life; that i had wished to take in the academy, masters, scholars, and the public; and that such a living piece of work thus introduced as if it were a work of art, while in point of fact it was a mere cast from life, ought at once to be expelled from the public exhibition. and this scandalous talk, which was as absurd as malign, originated among the artists, and especially among the sculptors. it was pushed to such a point, that in order to make the fraud clear, they obliged the model, antonio petrai, to undress, and laying him down in the same position as the statue, they proceeded with compasses and strips of paper to take all the measures of his body in length and breadth. naturally they did not agree in a single measure; for, without intending it or thinking about it, i had made my statue four fingers taller and two fingers narrower across the back. this beautiful experiment was made in the evening; and the president of the academy, who by chance surprised them in the very act, reprimanded all severely, not heeding whether among them there were professors. [sidenote: malignant accusations.] but none the less this malignant and ridiculous accusation was still kept up, and nothing was said of the failure of the attempted proof. the model himself, who persisted in affirming that the statue was modelled and not cast, was openly jeered; and one person went so far as to tell him, that for a bottle of wine he could be made to say anything. but the person who thus insulted petrai had better have let him alone, for tonino--who, poor man, though now old, would still hold his own perhaps--added certain arguments to his words which no one dared to resist. signor presidente montalvo was quite right in expressing his disapproval of this dirty and impertinent examination, which was made without giving notice to the president and director of the academy; but, besides this, he felt all the more inclined to assume my defence on account of a little debt of conscience that he had towards me, and that he wished to pay off. one day, before resolving to take a studio on lease, i made up my mind to petition the grand duke to give me one gratis. the government had then at its disposition several small studios, which were given away, without rent and for an indefinite time, to those young men who either in painting or sculpture gave good promise not only of aptitude, but also of goodwill and proper conduct. as i did not think myself wanting in all these qualities, and specially the last two, i determined to make an application, driven to it indeed by necessity. but before presenting my petition i wished to inform the president of it, and to beg that he would be so kind as to lend me his support, as i well knew that petitions of this nature were always passed on to him for due information. [sidenote: petition for a government studio.] montalvo was a perfect gentleman, and of an ancient and wealthy family, instructed in the history of art, a great admirer of it, and a very good friend of all artists, especially of those who to their artistic skill added an outward practice of religious duties, to which he was a devotee--though, as far as sentiment, enthusiasm, and real taste for art go, he was not distinguished. accordingly, i went one morning to pay him a visit at his rooms in the gallery of the uffizi--he being also a director of the royal gallery. i must here premise that i was not much in his good graces, because i had not studied at the academy, which he believed to be the true nursery of an artist. as soon as he saw me, suspecting perhaps what i had come to ask, he said to me-- "and what do you want?" "i come, signor president, to say to you that i have made a petition to his royal highness the grand duke in the hope of obtaining a studio to make a model of a statue that i wish to exhibit this year in the academy. my means are narrow, because i have a family; and before presenting this petition to the sovereign, i have thought it my duty to inform you, and at the same time to beg your aid, and to use your influence that it may be answered favourably." [sidenote: government studio refused.] he answered, "you are not a pupil of the academy, and therefore you have no right to ask for a studio, which the grace of the sovereign grants only to those who have completed their studies in our academy of fine arts." "if i have not studied," i answered, "at the academy, i have competed there, and gained the triennial prize, which is the end of the studies at the academy." the good signor replied with impatience, "which, then, do you think that you are, canova or thorwaldsen?" "god save us, signor president, i never thought this! but it may be permitted to me to observe, that even canova and thorwaldsen began from small beginnings, and were not born at once great sculptors, as minerva sprung from the head of jove." you see that i really had no luck this morning; for the director, rising, said to me, "ah, then, as you argue in this way, i will tell you that, if the petition is referred to me for information, you shall have nothing," and then reseated himself. i made my bow, and went out. but when i was outside, and wished to put on my hat, i found it was completely crushed: without being aware of it, i had reduced it to this state. so much the better. you lose as far as your hat is concerned, but you gain in character; and i counsel all young men who find themselves in a similar situation to take the same course. [sidenote: cavaliere ramirez di montalvo.] but for all this, i repeat, cavaliere ramirez di montalvo was a good and excellent man; but everything irritated him which seemed to him in the least to run off the rails. in his view, a youth who had not come out of the wine-press of the academy could have little good in him, and he looked upon him as being a schismatic or excommunicated person. the academy was to him the baptism of an artist, and outside of it he saw neither health nor salvation. i fell under him, and he crushed me. _parce sepulto._ but he was soon obliged to go back on this academic puritanism. his friend cavaliere pietro benvenuti spoke to him in praise of this germ which was budding forth outside the privileged garden; and he soon began to regret having treated me with a _nonchalance_ more appropriate for a pasha than a christian. i believe this--and more, i am sure of it; for having gone one day to invite him to come and see a statue which i was modelling, he received me with singular kindness. it was as if he had never seen me before, much less had spoken to me so severely only a few months before, when i urged him to look with favour on my petition for a studio. i was moved to invite him, not only because by nature i am not tenacious in my resentments, but because i knew that he desired to see me--perhaps because he regretted not having been able to further my request. in a word, i went to see him, and found him most kindly disposed, as i have said; and he accepted my invitation, and came to call upon me at my studio in san simone, where i modelled my abel. i have said that cavaliere montalvo was rather deficient in his sentiment and taste for art, but he liked the contrary to be thought of him. he was not indeed entirely without a certain discernment, and he had enough to enable him to distinguish an absolutely bad thing from an absolutely good thing. he was, in a word, a connoisseur in a general way; but his dignity as director of the royal galleries, and even more as president of the academy of fine arts, required him to conscientiously believe himself a connoisseur with refined taste. what i was then ignorant of in this respect i now clearly know, but i had a suspicion of this from the manner in which he looked at my statue, and by his expressions of praise, which were interlarded with commonplaces which he had learned from the stale formulas of the academy. and in order that i should not imagine that he had found everything as it should be in the statue, he wished to point out some defect, and what he discovered was this, that the left ear seemed a little too far back, by which the jaw was enlarged beyond what it should be. [sidenote: an amateur critic.] i have promised from the beginning to tell the truth, and i will tell it, with the help of god, even to the end. i must here confess that i acted like a hypocrite. instead of answering, "it does not seem so to me, but i will measure it to assure myself," i told him that he was right, and i was much obliged to him; and more, when he favoured me with a second visit, i said to him as soon as he came in-- "look at the ear." "have you compared it with the model?" "yes." "have you moved it a little more forward?" "eh? what do you think?" "ah! now it is right." when i think of this, now that i am old, it seems to me a very bad thing, a most vile lie, under which (may god pardon me!) was concealed perhaps a secret sentiment of vengeance; and yet that lie made him a friend to me, and so he remained as long as he lived. but thenceforward i have always guarded myself from lying, and above all, from making game of any one who trusted me. [sidenote: great artist--miserable impostor.] i return to the event of the exhibition. my name was on the lips of all; some praised me to the skies, some despised me as the most vulgar of impostors. bartolini, pampaloni, and santarelli openly assumed my defence. the grand duke asked giuseppe sabatelli about it, and he assured him that the statue was really modelled, and not cast from life, and that he had been an eyewitness of my work, staying in my studio every morning, and had seen me working at it. i was exposed to a tempest of words and looks diametrically opposed to each other. the meaning of the two parties might be rendered by precisely these words, "great artist," "miserable impostor." my poor wife consoled me by saying-- "do not be troubled, do not listen to them. they are irritated because you have done better than they. they will talk and talk, and at last they will hold their peace." "yes, my dear marina, they will hold their peace; but in the meantime, what an injury they have done me! a certain person perhaps would have given me an order for the statue, as i know; but after all this absurd and evil-minded chattering, he mistrusts me, and will now do nothing, and i am crushed and overcome by the very thing which ought to have given me reputation and cleared my path for me. in the same way that i have made this statue, i know that i can make another. the will to do it is not wanting, but how can i bear the expense. my earnings, as i well see, are not sufficient to support the family, and to pay the model, the rent of the studio and the casting, and to buy what is necessary for the studio. besides, i tell you, dearest, that i cannot allow you to fatigue yourself with so much work. you labour all day and all the evening, you have a baby to nurse, you get little repose at night, and do you think that i can allow you thus to wear your strength out? i hoped to enable you to get some rest, and to lead an easier life, and i thought that i saw before us, after i had breathed the last breath of life into abel, the beginning of our intellectual and loving life; and now i find that these are and were only vain hopes." "do not be troubled, nanni," said that blessed woman, and she said nothing more, only her eyes were swimming with tears. [sidenote: count del benino.] in the meantime, without knowing it, i had a friend, in truth a real friend and benefactor, in count f. del benino. count benino was an old man of noble and ancient family, and a bachelor, who lived in his own palace in the borgognissanti, and in precisely that on the lung'arno which was designed by the able architect and engineer professor commendatore giuseppe poggi. count benino had taken a liking to me when i was a little boy in sani's shop. he was a great and very intelligent lover of the fine arts, and everything relating to them, and was extremely interested that his house should be a model of good taste, from the modest furniture of the entrance-hall up to his own private cabinet, which was a wonder to behold. the walls were surrounded by bookcases of solid mahogany, his study desk was also of mahogany; the chairs were covered with polished leather, and the floors were of inlaid wood and polished with wax. the books on the shelves were bound simply in leather in the english style. upon his desk, among his books and papers, were various objects of great value--as, for instance, an antique bronze inkstand ornamented with figures and arabesques, ivory paper-cutters with richly carved handles, portraits in miniature of persons dear to him, and little busts in bronze and figures in ivory set on the cases of the desk, which were divided into compartments to hold his papers. in person he was tall and erect, thin, and with full colour, blue eyes, and perfectly white hair. he spoke with invariable urbanity and facility, not infrequently with pungency, but always with proper restraint. he dressed very carefully, and he liked the conversation and sought the friendship of artists. from the time when i was a youth in sani's shop and worked for him as a wood-carver, and afterwards while i was working by myself in the borghese stable, up to the time when i was making the abel, when he was one of the subscribers to my petition for assistance, and indeed the largest of them, he never lost sight of me, but often came to pay me a visit while i was modelling abel, and showed himself delighted with it, and sure of my future; and now, perceiving this scandalous plot to put me down, he was indignant. he came to seek me out just at the moment when i was thoroughly discouraged and knew not to what saint to recommend myself, and after saluting me with his customary "sor giovanni, che fa?" ("how are you, mr giovanni?"), seated himself on the only seat i possessed, and seeing that i was oppressed with thought, though i endeavoured to put a gay face on it, said to me-- [sidenote: count del benino's kindness.] [sidenote: generosity of count del benino.] "oh, don't give up! courage! don't you hear how these donkeys bray? what they want is a good cudgel and a hearty beating. don't think about it. i know what i am talking about. i frequent the studios, and i see and feel what a disloyal and foolish war they are waging. but do not give them time. you must ward off the blow and give them two back. in one studio i heard a fellow, whom i will not stop to name (but names are of little importance)--i heard a fellow, who, with a contemptuous laugh, said, 'the abel he could cast, because the figure is lying down, but a standing figure he cannot cast. he will not make one this year, nor any other year.' and all the others laughed. this happened only a few moments ago, and i have come now to tell you that it is your duty to silence these snarling curs. so, dear sor giovanni, you must make another statue, and this time a standing figure; and ... now be silent a moment. i imagine very well what you will say. i understand it all, and i say to you, quit this studio, which is not fit to make a standing figure in, and go and look for another at once. order the stands which you require, think out your statue, and i will pay whatever sum is necessary. you know where i live; come there, and you will find a register on which you must write down the sum that you need, and put your signature to it; and when you have orders and work to do, which will not fail to come, and have a surplus of money, you may pay me back the money that i advance. say nothing. i do not wish to be thanked,--first of all, because i am not making you a present, and then because i have my own satisfaction out of the proposition i make to you. what i want is to laugh in the face of these rascals who are now deriding you, and me too, because i assert that i have seen you at your work. so you see that i, too, am an interested party. without spending a penny, we have an advantage, which, with all my money, i could not otherwise get. and now, dear sor giovanni, _a rivederla_. i shall expect you, to give you the money you need. lose no time, keep up your spirits, and think of me as your very sincere friend. chapter vii. the grand duchess maria of russia and the commission for the cain and abel--the prince of leuchtenberg and a plate of caviale at caffÈ doney--an unusual amusement that did some good--again the generosity of count del benino--bartolini's hunchback, and in consequence a return to the abel--bartolini gets angry with me--examination of the materialistic or realistic in art--effects of the realistic--do not have girls alone by themselves for models--subscription got up by the sienese to have my abel executed in marble--a new way of curing a cough--signora letizia's receipt, who sent it and paid for it herself--one must never offer works gratis, for they are not accepted--the grand duchess marie antoinetta orders the "giotto" for the uffizi--has abel killed cain?--statue of pius ii.--a foolish opinion and impertinent answer--i defy the law that prohibits eating. i ran home with all speed, elated and full of enthusiasm, to tell my wife of the charming proposal of count benino. my wife, poor soul, could not understand all this delight, this vehemence and excitement, in praise of that kind gentleman; and without saying it, she made me understand that she should have greatly preferred my continuing as a wood-carver, without troubling myself about an art which hitherto had only given me disappointment and worry. with her eyes she seemed to say to me, "don't bother yourself, nanni, about it." i looked about to find a studio, and took one in the niccolini buildings in via tedesca, now via nazionale. i ordered two large modelling-stands--one for the living model, the other for the statue in clay. "a standing statue he will not make," they said; but i will make it, and in movement too. the idea of cain came at once into my head. cain, the first homicide, fratricide! a fierce and tremendous subject, and one of great difficulty. i made the sketch, and it seemed to me that i had divined the movement and expression. among the artists, it was soon known that i had taken a new studio to make another statue. those who had laughed at first, laughed no longer. my friends encouraged me, and added fuel to the fire. i had also some offers for the abel--insufficient if you will, but enough to encourage me. among the others i accepted that of signor lorenzo mariotti, an agent of the russian government, who lived in his own house in the piazza pitti. he came to see me, and said that he should like to order the statue of abel, whenever i would make it, for what it cost me, and when it was done he would help me to sell it. the expenses were calculated at _scudi_; and he offered me this price, with the understanding that whatever sum it was sold for above the _scudi_, should be divided between us. [sidenote: model of cain.] the marble was procured, and i was already modelling with ardour the statue of cain. fortunately the grand duchess maria of russia, daughter of the emperor nicholas, was passing through florence. she had already heard the discussion, _pro_ and _con_, which this statue had raised. she wished to see it, and was so well pleased by it that she did not conceal her delight. she was in company with her husband, the prince of leuchtenberg. they went into my private studio and saw the cain, only just begun. she exchanged some words with the prince, and he was much pleased, and embraced me. then the grand duchess, pressing my hand, said, "the abel and the cain are mine." then they departed. when i went home and told the good news to my wife, it seemed as if she had a little more faith in what i was so convinced of--viz., my future career as an artist. [sidenote: prince of leuchtenberg.] for the rest of the time that the august prince and princess were in florence, he never omitted to pass some half-hours of the morning in my studio, because he liked so much to see me at work. he spoke italian extremely well, and it amused him to talk with my model antonio petrai on various subjects; and as he was such a strong and well-made fellow, one day he asked him if he would like to measure his strength at fisticuffs with any one; and petrai--who knew well enough who it was who asked the question, and was embarrassed about making a proper reply--after much hesitation could only say "aho!" upon which the prince laughed heartily and gave him something. who would have thought that such a handsome youth, so tall, squarely built, and so spirited, would have died only a few years later of an insidious disease? he was the son of prince beauharnais, viceroy of italy in the troublous times of napoleon i. one day he came and carried me away from the studio, because he wished to see with me the statues which ornament our piazza della signoria and the loggia of orsanmichele; but first he would go to doney's to breakfast. as soon as we were seated, he ordered _caviale_. "_caviale_!" answered the waiter, "we have none." "bring _caviale_," said the prince, sharply; but before the servant could reply he made a sign to the master, who was at the desk, and he knocked loudly on the marble to call the waiter back. after a little while a magnificent plate of _caviale_ was served. i wish to note this anecdote, as it depicts the courteousness, affability, and popularity of this prince, who, though he had married the daughter of the emperor of russia, had not forgotten that he was born and educated in italy. [sidenote: commission for cain and abel.] in the meantime, mariotti, by order of the grand duchess, made the contract for the two statues, cain and abel, and the price fixed for the abel was _scudi_, and for the cain _scudi_. the contract which i had made with mariotti was torn up, and i gave him out of my first receipts the sum he had given me; but as to the remainder, the _scudi_, which was to be divided between us, he would not receive it, saying that the grand duchess had already paid him enough. and this, for mariotti, whom they call _mangia-russi_, was a good action. in the meantime the good count del benino lent me a considerable sum of money to pay the rent of my studio, for the modelling stands and tools, and for the models, as also the daily sum i carried home for household expenses. this was all registered in a book, with the sums, the dates, and my name signed in receipt. and all this together came to the amount of about _scudi_. now that i had two good commissions, and the relative advances on them, i went to palazzo del benino, this time to pay rather than receive, and therefore with lighter and freer spirit. i was anxious to cancel this debt, which weighed upon my mind like an incubus, which i had felt was increased and renewed every time i was forced by necessity to ask for more money; and poor del benino, who perceived my reluctance, encouraged me, and made me feel that it was indifferent to him whether he gave more or less, trying to distract me while he counted out the money. but this time, as i have said, i was gay and light-hearted, and caused my name to be announced by the servant in a loud voice: in short, i was in bearing and in words slightly proud. [sidenote: i offer to repay del benino.] the count was seated writing in his usual place. he put down his pen, and staring at me with his blue eyes, said, "sor giovanni, welcome! i am delighted to see you. what charming thing have you to tell me? yes, what can you tell me that i do not already know? to begin, then, i congratulate you truly--truly. you see, this is for me a new satisfaction: you cannot imagine the pleasure i feel in now seeing certain faces cloudy and sad which a few months ago were bursting with laughter. and i divert myself very much playing the ignoramus with them, saying, 'then it appears that this youth is going straight ahead, _per bacco!_' the abel! that stands for what it is--i mean to say, that if the artist has cast it from life, as you say, the grand duchess maria has caught a fine crab; but the cain! that is scarcely begun, and they tell me that she has seen it only in the clay, and liked it, and given the order for it, and other like things; for the desire to torment them does not fail me, and they were much teased and molested by my bitter words, which i pretended not to mean and ran on. so i have diverted myself, and so i will divert myself. now, then, again i congratulate you. and now tell me if i can do anything for you. i am at your service." "signor conte, i have come to repay the money which you have lent me, with so much generosity and kindness, to enable me to make my new model of cain, which, god be thanked, has so much pleased the grand duchess. if i had not already begun this, she could not have seen it; and who knows if she would have taken the risk to order even the abel? i feel, but cannot express all the importance of your valuable aid. this aid, so timely, has been for me a second life, without which, who knows what would have become of me, discouraged, despised, and probably deserted by those who now cry out, 'beautiful, beautiful!' here am i, then, to thank you cordially, and to return the money i have borrowed." while i was speaking the count gradually lost that gay and lively expression which was habitual to him, and at my last words looked at me with an expression of seriousness and regret that i knew not how to interpret. then he said-- [sidenote: count del benino refuses repayment.] "there is time enough for this; don't be in such a hurry. this is only the beginning; a thousand things may occur, and it will do you no harm to have a little money in the house. on the contrary, it may be convenient. now think of study and your reputation; and to pay your debt to me there is time enough." "listen, signor conte: i have come here on purpose, and have brought the money. i do not need it for the present. let me pay this material debt; that other great moral substantial debt, the infinite good you have done me, i can never repay, and never should wish to." the count grew even more earnest and serious. he held the paper of our accounts mechanically in his hand, and tried to prove to me that there was time enough, and that i should keep the money; but seeing that i insisted, and held out my hand for the papers to see the sum due, drew it back with vivacity, and with flashing eyes said to me-- "oh, leave me, dear sor giovanni, this satisfaction." he tore up the paper and threw it in the basket. i was mortified, and had half a mind to be offended, but the kind expressions of this excellent man prevailed. he took my hand and pressed it between his, saying-- "don't take it amiss, but leave me the consolation that i have been able to assist, even in the least degree, in the sale of your work--as you say, opened for you a future which i hope may prove full of honours. and moreover, you must know that it has always been my firm intention to assist you until the road was open and easy before you. i did not at once open my mind to you, because then, perhaps, you would not have accepted the offer; therefore i said, you will sign the contract,--and in good time you will pay. now you have really paid me, because that small sum of money has secured your future and given me a great satisfaction." [sidenote: idealists and academicians.] it is necessary now for me to touch upon a question vital to art, and which was being agitated just at the time i was modelling the abel. this work served to inflame it, and to encourage as much one side as the other--that is, either the idealists or the academicians in opposition to bartolini, who, while he was not naturalistic in the strict sense of the word, proposed to introduce this principle into his teaching by bold innovations. it is necessary for me to speak of this, inasmuch as this dispute and my statue served as the target for the shots of one as well as the other parties, and had the effect of estranging bartolini from me--although, as we shall see later, it was another and less justifiable cause that made the great sculptor indignant with me. when stefano ricci, master of sculpture in the royal academy, died, it was wisely decided to call lorenzo bartolini to his place (this was a little before i modelled the abel), and bartolini took possession of the school with the air of a conqueror. various were the causes for his extremely overbearing conduct. first, the opposition his demands encountered on the part of the president and others of the academy; then his before-mentioned principles of reform, diametrically opposed to those now taught in the school; also, finally, the heated political and religious opinions, which were discussed with little charity on either side. he altered everything, theories and systems. the position of his assistant, professor costoli, was unpleasant; but he was obliged to remain. he prohibited all study from statues, and restricted the whole system of teaching to an imitation only of nature; and he pushed this principle so far, that he introduced a hunchback into the school and made the young students copy him. this daring novelty raised a shout of indignation: they cried out against the profanation of the school, of the sacred principles of the beautiful, &c.; said that he was ignorant of his duties as master, and that he misled the youths, extinguishing in them the love of the beautiful by the study of deformity; and many other accusations of this agreeable sort, in a freer and more pointed style than mine. [sidenote: imitation of nature--the hunchback.] neither was bartolini the man to allow this deluge to fall upon his head, which, together with much that was true, carried with it a torrent of errors and unreasonable absurdities. as he understood well the clever use of the pen, he launched forth certain articles so stinging and cutting that they were delightful. the abbé chiari and the abbé vicini were treated by old baretti with distinction as compared with the treatment bartolini gave the anonymous society of the via del cocomero. i recollect one of the foolish arguments raised by his detractors against bartolini, which was so ingenuous that it showed in its author more emptiness and smallness of mind than cleverness or bad faith. this is what he said: "the expert gardener, by means of his art, transforms a forest which is rough and horrid, as nature made it, into a beautiful grove, by rooting out plants, opening alleys, pruning into a straight line the projecting branches," &c. how much this comparison of the grove to the human figure diverted bartolini is not to be told. i have not before me his sharp stinging words, and i do not wish to spoil them by repeating them from memory, but to me he appeared to be as pleasant and brilliant a writer as he was admirable as an artist. [sidenote: bartolini's views and character.] this dispute was rekindled, as i have said, on the appearance of my abel. i do not remember by which side was first pronounced my name and my work, but certain it is that bartolini said that the most convincing proof of the excellence of his method was "precisely the abel," which statue was made by a youth who knew nothing of phidias or alcamenes, nor of the others--who had not breathed the stifling air of the academy--that he had trusted himself to beautiful nature, and that he had copied her with fidelity and love. after this there was fresh sarcasm against him and his system of copying nature, even when deformed, &c. added to this, there were long-winded eulogies on my work, and i could see that these were advanced merely to put this man in bad humour. he had taken a dislike to me, and wished to tell me so. he sent his father-in-law, dr costantino boni, to summon me. i went, and when i arrived he received me in the great ante-room, and said to me, with his usual striking bluntness, "i have sent for you to tell you that i do not wish to see you again." how astounded i was by these words you can imagine who know the veneration and affection i had always felt for this celebrated master; and i could only reply--"why?" "why! you have no more need of me, nor i of you; stay in your own studio, and don't come any more to mine." it appeared to me so strange, not to say unreasonable, that he should send for me to tell me not to come to him, that i could not do less than reply that i had come to his studio because he had sent for me, and that i was very sorry to be forbidden to return, as i always wished to learn. [sidenote: bartolini refuses a reconciliation.] "no matter," replied he; "you understand--each one for himself," and this he said in french. because you must know, that when he was excited he preferred that language either for speaking or writing. notwithstanding this, the next year, as i wished for a reconciliation,--having made the model in clay of the giotto, which i wanted to try in the niche of the uffizi, to hear the opinion of my friends about it, and to correct it where it was necessary, before its execution in marble,--i wrote to bartolini begging him to come to see my statue in its place to give me his authoritative opinion. he replied in a manner specially his own--i might almost say with his own brutal sincerity,--that which distinguished him from his sugared and often hypocritical contemporaries. he could not deceive; he held me in aversion, and he wished me to know it, not by his silence, but by a letter. here it is: "dearest, the thing which above all things i like in this world is to see the races in the cascine; but as i have so much work which prevents me, just imagine if i shall come to see your statue?" observe, i do not say that i expected precisely such a reply, and i was a little stung by it; but i understood him, and really liked it better than if he had made an excuse and told a lie. all men should be true to themselves. bartolini was still angry with me, as i found out afterwards, because, in the discussion about the hunchback, my name being brought forward, i did not enter into its defence. in fact, if a similar discussion were now to arise on this subject, it would seem to me cowardly to draw back and not clear up a point of controversy of the greatest importance; but then, being young and a beginner, how could i presume to offer my support to bartolini? would it not appear pretentious in me even to assume to be the defender of so great a master? it seemed to me so then, and it seems so now. let it not be thought that i did not do this while arguing with my artist friends; it was quite otherwise, and this was the way in which i drew upon myself their ill feeling and dislike. and the defence of the bartolini system which i then made was in a much more absolute sense than that which i now make; for while i see that bartolini was right in carrying back art to its first source--that is (and we should thank him for that), to the imitation of nature--he went beyond bounds in proposing a deformed person as a model. it is very true that bartolini never affirmed, as his enemies assert, that a hunchback was beautiful. he said that it was as difficult to copy a hunchback well as a well-formed person, and that a youth ought to copy as faithfully the one as the other; and when the eye had been educated to discover the most minute differences in the infinite variety of nature, and the hand able to portray them, then, but only then, was the time to speak, and select from nature the most perfect, which others called the _bello ideale_, and he the _bello naturale_. but that blessed hunchback still remains, who, in the strict sense of the word, is not the real truth; for in what is deformed there is something deficient, which removes it from the truth, however natural it may be. it is a defect in nature, and therefore not true to nature. [sidenote: bello ideale--bello naturale.] but it happened then as it happens always: the reform of bartolini and the dogmas of the academicians never came to an end. they might have confined themselves to the indisputable principle that one should imitate life in its infinite scale of variety, avoiding always deformity. but once they had begun with the meagre child, the adipose old man, the lean or flabby youth, they went on through thick and thin. it would not have been so bad had they really appreciated what bartolini meant to say, and that is, that _copying_ anything was very well as a mere exercise and _means_ of learning one's art--or, to use his expression, of "holding the reins of art"; but the misfortune was, that some took the means for the end, and so went wrong. [sidenote: copying of antique statues.] but nevertheless, this bartolinian reform was of great advantage. let us remember how sculpture was then studied. the teaching of ricci was only a long and tedious exercise of copying wholesale the antique statues, good and bad; and what was worse, the criterion of greek art was carried into the study of nude life--the characteristic forms of the antique statues supplanting those of the living model. the outlines were added to and cut away with a calm superiority, which was even comical. the abdominal muscles were widened, the base of the pelvis narrowed, in order to give strength and elegance to the figure. the model was never copied; the head was kept smaller, and the neck fuller, so that, although the general effect was more slender and more robust, the character was falsified, and was always the same, and always conventional. this restriction of nature to a single type led directly to conventionality; and once this direction was taken, and this habit of working from memory, following always a pre-established type, the artist gradually disregarded the beautiful variety of nature, and not only did not notice it, but held it in suspicion, believing that nature is always defective, and that it is absolutely necessary to correct it; and in this, they said, lies the secret of art. and yet bartolini cried aloud, and, so to speak, strained his voice to make himself understood, and stood up on a table and beat his drum for the hunchback. but as soon as a sufficient number of people is collected to make a respectable audience, one must lay aside the great drum and begin to speak seriously. and this is just what the _maestro_ did: he gave up the hunchback, inculcated the imitation of beautiful nature in all its varieties of sex, age, and temperament. but, in the ears of the greater number of persons the beat of the great drum still sounded, and the words of bartolini were not understood. from that time to this there have been no more statues of apollo, jove, and minerva. chased from this earth, they returned to their place on olympus--and there they still remain. [sidenote: how far nature is to be copied.] still the seed of deformity had been sown, and struck strong roots. there are some men who grub in filth and dirt with pure delight, and have for the ugly and evil a special predilection, because, as they say, these are as true representatives of nature as what is beautiful and good, and are in fact a particular phase of that truth which, as a whole, constitutes the truly beautiful. and reasoning thus, this school, or rather this coterie, has given us, and still gives us, the most strange and repulsive productions, improper and lascivious in subject, and in form a servile copy of such offensively ugly models as mother nature produces when she is not well. what would you say, dear reader, if you were ever to see a hideous little baby, crying with his ugly mouth wide open, because his bowl of pap has fallen out of his hand? or an infamous and bestial man, with the gesticulations expressive of the lowest and most vicious desires? or a woman vomiting under a cherry-tree because she has eaten too much? or other similar filthinesses of subject and imitation, which are disgusting even to describe? for myself, i am not a fanatic for ancient art: on the contrary, i detest the academic and conventional; but i confess that, rather than these horrors, i should prefer to welcome cupid, and venus, and minerva, and the graces, and in a word all olympus. but, good heavens! is there no possibility of confining one's self within limits? and if we abandon olympus and its deities, is it necessary to root and grub in the filth of the mercato vecchio and in the brothel? [sidenote: model of beatrice portinari.] now we will return to our story. at the time i was modelling the cain, and as it were for the purpose of repose, i made a little figure of beatrice portinari, which i afterwards repeated in marble, i know not how many times. for this statue i had used as a model a tolerably pretty young girl who was named likewise portinari. i tell this little story for the instruction of young artists. there will even be two of these stories, for i omitted one in speaking of the cariatidi of the rossini theatre; and these little matters show how one should treat the model. one morning, when i had the portinari for a model, the curate cecchi of the santissima annunziata knocked at my door and told me that he wished to come in to have a few words with me. i replied that for the moment i could not attend to him, as i had a model, but that if he would have the goodness to come back a little later, we should then be alone, and he could speak to me at his ease. after dinner he returned, and said, "have you a certain portinari for a model?" "yes," i said. "then you must know that this girl is engaged to my nephew; and as i have learned that she comes to you as a model, and as i absolutely will not allow my nephew to marry a model, i have already so told the girl, and she denies that she comes to you. now i beg that you will do me the favour to let me come in when she is here. i will then surprise her, and blow into the air this marriage arranged with my nephew." [sidenote: a model and her lover.] "listen," i said. "this sort of thing i do not like. i cannot lend myself to do an injury of this kind to this poor girl, who comes here to be my model. she has confided to me that she is in want of money, having larger demands than her daily earnings will supply. she has said nothing about her being engaged, in which case i would not have employed her unless her mother or other near relation came with her. but, since it seems to me reasonable that you should not wish your future relation to go out as a model, i will promise you not to so employ her any more; and the first time she comes, i will tell her that i do not want her again, and i will warn her not to go to others. are you content?" he seemed to be tolerably well satisfied, and i did as i had promised. here is the other little story of the model of the cariatidi. every morning there came to me as a model a girl who lived in the prato, and was a weaver. the first morning, she came to the studio with a _subbio_.[ ] i took no notice of it; but the second and the third, as well as the fourth time, she had always under her arm this clumsy and heavy thing, so i asked her-- "why do you carry about that _subbio_?" [ ] weaver's beam. she answered: "i have a lover. if i meet him in the street, i tell him that i am going to my employers." "what occupation has your lover?" "he is a butcher." ah! thought i. "look here, you must do me the favour to bring your mother with you when you come again." "the mother cannot leave her work." "then bring some one else; one of your relations, or a lodger--at all events _some one_. i will not have you here alone." i had scarcely spoken these words when i heard a knock at the door. "hark! it is your lover who knocks," i said, as a joke. i went and opened the door, and found there a sturdy youth as red as a lobster. "who do you want?" i asked. "are you the painter?" "no, i am not a painter." "nonsense! let me come in. you have got anina in there to paint. i want to have one word with her, and will go away at once." "and i tell you that you don't know what you are talking about." "if you take it so," he said, "let me come in;" and he pushed the door with all his force. i, who had been warned, was ready with all my strength, and shut the door in his face. i went back into the studio, and found the girl, who, only as yet half dressed, was trembling like a leaf. i crossed the court of palazzo borghese, and opened carefully the door which gave upon the via pandolfini, and made signs to the girl to follow me. i looked out on the street to make sure that the youth was not there, and said to the girl hastily, "go away, and don't come back to me, even if you are accompanied by some one." the young man stayed in the via del palagio, and walked up and down for some hours before my door; but i saw no more of him, and know nothing more. the conclusion: girls as models--never _alone_. [sidenote: subscription for the abel.] i return to where i left off--to the cain. there was in florence at that time a certain english lady, mrs letitia macartney, who had been living for some time in siena. she wished so much to see the abel reproduced in marble, that on her return to siena she issued a paper which invited the sienese to make a subscription for this purpose. i have before me that paper, dated th december , a few days before the grand duchess of russia had given me her commission. this invitation to my townsmen had a great success, for in a few days sheets were covered with signatures, among which all classes figured--beginning with the governor serristori, the archbishop, the clergy, the university, the gentry, and the people, and finally the religious corporations. certainly, that excellent lady could not have had a better result from her touching appeal, which ran as follows: "i beg the sienese not to reject my humble petition, and that the poor as well as the rich, whoever reads these words, will put his signature, and will contribute a half _paul_ to assist his townsman, who has so well proved that he deserves encouragement. those who wish to give more than the small proposed sum can privately satisfy their generous impulses in the way they think best,--on this paper they are begged not to exceed the sum named." and by half _pauls_ only, the not small sum of _scudi_ was collected; and if this good lady had added that the half _paul_ was to be paid every month for a year or fourteen months, i am sure that my townsmen would not have refused it, and that the abel would be to-day at siena. the sum of money and the list of subscribers were sent to me, and i preserve the latter jealously; and after these many years i read over the names with heartache, thinking how all these have disappeared, together with the good signora letizia. and now i am speaking of her, i will mention something which will cause her to be appreciated and loved, even as i loved and admired her. [sidenote: mrs letitia macartney's kindness.] a short time after she had issued the appeal for my abel, she came with a nephew and her two sisters to establish herself in florence. she was about fifty years of age, enthusiastic for the beautiful wherever she found it. she had a small gallery of ancient pictures which she had collected with careful study in her wanderings through italy. she had taken an apartment in the piazza di santa maria novella, and i often went there with my wife to pass the evening; and on her part the signora letizia often came to look me up in my studio. she liked to discuss with me artistic things, and when i could not attend to her, she said good-bye and went away. then it was, either from too hard work or on account of the dampness of the room in which i worked, or both together, i took so tiresome and obstinate a cough, that it gave me no peace night or day. i tried many things to get rid of it, and all in vain--decoctions, ass's milk, care, all were useless. la signora letizia having urged me a thousand times to take care of myself and to get rid of that cough, said to me so seriously that it made me laugh-- "it is absolutely necessary for you to get well." "bravo!" i said; "that is what i have been thinking of for the past month, and i have done everything for that purpose--the advice and prescriptions of the physicians have not been neglected; but now seriously i must get well--go away, cough!" "no, don't joke; you must get well, and i mean to cure you. listen," she said, "what you ought to do: you should buy a quantity of pine-wood, and with this line all the walls of your studio from top to bottom, leaving space between the wood and the wall; and you must do the same for the floor. have the window open some hour of the day when you are not in the studio, that the current of air may not do you harm." [sidenote: she lines the studio walls.] it seemed an odd thing to me. i could not understand what all this wood had to do with my cough; but to content her, i said that i would do as she advised. in the meantime i continued to cough in spite of the pot of lichen which i kept hot in my studio; and every day when this poor lady came to see me and saw that her advice was not followed, she appeared serious and disappointed, and finally said-- "do you think, signor duprè, that my advice could do you harm?" "certainly not," i said. "then why don't you follow it?" "i must wait a few days; just at present i cannot. but i will do it--of this you may be sure; and i am very grateful to you: it seems to me that it will be more comfortable and warmer." she soon went away, and i seriously considered that i ought to try and content her, not that i thought the remedy effective. i said to myself--"my trouble is either a cold or something else; it is in the stomach, or the throat, or the bronchial tubes, and surely is not owing to the walls of my studio. but what shall i do? i must satisfy her. certainly it will cost something to line all the studio with wood from top to bottom, and the floor; but what a strange idea has come into this lady's head, and with what seriousness and impressiveness she urges me to use pine-wood!" shortly after, i heard a knock at the door and saw three or four loads of boards in the street. the head carter said to me-- "_is this wood to come here?_" [sidenote: my studio is lined.] i had ordered no wood, i replied. then he showed me a card on which was written my name and the number of my studio, and added-- "this wood has been ordered and paid for, including the carriage, and--is it to come here?" "certainly," i said, "it is to come here." it was unloaded, and i gave the men a little money, for although they had been paid, it would do them no harm. i sent immediately to call petrai, who, besides being a model, was also a carpenter, and told him that i wished, in the quickest possible manner, to use this wood to line the studio walls and plank the floor; that he was to employ as many men as were necessary, and that they could not go to bed until this work was done. the blacksmith was immediately set to work on the irons which were to support the boards, the mason to fasten them to the walls, and men to saw and nail. all the day and all the evening it appeared to be the devil's own house, and i was in the midst directing and overseeing the work. the next morning, when i entered my studio, i felt revived by the odour of the pine and the air so sensibly dry, and i said, "if this work does no good to the cough, no matter; but it is certain that i find myself much better. besides, i like the colour of the wood, which is gay. i like the smell of the pine. the floor is better to walk upon, and it is drier than any carpet. the air circulates everywhere. _viva_ mrs letitia! and now, how to repay her for this wood which she has bought for me? ah! this is not so easy. to talk of giving back the money is useless, and it would also be in bad taste, for i know how sensitive this lady is; but as a present i will not receive it." as it happened, i had a small bust of beatrice in marble, which she had always admired. i sent this to her house, and she was so much pleased that she never ceased to speak of it to me. and the cough? the cough diminished day by day as if by enchantment, and in a week i was perfectly cured. [sidenote: busts of beatrice and raphael.] whilst i am speaking of favours received and the manner in which i requited them, independent of the sentiment of gratitude which i always preserve for those who have rendered me a service, i must add that mrs macartney was pleased with the little bust of beatrice; so also was del benino more than delighted with a bust in marble of the boy raphael which i had copied from a painting by his father, sanzio, who had painted the little boy when six years of age. at the bottom of this portrait was written in red, "raphael santii d'anni sei, santii patre dipinse." i saw this work of mine only a few years ago in the palace belonging to the heirs of count del benino. as i have alluded to that excellent man--of whom, as you see, i retain such an affectionate remembrance--i will mention that i asked permission of his heirs by letter to be permitted at my own expense to make a little memorial of him in marble, and to place it in the chapel of the villa where del benino was buried; but i have never received any answer. it appears that works either for love or money are not wanted. here is another example of this. it must be now four or five years since the lamented professor g. b. donati, the astronomer, came to my studio with the engineer del sarto, to tell me that the commune of florence intended to place a sun-dial on one side of the ponte alla carraja, exactly at the beginning or end of the terrace, where there is at present a kiosk; and in order to have an elegant and artistic thing, it came into the head of donati, or some one of the municipal council of art, to have a figure in bronze holding a disc on which should be marked the meridian, and the hand of this figure should be held gracefully in such a manner that its shadow indicated the hour. the idea pleased me. i made a sketch, and del sarto the engineer sent me the exact dimensions of the terrace. he liked the sketch, and asked me what the cost of such a work would be, adding that unless the price was small they would not be able to order it. i replied that nothing could cost less than this, as i intended to present the model, and the municipality would only have to pay for the casting in bronze. i had an estimate made by professor clemente papi, who asked a very reasonable sum--seven or eight thousand lire, i believe; and he signed a paper to this effect, which, at the same time with a letter i had written repeating the offer of my work gratis, i sent in an envelope to the municipality: and since then i have heard nothing. poor donati is dead; the sketch and the model of the terrace are in my studio. count cambray digny was then syndic. on ponte alla carraja, in place of my statue, there is a kiosk where papers, wax-matches, &c., are sold. even this is not the last of the statues i have offered as a present which have not been accepted, but i will not mention them here. [sidenote: figure for a sun-dial.] meanwhile, as i was finishing the model of cain, the grand duchess maria antonietta ordered of me a statue for the uffizi. i selected giotto, and she presented this statue to the commission for erecting statues of illustrious tuscans, which, while they ornament the loggia, serve to recall past glory and to advise one to study more and to chatter a little less. in roughing out the statue i found a flaw which split the marble in two. i was obliged to throw it away and to buy another block. when the good grand duchess heard of this, she insisted upon repaying me the price of the new marble. i note this because so generous an act is uncommon. [sidenote: abel has killed cain.] the cain was exhibited, and, as was natural, was less liked than the abel,--first of all, because the enthusiasm raised by the former statue had too sensibly wounded the self-love of many; and then, because some of my friends were too zealous, and their excessive praise of it before it was on exhibition created a public opinion in its favour which perhaps was not justified by its merits, for the difficulties of the subject were very great. with a phrase more witty than just, they said, "this time abel has killed cain;" but bartolini, who generally liked wit, said this was unjust and stupid, and declared that i had overcome a thousand times greater difficulties than in the abel. but that witticism was prompted by suspicion and passion, and it came from those same persons who said that the abel had been cast from life. being proposed by bartolini, i was elected professor of the academy. at that time, being invited by some of my townsmen, i went to siena, where i was received with warmth and fraternal love. i was a guest of the bianchis--of that charming signora laura who had always been so good to my poor mother and my family. that dear lady, and carlo, who is still alive, and luigi, who, alas! was too soon snatched away from the love of his relations and of siena, rejoiced in seeing me made the subject of honour and ovation by all the citizens, who came to the palace to greet me. i remember with emotion that crowd of people, and those deputations of the _contrade_ and academies of the city, sent to bring me salutations and presents. these were the first flowers that i gathered and smelt in the garden of my youth; and their perfume i still smell, and it is now perhaps even more delightful, for it is associated in my memory with a time when i had no remorse. [sidenote: discovery of a raphael.] a subscription was opened on the spot, promoted by the cavaliere alessandro saracini, the count scipione borghese, the count augusto dei gori, and the marquis alessandro bichi-ruspoli. the statue which they ordered was of the pontiff pius ii., eneas silvius piccolomini. these four gentlemen were good friends of mine; but i saw saracini oftenest, as he came to florence on business affairs. he had an intelligent love of art, which he practised a little for his amusement, and he was president of the institute of fine arts at siena. one day he came to me quite breathless. he said that he had seen, in a shop or store-house near the via faenza, a wall all painted over, and that it was concealed by carriages, carts, wheels, and poles--in fact, it was at a carriage-maker's. "but what painting is it?" i asked. "i do not know--i cannot say what it is; but it appears to me very beautiful," he replied. "it is like perugino, or certainly of his school." "wait a moment," i said; "here in the neighbourhood is some one who understands these things better than you or i;" and we went to count carlo della porta, and to ignazio zotti, painters who lived in the niccolini building with me. they lost no time, and we all four went to the place. carlo della porta having placed a ladder against the wall, mounted, and stayed there only a few moments, then descended, and made zotti go up. they then, after exchanging some words, expressed the opinion that it was by raphael. the clearing out of this place, and the arguments for and against the decision on the part of the government, and the ultimate destination of the picture, are all well known, and i pass to other things. having finished the giotto, i went to rome to make studies there for the statue of pius ii. i stayed there a month, and lived at the hotel cesari, piazza di pietra. it was the month of december . [sidenote: my folly at rome.] i must confess, whatever it costs me, that the eternal city did not make the most favourable impression upon me; and except the ruins of ancient rome, the colosseum, the pantheon, the forum, with its triumphal arches and colonnades, all the rest excited in me no enthusiasm. but i must admit i had been spoiled by too much praise; and i was so vain, that while i accepted everything with apparent modesty, i was so puffed up internally with pride that at times it would show itself in spite of me. i remember once at the house of the signora clementina carnevali, where every evening were to be seen all the most distinguished persons in rome, either in letters or art, strangers as well as italians,--i remember, i say, to have replied in a most impertinent manner to some one who asked me how i liked the monuments and the art of rome, and what above all had most pleased me. i replied--and i blush to repeat it--"what i like best is the stewed broccoli"--a reply as outrageously stupid as insolent, and i wonder that those who heard it could have taken it in good part. for myself, as i feel to-day, if a young artist had replied to me in such a manner, he would have got little good out of it, and so much the better for him! but i had better luck; my foolish reply was repeated by every one, and so clouded by vanity and pride were my eyes, that i fancied it excited mirth and approbation, while it really deserved only compassion. o minardi! o tenerani! o massimo d'azeglio! you who were present, but now dead, cannot see the _amende_ which i make. however, you knew me later, and were aware of my repentance. but as for you, excellent clementina--who are alive, and will read, i hope, these pages--if then you smiled with compassion, because you are so good you will to-day smile with approbation and praise. [sidenote: i lose my way.] and now, gentle reader, would you like to see how headstrong and proud i had become? one evening--christmas eve--i proposed to go to the midnight mass at st peter's. i set out at ten o'clock from the via condotti, where i had passed the evening with some of my english friends whom i had known in florence. mrs ----, to whom i had disclosed my purpose, said, "take care! you are not much acquainted with roman streets; you had better take a carriage to go there. if you do not, you may easily lose your way in the streets of rome. they are very confusing by day; imagine what they are at night!" if this lady had not given me such a warning, it is probable that i should have done as she suggested; but because she had given it i despised it, and determined to go by myself to st peter's. [sidenote: my pride punished.] i walked until two o'clock without even being able to find the bridge of st angelo. i got bewildered in all those streets and lanes which are comprised between san luigi dei francesi, piazza navona, san andrea della valle, san carlo a catinari, teatro argentina, il gesu, and san ignazio e la minerva; and after having walked for two hours, i found myself at the point i had started from. then, more obstinate than ever, though overcome by weariness and mortified pride, i persisted in going up and down all sorts of streets unknown to me, and often very filthy, and again coming across the same _piazze_, the same fountains, until at last i found myself at the foot of the campidoglio steps. the people whom i met in the streets here and there returning from the mass could have shown me the way, not to go to st peter's, but how to return to my hotel, had i been less headstrong, and had i inquired for the piazza colonna or piazza di pietra, where i lodged. but no; it appeared to me to be a humiliation. i wished to find the hotel by myself; and i did find it finally, but in what a condition i leave those to judge who know rome, and the sharp pavements of its streets, but, above all, tired out, and more than this, humiliated and without supper. it was two o'clock. the hotel cesari was shut, and i had to wait until they opened it for me. i asked for supper; they replied that they had nothing, and that if they had it they could not give me anything, because they were prohibited by law from supplying any food on that night. i should have been glad of any little thing, but could get nothing. my pride was singularly punished that night, and i went to bed hungry. at first i strove in vain to go to sleep, then i dreamt all night of eating, and awoke in the morning rather late. i could not realise that i could get up and have a good breakfast. i went over again in thought the weariness of the night, the hunger, the annoyance, and i felt weak. but finally i said to myself, i will eat now, and another time i shall be wiser. now to breakfast! after going out of the hotel, i turned to the right to go into the osteria dell'archetto. it was closed; the _caffè_ next door was closed. i ran into the piazza colonna, and found all shut up--_caffès_, pastry-cooks, everything closed. i asked, angrily and with a bewilderment easy to comprehend, what was the reason of this, and was told that during the time of the religious ceremonies no one could sell anything to eat. i was stupefied, and walked along slowly, not knowing where to go. until after twelve o'clock neither the _trattorie_ nor the _caffès_ would be opened. i would not go back to the hotel, as i feared a refusal such as i had the night before. i began to feel very faint; for nearly twenty hours i had eaten nothing. i saw the people gaily walking about, smiling, smoking, and looking well-fed and of good colour, and i felt angry and envious. they had eaten leisurely and at home, or in the _caffè_ or _trattoria_ before ten o'clock, the hour prescribed. i had slept until that hour, and dreamt of eating, and when i went out intending to get something to eat, it was too late. fortunately, one of my friends, the engraver travalloni, saw me, and coming to meet me, said, "what is the matter? why do you look so scared?" i told him my story, and he laughed, and taking me by the arm, said--"come with me." after a few turns he entered a doorway half closed, and pushed me up a dark staircase, where there were the savoury odours of cooking, all the more grateful to me because my appetite was so great. the staircase opened upon an ante-room, also dark. we closed the door and knocked at a smaller door. it was opened, and i found myself in a spacious hall, well ventilated and full of people, who were sitting eating and drinking cheerfully at table. [sidenote: nothing to eat.] "what is this?" i asked. "can i get anything to eat here?" "yes," he said; "give your orders." the waiter, with a napkin over his shoulder, was standing before us. i was like a full flask which, being upturned, can with difficulty empty itself. there was such a variety of odours in the room, and such a quantity of things to eat, that i could not get out a word; and my friend, seeing my embarrassment, hastened to say to me-- [sidenote: a breakfast.] "will you have some soup and a cutlet?" "yes; two," i replied. "will you have orvieto or good roman wine?" "do me the favour to bring anything you please, so long as you bring me something to eat and drink. i can't stop to choose." and the good travalloni, turning to the servant, said-- "bring at once a flask of orvieto, such as i drink--you understand?--some bread, some soup, a cutlet, cheese, and fruit." that day travalloni appeared to me to be a man of genius. chapter viii. literati at my studio, and their influence on my work--calamatta's opinion of tenerani, of bartolini, and of myself--his defence of my abel in paris--pius ii.--academicians and "naturalisti"--luigi venturi--prince anatolia demidoff and the princess matilde--the statuette in clay of the princess matilde is destroyed--our minister nigra presents me to the emperor napoleon iii.--beauty does not exist outside of nature--praise puts one to sleep--the incoherence of bartolini. my studio, as i think i have already said, was the resort of many of the literary men of the time--giusti, thouar, montazio, la farina, f. s. orlandini, enrico mayer, girolamo gargiolli, giovanni chiarini, filippo moisè, and sometimes, but rarely, g. b. niccolini, atto vannucci, and giuseppe arcangeli. these distinguished men, all talking with me, and bringing forward their theories of art, somewhat confused me in my ideas. i said, at the very beginning of these memoirs--and the reader, i hope, keeps it in mind--that i had received no education, and my judgment was not trained to discern and distinguish the laws of the beautiful, which, the more deeply one studies them, the more they scatter, and seem, as it were, to fly from us. i was attracted to art by a purely natural sentiment, which i sought to express by a simple imitation of nature; and so far, i think i was right, for whatever other path we may take, supported however it may be by philosophic and æsthetic reasons, it will prove utterly fallacious unless it lead to this end, of imitating the beautiful in nature, and will surely lead astray the young artist, even though he has a good natural talent and a lively fancy. [sidenote: a passage in dante.] yes, sir; my poor head was perplexed, and i began to distrust nature, with its imperfections and its vulgarity. the warm and imaginative utterances of la farina made all the words of niccolini seem colourless to me, for though given with antique beauty, they came from him with difficulty. the pure and touching morality of thouar conflicted with the humoristic and cynical freedom of montazio. giusti, who might have set me right in my opinions, kept at a distance without giving a reason why; and in this he was wrong, for i should have given heed to him. but he contented himself with writing to the advocate galeotti, telling him that i was surrounded by a number of fops who spoiled me, and that if i did not shut myself up in my studio, as i did when i made the abel, i should not succeed in making anything good. this outburst of giusti's i only knew many years afterwards, on the publication of his letters. i remember one day, when giusti was with me, i recited from memory the canto in the 'inferno' relating to francesca, but when i came to this passage-- "quali colombe dal desio chiamate con l'ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido volan per l'aere dal voler portate;" he interrupted me, saying, "you recite well and intelligently the verses of the divine poet; but you, too, fall into the error into which so many have fallen--copyists, printers, and commentators--that of placing the semicolon at the end of the line, after the word _portate_, instead of putting it in the middle of the line, after the word _aere_. this punctuation makes dante guilty of a blunder, he attributing to the doves, besides desire, which is most proper, also will, which belongs properly to man. try and place the comma and the pause after the word _aere_, and you will see what a stupendous philosophical value it gives to the verses. listen; i will repeat them to you:-- 'quali colombe dal desio chiamate con l'ali aperte e ferme, al dolce nido volan per l'aere; dal voler portate cotali uscir dalla schiera, ov'è dido,'" &c. this correction, so clear, so easy, so just, satisfied me immediately, and from that day i have always recited these lines in this way. the unintelligent did not perceive the change of sense, but those who were more attentive and refined gave me praise for it; but i rejected it at once as belonging to me, saying that the correction was due to giuseppe giusti.[ ] [ ] the distinguished signor carlo ara of palermo informs me that this new punctuation did not originate with giusti, but with muzzi. and, in truth, giusti did not tell me that it was his, but simply recommended me to try to say it and understand it in that sense; and i, supposing the correction to be his, recited and wrote it so. the distinguished carlo ara pointed out to me the way in which i could verify his assertion; and i am glad to be able to correct an error (involuntary on my part), and to take this occasion to thank the distinguished signor carlo ara. the distinguished signor angelo cavalieri of trieste writes to me that this new punctuation of this dantesque simile does not convince him, and he gives his reasons; but upon this i am not competent to enter into a discussion. [sidenote: statue of giotto.] in making my giotto, i followed my inspiration by drawing upon nature for that type of rude good-nature which constituted the outward character of my statue; and although some of my literary friends, who were more attached to the antique and the so-called _bello ideale_, blamed me, and some artists of distinction opposed me openly, i firmly adhered to the sound principle of imitating nature. the giotto was finished without a moment's indecision, although, as i have said, i had been revolving over and over again in my mind the conception of a beauty ideal and beyond nature, but which, without great judgment, becomes conventional. [sidenote: calamatta's visit.] about this time a controversy occurred between me and a great artist which it may be well to speak of here, because, although it will show how tenacious i was of this principle of imitating nature, yet it will also show how much i was affected by it, and how the acerbity of this artist produced a change in me, which certainly he did not desire. his fear was lest i should fall into a servile copying of life; and had his language been more measured, we should easily have understood each other. but he took a different course, and i now proceed to give the history of this controversy. [sidenote: calamatta's attack.] i had a short time previously completed my model of giotto, and, as i have said, some among the artists most tenacious of the classic rules attacked me sharply, but bartolini defended me. i was therefore somewhat irritated when calamatta, accompanied by signor floridi, the draughtsman, came to my studio. he came in with a magisterial and rather arrogant air. i received him politely and with respectful words, such as became me towards the author of the famous mask of napoleon i. he looked at "abel" and "cain" without opening his mouth, and as if he found in them nothing either to praise or to blame; but when he came to the "giotto," he said, "i have heard a good deal of talk about you, in which you have been lauded to the skies, and i wished to come and ascertain with my own eyes whether you were entitled to your fame; and i confess to you, though what i shall say may seem bitter to you, that in the presence of your works your fame disappears; and if it be permitted to me to make a comparison, i should say that you produce the same effect upon me as if i saw a balloon inflated with gas rising majestically in the air, and which, after arriving at a certain height, bursts, and afterwards leaves nothing to be seen." i answered that such things might be thought, and even spoken, but a little more graciously, and i said no more. calamatta rejoined, with some irritation, that he was a person who could not endure the ugly--that it was his instinct to denounce it with the same vivacity and earnestness that one does when there is a cry of fire, and some place is in flames. i began then to lose my patience: still i only contented myself with asking whether he was quite sure that there was a conflagration, and whether he was absolutely called upon to extinguish it; and finally, added that bartolini, tenerani, and others had seen my works, and had spoken of them in very different terms. this only more irritated poor calamatta, and he said that he had just come from paris, and had visited tenerani at rome, and his insipid and hard mysticism had seemed pitiable to him; and that, on coming to florence, he had found in bartolini the most filthy and offensive realism, carried to the point of proclaiming the beauty of deformity, and that in response to his just criticisms upon the injury that he was thus doing to the true principles of art, bartolini had advised him to come to my studio and see the application of those principles which he censured,--and now, after examining my works, he perceived that i was sliding down a steep declivity, which would soon precipitate me into naturalism and deformity, and though he recognised in me a certain talent, he warned me to avoid that false school and those insidious precepts, and more than all, to be on my guard against treacherous and lying praises. all this was very fine, if it were granted that i was on a false road. but as i did not think so then, and still less now,--and besides, as i was young, flattered, and praised, and those words of his, "that i should be on my guard against insidious precepts and treacherous praises," seemed to me a very unjust accusation against bartolini,--i indicated to him that i should be glad if he would leave me in peace, and in fact, as he had declared my works to be ugly, and of an ugliness that he abhorred, he was not in his proper place here; and as to his counsel, not having asked for it, i should not take the trouble to consider it. poor calamatta was angry at this, and taking by the hand floridi, who during the whole squabble was on thorns, he said, "let us go away; let us go away; let us go away"--and away he went. [sidenote: his report and defence of me.] [sidenote: calamatta's speech.] poor calamatta, my illustrious friend. if any one had said on that day, when we separated with such unpleasant feelings, and on my part with so little kindness, "the time will come, and soon, when he will be your most open defender and friend," i would not have believed him, and i should not have wished to believe him,--and yet it so turned out. in , eleven years after our disagreement, he was in paris, and on the jury of the fine arts at the world's exhibition. i had sent a model of the "abel" in plaster, and among the jury the doubt arose whether it was not cast from life. as in florence that opinion was originated out of evil-mindedness, so it was repeated in paris from speciousness, and heedlessness of judgment. calamatta, whom i had not seen since that famous day, although he frequently returned to florence, undertook to defend my work with sound reasoning and friendly warmth, but he did not succeed in convincing the entire body of the jury of their error of judgment; and in assigning the prizes, out of mere regard for calamatta they gave to "abel" one of the last. calamatta then rose and said, "gentlemen, our judgment of this work must not be given in this way. i have endeavoured to show you by artistic reasoning that this statue is really modelled in clay, in imitation of beautiful nature. i have pointed out that certain imperfections which are always found in nature have been wisely avoided by the artist. i have shown you clear proofs of modelling in the mode of working the clay. i thought that i had convinced you that so noble and refined a whole is rather the creation of the mind, through a studious and loving imitation of parts, than a mechanical reproduction by casting; and finally, i have demonstrated, and you have conceded to me, that the head is of equal merit with all the rest of the body, and this could not have been cast from life. from these considerations, which arise from the examination of the work itself, and without regard to the artist, whom i have only once met in florence, and who is, i believe, inimical to me, i am of opinion that your judgment of this work should be reconsidered, and if it seems to you to be proved that this statue is a cast from nature and not modelled, and in consequence a falsification and not a work of art, you ought not to adjudge to it even the lowest prize, but to exclude it entirely from the exhibition, and in so doing you should give your reasons for such a decision in writing, and under your signatures,--and in such case i shall retire from the jury of fine arts, and shall publish in the journals of paris my reasons for withdrawing." after this discourse there arose an exceedingly animated discussion, and the president decided that a new examination of the model should be made; and as many were convinced by the good reasons put forward by calamatta, the second examination of "abel" resulted in a complete success, and at the next voting the golden medal of the first class was awarded to me. the news of this, derived directly from calamatta himself, was sent to me at once by rossini, who had conceived a strong affection for me, and honoured me with his friendship. [sidenote: golden medal--pius ii.] i now return to the point where i left off. after giotto i began pius ii.; and filled as my head was by the criticism of the academicians, the eulogies of the _naturalisti_, the contempt of some to whom the subject was displeasing, and more than all by the exceptional character of the studies i had made for this work, i began it unwillingly, and strove (strangely enough) to conciliate the academicians, copying from the life with timidity, where boldness and fidelity were required--boldness, that is to say, in accepting frankly the stiff paper-like folds of the pontifical mantle, and fidelity in copying them. in consequence i made a washed-out work, and i pleased neither one party nor the other, and much less myself. i make this statement so that young men may be on their guard against allowing themselves to stray from the true path, which is this--viz., to embody the subject in its appropriate form by the imitation of living nature, to strive for truth of character in the general action and in all the particulars, and in proportion as the subject is historical and natural, as in portraiture, to adhere all the more closely to nature. in such a case as this statue of pius ii., it is necessary to be naturalistic--avoiding, of course, all minutiæ which add nothing to the beauty of general effect and the truth of character. has it ever happened to you, courteous reader, to meet a person with whom your personal relations brought you often in contact, and who, reserved and serious by nature as well as on account of his social position, differed from you, who are perhaps too vivacious and open; and on the one side you feared to displease him by your vivacity, and on the other you were annoyed by his reserve? in such a case, if certain allowance be made on both sides--as far as you are concerned by listening with attentive deference to his wise counsels, austere maxims, and high principles, and on his part by an indulgent consideration for your free and vivacious nature--has it not happened to you that insensibly and firmly a harmony of relation has established itself which it is difficult to break,--and this for the undeniable, however recondite reason, that there is a sympathy between entirely different natures which causes each to compensate for the other? [sidenote: my friendship with venturi.] in like manner as this may have happened to you, so it happened to me with luigi venturi, then private secretary of his royal and imperial highness the grand duke leopold ii. he often came to my studio by order of the grand duke, for whom i was making a statuette of dante and another of beatrice. he took a liking to me, which i have returned sincerely, even till to-day; and he is the oldest and most affectionate of my friends. after the revolution of ' , with the loss of his high position he lost also a great portion of such friends as come with fortune and flee with her. but neither the ingratitude of some nor the fickleness of others ever drew from him a lament. he was contented with those who remained, and i was one of them. our long and intimate connection has at last harmonised our characters,--he making me more temperate, and i (as i dare to hope) making him more open and vivacious. his friendship, as well as that of others of whom i shall speak in the proper place, has strengthened my judgment and tempered my fancies. trustworthy, honest, and sincere friends are a great fortune--and i have had such, and have kept them. to distinguish the good from the bad requires study, and we must learn how to get rid of chatterers and adulators. [sidenote: prince anatolio demidoff.] and this warning i feel it my duty to give to young artists, for whom these memoirs are specially written. i have already said, in speaking of models, "girls unaccompanied as models, no!" now i add, "nor even married women without the express consent of their husbands." here is a little incident which may serve as a lesson. prince anatolio demidoff often came to my studio. he gave vent to his annoyance at the delays and the infinite difficulties interposed by bartolini in completing the groups and statues of the monument ordered by him in honour of the memory of his dead father. to listen to the prince, he seemed to have a thousand good reasons; but the consequences he drew from them, and the bold, unjust measures which he proposed, i could not but think blameworthy, and i strove in every way to moderate him, and to dissuade him from carrying out his intentions. my frank and loyal defence of bartolini, so far from exasperating him, as often happened when he was opposed, made him more kindly towards me, and he proposed to order of me a great work worthy, as he was pleased to say, of my genius. he had a thousand projects, and among them he spoke to me of a colossal statue of napoleon i. he was at that time tenderly inclined toward the bonaparte family. his pride in being connected with it, as well as the charms of the beautiful princess, his wife, were in great measure the cause of this enthusiasm. he treated me with great kindness, invited me often to dinner and to his evening receptions, and talked very freely with me in regard to works that he wished me to make for him. [sidenote: statuette of princess demidoff.] about this time the princess came one day to my studio, and told me that she wished me to make her portrait--not merely a bust, but the whole figure, almost half the size of life. i answered that i should like much to make it, for i was persuaded that it would give the prince pleasure; but she hastened to say that the prince must know nothing about it. i had not sufficient presence of mind to reply that without his consent i could not undertake it--and i was wrong, i confess: but the princess stood before me blandly insisting; and overcome by the beauty of the model, i agreed to make it and keep it a secret from the prince. she gave me a number of sittings, and i was going on satisfactorily with the statuette, and had already a good likeness, when unexpectedly the prince came one day to see me, and after exchanging a few words and taking a turn through the room, he stopped before the modelling-stand, on which was the clay of the statuette covered with wet cloths, and said-- "and what have you got here?" "nothing, your excellency--nothing." "let me see what there is under here." "but there is nothing; it is only a mass of infirm clay, and is not in a state to show." "let us see, my friend,--i am extremely curious." and so saying he lifted up the cloths, looked at it, and then said seriously, "very good--very like;" and then in a sharp tone added, "and who has ordered this?" "listen, signor principe. the princess has ordered this statuette of me, for i see that you recognise it as her portrait--and she ordered me to show it to no one, not even to you, signor principe; for i believe she wished to give you a surprise, and to present it to you when it should be finished in marble." [sidenote: prince demidoff's displeasure.] he answered, "the princess has done wrong in ordering her portrait without my consent, and you have done wrong in complying with her request. i do not like these surprises, and when the princess returns for a sitting you must request her to go about her business; and you may tell her that you do this by my order. and besides--and this i say particularly to you--destroy this work, and think no more about it." i felt that the prince was right, but to throw down this work was a bitter pain to me; and besides, i was unwilling to displease the princess, who so earnestly desired to have this statuette, and who had already expressed her satisfaction with it. my face must have been very expressive at that moment, for the prince, taking my hands in his, said-- "my dear duprè, i understand your embarrassment and annoyance, but it is necessary that this should be done. i do not like, and i will not have this sort of thing, and i like still less this way of doing it. do you understand? a portrait of the princess, or even a statue of her, would be a charming possession, and i should particularly like one by you. i have already a beautiful statue of madame letizia by canova, and this of my wife would make an admirable pendant; but i repeat that this way of doing it does not please me, and though i may seem harsh, i again say to you--destroy this statuette, and let us say no more about it." while he was speaking i thought to myself--this statuette and portrait of his wife he does not wish to have, but rather wishes to have a statue of her of life size; and so much the better. and then, considering that he had said he did not like the way in which it was done, i perceived, as i ought from the first to have perceived, that he objected to the princess coming to my studio to sit, and i answered-- "you shall be obeyed. to-morrow the princess is to return to give me a sitting, and i will tell her all, and this clay shall go back into the tank. but i hope that you will not forget that you have spoken of a life-size statue of the princess; and as this work would require considerable time, and it might be more convenient to her that i should model it in your own palace, i could----" [sidenote: the annoyance of the princess.] he did not let me finish my sentence, but, embracing me warmly and kissing me, said-- "thanks, dear duprè, that is right. that is what pleases me, and that is the way it shall be done. and now, _addio_." and pressing my hand, he departed. the day after, at one o'clock, the usual hour, the princess arrived, gay and laughing, as usual; and after giving a glance at herself in the mirror, and arranging a little her hair, she seated herself and said-- "i am ready." i had not as yet thrown down the statuette. there it stood uncovered, just as the prince had left it the day before. "i am very sorry, signora principessa," i began, "to give you some bad news. the prince was here yesterday." "i hope you did not allow him to see this portrait?" "yes, he has seen it--he has seen it, signora principessa. it was useless to try to conceal it from him, and i did wrong to endeavour to do so, for he was perfectly aware of its existence when he came here. he must have been exactly informed about it; and so sure was he that i was making your portrait, that he planted himself here precisely before the modelling-stand, and seeing that i was unwilling to uncover it, he uncovered it himself without any ceremony. he told me that i did wrong to begin the work, and that i must not go on with it, and, in fact, he has expressly ordered me to destroy it and throw it down." [sidenote: the princess remonstrates.] while i was thus speaking she stood disquieted and frowning, and then said that it was unjust, absurd, and ridiculous, and that i must not give heed to him, but that she should stay, and i must go on with the portrait. after a while, however, she grew calmer, and decided to go away; and this was well. but she did not give up the matter, and the day after, she wrote to me to say that she should return to give me more sittings. i had not yet thrown down the clay, not only on account of my natural unwillingness to do so, which is excusable, but also because of the advice of prince jerome, the brother of the princess matilde, who insisted that the prince could not pretend to anything more than that the work should be suspended. but of this i was a safer and better advised judge than he, and well knew that a husband is the legitimate master of his own wife, and of any portrait of her. but i repeat, i allowed the statuette to remain because i disliked to destroy it. the princess did not return as she had promised, and wrote again to me to expect her another day. this went on for some time; and finally, when i saw her again, she told me that she was going to paris with the prince, and that on her return we must go on, and if the prince persisted in his ideas, she would recompense me for the work i had done on it. in fact, she went to paris with the prince, and there she remained; while he, recalled by the emperor nicholas of russia, went to st petersburg, where he found that a decree of divorce had been demanded by the princess and signed by the emperor. the prince gave me nothing further to do, except some slight things which are scarcely worth mentioning, and the princess entirely forgot her promise. and as i am now on this matter, and in order to make an end of it, let me leap over eleven years, and say that, having exhibited in paris at the exposition of , besides the model in plaster of the abel (as i have before narrated), a reproduction in small of this statue in marble, which i desired to sell, i wrote to the princess asking her to purchase it. this i did to remind her indirectly of her promise to recompense me for the labour i had given to her statuette, but she never answered. i now make another leap over twelve years more. in the exposition universelle at paris in , i was one of the italian jury on sculpture; and one evening, at a reception at the tuilleries, i was presented by our minister nigra to the emperor, who had on his arm the princess matilde. as soon as she saw me she said, "we have known each other a long time;" but i, remembering how she had treated me, pretended to have no remembrance of her. and the emperor looked at me through his sleepy eyes, and must have thought me either remarkably forgetful or a great fool. the princess, naturally, never deigned to give me another look. [sidenote: i meet the princess in paris.] and now again i return to my works. after pius ii., i put up a figure of life-size representing innocence. this was ordered of me by signor tommasi of leghorn; but later, with my full consent, it remained on my hands, and was bought by prince constantine of russia. i have determined not to judge my own works, though here and there i may give a little hint; but in order that these memoirs may be of some use, it is well that i should indicate the spirit of the principles which guided me in my work. i have said that my faith in the pure imitation of nature was somewhat shaken by the criticisms of my giotto as being too naturalistic. some reasonings by my friends, and above all, certain articles by giuseppe arcangeli in the 'rivista, sul bello ideale,' as well as the compliments and eulogies of my statue of innocence by borghi, finally persuaded me that there does exist a _bello ideale_ impossible to find in nature, and this beauty should be arrived at by an imitation of the antique, and by the aid of memory. [sidenote: idealists and naturalists.] nothing is more dangerous than this theory. beauty is scattered over universal nature. the artist born to feel and perceive this beauty (which is the object of art) has his mind and heart always exercised in seeking it out and expressing it. he discerns in nature one or more living forms that in some degree approximate to the type he has in his mind, and the reality of these, by strengthening his ideals, enables him to work the latter properly out. the artist who is without his ideal, and forces himself to find it outside of nature, torturing his memory with what he has seen or studied in the works of others, makes but a cold and conventional work. the animating spark, the heat, the life, does not inform his work, for he is not the father, but only the stepfather of his children. to this school belong the imitators--that is, the timid friends of nature. on the other side, but in much greater numbers and with much greater petulance, are the _naturalisti_, who despise every kind of ideality, and especially despise it because they have it not. neither is their heart warmed by strong and sweet affections, nor do they with their eyes or their mind seize, among the multiform shapes of nature, a type, a movement, or an expression which, assiduously pursued, awakens and fecundates the idea within them. the first ruffian or harlot of the streets taken by evil chance suffices for them, and they delight to drag this noble art of ours through filth and ugliness. [sidenote: bad effects of eulogy.] each of these extremes i have sought to avoid. but it is none the less true that, at the period to which i have arrived in my narrative, i was carried a little away, by the discourses and writings of literary men and critics of art, on the road that leads to the conventional and academic. this bad influence weakened my faith in nature and my courage in my work. and the pius ii., the innocence, and the purity are, so to speak, the mirrors in which are reflected my want of faith, uncertainty, and weakness of mind during these three years of artistic irresolution. in seeking after the perfect i lost the little good that my genius had produced in my first years, uninfluenced by all these discussions, and what is of more importance, by all eulogies both of good and of bad alloy. yes, also of bad alloy. the young artist should take heed of all the praise that he receives. he should hold it in suspicion, and weigh it, and make a large deduction. eulogy is like a perfume, grateful to the sense, but it is better to inhale it but little, little, little, because it goes to the head, lulls us to sleep, and sometimes intoxicates us and bewilders us so that we lose our compass. one must be prudent. flowers of too strong an odour must be kept outside the room. air is necessary--air. i hope that these words will fall into the ear of some to whom they may do good--i mean, of those who not only sniff up praise with eagerness, but are discontented because they do not think it sufficient, and who re-read it and talk of it with others so as to prolong their pleasure, and preserve all the papers and writings which speak of them, without perceiving that this is all vanity and pettiness of heart. [sidenote: injudicious praise.] for the rest, it is very easy to see how one may vaccilate, and even fall; and on this account i deem it my duty, for the love that i bear to young men, to put them on their guard against the blandishments of praise. imagine, dear reader, an inexperienced youth of spirit and lively fancy, who in his first essays in art finds it said and written of him that he has surpassed all others, has begun where others ended, that he is born perhaps to outdo the greeks with his chisel, that michael angelo must descend from the pedestal he has occupied for centuries, and other similar stuff--more than this, expose him to the envy of the mæviis, and those light and inconsiderate flatteries, which are all the more dangerous when made attractive by courtesy and refinement of expression,--and you will have the secret of his vaccilations, even if with god's help he is not led utterly astray. at this most trying time of my life the peace of my family was somewhat disturbed by these influences. my wife was disquieted because i had prevented her from carrying on her occupation. our daily necessities increased with the growth of our children. then there were requirements and troubles on account of my father, thoughts about my sister, as well as my brother, who wished to become a rougher-out in marble, and who brought to my studio very little aptitude united with great pretensions on the score of being my brother. all these annoyances were partly confided to my friend venturi, to whom i poured out all my mind; and he with wise and kindly words consoled me. [sidenote: bartolini and the crucifix.] not the least affliction to me was bartolini's unconcealed animosity, of which i had a new proof in a fact which it is here the place to narrate. i hope that the reader will remember that i made, while in the studio of sani, a little crucifix which the signor emanuel fenzi bought for the chamber of his son orazio, who married the noble lady emilia of the counts delia gherardesca. about this time signor emanuel desired to make my acquaintance, and having become intimate with me, wished to have me often with him. thus he discovered that this crucifix he had bought of sani was my work, and i cannot say how much this delighted him. to his dinners and _conversazioni_, which were frequented by many foreigners as well as italians, bartolini often came; but he was never willing to renew his relations with me, although my bearing towards him was that of the most affectionate consideration. as long as this unwillingness was concealed or perceived by few, i bore it quietly; but it happened that it was soon openly exhibited. one evening after dinner the _salon_ of signor fenzi was filled with guests, and gay with all sorts of talk. soon, as was natural, the conversation fell upon art; and bartolini, who was an easy and clever talker, affirmed that the arts were in _decadence_, for various reasons: first, because of the want of enthusiasm and faith among the lower and upper classes, both of whom were sleeping in a _dolce far niente_; and second, because the artists had abandoned the right road of imitation of beautiful nature, and were pursuing with panting breath a chimerical beauty, which they called a _bello ideale_; and last, because the vices of both had usurped the place of the virtues of our ancestors, and luxury, apathy, and avarice had drawn out of our beautiful country activity, temperance, modesty, and liberality,--and he illustrated this by various instances of ancient temperance and modesty. while bartolini was speaking, signor fenzi went into the chamber of the cavaliere orazio and brought out the "christ," which, by reason of the long time that it had been executed, and perhaps of the kisses of the pious signora emilia, had an antique look, and showing it to the _maestro_, said-- "look at this work." after examining it, he said, "the proof that our artists of old were as able as they were modest can be seen in this work. the artist who made it, and who probably was only an _intagliatore_, would have been able to make a statue such as perhaps no one to-day could." at this fenzi replied, with a smile, "excuse me, but you are in error. this is a modern work, and there is the artist who made it," pointing me out, who was just coming in at that moment. bartolini laid down the "christ," spoke not a word more, and did not deign even to look at me, although he had praised the work. this did not seem just, either to fenzi or to any of the persons there present. chapter ix. the political reforms of the year in tuscany--my first scholars--ciseri, prati, aleardi, fusinato, coletti, and chiarini the improvisatore--inedited verses by prati--giuseppe verdi--a digression on artistic individuality--the emperor of russia's visit to my studio--reactionary movement of the th of april, --i am in danger of my life--the return of the grand duke. the elevation of pius ix. to the pontificate, the amnesty and reforms granted by that pontiff, which initiated and awoke the liberal sentiments of all italy, were perhaps felt more in florence than elsewhere, almost all the political refugees from the different states having for some time past found a safe and peaceful home there, owing to the character and patriarchal laws of the grand duke. this drew me away from the serene quiet of my studio, and with the others i shouted, "long live ferruccio! pius ix.! the press! the civic guard and gioberti!" and all the rest. the principal leader of our peaceful demonstrations was the advocate antonio mordini, and after him came giuseppe la farina, and others. not a petition was made to the government or a deputation sent to the prince in which i did not take part. whether our honest demands were of use to the country, i will not discuss, but certainly my work suffered not a little from this state of things. nor was i the only one to abandon the studio; all, young and old, were possessed and inflamed with a national aspiration for independence from foreign occupation. the consequence of all this excitement was, that i was taken away from my studies and work; and, in short, while there was a great deal of patriotic enthusiasm, there was but little study, very little profit, and much idle talk on questions more or less futile, by which family peace was destroyed, and friendship made a matter of caution and suspicion. [sidenote: politics and revolution of ' .] although in these memoirs i do not propose to speak of politics (not feeling equal to it), i wish to touch on the great events that produced the revolution of ' , as they were one of the causes of interruption in my art; and even in politics, in consequence of the turn things were taking, i found myself set aside. some of my friends whose views went far beyond mine left me, and the others that had remained stationary blamed me even for those temperate aspirations that were those also of the government. i was disheartened, self-involved, and ill at ease. with the growth of the revolution, the departure of the grand duke, and the dread of a dangerous crisis, artistic life was not one of the most flourishing, and i had not work of any kind, except to retouch the wax of "abel and cain," that the grand duke had given an order to papi to cast in bronze. seeing this, i concentrated all my life in my family affections. my studio had become deserted; my scholars--tito sarrocchi, luigi majoli, and enrico pazzi--had left me to go to the camp. they returned afterwards, but were always tossed about on the wave of the revolution. only one of my workmen, romualdo bianchini, was left dead on the field, the th of may, at curtatone. i passed my days in great sadness. antonio ciseri, with whom i had contracted a friendship from my earliest steps in art, had his studio near mine, and we used to exchange visits. although he was not a facile talker, his nature was open and ingenuous; and as his principles in art, his morals, and his habits agreed with mine, a strong friendship grew up between us, which has never diminished; and if years have whitened our beards, our hearts have not grown old, and we love each as in our early years. to-day he is one of our first painters, and has a number of able and devoted scholars. [sidenote: poets and improvisation.] amongst my friends was also dr giuseppe saltini, who for many years had been a physician in the employment of the government, and now leads a hard life with restricted means, on account of having so many children. now i will describe an evening passed most pleasantly in those times. one day some clever men came to see me--prati, aleardi, fusinato, coletti, doctor and poet, and others that i do not remember. they said to me, "is it true that in florence there are, as in the days gone by, _improvisatori_ poets? we [it was prati who spoke] are curious to hear one, and have not the pretension, as you can imagine, to expect high flights, but only free verses, and really improvised. here is aleardi (whom i present to you), who is a confounded sceptic on the subject of improvisation, and says that these people commit to memory a great quantity of verses of various measures, and when the occasion offers itself, have the art of patching them together in such a way that the mosaic resembles a real picture. you must know, however, that my friend is very slow in composition,--much slower than i am, although he is a far abler and more graceful poet." "i believe," said i, "i know just the person you are looking for, and aleardi will be disabused of such a notion. it is a certain chiarini, called baco, who keeps a little stall under the uffizi, and i have heard him many times, alone or in company of others. it was real improvisation; the flow of his ideas was not common or vulgar, and he invested them with a graceful and vigorous form. you shall hear him. i will take upon myself to invite him to come. return here, and i will tell you when he is able to do so, for he is a man who has much to do. during the day, as i have said, he attends to his little shop under the uffizi, and in the evening he is engaged to go here and there on purpose to show his skill as an extempore poet." [sidenote: an improvisatore.] [sidenote: death of buondelmonte.] the poet having been engaged, and an appointment made for my friends at the studio, trial of his improvisation took place; and he did not know who his listeners were, which was perhaps as well, for who knows how much the poor poet might have felt embarrassed by the presence of such men? a table was constructed by laying a board on two trestles. i had invited, besides prati and the rest, ciseri the painter, giulio piatti, and some others whom i do not remember. the table was laid with great simplicity--some bread, sausages, and wine serving only as a sort of excuse for animating our poet with a little food and drink. before anything else was done, aleardi and prati besieged the _improvisatore_ with questions to ascertain how far his culture went; and although he showed that he was familiar and well acquainted with the poets, beginning with homer and virgil down to our times--so that he could repeat by memory some of the most beautiful fragments--as far as history, geography, and critical works went, he really knew very little, or at least so pretended. then without further preamble chiarini said, "some one give me a theme. i feel in the mood for singing;" and seating himself whilst waiting, he began a prelude upon his guitar, which was sometimes soft and mournful, and then again loud and stirring. seeing that we delayed giving him a subject, he began to sing off verse after verse in _ottava rima_, and stringing together a series of piquant and pointed remarks against us, ridiculing our torpor and indifference. i cannot describe our hearty laughter in hearing the deluge of sarcasm and biting epigrams launched at each of us in turn by way of stirring us up. the verses were so flowing, fresh, and spirited, that they really did not seem like improvisations, so that prati, a little irritated, after a brief consultation with the others, gave out the following theme: "the death of buondelmonte of the buondelmonti." our poet began as if he had studied the subject before in all its parts, situations, colouring, names, dates, and particulars, the circumstances and sad consequences of that tragic death, and sang with inspired freedom, and with always increasing warmth and passion. the tender and pure love of the amidei, the betrothal and pledges made between the two families, the insidious and malicious conduct of the mother of the donati, the frivolities of buondelmonte attracted by the saucy beauty of her daughter, the perjury and breaking away of the compact with the amidei family, the marriage arranged with the donati, the preparations for this marriage, the rage of the amidei and their followers for such an atrocious insult and want of good faith, their schemes of vengeance, the conspiracy, the ambush and murder at the foot of the statue of mars (where he interpolated in a masterly way the saying of mosca-- "lasso! capo ha cosa fatta, che fu 'l mal seme della gente tosca") --it seemed as if the whole thing stood there before him, not as a picture, but a living and breathing reality; while he, with his head and eyes uplifted, was heedless of our enthusiasm and shouts of applause. he sang for almost two hours; and when he had finished, all bathed with perspiration, he put down his lute and drank. prati and the others embraced him with effusion, only regretting that, owing to the rapidity and rush of the poet's inspiration, they had been able to retain but a few lines. prati, however, repeated and perhaps somewhat refashioned a whole verse in _ottava rima_, and not content with expressing his admiration in words, wished to prove it to poor, tired, and excited baco by dictating an improvised sonnet to him, of which i remember the first four and the last three lines. [sidenote: prati's improvisation.] in order, however, to understand prati's verses, it is necessary to know that in those days the capponi ministry had fallen, and guerrazzi come into power. prati, who had suffered some persecution from him, owing to having in his harangues before the circolo politico moderato fulminated pindarically against this titan from leghorn, whilst praising the _improvisatore_, lashes out against the opposition. here are the verses, and i regret i have only retained these in my memory:-- "s'improvvisan ministri alla recisa; s'inalzan nuovi altari a nuovi dèi; ma un improvvisator come tu sei, per la croce di dio! non s'improvvisa." "one soon may improvise new ministers, unto new deities raise altars new; but an improvisator like to you, by god's own cross! one cannot improvise." and the last three lines are:-- "felice, che almen tu vivi alla febea fatica, nè sei di quelli che una nuova italia tentando improvvisar, guastan l'antica." "happy you live in your phoebean toils, not one of those that our new italy striving to improvise, the antique spoils." and, placing his signature at the bottom of it, he presented it to chiarini, whose face, when he had read it and seen by whom it was signed, assumed an expression of admiration mingled with regret touching to behold. [sidenote: replica of the abel.] the evening passed gaily. prati also improvised, encouraged (which is saying a great deal) and accompanied by chiarini, and, despite his puffing and blowing, said some very fine things. at last we separated, engaging our _improvisatore_ for another evening in another place; but this i shall omit. this symposium of artists was one of the few pleasures of those days, when my interest and enthusiasm for art were relaxed, and i had no opportunity to work, as i have before said, because, except retouching in wax the abel and cain, and some few portraits, i had absolutely nothing to do. in connection with these statues that the grand duke had ordered in bronze, let me say that, having finished in marble the abel, the grand duke saw it, regretted that he had not ordered it himself, and that it was to go away from florence. i proposed, to satisfy his wishes, to make a replica; but he was set upon having the original. it was in vain i said that any replica made by him who had originally made the model is always and substantially original, the artist in finishing it always introducing modifications and changes which make it an original and not a copy. his highness was not satisfied with this reasoning, and preferred that it should be cast in bronze, making the mould upon that which was already finished in marble. i answered, "in order to do that, i must have the permission of the owner." [sidenote: cast of abel for the grand duke.] "right," he said to me; "and if, as you assure me, the marble is not injured by making the mould, i am certain that permission will be given." i wrote to the imperial household of russia that his highness the grand duke wished to have a cast in bronze of the abel, taking the mould from the finished marble that i was making for his imperial majesty (the grand duchess marie having presented both this statue and the cain to her father the emperor nicholas). the answer was precisely this: "if the abel is finished, have it boxed up and sent immediately." i showed the answer to the grand duke, who smiled and said-- "one cannot deny that the answer is not very gracious; but now, as i really desire to have this statue in bronze, tell me, could not a mould be taken from the plaster-cast?" "your highness, yes; and for this, only the consent of the artist is required." "and do you give this consent?" "i prefer to take the mould from the plaster-cast rather than from the marble, because the cast is the more accurate--in fact, is the true original." and so it was settled. and at the same time, he ordered also the cain, from which i removed the trunk that served as a support in the marble, bent a little more the arm and the hand, which was upon the forehead, and remodelled it almost entirely in the wax. about this time giuseppe verdi came to florence to bring out his 'macbeth.' if i mistake not, it was the first time he ever came among us; but his fame had preceded him. enemies, it is natural, he had in great numbers. i was an admirer of all his works then known, 'nabuco,' 'ernani,' and 'giovanna d'arco.' his enemies said that as an artist he was very vulgar, and corrupted the italian school of singing; and as a man, they said he was an absolute bear, full of pride and arrogance, and disdained to make the acquaintance of any one. wishing to convince myself at once of the truth of this, i wrote a note in the following terms: "giovanni duprè begs the illustrious maestro g. verdi to do him the honour of paying him a visit at his studio whenever it is convenient for him to do so, as he desires to show him his cain, that he is now finishing in marble, before he sends it away." but in order to see how much of a bear he really was, i carried the letter, and represented myself as a young man belonging to the professor's studio. he received me with great urbanity, read the letter, and then, with a face which was neither serious nor smiling, he said-- "tell the professor that i thank him very much, and i will go to see him as soon as possible, for i had it in my mind to do so, wishing to know personally a young sculptor who," &c. [sidenote: visit of verdi.] i answered, "if you, signor maestro, desire to make the acquaintance as soon as possible of that young sculptor, you can have that satisfaction at once, for i am he." he smiled pleasantly, and shaking my hand, he said, "oh, this is just like an artist." we talked a long time together, and he showed me some letters of introduction that he had for capponi, giusti, and niccolini. the one for giusti was from manzoni. all the time that he remained in florence we saw each other every day. we made some excursions into the neighbourhood, such as to the ginori porcelain manufactory, to fiesole, and to torre del gallo. we were a company of four or five: andrea maffei, manara, who afterwards died at rome, giulio piatti, verdi, and myself. in the evenings he allowed either the one or the other of us to go to hear the rehearsals of 'macbeth;' in the mornings he and maffei very often came to my studio. he had a great deal of taste for painting and sculpture, and talked of them with no ordinary acumen. he had a great preference for michael angelo; and i remember that, in the chapel of canon sacchi, which is below fiesole, on the old road, where there is a fine collection of works of art, he remained on his knees for nearly a quarter of an hour in admiration of an altar-piece said to be the work of michael angelo. i wanted to make his bust; but for reasons independent of his will and mine, this plan could not be carried into effect, and i contented myself with taking a cast of his hand, which i afterwards cut in marble and presented to the siennese philharmonic society, to which i have belonged since , when, as i have before said, i went to siena. the hand of verdi is in the act of writing. in taking the cast the pen remained embedded in it, and now serves as a little stick to my sketch of sant'antonino. [sidenote: verdi.] verdi seemed to be pleased with the cain, the fierce and savage nature of which he felt in his very blood; and i remember that my friend maffei endeavoured to persuade him that a fine drama, with effective situations and contrasts of character, with which verdi's genius and inclination fitted him to cope, could be made out of byron's tragedy of 'cain,' which he was then translating. the gentleness of character and piety of abel contrasted with that of cain, excited by fierce anger and envy because the offer of abel was acceptable to god; abel, who caresses his brother and talks to him about god--and cain, who scornfully rejects his gentle words, uttering blasphemies even against god; a chorus of invisible angels in the air, a chorus of demons under ground; cain, who, blinded by anger, kills his brother; then the mother, who at the cry of abel rushes in and finds him dead, then the father, then the young wife of abel; the grief of all for the death of that pure character, their horror of the murderer; the dark and profound remorse of cain; and finally, the curse that fell upon him,--all formed a theme truly worthy of the dramatic and biblical genius of giuseppe verdi. i remember that at the time he was much taken with it; but he did nothing more about it, and i suppose he had his good reasons. perhaps the nudity was an obstacle. still, with the skins of wild beasts, tunics and eminently picturesque mantles can be made; at all events he could have set the subject to music if it offered him situations and effects and really attracted him, for verdi has shown in his many works that he possesses that sublime and fiery genius which is adapted to such a tremendous drama. he who had conceived the grand and serious melodies of 'nabuco,' the pathetic songs of the 'trovatore' and the 'traviata,' and the local colour, character, and sublime harmonies of 'aida,' might well set cain to music. should verdi at any time read these pages, who knows what he may do? [sidenote: cain, a subject for an opera.] and here perhaps it is best for me to make a slight digression, in order to speak of the character and disposition which specially belong to every artist independently of everything else--of his studies, of what he copies, and of the fashion of the day. who would have thought that so sweet and strong a painter as giotto would ever have risen out of the harsh and coarse mosaic-paintings of the byzantines and the teachings of cimabue? variety of character, truth of movement and expression, broad and flowing draperies, colouring at once temperate, airy, and strong, were, it might be said, created by him, and took the place of the hardness, and i could almost say deformity, of the byzantines and the dryness of the works of cimabue. nor did fra giovanni angelico show less originality and individuality in his works. he lived in the full noon of the naturalistic school of masaccio, lippi, and donatello, and his pure spirit drew its inspirations from the mystic and ideal sources of heaven, the virgin, and the saints, not only in his subjects, but in their treatment. michael angelo, solitary in the midst of a corrupt, avaricious, and lascivious civilisation, by his temperament and will was conspicuous for his purity of morals, his large liberality, and his intellectual love; and despite of raphael and leonardo, those most splendid planets of art, he maintained his originality, and his great figure towers like a giant among them. [sidenote: character of the artist.] the artist by nature, developed by study, becomes original and has a character distinct from all others, and in no way, not even in the slightest characteristic, can, despite any exterior influence, be different from what he is. for if giotto had been born and educated in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, he would not have painted the vain pomps and the archaic frivolities of that period; nor would fra angelico at the school of giulio romano have given himself up to the lasciviousness of his master; nor would michael angelo have been warped, nor was he warped, by the strength of those giants leonardo and raphael. the artist, then, is what he is and such as he is born, and study will only fertilise his genius, his nature, and his propensities, nor can he with the utmost force of his will conceive and create a work contrary to his nature and to his genius. michael angelo would never have been able, even with a hundred years of the most powerful effort, to create a paradise like that of giovanni angelico; and fra angelico would never have imagined even one of the figures of the last judgment in the sistine chapel. i remember--and this is my reason for this digression--that one day rossini, speaking to me confidentially of art in general, and upon this subject and all its bearings (and he was a competent judge), came by degrees to speak of music, and of the individual character of the composers he had known, and in regard to verdi he spoke thus: "you see, verdi is a master whose character is serious and melancholy; his colouring is dark and sad, which springs abundantly and spontaneously from his genius, and precisely for this reason is most valuable. i have the highest esteem for it; but on the other hand, it is indubitable that he will never compose a semi-serious opera like the 'linda,' and still less a comic opera like the 'elixir d'amore.'" [sidenote: rossini's views of verdi.] i added, "nor like the 'barbière.'" he replied, "leave me entirely out of the question." this he said to me twenty-two years ago in my studio in the candeli, and verdi has not yet composed a comic or semi-serious opera, nor do i believe that he has ever thought of doing so; and in this he has been quite right. the musical art and italy wait for a 'cain' from him, and they wait for it because he himself felt the will and the power to create it. i remember also another judgment and another expression of rossini's in regard to verdi. one evening after dinner i stayed on with him, because he liked to have a little talk. he was walking slowly up and down the dining-room, for he did not like to leave the room, the unpleasant odour which remains after dinner giving him apparently no annoyance. the signora olimpia, his wife, was playing a game of cards called _minchiate_ with one of the regular friends of the house--i mean one of those inevitable sticks that old ladies make use of to amuse them and help them to pass the time at cards. [sidenote: rossini on verdi.] some one always arrived late, but rossini would not see everybody. this evening, if i mistake not, came the signora varese, signor de luigi, and others whom i did not know; then two youths, who apparently were music-masters, and they, after saluting the signora, turned to rossini with these words: "have you heard, signor maestro, the criticism of scudo on the new opera of verdi, 'i vespri siciliani,' which has just been given in paris?" "no," answered rossini, rather seriously. "a regular criticism, you know; you should read it. it is in the last number of the 'revue des deux mondes.'" and then they began to repeat some of these opinions of scudo's, with adulation, which, if courteous, was little praiseworthy. but rossini interrupted them, saying-- "they make me laugh when they criticise verdi in this way, and with such a pen! to write an able and true criticism of him, requires higher capacity and an abler pen. in my opinion, this would require two italian composers of music who could write better than he does himself; but as these italian musical composers who are superior to verdi are yet to come, we must content ourselves with his music, applaud him when he does well," and here he clapped his hands, "and warn him in a fraternal way when we think he could have done better." as he finished these words he seemed a little heated, and almost offended, as if he thought that these people had come to give him this news by way of flattering him, or in order to have the violent criticism of scudo confirmed. the fact is, he must have already read the criticism itself, as i had seen the number of the 'revue' on his table before dinner. the conversation then changed, and nothing more was said. [sidenote: visit of the emperor of russia.] about this time the emperor of russia, who was passing through florence, honoured me with a visit. i should have passed over in silence this fact; but as it was the occasion of a false impression, by which i appeared to be the most stupid and ignorant man in the world, it is better that i should narrate exactly what occurred. signor mariotti, the agent for the russian imperial household, who, the reader may remember, had procured for me the commission for the marble of abel, sent me word that during the day the emperor would come to see the cain, which was already finished in marble. i waited for him all day; but towards evening, an hour before nightfall, i dressed myself to go away, not believing that any one would come at that hour. just as i was going out i heard a disturbance, a noise of carriages and horses, and saw the emperor stopping at my studio. it was nearly dark, so, with a stout heart, before he descended i went to the door of the carriage and said-- "your majesty, i am highly honoured by your visit to my studio, but i fear that your majesty cannot satisfy your desire to see the cain, as it is nearly nightfall, and i should like to show this work of mine in a more favourable light." the street was full of curious people; the studios of the artists my neighbours were all open, and they were in the doorway; the ministers of the imperial house put their heads out of their carriage to see what was the reason the emperor did not get out, and with whom he was talking. the emperor, with a benign countenance, answered-- "you are quite right; one cannot see well at this hour. i will return to-morrow after mid-day." i bowed, and the carriages drove on. this stopping of the carriage and its driving on again after a few words had passed between his majesty and myself, led some ass to suppose that i had not been willing to receive the emperor, and some malicious person repeated the little story; but not for long, as the next morning he returned with all his suite. as soon as he descended, he said to me-- "_vous parlez français?_" "_très mal, majesté._" "well, i speak a little italian; we will make a mixture." general menzicoff, count orloff, and others whom i do not remember, accompanied the emperor. as soon as he entered the studio he took off his hat, to the great astonishment of his suite, who all hastened to imitate him, and remained with his head uncovered all the time he was there. he was of colossal build, and perfectly proportioned. the emperor nicholas was then of mature years, but he looked as if he were in the flower of manhood. he talked and listened willingly, and tried to enter into the motives and conceptions of the artist. amongst others he saw a sketch of adam and eve that i had just made with the intention of representing the first family. he saw it, and it pleased him. he said it would go well with the cain and abel; and from these words, one might have taken for granted that he had ordered it. but i have always rather held back and been little eager for commissions, so that i did not feel myself empowered to execute it. then, also, i had taken this subject for my simple satisfaction, and certainly with the intention of making it in the large, which i did not, however, carry into effect; for if i had done so, i should probably have offered it to him, as he had been so much pleased by the sketch. the emperor was most affable with me, and showed a desire to know something about me besides my studies and works that he had before his eyes, so i satisfied his wishes. nor is it to be wondered at that so important a person as he was should inquire into the particulars of simple home-life, for he was (so i afterwards heard) a good husband and father. he accompanied the empress his wife to palermo, as her ill health made it necessary for her to be in that mild climate, perfumed with life-giving odours. he married his daughter maria nicolaiewna to the prince of leuchtenberg, who was a simple officer in the army; but as he became aware that the young people loved each other, he wished to procure their happiness. a good husband and a good father; pity it is that one cannot say a good sovereign! his persecutions and cruelty towards poland, especially in regard to her religious liberty, and even her language, which is the principal inheritance of a nation, are not a small stain on that patriarchal figure. [sidenote: the emperor's character.] if the young reader has the good habit of not skipping, he will remember perhaps the danger i ran of dying asphyxiated in my little studio near san simone in company with the model, whilst i was making the sketch for the abel. now i must speak of another grave peril that i ran of certain death, had it not been that divine providence sent me help just in time. it was the th of april : for some days past a crowd of rough and violent livornese had been going about our streets with jeering and menacing bearing; and insults, violence, and provocations of every kind had not been wanting. that day a squad of these brutal fellows, after having eaten and taken a good deal to drink, would not pay their reckoning; there were altercations and blows, to the damage of the poor man who kept the wine-shop; and as if that were not enough, there were other gross improprieties. this happened in the camaldoli of san lorenzo, at a place called la cella, where the population was crowded and rude. the cup was overflowing, and at a cry of, "give it to them! give it to them!" they fell upon these scoundrels; and although the latter were armed with swords (being of the livornese national guard) and stilettoes, they were overwhelmed by the rush of the populace, disarmed, and killed. [sidenote: riot in florence.] this was like a spark, and spread like lightning throughout florence. there was a great tumult and angry cries for men from leghorn. everything served as a weapon; every workman ran out with the implements of his trade, and even dishevelled ragged women ran about like so many furies with cudgels, shovels, and tongs, screaming, "kill them! kill them!" there were many victims. the soldiers who were in the belvedere fortress, as soon as they heard the reports of the guns and the cause thereof, came down from there like wild beasts, such was their hatred against these people, from whom they had received every kind of insult, even to finding two of their companions nailed to the boards of their barracks one day--acts that were a dishonour to the good reputation of the open-hearted livornese, with their free mode of speech and quick intelligence. timid people retired and shut themselves up in their houses, the shops were closed, the streets deserted, and one saw some people running and others pursuing them, as dogs hares; reports of guns were heard, now close by and now in the distance, cries for mercy, the drums beating the _generale_, and the mournful tolling of the big bell,--all of which produced a fearful and cruel effect. i lived in a house over my studio, in via nazionale, a short distance from the spot from which came the fatal spark. at the sound of the beating of the _generale_ i rushed up into my house to arm myself, to run to join our company. my colonel was the marchese gerini, and the captain carlo fenzi. my poor wife! i see her still crying and supplicating me not to leave her, saying, "what are you going to do?--to kill or to be killed? stay here, and if they come to attack us in the house, as they said they would, then you will defend these poor little ones." i yielded; but sarrocchi, who was in the house with me, in spite of his father's tears and prayers, would go, and our company went forward and protected these livornese guards from the fury of the populace as far as the station of santa maria novella. the company was led by the second lieutenant, engineer renard. i went back down into the studio and tried to work, but could do nothing. that constant noise of running, questioning, firing of guns, the beating of the distant drums--a dull sound, strange and fearful--had so irritated my nerves that i walked up and down the studio, taking up a book and putting it down again. at last i resolved to go home again, all the more so that i had left my wife feeling anxious and every moment fearing that something might happen to me. i had my studio dress on, which consisted of a linen blouse and red skull-cap. just as i was going out i heard some screams, lamentations, and a rush of people. i looked out, and saw a squad of furious men following and beating with sticks a poor livornese, who, not being able to go any farther, fell at the corner of the street, by the caffè degli artisti. that bloody scene made me ill; and compelled by compassion for that poor young fellow, i ran and thrust myself into the midst of the crowd that surrounded the fallen man. he was wounded in the head, and bleeding freely; one eye was almost put out, and he held one hand up in supplication, but his infuriated assailants beat at him as if they had been threshing corn. "let him alone! stop! good heavens, don't you see that the poor young fellow is dying?" they turned and looked at me. "what does he say? who is he?" asked these assassins. "he is a livornese also," was the answer. the eagerness i had shown in favour of that unfortunate man, the red skull-cap that i wore on my head, and my accent not being that of a vulgar florentine, gave strength to that assertion. from the dark look in their eyes and their sardonic smiles i became aware of my danger, and wished to speak; but these infuriated beings screamed out, "give it to him! give it to him, for he is also a livornese!" i felt that i was lost. a blow, aimed at my head, fell on my shoulder, and some one spat in my face. a person, whose name i do not recall, an ex-sergeant and drill-master of our company, arrived in time to save me. [sidenote: personal danger.] "stop!" said he--"stop!" and with these words he interposed and warded off the blows aimed at me. the words and resolute action of this man in sergeant's uniform carried weight with them, and to put an end to all this excitement he shouted out, "i bear witness, on my honour, that this is the professor duprè, sculptor, corporal in our company, and not at all a livornese." the crowd had thickened more and more, and in it there were some who knew me and echoed the words of this courageous and spirited man, so that i was saved. in the meantime my scholars, enrico pazzi and luigi majoli, armed with long iron compasses, had rushed to my succour; and it was fortunate that they were no longer needed, as, being young and brave-spirited, and romagnoli, with these weapons in their hands, who knows what might have been the consequence? chapter x. my wife, my little girls, and my work--death of my brother lorenzo--death of lorenzo bartolini--the base for the "tazza"--eight years of work, only to obtain a living--mussini and his school--pollastrini--the school in via sant'apollini--prince demidoff and the monument by bartolini--the nymph of the scorpion and the nymph of the serpent, by bartolini--marchese aba--count arese--the four statuettes for demidoff--amerigo of the prince corsinis--his royal highness count of syracuse, a sculptor--"sant'antonino" statue at the uffizi. the events of that day already belong to history, and it is not for me to narrate them. those of the livornese who could escape from the fury of the populace were part of them shut up in the fortress da basso, and part of them packed like anchovies in the railway-carriages. guerrazzi was imprisoned in the fortress of the belvedere, and the reins of the government were provisionally put into the hands of the municipality, ubaldino peruzzi being _gonfaloniere_. that same evening the ensigns of liberty that the republicans had hoisted in the _piazze_ and the street-crossings in florence, were torn to the ground. thus ended the enormities of these so-called democrats, who were in fact only the scum and unrestrained rabble of the flourishing and active city of leghorn. in the meantime affairs in my studio went from bad to worse. the political vicissitudes, the uncertainty of the present, and fears for the future, preoccupied every one, and no thought was given to the arts. i had no work to do, and lived a secluded life of poverty with my little family, fearing that the apprehensions of my poor wife would be realised: often we were in need even of the mere necessaries of life, and one thing after another went to the _monte di pietà_ in order to supply our most pressing wants. sorrows, disillusions, and mortifications were not wanting: one of my children died, the only boy that i ever had; the statue of pope pius ii. that i had made for siena was despised and kept shut up in its box for month after month, the aversion taken to it being, they said, occasioned by the disaffection of pius ix. what pius ii. had to do with pius ix. i do not know. [sidenote: the grand duke returns.] the grand duke returned; but the joy felt for his return was embittered by the presence of foreigners, and thence there were fears, suspicions, and ill-repressed rage, so that art suffered in consequence--art, that lives and breathes in the quiet and life-giving atmosphere of peace. [sidenote: design of a casket for the grand duke.] the grand duke having returned, i went to make my bow to him. he received me with his usual kindness, and asked me about my works and my family. i spoke out sincerely to him, touching lightly, not to distress him, on my misfortunes. he remained thoughtful, and dismissed me with benevolence. some days after, he sent his secretary luigi venturi for me, and talked at length with me about works that he was thinking of giving me. in the meanwhile, remembering that in times gone by i had occupied myself with wood-carving, he asked me if i could make or direct some work that he was thinking of having executed for a present he wished to make to his daughter princess isabella, who was to be married to prince francesco of naples. already, before isabella, his eldest daughter, the princess augusta, to whom he had given my two little statuettes of dante and beatrice, had been married. the work for the princess isabella was, however, of an entirely different kind, being a casket for jewels. i accepted this commission with gratitude, although it was not a real work of sculpture; but remembering that our old artists had executed works of the same kind, and that baccio d'agnolo, a famous architect, used to make the _cassone_ that contained the trousseau of the young florentine brides, and gloried in signing himself baccio d'agnolo, carpenter, i was contented. and besides, to speak my mind clearly, it is not the material or the thing itself that counts for anything. a little _terra cotta_ of luca della robbia, or an _intaglio_ of barili, is worth more than a hundred thousand wretched statues in marble or bronze. i therefore made and showed him the design for the casket. in shape it was rectangular, and stood on two squares, ornamented on all sides; the cover was slightly elevated, and on the top was a group of three figures representing maternal love; in the six spaces were six subjects taken from the bible representing holy marriages. these, i thought, were real jewels--family jewels. they came in order as follows: adam and eve in the terrestrial paradise before the fall, isaac and rebecca, boaz and ruth, esther and ahasuerus, tobit and sarah, david and abigail. the grand duke liked the idea and the design, and asked me in what wood i should carve it. i answered, in ivory, for two reasons: on account of the smallness of the figures, which would not admit of another material; and then because ivory is in itself beautiful, rich, and most adapted for this kind of work. fortunately, it was not necessary to look for the ivory, as in the grand duke's laboratory there was a most beautiful elephant's tusk. he gave it to me; and after having cut it up into as many pieces for the _formelie_, _cornice_, and _lamine_ as were required for this work, there remained a large piece, which i still keep. i set myself to the task, and worked with a will, as the marriage of the princess was soon to take place. in the construction of the square i employed a man from the cabinetmaker's, ciacchi; for the ornaments, paolino fanfani, a clever wood-carver and my good friend, whom i had known when a boy in sani's shop, where i used to work at wood-carving. two poems by luigi venturi, "lo sposo, la sposa e gli sposi," which form part of his poem "l'uomo," were placed inside of the box. [sidenote: i am dispirited.] and here i am at work. consider, friendly reader, if you are an artist, and after long study and anxiety have ever obtained the hoped-for compensations and triumphs, the more deserved because so earnestly laboured for, that you now see an artist occupied, on a work difficult indeed, but very far from being of that ideal greatness that his hopes and the applause previously given him have led him to anticipate and desire. the smallness of the work, the material, and even the tools for working it, reminded me of the humbleness of my origin. i felt sick at heart, and then flashed into my mind the fear that i might be obliged to return to wood-carving. not that i despised that art--i have already said the material is of no account; but i wanted to be a sculptor, and meantime i had nothing to do, and my family looked to me for support. this thought gave me strength, drove away the golden dreams of the future, even the memory of the smiling past, and i worked all day long and part of the night. my poor wife, who was always so good and active, attending to the household economy and to the education of our little girls, comforted me with her simple and affectionate words. sometimes, returning home with the children, she would stop to see me, and would look at and praise my work, and perhaps, because it reminded her of our early years, would say-- [sidenote: family difficulties.] "beautiful this work, is it not, nanni?" "yes; do you like it?" "yes." but in this exchange of loving words there was a certain sadness, and although it did not appear on the surface, yet the ear and eye of him who loves hears and sees what is hidden below. we remained silent, and she, taking the little girls by the hand, said good-bye to me, and i was deeply moved, and resumed my work. added to all this, we were preoccupied about my sister, who would not remain any longer in the conservatorio of monticelli, and could not return to my house on account of incompatibility of temper between her and my mother-in-law. at last i arranged that she should be with my father; and this proved satisfactory, as he thus had some one to look after his house, and she some one to lean upon. as soon, however, as this was settled, we had other troubles, and of a graver kind--my brother's illness. already for some time past, after the work in the studio had fallen off, the maintenance of this brother had been a serious thing to me; but with a little sacrifice and a little goodwill, this difficulty had been got over, and the hope of better days kept up the courage in both of us. but he constantly grew worse, and we had no hope of his recovery. in his wanderings he always spoke about me and my works, and it seemed as if his mind at times was clearer and more active. perhaps this is so because the soul feels the day of its freedom approaching, and is breaking the chains which bind it to the body, and drawing nearer to its immortal life. we say that it is wandering, because we do not understand it; the veil of the flesh obscures our spiritual vision, and we cannot comprehend the meaning of the strange and mysterious words we use. having partaken of the blessed sacrament, he expired, at peace with god, in the first days of january . my poor brother! poor lorenzo! strong and handsome of person; open and gay of nature, and generous-hearted; loving work and not minding fatigue, with a frank sincere smile that often came to soften the sharpness of his words. in those days a man of high intellect and great spirit, burning with a love for all that was truly beautiful, also left us. lorenzo bartolini died, after a few days' illness, of congestion of the brain, not young in years, but always very young in his affections and inspirations. some moments before he was overtaken by illness, he was working on the marble with the energy and precision of a man in the prime of life. whatever was the cause, he was taken ill, and neither the efforts of science, nor the love of his family, nor the interest and concern of every one, was able to save him. he was universally lamented, even by those who disliked him; for genius, though at first it may irritate the weak, in the long-run commands admiration and love. [sidenote: death of bartolini.] his works remain as an example of the beautiful in nature, which is the mainspring of art. in the foregoing pages i have already touched on his character as a man. i have also mentioned the reasons why he kept me at a distance; and now it is pleasant for me to remember that some time before his death he became reconciled to me, and the reconciliation took place in a most singular and casual way. one evening at fenzi's house, after dinner, we were all assembled in the billiard-room playing pool: there were also some ladies, who were not kept away by the cigar-smoke. bartolini came in; and carlino fenzi, as soon as he saw him, went forward to meet him, and said-- [sidenote: anecdote of bartolini.] "good evening, professor." "_accidenti_ to all professors!" "what kind of a speech is this? have i offended you?" "offence or no offence! i have said _accidenti_, and ... if you don't know anything, go and learn;" and with this he passed into the other rooms. carlino stood there as if he had been made of stucco, and turning to me said-- "but what stuff is this? do you understand anything about it?" "dear carlino," i answered, "i understand it all, and will tell you at once. bartolini does not wish to be called professor." "what! but is he not professor bartolini?" "that he is,--a professor, and one of the most able, and perhaps the oldest of them all; but he has a dislike to be called so, because he says all professors are asses." "this may be, and may not be," replied carlino, "but i knew nothing about it; and besides, how does he wish to be called? a cavaliere? it seems better to me to be an honourable professor than a cavaliere." "no, my dear fellow, not even a cavaliere, although he does not at all dislike being one, as you see he wears the ribbon of his order constantly in his button-hole." "well, what then?" "he wishes to be called master," i answered. "dear, dear! oh, this is beautiful! and i, who knew nothing about it, what fault is it of mine? does it seem to you proper or well-bred to come out with that word before everybody, even before ladies? to me it seems not only not like a master, but not even like a schoolboy." [sidenote: i reprove bartolini.] "have patience, carlino, and don't let us talk any more about it: bury it under a stone, and leave it alone. listen! they are calling out your number;" and so the matter ended. the day after, i had a model, tonino liverani, called tria--a beautiful model, and bartolini's favourite one, the same from whom he modelled when making his group of the astyanax. half an hour before mid-day he said to me-- "signor giovanni, would you be so kind as to send me away a quarter of an hour earlier to-day? i must be at the _maestro's_ at twelve o'clock. i replied, "certainly--of course; dress yourself at once and go; do not keep him waiting." whilst tria was dressing, i thought over the _accidente_ or the _accidenti_ on the previous evening, and if that horrid word did not go down with carlino because it was said at his house, neither did it please me, for in my quality of professor it wounded me more than it did him. but, in fact, joking apart, i was really grieved to see such a great man descend without any cause to the use of such puerile and unbecoming expressions, the more so that he was made an object of ridicule because carlino took the matter seriously. i said to myself, shall i send him a message or let it go? if i let it go, he will think that i am afraid to say what i feel, or that i am so weak-minded as to think that sally of his the most natural thing in the world: in the one case, as in the other, i shall cut a bad figure, and bartolini despises men who are afraid or stupid. then, too, who knows if a frank sincere word, spoken at any rate with respect and reason, such as i should say, would not do him good? all depends on tonino's reporting it straight. [sidenote: base of table of the muses.] "have you any orders, sor giovanni? when shall i return?" said tonino. "listen, tonino; you must do me the kindness to say to the _maestro_, that last night he let fall from his mouth a word that displeased me, because those who heard it did not know why he used it, and having heard his reason did not appreciate it. take care! not a word more or less, and don't make a mistake." and having gone over his lesson two or three times, he repeated it quite right. "you will return to-morrow morning at nine o'clock if bartolini will let you, and then you will give me his answer." the day after, at nine, tria appeared and said to me-- "i told the _maestro_, you know." "well, what did he answer?" "he replied in these words: 'you must say to duprè that i thank him. i also was aware that i had done wrong, but it was too late. salute him.'" some evenings afterwards i saw him again at fenzi's house: i was playing billiards. he shook my hand and said "good evening," a thing he had not done for a long time. [sidenote: description of my design.] after the little ivory casket that i have already spoken of, the grand duke ordered me to compose a base for the famous table of the muses in _pietra dura_ that is in the palazzo pitti. this work made me happier, as i was free to imagine and execute it in the manner i thought best, and a rich and elaborate subject occurred to me at once. the table of the muses is round; in the centre is apollo driving the chariot of the sun, and encircling him are the attributes of the muses. as the artist who made the top of the table had taken for his subject apollo as the father of the muses, i in my work gave to him the attributes of the sun, as fertiliser of the earth. in the base immediately under the table, i preserved its circular form, throwing out at the top a sort of capital supported by jutting brackets, and richly ornamented. beneath this is a cylinder covered with figures of children (_putte_) engaged in the rural occupations and pleasures of the various seasons. in the spring they are sporting, and playing on instruments, and dancing among flowers; in the summer they are cutting and bringing in the corn; in the autumn they are harvesting and treading grapes; in the winter they are digging, hoeing, and sowing. this cylinder thus storied over is set upon a large disc with mouldings and bevelled slope, upon which the seasons are seated, in varied attitudes, and weaving a garland of the flowers and fruits which the earth produces during the year. spring is peacefully sitting, lightly draped, crowned with daisies, and holding her head somewhat elevated, to express the reawakening of nature. summer has her _torso_ nude, is crowned with ears of corn, and is more robust of form than the others. autumn is crowned with grapes and vine-leaves, entirely dressed, but without a mantle. winter is crouching down, pressing her knees together, is entirely enveloped in her mantle, has a cloth on her head, and is expressive of cold. the garland which unites the figures is hidden behind winter, is more slender, and composed solely of fruits. each of these four figures seated upon the disc stretches forth a foot upon a projecting ledge or bracket, which is in plumb beneath the upper brackets, which support the capital; and these four lower brackets, making part of the disc and jutting forth from it, form the base and foot of the entire column. in the spaces between the figures on the upper bevelled slope of the disc, ornaments with the attributes of the elements are carved--for the earth a growth of acanthus-leaves, for the water a dolphin, for the air an eagle, for the fire a vase with flames. full of goodwill, i put my hand to the work with new hopefulness. i remember those days of a new awakening within me of interest in my art, and trust in providence for the support of my little family, which had been increased by the birth of luisina, dear little angel, whom god took to himself again, now some four years ago. in going from us, she left behind her the memory of her rare virtues, that softens the bitterness of our great loss. my poor little angel, pray for us. my eyes are dim with tears, but i feel how true it is that sorrow only rekindles the light of faith. [sidenote: in better spirits.] i worked with true enthusiasm, getting up at an early hour, and after a slight breakfast with my family, going down into the studio, which was almost under my own room. i kept note of all my expenses, to have some idea of the price i should ask for my model, as it was his highness's intention to have it cast in bronze. i was very light-hearted, as i have already said; and the principal reason for my being so was, that i saw by means of this work the bread for my family was provided for. i had not put aside a _soldo_, and the various works i had made during eight years--that is to say, from ' to ' --had yielded me barely enough to live upon, because the inevitable expenses of housekeeping had absorbed all the little i had beyond. i lived day by day, hoping always that fortune would smile upon me as in my early years; and now with this work of the pedestal for the table, i felt at ease. i have thought it opportune to enter into these minute particulars, that the young artist may learn two things from them: first, not to give himself up with too much assurance to the joys of early triumphs; and secondly, not to get discouraged in the bitter days of want and disillusions, when he feels himself forsaken. i know so many young men who become dejected at once, and inveigh against adverse fortune, against the injustice of men and their neglect, and other phrases equally idle, proud, and foolish. [sidenote: mussini's works.] my studio was no longer what it used to be at one time--no longer the place of rendezvous of applauding friends and admirers who followed the fashion of the moment; these all went about their own affairs, and had nothing more to do with me. some of the most distinguished amongst them, after the restoration, were refugees, some in one place, some in another. venturi was the only one who remained, and he came often to see me, and we talked at length about art. ciseri also was a good and faithful friend, and used to come to take me for a long walk in the evening. mussini, whom i had known a short time before, first left for paris, and then returned to go to siena as director of the institute of fine arts there, where he still teaches, and from his admirable school have come such famous artists as cassioli, franchi, maccari, and visconti, who died a miserable death from drowning at rome. [sidenote: mussini's character and fortunes.] i knew mussini in , when he had finished his four years of _pensionat_, and was on his return from rome. mussini was then a remarkable young artist, having gone through a varied and severe course of study. his compositions were serious and careful, and as a draughtsman he followed the style of our florentine school of the _quattrocento_. those qualities he showed in his first pictures, the expulsion of the profaners of the temple, sacred music, and the allegory of almsgiving. in his last sketch, which he made in rome, abelard and heloïse, he changed a little from his first manner, or i should better say from his first method: in the "abelard" he followed the modern german school--overbeck perhaps. as soon as he had returned to florence he set to work on his triumph of truth, abandoning his first views, enlarging his style, freshening his colouring, and taking his inspiration from leonardo and raphael. we became friends. he was rather a small thin young man, with black hair, black eyes, and olive complexion. in his conversation he was vivacious, sententious, and decided; an admirer of phidias and giotto above all others; also of raphael, michael angelo, and, in modern times, of ingres and bartolini. his companionship and friendship were of great use to me on account of his frank and sound advice on art. he went for some time to paris, and returned, as i have already said, to occupy the place of director of the institute of fine arts at siena--a post that he had begged me to ask for in his name; and in this way i lost the friendship of enrico pollastrini, who had asked for it for himself. as soon as i heard that the post was vacant by the death of menci, i advised mussini by letter to apply for it. he answered me at once, thanking me for my advice, but adding that at present he did not wish to leave paris. two days after, in another letter he told me he had changed his mind, and begged me, as i have said, to make an application in his name. pollastrini, who knew neither of my advice and counsel to mussini nor of my having asked for the post for him, came to see me, to get me to promise that i would support him in his demands for the place. poor enrico! he died but a few months ago. he was an excellent man, affectionate, and ready to serve a friend, but mistrustful and irascible. he would take offence at a mere nothing, and once in that vein, he was capable of not bowing to you for some time. i did not like him the less for all this. he never did any harm to anybody; and i believe he would not have killed even a fly, much less have been of injury to any one. may god give his soul peace! he came, therefore, to see me and get me to pledge myself in his favour; and when he heard that i had recommended the nomination of mussini--for by my petition it was to be understood that i supported him--he was annoyed, and did not hide his resentment, saying that he should not have expected me to show this preference, or to put another before him. i answered that i knew nothing about his having asked for the nomination, and that what i had done had been from a desire that a clever artist, and one so able to teach, should not remain in a foreign land. these reasons, instead of bringing persuasion to him, only embittered him the more, and he was angry with me for a long time. but below the surface poor enrico cared for me, and has shown it in a thousand ways. [sidenote: mussini's principles in art.] i have said that mussini was a master of sound and true principles in art; and so he is still, for his school at siena has produced, and produces, excellent results. beyond these principles, he had the power of communicating and exemplifying them to others, and this is a most important and invaluable faculty in a teacher. before he left for paris, he kept a school in via sant'apollonia, where, amongst other scholars, i remember a certain pelosi di lucca, gordigiani, and norfini, now painters of repute. he begged me to take the direction of his school, and i accepted, not without observing to him that i had not the necessary qualities for that place; but he insisted, and i yielded. things, however, went as it was natural they should go; the school lingered on awhile, and after a few months was broken up. [sidenote: gordigiani's talent for sculpture.] as it seemed to me, from his drawing, that gordigiani had talent for sculpture, i advised him to give himself up to that art, and he readily came to my studio and began to model with goodwill. but, either because the material he had to handle was difficult to manage on account of its novelty, or because impatience got the better of him, one fine day he threw his tools and work to the ground, and would have nothing more to say to them. he gave himself up to painting portraits, and succeeded so well that he has now become the portrait-painter most praised amongst us, and has made for himself a really enviable position. nevertheless, i believe that if he had had a little constancy, he would have succeeded as well in sculpture as in painting, because few understand as well as he does the form and relation of planes. [sidenote: i refuse to finish bartolini's statues.] at this time i had a commission to finish in marble two statues by bartolini that he had left unfinished; the "nymph and the scorpion" for the emperor of russia, and the "nymph and the serpent" for the marchese ala-ponzoni of milan. with regard to this there were certain ill-natured reports against me that i think best to clear up. some time before, prince demidoff had engaged and even begged of me to finish some of the figures of the great monument to his father that bartolini had left incomplete. i would not accept this commission, because the master had worked on them a great deal himself, and it seemed to me irreverent, and not a thing to be done, to continue and finish his work. i endeavoured to make the prince understand that as bartolini had worked upon it himself, and the work was so well advanced, it had more value left as it was than if it were finished by my hand, be it even with all the love of an artist. the prince did not appear to be much persuaded by this reasoning, and insisted, saying that my principles in art were the same as those taught by bartolini, and the veneration felt by me for him was a pledge of the love i would employ in finishing these figures. i thanked the prince for the too great confidence he placed in me as an artist, but i begged of him not to insist in carrying out this idea of having the work finished, either by me or by any other--for he, in order to force me to accept, said that otherwise he should give it to some one else, and added (exaggerating out of kindness my worth in art) that it would be my fault if it chanced that the artist was not fully equal to the arduous enterprise. i answered that i thought other artists abler than myself, but was of opinion that the statues ought to be left as they were. in order to convince him, i reminded him, as an example to the purpose, of the medici monuments in san lorenzo, before which no one would dare to say, "what a pity these figures are not finished!" if he did not say it with regard to michael angelo himself. and if, instead, they had been finished by other hands, with a good reason he would curse clement, who, after having betrayed his country, had wished to offer this offence to art and michael angelo's fame. this, god be praised, cannot be said, because the statues of day and night are just as that divine master left them. these words, said with the conviction and the warmth of an artist, who was a poor one to boot, and wishing and longing for fame and fortune, so entirely convinced the prince, that he was quite satisfied; and pressing my hand in silence, which was more eloquent than words, he left me. [sidenote: restoration of bartolini's statue.] if this conduct of mine was praised by some people in the hopes that it had not been quite liked by the prince, my acceptance of the order for the two statues for the emperor and the marchese ala afterwards, gave rise to a number of remarks: "see his consistency of principles and opinions!" they said. "how is it that the same reasons that were held out for his refusing the figures in the demidoff monument do not hold equally good for these? are these not also statues of bartolini's, and to be finished in the same way as those?" and here i come to an explanation of this point, where it would seem as if i had been in contradiction with myself. on one of these statues, the "nymph and the scorpion," for the emperor of russia, bartolini had never worked with his own hands--in fact, it was not finished, not even blocked out. on the other, for the marchese ala, he had worked, but how? the head, where he had wished to make a change in the arrangement of the hair, had been so cut away that there was a finger's-breadth of marble in the blocking-out points wanting on each side, so that it was ugly to see; and in addition to this, he had bent the forefinger of the left hand that rests on the serpent under the palm of the hand, perhaps because in undercutting it the last joint of the finger had been broken. now this finger, bent back and dislocated, looked very badly, when compared with the model in plaster, where the fingers were all extended, and pressed upon the serpent's neck admirably. i therefore accepted both these commissions,--the one because it had never been touched by bartolini's own hand, and the other because i was willing and able to put it straight. however, before touching the statue, i made the marchese ala acquainted with the serious defects there were in it, which bartolini would certainly have remedied had he had the time to finish it; and i asked for his permission (and on this condition alone accepted the work) to cut off all the top of the head with the locks of hair where it had been injured, in order to replace it exactly in the way that bartolini had first imagined and modelled it, and to add a piece of marble to the hand to remake the forefinger. he consented to these conditions. in order to make sure myself that i was right, before cutting away the defective parts, i had a mould and cast taken from them, that any one might see how they stood before i touched them, and how by taking the original model for my guide, i had replaced them: and i then said (as i now write), that all who were sensible and reasonable understood and were satisfied; as to the others, i do not know what they thought, nor did i care for them then, nor do now. i finished the two statues, copying the original models where these were carefully finished, and interpreting them where they were barely indicated, selecting suitable models from life; and so i satisfied those who trusted in me, and my own conscience. [sidenote: statue of innocence.] some time previous to this the marchese ala had given me an order for the "sleep of innocence"--a statue of a child sleeping--which i had already executed a long time before for my excellent friend the marchese alessandro bichi-ruspoli of siena. i therefore repeated this child in marble by commission of the aforesaid marchese ala; but being rather changeable, he afterwards declared to me that this work did not entirely satisfy him, although it was conscientiously done, and that he should take it only because he had engaged to do so. i answered that i wished my works to be taken because they were liked, not because they were ordered, and begged that he would not speak of it again. he thanked me, and promised to give me another order for portraits of his three pretty little children; but subsequently i heard nothing more about it. one day, being in turin, and finding myself at vela's studio, where i had gone to pay him a visit, i saw a very graceful little portrait-group, full length, such as that able artist knew how to make and is in the habit of making. i asked, "who are these pretty children?" [sidenote: the marchese ala.] "they are the children of marchese ala," replied vela. "it is already some time since he ordered this work, but he has not yet put in an appearance. i have written him so many letters, to which i have received no answer, that i don't know what to think." i then recounted to him what took place about my little putto, and the promise he had made of giving me an order for the little group. vela answered that he was astonished and annoyed; but as the commission had been given to him, and the model was in plaster, he begged me to speak to the marchese in order that he might be able to finish the work. i do not know whether vela ever did put the group into marble. as regards myself and compensation for the affair of the putto, which had been left hanging for so many years, he took my bacco della crittogama; but as the marchese was subject to very long periods of melancholy that prevented his thinking about anything for a good while, i heard nothing more on the subject, until one day count arese, to whom i began to speak about this affair, said to me-- "leave the matter to me. write me a letter giving me an account of this affair, and i will send you the money. i have business relations with the marchese ala, and will send him your receipt, and there will be an end to it." [sidenote: statuettes of petrarch and laura.] i did as he said, and was satisfied. what a pity it is that that most noble gentleman was so often afflicted by such a malady! he was and is one of the most intelligent and generous patrons of art. the first italian and foreign painters and sculptors had co-operated to make his house splendid and enviable for its works of art. as i have already said, demidoff kept these statues just as bartolini had left them, and placed them in his villa of san donato. one evening after dinner, as we were walking together through its magnificent apartments, he stopped in one of the little sitting-rooms and said to me-- "your little statuettes of dante and beatrice would look well here on small pedestals in the corners; but there ought to be four. and you may complete the number, by making a petrarch and madonna laura, if you like." "i should like to do so." and i made these other two statuettes. at present i do not know who has them; they were sold at paris a few years ago, together with a great many other works of art belonging to the prince. the dinners that the prince gave in that magnificent and enchanting house were most splendid. i met there, besides strangers that i do not speak of, matas, the prince's architect, baron gariod, my good friend professor zannetti, prince andrea corsini, and that dear son of his, young amerigo. one evening we were playing billiards together, and having finished our game of _carolina_, he said to me-- "come away; let us take a turn through the rooms;" and looking at and talking about his statues of pradier, bartolini, and powers, the stupendous fiamminghi, the canalettis, titian, greuze, the arrases in the large hall, the columns of malachite, remarkable both for their size and finish, and a thousand other objects of exquisite taste and great cost, the young man's eyes sparkled with joy and enthusiasm, and looking me steadily in the face, he said-- [sidenote: death of don amerigo.] "i am going away soon, you know, to spain. on my return, i want to do great things, and you must help me. i want a house that shall not be inferior to this." i replied, "if you desire, you can have one even more beautiful. i know the suite of rooms in your palace, and the masterpieces of art in your gallery. with the riches you possess, and the will that is not wanting, you might, as i have said, surpass even this enchanting abode." a short time after this, he came to my studio to say good-bye to me. dear young man! with a pure heart and open mind, an enthusiast for the beautiful, and beloved by all, he went away, and not one of us saw him again. he died in a foreign land, where he had gone to bring away his bride. bartolini's statues being finished, i made a bas-relief of adam and eve by commission of cavaliere giulio bianchi of siena; after which i retouched in wax the pedestal of the table for its casting in bronze, and in the meantime prepared to model the statue of sant'antonino for the loggie of the uffizi. from this time forth things began to go more evenly and liberally with me, and fears of falling back into poverty disappeared by slow degrees. already the rent of my studio, which was not small, was no longer a weight to me, as by sovereign decree the studio which had been left by professor costoli on his promotion to the presidency of the academy after bartolini's death was given to me. the statuettes of beatrice and dante of themselves alone almost supplied enough for the daily wants of the family, as i always had one or two of them to make at a time. i think i have made about forty of them, and one of them deserves comment. [sidenote: the count of syracuse.] before the princess matilde, who was married to demidoff, left for paris and was separated from her husband, the grand duchess of tuscany ordered my beatrice, with the intention of presenting it to that lady. the divorce having ensued, she did not give it to her, and the little statue remained for some time at her highness's, and afterwards she gave it to her brother, the count of syracuse, who used to amuse himself by working in sculpture. this sculptor-prince, without the slightest improper intention, but rather from a sort of good-natured, easy-going way, used to keep this statuette of mine alongside of his own, and it sometimes happened that persons praised him for it; and he must have felt not a little embarrassed to clear up this _quid pro quo_. it appears that sometimes, perhaps because this annoyed him, he made matters so far from clear that the statuette passed off as his own work. one day a neapolitan lady came to my studio, a princess caraffa or coscia (i cannot say which with certainty, but it is a matter that can be verified, for she told me that she was a descendant of the family of pope john xxiii., who is buried in our san giovanni, where one sees his fine monument between the two columns on the right-hand side). this lady, when she saw the beatrice among my other works, exclaimed-- "oh! the graceful portinari by the count of syracuse! is it not true that it is charming?" "princess," i answered, "i do not know if that little figure is pretty or not, but i am glad that you think so, for it is mine, one of my very first works. i modelled it in , inspired by that sublime sonnet of dante which begins-- 'tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare,' &c. i made the first copy of this statuette for signor sansone uzielli of leghorn; the second for the grand duke, which, with the young dante, he gave to the princess isabella his daughter, who married the prince luitpoldo of bavaria; and the one that you saw was presented to the count of syracuse by the grand duchess." [sidenote: sant'antonino.] the noble lady smiled, and said, "i must have been mistaken." the count of syracuse was a great lover of sculpture, and occupied himself with it as much as was consistent with the position he occupied. several of his works are most praiseworthy, and i keep some of the photographs of them that he was so kind as to send me. to return to my sant'antonino that i left unfinished. this model cost me an immense deal of work. the subject required character, bearing, and attitude of an absolutely simple and natural treatment, such as i gave the giotto; but fearing to meet with censure from the lovers of the classic, i kept doing and undoing my work in my sketches, as well as in my large model. it is useless! one must be decided, and sure of the side one wishes to take. this see-sawing between ideal beauty and truth to nature in portraiture will not do, just as it would be absurd and bad to adhere entirely to nature in other subjects, especially sacred ones. [sidenote: the natural and ideal.] and although imitation of beautiful nature is the foundation and substance of any work, yet the mode of seeing it and reproducing it constitutes the style that every artist, who is elevated, great, and pure, draws from within himself, according to his subject and the measure meted out to him by nature and education. in portrait statues one must abandon the ideal, even as regards the ordinary rules of the just proportions of the body. sant'antonino was named thus because he was small of stature. i was tempted several times to make him faithfully just as he was, small and crooked; and i made a sketch of him thus, which i still preserve, and it is precious on account of the little stick on which he leans, for this stick was no other than giuseppe verdi's pen. but i did nothing more with it, as i was vacillating between the rules of art and the close imitation of nature; and it is just this close imitation of the details of nature that constitutes the character of a portrait statue--a sound canon put wisely in practice by the ancients, as can easily be seen from their statues of the philosophers in the vatican, such as the zeno, and more particularly in that of diogenes; and in the bas-relief of Æsop, where one sees even the absolute hump on his back. but the copying in detail from nature does not mean a too close imitation of every little thing, of every wrinkle; these are the mechanical nothings that are, as it were, the battle-horse to those who make a trade of art, and should be left to them. chapter xi. close imitation from life--my illness--i am in danger of losing my life--luigi del punta, head physician at court--the grand duke furnishes me with the means for going to naples--i leave for naples--a beggar impostor--another and my boots--sorrento--my neapolitan friends--professor tartaglia and the hydropathic cure--the museum at naples--let us study the good wherever it is to be found--a strange presentation. that my words may not be obscure, and that one may see with sufficient clearness the difference that exists between the details that constitute different types and the minutiæ that must be left out, i will mention where this sound principle of art is to be found. for greater brevity and clearness i will speak of busts. the bust in bronze of seneca in the museum at naples, the bust of scipio africanus in the statue-gallery at florence, the vitellius, julia and lucius verus, the cicero of the british museum, and another seneca at the capitol, each has a distinct character of its own. so firm and decided are the details of those different faces, the planes are so clear and certain, the life so shines in the eyes, the breath so seems to come from the lips, that they have been for centuries the study and stumbling-block of all artists; for after that period you do not find anything, unless it be some _terre cotte_ of luca della robbia, and a bust of a bishop by mino da fiesole, in which you do not find every hair, and, in fact, every possible minutia. [sidenote: truth of detail.] the error into which these two schools run--that is to say, the academic and naturalistic--is this, that the one, exaggerating its general rules, neglects detail, and so becomes hard and cold; whilst the other, multiplying them _ad infinitum_, falls into minutiæ which make art vulgar. these are both errors, both ugly, both false. does this brief tirade, half dictatorial and half careless, bore you, gentle reader? if so, skip it, for i cannot let go the opportunity, from time to time, of making a good critical observation when it occurs to me, and i think it well not to omit doing so. young artists will, i am sure, be grateful to me; and besides, though these few words may have bored you, they serve as a warning to them on the importance of different characteristics, and are also of use to me, i do not say as an excuse, but as a frank statement of opinion, for in my sant'antonino this rule is not clearly carried into practice. the importance of speaking the truth and loving it is clearly given by dante when he says:-- "che s'io al vero son timido amico temo di perder vita tra coloro, che questo tempo chiameranno antico."[ ] [ ] "and if i am a timid friend to truth, i fear that i may lose my life with those who will hereafter call this time the olden." --dante: _paradiso_, canto xvii. as i am an ardent lover of truth, i wish to speak it now. with regard to this statue, if i had not the strength of mind to reproduce the saint just as he was, with all his peculiarities, in other statues it has been my study to do so, and i believe not without success. but in the meanwhile--i do not know for what reason--a general feeling of uneasiness took possession of me, and a prostration of strength, that prevented me from thinking or working. added to this, i had attacks of giddiness, and was obliged to spend entire days sitting down without being able to do anything, and feeling sad and melancholy. my medical friends--alberti and barzellotti--recommended exercise, meat diet, and a little good wine, which in those days ( ) could scarcely be found genuine. they ordered me to take preparations of iron and zinc, but my health grew worse every day. it was now three months since i had gone to the studio. i went out sometimes in the carriage with my poor wife, and we used to go into the country, or on the hills of san domenico, settignano, or pian di giullari. sometimes i went out on foot, but accompanied by and leaning on the arm of enrico pazzi, luigi majoli, or ciseri, who one day took me by the railway to prato, where we remained until evening. after that i began to feel a want of appetite, nausea, and sleeplessness, and then my friends really became alarmed about my health. [sidenote: illness.] the grand duke leopold, that excellent sovereign, who was called the _babbo_--i know not if from affection or derision--was for me (and for many others who do not think proper to admit it) really paternal in his care and timely help. almost every day he wished to have news of my health; and constantly sent luigi venturi, his secretary and a friend of mine, to make inquiries. when he heard that matters had come to this bad pass, he charged his private medical attendant, luigi del punta, to come and examine me, study my disease, and suggest a remedy. del punta, before coming to see me, acquainted my medical advisers with the order he had received, and a consultation was fixed for the following day, which was the th of september, --the feast of the virgin. on that morning alberti and barzellotti arrived first, paid me a little visit, and then retired into the sitting-room to wait for del punta. the sitting-room was next to my room. del punta came in, and they talked for a long time, but in an undertone, so that i heard nothing, except one word pronounced by del punta, which put me in a great state of apprehension, and that was "tape-worm." the idea that i could have that ugly malicious beast inside me frightened me, and when they came into my room they found me in a much worse condition than when they had left me a little time before. i always remember the piercing look of del punta, anxious and penetrating. then he began to question me, and examine me all over, by auscultation, thumping, and squeezing me. his inspection was a long one; but as he proceeded little by little, his expression became more _open_, his beaming frank eyes met mine, and i could almost say that a mocking smile played about his lips. seeing me still staring at him, he gave me a little tap with his hand on my shoulder, and said, "well, be of good cheer; there is nothing serious the matter." and seeing that i did not believe him, he added, "i tell you you haven't a cabbage-worth the matter with you!" and he said this with emphasis. [sidenote: consultation of physicians.] well, my dear reader, that foolish expression did me good. if he had assured me in the usual way, and with select phraseology, that i had nothing serious the matter with me, it would not have had the eloquence or efficacy of that slang word blurted out with such force in the face of the sick man, before the other medical men, with my poor wife listening sadly and anxiously, my little ones about me, not understanding, but full of vague fears on account of their mother's sadness and the novelty of the thing. it brought with it, i say, such a sense of conviction, that it was for me a true and positive affirmation. poor luigi! as learned in medicine as you were genial as a friend, on that day you gave new life to me when i seemed to see it fleeting from me. you so vivacious, so full of health--i so weak and ill; who would have then said that so soon you would be gone? [sidenote: i am sent to naples.] after having assured me and my wife that there was no serious disease, that i should certainly recover, he added that i required a special method of treatment that had more to do with a regimen of life than with medicine, and that he would refer the result of the consultation and his examination to the grand duke. in fact, he reported to the grand duke (as i afterwards learned), that in the condition in which i was, i could not have lived; my nerves were so shattered that i had become very weak, and that i suffered from vertigo and could hardly stand, and at last had lost my appetite and power of sleeping. it was urgent that i should have rest; and this would consist in taking me away from home, away from my studio, from florence, from all--in one word, sending me off on a journey, not a long one, but far enough to distract me from cares and thoughts that oppressed; this was the only remedy, he said, and could be freely adopted, as i had no internal disease. it was necessary that i should have a companion that i liked with me, and he suggested that my wife should accompany me. a few days after, the grand duke informed me by means of his secretary, venturi, that it was necessary for me to have a change of air, and that professor del punta had advised naples, as it was a bright cheerful place to stay in--where the air was mild, and where there were many pleasant things to distract one: that i must therefore make my arrangements to go there; that my wife and one little girl must accompany me; and that i was not to give a thought to anything, as he provided for everything during the time that was necessary for my recovery, and he recommended me to his minister cavaliere luigi bargagli. [sidenote: arrangements for departure.] every day that preceded my departure, professor del punta came to see me, and encouraged me to be of good cheer also, on the part of the grand duke. the preparations for our departure were many, and by no means trifling. it was necessary to make arrangements so that the work in the studio should not be without direction, and should be carried on carefully. tito sarrocchi, then my scholar and workman, was intrusted with the direction of it. the works in hand, besides the statue of sant'antonino, were, "innocence and the fisherman," for lord crawford of london, and some busts. as to models in clay, i left a bacco dell'uva malata, that sarrocchi had charge of until my return. my friends, artists and not artists, came during those days to say good-bye to me, some of them consoling themselves with hopes of my recovery, and others fearing that they should never see me again, so emaciated and sad was i; and antonio ciseri wept in saying good-bye. good gracious! how long and tedious is this narrative of your illness! long! yes or no. long for you perhaps, who, as it would seem, have never been ill, and who do not know what a consolation it is for one who is suffering from the same malady as yourself to hear about such illness from one who is at present quite well. if it annoys you, have patience--some one may benefit by it; and at any rate, for the present i have done. the night that preceded my departure, that dear saintly woman my wife remained up all night to put everything in the house in order, and to prepare what was needed for us--that is, myself, my wife, and beppina, our second daughter. i had at that time four daughters: amalia, who is the eldest; beppina, who went with me; and luisina and emilia, who remained at home with their grandmother and amalia. i lost emilia quite young, dear little angel. her little body rests in the cemetery of san leonardo. gigina i lost when she was grown up, and will speak of this in its place. the journey had to be made by short stages in a _vettura_, so that it was necessary to hire a carriage and keep it at one's own expense as far as naples. we left on the morning of the th of october , arrived on the th, and lodged at the hotel de rome, santa lucia. that eight days' journey in the sweet company of my wife, the pretty, innocent questionings of beppina about the fields, the rivers, and the villages that we passed by one after the other, the novelty of the life, the pure country air, and the hope of regaining my health, had softened the asperity of my suffering. apathy and sadness gradually gave way to a desire to see new things; my wife's questions and those of my little one obliged me to answer, and sometimes to smile. i felt my appetite for food return, and i slept peacefully some hours every night. [sidenote: impressions of naples.] in this way i arrived in naples--in that immense city, so crowded with people, so noisy and deafening on account of the numbers of carriages, shouts of the coachmen, of the people offering things for sale, of jugglers, beggars, all speaking in a strange difficult dialect most unpleasant to a tuscan. in this city the first impression made upon me was a mixture of wonder and anger. it seemed to me as if one could do all that those good people were doing without being obliged to scream and throw one's self about so much. here a coachman smacked his whip within four fingers of your ears, to ask you if you wanted his carriage; there a man, selling iced water and lemonade, screamed out at the height of his voice i don't know what, and, to give it more force, beat with his lemon-squeezers against his metallic bench, like norma or villeda on irminsul's shield; a little farther on a half-naked beggar, with his ragged wife and children, shouted out, "i am dying with hunger," with lungs that a commander of a battalion in the battle-field might envy. these beggars, however, are for the most part impostors. one day--it was a _festa_--i was returning from san gennaro, where i had been to mass with my wife and little girl. i saw a man extended on the ground with his body and legs inside a doorway, his head and his arms out into the street; his mouth was green with grass that he had been chewing, and some of which was hanging out of his mouth. the people passing by looked, and then went on their way talking and laughing as if it was nothing. i was stunned, indignant, and full of pity, and turning to my wife (and even i flinging about my arms in the neapolitan fashion), said, with all the christian and human resentment that i was capable of, "how is it possible that, in such a flourishing and civil city as this, a poor christian is left to die of hunger in the street for want of a little bread which is denied him by his unnatural brethren, and is obliged to feed upon the food for beasts?" and i ran at once to a pastrycook's near by for some cakes, because i thought bread would be too hard food for a man reduced to such a state; and with a light heart on account of the good action, i took them to him that i might see him eat them, and as soon as he was a little restored give him some _soldi_. clever indeed! you little thought that the man was an impostor! i bent over him, called him; he did not answer. i put a cake to his mouth, and he looked at me, took the cakes, and hid them in his bosom between his shirt and his skin, and this kind of a bag was crammed full of bread and other things. some inquisitive people had stopped to look on, and seeing this, it seemed to me as if they laughed at my simplicity. [sidenote: i give my boots to a beggar.] and as i am on this question, and my memory serves me well, i will tell you of another beggar. in front of the hotel de france, largo castello, where i was staying, is the church of san giacomo. at the door of this church a poor man stood from morning until night trembling, half naked, and barefoot. it made me feel badly, comfortably lodged as i was, and sitting smoking my cigar on the terrace, to see that poor creature out in the cold with his feet in the mud. more than once my poor wife had given him some _soldi_; but one day when it was raining heavily, and the poor man was out in it all, with his feet nearly covered by water, a happy thought struck me, inspired by christian charity, and i said, "i am here under cover, and have boots on my feet, while that poor wretch is there outside with no shoes on; i will give him my boots." i rang the bell; the servant came, and i said to him, "raffael, take this pair of boots to that poor man over there by the door of san giacomo." "yes, sir," said raffael, and away he went. i went back on to the balcony to enjoy the effect of my good deed, imagining that i should see an expression of amazement and joy on the man's face. nothing of the sort; he remained there with the boots in hand as if he did not know exactly what sort of things they were, and when raffael told him that i gave them to him, and pointed me out to him on the terrace, the man turned, looked up, and, always holding them in his hand, made signs of thanking me; then he put them down on the ground near his feet, and continued to stretch out his hands to the people entering the church! "ah, poor man," i said, "he wished to put them on to-morrow morning; he must wash himself, of course, and dry his feet before putting them on. how stupid of me! the people are just going in for the _novena_ (it was christmas-time), and he does not want to lose a chance _grano_ to buy him some bread." but the next morning he was still barefooted, and it was raining. i said to my wife-- [sidenote: the beggar sells the boots.] "look, i sent that poor man my boots yesterday, so that he should not wet his feet, but he has not put them on. what do you think is the reason? what should you say?" "he probably wishes to keep them for sundays," was the serious answer of that dear simple woman. "you are joking, my dear; that man is old, and if he keeps them for sundays he will not see the end of them. i say that he has sold them." "and i say, that if he had two or three _lire_ to spare, he would have wished to buy a pair, poor man!" we each remained of our own opinion. late in the day we went out, and, approaching the poor man, i said to him-- "why have you not put on the boots that i gave you? are they tight?" "your excellency," he replied, "if i put the boots on, no one will give me another penny. i have sold them, your excellency; and may the virgin bless you." a few days after my arrival at naples i went to sorrento. the discordant noise of the town annoyed me, and i wished to try that little place, so much praised for its climate and for its quietness, and so full of association with that illustrious and unhappy man, torquato tasso. i went there with my friend venturi, who had come to naples for a few days with the grand duke. [sidenote: sorrento and its inhabitants.] sorrento is a charming little town seated on the crest of a hill called the deserto. it is surrounded on the left by woods of orange, citron, and lemon trees, and on the right by the sea with the island of capri, that seems to rise up majestically from the deep blue waters. on the far horizon one catches a glimpse of nisida and baia. this small town is inhabited by fishermen, orange-packers employed on the large landed possessions in the neighbourhood, and by most clever workers of inlaid wood, who have made their art so much in request by the thousand little trifles, so pretty in design and so carefully executed, that they make. garguillo's manufactory is much renowned, and justly so. not only do you find on the pieces of furniture cornices, fillets, meanders, and other graceful ornaments, but also extremely pretty figures inlaid on the boxes, little tables, and other nick-nacks with which well-to-do people embellish their rooms. here the air is mild, and the sun is tempered by the shade of laurels and orange-trees. the character of the inhabitants is gentle and laborious, and through their acts and their words there breathes a quiet, ineffable melancholy, like the memory of a sweet pure dream. their complexion is dark, and also their hair; their eyes have long lashes, and are cut in almond shape. it seems as if they looked with infinite sweetness at something immeasurably far off; their smile is sad, as if it recalled to them a lost existence that hope induced them to think not irretrievably lost. this favoured, i should almost say ideal, bit of nature, at a few miles' distance from the thoughtless vulgar noise of the inhabitants of naples, is a thing commented on by all, but by no one reasonably explained. the climate so temperate, the air perfumed with the scent of orange-flowers, and the sweet melancholy on those faces, instead of rendering the place agreeable to me, made me profoundly sad. why did my heart not open itself to the enjoyments of that pure, serene, and most beautiful nature? why was it that that bright sky, that tranquil sea, that quiet industrious life, rendered me more sad and thoughtful? perhaps it was because being so very weak i did not feel the strength within me to reproduce in art any of those many impressions that the mind took in and fancy clothed in most varied forms. one day i visited tasso's house; and whilst, as usual, the cicerone explained in his way the singularity of that abode, i dwelt in imagination on the life and vicissitudes of that unhappy poet, and recalled the secret joys of that passionate soul after he had finished his christian epic: i saw the courteous, handsome cavalier, the inspired poet, envied and conspired against by the favourites of the duke and the _literati_, his rivals; the looks of the ladies, whose frank admiration was veiled in the shadow of profligacy; then the disorder, confusion, first in the heart, and then in the brain of poor torquato, the suspicions of the duke, his imprisonment, his lawsuit, his resignation and death; and i wept. [sidenote: sorrento--return to naples.] i decided to return to naples--for this quiet full of fancies drove me back into myself, and made me more sad. i took up my abode in the centre of the great city, in piazza castello, at the hotel de france, on the angle of the strada dei guantai vecchi. in this hotel strangers were continually coming and going, and changing every day. the windows of my little apartment opened on the piazza, and the mid-day and westerly sun bathed them in heat and light. some artists, in compassion for my condition, came to give me courage; and among them i remember with profound sadness, for almost all of them are now dead, cammillo guerra, giuseppe mancinelli, gigante, and tommaso aloysio juvara, who had such a tragic end in rome. the warmth of your heart turned your brain, my poor friend! but in your last moments you acknowledged your sin, and god will have been merciful to you. the other younger artists who are still alive are the sculptors solari and balzico, the miniature-painter di crescenzio, and postiglione the painter. but my health was always the same. professor vulpes, to whom i had brought a letter of recommendation from professor del punta, continued to follow the same treatment as that indicated by the other florentine doctors,--that is to say, prescribing preparations of iron, meat diet, rest, and tranquillity of mind. and in the meanwhile i had no desire to eat; my sleep was restless and of short duration; my legs would ill support me, and my mind was so depressed that i could not endure to read more than a few pages. as to writing, i was obliged to stop every moment or so; ideas got confused, and i could not separate them from each other or give them any proper shape. it was a great fatigue to me to give my news to venturi when he desired to hear from me. [sidenote: my ill health continues.] at last the longed-for day came which was to decide the question of my health. it was already two months since i had left my home; and although the journey to naples and the air there had been somewhat beneficial to me, yet i was very far from entertaining the slightest hope of recovery--or rather this recovery was so slow as to make me lose all patience. at this stage good professor smargiassi, seeing me always so weak and melancholy, said to me, "why do you not try the water-cure?" [sidenote: i try the water-cure.] "what do you mean by water-cure?" i replied; and he explained it to me, adding, "here in naples there is professor tartaglia, who has effected some wonderful cures." he told me of some, and he added that he himself had tried this cure and had got well. as smargiassi was a serious man, with a temperate habit of speech on all matters, his words carried weight with them, and i consented willingly to consult this hydropathic professor, and so sent for him. professor tartaglia was an exceptional neapolitan--that is to say, he had nothing of the vivacity of speech and manners that is peculiar to this warm-hearted, exuberant, and imaginative people; he spoke little and quietly, listened a great deal, and observed attentively. when he had heard of my complaints, he examined me, and after that said: "you have no disease, although you may not feel well; you will recover quietly and easily--of that you may be sure. in the meanwhile i will tell you that i shall not come again to see you; but instead, you must come to see me every morning at twelve o'clock to give me an account of how you feel. to-morrow you must take your first bath. don't be alarmed--it is not a bath by immersion; you are not to go into the water," and he gave me the directions to be followed; and as he was going away he said, "let alone the medicines that you have taken thus far." the first morning this hydropathic cure seemed very arduous. to get out of one's bed and put on a sheet drenched with cold water is not the pleasantest thing in the world, especially at that season of the year (it was the last of december); but after the first impression, i can assure you that the external warmth finally produces a pleasant effect, and gives strength and elasticity to the body. after the bath, walking exercise should be taken for at least an hour. to my objection that i could not walk, the professor answered, "walk as much as you can, rest a little, and then continue to walk, and so on; you will see day by day that your strength will return, and with your strength, courage and happiness." in short, after a month of this treatment i was so well that i could walk easily eight miles during the day. when i wrote to florence of the new cure that i had begun, del punta was frightened, and said that he would not be responsible for the result of this resolution of mine, which, to say the least, was hazardous; and that i ought not to have undertaken it without the advice of an ordinary practitioner--that is to say, of an allopathic doctor. his making this a condition tranquillised me, as professor tartaglia was really an allopathic doctor; but in some cases that were rebellious to that system of treatment he adopted hydropathy. then, too, the result was so satisfactory, so decided, that all objections fell to the ground, and nothing more was said about it. [sidenote: my health is renewed.] by degrees i felt my strength returning, and my heart expanded with hope. delightful artistic thoughts, that had so long lain dormant, sprang into life within me, one by one, like the first leaves in april; and will, precious gift, mysterious, immortal power, again took and held its empire over me, and pronounced itself. during the days just passed, the smiling country, the glorious sun, the terrible beauty of the sea, the joys of men, the creations of art, and (sad to say) even the affectionate care of my dear ones, were irksome to me; and now, with pleasure, slowly and by degrees i began to feel a desire and thirst to enjoy these good things, thinking about them and loving them with more intensity of understanding and hearty sincerity. every day there was a new excursion to be made: capodimonte, with its immense park and rich gallery; that beautiful walk, the strada maria teresa, now vittorio emanuele; the certosa of san martino, where one enjoys a view of the whole city, of the sea and all the campagna-felice, of vesuvius, of monte somma, of portici, resina, capri, and nisida. then i felt a desire to see the royal museum, unique in the world for its great riches in ancient bronzes; the flora, venus victrix, callipige, aristides, the equestrian statues of the balbi, father and son; the seated mercury; the sleeping faun, and a thousand other statues, big and little; busts, in marble and in bronze, of exquisite beauty, all or almost all of them having been dug out of the ashes of herculaneum and pompeii. on certain days, or i should rather say at certain moments, a sight of these works of sculpture sets one on fire, and fills one with courage and a strong desire to do something; but at other times it gives one a feeling of dismay, discouragement, and fear that cannot be described. this difference of impression deserves to be examined a little, and he who is bored must here skip; the young artist, however, i am certain, will follow me attentively. i have made a promise to myself not to leave these papers as food for mere curiosity, for, seriously speaking, there should be no satisfaction in that; whereas a little value and profit will be found by every one who has the patience to follow me. [sidenote: excursions--the royal museum.] [sidenote: the academicians and naturalists.] yes, dear friends, sometimes, in seeing certain works of art, one burns with enthusiasm, with a fire, a desire to do, that is really marvellous, and we ease our minds with the conviction that this is a sign of our strength. illusions, dear sirs--illusions! to the eyes of the artist all works of art ought to be the occasion of examination and serious hesitating thought; and when these outbursts of immoderate confidence in ourselves occur, they are a sign that our sight is obscured by pride, or that we are not able to comprehend the degree of beauty in such works, and consequently the difficulties that have been overcome to produce them. we must correct ourselves of both these defects, and learn to respect even mediocre things, as by this method we arrive at the discovery of something good even in these, if not as a whole, at least in their intention and germ, and this will always be something gained. as a young man, i have found myself laughing compassionately at some of the most beautiful works of art, both ancient and modern, and this merely because my natural pride had been excited by light or false praise. the complacency that we feel in ourselves and our works comes in part from a species of exclusiveness and belief in the infallibility of the principles we profess. not that i would counsel any disloyalty to the principles that are our guides in art--no, indeed, for we must keep entirely true to them; but it is a very different thing to despise all other schools that are removed from ours. for instance, why despise the academicians, who are tenacious of the study of antique statues, in order to keep within bounds the turbid torrent of the _veristi_, who in their turn, through their coarse adherence to nature, lose the idea of the beautiful? let us, on the contrary, respect them for their intentions and motives, at the same time that we make certain reservations as to the final consequences that would result from this distrust and refashioning of nature. the fault of the academic school lies in this, that instead of saying, "study the antique; look how well they knew how to choose from life and how to interpret it," they say, "here, copy these casts; apart from them there is no health or safety for you. nature is imperfect; you must improve on it, and, imitating the grecian and roman statues, you will learn to purge nature from all her imperfections." so saying, the intention, which is good, is spoiled by its application of exaggerated rules. but, i repeat, the intention is good; therefore let us look to that whilst we reject its application. on the other hand, why should we despise the _naturalisti_ in all that they have that is good--i mean, in their axioms and rules--which, in short, putting aside amplification and exaggeration, means the imitation always in everything of nature? we have always accepted and insisted upon the imitation of nature, that is of beautiful nature, putting aside that exaggeration which leads to folly, absurdity, and licence of conception, and to ugliness of form, detail, and minutiæ. [sidenote: the naturalists and idealists.] the same may be said of the mystics, the purists, colourists, lovers of effect and _barocco_, &c. let us take the good where we can find it: not, indeed, make a mixture, a medley, as some have been fantastic enough to imagine, by which we should arrive directly at eclecticism, which is the most foolish thing in this world; but putting our minds into the study of all these schools, we shall be able to find good reasons for their teachings. separating them from excess and exaggeration, we shall find ourselves in a wider, clearer, higher atmosphere, and the impressions that we receive from works of art will not produce despondency or rejoicing, our judgments will be more temperate and just, and our own work will be done quicker and better. this does not mean, indeed, that we are to remain indifferent before works of art. alas for the man who is indifferent! for the artist who before some work of art stands cold and without feeling! a young man who is ardent, boasting, and proud, can correct himself, can be trained by difficulties and instances, by emulation or jeering. the timid will become animated, and take courage, moving with measured and cautious steps on his arduous journey, and, by reason of his timid, gentle character, conciliate the goodwill of his masters and fellow-students; but the indifferent and cold of nature has too much the air of a simpleton or an arrogant person, and he is fled from and left in his stupid ignorance. [sidenote: an artistic visit.] and here, gentle reader, is one of these happy mortals who live their little day in dreamland. a person came to see me one day bringing with him a young man who might have borne a quarter of a century weight on his shoulders. he was of medium height, with broad shoulders, bent slightly, owing, perhaps, to his being twenty-five years of age; he had a black beard, bronzed complexion, and wandering eyes. he looked all about him and saw nothing. i say that he saw nothing, for he paid the same attention to my cat as he did to the head of the colossus of monte cavallo, which stood on a stand in the room, and to my "abel" as he did to me or my stool. he spoke no italian, not even french; but the person who accompanied him, and who was competent in all respects, spoke for him, or rather of him, for the young man himself never opened his mouth to utter a word, although he kept it half open even when he was looking at the cat. this very polite person said-- "you will forgive me, signor professor, if i take you away from your occupations for a few brief moments; but i could not forego the pleasure of regaling you with a visit from, and making you acquainted with, this young sculptor, who is on his way to rome, where he goes, not, indeed, to perfect himself as an artist, but to practise the profession which he has so nobly and splendidly illustrated by his genius. as he is undoubtedly born to fame, and the whole world will talk of him, i wished to bring him to you, and make you really acquainted, that you might some day be able to say, 'i have seen him and spoken with him.'" [sidenote: a genius.] i stood there like a bit of stucco, looking at the young man, and then at the person who had spoken to me thus. then i answered-- "tell me, does this gentleman speak, or at least understand, italian? has he understood what you have just said of him?" "oh no! he only speaks english; he is an american." "the lord be thanked," muttered i to myself, "that the poor young man understood nothing!" but this polite person, misunderstanding my question, began-- "now i will tell him what i have said to you." and he began in english to repeat the little tirade that he had given me, and this genius of a young man nodded his head at every phrase, looking at me, at the stool, and at the cat! chapter xii. pompeii--a cameo--sketch for the bacco della crittogama--professor angelini the sculptor--one must not offer one's hand with too much freedom to ladies--a hard-hearted woman with small intelligence--the san carlo, the san carlino, the fenice, and the sebeto--monument by donatello at naples--the barocco and mistaken opinions--dilettanti in the fine arts--prince don sebastian of bourbon--is the beard a sign of being legitimist or liberal?--i am taken for a prince or something like one--"the bottle" for doorkeepers and custodi of the public museums of naples--phidias, demosthenes, and cicero all against ruggero bonghi. i summoned up all my little stock of patience, and moved slowly towards the door, they following me. thanking the gentlemen, i shut them out, and returned in silence to my work. this happened some thirty years ago, nor as yet does it seem as if the prophecy about that young man were realised. to return to ourselves. "appetite comes with eating," as the proverb has it; and in fact, by degrees, as i visited the museums, the churches, and the studios of the neapolitan artists, i felt an increasing desire to do something, to try again to draw or to model, were it but a mere trifle. one day, after having gone over the whole breadth and length of the excavations at pompeii, i was examining a mosaic pavement made out of a great many pretty little coloured stones, some of them broken away from their place; and bending down to examine it closer, i touched one of the stones. the _custode_ hastened to say to me, "don't touch, signor--the regulations prohibit it." it cannot be denied that i have always been disposed to respect all regulations; but since i had seen them broken, even by those who ought to have been the first to respect them, i had taken them in dudgeon. i looked at the _custode_, and he at me, and we understood each other at once. i took a turn, went to the door, looked to the right and to the left of me, and coming back, as i was taking something out of my pocket i dropped some money on the ground. [sidenote: a little cameo-head.] my friend picked it up for me, and i gave him a _carlino_. we returned to the room where the mosaic pavement was. it represented a race of animals, hares and dogs, on a yellow ground. some of the little stones were loose, and already many were missing; they were small squares about as large as my little-finger nail. i bent down again, and stretched out my hand, looking at the guard, who for decency's sake turned in the other direction; and i took the little stone, on which, with a great deal of patience and increasing gusto, i drew and engraved a small head after the fashion of a cameo, roughing it out at first with the point of a penknife, and finishing it off with sharpened needles fastened into little handles, which i used in the place of small chisels and burins. i always keep this little head, which was set in gold as a pin, and sometimes wear it in my necktie. when i look at this small piece of workmanship, i am astonished at my patience and my eyesight at that time. to tell the truth, when i picked up that little stone i had no idea of working on it, but merely took it as a remembrance of the day and the place. in touching it, i thought that it had been shaped and put there by a man like myself, two thousand years ago. in holding that little square stone between my fingers, it seemed to me as if my hand touched the hand of that man, who then was full of life. i thought of his scant dust, now dispersed, transformed but not lost! where is this dust now? i, where was i then? while i was thinking on this, my good marina approached, and said-- "do you find any beauty in that little stone?" [sidenote: vesuvius and its lava.] "no. i was thinking that it is very old. i was thinking that it is a fusion of fire, and in substance lava. but was not vesuvius unknown at the time that this city was constructed? could you imagine that they would have been so insane as to have built on the outskirts of a mountain vomiting fire? have you not observed that in all the many paintings on these houses, where you find over and over again landscapes, sea views, animals, figures, in fact everything, that there is never the slightest trace of a view of vesuvius? if it had been there, surely they would not have failed to reproduce in painting such a marvellous phenomenon. therefore it could not have been there; and yet all these mosaics are made of lava, and all the surrounding country at a certain distance below the surface of the ground is covered with it. it was not there, i say, in their memory; but when was it there?" "do you know?" said my wife. "i?--no, indeed." "then you can imagine if i do." after this small cameo, i wished to model a little figure in bas-relief, which it was my intention to have executed on a shell cameo, and i gave the order for it; but the workmen employed for this kind of work are so unintelligent that if you take them away from the work they are accustomed to do almost mechanically, they are not able to succeed in doing anything. the little figure represented medicine. she was seated on a stool, and with a little stick was pushing aside the bushes to look for some medicinal plants; but in doing so a serpent had wound itself around her stick, as it is said to have happened to Æsculapius. behind the stone on which she is seated flows a little stream of water, to denote the salutary action of water by which i was cured, and to which she turns her back. [sidenote: new sketch of the bacchus.] i also made a new sketch for the bacchino della crittogama, which was the one that i afterwards made of life-size on my return from naples. the one i had left behind me in clay was very different, and i destroyed it. i had this new sketch baked, and i remember one day when i went to get it from the man who sells _terre cotte_, near santa lucia, to whom i had given it to bake, that i found him arguing with a stranger who had taken it absolutely into his head to buy it. it was useless for the man to say that the statuette did not belong to him; that he could not sell it; that it was not finished; and that his little figures of apollo, the idolino, venus, and flora were far better and more finished than this sketch: he only kept repeating, "i like this, and want to buy it;" and all persuasion was useless. i put an end to the discussion in two words, saying to the man-- "sell it to him." "how much must i ask?" "a thousand _lire_." at which the good _touriste_ immediately put down the bacchino, and went away in peace. some two months after this i presented this little sketch to a priest from verona, whose name i do not remember, but who came to preach the lenten sermons at our cathedral in florence. i regret to have given it to him, for it is always well that a man's sketches should remain in his family, and also because, for all his eloquence, he has never since reported himself to me. can he really be dead? _requiem æternam._ [sidenote: visit to cavaliere angelini.] in this manner the time passed by, alternating the long walks in the neighbourhood of naples with a little work and some artistic visits to mancinelli, to balzico (then but a young student), to smargiassi the landscape-painter, and to gigante, the famous water-colourist. i did not fail to try to find the sculptor cavaliere angelini, whom i had already known in florence; but for some inexplicable reason i could not see him, and this was what happened. i went to his studio, and his men told me that he had gone to the academy to lecture to the young men. i went to the academy, and was told that he desired me to wait, because he was giving his lessons. i waited a good long time, and when he came out he said that he was in such a hurry he could not pay any attention to me then, but that i must come to his studio on a certain day at a certain hour. i went there and knocked; no one answered, and the soldier who was mounting guard at the serraglio dei poveri close by said that every one had gone away more than two hours before. it seemed to me a little strange, after having named the day and hour; but more or less forgetfulness in an artist means nothing--in fact it is a sort of sauce or dressing to an artist's character, be he young or full-grown, on horseback or on foot. dear me! such things are easily understood; and if i had not been a little tired, i should not even have thought of it, and would have returned another day. but when, and at what time? should i have ever found the door open? my hotel was very far from the poorhouse, but the two places were not very dissimilar; for although all my expenses were paid by the grand duke, it had not yet become the fashion to squander and waste after the ways of to-day; and be it from education, temperament, or other motives, i felt it my duty to economise for that good gentleman's purse even more than for my own, and therefore my inn could really be called a poorhouse in spite of its pompous name, for it was a third-class hotel; but the distance was great, and, to mortify the professor a little, i wrote on his studio door--"_g. duprè at home on such a day and such an hour._" [sidenote: professor angelini.] he will come, he will certainly come, to see me at my inn to make his excuses. poor angelini! he is certainly absent-minded, and am i not also absent-minded? he will come to find me out. yes; i stayed in naples six months, and never saw him. something beyond absent-mindedness, i think; but so it was. i told all this for amusement to his colleagues, but they took it seriously to heart,--so much so, that at one of their academic meetings they proposed me as an associate-professor: and angelini seemed delighted, and warmly supported my nomination, so that naturally it was passed; but i never went into his studio. oh no. yes; i repeat it ten, twenty times over. my dear colleague, this happened in the month of january ; see what a good memory i have. you, it is quite natural, have forgotten it, because he who is guilty of such things does not take heed of them, neither should the person to whom they are done, unless he be as black as loredan, who wrote down the death of the two foscari in his book of debit and credit. therefore let it be understood, that i did not take note of it, and don't remember it; but if you ever take it into your head to return to florence, and, passing casually through the via della sapienza, you would like to rest a little in my studio, you can do so; and the best of it is, that i do not name the day or the hour, only take this journey and make this visit soon, for we are now both old, and i shall not return to you, for i am afraid of finding the door shut! here i come to the moral. i speak of artists. the desire to see the works and also become acquainted personally with contemporary artists is a good sign; it indicates a spirit of emulation, a wish to learn, and form bonds of friendship, so to discuss and bring to light errors and doubts on questions of art. but if the artist with whom you desire to speak names a certain day and hour, then answer at once, "thank you very much, but i cannot come." tell him this untruth--it will be but a small sin; whereas he who imposes upon you a day and hour gives himself so much importance that he resembles that ugly and haughty signor called _pride_. [sidenote: shaking hands.] there are some medicines so proper and efficacious, that once you have taken them, you are radically cured, and for good. angelini cured me of the wish to knock at studio doors; and the signora marchesini cured me of another habit, formed either by custom or stupidity, of shaking hands with everybody, especially with women. the signora marchesini was at that time (i am speaking of about thirty years ago) an aristocratic lady of a certain age--one of those persons who, without even taking the trouble to turn to look at any one who came to see her, would answer the salutation and bow prescribed by good breeding with an _addio_ and a "good evening" when one took leave, were it even at midnight. such was the signora marchesini. [sidenote: embracing friends.] one night i went into her box at the pergola, and going up to her i bowed and put out my hand. ass that i was! i did not know that this act of familiarity was not allowed to _inferiors_; and putting aside nobility of birth, i was her junior by thirty years, and perhaps this offended the austere lady more than anything else. the lesson, however, was a good one; and from that day, in fact from that evening, i have never since been the first to offer my hand to any woman, old or young. all this nonsense reminds me of a much rougher and more vulgar instance of haughtiness, from which my beloved wife was the sufferer. she was as simple and good, poor darling, as the woman who offended her was hard and proud. i had gone to pay a visit to a friend of mine, a gentleman of noble birth, education, and tact, with whom i had friendly relations. my wife was with me, and he was in the drawing-room with his, who was french by birth, much younger than himself, and whom he had lately married. as soon as my friend saw me he spread out his arms, and we embraced each other; my wife, with a feeling of spontaneous tenderness, pressed forward to embrace the young lady, but she drew back, perhaps not thinking it beseeming or according to etiquette to embrace a woman the first time she saw her, even although she was much older than herself. my poor marina, with her purity of soul, did not feel offended, but turning to me she timidly asked, "have i done wrong?" "you! no, my dear; but another time stand on your own ground. that woman did not deserve to be embraced by you." my friend took no notice of anything, and shortly after we left the house. i do not know why, but this remembrance goads me more and more every day; it stimulates my love for her who now smiles at all these miseries--she who was so worthy of all honours, who desired and was able to keep herself always good, mild, and compassionate--a good wife, a good mother, truly a lady by her virtues, and not by reason of her birth and riches. more i should like to say, but cannot; i look with anxious love for the words that fail me, and i think that the innermost lineaments of that temperate, strong, patient soul can be felt but cannot be portrayed. [sidenote: amusements at naples.] i continued to get better and better in naples. the medical man insisted that i should walk a great deal and take simple and abundant food--a little soup, roastbeef, and a plate of vegetables, and nothing else, for dinner; for breakfast, after my bath and walk, a glass of cold milk and some bread. as a distraction for my mind, he recommended my seeing and talking with people i liked, and going to the theatre of an evening. at first the theatre bored me; i did not understand those little _bouffe_ comedies in dialect at the fenice and san carlino, and all those repartees of punchinello irritated me. it was bad for me to go to the san carlo, where they were giving the 'trovatore' with the penco, fraschini, and the borghi-mamo, and 'othello' with the pancani, for they made me weep, not on account of the dramas themselves, which i already knew, but on account of the music, which had such a strong effect on my nerves. for these reasons i was obliged to give up the music at san carlo, and 'punch' at san carlino and the fenice, and took refuge in the sebeto, a very small theatre, where for the most part were represented dramas in bad taste, artistically speaking, but not as far as morals are concerned--exaggerated characters, forced situations to create immoderate effects, &c.,--in fact, dramas of the federici stamp, to touch the hearts of the populace, but not calculated to influence them with voluptuousness, the more dangerous when veiled in the attractive, graceful, and polished forms of cunning sophistry. then these dramas were not in dialect, and 'punch' only came in at the farce, and for such a very small part that i could bear him, and little by little began to understand and appreciate him. as i have already said, the theatre was a necessity for me, and it entered into my _sage's_ system of treatment; but he added that i was not to take the recreation by myself, but in the company of my wife and child, and with as much ease as possible, so that it was necessary to take a small box, which, as the theatre was so small and unpretending, was not a very great expense. perhaps the idea of economy never once occurred to the generous sovereign who came to my aid, but i used to think of it, as i have before said. [sidenote: churches at naples.] thus, with so much to divert my mind, during the day going to see the public monuments and the churches in which this immense city is so rich, and at evening to the theatre, my recovery was completed. nor were there wanting splendid works of art, besides the collection of ancient bronzes, unique in the world, and wonderfully useful to the students of sculpture. the church of san gennaro, with its monuments, amongst which are those of carlo d'angio, carlo martello, and clemenza his wife; san paolo, built on the ruins of the roman theatre where nero used to appear in public and declaim his verses, and where metronate gave his lessons in philosophy, which were attended by seneca as his pupil (what a lesson to young men!); santa chiara, with its monuments to the ancient kings of naples, which once was all frescoed over by giotto, and has been most barbarously whitewashed by berio nuovo; sant'angelo a nilo, with that splendid monument to cardinal brancaccio, one of donatello's finest works; and san domenico maggiore,--all these monuments, as much for their beauty as for the historical records they contain, are worthy of the greatest attention and study, and are calculated to inspire ideas and a desire to work. [sidenote: indifference to what is near us.] but often it happens that the most valuable things one has, so to speak, at one's very door, are not thought anything of--not even noticed; and such was the case then with some artists in naples, who either did not remember or were not acquainted with their own artistic treasures. i remember a young sculptor who often lamented that naples was wanting in art of the middle ages. i reminded him of the monuments above mentioned, dwelling especially on that by donatello, to which he answered that he did not know it. "go to see it," i said; "it is unpardonable in you not to know it." after some time i saw the youth, and said to him-- "well, did you see the monument by donatello, and what did you think of it?" to which he answered, "i found that i had already seen it once before, but did not remember it." "then," thought i to myself, "there is an end of all hope for you." [sidenote: ciceroni and their ideas.] it is certainly a most painful fact that some of the finest works of our elders are either entirely ignored or not cared for, but it is most sad when this indifference comes from young men who have dedicated themselves to art. that the usual ignorant _ciceroni_ who show strangers the sepulchral chapel of the princes of sangro take no notice of the monument by donatello is natural enough, but it is none the less disgusting to hear them pouring forth their opinions after the following fashion: "see, gentlemen, these statues are the stupendous work of the famous venetian antonio corradini. observe the two statues that stand in the arch by the columns of the high altar; they are miracles of sculpture; one is by corradini, and one by quieroli. the first represents the mother of the prince don raimondo, who restored and enriched this chapel--which was founded by the prince don francesco in --with precious marble. the statue represents modesty--one of the principal virtues that distinguished the princess. see, gentlemen, she is enveloped in a transparent veil, beneath which is revealed the whole of her figure: this is a method of sculpture unknown even to the greeks, for the ancients only painted their draperies, but did not cut them in marble. the other prodigy of art is a statue representing the father of the prince himself as 'disinganno.' in this statue behold a man caught in a net; you see all the meshes of the net, and inside it the body itself." the stranger, meantime, stands there open-mouthed, admiring these statues, in which, to tell the truth, one could not too deeply deplore the time and patience that have been wasted on work whose only object is to arrest the attention of vulgar people, who take all these material and mechanical difficulties for the essential and only aim in art. all this, i repeat, is disgusting if you like, and rather ridiculous; but the people of the country, and most particularly artists, ought to laugh at such works as these, as well as their admirers. this mania for the difficult and surprising, to the detriment of beauty itself, which is so simple, has carried corruption into art itself as well as to its amateurs--so much so, that dresses of rich stuffs, embroideries, laces, and like trifles, which need but a little patience and practice to produce, have to-day become so much in vogue as to really make one fear that art is in danger, and that research and study to reproduce the beautiful will be replaced by work of a sort of asinine patience, which surprises and impresses only simple-minded, vulgar people, and dilettanti. and _àpropos_ of dilettanti, i wish to express my opinion that although they may take pleasure in painting and sculpture they are not of the slightest use to these arts. dilettanti are generally gentlemen--fine gentlemen, sometimes even princes--and in consequence of their station and wealth, are surrounded by a cloud of small-minded people, who, owing to the respect and deference they feel for them, are induced to praise them. this cheap praise, which is taken so unceremoniously, engenders in those who give it a false and sophistical tone, with which they quiet their consciences, ever muttering, "you ought not to have said this; it is not just--it is not true." as this internal grumbling is irksome, the mind builds up a sort of reasoning that holds out as long as it can, and then falls for want of that solid foundation, truth, that alone can uphold any structure, be it scientific, artistic, or literary. with him who receives the praise, matters go far more easily; he does not give it another thought, or if he does, it is from excess of vanity that he sniffs the remaining odour from that small cloud of incense. [sidenote: cheap praise.] [sidenote: a dilettanti prince.] in naples there were two of these dilettanti princes,--one a painter, the other a sculptor. his royal highness don sebastian, prince of bourbon, brother-in-law of the king of naples, was the painter, and his royal highness count of syracuse, brother of the same king, was the sculptor. the last named died a little after the revolution in , and of his artistic merits i have already spoken. i shall therefore now say two words about his highness don sebastian. i had the honour of being presented to him by the grand duke leopold, who was at that time in naples with his daughter the princess isabella, married to count trapani, who was expecting to be confined. having been some time in naples myself, i went to pay my homage to him, and he then made me acquainted with his highness don sebastian, who was without pretensions, a simple, modest man. he asked for advice, and he asked for it with such eagerness and persistency that it showed a desire to know the absolute truth, that he might correct himself--and not truth disguised under a veil of complimentary praise, which only misleads. and i, with the mildest words that i could find in the vocabulary of truth, gave him briefly and generally some advice; for his wish to do something really good was above his school and the studies he had followed. although, as i have said, he had a sincere desire to hear the truth, yet i became aware that the language i used was quite new to him. i can add, however, that he did not feel hurt by it, as he often wished to see me and hear me, and corrected himself or tried to do so in many things, thus indicating confidence and goodwill. at this time he was painting a large picture for an altar, which he presented to the church of san giacomo degli spagnuoli, above toledo, and i remember that he gave me a drawing of it. he had taken refuge in naples with the king his brother-in-law, owing to the part he had taken as a legitimist against the government of queen isabella, who had confiscated all his revenues; and he mitigated the bitterness of exile and poverty by his devoted love for art. after some time he was restored to his country, and reinstated in his property, so that at last he must have comforted himself with his own bread, having known how salt was that of exile. he returned to his country, and who knows if he did not cut off his beard, which he used to wear full and long, after the fashion of spanish legitimists? strange to say, in italy at that time, especially in naples, a beard was the sign of just the contrary--that is to say, of a liberal; and the annoyances caused by the police on this account were so ridiculous as to be quite disgusting. one was obliged, however, to conform to all this, for if a young man desired not to be exposed to worse annoyances, he was obliged to shave his chin. he might keep his moustache and whiskers after the german fashion, or wear his whiskers alone like the english--he was quite free to do that; but a beard on his chin, be it long or short, indicated liberalism: and as i have said, he was immediately marked by the agents of del carretto, minister of police, and, willing or no, was obliged to shave to avoid something worse. at that time, therefore, the manliness of a neapolitan showed itself everywhere but on his chin. in all naples--with the rare exception of some foreigner, the prince don sebastian, who was anything but a liberal, the count of syracuse, and count of aquila, brothers of the king, whom the police hounds could growl at but not bite--not for a million of money could a beard be seen, unless it were mine, which, although not so luxuriant as it is now, was still more than enough for the police. [sidenote: beards in naples.] during the days that the grand duke remained in naples, he desired to see the museums and other monuments of this great city, and wished me to accompany him, out of simple kindness, for his highness acted as my guide, being much better acquainted with them than i was. this driving up and down the streets of naples in a court carriage, with a full beard on my face, upset all the ideas of those poor _sbirri_. some people took me for a spanish legitimist; and others--especially the sentinels at the palace--christened me at once a relation of the royal family,--so much so, that they presented arms to me every time i passed by. must i admit that i took pleasure in this, returning their salute and passing before them as if i had been a true prince? "_viva_ my beard!" said i to myself; "but see how things are going in this country! some people are sent almost to the gallows for wearing a beard, and to me they are presenting arms." one evening, however, even i came very near being sent to prison. i was walking in the strada toledo, and about to return home. near the turning of the _orefici_ by the palazzo dei ministeri, there was a print-shop lighted by a reflected lamp, that threw a light upon it as brilliant as day. there were some french engravings, such as the death of richelieu, the death of the duke de guise, and i know not what else. i felt a hand on my shoulder; turning round i saw some one gazing attentively at me, and before i had time to ask him what he wanted, some one else took the man by the arm and said, "don't occupy yourself with him; he is one of the royal household;" and away they went in the crowd, and i saw them no more. [sidenote: i pass for a prince.] [sidenote: la bottiglia.] i hurried home, for fear of finding others who might not share the same opinion. my wife and little one were waiting for me to go to the theatre, and i remember that they were then giving 'edmondo dante, count of monte cristo,' a monstrous production which lasted twelve hours--divided, however, into three evenings. my little box was on the first tier near the orchestra,--and such an orchestra! two violins, one double-bass, a clarionet, and a flute, the music being pieces adapted from the 'trovatore'; and such an adaptation! good heavens! all this cost me--that is to say, cost the grand duke--four _carlini_, including "the bottle," for in naples one must always pay for "the bottle" to every one. really in that fortunate country one required to have a _carlino_ always in hand. i don't know how it is now, but then every one was constantly drinking. ushers, inspectors, _custodi_--all asked for "this bottle" with the utmost frankness and in perfect seriousness. i, who went often to the museum, wished to have my cane to lean on, as there were no chairs to sit down on; but "no, sir,"--the porter, with his great cocked-hat, came and took it away, having the right to do so, as it was against the regulations. when i left he gave it back to me, always saying, "your excellency, the bottle," pronouncing these words with such dignity that you would have thought they were part of the royal regulations; and i used to give it--that is to say, a half-_carlino_ at every section. pompeian paintings, statues and bronzes, etruscan vases, renaissance paintings and drawings--each had a _custode_, and all wanted a drink. perhaps now they are no longer thirsty, which will be all the better for the poor visitor. i paid these half-bottles, or rather half-_carlini_, most unwillingly, for to be always paying out is in itself most tiresome; and i was more out of temper than really tired, not being able to find a seat anywhere. one day a painter who was copying there was moved to pity, and offered me his stool. it is not unnatural that a man who was both poor and unwell, should be unwilling to pay out money in gratuities, and should look upon that given to the porter as the hardest part of all, as it was to pay him merely for taking away the stick he had to lean on. the consequence was, that not being able to bear this _lucro cessante_ and _danno emergente_, as they say in law, i made bold to say to this high personage (he was at least a palm taller than i), "listen, signor; i will no longer give you the bottle." [sidenote: fees for admission to the galleries.] "why not, excellency?" "because you take away my stick, which would be a comfort for me to lean on." "well, well," he answered, "keep your stick, excellency; but remember the bottle." "i understand, i quite understand--and add a little more to it." and the eyes of that argus brightened, although he was by way of shutting them as far as the regulations were concerned. the necessity for drinking, it seems, belongs to this people, and it must be on account of the hot air they breathe, all impregnated with the salt from the sea. therefore i fancy this desire of theirs has not yet been allayed, for even i drank a great deal when i was there, only it was water, which is so good, so fresh, so light, that it is a pleasure to drink; but alas! so many prefer "the bottle." if, however, even against the natural order of the country, this has been suppressed amongst the subalterns, it has been adopted by the heads themselves, as the minister of public instruction has decreed an entrance-tax for every one who wishes to see in our galleries the works of raphael, michael angelo, or our other glorious fathers, who in their simplicity certainly never thought of being obliged to show themselves at so much a head like some wild beasts. [sidenote: admission fees to the public galleries.] it is a curious thing (which induces me to think that thirst must be in the air of naples) that this bottle-tax was instituted by a neapolitan, the honourable ruggero bonghi, who, be it said with all due respect, seems to be less anxious for the decorum of art and the advantage of artists than for an economy which, to say the truth, is but a shabby one. i know quite well that artists are free from this tax, but they must be provided with a certificate, which is always a restriction; and it is also true that artists, and those who are not artists, can enjoy free entrance, but only on _festa_ days. it comes to the same as if to one who said, "i am hungry," you answered, "you shall eat next week." is it believed that only those students who are provided with certificates are to become artists? art learns more from example than from precept, as it is with every other thing. i should be curious to know if demosthenes and cicero lived before or after the treatise on eloquence, or if phidias studied at the academy, and paid a tax for admission. then, also, this is the common property of all, and therefore its advantages should not be restricted. the answer is, that the entrance-tax is used for the maintenance and decorum of the galleries themselves. the decorum and support of the public galleries never suffered from the want of this in bygone days; why should they feel the need of it to-day? chapter xiii. never make a present of your works--pope rezzonico by canova--tenerani--overbeck's theories--minardi and his school--a woman from the trastevere who looked like the venus of milo--conventionalists and realists--an ambitious question and bitter answer--filippo gualterio. the church of gesu nuovo was at that time under the ordinance of the jesuit fathers, and one of these fathers, who was devoted to the church, set on foot a work which did him much honour. though the church was beautiful in its design and decorations and rich in marbles, the high altar was of wood, and this was quite out of keeping with the general effect. padre grossi, who was as learned as he was zealous in his religion and a lover of art, made the resolve that this altar should be entirely renewed and reconstructed of precious marble, and he succeeded in carrying this into effect. everybody contributed--the court, the nobility, the people, owners of marble, and artists. it was not, however, yet finished; some ornaments were still wanting, and among these the panels of the pyx. i was asked by padre grossi to make a model for this to be cast in silver, and i cheerfully accepted the commission. the subject, which was singular and unusual, but extremely pleasing, was suggested to me by the padre himself. it represented a youthful female figure, accompanied by an angel, at the foot of the altar, who came to partake of the mystic bread. as soon as i had finished the model, i sent it to padre grossi, who expressed his satisfaction with it. not so the superior and the other fathers, to whom the subject seemed to be too unusual. the superior wrote me a very courteous letter of thanks, the substance of which, stripped of all its sweet and useless phrases, was that he could not give his approval to the work. i then took back my model and presented it to professor tommaso aloysio juvara, who kept it as a pleasant memorial of me; and thus this work also, which was intended as a present, fell through. [sidenote: my mental condition.] the time for my return to florence now drew near, for my health could now be considered as quite restored, save that a slight melancholy still hung about me, induced by an importunate and persistent feeling that made me doubt my own powers to overcome the difficulties of art, and of that art upon which i had at first entered, as it were, in triumph. i was oppressed by a torpor or indecision, a sense of something vague and undefined, resembling that state of moral weakness which shows itself in sudden impulses and as sudden prostrations--all indications of lively fancy and active sensibility, together with a great weakness of judgment and will. in a word, i had become a coward. in my excited imagination i felt the beauty of art, but i could not bring myself to lay hold of it, and express it, and reproduce it. i desired to go back to my first steps, and so felt my vanity offended. the _bello ideale_, ill defined and ill understood, smiled upon me with all its flattering and illusory charms. at slight intervals i seemed to feel these allurements, and then again i suddenly fell into uncertainty. "e quale è quei, che disvuol ciò che volle e per novi pensier cangia proposta;"[ ] [ ] "and like to one who unwills what he wills, and changes for new thoughts his purposes." --dante: _inferno_, canto ii. this was my state, and it afflicted me. [sidenote: statue of pope rezzonico.] the decision which was to overcome all my uncertainty came to me from an idealist, or rather from an imitator of greek art, canova, and from one of his works not drawn from the ideal, but from life. i was about to return from rome to florence, when, as i stood looking vaguely about one morning in st peter's, a prey to fleeting and changeable thoughts, my eyes were arrested by the statue of pope rezzonico. how often i had looked at that grandiose monument and passed on! this time the movement and expression of concentrated feeling in this statue, united with a sentiment of imitation so strong, and yet so free from minute and servile detail, made a great impression on me; and this was all the more vivid, because i could confront it with the other statues of the same monument, all of which are characterised by mannerism and imitation of the antique. this comparison stood me in stead of the most powerful of reasonings and criticism, and i seemed to hear a voice issue from those marbles which said, "see the great affection and study that canova has given to these statues, and still they do not speak to your heart like that praying figure of the pope. why is this? reflect!" and, in fact, i know no subject more worthy of consideration than to seek among the statues of canova for the reasons of his oscillation between the imitation of nature and the imitation of the antique; for exactly here is the knot of that grave question which even to-day keeps artists divided into two schools--that of the academicians and that of the _veristi_. [sidenote: canova and the bello ideale.] doubtless nature is the foundation of art, as beauty is its object; and to forget either one or the other is to fall into error. if we kept these two cardinal points in our mind, and made them both subjects of study in our works, all our discussions and disputes would cease. but it too often happens that the academicians, holding too strongly to the beautiful as the end to be attained, forget that its foundation is in the truth or nature; while the realists, blindly trusting to nature, which when it is not subjected to selection is a bad foundation, lose sight of the true end, which is beauty. now in the works of canova we see a constant endeavour to harmonise the beautiful with nature; but as the cry of _bello ideale_ (a magic phrase invented at that time) was then loved, with the painter david leading the chorus, and the imperial cannon sounding the accompaniment, the interior voices and protests of the christian artificers were either drowned or lifted to the hundred pagan deities whom the epicurean philosophy of the time demanded, and to whom they burned their incense. but the genius which nature had given to this great artist triumphed over the tendencies of his time, over the cry of pedants and the imperial favours; and the pope rezzonico, and pius vi., and the magdalen, are there to demonstrate the singular force of that genius which alone battled against the torrent of the schools and the tyranny and customs of his age. these works of his are rays of that light which first illuminated the mind of this great artist, when, still young and free in his inspirations, and unbiassed by rules, counsel, and praise, he conceived and executed that wonderful group of icarus. in this careful spirit of examination and reasoning i again reviewed and studied the masterpieces of ancient and modern art, and many of the judgments which had been distorted by my poor brain during my first visit were afterwards rectified. i became attached with reverent friendship to minardi, tenerani, and overbeck; and although all three followed the school of the mystical ideal, which was far from conformable to the rich and inexhaustible variety of nature, i admired in them their profound conviction in the excellence of their school; and although tenerani united to his mysticism the graces of antique form, still it seemed to me that precisely on this account he was often a timid friend to nature. when, however, he was not dominated by a preconceived idea--i mean in his portraits--he was really and incontestably true to nature. his count orloff, though inspired by the statues of the philosophers in the vatican, is not inconsistent with this opinion; and his pellegrino rossi and his maria of russia are perfectly original, and show no preoccupation of his mind except with nature. and it then seemed to me strange, as it still seems, that an artist, in portraying a fact or a personage, however ideal, should attempt to draw it purely from an idea, and not from living nature; for his idea is for the most part only a remembrance of what he has seen. the two processes are quite different; for the idea reaches out for the source of truth or nature, which is infinitely varied, while the memory retains types and figures of other works of so small a scale in variety that its extreme ends soon meet each other. [sidenote: tenerani and overbeck.] overbeck was more ideal and mystical than tenerani. he placed all the charm of art in the conception alone, and rarely or never used a model. one day he said to me, in a tone of the most absolute conviction, that models (or nature) destroyed the idea. this theory, which is eminently false as a general proposition, has a certain truth when applied to sacred subjects and representations of divinity, and specially in regard to those artists who in painting a madonna make a portrait of a model. the imitation of life is certainly necessary even in sacred subjects; but it is difficult so to select and portray them that the religious idea does not become obscured, as well on account of the vulgarity as of the excessive realism and expression of the model. the expression it is absolutely necessary that the artist should create, if he has it in him,--and only so far as this overbeck was right. then, indeed, is the opportunity for the _bello ideale_, which is so ill understood and ill treated; for the ideal is in substance nothing else but the idea of the truth in nature, and diffused over all creation, as well in the material as in the intellectual world. and every artist of heart and just perceptions feels it and sees it, and recomposes its scattered parts by means of long study and great love. [sidenote: minardi and his school.] minardi, the father, so to speak, of all the artistic youths of his day, strove to reform them in taste and composition, founding himself on the works and the canons of the _cinquecentisti_. this recognition is all the more due to him when we remember that precisely at this time, when he was endeavouring to carry out this reform, he had before him camuccini and all his school in full vigour, and that now minardi's school is flourishing and strengthened as much by the conquests he has made in variety of imitation from nature as in mastery of colour. i have said that minardi was like a father; and so he was. he treated his young pupils as if they were his children, kept them in his own studio, and i have seen three--consoni, mariani, marianecci--and many others around him gaily jesting with their venerable master. his portfolios and albums were always open to all, and he delighted to show them, and, while looking over their studies and compositions, to add those words of explanation, counsel, and warning which are so useful to young artists. i seem to see him now in that great studio of his, which was somewhat in disorder, and encumbered with easels, drawings, cartoons, books, prints, and antique furniture--the air filled with clouds of tobacco-smoke which issued from the pipe he had always in his mouth, and he himself always working or talking, reading or writing. he was affable, gracious, and eloquent, and, with those little eyes looking through his spectacles, he seemed to read into your soul; and if he found it sad, he threw out a word, and awakened it again to life and courage. one day, seeing me more than ordinarily melancholy, he rose from his work, took me by the hands, and puffing from his pipe a larger volume of smoke than usual, asked what was troubling me; and when i had made a clean breast of it to him, he laid his pipe down, and embracing me, said, "cheer up, my son! drive away from your head all those whims: go back to florence, take up your work again with courage, and have more faith in yourself and in your powers. it is an old man who is speaking to you, who neither can nor will deceive you." the words of the excellent master went straight to my heart, and filled it with courage, hope, and peace. [sidenote: roman and florentine models.] in this way, with studying the ancient monuments, and going about among the living artists, i passed several days in rome. the models, and particularly those of the artists i have named, i found more robust and rounded than our florentine models, which are for the most part slender and lymphatic. among our girls you will not find, though you should pay a million, such necks, so firm and robust, and at the same time so soft and flexible, and like the examples which greek and roman art has left us. so it seems that, without seeking for the cause of the contradiction between the living nature i had found in florence, and that which was represented in antique art, i had come to the conclusion that the greeks and romans worked purely from ideas, and corrected nature according to that established rule which we call convention. nothing is more erroneous than this notion, and the proof of it i found in rome itself, as i shall now tell. [sidenote: a roman model.] [sidenote: an adventure with a trastevere girl.] whoever is familiar with the roman people will have observed a notable difference between the figures of the common people, and especially those of the trasteverini and the monti, and those of the higher classes who are in better circumstances. the latter are more slender, with a fine and white skin, and often with chestnut hair; while the former have dark eyes, skin, and hair, are harsh and short in their ways and voices, and for a mere nothing throw up their barricades, and blood runs without much lamentation over it. you can easily see in these people their uninterrupted derivation from those fierce legions who planted their eagles over all the then known earth. nor is the blood in the women different from that in the men; and if the men carry their knives in their pockets (they certainly did then), the women carried, thrust across their massive knots of ebon hair with much taste, a sharp dagger with a silver handle, which was in every way capable of sending any poor unfortunate devil into the other world. one day (it was sunday towards evening) i was, as usual, dreaming about those busts or necks of minerva and polymnia, and the venus of milo, and i know not how many other antique statues, which seemed to me to give a solemn contradiction to all my little models of pastry that i had left in florence, and i fixed my eyes on the neck of every woman that i passed. this examination induced me to modify in measure my opinion as to the conventionalism of the necks of the antique statues; and i should have been satisfied, and have changed my mind entirely, even had i not purely by chance gone on into the trastevere. here there was a great number of young persons, both male and female,--the men either in the pot-houses, or gathered around the doors, or standing in groups, and the girls in companies of three or four walking up and down the street of the longaretta. among these i saw one who, if she had been made on purpose to prove that the necks of the antique statues were not conventional, could not have here offered a more absolute proof. there were three girls, two small, and one large who was between them. she walked along with a slow and majestic step, talking with her companions. a sportsman who spies a hare, a creditor who meets a debtor, a friend who finds another friend whom he thought to be far away or dead, these give a weak notion of my surprise in beholding this girl. my dear reader, i do not in the least exaggerate when i say that i seemed to look on the venus of milo. her head and neck, which alone were exposed to view, were as like that statue as two drops of water. i was astounded. i turned back to look at her again, and it would have been well for me had i contented myself with this; but i wished to see her yet once more. the girl, who had not an idea within a thousand miles of what i was pondering, nor of the corrections that i was formulating on an æsthetical opinion of such great importance, suddenly stopped, and taking the dagger from her hair, advanced towards me, and with a strong and almost masculine voice, said to me, "well, mr dandy, does your life stink in your nostrils?" i shot off home directly, looking neither to the right nor left; and when i arrived i told my wife what had happened, and she reproved me gently for making my studies so out of time and place. now i ask, why this disdain? had i been guilty of anything improper in looking at the girl? is it possible that she could have really been offended? i do not believe it. i know something about women, and i know that it is their weakness to try to attract attention. it is more probable that there was some one near her to whom the girl wished to show that in respect to anything touching her honour she was too fierce to allow any other person even to look at her. leonardo none the less counsels us to study from nature, in the open air, not only by looking, but also by taking notes; and he makes no exception as to the trasteverini. for the benefit of young artists, i propose to add a note on this subject to all new editions of leonardo. [sidenote: greek life and models.] the discovery of this beautiful head and neck of the antique style and character set upon a living girl (and what a complexion!) led me to consider how many other parts of incontestable beauty which we find in the antique statues, and so readily believe to be born of the imagination of the greek sculptors, are really to be found in nature; and the greeks only selected them for imitation. but if this be so, how can the absolute deficiency of such models in our day be explained? then i considered the different education of this people, their warlike lives, their games, and prizes at throwing the disc, racing, boxing, and the esteem in which physical beauty was held. if, indeed, for these reasons there is in our day a deficiency of fine models, we are not absolutely without them, as this spirited and beautiful girl clearly proves; and i firmly believe she must have been in respect to all the rest of her body an excellent model. hence the necessity of carefully selecting our models. in this respect, however, we find ourselves in a much more difficult position than the ancients. first, because, as i have said, their education lent itself more efficaciously to the development of the body; and then, because the public games afforded far greater opportunities to see and select among them. [sidenote: a beautiful nude model.] the first thing which assures a good result to a work is the selection of good models; and after taking great heed of this, good imitation is of absolute necessity. i have observed that he who exercises little or no selection, and contents himself with the first model he sees, belongs to that class of conventional artists who allow themselves such an infinity of additions and subtractions, and corrections of the model, that generally only the remnants of nature are to be found in their works; while those who follow the opposite school copy the model minutely just as it is, and even with all its imperfections. if the former remain cold and false, the latter are vulgar and tasteless; for they carry their love for truth to such an excess, that they do not distinguish the beautiful from the ugly. nay, they prefer the ugly, because to them it seems more true because it is more common. it happened to me once to be in the studio of one of these young artists, who was engaged on i do not remember what work. when the model was stripped he was beautiful to see: a small head, squared breast, an elegant pelvis, delicate knees and ankles, and, in a word, seemed the "idolino" itself, living and speaking. will you believe it?--he was set aside. "but what are you doing?" said i. "don't you see how beautiful this boy is? copy him fearlessly. he is beautiful as idolino himself." "that is exactly why i do not want him as a model. i am afraid it will be said that i have copied my idolino." [sidenote: conventional imitation.] to such a point did their aberration arrive. but at the same time, i am sure that if this model had fallen into the hands of one of the idealistic reformers of nature, he would have been corrected (that is, ruined) in every part, according to the suggestions of his stupid conventionalism. this mania of correcting nature is in itself extremely injurious, and the young artist must be constantly on his guard against it. a finished artist may sometimes do this, because in his skill and experience he finds the limits and the measure of the liberty which are permissible. indeed he is not aware of the corrections that he is making, and believes that he sees it so; but this depends on the habit of seeing and portraying beautiful nature. but a youth who once is set going on this incline never stops; for he finds it far easier to draw freely on his memory than to keep within the proper bounds of imitation. i repeat, then, that he who does not select from beautiful nature with studious love shows little faith in her beauty, and thence come carelessness and unwillingness to portray her, and then a headlong fall into the conventional. he, however, who finds the beautiful in everything, or rather, he who despises antique art and calls it conventional, even though it be by phidias, is quite as conventional himself in his realism. his wish is to be considered naturalistic and realistic at all hazards, even to denying nature itself, in case it reminds him of anything classic (as we have already seen), and at last he goes so far as to puzzle his brains and struggle to arrange the model and draperies so as to make them appear naturalistic. i have seen an artist get into a rage because his draperies would not come upon the natural model just as he wished, and who kept tossing them about and disarranging them so that they should not seem to be artificially disposed. i observed to him that he was really arranging them artificially, so that they should not appear to be so arranged. he was making a seated figure in a cloak. after the model had seated himself, and thrown the cloak about him in folds which were perfectly natural, and fell beautifully about his body and knees, the artist kept foolishly changing them, putting them out of their proper place, because, he said, that as they came naturally, they looked as if they had been artificially disposed. [sidenote: arrangement of draperies.] "but that is not so," said i. "they arrange themselves naturally, and you keep disarranging them exactly like those artists whom you blame for being imitators of the antique and conventionalists, and you are in this neither more nor less than a conventionalist like them, and even worse, for they always strive to put the folds in their proper place, in a certain number and a certain disposition; and though this is detestable and tiresome pedantry, because it destroys that variety which is the first attribute of nature, still they are not renegades to it as you are, when you thus obstinately insist on placing the folds where they cannot possibly be, with the pretence that otherwise they would seem adjusted. you, even more than they, are an illogical conventionalist." but to be just, i must say that at this time the neophytes of the new school were few and scattered. the school, indeed, is new only in so far as it has carried us into the excessive, the negative, and the illogical; for the school of the _veristi_ is as old as art itself, and its principles are correct. indeed, strictly speaking, it has one single principle, the imitation of nature; but what the ancients meant was imitation of life in its perfection, while the moderns (at least some of them) mean all life, all nature, even though it be ugly. more than this, they prefer the ugly and deformed, not perceiving that the deformity of nature is outside of true nature, since any defect alters the essential character of nature, which consists of a harmony of parts answering to beauty. in a word, the deformed, which is the same thing as the ugly, is nature debased, and thus ceases to be nature. i am well aware that the _veristi_ deny that they prefer vulgar and ugly nature; and if their denial were justified by their works, i should entirely agree with them, and my discourse on this subject would be entirely futile. but saying is not the same as doing. [sidenote: return to florence with a fresh mind.] i returned to florence quite restored in health, strengthened by the example of the works of art in rome, and inspirited by the brotherly words of those old and venerated artists, who, alas! now sleep the eternal sleep, or rather, who have waked from the brief sleep of life to one eternal day. the discovery of the famous head and neck of that trasteverina had cured me of my prejudiced belief that the ancients corrected nature according to their completely ideal mode of looking at it--a belief which induces in the mind of the artist a weak faith, slight esteem of nature, and thence an unwillingness to imitate it, and an effrontery in correcting it. before going to work in my studio i wished again to see and study, in view of my new convictions, our own monuments. i made the tour of the churches, palaces, and public and private galleries, just as if i was a stranger. to many things indeed i might call myself really a stranger, for i had either never seen them, or but slightly and superficially. from this examination i came to the conclusion that the artists of all times studied their predecessors, and only imitated nature after having studiously selected what was conformable to the idea which first rose in their minds. henceforth the way was clear, the light shone upon it, and the objects of art which i examined came out distinctly and really in their true aspect. never to my intellect had the veil which covers the subtle and recondite reasons of the beautiful seemed so clear and transparent; and i felt tranquil, satisfied, strong, and ready to devote myself to my new works in the studio. one incident, however, did momentarily disturb this peace and security of mine. [sidenote: an adventure in the pitti.] one day i was in the pitti gallery, and passing through the room where the two statues of cain and abel are placed, i saw a youth who was drawing from the latter. he seemed from his aspect to be a foreigner. i spoke to him not only to assure myself of this fact, but also (i confess) because it gave me pleasure to see him copying my statue, and i wished by exchanging a few words with him to taste still more strongly this pleasure, which, for the rest, is excusable in a young author. approaching him i said-- "do you like this statue?" "yes, very much; and that is the reason i am copying it." "it seems," i said, as i saw he did not recognise me, "to be a modern work, does it not?" "certainly; so modern that the author is still living--though one might say that he is dead." "what! i do not understand you. how can one say that he is dead when he is living?" and i could scarcely restrain the wonder and emotion that these singular words created in me. "it is indeed a very sad fact, and is very much talked about; but it seems that the poor artist, so young and full of talent----" [sidenote: filippo gualterio.] "well?" i interrupted him suddenly. "it seems that he is going mad." i was silent. these last words wounded me to the quick, and i remembered that during my past sufferings i too had a fear lest i should lose my head, but i never suspected that this idea had entered into the minds of others. i went out of the room without even saluting the young foreigner, and walked up and down in the open air, going over in my memory my past suffering, my voyage to naples, the cure i had undergone, and my re-establishment in health both in body and spirit, and at last i became tranquil, and almost smiled in recalling this strange conversation with the young foreigner. i set myself to work with good will, and threw down the first model of the bacchino dell'uva malata, which i had left without casting in order to remake it according to a new conception that had come to me in naples. secure of the road i meant now to take, convinced in my principles, which in substance did not differ from those that had guided me in my first statues, i modelled with great rapidity the small bacchus, the bacchante, and a figure of the daughter of the marchese filippo gualterio, lying dead. i first made the acquaintance of filippo gualterio at siena, in the house of my friend count dei gori, in the first revolutionary movement of . he was a thorough gentleman, of careful education, a lover of art, an enthusiast for beauty, a facile writer of the moderate party, not then in favour of the unity of italy, but attached heart and soul to the theories of gioberti as set forth in the 'primato.' out of pique, on account of some annoyance he had received from the pontifical government, of which he was a subject, he exiled himself from his native country, orvieto, and joined the revolutionary movement of turin, florence, and genoa. later he took a prominent part in the revolution of , embraced the cause of unity, became minister, and shortly after died of paralysis of the brain. [sidenote: pietro selvatico.] the statuette of the bacchino so much pleased my friend pietro selvatico, who happened to be in florence precisely at the time when i finished it, that he made a drawing of it as a _souvenir_ in his album. this able writer and distinguished critic and historian of art was also an artist and accomplished draughtsman, or rather he was so until an obstinate disease in his eyes deprived them of that clearness of vision which is necessary to mastery as a draughtsman. chapter xiv. the nude--the statue of david--rauch--the base of the tazza--the chapel of the madonna del soccorso--sepulchral monuments for san lorenzo--the th of april --count scipione borghesi--a group of the deluge--competition for wellington's monument, and a great help. i began to work, as i have said, upon the figure of the dead girl, and upon the bacchante, two subjects diametrically opposed to each other,--the bacchante representing the festivity, the dance, the libations, and the weariness resulting from them; the dead girl, the innocence of a few short days of life, the repose and the joy of an eternal peace. this is a good method whereby to temper the expression and form of one's works, and i recommend it to young artists, since continually playing on the same string finally begets an annoyance and weariness, which exhibit themselves in the work. if the bacchante had not been modified by this dead figure, which recorded an innocent life and a serene death, it might have degenerated and lost that beauty which is only to be found in what is good. [sidenote: the nude.] one other piece of advice. in conceiving and working out subjects which, in their intention as well as in the manner required to express them, tend towards sensuality, one should inspire one's self with a purely intellectual love. to this kind of love one should adhere tenaciously, for it is easy to go astray. such love seizes, and desires, and prefers to attain what is good, in which is included all that is true and all that is beautiful; but the seductions of the senses veil the eyes of reason and light the fires of voluptuousness. therefore we should be careful, in order that art, which is the mistress and mother of civilisation, should not lower itself to be the corrupter of taste and habits. it is not in the least in regard to nudity that we should be circumspect, but in regard to the conception, the expression, and the movement of the statue; in a word, to the state of mind, the idea, the interior condition of the artist. thus, for instance, one may look at a figure entirely nude, like the venus of the capitol, and be impressed merely by a reverent admiration, or by quite the opposite sentiment. the purest and most sacred subjects, the most completely clothed figures,--as, for instance, a nun, or the santa teresa of bernini,--may be impressed by an unequivocal sensuality. no! nudity does not offend modesty. if it did, all the works of michael angelo deserve condemnation; while on the contrary, as every one knows (i appeal for the truth of this to the most prudish; to the priests, to the popes, who ordered and placed in the churches the works of this divine man--and in so doing did well, though these figures, both male and female, are as naked as god made them), far from offending against decency in the least, they elevate the mind into regions so high and so ideal that their bodies are transfigured, so to speak, and clothed with a supersensual light in which there is nothing earthly. [sidenote: removal of the david of angelo.] about this period the question began to be agitated in respect to the david of michael angelo. already for some time artists and lovers of works of art had expressed a fear that this masterpiece should remain exposed to injury in the open air, and thus be subjected to constant deterioration. a commission was nominated to examine into the matter and prepare some manner of placing under shelter this celebrated work. professor pasquale poccianti, president of the commission, proposed that it should be removed and placed in the loggia dell'orgagna close by, under the great central arch. this proposition was supported strongly by lorenzo bartolini, who had expressed his opinion several years before in a letter addressed to signor giovanni benericetti-talenti, then inspector of the academy of fine arts, and which i have seen. the grand duke, assured by the opinion of such competent artists, ordered the statue to be removed and placed under the loggia, in conformity with the advice of the commission, and with the plans presented for this end by professor poccianti. it was the intention of the grand duke to substitute for the colossus that he removed a copy of it in bronze, to be cast by papi, and the order was given for making a mould and casting it. i was not on the commission for the removal; on the contrary, i was among those who did not believe in the injuries which the statue was supposed to be suffering. i did not think that there was any grave danger in allowing it to remain where it was, or that the cause that had produced the very apparent injury occasioned to the head and the left arm was constant dropping of water from the roof above; and as this had already been guarded against, it seemed to me inadvisable to remove it and withdraw it from public view. i remembered also to have read that michael angelo himself had strongly urged that it should be allowed to remain where he had placed it, and where he, in working at it, had harmonised it with its surroundings; for even then doubts were raised lest it might suffer injury in that position. and besides, i did not consider it prudent to remove such a colossal statue, both on account of the danger of the operation, and because i thought it impossible to find another place so favourable for artistic effect and historical significance. therefore, when i learned that its removal had been decreed, i regretted it extremely. information of this intention was given me by my friend luigi venturi, from whom i did not conceal my regret; and as the grand duke was well disposed towards me, i decided to go that very evening to the pitti palace and humbly submit all the arguments which induced me to oppose this removal of the david. he received me with his customary kindness, and imagining perhaps that i desired to speak with him about some work which i was doing for him on commission (of which i shall speak in its proper place), he said-- "sit down, and tell me what you have to say." [sidenote: arguments against the removal.] "your imperial highness, i have heard with great surprise that you intend to remove the david from where it now stands, and to place it under the loggia dell'orgagna." "yes; that statue is, as you know, the masterpiece of michael angelo. it is suffering injury every day, and it is dangerous to leave it there exposed to the sun and the rain. it ought to be placed under cover, and the loggia is not only so near as to render the operation of removal easy and safe, but it also is a most beautiful place, and with its great central arch will fitly frame this magnificent statue." i answered--"i also always have thought that this statue suffers from its exposure to the frost and sun--although the marble is from fantiscritti, and is of most durable quality; and naturally the idea suggests itself to one that it would be better to remove it where it would not be subjected to this slow but certain deterioration. but the grave question which has always preoccupied my mind has been the difficulty of handling this colossus, so weak in its supports; and what renders this all the more difficult is the crack which is said to have been discovered in the leg upon which it stands, which is the weakest. i therefore think that if this crack exists, it constitutes another and principal reason why the statue should not be touched. but independent of this difficulty, which practised and scientific persons might possibly overcome, there is the question as to where it should be placed. this colossus is made for the open air, and to be seen at great distances; and the place to which it is now proposed to assign it is not in the open air, and has not the light of the sky, but on the contrary, a light reflected from the earth, so that only the lower part would be illuminated, and in a negative sense--that is, from below upward, and not from above downward, as from the light of the sky. the upper part would in consequence remain in a half light, so as to divide the statue into two zones: the one which would be in the half light ought to be illuminated, and that which would be illuminated ought to be in graduated shadow. and again, there is no distance: from the sides it is not sufficient, and in front the statue would seem too high in consequence of the steps of the loggia. nor only this: if for the reasons i have stated the statue itself would suffer, the loggia would suffer still more, and would be enormously sacrificed, and in consequence of the colossal proportions of the statue, its beautiful arches would be dwarfed; and still more----" "enough!" the grand duke with vexation interrupted me. "these are considerations which might have been discussed, but now the thing has been decreed." and rising, he added, "good evening,"--which being interpreted into common language, was as much as to say, "go away; you bore me." [sidenote: the grand duke dismisses me.] i bowed and went away. on the stairs i said to myself, "you have done a pretty business. you see how you were dismissed, and with what irritation. you had better have minded your business. what had you to do with this? did he ask you to give your advice? no; you have your deserts, and will learn better another time." and slowly, slowly i returned home. but none the less i was not dissatisfied with myself for having spoken frankly to the grand duke on this matter. i had expressed my true opinion, and i should have felt more regret if i had been silent, inasmuch as i was thoroughly convinced of the utility and propriety of what i had said. besides, i knew how good the grand duke was, and with what attention he had listened to me on other occasions when he interrogated me on questions relating to art in general, or to my own works in particular. but the phrase "decreed" still hammered in my head, and i said to myself, "very well,--it is decreed; but his decree is not a decree of heaven. we shall see. after all, i have said what it seemed to me just to say, and there is nothing improper in that; and if there was any impropriety, it was on his part in not allowing me to finish. and there is this also," i said--"that colossus in the middle of the loggia will dwarf all the other statues, and make them of little consequence; so that by an accursed necessity they will have to remove the group of the rape of the sabines, and the perseus, which stand very well there, as well as the centaur and the ajax, and all the others along the wall, which are not placed well, whether the david is there or not." [sidenote: visit of rauch.] but in the meantime, a fortunate incident gave a new direction to the affair of the removal of the david, and a great weight to my words. one morning a gentleman came to my studio, who said he wished to see me. i, who then was accustomed to permit no one to pass into my private studio, went out to see him. he was tall of person, dignified, and benevolent of aspect; his eyes were blue, and over his handsome forehead his white hair was parted and carried behind the ears in two masses, which fell over the collar of his coat. he extended his hand to me, and said-- "for some time i have heard you much spoken of; but as fame is frequently mendacious, in coming to florence i wished, first of all, to verify by an examination of your works the truth of all i have heard of you; and as i find them not inferior to your high reputation, i wished to have the pleasure of shaking your hand;" and he then took both my hands in his. "you are an artist?" i asked. "yes," he replied,--"a sculptor." i wondered who he could be. he spoke italian admirably, but with a foreign accent. "excuse me,--are you living in rome?" "oh no," he answered; "i lived there for thirty years, but now for some time i have been in berlin. i am rauch." i bowed to him, and he embraced me and kissed me, and accompanying me into my private room, we sat down. i shall never forget his quiet conversation, which was calm and full of benevolence. while he was speaking, i went over in my memory the beautiful works of this great german artist,--his fine monument to frederick the great, his remarkable statue of victory, and many others. i recalled the sharp passages between him and bartolini, and without knowing why, i could not help contrasting his gentleness with the caustic vivacity of our master. their disagreements have long been over; the peace of the tomb has united them; and now the busts of both stand opposite to each other in the drawing-room of my villa of lappeggi. [sidenote: rauch's visit to the grand duke.] among other things, we discussed the question of the removal of the david, and its proposed collocation under the loggia dell'orgagna. he strongly disapproved of it, and exhorted me to use all my influence (to use his own words) to induce the grand duke to alter this decision. i then narrated to him my conversation with the grand duke, and the issue of it. he was surprised, and after thinking awhile, said that perhaps there was no ground to despair, and that i ought to speak of it again and to insist. i answered-- "i really cannot do so. you, however, might. your name, and the friendship of the grand duke for you, might perform miracles; and nothing else is needed, as there is already a decree in the way." "leave it to me. to-morrow i am invited to dine at court, and i will manage so that they will speak to me of this; and unless they ask me, i will not let it be known that we have met." a few days afterwards he returned and told me that he had spoken at length on the subject with the grand duke, who did not seem to be annoyed, but on the contrary, listened to him to the end; and then smiling, said that i had advanced the same doubts and objections. he then thought it best to openly confess that we had talked together on the subject. rauch went away shortly after; but he so well managed the affair, that the grand duke thought no more of the removal of the statue to the loggia, considering the means proper to shield it from the injuries of the weather. he also sent for me to tell me that rauch had advised him not to place it under the loggia, and i remember used these words: "rauch is entirely of your opinion in regard to the david, and he is a man who, on such a ground, deserves entire confidence; and i wish to say this to you, because it ought to give you pleasure, and because it proves that you were right." [sidenote: letter from rauch about the david.] i thanked the grand duke for the attention and consideration he had paid to the reasoning of rauch in regard to the david, as well as for his kindness towards me; and this procured me a dismissal more benignant than the previous one. a short time after, i received a letter from rauch from berlin, in which he spoke to me of the david. i showed it to the grand duke, who ordered me to leave it with him. but he returned it a few days later, and i have transcribed the passage relating to the david:-- "i learn with great pleasure that his highness the grand duke has resolved to leave the statue of david in its place in consequence of the trial made with the plaster cast. but i should like to recommend to his highness to remove the group of ajax and patroclus from its present position, and to arrange a proper place of just proportion and with a good light, to receive worthily this work of sculpture divinely composed and executed by greek hands. "berlin, _ th december _." this is the reason why the statue of david was allowed to remain in its place for some twenty years more, and until the fear of the danger which this masterpiece undoubtedly incurred induced the municipality and the government to order its removal to the academy of fine arts, where it now stands, but where it is not seen; for if the government is liberal in spending many millions upon a palace of finance in rome, it feels itself so restricted that it obstinately refuses to spend a few thousands to complete the building which is to harbour the most beautiful sculpture in the world. [sidenote: restoration of the porphyry tazza.] it was at this time that the royal manufactory of pietre dure finished the restoration of the famous tazza of porphyry--a most precious and rare object, which, from the time of cosimo i., to whom pope clement vii. presented it, had remained hidden in the store-rooms, and in great part mutilated. now, as i have said, owing to the great care and intelligence of the directors, united to the goodwill and money of the prince, it had been restored to its pristine beauty and perfection. in order that this work, which is also an historical record, should be properly exhibited by itself in the royal gallery, the grand duke desired that it should be placed on a base with a new and rich design, which should at once be a completion and adornment of the tazza itself, and also offer an occasion for a work of sculpture. in matters of this kind this excellent prince was intelligent, earnestly entered into them, and gave full liberty to the artist who wrought for him; and this work he would have carried out had not the revolution interrupted it. but let us not be in a hurry. i imagined a base of a form naturally cylindrical, with ovolo mouldings. that from below the base of the tazza descended in a vertical line to the base, which stood upon a quadrate plinth. between the base and the tazza--that is to say, on the first cylinder--was a complete history of the tazza, by means of symbolical figures which represented its origin, fortunes, and final destination. perhaps this tazza once embellished the immense gardens of the ancient pharaohs; and when their empire was overthrown by the power of rome, all things great and precious which the genius and power of the nation had produced were either destroyed or carried off. this tazza, as well as the famous obelisks, were brought to rome. on the fall of the roman empire, the tazza and obelisks remained, and the former was presented by clement vii., together with other precious objects (among which was the venus--so called--de' medici), to cosimo i. after the medician domination was over, the tazza remained forgotten, until it was restored, as i have said, and placed in the pitti gallery, where it now stands. [sidenote: the base of this tazza.] to express artistically this history, i imagined four groups, representing thebes with the genius of mechanics, imperial rome with the genius of conquest, papal rome with the genius of religion, and tuscany with the genius of art. _thebes_ is in a sad and thoughtful attitude, with a simple vest without mantle, and has on his head the egyptian fillet. he holds by the hand his genius, who frowning and unwillingly follows after him and looks backward, recalling "il tempo felice nella miseria." in his hand he carries a pair of broken compasses, to denote his lost empire over science and art; and at his feet is a truncated palm, around which is coiled and sleeping the sacred serpent. _imperial rome_ stands in a proud attitude, resting her right hand on the consular fasces, and the left hand gathering up her mantle, which falls to her feet. she is crowned with oak-leaves, and above her head is a lion-skin in the shape of a helmet. her genius, with a bold step and fierce aspect, grasps a lance and a torch, implements of destruction and emblems of iron and fire. _papal rome_ stands still, with three crowns on her head, from which the fillets descend upon her breast. she is dressed in the pontifical robes, and holds closed upon her breast the bible. her genius, dressed in a levite tunic, and with one hand holding a cross and the other placed upon his breast, in sign of faith and humility, treads on a serpent, the symbol of error, which even from the earliest time insinuated itself into the church. _tuscany_ is in the act of walking. on the diadem which crowns her head are engraved the tiber and the magra, the rivers which bounded ancient etruria. she holds the royal sceptre in her right hand, and in her left the palladium of the arts. her genius is crowned with laurels, and leans upon a _cippus_, on which are disposed the implements which are used in the arts of poetry, music, sculpture, painting, and architecture, bound together by a branch of olive, to denote that the arts are only developed during peace. [sidenote: description of the base.] this conception, which was clearly expressed in a sketch, met with the approbation of the sovereign, and he ordered me to model it on a large scale, to be cast in bronze. afterwards, it seeming to me that the dark hue of bronze, added to the shadow cast by the tazza itself, would injure the effect of my work, i sought and obtained permission to execute it in marble; and i was at once paid for my model. in the meantime, in consequence of rich work of great delicacy, it became necessary to seek for some marble which should be hard, white, and beautiful; for this work differed from others in having no back view, in which ordinarily the imperfections of the marble can be hidden, but was exposed on all sides, in consequence of its round form, every point of view being a principal one. hence there was a difficulty in finding a block entirely free from blemish, and having no spots to injure the view of any important part. the search for this consumed much time; and when at last i had a clear hope that i had found it, the revolution first suspended, and afterwards ended, everything. i shall return to this subject later, and at present i shall go on. [sidenote: chapel of the madonna del soccorso.] at the same time the grand duke ordered me to decorate a chapel of the madonna del soccorso at leghorn. of this, which is the first on the left on entering the church, he had become the patron. the chapel was to represent the entire life of the madonna. i made a large sketch, in relief, of the chapel and the ornaments of the altar, with statues and pictures on the side walls. in the great lunette over the altar, i designed and coloured the annunciation of the virgin. in the empty spaces between the arc of the lunette and the side walls, which are trapezic like half pedestals, were angels painted upon a mosaic ground of gold, and holding spread out rolls of papyrus, on which were written the prophecies of the virgin and of christ. the altars i made with columns and round arches, with a straight base, after the style of the _quattrocentisti_. the table of the altar represented the return from calvary of the virgin with st john. behind, in the distance, were seen the crosses, and the angels of the passion weeping and flying from the sorrowful scene. this also i designed and coloured in my sketch. under the table, and through a perforated screen, was seen the dead body of christ, illuminated by hidden lights. the statues in the niches of the lateral walls were to be st john and st luke, as those who had specially written about the virgin. in the two lateral walls above the niches, there were to be two pictures representing the nativity and the death; and these compositions, as well as the sketches of the two statues of john and luke, i did not carry out, relying upon the intelligence of the grand duke, which would enable him to judge from what i did do. [sidenote: works ordered by the grand duke.] besides this complex and important work--the scriptural portion of which i was to execute, while in regard to the paintings and architecture, i was assigned the post of director, with an authority to select the artists,--besides this, i say, he ordered of me the monuments to the grand duke ferdinand iii. his father, to his brother, his sister, and various of his children, all to be erected in the chapel called the "vergine ben tornata," which is in san lorenzo, where at present is to be seen the monument of the grand duchess maria carolina. and all these monuments i designed, and made sketches of them, which were approved by his highness; and a royal rescript was made to me, signed by the president of the ministry, prince andrea corsini, ordering me to execute these works. but the th of april , foreseen by all, unexpected by few, arrived and overthrew everything. from all these statements, two facts are clear; the first, that the grand duke esteemed me--and the second, that i knew absolutely nothing of the revolutionary movement of these days: and this increased the not small number of persons, who held me in dislike, owing to the favour which i enjoyed at court, and owing to the works which were intrusted to me. these persons, whom i must not call artists, showed themselves, both then and after, to be sorely deficient in intellect and heart, in blaming me for my affection and gratitude towards the prince, who treated me so beneficently. i have said that the events of the th of april were quite unexpected by me. but how was it possible for me to know anything, when those who, above all, were so intimately acquainted with what was going on, kept me at a distance, and some, as for instance the marquis gualterio, who usually frequented my studio, withdrew entirely from me? besides, how many there were who were as much in the dark as i, though they were in a position that almost obliged them not to be ignorant! i remember that the sardinian minister, buoncompagni, who lived in the pennetti palace in borgo pinti, gave every week (i do not remember on what day) a reception or party at which i met and conversed, with the utmost frankness, with the advocate vincenzo salvagnoli, giovanni baldasseroni, then minister, the marquis lajatico, the marchioness ginori, as well as the princess conti and others, and all of us were ignorant. [sidenote: demonstration against grand duke.] it was only on easter morning (i believe it was the _antivigilia_ of the revolution) that i heard that something was to occur, but vaguely; there was nothing positive or precise. there was to be some sort of demonstration or manifestation to induce the grand duke to enter into a league with piedmont for the war of independence. but afterwards, reassured by one who ought to have known more than i, that it was really nothing, but mere idle talk, and childish vague reports, i believed him. and then? the day after, i met count scipione borghesi, my excellent friend, who, as soon as he saw me, said-- "well, i have just arrived from siena; and to what point have we come?" "about what?" i answered. "about our request--about our demonstration, which is already organised. it should take place to-day. what! you know nothing about it?" "i know nothing--and there is nothing to know; trust me, for i ought to know something about it," i answered, assuming rather an air of authority. my friend was a little disturbed at first; and then smiling, he added-- "it may be as you say. have you any commands for siena?" "no, thank you. are you going back to siena soon?" "eh? who knows?--to-morrow--the day after to-morrow--as may be." "good-bye, then," i said, and we shook hands. [sidenote: popular demonstration.] the next morning, from my little villa which i had rented at the pian di giullari, i went down to florence, taking my usual route, at about half-past eight, when i saw a gathering of people, and groups here and there crowded together and talking excitedly. i then began to suspect something. i went to my studio, uncovered my clay, and waited for the model, who should have been there. she kept me waiting for an hour; and before i could reprove her for her unpunctuality, she told me that she had been detained by the great crowd of the demonstration which blocked up all the streets around barbano, and that the piazza was thronged with people carrying banners and emblems. "bravo!" i said to myself, "i did know a good deal!" at the same time, an under-officer and instructor of the lyceum ferdinando, who lived over me, came to the window and cried out "viva italia!" and his pupils repeated his cry with enthusiasm. "do you know what this means?" i asked of my model, who was already undressed. "i cannot work now; dress yourself, and go." she at once obeyed, and i remained thinking over the fact. i desired that the grand duke should yield, as in fact he did yield, to the league with piedmont for the war against the foreigner; and i was grieved when i heard of his departure. on returning to the country, i met my friend the advocate mantellini with duchoqué, and we were all very sorry for what had occurred, although i had nothing to do with the events which took place either before or on that day. [sidenote: sketch for monument to wellington.] the desire to give an account of this day has kept me for some time from the regular order of my records, and i must now return upon my steps. when i had completed the model for the base of the tazza, a desire came over me to model a group of colossal dimensions. i had selected as subject the universal deluge, and with youthful ardour i had sketched out the whole, and had fairly well modelled some of the parts. but as at that time the english parliament had decided to erect an imposing monument to the duke of wellington, and to that end had opened a world-competition, i stopped working on my group, and set myself to think out the monument to wellington. i had, however, little wish to compete, because it seemed to me that the work would finally be intrusted to an english sculptor, and that love of country would naturally overcome that rectitude of judgment which is so deeply seated in the spirit of that great nation. and so it happened that i had, as i have said, little desire to compete; and besides, i have always been opposed to competitions, and i shall explain my reasons for this elsewhere. but my friends at first began by proposing it to me, then said so much, and urged the matter with such insistence, that finally i yielded and competed. this work of mine i cannot exactly describe, because, not having seen it for many years, i scarcely remember it. let me try, however. in the angles of the great embasements were groups representing military science, political science, temperance, and fortitude, each with his genius. the four faces of the base were ornamented with _alti-rilievi_. [sidenote: the grand duke sends me to london.] above this rose upon another base the principal group of wellington with victory and peace. there was a large contribution of florentine sculpture sent to london, for fedi, cambi, and cartei competed as well, and their models were exhibited before going to england. the sending of these models was not without risk, owing to their fragility--being in plaster--the minuteness of the work upon them, and the length of the journey. all these difficulties did not escape the attention of our benevolent sovereign, who had seen my model; and as soon as i had sent it off, he told me he thought it both prudent and even necessary for me to go to london to attend to my work and see it taken out of its box. i answered that i had no fear of its being injured, having had it so well packed, and depending on the government officials who were intrusted to receive and see to the placing of these competitive works. these were the reasons i gave; but there were others of a more intimate and delicate nature, for out of respect for the other competitors i did not wish to appear as if i went to push forward my own work. on his highness urging me more and more, i told him all my thoughts, and he replied, with a smile, "if it is on account of this, you can go at once, for fedi came to take leave of me yesterday; and to facilitate your journey, i shall give you a hundred _zecchini_. i could give you a letter for king leopold of the belgians, my good friend, but that would be like a recommendation, so i shall abstain from doing so. go and make haste, for if your work should be damaged on its arrival, who is there who could mend it? therefore go; and good-bye." chapter xv. patience a most essential virtue--trust was a good man, but trust-no-one a better--a competition either attracts or drives away men of talent--a study from life of a lion by marrocchetti--assistant modellers--sydenham and its wonders--one of "abel's" fingers--new judgment of solomon--an important question--an indian who speaks about things as they are--professor papi and the failure of the first cast in bronze of the "abel"--a medicine not sold by the chemist. i started at once, and it was well that i did so, for the vessel which had the case containing my model sprang a leak on account of the bad weather, had to stop at malta, and arrived in london too late, as the term had expired for the presentation of these models. if it had not been for my having the bill of lading,--from which it was made clear that i had not only sent it in time, but a long time before i was required, and that this delay had occurred from circumstances entirely independent of my will,--my work would have been undoubtedly rejected. for this reason, and through the good offices of william spence, it was accepted; and he made me acquainted with the royal commissioner of the exhibition as the person intrusted by the author of the work. when they proceeded to open the case the commissioner wished me to be present, that i might see in what state it had arrived--and it was a truly lamentable state! the ship, as i have already said, sprang a leak, and the water had entered the case and softened the plaster figures, so that they were dislodged from their places, and rolled about in the box in all directions. heads were detached from their bodies, hands mutilated and broken, aquiline noses flattened out, the helmets had lost their plumes and front pieces. in fact, it was all a perfect hash! besides this, as i had wrapped them up in cotton-wool and paper, and the salt water had penetrated and remained there for many days, they had gone through a sort of special chemical process, by which my sketch was coloured in the most varied and capricious way. blue, red, and yellow were mixed up together with the most lively pleasantry; and if it had been done on purpose, one could not have reduced the poor work to a more wretched condition. i saw at once that i needed all the _sang froid_ possible, so i did not utter a word, and ostentatiously showed a calm exterior that i did not really feel,--all the more because already the greater part of the models had been put in their places, and the exhibition and judgment on them were imminent. fedi, who was present at this disaster, seeing me so cold, said to me, almost in a rage, "why don't you get angry?" [sidenote: my sketch arrives broken to pieces.] "why should i get angry?" i answered. "shall i mend the matter by getting angry? on the contrary, see how well i shall manage, in a slow and orderly way. i remember to have read somewhere--i don't recollect where--that he who has to go up a steep ascent must take it slowly; and so shall i." he was of the contrary opinion, and advised me rather to leave everything alone for the moment, to take a pleasant walk, and to set myself to work the next day with a fresh mind; and he himself, with praiseworthy thoughtfulness, offered to help me. but i held to my purpose, thanking him for his advice and offer to help me, as i felt confident that i should be able to do it all by myself. i then at once informed the commissioner for the exhibition that, as i was empowered by the author of the sketch, and was in his entire confidence, i intended immediately to set to work and restore it. as this gentleman commissioner understood not a word of french or italian, william spence, then a young man, was my interpreter. when he understood what it was i wanted, he called a gentleman who was looking at the models for competition, and spoke to him in a low voice in his own language; but my young mentor, who, besides his intelligence, had a fine sense of hearing, taking me aside, told me what orders the commissioner had given this gentleman. [sidenote: reparation of the sketch.] it should be known that the english government, among the articles regulating this competition, had made one which was most wise, as it partially guaranteed the artist who had not been able to accompany his sketch in person, and had no correspondents or friends who could act for him, to repair any chance damages to his work. for this they had appointed an able artist capable of making the required restorations. this, then, was what spence told me: "the commissioner, as you see, called that gentleman to tell him to pay attention to what you are doing to this model, for although you have asserted yourself to be the person intrusted by the author of the work, yet he has not felt sure of it; and as you might also be a person who, with bad intentions, propose to damage it under pretence of restoring it, it was his duty to prevent this,--so he gave orders to that gentleman, in case he saw that your hand was guided by bad faith or incompetency, to make you leave off at once, and to set himself instead to work on it." [sidenote: signor brucciani's friendliness.] i understand i must give all my attention and mind to the manner in which i do my work, though i should have acted more freely had i not been exposed to a supervision as reasonable as it was conscientious. the consequence of a mistake or an oversight might be to see myself set aside as an ass, or even worse, as an impostor, and the heads and hands of my little figure mended by another, heaven knows how! in the meantime, the sculptor or modeller who was to watch me never lost sight of me, and being sure that i knew nothing of his charge, observed every movement of mine; but after i had been at work about ten minutes he was completely convinced, and declared that i could be allowed to continue the restorations--_meno male!_ plaster brushes, small knives, sharp tools, and all other implements, had been largely furnished to me by signor brucciani, a most able caster, and the proprietor of a large shop, or rather a gallery of plaster statues, able to supply any school of design, and what my friend giambattista giuliani would have called a perfect _gipsoteca_. and with regard to good signor brucciani, i must say some words in his praise, not only because he provided me liberally with plaster and tools, and help in my work, but because he, a stranger in a foreign land, has known how, with his activity, to acquire for himself the esteem of a people who are as tardy in conceding it as they are tenacious in keeping to it when once given. from this he derives his good fortune and enviable position. when signor brucciani fell in with an active and open-hearted compatriot, it brightened him up soul and body, and he often wished to have me with him. his wife and daughter united a certain english stiffness with italian _brio_ and frankness that they took from their husband and father. one day brucciani and his family desired to spend the day in the country and dine in richmond park. everything brucciani did he did well; and i hope he is alive and able to do so still. he brought with him several carriages, with everything that was required for the _cuisine_ and table--furniture, servants, food, and exquisite wines, even ice in which to keep the ices, &c. a _viva_ to him! for as the marchese colombi said, "things can be done or not done." after dinner a caravan of gipsies, perfect witches, who live in that forest, made their appearance, and asked if we wanted our fortunes told. the request was odd enough; but being made in such a serious manner, it became really amusing. naturally, as we had to give something to these poor gipsies not to humiliate them, we had our fortunes told; and as for the old woman that examined my hand, she guessed so much that was true that i was almost frightened, and drew away my hand. the old witch continued to point with her bony finger, and say, "there is still more, still more." [sidenote: the sketch is restored.] my work was rather long, and would have been tiresome; but as it was a necessity, i did it willingly, and succeeded very well. it is true, however, that both the architecture and the figures were strangely spotted with stains made by the salt water, and bits of paper and cotton-wool in which it had been packed. some one advised me to give it all a uniform tint to hide this; but i insisted on leaving it in that way, trusting to the good sense of the judges, who were called upon to consider much worse defects than those produced by a chance accident. i remember that mr stirling crawford, of london, on receiving some years before the two statues of "innocence and the fisherman," and a stain having made its appearance on the leg of one of these, wrote to me manifesting his entire satisfaction with these works, and adding: "it is true that here and there there are some stains in the marble; but as i know that you do not make the marble yourself, it would be absurd to reprove you for this." there are but few gentlemen like him, however--so few, that i have never found another; but on the contrary, i have seen more than one who would even buy a mediocre statue, to use no harsher expression, provided it were made out of beautiful marble. [sidenote: marrocchetti's views of competition.] i remained in london about two months, and left the day before the opening of the competitive exhibition. the judgment was to be pronounced after the public exhibition was over; and there were a great many competing--nearly a hundred--and some of the models were very beautiful. there were to be nine prizes given--three first class and six second. the government reserved to itself the power of giving the final commission without regard to the models that had received prizes, as it might so happen that when the name of the sculptor who drew the first prize was known, he might not be able to offer sufficient warrant as to the final execution of the work as to tranquillise the consciences of the judges and satisfy public opinion. this argument is a just one when not vitiated by preconceived opinions or self-love, which sometimes happens, as we shall see hereafter. this was in itself a thing easily understood, but was not understood by us, who went in for this competition. not so marrocchetti, who, clever artist that he was, was none the less wide awake and wise. with those who instigated him to compete he reasoned in this way, saying: "they know that i am capable of doing this work. why, therefore, enter into competition with others, if not to find out that there is some one else cleverer than i am? very well; but i choose to retire, and you can take the other fellow--take him and leave me in peace. so far this would seem prompted by nothing but the fear of losing, which in itself is no small thing for a man who has a name and has gone through his long career applauded by all. but there is another and a much more piercing and almost insufferable dread. do you know what it is? that of winning. yes, that of coming in victor before a poor young fellow, perhaps one of your own scholars!" thus he gave vent to his feelings one day to me, with the sort of intimacy that springs to life quickly and vigorously between artists who are neither hypocrites nor asses; and his words depict in a lifelike manner the frank, and, i might say, bold character of this original artist, who was most dashing, and who, with a thorough knowledge of dramatic effects in art, from the very exuberance of his strength, not seldom had the defects produced by these qualities--defects which were perhaps magnified by his assistant modellers, who worked with too much rapidity and carelessness. [sidenote: marrocchetti.] when he saw the photograph of my model he desired to have it, and i was delighted to give it to him. he wished me to choose something of his as a remembrance, and i did not need to be urged. i had set my eyes on a most beautiful study of a lion from life in dry clay, and so i asked him for that; but as that was a thing precious to him, he asked me if i would not content myself with a cast of it in bronze instead of the clay. on my answering that i would, he called his caster, who worked for him in his own great foundry, and ordered it to be cast at once. two days after this i received it, and keep it as the dear remembrance of an excellent friend, and as a valuable work of art. at that time marrocchetti had finished his great equestrian statue of richard the lion-hearted. it is a singular thing that marrocchetti, in his long and glorious life, made four equestrian statues--emanuele filiberto, the duke of orleans, carlo alberto, and richard the lion-hearted. each one of these statues bears a different stamp, both as regards composition, feeling, and mode of treatment; one would say that they were the work of four different artists. this difference of work can be reasonably explained by the diversity of the subjects and the distance of time that occurred between each work, necessarily producing notable changes in the mind and style of the artist; and also because marrocchetti, on account of the multiplicity of serious work he had in hand, thought it advisable to have help, not only in the marble work, but also on his clay models; and as those who helped him were not always of his school, so every one brought just so much of their own individuality to bear upon the work as to alter the master's character and style. these are the sad but inevitable results for him who has the bad habit of getting assistance with his clay models. [sidenote: marrocchetti and his assistants.] while i was there in he had under his directions a very able modeller--i think he was a roman, by name bezzi. bezzi went on modelling, and marrocchetti directed his work, whilst he sat smoking and talking with me and others. sometimes he would make him pull down a piece he had been at work on and begin afresh. this method seemed to me then, as it does now, a most strange and dangerous one; and it has not resulted happily, even amongst us, with those who have been induced to follow it. marrocchetti was distinguished from other sculptors by another originality--i was almost going to say oddity--and this was, that he coloured his statues often to such a degree that you could no longer distinguish the material of which they were made. i remember to have seen an imposing monument composed of several figures that had been put up in honour of madame de la riboisière in the chapel belonging to the hospital which bears that name in paris. it is completely coloured--i should better say painted all over--with body colour,--the heads, hair, eyes, draperies, all coloured so that it is impossible to distinguish the material in which it was sculptured. you could distinguish absolutely nothing; and if it had not been for the _custode_, who affirmed that the work was in marble, you might have thought it was coloured plaster or _terra cotta_. and this worthy man was so sure of having thus added beauty to his statues that he was much astonished that others did not imitate him. [sidenote: the colouring of statues.] marrocchetti, there is no doubt, was wrong in loading on colour as he did; but it is a question not yet solved or to be lightly put aside as to whether a delicate veil of colour may not be tried on the fleshy parts. grecian sculptors used colour, and ours also in the middle ages, although only on particular parts of the figure and on the ornamental portions of their monuments. the only one that i know of, amongst modern artists, who used colour with discretion, was pradier. the english sculptor gibson was more audacious. i have seen a cupid by gibson entirely coloured--the hair golden, the eyes blue, his quiver chiselled and gilt, and, incredible as it may seem, the wings painted in various colours with tufts or masses of red, green, blue, and orange feathers, like those of an arara parrot. [sidenote: the crystal palace.] having seen the kensington museum, and the other sculpture and picture galleries in which london is so rich, i take pleasure in recounting a little occurrence that happened to me at sydenham. sydenham is a place some fifteen miles from london, in an open country, healthy, and rich in green vegetation. there is the famous crystal palace, where one can see a permanent exhibition of all the most beautiful things that are scattered about in different parts of the world, beginning with ante-diluvian animals reconstructed scientifically from some fossil bones found in the excavations of mines in scotland and elsewhere. there are gigantic trees from australia, one of which, having been cut in pieces, bored, and the centre extracted, to enable it to be transported, had been put together again and planted inside this palace. it is as high as a veritable campanile; at its base a door has been made, so that one can enter inside it; and it holds comfortably some thirty persons. all the tropical plants are there in fine vegetation, in conservatories heated by stoves, where the heat is so oppressive that one longs to go out and breathe the fresh outside air. there also can be seen that famous plant that grows in the water, with its flower floating on the surface. this gigantic flower, when i then saw it, measured not less than two metres in diameter, and the leaves flattened out on the water looked like open umbrellas. it seems really as if one were dreaming, to see such gigantic vegetation. besides plants and animals from all parts of the earth--from the polar as well as from the tropical regions--there are the full-sized models of men taken from life, and coloured according to nature--cretins, esquimaux, savages, tartars, mongols, and anthropophagi, all in most natural attitudes, and in their various costumes. there are also full-size reproductions of pieces of egyptian, indian, assyrian, mongolian, and moorish architecture; parts of the alhambra palace; some rooms from pompeii; minarets and chinese temples; sculpture (i mean, be it understood, reproductions in plaster) of the best egyptian, indian, greek, and roman works, as well as those of the middle ages; ghiberti's doors; the equestrian statues of colleoni, of gattamelata, of marcus aurelius; and even some modern works, amongst which is my "abel." [sidenote: i break off the finger of "abel."] i knew that this statue of mine must be there, for i had it cast by papi, who had the mould ever since he cast it in bronze; and when i saw it amongst these masterpieces as a specimen of modern art, i felt a certain feeling of complacency that i hope will be forgiven me. but this complacency of mine was disturbed when i saw that one of the fingers of the left hand had been badly restored, not merely formed inelegantly, but actually distorted, as the last phalange was much too short. that little stump of a finger so irritated me, that i gave it a blow with the stick i had in my hand, and it fell on the ground. ill-luck would have it that one of the guards saw me, and seizing hold of me, he carried me off to the commissary of the exhibition. i was asked why i had damaged that statue; and i answered that the finger was badly made, and that i had broken it off by an involuntary movement. they replied that i could not judge whether that finger or anything else was well done or badly done, and in any case it was not permitted for persons to damage the objects exhibited there; that therefore, for this violation of the rules, i had incurred the penalty decreed in such and such an article, and that they intended to keep me in custody. to tell the truth, this signor commissary spoke french rather badly; but i understood him very well, and with the best grace possible begged to be forgiven, saying that the wish to damage the statue had never entered into my thoughts, that the finger i had broken was positively ugly, that it must be remade as it ought to be, and that, as to having it restored, i would myself bear the expense. but the commissioner was firm, and was about to consign me to a guard, who was to conduct me not exactly to prison, but to something of that kind. i then felt obliged to make my name known. at first he had no intention of yielding to my explanation, and there was an expression on his face that might be translated thus: "it seems to me strange; it cannot be; i don't believe it." then he went on to say, "your position as author did not give you the right to do what you have done, even admitting that what you affirm is true--and we shall soon see if it be really true (_tout de suite_). you are the author of that statue; then remake the finger that you have broken." i was completely taken aback by this new judgment of solomon, so simple and just. calling to my aid a young modeller who was employed there, working a little and directing a little, the finger was soon remade. and so this odd adventure came to an end, proving the justice of the proverb, "who breaks, pays." [sidenote: dinner given by industrial society.] i returned to sydenham several times, because the quantity and importance of the things to be seen required time and attention; but when i found myself near my own statue, i gave it a wide berth. one day i found myself, or rather i should say i was taken by william spence, to a great dinner given by the artistic and industrial society in the dining-hall of the great palace of the exhibition. we were no less than four hundred, and lord derby presided. about the end of the dinner the toasts began, with speeches of which naturally i understood not a word; but fortunately "mino" translated them to me in a few brief words. at last an indian officer of the english army arose with a face the colour of copper, and began to speak; but after the first words, here and there in that immense hall, first in undertones, and then louder and louder, there arose a confused noise of voices of disapprobation. i understood nothing, and begged "mino" to explain; and he replied that i must keep quiet, and he would afterwards explain everything. in the meantime the noise of disapprobation increased, and some loud words were repeated. the orator's voice could hardly be heard any more, but he was not disturbed, and waited until the tempest was a little calmed down before continuing. then i heard a word repeated louder and louder, which "mino" explained to me was "enough." the only one who remained cold, passive, and silent was the president; and when the speaker saw that it was an impossibility to make himself heard, he bowed and sat down. after a little while every one rose from table. [sidenote: an exciting speech on india.] "now, then, relieve my curiosity. what has that officer said of so extraordinary a nature as to compel him to silence in a country like this, where really such entire liberty prevails?" "what he has said," replied "mino," "he could have said and repeated most freely; but he was badly inspired, and had the imprudence to name the queen. now amongst us the queen, whatever may be the question, is never mentioned. the law--and more than the law, respect for her person--prohibits us from naming her. the officer who spoke is a colonel in our indian army, and is, as you can see by the colour of his face, an indian. he only arrived a few days ago on a mission, they say, of some importance. now this is what he has said: the indians, subjugated by the force and cunning of the english government, having borne as much as is humanly possible to bear--the loss of their liberty, of their wealth, and of their religious faith; aggravated by the odious sight of their oppressors; every modest demand of theirs rejected; weighed down every day more and more by additional taxation,--for some time past have burned with impatience to shake off their yoke and regain their lost liberty. the english government, being aware in part of this movement, and in part ignoring it, he felt himself in duty bound to proclaim it loudly, as much for the good of his own people as for the english themselves. after having in vain attempted all ways of adjustment with the government of the queen (first time of mention), he hoped at least by these means to open the eyes and move the heart of the queen (second time) in favour of those poor pariahs, assassinated by a government who, in the name of her majesty the queen (third time), add to insult the derision of a people whom it has enervated with the pretext of civilising it. revolution and war being imminent if their just demands are this time again rejected, the government being responsible for this disaster, and the queen ... and the queen----here the orator, as you saw, was unable to continue, and already they had allowed him to say too much. neither the gravity of his revelations nor his injurious assertions against the government had been able in the least to excite our delicate organisation, but it was only and entirely on account of the sacred name of the queen being mixed up in his speech so imprudently and with so little judgment." [sidenote: the indian mutiny.] the fact is, however, that in less than five weeks from the day that this poor indian attempted to make the truth known--explaining what was wrong, and revealing the consequences that would follow, and counselling a remedy--the telegraph, with its flashing words, announced the mutiny, the peril the english were in, and their calls for help. it is true that the queen was not then mentioned, but for all that, men did not the less die. methinks i can hear it said, "what has this to do with your memoirs? in our opinion, it has nothing to do either with your life or with any artistic reflection that can be of interest to us." [sidenote: study of character and temperament.] but this objection bears only the appearance of reason. with this scene i wished to depict the temper and character of the english in general, and in particular of the two most prominent persons of that assemblage--namely, the indian colonel and the president of the banquet. and who is there who does not see how useful and good these studies of character, taken from the life, are to the artist? the essential thing required to make a work of art beautiful and valuable is, that it should be a just expression of the passions and feelings of the various characters the artist wishes to represent. it is vain to look for the right expression amongst the mercenary models that one ordinarily makes use of. the model is used for all that is on the outside--movement, proportions, physical characteristics, beauty of form,--for all, in fact, except, however, just that turn of the head and look of the eye, that movement of the lips, dilation of the nostrils, and a thousand other signs and indications on the face which reveal the inner struggles of the soul. these passions and feelings are more or less intense according to the temperament, habit, and education of different individuals; and in the mysterious sea of the soul, tempests gather, and become the more dreadful in proportion as they are not kept in check by reason. not to give a false expression to the subject we wish to treat, we must study all these differences. love in francesca does not manifest itself as in ophelia, the madness of orestes is not that of hamlet, ugolino's grief is not the grief of prometheus, and penelope's sadness is different from that of ariadne's. there are natures in whom the soul is of such delicate fibre, and who revolt so haughtily against an insult, that, oblivious of physical weakness, they flash into anger, and rush blindly against the offender, whoever he may be. there are others, strong and robust in body, who take things comfortably and easily, and let alone the calumnies launched against them; which, in fact, have rather the effect of mosquitoes upon them,--they are disturbed for a little while, and then go quietly to sleep again. the acute thrusts of love wound but the external epidermis of these well-wadded souls. giuseppe giusti created a couple of these curious beings--man and woman--and he called them taddeo and veneranda. for them the sea that i spoke of is always becalmed, and their tranquil souls float peacefully about therein. there is, however, a calm very different from this, brought by reason into these fierce struggles of the soul. the first, instead of being a calm, is indolence, and all the fibres that make our whole being move and throb, are, as it were, dormant. but this calm i speak of is caused by the force of reason, and strengthened by the sentiment of temperance and charity. [sidenote: giusti's 'amor pacifico.'] how much self-control that indian officer must have exercised over himself, knowing that he was proclaiming a great truth, which, had it been listened to and reparation made in time, would have prevented that most unfortunate war that he knew to be imminent, certain, and homicidal! to hear the shouts crying silence to him, and not to be disturbed by them, continuing with a firm voice not any louder (which would indicate anger), nor lower (which would be a sign of fear), only stopping a little when the other voices grew louder and prevented him from being heard, and then again taking up his discourse without turning to the right or to the left, and repeating over again the last word that had been drowned by the noise,--i say that this produced on me the impression of a profound admiration for the man. even now, after twenty years have elapsed, i seem to see that grand figure before me, and i feel all his manly tranquillity. [sidenote: clemente papi.] [sidenote: casting in bronze of "abel."] one of the peaceful natures, always content, so well described by giusti in his 'amor pacifico,' and whom i knew well, was professor clemente papi, an excellent caster in bronze. when i knew him he was between fifty and sixty years of age, of moderate height, stout build, and high colour, always laughing, always full of bright stories and little jokes. the muscles expressive of indignation had, as it would seem, been left out of his composition by mother nature. his brow was always smooth--there was never a frown on his face when speaking or listening, whatever might be the subject of discussion; and this constant habit of laughing made him laugh, or shape his mouth into a smile, even in the most serious moments of life. this man, who was in many respects most excellent, in his art, in his family, and as a master, appeared as if he had no heart, or as if it were made of sugar-candy; and yet he died suddenly of heart-disease. as i have said, he had a heart, but it was sugar-sweet; the bitterness of sorrow and the harshness of anger never in the least disturbed his state of calm, careless joviality. the following occurrence depicts professor papi's nature to the life: the grand duke having ordered a cast in bronze of my "abel," and all the preliminary work for the fusion of it having been accomplished,--that is to say, the mould made on the original plaster, the earth pressed into that mould to form the kernel, or _nocciolo_, so as both to obtain lightness and to strengthen the cast--the wax cast having been made and the necessary touches given to it by myself--the whole cased in its heavy covering, armed and bound about by irons that it might bear the stream of liquid metal, and placed in the pit and heated to allow the wax to escape from the fissures, then baked that it might become of the consistency required for the operation,--the composition of the metal was prepared, placed in the furnace, and set on fire. after fifteen or twenty hours, the melting was accomplished--an operation easily related, but which was the result of many months of labour and great expense. the valve was then opened, that it might descend into the mould below. the strangeness of the enterprise, the time and sacrifices of those employed in it, the strange and almost mysterious spot where the operation took place, the heat from the furnace-fire, the gases that came from it, the anxiety of the workmen, their extreme fatigue in that decisive moment, the lamp that burned before the crucifix, and prayer that preceded the opening of the valve--all filled me with an undefined sense of the marvellous and unknown, of the fearful and sacred. the valve was opened, the metal flowed down the pipe into the main channel clear and liquid, as all metal is during this process. joy was depicted on all the faces of those anxious persons who had toiled so long on the work. the metal had been already poured into the greater part; the mould, which had resisted well, cased as it was in its thick covering, and bound with hoops of iron, gave no signs of cracking, nor was any noise heard, as not unseldom happens when, as the metal flows in, the air inside has not an easy escape. papi stood upright and beaming, ready to embrace his scholars, when all at once some little violet flames from the mouth of the furnace announced the cooling off of the metal, which gradually slackened its flow and lost its splendour. stupor and depression were depicted on all faces--a mortal pallor, rendered stranger still by the light reflected from the furnace, making them look like spectres. the metal no longer flowed along, but began to drop in flakes like polenta, then became coagulated, and then stopped still. the statue was little more than half cast, and all was lost! at this sight the poor workmen, tired out, and torn with grief, threw themselves on the ground with violent contortions and weeping. i, between stupor and regret for the failure of the work, the seeming despair of those poor people, and the grief--although not visible, but still great--that papi must feel, did not know what to say; it seemed as if my tongue were tied. i wanted to get away from that place of misery: it seemed to me as if those people, master and workmen, must be left alone to give vent to their sorrow. papi came to my rescue. he came up to me, and said that he had promised the grand duke to give him the news of the casting, and that he had hoped to do so himself; but as it had failed, he did not feel courage enough to carry him the bad news, and begged me to do so. he shook hands with me, and turned to take leave of others that he had invited or allowed to be present at the casting. [sidenote: failure of the casting.] the evening was well on when i went to the pitti. i spoke to paglianti, the royal valet of the grand duke, and asked if i could be permitted to have an audience. paglianti knew me, and also knew that the duke liked to see me. in a few moments i was shown into his study, and briefly told him what had happened. according to his wont, he listened thoughtfully and attentively, but did not seem disturbed by it. one would have thought that he was listening to a thing that might be anticipated as possible or probable. then he began to speak-- "poor papi! poor man! who knows how disappointed he must have felt, and how miserable he is now? and your work, too, which gave you so much trouble--all is lost! i feel deeply for your misfortune and that poor man's unhappiness. let us think about consoling him. return to him, and tell him in my name to be of good cheer, for there is a remedy for everything, and that i am certain he has nothing to reproach himself with; for, when one has taken every possible precaution to secure success in the execution of anything, and notwithstanding all, the work does not turn out well, no one can blame him for it, and i least of any one. tell him that battles are won and lost in the same way. sometimes even a mistake makes one win, and one can lose in spite of every forecast. tell him this and more, all that comes into your head, to comfort him, and speak in my name. go at once to him, console him, and your words will bring him a little calm. i am certain that you will do him a great deal of good, and that he may afterwards be able to rest to-night; but i am sure that if you do not speak to him, the poor man will not sleep." [sidenote: grand duke sends me to console papi.] i went almost at a run, and from palazzo pitti to the via cavour is a good bit of way. i was all in a perspiration. i knocked at his door, and after a time his maid-servant appeared. "who is it?" says she. "it is i; open the door." "oh, is it you, signor professor?" "yes, it is i; open the door, i have a word to say to your master." "the master is in bed; you could speak to him to-morrow." "no; i must do so now. if he is in bed, no matter; he will be glad all the same." "but if he is asleep, do you want to wake him?" "asleep!" said i; "is he asleep?" [sidenote: i find papi asleep.] "yes; he is asleep, i assure you. he has been asleep more than two hours, he was so tired when he came home." "well, then, since you assure me that he is asleep, my commission is at an end; and when he wakes up, which will probably be to-morrow morning, you may tell him that i had come in a great hurry to say two words to him that contained the power of making him sleep, but having found him in his first sleep, i shall tell him another time, although they may then seem quite stale." to speak sincerely, such an extraordinary feat i have never been able to explain. to sleep after a similar misfortune--to go to sleep at once, immediately, two hours after, at his usual hour, the hour when those who have nothing on their minds sleep! and yet, now that i think of it, napoleon slept on the night that preceded one of his greatest battles. so at least he wrote in his biography, and because it is printed, a great number of simple-hearted people believe in it as they do in the gospel; and you, gentle reader, do you believe it? "_mi, no!_" as sior tonin bonagrazia would say. it has been necessary to make this digression on character,--that is to say, on the difference between those who acquire calmness by virtue of their reason, and those whose senses are obtuse to all passions--differences which are visible to any one who observes with care, and that escape many, indeed most people who do not think. let the young artist be persuaded that the study and observation of the true nature of love and human passions are most essential. let them give up all thoughts of seeing these expressions in their models. one's studio models are common people, who certainly have their feelings and passions, but they are generally vulgar; and in any case, during the time that they are posing as models, they are thinking of everything except the moral condition of mind of the person they are representing. one may answer, "we know this; the artist should himself give the expression required by his subject." quite right; but how can the artist seize hold of the right expression if first he has not seen it in life, and studied with attention beyond words? then it is evident to me, and other works show it without my words, that not a few artists expect and insist on finding expression in their models. i remember an artist who flew into a passion because his model did not assume an expression of grief. the model naturally laughed louder and louder, every time this simpleton said, "don't laugh; be serious and sad; i want you to express grief." [sidenote: study of expression from nature.] it is true that this kind of study may occasion some little inconvenience--as, for instance, one may pass for being very stupid, because absorbed in observing and committing to memory, and hearing nothing that has been talked about. one may answer at random, and be extremely ridiculous. one may appear as a somewhat offensive admirer, and give umbrage to some jealous husband. one may even pass for a scatter-brain and imbecile. but have patience! with time and practice the artist will gain his point, and be able to study as much as he wishes, while assuming an air of indifference that will shelter him from the above-mentioned misconceptions. [sidenote: a circe at a ball.] [sidenote: a lesson.] he may, however, fall into other mistakes; and i here take note of them that he may avoid so doing. one evening i was at a ball at the palazzo torlonia at rome. i have no fancy for balls, but i like to see a great many people,--beautiful ladies, elegant dresses, and naked arms,--and more than all, the expression of eyes now languid, now animated,--smiles now ingenuous, now coquettish,--the weariness of the fathers, and the eager concern of the mammas,--the reckless joy of the don giovanni _in erba_, and the deceitful, washed-out look of the don giovanni _in ritiro_. it is a pleasant as well as useful study, as long as one does not change parts, and instead of a spectator become an actor in the scene. the "lime-twigs are spread out, the little owls are at their places; so beware, ye blackbirds, not to be caught." there i stood; the painter podesti, with whom i had come to the ball, had left me, carried away by the attractions of the card-table. in one of the many rooms open for the circulation of the company, and for the repose of dancers and those not dancing, seated on one of the divans i saw a young woman of singular beauty. she was about thirty: several gentlemen surrounded her like a garland, and she had now for one, now for another, some trivial gay word; but in strange contrast with her careless words and smiles was her austere brow, and the haughty looks that came from her eyes. the turn of her head was stately and attractive; and a clasp of diamonds that was fastened in her dark shining hair flashed every time she moved. i never saw a more assassinating beauty than hers! leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room, studying that face with its strangely variable expression, all the women of history and fable with which this singular beauty had affinity rose before my mind. less full of passion than norma, less ferocious than medea, almost helen, and, without an _almost_, a circe,--in fact, one of those women who promise one paradise and prepare one an _inferno_--capable of killing the body, the soul, and the memory of a man. when i had got so far in my reflections, the young lady rose, and coming straight towards me, she said these simple words--"_monsieur, tandis que vous pensiez, je ne sais pas à quoi, la cire a coulé tout à son aise sur voire habit_"--and she passed on slowly, demolishing in two words my castles in the air. i found, in fact, that the shoulder and sleeve of my dress-coat were covered with wax, to say nothing of the suppressed laughter of the beautiful circe. of two things one must therefore be warned--to put one's self out of the dangerous proximity of lights, and to be careful to look at people with some reserve. chapter xvi. on the study of expression from life--the care one must take in making studies from life--a genre picture and raphael's cartoon of the "massacre of the innocents "--i lose myself in london--the housemaid at hotel granara--the inconvenience of being ignorant and absent-minded--ristori and piccolomini in london--the cartoons of raphael at hampton court--fantasy runs away with me--a curious but just law--the result of fasting--the villa of quarto and a prince's "early hour"--again of prince demidoff. but it is time to return to the point i started from, and to speak of the study of character and spontaneous expression from life. in fact it was in london that i had occasion to see a picture of extraordinary beauty for strength and truth of expression, in which the result of that study was clearly demonstrated. this picture, on exhibition at the school or academy of fine arts, was of small dimensions; the subject, a familiar one, or, as it is usually called, _genre_, was as follows: to the right of the person facing the picture is a gentleman's country-house, and outside by the garden-gate a mother is seated near her little girl, who is ill, and reclines in an arm-chair, supported by pillows. the mother has left off working, and looks anxiously at the pale exhausted girl, whose eyes are sunk deep in their sockets, and who smiles and looks languidly at two little children, a boy and girl, little peasants, strong, healthy, and robust, who are dancing, and have evidently been invited to do so by the parents of the little invalid. it is autumn, the hour a sad one. the last rays of the sun are gilding the dead leaves on the trees and on the bushes. on the left you see the father in close conversation with the doctor, questioning him with anxious eyes, whilst he, very serious and sad, hardly dares look at the unhappy father. to speak the truth, when _genre_ pictures are so full of interest and life as this, i prefer them to all the gods of olympus. but, generally, they are entirely wanting in this first quality, and abound in the second, which becomes vulgarity; and so the foundation of art, which is the beauty of truth, is wanting, and only the "business" remains, with its puerile attractions. [sidenote: the national gallery in london.] i saw many other works of art, both in painting and sculpture, at this exhibition of living english artists, but none of them compared with that marvellous work. i do not remember the name of its author, and much i regret it; but i have given a minute and exact description of it. in the national gallery, rich in pictures of the italian school, i admired a marvellous cartoon of raphael's, slightly coloured, of the "massacre of the innocents." it is jealously guarded under glass. of the beauty of this work as to form, i do not speak--it is raphael's, and that is enough; but what most struck me was the brutal movement of murdering soldiers, the desperate convulsive resistance of the mothers, pressing to their breasts the little babes, whilst they scratch and tear at the faces of the executioners; and it would seem as if one heard their sharp screams mingled with the cries of the murdered infants. the calm and flowing grace that are the characteristic notes of that divine genius, do not appear in this; but instead one sees and hears _parole di dolore, accenti d'ira, voci alte e fioche_, of the desperate mothers. those who have not seen this cartoon and the others at hampton court, of which i will soon speak, cannot entirely appreciate raphael. [sidenote: i lose my way in london.] i advise young artists who want to go to london to learn a little of the language of the country; they will find themselves the better for it. it happened to me, who knew nothing of it, one day to lose myself in that interminable city, and another day, very little to my taste, to find myself carried off in the train to scotland. if, therefore, they learn a little english, they will understand that leicester square is pronounced _lester squere_. as i said, i lost myself in london, and this was how. i lodged at the hotel granara. granara is an honest genoese, who knows how to attend to his own affairs, as all the genoese do, and more than that, knows how to secure the goodwill of his customers, almost all of whom are italians. his hotel was at that time, in , in leicester square. it was my habit then, as always, to go out very early in the morning and take a little turn before breakfast. i made it a study to observe well all the turnings, the names of the streets and their peculiarities, so as to be able to return home, but did not succeed. i tried again and again for about two hours, before asking my way, to see if it were possible for me to find a street, a name, or a sign that i had seen before, but all was in vain. i was tired, had had no food, and had not a _soldo_ in my pocket; and although i had with me the key of the place where i kept my money, this was of no avail in getting me a breakfast. driven by hunger i put aside my pride, or rather my pretence, of finding my way to the inn, and asked a policeman. i asked him both in italian and in french, but he did not understand me, and presented me to another, but with the same result. there i beheld myself lost in that immense city, without a penny, and very hungry. it must be admitted that my position was a rather serious one--not that those excellent policemen did not perfectly understand that i had lost the way to my hotel, and were most desirous of putting me on the right road to it, but they did not know how, as they were not acquainted with the name of the square that i inquired for. at last, and it was quite time, one of them took out of his pocket his note-book and pencil and gave it to me, saying in good french, "_Écrivez le lieu où vous êtes logé._" i had hardly written the first word when the policeman quickly said, "lester squere?" "it may be so," said i; but to make sure i finished writing out the address, adding even the name of the hotel, and showed it to him, to which the policeman said, "yes, very well." he took the paper and begged me to follow him to another policeman at the end of the street, to whom he consigned me and the paper, and having exchanged a word or two with him, returned to his post. the new guard, without uttering a word, took me to another and consigned me to him, and so on, until in about half an hour i was reconducted home. [sidenote: it is best to speak english in england.] you understand me, therefore, in england the knowledge of a little of the english language will do no harm, and not be _de trop_, and by it you may avoid another inconvenience, that of finding a teacher at the wrong time and place. let me explain myself. the maid-servant who had the care of my room got it into her head that she would teach me to speak english, and she set herself to work to teach me with a method entirely her own. she seized hold of a chair and called it by name, then the chest of drawers, then the bed, then the looking-glass, &c., and she insisted that i should repeat these names after her in her language. the thing in itself was innocent enough, but foolish, as both she and i lost our time by it. for me it was not so much matter, but for her the neglect of her duties might have lost her her situation; and therefore, with the language common to all--that is, by gesticulations--i made her understand that she must stop her lessons. let the reader not think, however, that i refused that good, and, let me add, beautiful teacher in a rough way; no indeed, i am not a satrap. i said to her--(beg pardon!) i gesticulated all this to her nicely, and with a good grace. one must always have every care to treat women in a gentle and respectful manner. [sidenote: visit to hampton court.] here is another story, always _àpropos_ of the necessity there is of knowing at least a little of the english language. hampton court is a palace of the queen's, about an hour's distance from london by rail. it is open to the public on holidays. the palace is beautiful, and contains many precious things; the country about is green, fresh, and pleasant: therefore, as can easily be imagined, there is always a large concourse of people. i wished also to procure myself this outing; so, betaking myself to the northern station, i took my ticket for hampton court, and got into the train. in that country one goes along at the pace of twenty kilometres an hour. enchanted by the sight of the beautiful country clothed in its deep-green mantle,--so new to us who are accustomed to ours, so much more pallid, and burnt in streaks by the greater fierceness of the sun,--i forgot the pace we were going at, paid no attention when we stopped, and did not hear them call out the name hampton court. i suppose similar things must happen to the _touristes_ who visit our italy. let us imagine one of them to have taken a ticket for certaldo, desiring to visit boccaccio's house; the train stops, and the guard, with a stentorian voice, more calculated to slur over than pronounce the name, calls out, "who is for certaldo?" (_chi è peccettardo_). naturally the _touriste_ does not understand, and allows himself to be carried on maybe even as far as siena. but this is not so bad as my case, for i ran the risk of being taken on to edinburgh. fortunately i began to suspect that i had passed by the station where i ought to have got out, and asked. the answer was, that we had passed hampton court some time since. [sidenote: am carried on beyond hampton court.] "what must i do?" i asked. "stop at the first station; and this evening, by the edinburgh train, you can return to london." "are there no other trains before this one, that i may return to london during the day to dine?" "no." "many thanks!" i got down at the first station, paid the difference in my ticket, and, in the very worst of humours, took a turn in the little village or hamlet,--i did not even care to ask its name. i had some wretched food, and everything seemed to me bad and ugly. yes, yes; a little of the language of the country is even more necessary than bread or than money, for the english--and i think they are right--speak no other language than their own. but they go so far as to pretend, when they come amongst us, that we should speak english like them; and here they are in the wrong. when i got home to the hotel in the evening, avvocato fornetti and caraffa, my friends and companions at the hotel, came to me smiling, and said, "have you amused yourself?" [sidenote: piccolomini and ristori.] i said, "yes;" i did not tell them what had happened, for they were the kind of men who would have ridiculed me for a long time. beyond these few little mishaps, my time passed most pleasantly in london. my fellow-citizen marietta piccolomini was singing at the queen's opera house with giulini and belletti. ristori was acting at the ateneo italiano. there were very often concerts of music, instrumental and vocal, where bottesini, giovacchino bimboni, and the violinist favilli played. i knew de vincenzi, who was afterwards in the ministry; and i again met count piero guicciardini, count arrivabene, the _maestro_ fiori, that scatter-brain of a fabio uccelli; monti, the milanese sculptor; our fedi; bulletti, a carver in wood; romoli, the painter and sculptor; and others,--in fact, a perfect colony of italians. among the tragedies which ristori acted in at that time, and which i already knew, i saw one that i liked extremely. it was the 'camma,' by professor giuseppe montanelli,--in my belief, a very fine work, and superlatively well interpreted, in its proud and passionate character, by the first actress, signora ristori. i heard the signora piccolomini, with her usual grace and intelligence, sing in the 'traviata' and the 'figlia del reggimento.' although these entertainments, be they prose or music, were deserving of all praise, yet the price of the entrance-ticket, according to us italians, was enormously dear, being one pound sterling, which is equal to twenty-five _lire_ and twenty _centimes_ of our money. may i be forgiven if that is little? one must also take note that at that time, a. d. , everything was done in a small way,--reasonable incomes, few requirements, small expenditures, and, smallest of all, taxation. the ciphers of millions in the great book of 'debit and credit' had not yet been invented; the floating debt did not even exist in dreams. so that thirty _lire codine_ at that time represented nearly a hundred francs of to-day. who is there (i mean amongst us) who would wish to spend a hundred _lire_ for a 'traviata'? not i, indeed; for i remember, when i was an _abonné_ at the cocomero (now niccolini), to have heard ristori for four _soldi_ a-night, and she acted equally well, without taking into account her youth and beauty, that inexorable time will not respect, even in celebrities. [sidenote: prices at the opera.] "then you went to a foolish expense; and you contradict yourself without even turning your page, for you say that you would not spend the money, and at the same time you inform us that you heard ristori act in 'camma'!" i answer, "'camma' cost me absolutely nothing, as the signora ristori, who is as amiable as she is eminent as an _artiste_, favoured me with an entrance-ticket;" and so i clear up the apparent contradiction that the critical reader was in such haste to bring forward. go on, however, and look sharply through these papers, where you will find something of everything. moreover, you will be often bored, but i hope you will never find any contradictions. i have also a very good habit--that is, of re-reading what i have written: and then, with a little art, one succeeds in putting everything nicely in its place. you understand? then we will push on. [sidenote: hampton court.] in order not to fail a second time in my intention of seeing the royal villa of hampton court, i wrote that name on a card and showed it to the guard every time we stopped. i got there at last. the place all about is very pleasant, with a wide, clear horizon, for the fogs only have their home in london. the palace, as may be imagined, is large and majestic. i don't remember the style of its architecture, and don't want to refer to the easy expedient of consulting a guide-book. i promised myself that i would write my life, the thoughts that came to me one after another, without help, trusting only to memory. so i have done thus far, and intend doing so to the end. the villa, as i have said, is majestic, enclosed on all sides by gardens and orchards. the interior consists of innumerable halls richly decorated with paintings, somewhat out of repair, as they are no longer used, it would appear, as a royal residence. people crowd more particularly to the queen's own private apartments, to see her sitting-room, and even her bedroom with its bed-furniture, and the thousand rich, pretty, and curious things with which these rooms are filled. the rest of the place, or the greater part of it, such as the gallery of pictures and cartoons, is generally deserted. yet the english are great lovers of art; we see them with great interest frequent our galleries in rome, florence, venice, and naples. but perhaps the people brought by curiosity to hampton court belong to the lower class, which has not in london the feeling for art that the people even of the lowest class have in italy. in a great long hall, like a gallery, i saw the eight cartoons of raphael that were made for the arrases in the vatican. they consist of "st paul preaching to the athenians;" "st peter and the miracle of the fish;" "st peter and ananias;" "st peter receiving from christ the charge of guarding his sheep;" "peter and john healing the lame man at the gates of the temple;" "elymas the sorcerer punished by losing his sight;" and others that i do not remember. he who has never seen these cartoons, and the "massacre of the innocents" above mentioned, can form no idea of the strength of raphael in that grandly fierce style initiated by michael angelo, who spread therein so broad a sail as to make him terrible to the beholder, and to occasion the shipwreck of many in a smaller craft, who perished miserably, desirous of following him on that fearful ocean. [sidenote: hyde park.] there are other cartoons in the same gallery by mantegna representing the "triumph of caesar." mantegna, as all know, as an artist is an imitator of the antique: the execution of the work which is merely the material part alone is his own, for he took the conception, character, and style, in generalities and detail, from the antique. besides the treasures of art contained in the london museums--and one may also call hampton court a museum--there are the beautiful public walks called parks. the largest, richest in avenues, fields, and lakes peopled by innumerable ducks and fish, is called hyde park. this is the promenade where all the fashionable world meet. ladies and gentlemen on horseback dash down the interminable avenues of this park, giving loose rein to their fiery steeds. it is a fine sight to see these animals, so elegant in form, and at the same time full of fire, pawing the ground, neighing, and fretting at the bit, from their desire to be off: but still more beautiful to look at are those gentle ladies on their backs; and when they are going at full pace, bending slightly forward on their fiery steeds, their flowing skirts, in ample undulating lines, giving a slender, flexible look to their figures, you feel carried away, and as if you would like to follow them in that rapid, anxious race, where peril changes into pleasure, and where the inebriation of the senses becomes ideality. such is the fascination youth, beauty, and strength produce on the mind and senses of all natures susceptible of feeling. it is a pungent pleasure; the soul struggles in these meshes of flowers, and their perfume inebriates and captivates it. i beg pardon of the reader, if, for an instant attracted by this race of beautiful ladies, my head galloped away with them. another time i will hold the reins tighter; and it ought not to be difficult to stop this little horse of mine, sixty years old. [sidenote: distribution of crimean medals.] hyde park, as i have said, is larger than the two others, st james's park and regent's park, and is about five miles in circumference, which seems a good deal; but so it is. these country spaces in the middle of london are, as have been justly said, the lungs of the great city. by means of these green oases, impregnated with oxygen, the air of that gigantic body of london, where millions of men swarm like ants, is constantly renovated. these parks are rich in timber, and flowers are there cultivated with every art. there are very few guards, for great respect is shown for the laws prohibiting the damaging of the plants. a curious but very just penalty is inflicted by them, and this is it: if signor tizio has damaged a plant, or only picked a flower, signor tizio, according to the gravity of the mischief he has done, is prohibited from entering those precincts for fifteen or twenty days. and this is not enough--it would be too little; his name is posted up to view at all the park entrances, specifying the damage he has done and the penalty inflicted on him, that everybody who goes there may read and laugh! i was present in hyde park at the distribution of medals to the troops on their return from the crimea. that great national _fête_ was a splendid success--the whole army in arms and full uniform, every part of it in its proper place, cavalry, artillery, marines, and infantry. at the end of a large camp a throne was erected for the queen, her children, and her husband, prince albert. the ministers, court dignitaries, and lords surrounded her. the ceremony was a long one. the troops had been on foot since early morning, and many were the numbers who received medals. the sun beat down with great force on our heads, for it was in the month of june. it is a fine sight to see the youth of england, tall, square-shouldered young fellows, with upright bearing and brilliant colouring; but notwithstanding all this, it would seem that for all their strength of nature they cannot endure hunger. i was present at some little occurrences that astonished me extremely: two or three of those young men fainted as if they had been delicate girls, although they had herculean chests and arms. but so it is: the englishman, when the hour has come, requires absolutely to have his tea; if this fails, he can no longer stand on his feet. [sidenote: englishmen must have tea.] that this must really be the case, was demonstrated to me by the affectionate solicitude shown by their comrades and the people carefully conveying these fainting youths to the ambulances. instead of this with us italians, we see young men of twenty bear long marches, discomfort, and hunger with a bright face. it is the difference of nature and habits in the two nations. i do not mean, indeed, to say that we do not feel hunger--in fact, i can say for myself that i feel it most ferociously; and if this expression seems exaggerated, i will correct myself and add, brutally and insolently, and will recount a little anecdote in proof of my appetite, especially after fasting. it is a trifling matter, that goes as far back as thirty years. at that time of juvenile effervescence one wishes for much and feels much, and is not very fastidious about ways and means. the fact is a curious one, and, to say the truth, would not be very pleasant for me to narrate were it not that it is peculiar, and with the touch of a brush paints to the life the character of my early youth. i had quite forgotten it, and it really would have been a mistake to do so. those fasting english soldiers reminded me of it, and i am very glad of it. [sidenote: visit to quarto.] the benevolent reader must betake himself back to the time when i was twenty-six years of age, which, in a young artist, sometimes means being possessed of twenty-six devils. true it is that with time and increase of years these devils, alas! diminish. therefore, at my present stand-point, i feel myself absolutely free of them, and could bear fasting and hunger without dreaming of committing the impertinence that, without other preamble, i am about to narrate. lorenzo mariotti, an agent of the russian government, as i have before mentioned, brought me a paper, on which were written the following words:-- "professor duprè is requested to come at an early hour to-morrow morning to quarto. a. demidoff." quarto is an enchanting villa that was afterwards in the possession of the grand duchess maria of russia; at that time, it was the property of prince anatolio demidoff, who had bought it from prince girolamo buonaparte, the father of princess matilde. it is four miles distant from florence, on the skirts of the steep hill of monte morello, enclosed by beautiful gardens and a fine park. i therefore betook myself there at an early hour; and in the hopes of quickly despatching my business, i had not thought of breakfasting before starting, but merely took a cup of coffee. i got into the carriage, and arrived there at about eight o'clock. it was a good season of the year, being may, and the day was a splendid one; in its quietness and fragrance it reminded me of those most sweet verses of the divine poet:-- "e quale, annunziatrice degli albori, l'aura di maggio movesi ed olezza, tutta impregnata dall'erbe e da fiori."[ ] [ ] "and as the harbinger of early dawn, the air of may doth move and breathe out fragrance, impregnate all with herbage and with flowers." --dante: _purgatorio_, canto xxiv. so i tasted the voluptuousness of these first warm days in the pure quietness of our hills, and i looked forward to a short conversation with the prince (as i imagined the motive of his summons), and a speedy return to florence. i dismounted, and told the coachman to wait; he lighted his cigar, took a turn round the villa, and then placed himself in the shade. i asked for the prince, and was answered that he was not up. then i feared that i should be obliged to wait; but the message was, "at an early hour." who knows, however, what is an early hour to a gentleman? i found out afterwards, as the reader will soon hear. [sidenote: hunger at quarto.] i walked about in the apartment, in the court, in the garden, and in the park, and from time to time i came back to see if the prince had asked for me; but the prince had not yet called. two good hours were already past. the pure air of the beautiful country, the pleasant shade in the park, the odour of the violets and roses, all had served to sharpen my appetite. i risked asking a servant if he could give me some breakfast, but he answered that no one could have anything to eat before his excellency had ordered his breakfast. "and is it late before his excellency orders his breakfast?" "ah! that is as it happens,--at mid-day, at one o'clock--when he thinks best." so saying he left me, and i began my walks again. the beautiful country seemed to me less beautiful, the shady avenues of the park had assumed a certain sadness and obnoxious freshness, the odour from the flowers made my head giddy! what was i to do? return to florence? it was far. and what then of the prince's message? i did not wish to fail to meet his invitation. i reflected a little, and then resolved to make a somewhat rash attempt, but which succeeded admirably. i had caught sight of the breakfast-room, with its table all set out with cups, plates, glasses, cakes, confectionery--in fact with everything, even with flowers in crystal vases that were a wonder to look at. i went into the room and rang the bell with violence; in an instant a servant appeared dressed in black, to whom i turned, and with my head well in the air pronounced in a harsh firm voice the one word-- "breakfast!" [sidenote: i order breakfast for myself.] [sidenote: after a good breakfast.] the servant disappeared, and returned almost on the instant with a silver soup-tureen, which he placed on the table before me, and then stationed himself behind me. two other servants brought me ham, tongue, _caviale_, veal cutlets, cold galantine, and then asked if i wanted madeira, bordeaux, or marsala. i was satisfied with the bordeaux, and also partook of a plate of strawberries; and as a last sacrifice, i sipped a cup of mocha coffee--really inebriating--lighted my cigar, and lost myself in the thickest part of the park. i was really beaming. i felt restored in body, and in a state of perfect wellbeing, feeling a certain sort of complacency with my spirit, my genius, my quickness--my impertinence, let us say--which, _au fond_, was of good service to me and did nobody any harm. carlo bini assures us that the prison so sharpened his brains that it was as much use to him in expressing his ideas as style was:-- "la prigione è una lima sì sottile, che aguzzando il cervel ne fa uno stile;" and does not hunger, i say, sharpen the brain? i could cite a thousand examples of well-known geniuses who have grown up in the midst of privations and hunger, but i do not wish to be pedantic. this i know full well, that i should never have been capable of such an escapade had i not had that formidable appetite, nor should i have had the idea of satisfying it in that way. necessity sharpens the intellect to invent and to act; health and physical wellbeing kindle and spur on the fancy through flowering pathways of flattering hopes. who knows with how many beautiful _grilli_ and beautiful bright-coloured butterflies, swift of flight, a little glass of bordeaux, or better still, a glass of our good chianti wine, has brightened the life of poets and artists? i found myself in one of those beautiful dreams. my mind wandered from one thing to another; the past and the future were mixed up together. history and fable, religion and romance, light and serious love, the fantastic and the positive, fine statues, fine commissions, friends distinguished for rectitude and genius,--all passed before me. the flowers in the garden seemed to me more beautiful and more odorous than ever, the sky brighter and purer; and never did the hills of artimino, careggi, or fiesole, populous with villas, seem to me so fair. i never gave a thought to the prince or to his having sent for me, any more than if it had been all a dream. and all _was_ a dream; for i fell asleep seated on one of the sofa-chairs made of reeds, and in my sleep my thoughts went back to those beautiful legends of history and fable--beautiful women, fine statues, sweet friends--and to the delightful country, when a slight touch on my shoulder woke me from my placid sleep. it was one of the prince's servants, who was in quest of me to take me to him. to judge from their dress, the prince and princess must have only been up a short time. the prince was standing; he had a cup in his hand, and dipped some pieces of toasted bread into it. from the odour, i became aware that it was _consommé_. the princess was seated, turning over the leaves of a book of prints. she was of rare beauty, and the time, the place, and mild season of the year made her seem even more beautiful. she ought therefore to have seemed and to have been an object of love and profound admiration to her happy husband; and if you add to the attractions of youth and beauty, grace of education, culture of mind, and _prestige_ of birth, the affection of the man who possessed her should have verged on idolatry. but, alas! in life such perfect happiness never lasts; and the reader remembers what i told of the end of this union. [sidenote: prince demidoff's commission.] "my dear duprè, you have arrived a little late, have you not? i sent for you, but you had not yet come." "your excellency, let me tell you. i arrived betimes--in fact, very early, as your excellency indicated i should do in your note; but----" and here i told him the whole story already known to my reader; and i cannot describe how delighted he and the princess were with it. now and again the prince held out his hand to me, saying, "bravo! in faith, i like this. bravo!" then he told me what was the object of his sending for me. it was to give me an order for a life-size statue of napoleon i., in the very dress which he possessed, and would furnish me with. he would procure me a good mask and some authentic portraits; but he begged me to make it in the shortest possible time. it was very evident that he wanted to please the princess, because whilst he was speaking to me he looked with loving intensity at her, and from time to time caressed her with a gentleness almost childlike. [sidenote: prince demidoff's character.] it has been said that this man was extravagant and almost brutal; but when i remember the expression of radiant joy he had on his face when he was looking at his wife while proposing to give her a statue, as if it had been only a flower or a fan--when i recall that i have seen him shed warm tears for the death of bartolini, and when i remember his great charity in founding and maintaining the asylum of saint niccolo,--i cannot but deplore the bad feeling and injustice of those who take pleasure in blackening his character, in misinterpreting facts, and maligning his intentions. the order for the statue of napoleon proved a failure, as also for that of the princess, owing to the separation of husband and wife. and now let me go back to my place, for oh, how i have wandered away from the fainting young soldiers in hyde park! the exhibition of the models competing for the duke of wellington's monument was about to be opened, so i thought it better to return home--all the more, because i wished to stop in paris on my way back, as i had been in too great a hurry to see it when i came through. by this time, nothing that there was to be seen in london had escaped me, and i could describe with great precision the docks, the tunnel, westminster, st paul's, the tower of london, the houses of parliament, &c., &c.; but to what use? are there not guide-books? and my impressions are many, it is true, and not of the common run; but they would require no little space, and this would change the simple design and form of these papers. [sidenote: examination of the models in london.] two or three days before the opening of the exhibition of these models, the minister of public instruction, accompanied by the royal commissioner and other officials, visited the great hall at westminster, where the models were exhibited. some english and a few foreign artists thought proper to accompany the minister when he went to inspect these works. as for me, i felt no such wish; and not wanting to be thought rude, and as neither the commissioner nor any of the people with the minister knew who i was, i reclined in my shirt-sleeves on one of the cases belonging to these monuments, and so passed for a common workman in the hall. the commissioner, in fact, only knew me as a person of trust, who had some ability in restoring a work in plaster. i hope the reader has not forgotten that little affair. i was consoled, however, by seeing that the minister stopped some time to look at my work, although he passed by others in too much haste, excusable in many instances, but not in some, where attention and praise were merited. be it as it may, i was well pleased that he stopped before mine--and all the more so, that i did not form a part of his excellency's suite. in fact i have been always very slow in putting myself forward with ministers of public works, and i don't know to what saint i owe this feeling of respect for the ministry. with certain members i have had frank cordial relations, before they became excellencies; afterwards, when once they were in the ministry, as if by a sort of magic they became for me such respectable personages that i retired into myself, and kept most willingly to my own place. then those poor gentlemen have so much to do that, without a doubt, if you wanted to see them, you would be told that they could not receive you. so the fact of it is, that i have so much respect for them, and just so much for myself, as not to be willing to annoy them, and there is not a minister of public works who can say, "this fellow has bored me about this or that thing." true it is, that by the grace of god i have never felt the necessity of doing so. once only, and that not on my own account, but from a sentiment of dignity and justice, negotiations were entered into with the ministers natoli, correnti, and bonghi, as to the completion of a base for my tazza, which i mentioned some time back; and as it just fits in here, i shall now bring this story to a close. the subject is a delicate, and for me a trying one, but i shall discuss it with calmness, and in as few short words as truth and reason can be clothed. [sidenote: the base of the tazza.] [sidenote: i leave london.] the base of the tazza that i had modelled was either to be cast in bronze or cut in marble, and the last was decided on. whilst they were looking for a pure piece of close-grained marble, the revolution took place, and the grand duke left. my model had already been paid for, and i hoped that the present government, sooner or later, would have confirmed the commission; but i hoped in vain. after several years had passed, i asked my friend commendatore gotti, director of the royal galleries, to make known my claim to the ministry, which was done; but i obtained nothing. later, professor dall'ongaro spoke about it to correnti, the minister, and also obtained nothing. at last commendatore d'ancona was most pressing in speaking to bonghi the minister, and betti the secretary; but then came the fall of the minister with his cabinet, and i was really tired out by the whole thing, with its long, wearisome, and useless negotiations. i must add, that as the model had already been paid for, the expense for executing it was all that was required; and yet, notwithstanding all these recommendations, this little sum was not granted, and i was not given a hearing. and here it is to the purpose to remind the ministers of our government that i for more than fifteen years have occupied the gratuitous post of master of finishing; and as in the statute creating this office it is declared that the royal government is not wanting in funds to pay the professors who shall have done the most for the good of their young pupils, it is to the purpose, i repeat, to remind them of the office that i have filled, and to declare to them that the pupils i have taught are now for the most part young living artists--some of them already professors, _cavalieri_, and masters in the schools--and that meanwhile i not only have not obtained a recompense, but even my demand, which to my belief was but a matter of pure justice, was not even listened to. but enough of this. i return to london, or rather let me say i leave it, as my work was finished and in place, only waiting for the judges. i therefore packed my trunk, paid my landlord, said good-bye to my friends, and got into the train, thinking of that blessed channel where i had suffered so much in crossing. chapter xvii. my father's death--a turn in the omnibus--the ferrari monument--i keep the "sappho" for myself--the "tired bacchante" and the little model--raphael and the fornarina--the madonna and bas-reliefs at santa croce and cavaliere sloane--my daughter amalia and her works--my daughter beppina--description of the bas-relief on the faÇade of santa croce--i am taken for the wrong person by the holy father pius ix.--marshal haynau--professor bezzuoli and haynau's portrait. my stay in london had been rather a long one, but it was necessary for the restorations (and what restorations!) of my work, and also to see the wonders of art collected by that powerful nation, by force of will, money, and time. i stayed there about two months; and notwithstanding the many and novel distractions which that vast city offered, and the good health i enjoyed at that time under a climate so different from ours, i felt every day more and more keenly the ardent desire to see my family, so that when i arrived in paris i delayed very little. the letters which i received from home breathed the same affectionate longing that i felt myself; and the gay, thoughtless life of paris, instead of attracting me, disgusted me. my daughters by their mother's side in our little parlour were always present to me; and knowing their dispositions, and the loving wisdom of the mother, i felt that tender, holy joy which is difficult to describe, but such as a loving and beloved father feels for his dear ones. i had lost two years ago my poor father from cholera. the poor old man had at first resisted the fury of that tremendous disease. he lived at the carra, beyond porta al prato. all around death reaped its victims,--young and old, poor and rich; it spared no one. almost every evening, at dusk, i went to him to assure myself of his health. one evening i found him unwell and in bed; but he had no fever, and his servant-maid, a good girl, served him with affectionate zeal. i left him quiet. on going away i urged her to be attentive to my father through fear of the epidemic then raging. the girl assured me that i need not doubt of her being so, and that i might be tranquil. the next evening i went back to see him: he was still in bed, and was better; but he told me that he stayed there as a precaution, and that he was to get up the following day, having the physician's permission to do so. the door had been opened for me by a little boy, to whom he gave lessons in drawing and ornamentation--gabriello maranghi--who to-day is one of our ornamental marble-workers. [sidenote: my father's illness--death of rosa.] "oh, rosa," i said to my father; "where is she?" "rosa, poor thing, died this morning. she came back from marketing, put down her things, went into her room, and i have not seen her since. they carried her away a short time ago!"--and the poor old man was much moved. this sudden news of a death so instantaneous upset me and frightened me for my poor father. it was the same whether he stayed there or was carried elsewhere, for in every district they died in the same way. i went away sad at heart. the next day he got up, and was pretty well, even gay--in fact, for several days continued well, and went on with his work as usual. one morning--it was sunday--my wife, who had got up before me, came into the bedroom, waked me up, and said-- [sidenote: death of my father.] "nanni, get up; father is ill." i looked in my wife's face, and read there the nature and gravity of my poor father's illness. i ran to him; he recognised me, and said-- "my good giannino, you have done well to come quickly to your father; i am so glad to see you before i die." he lived all day, but had spasms of pain and wandered in mind. then he died, and his face became serene, as if he were sleeping peacefully. whoever has lost a father knows the kind of grief it is! as i have said, i stayed but a few days in paris. i saw, on the wing as it were, and without being able to study them, the monuments of art in which that great capital is rich. i repeat, i felt an irresistible desire to return home. of the artists, i saw only gendron, whom i had known in florence; anieni, a roman; and prince joseph poniatowsky, then in his prime. what was most to my taste was to ride up and down the streets of paris in an omnibus to get an idea of the movement and grandeur of that city; but an incident occurred to me that prevented my having that desire any longer, and i should have put an end to this going up and down even if i had not already determined upon my departure. this was what happened. i had just come from a walk in the champs elysées, when i saw the omnibus which goes from the barrière du trône to the madeleine standing still. i said to myself: "very good; i will get in here, go through all the boulevards as far as the barrière, and without even descending, turn about again, and when i get back to the rue du helder (where i lodged), i will get out and go home." the omnibus started, drove through all the boulevards des italiens, des capucines, poissonnière, &c., and arrived at the barrière. the passengers got out, the omnibus stopped, and the conductor said to me-- [sidenote: i return to florence.] "_monsieur, descendez, s'il vous plait._" i answered, "_je ne descends pas moi._" "_pourquoi donc?_" "_parce que je retourne sur mon chemin._" the ill-concealed laughter made me aware of my mistake, and the conductor, with good manners, gave me to understand that the drive ended there, and on account of the lateness of the hour there was no return trip. i got out, and was at least four miles from home. to find a carriage, i was obliged to take a long walk towards the centre of paris, and finally found one, and had myself conveyed home, muttering against my own stupidity. the next day, without turning either to the right or to the left, i returned to italy,--to dear, beautiful florence; to the bosom of my family; to my studies; to my works; to my good pupils; to my faithful workmen; and to my dear friends. fortune had favoured me in london: my work had gained one of the first prizes in the competition. another prize was obtained also by professor cambi. i had scarcely got back from london when count ferrari corbelli ordered from me the monument for his wife, the countess berta, whom he had lost a few days before. this work, which he wished to see finished as soon as possible, was the cause of my abandoning the group of the "deluge," which i had already sketched, as i have before stated. the monument was composed of a base, on which was placed the urn containing the body of the deceased. modesty and charity, the principal virtues of the departed countess, stand leaning on the angles of the sarcophagus, and above these the angel of the resurrection points the way to heaven for the soul of the countess, snatched from the love of her husband and children. the monument stands under an arch, on which are three _putti_ who hold up some folds as if they were opening the curtain of heaven. the background is encrusted with lapis-lazuli. this monument is placed in the church of san lorenzo, in the chapel next to the sacristy. my friend augusto conti liked the conception of this monument, but objected to the nudity of the child of charity. i have a sincere respect for his criticism, as i respect also the one he made on the monument to cavour. he is a profound and conscientious critic of art; and besides this, he has had, and has, for me and my family, a truly fraternal love, and i remember with emotion the part which he took during the illness and death of my daughter and my wife. [sidenote: countess ferrari corbelli.] contemporaneously with this work i modelled a "sappho," and put it at once into marble, by order of signor angiolo gatti, a dealer in statues; but it happened that when he should have received the statue he had no funds, and so i sent it to our italian exhibition. the government, which had set apart a sum of money for the acquisition of the best works of art, decided not to take my statue, so i have it by me now. it seems to me (i confess the weakness) as if i had been wronged, so to speak, and as if my poor "sappho" resented this wrong from the new phaons: so i have wished to keep my faith with her, since the desertion of her lover had caused her death; and although i have several times had offers not to be despised, yet i have never been willing to sell her. who can tell where this poor "sappho" will be, and how situated, after my death? [sidenote: model of the "bacchante."] at this same time--that is, in --i made the model of the "tired bacchante"; and the idea of this figure was suggested to me by a little model who was brought to me by her mother, and who had never before been seen naked by any one. the freshness of this young girl, her unspoiled figure, the delicate beauty, somewhat sensual, of her face, suggested as a subject the "tired dancer," which afterwards was converted to a "bacchante"; and as some time before i had made a little statue, representing gratitude, for the signora maria nerli of siena, the general lines of that statuette served me as a sketch for this. but were i to say that it was only the beauty of the model, the subject suggested so spontaneously to me, and the composition already made, that persuaded me to keep the girl and make the statue, i should not be telling the exact truth. the mother of this girl was one of those women who not only throw aside all a mother's duty and responsibility, but despising all decency, show that they are capable of worse things. i tried at first to dissuade her from taking the young girl about to studios, and so forcing her to lose all that a maiden has most precious--modesty; nor was i silent about the perils that she was exposing her to. but my words were thrown away, for she smiled at them as if they were childish: so i kept the young girl and made the statue. i can assure you that she was a good young creature, and when i had finished the model i dismissed her with paternal words. i saw her many years after, so changed and sad, that one could hardly recognise her. she told me her sad story,--a name was on her lips, but a daughter's love made her conceal it. i repeat, she was good, and suffered, but not by any fault of hers. i have never seen her again: perhaps she is dead--the only good thing that can befall any of those unhappy creatures. [sidenote: the nude model.] to some it may seem as if i have been rather tedious about this poor traviata; but most people, i hope, have found my indignation reasonable, for the condition of such a girl as this is most sad and humiliating,--forced by her mother, who ought to be the jealous guardian of the modesty and innocence of her child, to strip herself naked before a man. even though her mother remain there present, it is always a hard thing, and most disagreeable to a young woman jealous of her good name, and dreading the looks and thoughts of the man there before her. it is not even impossible that it may be thought i have studiously and affectedly deplored such cases as these, as if i wished to show myself better than i am. i have no answer to give to any one who thinks thus, for in these papers he will find nothing to justify such an opinion. i only desire to remind the profane in art, that when we have a model before us, our mind and all our strength is so absorbed in our work, and the difficulties are so great in taking from nature just so much as is required for the character, expression, and form of our subject, that nothing else affects us. he who does not credit this is not an artist, and does not feel art. i see a little smile of incredulity, almost of triumph, come over the face of my unbelieving reader, and the old story, so often sung and perhaps exaggerated, of raphael and the fornarina placed before me, to belie my words. this case of raphael and the fornarina was a unique one, and quite different from the ordinary relations that exist between the artist and his models. a model is for us like an instrument or a tool, necessary for our work. if good and beautiful, we prize her and respect her as we would a good tool; if neither beautiful nor good, we bid her be off. the fornarina was beautiful, and perhaps she may have been even good; but unfortunately she was of a sanguine temperament, imaginative, and ardent, as she appears from the portraits raphael has left of her. the graceful nature, the delicate figure of the young artist, and the prestige of his fame, roused the love and ambition of the beautiful trasteverina. "amor che a nullo amato amar perdona,"[ ] "love, that exempts no one beloved from loving," seized hold of that angel and smothered him in its embrace. what has this most fatal story to do with our usual artistic life? to-day there are no more fornarinas, and, above all, there are no raphaels; and if by chance an artist falls in love with his model, why, he marries her, and there is an end of it. in conclusion, a good and beautiful model that willingly and honestly (i use this word for want of a better) does her business, i like and employ; but a simple, good-natured, ignorant young girl forced to this shame by her own mother, irritates me and makes me sad. [ ] dante, inferno, canto v. [sidenote: raphael and the fornarina.] at this time they were making the façade of the church of santa croce, with the most valuable aid of cavaliere sloane, to whom we are chiefly indebted that it was possible to complete this work. in the design of the façade there were bas-reliefs in the arches over the three doors: over the middle door the "triumph of the cross"; over that of the right nave the "vision of constantine"; and over the other, on the left, the "refinding of the cross." i had already made for the façade the madonna, who stands high up over the _cuspide_ of the middle door; and because the subject was dear to me, as also the idea which it should convey, i was content with a price which would barely cover the cost of making it, without counting my work on the model. but these three bas-reliefs were much more arduous work; and as i could not make them at the same rate as i had made the madonna, i refused. cavaliere sloane, however, who much desired that these bas-reliefs should be made, came to me and begged me to accept them. as to the price, he assured me that we should agree, and that he would himself pay it, because he wished that the façade should be made by me. i took time to reply, and reflecting that the three bas-reliefs would take much more time than i had to dispose of, and desiring to help my two clever and affectionate pupils, i proposed to cavaliere sloane to divide this labour into three parts. the larger bas-relief, that over the central door, i would make; the other two, over the lateral doors, should be made, one by sarrocchi of siena, and the other by emilio zocchi of florence. sloane was satisfied with my proposition, but with the understanding that i should be answerable for the excellence of these works, and while i should leave these artists freedom in their conceptions, i should direct them in such conceptions as well as in the execution. this i formally promised to do, and the work was decided upon. [sidenote: bas-reliefs on santa croce.] these bas-reliefs, which i relinquished to my scholars, recall to my mind other works also given up to scholars, but not mine. among these is professor costa of florence. in the beginning of my artistic career, when i was making the "cain" and "abel," "giotto," and "pius ii.," i had also a commission to make a statue representing summer, for one of the four seasons which ornament the palace once called batelli. this commission, though a poor one, i should have executed, because i had engaged to do so, and poor batelli had urged it in a friendly way; but pietro costa, then very young, studious, and needy, begged it of me, and i, with the consent of the person who had given the commission, gave it up to him, and it was a great success. [sidenote: my daughter amalia.] now that i am speaking of my scholars, it is but just that i should mention my daughter amalia. she used at that time to come and see me in my studio with her mother and sisters; and while the little beppina and gigina stayed out in the little square playing together and gathering flowers, amalia remained in my studio silently watching me at work. when her mother was getting ready to take her home, she was so unwilling to tear herself away from gazing at my work, that i asked her one day-- "would you like to do this work?" "yes, papa," the child quickly replied. "well, then," i said, "stay with me." then i turned to my wife and said, "leave amalia with me for company; she can return home with me." i arranged a slate on a little easel in form of a reading-desk for her, prepared some bits of clay, and showed her how to spread the clay to a certain thickness on the slate as a foundation; then i placed before her a small figure of one of the bas-reliefs from the doors of san giovanni, by andrea pisano, and i said to her,--"with this little pointed stick you must draw in the figure, then you must put on clay to get the relief; but first i must see if your drawing is like the original. only the outline is necessary, and this line should only reproduce the movement and proportion of the little figure you have before you. do you understand?" the child understood so well, that, at the first trial, she traced all the outline of the figure correctly. it must, however, be remembered that amalia and her sisters had taken lessons in drawing from me, and had always kept them up. [sidenote: amalia duprÈ and her works.] from that day to this amalia has never left the studio, and art has become so dear a thing to her that she can now no longer do without it. her works are well known. besides portraits, of which she has many, the greater number of them in marble, she has modelled and executed in marble various statues and bas-reliefs. the statues are: the "child giotto," dante's "matelda," "st peter in chains," the monument of the signora adele stracchi, and that of our dearest luisina--statues all life-size, and except the "matelda" and "st peter," all cut in marble; also two small statues, a "st john," and an angel throwing water, for the baptismal font in a rich chapel of one of marchese nerli's villas; also a little angel, still in plaster, and a group of the madonna and child with a lamb, for the church of badia in florence. the bas-reliefs are: the madonna, accompanied by an angel, taking to her arms the youthful soul of the daughter of the duchess ravaschieri of naples. for arezzo: the sisters of charity conducting the asylum children to the tomb of cavaliere aleotti, in act of prayer and gratitude; eight saints in bas-relief for the pulpit of the cathedral of san miniato; four bas-reliefs for monuments in that same cathedral to the following persons--"religion" for bishop poggi, "history" for bernardo buonaparte, "physics" for professor taddei, and "poesy" for the poet bagnoli; a font, with a small statue of sant'eduvige, for the countess talon of paris; a bas-relief for the lunette over the door of my new studio at pinti; a little bronze copy of the "pietà"; a copy of the "justice," also in bronze; a statuette of st joseph, and a statue of st catherine of siena, in _terra cotta_, for the chapel of a pious refuge for poor children at siena; a little group in marble of the _virtù teologali_ for signor raffaello agostini of florence; and a large statue, life-size, of the madonna addolorata, in _terra cotta_, for the church of st emidio at agnone. all these works, you understand, were done by her as a pleasant way of exercising herself in her art, gratuitously, as is most natural; but it did not so appear to the tax-agent, who, however, was obliged to correct himself by cancelling her name from the roll of taxpayers, where it had been put. poor amalia, working from pure love of art, doing good by giving your work away, and often the worse for it in your pocket; and then to behold yourself taxed in the exercise and sale of your work! a pretty thing indeed! [sidenote: amalia's character.] as i am now on a subject that attracts me, i cannot tear myself from it in such a hurry. it is not permitted me to speak of the artistic merit of my daughter. my opinion would be a prejudiced one, both as father and as master, and therefore i have restricted myself only to note down the works that she has done so far; but i cannot refrain from making known the internal satisfaction i feel in seeing my teaching productive of such good fruit. it fell on ground so well prepared that it sprouted out abundantly and spontaneously. the consolation a master feels when he sees his pupil understand and almost divine his thought, is very great; and when this pupil is his own daughter, one may imagine how much the greater it is. and when i think of her modest nature, shrinking from praise, desirous of good, tender and compassionate with the poor in their sorrow, grieving as i do for the many irreparable family misfortunes, i still thank the lord that he has let me keep this angel, and also my other daughter beppina, who is not less loving to us and to her husband, by whom her love is returned in a christian spirit. she also is endowed by nature with sentiment for art, and her drawings and certain little models in clay are the indications of wide-awake, ready aptitude. i treasure a bust of dante that she modelled, and that was cut in marble, and deplore that the new life she has entered upon, and perhaps a delicate feeling of consideration for her sister, have made her desist from the continuation of a career well begun. now she is a mother; and the duties of a mother are so noble and so arduous as to repress any other tendencies even more natural to her and more attractive. [sidenote: the faÇade of santa croce.] [sidenote: bas-relief, triumph of the cross.] now let us return to the façade of santa croce. i ordered the "refinding of the cross" from sarrocchi, and the "vision of constantine" from zocchi; and both zocchi and sarrocchi set themselves at once to work. here is the explanation of the conception of my bas-relief: it seemed to me that the "triumph or exaltation of the cross" ought to be explained by means of persons or personifications that the cross, with its divine love, had won or conquered. the sign of the cross stands on high resplendent with light, and around it are angels in the act of adoration. under the cross, and in the centre of the bas-relief on the summit of a mountain, there is an angel in the act of prayer, expressive of the attraction of the human soul towards divinity. by means of prayer descends the grace that warms and illuminates the intellect and affections of man. the affections and intellect, divided from the cross, again return to the cross, and are expressed by the following figures that stand below: a liberated slave, half seated, half reclining, with his face and eyes turned upward, expressive of gratitude for his liberation,--for from the cross descended and spread over all the earth that divine word of human brotherhood; and near the slave a savage on his knees, leaning on his club; the stupidity and fierceness of whose look are subdued and illuminated by the splendour of the cross. these two impersonations are in the centre below, leaving the space to the right and left for the following personages: on the right of the person looking at the bas-relief is constantine unsheathing his sword when he beheld the sign and heard the words, "_in hoc signo vinces_"; near constantine is the countess matilda, whose pious attitude revealed her strong love for the church of christ, and enabled it to put up a barrier against foreign arrogance, and to defend the liberty of the italian communes; behind her, nearly hidden, owing to her holy timidity, the magdalen, to indicate that the ardours of lust were conquered by the fire of divine love. on his knees, bent to the ground, with his face in his hands, is st paul the elect, who from an enemy had become the strenuous defender of the gospel and apostle of the gentiles. st thomas, with one knee on the ground, a book in his hand, in a modest pensive attitude, recalls the words of jesus, who said, "_bene scriptisti de me, thoma._" a little in the background, near constantine, is the emperor heraclius, dressed in sad raiment, commemorative of the wars against the christians; and a roman soldier bearing the standard inscribed with "s.p.q.r." closes the composition on this part of the bas-relief. on the left side the principal figure is charlemagne; an unsheathed sword is in one hand, and in the other a globe with a cross, emblems of his vast dominions and his mission of propagating the true faith; he also represents the greatest material power conquered for the glory of the cross. dante is near him--the greatest christian intellectual power--and he holds in his hand the three 'canticles,' called by him 'poema sacro.' near dante the poor monk of assisi, with his hands pressed to his breast, looking lovingly and with fixed attention at the cross. in these three figures are represented the dominator of the world, the dominator of the spirit, and the dominator of poverty and humility attracted by love of the cross. to complete this group you see st augustine in his episcopal robes, holding in his hand a volume of 'the city of god'; and behind them a martyr with a palm, as pendant to the roman soldier on the opposite side. [sidenote: the triumph of the cross.] such is the composition of the "triumph of the cross," which is above the middle door of that temple where the ashes of michael angelo and galileo rest, and where it has been my desire for so many years that a memorial monument to leonardo da vinci should be placed. and, vain though it be, i shall always call for it louder and louder, the more that i see the mediocrity that a want of taste continues to erect there. as it is not permissible for me to speak of the praise i had for this work, i will not pass over in silence a criticism that was made to me about my having selected the countess matilda to put into my composition. it was objected that the countess matilda served the pope, served the church of rome, but did not do homage especially to the cross. i have given the reason of her serving the pope. i have already given a few words in explanation of that personage; and as for the distinction that there is between the church of christ and christ himself, i must frankly say that i do not understand it. let not the reader believe, however, that i am one of those christians desirous of being more christian than the pope himself, and excessively intolerant and passionate. no; [sidenote: pius ix. in florence.] i am with the teaching of the apostles, and that seems to me enough, for it includes all, even comprising the beautiful exhortation of father dante, when he says-- "avete il vecchio e il nuovo testamento, e il pastor della chiesa che vi guida,"[ ] &c. "ye have the old and the new testament, and the pastor of the church who guideth you." [ ] dante, paradiso, canto . in fact--not now, but soon--i will let you know, and touch with your hand, so to speak, the fact that i am not in the good graces of some of those people who depicted me to the eyes of the holy father after the manner of a bad _barocco_ painter--falsifying proportions, character, and expression. but, as i have said, i will return to this later on; and meanwhile, i must say that the holy father did not know me at all, as the only time that i had the honour of bending before him and kissing his foot he took me for another person. and it occurred when the pontiff pius ix. passed through florence after his tour through the romagna. the grand duke did all the honours of florence to him. during the few days that he remained in florence the grand duke accompanied him wherever he thought it would give him pleasure to go, and, amongst other places, he took him to visit the manufactory of _pietre dure_, and the academy of fine arts; and on this occasion our president invited the college of professors to be present, that we might see the holy father near, and perform an act of reverence to the supreme hierarch. the pope was seated on an elevated place like a throne; on his left was the grand duke; the ministers, dignitaries, and our president were standing near him. we were called, one by one, and presented by our president, marchese luca bourbon del monte, to the holy father; and those who were presented prostrated themselves before him, kissed his foot, and then returned to their places. when it came to my turn, the grand duke turned to the pope and said-- [sidenote: a mistake of pius ix.] "here, blessed father, is the artist who made the "cain" and "abel" that your holiness seemed well satisfied with." and the holy father, turning to me, answered-- "i congratulate you. they are two most beautiful statues. you have nothing to envy in the berlin or munich casting." "most blessed father," i hastened to reply, "i am not the caster of those statues, but----" "go," continued the holy father--"go, and may god bless you;" and making one of those great crosses in the air that pius ix. knew so well how to make, he sent me away in peace, in the midst of the silent but visible hilarity of all those who had witnessed my embarrassment. it is more than probable that the grand duke rectified the mistake incurred by his holiness; and i should regret if i had remained in his mind as the caster, when that merit belonged personally and legitimately to professor clemente papi. but if it is easy to imagine that that mistake was then cleared up, it is difficult to say the same of the one at the present day, because it is harder to rectify. i heed very little the censure of certain extreme catholics, believing that i share it with many whom i should wish to resemble in every respect: but the censure of the pope was indeed painful to me; and i managed in such a way, by showing myself just as i am, that i obtained his goodwill. but of this, as i have already said, i will speak further on, and now i return to my works. [sidenote: portrait of marshal haynau.] the reader may have observed that i have made no mention of portraits, although i have made many. as, however, amongst these portraits there is one that made some noise, and as the things that were said, being magnified by passion and by the inexact information of the person who spread these reports, might lead those who are in the dark to form a wrong impression, i have thought best to narrate the facts as they were. one day a gentleman asked to speak to me. he was a man of about sixty, tall, thin, with deep-set, changeable, and vivacious eyes, thick-marked eyebrows, long moustaches, lofty bearing, and with such a singular and expressive face, that when an artist sees it, he is at once possessed with a desire to make it a study. this gentleman said-- "would you make my portrait?" i answered, "yes." "how many sittings do you require to make the model?" "six or eight, or more, according to the length of the sittings." "when could you begin?" "the first days of next week." "very well: monday i will be with you. at what hour?" "at nine in the morning, if not inconvenient to you." "good-bye, then, until monday. do you know who i am?" "i have not the honour." "i am marshal haynau." and he went away. [sidenote: anecdote of haynau.] [sidenote: portrait of haynau.] now, to say that, after having heard the name, i had pleasure in making his portrait, would be a falsehood; and yet the singularity of that face, the curiosity i had to become acquainted through conversation with a man of such haughtiness and fierceness of character, the engagement i had entered into, and my pledged word, all took from me the courage to renounce the work. it is useless to say how all my friends, and naturally even more, those who were no friends of mine, declaimed against me. the newspapers were full of attacks, the story of the brewery in london, with all its details, was told, magnified and praised; in fact, to tell the truth, it was in the days when i was taking his portrait, and then alone, that i was made acquainted with the fierce nature of this great person, as my only idea of him until then had been a very indistinct and sketchy one. the beauty of it is, that in the conversation he held with me he showed himself a quiet man, opposed to all cruelty, although a severe military disciplinarian, and inexorable in punishing refractory soldiers. he made no mystery of this, and he named to me the hungarian generals and officers that he had had shot, as the most natural thing in the world; and because i blamed him for this, he answered: with rebels one could not do otherwise, and that he would have become guilty himself had he not punished them. but i, who had read of his cruelty to women, children--to all, in fact--censured him for this, and he denied it in a most decided manner, adding a story which, if true, i don't know what to say. here is the anecdote: when he had gained the victory at pesth, and had all the heads of the revolution in his hands, they were all condemned to death by a council of war. amongst these were the archbishop of pesth and a count karoli. he had the _alter ego_ in his hands, and in consequence his orders had no need of the imperial sanction; but both the archbishop and count karoli had powerful friends and adherents at vienna, and these did so much, and exerted themselves to such a degree, that, an hour before the execution of the sentence, the imperial reprieve arrived. as he, however, thought both of these men more guilty than the others, owing to their high position, and as it seemed to him unjust that they should be saved and the others sacrificed, he called them all into his presence, and after having informed the two fortunate ones of the imperial pardon, he added these words: "it is my conviction, in virtue of the proofs which i have in my hands, and which have been examined by the council of war, that the archbishop and count karoli are the most guilty of any of you; but as our most gracious sovereign has saved them from the penalty that they deserved, it is not just that those who are less guilty should suffer from it; therefore, availing myself of the power i have of _alter ego_, i spare the life of all." i can attest the truth of this story, not only in its general sense, but even to its wording. the truth of the story, i say, for as to the facts i know nothing. and i have made a note of it; for if by chance it was not true, to the stain of cruelty one can add that of having told a lie to appear merciful. the fact was that he discussed all his affairs with facile prolixity. he spoke of art and the artists that he had known at milan, venice, and bologna, in the days of our servitude to austria, and through all his stories there was always something or other of the bombastic. he urged me to make his statue, but i decidedly refused to do so. he spoke to me about it several times, and at last i was obliged to speak openly to him, and he thought my reasons just ones. then he manifested to me his wish to have his portrait painted on horseback, and asked me if i knew a clever artist with a name that would undertake the work. this question embarrassed me, being myself already compromised. i took some time to think about it, and fate was propitious, and gave me a companion with whom to bear the censure and abuse that only too certainly rained down upon us. [sidenote: bezzuoli's defence of my bust.] early the next morning professor bezzuoli came to my studio, and said--"let me see the portrait of marshal haynau." "certainly; here it is." "do you know," says bezzuoli to me, "that yesterday i had to take up your defence? there were certain chatterboxes, that don't know even how to draw an eye, who, talking of you on account of the portrait you are making, said you ought never to have accepted it, and that they could never have abased themselves to do so. i answered that an artist when he makes a portrait is not occupied with politics. if the person whose portrait is taken is a scamp, he will always be a scamp, with or without his portrait, precisely like nero, tiberius, or other such beasts, of whom such beautiful portraits have been taken, that it is a pleasure to see them; but it never comes into the mind of anybody for an instant to say, look what a _canaille_ the artist must have been who made this portrait! so true does this seem to me, that if haynau had come to me and given me an order to paint his portrait, i would have accepted his commission most willingly." "ah, very well!" thought i to myself, "i shall no longer be alone;" then i said to bezzuoli,--"thank you for the part you have taken in my defence. i still think if my colleagues only had an idea how i have been taken by surprise when i engaged to do this work, and how the originality of the head excited a desire in me, and if they felt how imperious the impulse born of that little capricious demon art is--they would, i think, be more indulgent with me; and not only indulgent, but they would even praise me when they knew that i had refused to make a statue of haynau for himself. and _àpropos_ of this statue, which i shall not make, i will tell you about it presently; but first permit me to ask a question. i understood you to say that if this gentleman had gone to you and asked you to paint his portrait, you would have accepted the commission--did i understand right?" [sidenote: bezzuoli paints haynau's portrait.] "you understood perfectly." "i then add that he will come. he wants a full-sized portrait of himself on horseback. a large picture, an attack in battle, or something of that kind; and later, after mid-day, he will go to you for this purpose. should you like it?" "i should like it very much; but how can you speak to me with so much assurance about this?" then i told him what the reader already knows. that morning the marshal went with a note from me to professor bezzuoli. in a few words all was arranged; the picture was finished in a short time, and had a great deal of deserved praise as far as work went, and bitter censure for the rest, which he divided and bore in company with me--with less resignation, however, than could have been desired from so old an artist who had thought over and discussed the importance of the engagement he had taken. this was the character of bezzuoli, who preserved even as an old man all the vivacity and impetuosity of open, gay-hearted youth; but at the same time, he was mistrustful and touchy in the extreme. when i remember him, full of vivacity and _bonhomie_, the friend of young men, with his frank, open-hearted, sincere advice, and at the same time full of sensitiveness about the merest nothings, and with childish and ridiculous ambitions, such as not to be willing to be beaten at billiards, it makes me smile to think of the weakness of our poor human nature. he liked to invite a certain number of friends every sunday to his villa near fiesole, and after dinner to play at billiards. he who was unfortunate enough to beat bezzuoli, was sure to find him cold and set against him for some time; and those who knew this, either for pastime and amusement, or for fear and interestedness, bravely lost, and the poor professor was full of joy, more even than if he had found some new striking effect in art. [sidenote: bezzuoli's character.] here ends the anecdote of that famous portrait. further on i will speak of others that i had the order for and could not make, and why i could not make them. chapter xviii. one of my colleagues--a mysterious voice--the group of the "pietÀ"--very clear latin--a professor who ignores the 'divina commedia'--composition of the group of the "pietÀ"--digression--a good lesson and nervous attack--mancinelli and celentano. but if some of my very dear colleagues set themselves against me on account of the great haynau portrait, not knowing that i had refused to make his statue, others were alienated from me, i do not know for what reason. i will speak of one of them, to show how a most respectable artist and colleague of mine, having been led into error, chose strenuously to abide by it, and thus broke up a relation that one might call friendship; for esteem is the first bond that draws one together and creates love, and i esteemed this colleague of mine, and pitied him for the error into which he had fallen. when augusto rivalta came from the school at genoa (his birthplace) to complete his studies in sculpture in florence, his masters, and he himself, had great faith in my school, and i was, with him as with all my scholars, an open and free expounder of those principles that i believe to be good, and to lead directly towards the beautiful, under the guidance of truth. rivalta was always confiding and studious with me; and as by nature he is endowed with no common genius, he is to-day a professor and active master at our academy of fine arts. now it happened one day, during the early days that he was under my direction, that i saw hanging on his studio walls a bas-relief of a madonna by that above-mentioned colleague of mine, and the head of bartolini's "fiducia in dio." i thought it wise to warn my pupil of the error into which too often even tried artists have fallen, which is that of looking at and reproducing in their own works reminiscences of such originals hanging in their studios to attract poor artists. therefore that morning my lesson consisted of the following words:-- [sidenote: how to preserve one's originality.] "when the idea comes to you to make a statue, it forms itself naturally in your mind, and takes a movement and character all its own, be it ever so undecided and vague, as an idea always is, until it has been fixed materially into shape; but the idea is there (for him who has it), and is original. then begins attentive study, and sometimes a long research to be able to find a live model who approaches nearest the idea that you have formed to yourself, and that you have already in your mind in embryo, or have indicated in your sketch. from the moment, however, that you have found the model or models, you must remain alone with them and your idea; no extraneous images must come between you and your work. i am afraid that those casts there facing me, will in some way take from the originality of the character and expression that you wish to give to your statue, and you will do well not to look at them. let us understand, however, that i say not to look at them whilst you are at work on your statue: afterwards you may look at them and study them as much as you wish." rivalta assured me that he did not look at them, for he understood very well, that instead of being of help to him they would have confused him, and that he found himself more free and unhampered when trusting himself only to working from the live model. having established this most essential point in art, i left him, well pleased with both myself and him. but in the meantime, this obvious, clear, and easy lesson of mine created at first an angry feeling, and afterwards a rupture, between me and my colleague, the author of the bas-relief; and this happened because a youth in rivalta's studio reported that i had said to my scholar, "do not look at those casts, for they are rubbish." i heard this from professor de fabris, to whom our friend made a clean breast of it. it was not enough for him that this friend of ours took up my defence, saying that he knew me thoroughly well, and that i was incapable of saying such things, adding, that he ought himself to know well enough that i was averse to giving offence to any one, and so might feel sure there was some misunderstanding. but all this was useless, so that our friend de fabris, for the sake of peace, thought best to speak to me of it. it can be imagined how astonished and how pained i was. i at once told him how the matter really stood, and begged that he would assure the professor of my affection and esteem for him as a friend and as an artist. it was all in vain, and he insisted in believing in a boy who had listened badly and reported still worse, rather than in me, or even rivalta's testimony that i offered to bring forward. [sidenote: how a friendship was broken up.] i should not have mentioned this small matter had it not been to explain the sort of sensitiveness and obstinacy that one observes generally in the artist class, and most specially amongst us sculptors, although, to speak the truth, those defects showed themselves oftener, and to a greater degree, amongst artists of the past, or who are now old. the young men of to-day are more frank, more tolerant, and more friendly amongst each other, and sometimes they even go to the excess of these virtues by being frank even unto insolence, tolerant even to scepticism, and careless, thoughtless, frivolous, and even worse, in their friendship. who ignores the little bursts of temper and cutting words bandied between pampaloni and bartolini, between benvenuti and sabatelli, and between bezzuoli and gazzarrini? i shall not write a record of them, out of respect for their names, and for death, who, under his broad mantle, has enshrouded them in solemn silence. sleep in peace, pilgrim souls,--within a short time even we shall join you; and when we are awakened at the _dies iræ_, we shall smile at our little outbursts of temper in this most foolish life, and become for ever really brothers. we shall be happy if we have nothing besides the remembrance of these little sins, already forgiven us by god, if we have forgiven others! if by chance there be any one who thinks that i have offended him by excess of vivacity of temperament or otherwise, even though it be involuntary, as might happen easily, i beg his pardon. [sidenote: jealousies of artists.] this little war of words, sarcasms, and what is worse, reticences, i have always deplored; and to succeed in being less tiresome to my colleagues, and for want of occasion to induce them to temperance, i have always kept myself aloof, and have spoken of them as i could wish them to speak of me. to be just, however, i must declare that i have seldom been (openly, i mean) exposed to the sting of their words; and if, as it happened, i was once attacked with certain insistence in the newspapers on the occasion when my three scholars, pazzi, sarrocchi, and majoli, exhibited their works in the academy, my friend luigi mussini, who handles the pen in the same masterly way as he does the brush, reduced to silence with one single article the poor writer who had been put up to say evil of the works of my scholars in order to do injury to the master. these injurious words have been forgotten and amply pardoned, but the beautiful and generous defence of my friend i have never forgotten. i repeat, however, that these little annoyances are much less nowadays than they were, or at least they have changed form. to-day, instead of suggesting in undertones and mellifluous words the defects of a work to some poor writer, adding many that do not exist, and being silent as to its merits, it is rather the custom to come out frankly and openly before your face with a criticism which, if it has not the merit of temperance, does at least not bear that ugly stain of hypocrisy as a mask to truth. to this school, although he be numbered amongst the old and the dead, bartolini did not belong; and although one of the elect in spirit and strength, yet he sometimes allowed himself to give way to passion. while he was a young man in paris, canova was there making the portrait of the emperor napoleon i. bartolini demanded and obtained help from that great and beneficent artist; but being asked if he would return with him to his studio in rome, he refused: but to say, as he did openly to me and to others, that canova wished to take him with him to put an end to his studies, was not in conformity with the truth, or with canova's well-known and benevolent character. to the sculptor wolf, who one day brought him a note from rauch, he said, without even opening it-- [sidenote: bartolini.] "how is rauch?" "he is very well, and sends you his greetings, as you will see from the letter i have given you." [sidenote: i change my studio.] "rauch," began bartolini, ... but i have said above that the dead sleep in peace, and the portraits of bartolini and rauch are also at peace with each other, for in my house, at the villa of lampeggi, they look each other in the face, and smile good-naturedly. _evviva!_ so, perhaps, they smile in the true life eternal at the littlenesses of our brief life here. it was at this time ( ) that i was obliged to leave my studio in the liceo di candeli, and with me all the other artists who were in that place had to go, as the present government decided to place the militia there. this change made me feel very sad, for i had an affection for the place. i had improved it and enlarged it, renting a ground-floor in the next house, and putting it into communication with the studio. i had embellished the court with plants, fruit, and flowers. there my dear little girls used to amuse themselves at play, and gathered flowers to take home and arrange in a little vase to put before the image of the madonna. one of them is no longer here, luisina, of whom in time i will speak; but the other two--amalia, who is with me, and beppina, who is married to cavaliere antonio ciardi--follow, even now, that pious custom, which others may make fun of, but which i love so much when i see these children of mine, in all the simplicity and pureness of their heart, make this act of homage to the virgin. my good marina, who has also now joined our daughter and the other little ones and the boy (seven angels in all)--my good marina tried to console me with her mild words. in her speech there was no excitement or speciousness, but a persuasive sweetness and serenity, learnt from duty and temperance. she had had no education--was a poor woman of the people, as i have said in the beginning; but i never felt bored by her, never desired a more cultured woman to teach me lessons. it is sweet to me to return in memory to the time that i lived with my good companion; and i owe her so much! i think that, if fate had given me another woman, who had not had the patience to bear my crotchets and the quick words that sometimes escaped me, who had doubted my faith, who had bored me with tittle-tattle, with sermons or other things, i think (god save me!) that i should have been a bad husband and a worse artist. so that, with a slight variation, i can repeat the words of the divine poet:-- "e la _mia_ vita e tutto il _mio_ valore, mosse dagli occhi di quella pietosa."[ ] [ ] vita nuova, . [sidenote: a mysterious voice.] i had therefore to resign myself to leaving the studio that i had an affection for; and the one i have now at the academy of fine arts was assigned to me, with the charge of _maestro di perfezionamento_, without stipend, but with a promise of compensations, which i have never had, perhaps because i have never asked for them. a fact that i ought to have narrated long before this--quite domestic and intimate in its wondrous strangeness--i have kept silent about, owing to a certain sentiment that i cannot well define; but now, in recalling my good wife and my dead children, i feel as if a voice within me said, "tell it!--write the fact as it is, without taking anything from it or passing judgment on it." so here it is. my second daughter, carolina, was put out to nurse. she was the only one that the good mother did not bring up herself; but, from motives of health, she could not do so. the wet-nurse of this little child lived at londa, above the rufina. the baby was thriving, when all of a sudden a very bad eruption came out all over her and her life was in danger. the nurse wrote to us to come and see her. without delay i hired a _calesse_,[ ] and left with my wife: the grandmother stayed behind to mind the little eldest one, who afterwards died at seven years of age, as i have written in its place. arriving at pontassieve, we bent our way to the rufina, and from there continued on to londa; on up a mountain, in part wooded with chestnut-trees, in part bare and stony, until we arrived at the small cottage of the nurse of my little one. the road circles around the hill, and in several places is very narrow, so much so that a _calesse_ has great difficulty in passing,--as is most natural, for what has a _calesse_ to do up on that hill and amongst those hovels? but we arrived, as god willed it. the baby was very ill, and there was now no hope that she could recover. we remained there a night and a day; and having given all the orders in case of the now certain death of the little angel, i took the mother, who could not tear herself from the place, away crying. as i have said, the road was narrow; and in our descent, the hill rose above us on our right, and on the left we were on the edge of a very deep torrent: i don't know whether it was the rincine, moscia, or some other. the horse went at a gentle trot on account of the easy descent, and we felt perfectly safe, as i had put the drag on the wheel. my wife, with her eyes bathed in tears, was repeating some words, i know not what, dictated by a hope that the child would recover. the sky was clear, and the sun had only just risen,--we saw no one on the hill, nor anywhere else,--when suddenly a voice was heard to say "_stop!_" (_fermate!_) the voice seemed as if it came from the hillside. my wife and i turned in that direction, and i half stopped the horse; but we saw no one. i touched up the horse again to push on, and at the same instant the voice made itself heard a second time, and still louder, saying, "_stop! stop!_" i pulled in the reins, and this time my wife, after having looked all around with me without seeing a living soul, was frightened. [ ] old-fashioned one-horse carriage. [sidenote: a mysterious incident.] "come, have courage," said i; "what are you afraid of? see, there is no one; and so no one can do us any harm." and, to put an end to the kind of fear even i felt, i gave my horse a good smack of the whip; but hardly had he started when we heard most distinctly, and still louder, the same voice calling out, three times, "_stop! stop! stop!_" i stopped, and without knowing what to do or think, i got out, and helped my wife out, who was all trembling; and what was our surprise, our alarm, and our gratitude for the warning that had been given us to stop! the linch-pin had come out of the left wheel, which was all bent over and about to fall off its axle-tree, and this almost at the very edge of the precipice. with all my strength i propped up the trap on that side, pushed the wheel back into its place, and ran back to see if i could find the linch-pin, but i could not find it. i called again and again for the person who had come to my help with timely warning, to thank him, but i saw no one! in the meanwhile, it was impossible to go on in that condition. the little town of la rufina was at some distance, and although we could walk to it on foot, how could the _calesse_ be taken there with a wheel without a linch-pin? i set myself to hunt about on the hill for a little stick of wood, and having found it, i sharpened it, and with the aid of a stone, fastened it in the hole in place of the linch-pin. but as for getting back into the _calesse_, that was not to be thought of; so leading the horse by hand, we slowly descended to rufina, neither my wife nor myself speaking a word, but every now and again our looks bespoke the danger we had run and the wonderful warning we had had. at the rufina i got a cartwright to put in another linch-pin, and we returned safely home. if the reader laughs, let him do so; i do not. in fact, the seriousness and truth of this occurrence, which happened about forty years ago, filled me then, as it does now, with a feeling of wonder and surprise. [sidenote: i make a "pietÀ."] in the first part of the year , marchese bichi-ruspoli of siena gave me the order for a monument to be placed in the cemetery of the misericordia in that city, where he had bought a mortuary chapel for himself and family. he left me free in the choice of the subject, and i decided on a "pietà," a subject that has been frequently treated by many artists at different times, as lending itself to the expression of the most unspeakable sorrow, even if looked upon from a purely human point of view; and if one adds thought and religious sentiment, then its interest gains tenfold, as it contains in itself, besides the beauty of form in the nude figure, and the touching sorrow of the mother, the mystery of the incarnation, of the death and of the resurrection of our saviour. the subject, therefore, was highly artistic, exquisitely touching, and particularly well adapted to a christian sepulchre. but with all these admirable qualities, the rendering of the subject was extremely difficult, because so many great artists of every epoch had done all they could, in painting as well as in sculpture, to express this sublime idea. wishing to keep myself from doing what others had done before me, i thought a long time on this difficult theme; but cudgel my brains as much as i would, my conceits always bore the impress of one or other of those many groups that one sees everywhere. as the gentleman who had given me the commission pressed me--in a polite way, it is true, but with some insistence--to let him see at least the sketch, i set to work with much ardour, but with little hope of succeeding. after a great deal of study, i made a small sketch, with which the gentleman pronounced himself content, and ordered me to set to work on it as soon as possible. when the stand was ready, the irons put up, the clay prepared, and the models had been found, one of my friends, who had come to look in on me, exclaimed on seeing the sketch-- [sidenote: i abandon the sketch.] "oh, what a fine sketch! it is michael angelo's 'pietà.'" "what?" said i. "oh, i see i have made a mistake," said my friend; "it is quite a different thing." but none the less, this was the impression he had received and proclaimed, and, if not absolutely correct, was yet a sincere, true, spontaneous, and disinterested one; for my friend, although far from being an artist, or even a _dilettante_, was very intelligent, and a lover of art. so from that moment my mind was made up, and i said to myself--"either i will find some new idea, even though it be a less beautiful one, or i will abandon the commission." i put by all the things that had been prepared, went to work on other work, and thought no more of it. i ought rather to say that i thought of it constantly, perhaps even too much; for it was an irritated, futile kind of thinking, that did harm, giving me no rest even during my sleep, and not leaving my mind sufficiently free or my inspirations calm enough to seize hold of a new idea and make another attempt. [sidenote: a quotation from dante.] the gentleman who had given me the commission still pressed me, and could not understand why i had set aside the work after having, as he said, so well conceived it, and after it had met with his own approval. to which i only answered these words, "have patience!" and so he had, the poor marchese, for i must do him the justice to say, that seeing that this was a painful subject to me, he never spoke to me any more about it; and only when affairs called him sometimes to florence, after having talked to me about many other things, he would say, when leaving me, with his usual kind and genial manner, "good-bye, nannino, _memento mei!_" this blessed latin in its brevity worked upon me more than a long sermon would have done; but it was useless to try to set myself to make another sketch, for think about it as much as i would, although in my brain there were any number of mediocre groups of the "pietà," there was still wanting the one of my own creation, for the others belonged to me as some cantos of the 'divina commedia' do by force of memory. _Àpropos_ of this, here is a curious little story. it happened one day when i was speaking with a man excellent in every respect, that, being to the point, i quoted the following well-known verses:-- "o voi che siete in piccioletta barca, desiderosi d'ascoltar, seguìti dietro al mio legno che cantando varca," &c. "o ye who in some pretty little boat, eager to listen, have been following behind my ship, that singing sails along;"[ ] at which that excellent gentleman showed himself surprised, and asked if those verses were mine. i looked at him attentively, and saw in his face that he was perfectly frank, serious, and ingenuous; and so i had the impudence to say _yes_. i regretted it afterwards, and still do so. that gentleman died some time ago, and i should not have told this joke if he had been still living, for even withholding his name, he might have recognised himself and taken it in ill part; but for all this, i repeat, he was an excellent man, stood high in his art, was professor, _cavaliere_, and _commendatore_ of more than one order, but as ignorant, as it would seem, of our classics as i am of the propositions of euclid. [ ] dante, paradiso, canto ii. [sidenote: i dream of the group of the "pietÀ."] the reader, therefore, understands perfectly that i did not want to make my "pietà" a work from memory or of imitation, and give out with a bold face another man's conception for my own. therefore _pazienza_,--and months passed, and it seemed to me as if i no longer thought of it; but one fine day, when i was at home lying on the sofa reading a newspaper, and waiting to be called to dinner, i fell asleep (newspapers have always put me to sleep, especially when they take things seriously),--i fell asleep, and i dreamed of the group of the "pietà" just as i afterwards made it, but much more beautiful, more expressive, and more noble. in fact it was a wonderful vision, but only like a flash--a vision only of an instant--for an impression as of a blow awoke me, and i found myself lying over the arm of the sofa, with my arms hanging loosely, my legs stiffened out straight, and my head bent on my breast, just as in my dream i had seen christ on the virgin's knees. i jumped up and ran to my studio to fix the idea in clay. my wife seeing me go out almost running, called to me to say that the soup was on the table. "have patience," i answered; "i have forgotten something at the studio; perhaps i shall stop there a bit. you eat, and i will eat afterwards." the poor woman, i could see, did not understand what was the matter, all the more because i had been hurrying them to send up the dinner; but she made no more inquiries. it was her nature not to enter too much into the affairs of my studio. in two hours i had made the sketch of that subject which had cost me so much thought, so many waking hours, and loss of sleep, and i returned home. i do not know whether i was more hungry, tired, or contented. my wife, to whom i explained the reason of my running away, smiled and said, "you might have waited until after dinner;" and perhaps, who knows that she was not right? but i was so astonished and out of myself on account of that strange dream, that i was afraid every instant to lose the remembrance of it. it is really a strange thing, that after having thought of, studied, and sketched this subject for many months, when i was least thinking of it (for then i was certainly not thinking of it)--all at once, when asleep, i should see so clearly stand out before me, without even an uncertain line, the composition of that group. i have often thought of it, and being obliged in some way to explain it, i should say that the position i took when asleep might have acted on my over-excited imagination, always fixed on that same idea. [sidenote: i sketch it at once.] if the reader has followed me so far, he may truly be called courteous; but who knows how many times he has looked with avidity in these pages, full of minute details of my doings, for some little facts, some little escapades which really define and give the impress of the moral character of a man, and not having found it, has closed the book with irritation, and has muttered between his teeth, "this man is really very stupid, or he imagines us to be such simpletons as to believe that his life has always run on in a smooth, pleasant path, where there are no stones to stumble over, or brambles to be caught by"? i will not judge if the reader be right or wrong in his reasoning, but it would be as wrong to think that my life had been perfectly exempt from the little wretchednesses that are as inherent to it as smoke to a fire, especially if the wood be green, as it would be to require for his own satisfaction that i should ostentatiously insist on this smoke at the risk of offending the tender and chaste eyes of those who, albeit not ignoring these things, love the light and abhor smoke. then, also, in speaking of these little wretchednesses, one always errs, however faithful to the truth, in saying either too much or too little; and it is believed to be either exaggerated or underrated, according to the simplicity or malice of the reader: so it is better not to speak of them at all. these little details, these little moral wrinkles, ought to be cast aside, as they do not add an atom to the likeness of the person. the reader can imagine them, or, to speak plainer, he learns them from the voice of common report, which accompanies through life the acts of any man not absolutely obscure. but if in life there are brambles and pebbles that can momentarily molest the poor pilgrim, there are also errors and deviations which lead us astray. grave misfortunes such as these, by god's mercy, i have not met with, although the danger has not been wanting. the least thought of the gentle nature of my good wife, so full of simplicity and truth, her deep and serious affection, her loving care of her children, and her total abnegation of self for them and for me,--this thought, i repeat, was enough, with god's help, to enable me to escape once or twice from danger; and i wish to say this, that the reader fond of suchlike particulars need not tire himself with looking for them here, where he will not find them. [sidenote: dangers of going astray.] in the moral character of a man, deviation from and forgetfulness of his duties is an ugly stain, even uglier than deformity in art. in fact, deformity, which by itself alone is contrary to art, when introduced into composition, especially when historical or critical reasons require it, can be of use as a contrast, and be--not beautiful in itself, for that would be a contradiction of terms--but of use to the _ensemble_, and to the beautiful,--as, for example, the dissonances in harmony used sparingly, if they suspend momentarily the flow of that broad sweet wave, they make one hear it again more vividly, more unexpectedly, and transformed into other colour and form. if all this concerns and is of use to art, which is the manifestation of the beautiful, it does not apply to morals, which are the manifestation and practice of good. the one is relative, but this is absolute. the well-known aphorism, truth before all things, lands one nowhere; and i have shown that in being silent on some matters, one need not be false to her. but she is only cast into a slight shadow by these veils of decency and modesty; and so truth should show her matronly bearing. [sidenote: advantage of dissonance.] i have spoken somewhat at length about this, because to some this exposition of my opinion may have appeared unseemly. let them accept, then, with a kindly feeling, the reasons, which i think excellent ones, that have led me to this wise decision of representing the truth to each and every one's eyes in the most appropriate way, so that, while it attracts by the largeness and uprightness of its form, it leaves the spirit undisturbed and tranquil. i set to work on the model of the "pietà" with a feeling of assurance devoid of any of those outlooks of fallacious hope that so often preside over and accompany a work badly conceived and not sufficiently studied or thought out, with which the unsatisfied mind seeks to quiet itself, while the artist goes on persuading himself that he will better his idea as his work goes on, instead of which he finds out every day more and more the existence of those difficulties and doubts which increase in intensity as the strength to overcome them diminishes. and _àpropos_ of this, i remember one day when i was making an excursion from florence to sant'andrea, with bartolini (it was on a saturday, to stay over until sunday evening at villa fenzi), as we travelled along bartolini seemed to me gayer and more expansive than usual, and having asked him what was the reason, he would not tell me, but answered, "you will know why at sant'andrea; i am going to tell at dinner when every one is present, for it is a thing of great importance, as you will be able to judge perhaps better than any one else." with these words he so roused my curiosity that it made that very short expedition seem a long one. arrived at the villa, _sor_ emanuele, seeing the master so gay and almost beaming, turned to him and jokingly said these words, "i'll be bound you have found a new and beautiful little model." [sidenote: bartolini and the "astyanax."] "no; and even those i have--and they are beauties--i sent off this very morning. but i am contented, because i had a thorn in my side--a thought that had been tormenting me for more than a year. there was one side of my group--the "astyanax"--that i did not like. i have tried various ways of correcting it, but in vain; for the evil was fundamental. i have formed a resolution, and ordered my work to be pulled to pieces. i have sacrificed more than a year's time, but i am certain that i shall be the gainer, because the work will come better both as to lines and the quickness of execution. i feel sure that the change is a good one." whoever is an artist understands the importance of such an act, and the courage of a man who destroys a work that has cost him more than a year's labour, and admonishes those who are too quick in putting an undigested thought into execution. [sidenote: i get ill and nervous.] as for me, i felt an admiration as much for that heroic resolution as for his gaiety and indifference, and was persuaded that only men of such a temperament know how to act and comport themselves in that fashion. i set to work, as i have said, on the group of the "pietà"; and although the novelty of the idea and harmony of lines gave me every reason to hope for success in my work, yet the impetuosity with which i had gone to work, the difficulty of giving the expression to the virgin's face in contrast with the divine stillness of the dead jesus, impossible to find in models--for the most part the negation of all that is sublime in expression,--all this acted so upon my poor brain that i began to hear noises, which gradually increased to such an intensity that they deafened me, and i had to stop working, not being able to go on. the thought of my weakness worked upon me so violently that it produced melancholy, insomnia, and aversion to food. my good friend dr alberti, who treated me, advised rest from work and distraction,--but of what kind, as everything bored me? night and day i continually felt stunned by a buzzing noise in my head, which was most annoying; and what is worse, sounds, noises, and voices, even of the most moderate kind, became insufferable to me. a coachman smacking his whip put me in a tremor, and i ran at the sight of him. at home my poor wife and my little girls were obliged to speak in the lowest voice, and oftentimes by signs. as i have said, sleep had left me, and all taste for food, and i grew thinner before one's very eyes. i could not read two consecutive pages, and could not dream of writing. i used to go out of the house to escape melancholy, and walk for a long distance at a time without knowing where i was going. the buzzing in my head and the noise in the street tortured me. if i saw any one i knew, i avoided him, not to be obliged to answer the same tiresome question as to how i felt. if i went to the studio, my melancholy turned into acute pain on looking at my works which i could not begin to touch, and i felt my heart throb so hard that i cried most bitterly. [sidenote: i return to naples.] i could not continue on in this condition, and by advice of the doctor i resolved to go with my family to naples. i hoped to recover my health in that great gay city, under that splendid sky, in that mild atmosphere pure and impregnated with life, and my hope was strengthened by the remembrance that i had once recovered my health there ten years before. i left on the morning of the epiphany, the th of january , and that night i spent at rome at the hotel cesari. i did not stop in rome, and saw no one. i saw mechanically--more than anything else, to amuse my poor family--the finest monuments of the eternal city; and the day after took the road to naples--a true _via crucis_, by which i hoped to regain my health. we arrived in naples between eight and ten o'clock. i ordered the coachman to take us to the hotel de france. there was no room to be had, so we were conducted to a poor, dirty little inn, with which, being late, we were obliged to content ourselves. the day following, my friend giuseppe mancinelli insisted (in spite of my opposition, not wishing to inconvenience him) that we should lodge in his house, rampa san potito, near the museum degli studii. mancinelli was an excellent man, an artist of merit, a good husband and father, and a conscientious and amiable master at the academy of fine arts there. i remember with emotion the fraternal care that he took of us. poor friend! you too have left us, but the memory of your virtues and love still lives with us, and is a consolation to us in the midst of the coldness of so many who have never known the religion of friendship, or who, if they appeared devoted, only sought to steal the candles offered by the faithful to her altar. [sidenote: celentano.] the first days after my arrival at naples were very sad. the noises and voices in that immense city nearly drove me out of my mind, added to which the weather was wretched--for we had nearly a month of rain--so there were no walks to be taken, and nothing to distract me. fortunately i had all my family with me, and my thoughts were not in florence, as they had been during my former visit. i gave no thought to my studio, and only, as if in a vision, the head of my madonna appeared to me in the sad pose in which i had left her, fearing that i should never see her again. in vain mancinelli and his family, and my friends morelli, aloysio, maldarelli, palizzi, and others, tried to rouse me out of my despondency. how well i remember with what pains poor celentano, whom i then knew for the first time, tried to cheer me up! poor celentano! brightest light of that fine school that searches for and finds material in the universe of nature to embody the fantasies of the brain, how soon, and in what a manner, your light was extinguished! enough--enough of the dead, otherwise i shall fall into the elegiac, which would be ridiculous in these simple memoirs! but if it be true that every thought must be clothed in its own special garb, how sad is that of death, although through her veils shines the hope of heaven! chapter xix. a prophetic dream--giovanni strazza--signor vonwiller and societies for promoting art--return from naples to rome, and my daughter luisina's illness--our return to florence--death of tria the model--the mossotti monument at pisa--how it was that i did not make the portrait of his majesty the king--the competition for cavour's monument--i go to turin to pass judgment on it--the "christ after the resurrection," a commission of signor filippi di buti--religious art and alessandro manzoni and gino capponi--thought is not free--cavour's monument--the description of it. [sidenote: visconti the painter.] and yet i do not feel in the vein to stop talking of the dead. it is so sweet to go back in memory to those dear persons that we have loved and esteemed, and who have returned our love. one day in rome--it was in the summer of --a young painter of the brightest promise had received a letter from his betrothed, who was a long way off. in it she expressed the great anxiety she had been suffering on account of a dream she had had, in which she had seen her dear one drowning; and she beseeched him in the warmest manner to pay attention and not expose himself to danger. the ingenuousness and affection in this letter made the young painter smile, and in his answer he jokingly expressed himself as follows: "with regard to your dream, set your mind at rest, because if i don't drown myself in wine, i shall certainly not drown in water." a few days after this some of his friends proposed to him to go and bathe, but he refused decidedly, and said, "go, the rest of you; i don't want to bathe, and shall go home," and he left them. shortly after this his friends went, as they had decided, to bathe, and they saw a young fellow struggling in the water; recognising him, they at once undressed and ran to his rescue, as it was evident that he did not know how to swim. their attempt, as well as that of others, was vain, for the poor young man went down and was carried away by the current of the tiber to a great distance from the spot where he had thrown himself in. this young man was universally and sincerely regretted. painting lost in him one of her brightest geniuses, and siena, his birthplace, a son that would have been a very great honour to her. some studies sent by him to siena, and a picture of san luigi in the church of the madonna del soccorso at leghorn, bear witness to visconti's talent, a name dear and revered amongst all artists. he studied at the sienese academy, under luigi mussini, who, besides his sound principles in art, had the power of being able to communicate them, and carried persuasion and conviction through the weight of example. visconti was buried in rome in the church of san bartolommeo all'isola,[ ] a short distance from the place where his body was found, and siena honoured him by having a modest but touching monument made by his friend tito sarrocchi and placed for him in the church of san domenico. visconti was a handsome young man, healthy and strong, of olive complexion, black hair and beard, endowed with an open, frank, loyal, and at the same time modest, nature. [ ] poor visconti is not buried in the church of san bartolommeo all'isola. my friend majoli tells me that i have made a mistake. his body was taken there, as it was found near there, and the funeral took place in that church; but the body was taken afterwards to the campo verano, and buried in the lower part of that cemetery. a modest little monument called a _pincietto_ was erected over it by the subscription of several sorrowing and affectionate friends, and amongst these the good majoli, who most particularly exerted himself in modelling and cutting a portrait of him in marble, and offering his work as a tribute of friendship. [sidenote: giovanni strazza.] i return to the living, i return to naples. about this time the competition for the statue of victory, as a monument for the martyrs of the four revolutions, , , , and , was to be decided on. many were those competing for it, and all neapolitans--amongst these pasquarelli and caggiano, pupils of mine; and for this reason, as well as on account of my ill health, i could not accept the position of judge. giovanni strazza was therefore invited to come from milan; and he too died a few months ago, my poor friend! he had a very cultivated mind, and was as amiable and polished in manner as he could be. i knew him first in rome in , when he was very young, and when artists, amateurs, and all people crowded round his first statue of ishmael. to all, as well as to me, he was open-hearted, loyal, and sincere, and his words were always urbane and pleasant. i saw him again at vienna in , when he was my companion in the jury for our section of sculpture at the great exhibition. but let us really return to the living, if that be possible. the prize for the statue of victory was adjudicated to emanuele caggiano, and justly so. i think this statue is one of his finest works. i have heard nothing of him now for a long time, and am afraid that he does not occupy himself with the same fervour that he displayed when he began to work under my direction. i revisited all the things that i had seen the first time i was in naples, with a feeling of _ennui_, and only gave some attention to pompeii, because there i had the good fortune to meet the commendatore fiorelli, director of the excavations, and some artists that i have forgotten. i remember, however, the brotherly solicitude shown me by my friends morelli and palizzi, and this time even by angelini, and the particular courtesy of signor vonwiller, a most cultivated man, and so great a lover of art that he has converted his house into a real modern and most select gallery. here one finds in perfect harmony all the best products of italian art. at that time (and many years have since passed) the pictures of morelli, celentano, altamura, palizzi, and other clever painters of that beautiful school, were admirably exhibited; there too, vela, magni, angelini, and fedi had works; and in the midst of these i felt honoured also to find myself represented by my two statues of bacchini, the "festante" and the "dolente." if every city in italy had a gentleman like vonwiller, it may easily be believed that art would derive great benefit from it; for taste backed by great fortunes has more direct and potent efficacy than all the societies for promoting art, where, with small sips and small prizes, the genius of poor artists is frittered away. until the day when these societies make the heroic resolution of only conferring two or three prizes (be it for pictures or statues of small dimensions; the size does not matter, as long as they are really beautiful), art will not advance one step. but in the meanwhile, let us take things as they are and push on. [sidenote: signor vonwiller's gallery.] the repose and the balmy airs of beautiful hospitable naples worked a wonderful change for the better in my health. sleep, that beneficent restorer of the forces, which for some time past had gone from me, verily without my having murdered it, as macbeth had, or even in the least offended it, returned with its blandishments and its calm smiling visions full of pleasant happy memories. it was the season of the year when nature dons again her green mantle. in that happy country, her awakening is more precocious, and one could say that nature was there a very early riser; and whilst the mountains were still all covered with snow, on those sweet slopes, on those enchanted shores, the little green new-born leaflets mix with the blossoms of the apple, almond, and peach trees. the light morning breeze makes these leaflets and blossoms tremble, and wafts to the air a sweet delicate perfume, that revives the body and rejoices the spirit. [sidenote: the charm of spring.] this reawakening of nature has in it i know not what of harmony that is difficult to describe. it seems as if the chest expanded to drink in the air with unusual longing; the eyes are never weary of looking again at the budding flowerets, whose odour one inhales with a chaste voluptuousness, as of the breath of our children in their mother's arms. the mysterious wave of life, that insinuates itself in the earth, penetrating even into its most infinitesimal parts, that prepares the nuptial bed, and makes the budding vegetation fruitful; the wave, that in the profound depths of the sea gladdens the life of its mute inhabitants, gives joy and swiftness to the flight of the birds in the air, makes the animals of the earth walk with more erect, ready, and joyful step,--the wave of life, more than all, operates wonderfully on man. and i--i felt myself born unto a new life; nature seemed to me more beautiful, her bounty more desirable; the wish to observe and to work returned to me, the enjoyment of conversation, attention in listening, temperance in discussions, and courtesy in controversies, all impulses of the mind, wherein, it seems to me, lies the mysterious harmony of body and soul in perfect union--_mens sana in corpore sano_. [sidenote: illness of luisina.] having therefore recovered my health, and taken leave of my friend mancinelli and his good family, i again left for rome, with the intention of passing the approaching holy week there; but it so happened that my poor luisina, the youngest of my daughters, fell ill. some symptoms of her illness had already manifested themselves in the first days after our arrival; then she had to take to her bed, and became so much worse, that we were all in the greatest anxiety--two months of such anxiety as only a father can understand; and she was so sweet a creature, and so intelligent! then she improved a little, but did not recover. we left hurriedly, because the bitterness of losing her away from home was unbearable to us. the affectionate solicitude of our friends at this juncture was really brotherly. majoli, marchetti, mantovani, wolf, and tenerani came forward and showed us indescribable kindness, and i remember it with gratitude, that no time can ever efface or weaken. after our return to florence, under treatment the disease seemed to have been got under; she recovered her health, and we thought no more about it. i took up my studio life again. as i stood before my work that i had left when in a state of such utter prostration, it seemed to me that i had almost a new spirit within me. the head of the madonna, who, when i left, looked as if she was sorrowing for me, now seemed to me so full of sadness that i did not touch it again, and it remains just as it was when i left, tormented by the insupportable, atrocious, and stunning noise in my head. tears of emotion, of gratitude, and of feeling ran down my cheeks as i stood before the clay, and, full of confidence, i set myself again to work. in thought i returned to the days of my sufferings, when the fear of losing my mind frightened me, and i dared not look at my children or at my good wife. these remembrances quickened the pleasure i felt in my new state of health, and i thanked the lord from the bottom of my heart. [sidenote: tria, the model of my "christ."] i had taken tonino liverani (nick-named tria) as a model for my "christ." he was rather too old for a "christ," but i was not able to find another who united such majesty and grace of movement and of parts. hardly had i put the whole masses together and begun to define some of the outlines, when he fell ill and died in a few days. i went to see him when he was at his worst, and the poor man was glad to see me, and was pained (as he said) not to be able to finish the "dead christ." with his deep sunk eyes, mouth half opened, and with the pallor of death upon him, he looked marvellously beautiful, and strangely like that type of christ that good artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have handed down to us. poor tria, i still remember the long, piteous look you gave me when we bade each other good-bye! scarcely had i finished the model for the "pietà," when i modelled the statue of astronomy for the mossotti monument, which is in the campo santo at pisa, a work that i had pledged myself to make for its mere cost; and i did so most willingly on account of the reverent friendship that i had had for mossotti. but even the expenses were not covered, and to all my pressing inquiries i never got a word of answer from the treasurer of the committee, in consequence of which the committee itself was never able to publish a report of its administration. but, that the word expenses may be clearly understood, i wish it to be known that that statue, with its sarcophagus, base, and ornamentation, i had pledged myself to make, and did make, for six thousand _lire_. i have received _five thousand eight hundred and fifty_; there remain the _hundred and fifty_, which i am obliged to make a present of, after having given gratuitously my work on the models and the finishing of it in marble. i don't know if it is so with other artists, but with me it has always happened that the works i have been desirous of making for their mere cost--which is like saying, as a present--have not been accepted, or, besides giving my own work, i have been obliged to add something from my pocket! before these memoirs are finished the reader will find something else of the same kind which will serve as a lesson and warning to young artists, even if they ever feel within them the "softness" to work for nothing. [sidenote: bust of victor emmanuel.] in another place i have said that, in the enumeration of my works, i should not make mention of the portraits. i was obliged, however, to deviate from that promise to speak of one that had occasioned a great deal of talk and false reports about me. i must now speak of another that i was to have made, and did not--that is to say, the portrait of his majesty king victor emmanuel. why i never made it i cannot say myself, and perhaps the reader himself will not know after he has read the following account, unless he is satisfied with the explanation that i shall presently give. the superintendent of the archives, commendatore francesco bonaini, after having put in order and nearly reconstructed the archives of pisa, wished to put in the main hall a marble bust, of almost colossal size, of victor emmanuel; and in order to determine the size and study the light, i went with him to pisa to see the place itself where the bust of the king was to stand. having seen it and fixed upon the size of the bust, i made one condition, agreeing to all arrangements as to price and time for making it. the condition that i made--a most natural one--was that his majesty should concede to me the sittings required, that i might model him from life and not from photograph. the syndic of the day (cavaliere senatore ruschi, if my memory serves me) went to florence, accompanied by some of the _assessori_, to ask the king, first for the permission of placing his portrait in the great hall of the pisan archives, and then to grant the necessary sittings to the artist, and settle the place, the time, and the length of the sittings, according to his majesty's pleasure. both the one request and the other were granted most graciously by the king with his usual affability, and he added that he knew the artist and was well satisfied, and that, in the meanwhile, they were to wait for notice to communicate to me that i might begin my work. months passed, and this notice never came; bonaini was pressing me, being in a hurry to have the archives inaugurated, and i appealed to his excellency marchese di breme, minister of the royal house, to beg the king to let me have the required sittings, but my request met with no good result. later, after the death of di breme, i made the same appeal to the marchese filippo gualterio, who succeeded him in that office; but this appeal not only had no good result, but did not even receive an answer. as the affair of the inauguration of the pisan archives had boiled over, bonaini did not speak of it again, and naturally neither did i. here there would be some observations to be made on this favour having been asked for and granted, and then given up. as for me, i resolve the question in a few simple words and say, that as it is a most boring thing to all to stand as model, for a king it must be excessively so and insufferable, and therefore the notice to begin this boring business never came from the person who was to undergo it; and it is reasonable enough, and even satisfies me, who have posed as model two or three times. [sidenote: jury of artists on cavour's monument.] about this time the syndic of turin invited me to form part of a commission of artists to pass judgment on the models sent up for cavour's monument. i was then at leghorn with my family, as my little girls were in need of sea-bathing. i had no need for it myself, and, in fact, i think that the damp salt air was not good for me, and i stayed there most unwillingly, so that when the invitation to go to turin came i instantly accepted it with pleasure as a fortunate opportunity to change the air and have something to occupy my mind; and leaving my wife with the two youngest little girls, i took amalia with me. this competition, of which we were to judge, was a second trial, as the first had failed; the competitors were many, and some of them praiseworthy. my colleagues in the jury were, if i remember right, the professors santo varni of genoa, innocenzo fraccaroli of milan, ceppi of turin, and another whose name i cannot recall. the examination was a long one, and the discussion, although opinions differed, was a quiet one: the majority pronounced itself favourable to a project of the architect cipolla, which was in drawing; my vote had been for one of the two designs in relief by vela. the reporter of our decision was professor ceppi. i returned to leghorn to my family, and from there to florence, where i again took up my work. signor ferdinando filippi di buti, whom i had met at leghorn, showed himself desirous of having a statue of mine to put in the mortuary chapel that he had built from its very foundation close to one of his villas on the pleasant hill that rises above the town. the subject was a beautiful one, and, after the "dead christ," i could not have desired anything better to make than "christ after the resurrection," and this was the very subject that signor filippi wanted of me. [sidenote: importance of religious sentiment.] the "triumph of the cross," the "madonna addolorata" that i spoke of further back, the "pietà," and this "christ after the resurrection," are the strictly religious subjects that i have made--rather, that i have had the good fortune to make, because i believe that such subjects, always beautiful in themselves, when they find the soul of the artist disposed to feel them and comprehend them, are also capable of high serene inspiration, and secret efficacy to the soul of those who behold them, be they in spirit even thousands of miles distant from the number of believers. let the truth prevail. religious sentiment has its root in the heart, in the intellect, in the imagination, and, in a word, in all the impulses of the soul. a heart without god is a heart without love, and will not love woman but for the brutal pleasure she procures, and, in consequence, not even the children that are the fruit of, and also a burden upon, his selfishness. he will not love his country except for the honours and the gain that can be got out of it, and will sacrifice it carelessly for a single moment of pleasure or interest, because a heart without god is a heart without love. an intelligence without the knowledge of god is wanting in a basis as starting-point for all its reasoning--it is without the light that should illumine the objects it takes hold of to examine. such an intellect is circumscribed within the narrow circle of things perceptible to the senses, where, finding nothing but aridness wherein to quench its burning thirst, which is always insatiate for goodness and truth, it ends either in a fierce desire of suicide, or as a vengeance of nature's own in that saddest of nights, madness. an imagination deprived of the splendid visions of the supersensible, loses even its true functions, because, not seeing or divining through time and space, through life and death, in the stars and in the atoms, anything but a casual mechanism, it is cruelly condemned to inertia, and with clipped wings can no longer sustain its flight--those wings which so potently upheld dante as he passed from planet to planet, leaving the earth down in depths far beneath him. the eye accustomed to matter is besmeared with mud, and can no longer bear the bright light of the sun and the planets, which seem as if they were the eyes of god. [sidenote: religious sentiment.] religious sentiment has existed in all times, amongst all people, and it exists in the conscience of man independent of all education and example. the immense vault of the heavens; the innumerable planets resplendent in light; the sun that illuminates, warms, and fertilises the earth; the expanse of the waters of the sea; the prodigious variety and beauty of animals, plants, and fruits; the loveliness of colours, harmony of sounds from everywhere, and for all our senses,--come to us as the proof of god. but more even than from exterior things we feel it within ourselves. the blood shed by the martyrs fighting for the faith; life given in large profusion for the defence of country, liberty, and honour, or our women and children; active indignation against tyranny, cowardliness, and injustice; the tender charm we feel for innocence, admiration for virtue, and charity towards the poor, orphans, and those in trouble,--all these are signs that god has placed within us a part of his very nature. we feel within us the impulses of charity, and in prayer we feel our heart expand with hope; out of frailty we fall, and faith renews in us the strength to rise again. religious sentiment makes the heart glow, illuminates the intellect, fertilises the imagination, and creates not only the good citizen and good father, but also the artist. [sidenote: visit of manzoni.] our hundred basilicas, the paintings and statues of our christian artists that italy and the world is so rich in, bear witness to this tribunal of truth to which anxious humanity, even from its earliest days, appeals. phidias, homer, dante and michael angelo, brunellesco and orgagna, raphael and leonardo, donatello and ghiberti, and a hundred others, prove that religious inspiration is of so large a source that one can always draw from it; and although in the application of it the form may in a measure vary, yet it will always be great and admirable, because the mind that lifts itself up, though it may deviate more or less salient in curves, will always remain elevated. correggio and bernini, guido reni and the caracci, were under the bad influence of their time as to method, but the intention was always good. and coming down to our recent fathers, and speaking always of artists, were canova, rossini, and manzoni not great, for the very reason that they took their inspiration from religious subjects? as the venerated name of manzoni has fallen from my pen, i shall describe the visit that he made to my studio. when his visit was announced to me, i had but just finished the bas-relief for santa croce and the "pietà." he was in company with the marchese gino capponi, aleardi, and professor giovan battista giorgini. after having seen several of my works, he stopped before the model in plaster of the bas-relief for santa croce, and said-- [sidenote: the power of faith.] "i see here a vast subject that speaks to me of lofty things; it seems to me that in parts i can divine its meaning, but i should wish to hear the artist himself speak and explain his entire intention." it is always unwillingly that i act as cicerone to my very poor works--and to say the truth, i only do so most rarely with my intimate friends in order to ask some advice; but the abrupt request made by such a man as he was did not displease me, and i began my explanation. but after i had been talking a few minutes, marchese gino capponi began to stammer out something full of emotion in his sorrow not to be able to see the things i was explaining, and had to go out accompanied by giorgini, if i mistake not. and here was another of those great souls that warmed itself in the rays of that faith which broke asunder the chains of the slave--opened the mind and softened the heart of the savage--restrained the flights of fancy within the beaten road of truth and good--willed that power, justice, and charity should be friends with each other, and made one taste of peace and happiness in poverty--and that enlarged and extended the confines of the intellect, of morality, and of civilisation. i beg pardon if i have enlarged too much on this subject, but i do not think it can be superfluous to endeavour to correct the tendency of the day, when from every side one hears repeated that, for the future, in art the study of religious subjects is at an end, as if society of to-day was entirely composed of unbelievers or free-thinkers, who, by way of parenthesis, amongst other fine things have never thought that thought itself is not at all free. it seems to me that thought is an attribute of the soul that is moved with marvellous rapidity by means of a strength and impulse superior to itself, which depend upon physical constitution, education, and example. thought, with all its freedom, all its flights, is subject, dependent, and, as one might say, formed by those forces and those impulses. [sidenote: guardian angel for the grand duke.] in the infinite scale of human thoughts there are some good, but a great many more are bad. in the moral order of things, those contrary to good are evil; as in the intellectual, those contrary to truth--and in the ideal, those contrary to the beautiful. now thought moves inconstantly from the beautiful to the ugly, from the true to the false, from good to evil, until our will, which is really free, either repulses it or takes possession of it according to the power, more or less, that reason has over the will. it is clear, therefore, that thought is not free, but, on the contrary, is subservient to laws independent of and superior to itself. how this happens is quite another pair of sleeves; but the fact is this, our thought is moved, and so to speak, subject to this power. will comes and accepts it, weds it and makes it its own, good or bad though it be, with or without register of baptism, and snaps its fingers at the syndic or the priest. once stirred, thought moves the will, and the will assenting, commands it as with a rod. and now, for the second time, let me really beg pardon. after my "christ," his imperial highness the grand duke constantine of russia gave me an order for an angel that he wanted as a present for a german prince, whose name i do not remember. this angel was to be the guardian angel; the subject was determined upon, and i don't know if, in the mind of the giver, it was to guard the prince or the principality. if it was the prince, i hope my poor angel will have done the best he could; if the principality, i am afraid that he has been overcome by cunning and force. his head is crowned with olives, and his lifted right hand points to heaven. will the prince feel any consolation looking at the statue? i hope so; and in any way, he will be persuaded that true peace is not of this world. [sidenote: cipolla and the monument to cavour.] it is now the time and place to speak of cavour's monument. as i before mentioned, i was one of the judges on that committee. my vote had been for professor vela's design, but the prize was obtained by the architect professor cipolla; and as he was an architect, he naturally could not carry his work into execution: he therefore went the rounds, and it was not difficult for him to find several sculptors who assumed, each and all of them, certain parts, either a statue or bas-relief. for the principal statue of cavour, it was the intention, i know not whether of cipolla or the giunta comunale, that i should make it, but their reiterated request i did not think well to accept. in the meantime, in turin there began to be a sort of persistent, dull warfare against cipolla's design. all sorts of possible and imaginable doubts were raised as to its general character, meaning, proportions, and effect. that excellent artist, professor cipolla, proposed to put an end to all this talk by setting up in relief, in largish proportions, a model of his so-much-contested design. would that he had never done so! the aversion to it grew beyond bounds, and pronounced itself by means of the press to such a degree, that the giunta thought it best no longer to intrust him with the commission for the work; for, by virtue of an article in the programme for this competition, the committee were not in the least tied down to commit the execution of the monument to the gainer of the prize at the competition, having left itself full and entire liberty of action. from this began a sequel of remonstrances and appeals on the part of the artist, and answers backed by law on the part of the commission, which was then broken up and another formed, for the purpose of studying anew the whole affair. [sidenote: the cavour monument given to me.] i hurry over these things quickly as they come to me and as my memory has retained them after many years, without searching amongst letters, newspapers, or elsewhere, wishing, as i have done until now, to make use only of my memory. the new giunta, presided over by my illustrious and lamented friend count federigo sclopis, took up this tangled affair, discussed in so many ways, and came to the determination of not having any more competition. they decided that the best thing to be done was to choose an artist, and order the work directly from him, leaving him free to determine the rendering of the subject, the size of the monument, the materials to be employed, and choice of the site, and all other matters, except, naturally, as to price and time,--which latter could be but short, owing to the two years that had passed in competitions! the choice fell on me, who was a thousand miles away from thinking of such a thing. however, before saying a word to me, and much less, writing to me, i was interrogated by a most estimable person if i would accept that work, and i answered at once that i would not: in the first place, because the subject was a difficult one, on account of its purely political significance,--so extraneous, not to say tiresome, to my nature and studies; in the second place, because, having been one of the judges on that commission, it did not seem delicate to accept it; and finally, because i thought vela's design most praiseworthy. but neither my refusal nor the reasons i put forth availed to alter the resolution they had now taken to make me accept the work, which, for the matter of that, if it presented great difficulties, and even rather rough ones, in the rendering of its great conception, yet offered a most rare opportunity, that would have flattered many other artists of more ambitious hope than i, who have always been temperate. with all this, however, i should always have replied in the negative, had not a gentle and most noble lady begged me to accept, touching on certain family affections that have always found in me an echo of assent. [sidenote: i accept the commission.] i accepted this commission, therefore, not blinding myself to the great difficulties that i was going to encounter, or the many little annoyances that i should undergo on account of the disappointed hopes of those who had competed for the work. i saw and felt all the seriousness of my undertaking, and thought of nothing else but carrying it out most conscientiously. i asked for eight years' time, which will not appear much, to execute the work; but i was begged to be satisfied with six, and i wrote my adhesion, still declaring in the contract that it would be impossible for me to complete it in that short time. although i worked with all possible energy, and provided myself with additional workmen besides my own usual ones, yet the monument could not be finished and put in its place until after the eight years that i had asked for. [sidenote: description of my design.] my composition of the architectural part of the monument was a quadrangular base, with two spherical bodies on each side, whereon reposed another base, with the corners cut off, that sustained the principal group of italy and cavour. in front, on the lower base, is the half-reclining figure representing right in the act of rising, who leans with the right hand on a broken yoke, and clenches the left on his breast in a menacing attitude. his head and back are covered by a lion's skin, signifying that right is strength. opposite is duty, in a quiet attitude of repose. his head is crowned by a wreath of olives, signifying that in the fulfilment of duty peace is to be found; his right elbow rests on a block, where, on the two sides exposed to view, are sculptured in bas-relief the two extremes of human activity. on one of these there is a king distributing a crown and prizes to a virtuous man, whilst behind him there is a chained delinquent undergoing his penalty; and on the other there is a husbandman ploughing the ground. on the two lateral sides there are two groups. that on the right is of politics, with two little genii, revolution and diplomacy. politics is seated, but alert, and almost in the act of rising: her head is turned to the little genius of diplomacy, who has unfolded the treaties of , and is gravely showing it to her with his right hand, whilst with his left he hides behind him a sword and olive-branch, demonstrating that he brings with him either war or peace. the other little genius of revolution, in the act of wishing to dash forward, is held back by politics, who keeps her eyes on him, and, with a caressing expression, tries to temper his ardour; one of his feet rests on a fragment of medieval architecture, and he holds in his right hand a brand, the symbol of destruction. the group on the left is of independence, tightly clasping in her embrace the little genius of the provinces, at whose feet still lies a link of his chain of captivity. independence has roman sandals on her feet, and a warrior's helmet on her head; her right arm is uplifted, and she holds a broken chain in her hand, in the act of dashing it from her. the other genius is that of unity, crowned by an oak-wreath; he holds the fasces, to show that union is strength. the principal group stands up on the top, and represents cavour, wrapped in his funereal mantle. italy, at his side, in the act of rising from her prostration, is offering him the civic crown, with expressions of gratitude, more decidedly expressed by her left arm, by which she holds her great politician tenderly around the waist; whilst he, with kindly act, shows the people a chart, on which is written his famous formula, "_libera chiesa in libero stato_," or free church in free state. on the two façades of the great base are two bas-reliefs in bronze. in one of these is portrayed the return from the crimea of the sardinian troops, who, by cavour's advice, took part, in union with france and england, in the war against russia, to put a check to the ambitious designs of that power in the east. the other bas-relief represents the congress of paris, where for the first time, on account of cavour, italy's voice was listened to. [sidenote: description of this monument.] the architectural part is made in rose granite of baveno; the ornaments--that is to say, the arms, cornices, and trophies--and the statues are in clear white marble of canal grande, which withstands all attacks of weather. the entire monument is elevated on three steps, and surrounded by a garden enclosed by railing. the inscriptions are: on the front, "to cammillo cavour, born in turin the th of august , died the th of june ." on the side over the politics, "_audace prudente_;" over the independence, "_l'italia libero_;" and behind, "_gli italiani, auspice torino_." these inscriptions are by professor michele coppino. chapter xx. allegories in art--the monga monument at verona--of my late daughter luisina--her death--how i was robbed--monsignore archbishop limberti's charitable project--one of my colleagues--nicolÔ puccini and the statue of cardinal forteguerri--cesare sighinolfi--cardinal corsi, archbishop of pisa. i should now feel inclined to speak at length of the troubles, the thoughts, and of the opposition that i had to encounter during eight years, the grimaces and the miserable enmities of fickle, unstable friends and ungenerous enemies; but i must keep silent, as i have been thus far on all such matters, because my intentions and my works being known to all, others may judge them. then i also remember a wise warning that was given me when i was quite little, which is never to satisfy any desire or impulse to give vent to personal resentment, and i have always found myself the better for it. in such cases, silence has two advantages,--that of leaving one's own soul at peace, and of not satisfying those who would take pleasure in hearing us complain. only on one thing i will not be silent, because this does not concern me, but is a principle in art. i was reproved for having used allegorical figures in cavour's monument, it being asserted that as the subject was entirely a modern one, and could not bear allegory, it was inopportune and improper. to which i answered, that when the subject permitted, it was well not to think even of allegories. if they had said to me, "a memorial of count cavour is wanted, make us a statue," nothing would have been easier. a portrait-statue dressed in the clothes he wore, one or two bas-reliefs on the base, and a brief inscription, would have been enough; and, i repeat, nothing would have been easier. it was not this, however, that the commission required for cavour's monument. the commission desired that the whole of his character and intentions, the tenacity of his will, the greatness of his propositions, and the benefits obtained therefrom, should be portrayed. now, how to explain this with real historical figures, or, as they say, in living art? as if a complex idea expressed by one or more figures, as is the case with allegory, is dead art! oh, do me the famous pleasure, you irritating æsthetics, to go and prattle to babes! but don't speak to them of phidias, zeuxis, alcamenes, and others, of that dead art that is now more alive than it ever was; nor of giotto, nor of giovanni and andrea pisani, nor of raphael, nor of michael angelo, and many more, for they might find you out in your error. i repeat, this does not concern me or my work in the least, but it bears on a principle, and is a question that has been many times ventilated and resolved by the best thinkers in the way of argument, and by artists, who were not blockheads, in their works. [sidenote: historical figures and allegories.] from the noble signora augusta albertini of verona, through my friend aleardo aleardi, i had an order for a monument to her family, an extremely painful subject. the signora albertini had lost, one by one, all her family--father, mother, brothers, sisters, all--and she had alone survived; alone, but with the bitterly sweet memory of those she had loved so much, and the desire to erect a monument to them. some time before, she had given the commission to a young veronese sculptor of great promise, torquato della torre, and they tell me that he had already made a sketch; but shortly after, the young sculptor died, and after a long time had gone by i undertook to make this monument. here is the description of it. on a quadrangular conical base there is placed a group consisting of the angel of death seated, and prostrated at his feet the only survivor of the family, waiting, as it were, after the havoc made by that angel in her family, for her turn to fall a victim. the angel, seated on a fragment of an antique frieze, to denote that he is superior to time and the pomps of humanity, is crowned with cypress, and has a pained expression, as if he deplored the office that divine justice had ordered him to fulfil; the exterminating sword is still in his hand, but the point is lowered. on the base is a bas-relief representing the dead members of that family; and as they died at brief intervals the one from the other, as if death had blown them down with her breath as the wind overthrows the trees in the country, so they are laid out, shoulder to shoulder, by each other. a little angel hovers in the air near them with hands clasped in prayer, and in the background, on the horizon line, one perceives verona. the bas-relief is in bronze, and its colours add seriousness and sadness to the scene. on the sides, and again in bronze, are sculptured two wreaths of cypress, so that this first base on the plinth seems as if it were entirely made of bronze; the upper part, on which the inscription is engraved and the group stands, is in granite. this monument is at the end of the first nave on the right in the cemetery at verona. [sidenote: monument to the family albertini.] i said in the beginning of these memoirs, that i wrote not only for young artists desirous of knowing something of my life, my works, and the principles that have been my guide in art and my intercourse with my fellow-beings, but also to leave to my family a remembrance of my feeling and affection for them. and now that it behoves me to speak of one of our greatest sorrows--that is, of the loss of my most beloved daughter luisina--i know that i am doing what my dear ones desire, however sad it may be; therefore i warn those not caring for this theme to pass on. [sidenote: death of my daughter luisina.] i would that i could divest myself of all my defects to speak of gigina. i would that this page which i consecrate to her memory breathed a little of the sweetly chaste love that showed itself in every act, every word, and every look of hers. i would that i could simplify my style, temper and purify my words, that they might sound sadly sweet, pure, and serene, as were her words, her looks, and her mind. but i greatly fear that i shall not succeed in giving even a feeble idea of that dear child; i fear, because purity and chastity of imagery and simplicity of words have in some measure vanished with my youth and ambition--the passion and love for renown have perhaps clouded the clearness of mind wherein was reflected the true and the good. i shall also not succeed, because the innate beauty of that sweet creature was not fully revealed to me, for the confidence existing between a daughter and her father is always modified by respect; and so it is bereft of those intimate and delicate traits which are its sweetest perfume. my family will read these words on our beloved luisina, and supply with their loving memory where i fail in my littleness. my son-in-law, antonino, wrote of her with the intelligence of love; and several of my friends in condoling with me rendered her image more beautiful and more amiable. yet notwithstanding all this, i feel a desire to return to that dear little angel, were it for nothing else but to rejuvenate and sanctify that sorrow. [sidenote: luisina's character.] from her early girlhood my luisina was as vivacious and playful with her little sisters and with her mother as they would allow her to be; with me she was more serious, and sometimes even sad, perhaps because she saw that i was serious, and because at that time my health was not good. as she grew older she was more confiding in me, and displayed great love for her mother and sisters. she took pleasure in helping them with such little household affairs as no one else could or can do. she also drew, seeing her sisters draw, and could draw from memory faces and persons of our acquaintance. i have also amongst her papers extracts copied by her from books that had pleased her. she loved flowers, and in the morning, together with her sisters, she gathered them in the garden of our villa, and, making bunches of them, placed them on the altar in the little chapel. those days were delicious ones, but they were brief! there is no happiness on earth, or it lasts but a very little while. true it is that memory remains to make us taste of a bitterness mingled somewhat with a sweet sadness, because the dear person taken from us lives again in our mind and responds to the beating of our heart. we remember the movements, the modest look, the words, the gentle affections, and all the virtues by which she was adorned, rendered still more visible and clear without the encumbrance of the body, by whose veil the light was subdued. and then--then there remains for us that sweet, most consoling hope of seeing her again for evermore, leaning on that faith that "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." [sidenote: illness and death of luisina.] o my good gigina, my beloved little angel! i remember all that relates to thee--thy obedience, thy affection, thy anxious delicate care of us, our walks on the delightful fiesole hill so dear to thee, almost a presage that the body should one day have rest there, and now the little chapel in the cemetery there contains also that of thy dear, tired, and martyred mother! oh if i had strength equal to love, i would also write of her! i shall do so in time, but now i return to thee. the remembrance of that morning lies buried in my heart; it was in june , two days before thy _fête_ day, san luigi. for several days thou hadst felt ill, and could not dissimulate as in the past. that morning, before going down into florence, i went into thy room, and seeing that thou wast determined to get up, i ordered thee to remain in bed; thou wast obedient as always, my angel, but wept, because wanting, as i afterwards knew, to be up on thy festal day. the illness was felt by thee, but with hope to overcome it, at least for two days, resigning thyself to all suffering thereafter. thou didst obey, but weeping. perhaps this aggravated thy disease. this is the thorn i bear within my heart. as soon as bendini, the medical man from fiesole, saw her, he thought her case most grave, and wished to consult her own doctor, dr alberti, who had treated her at other times. i went at once to beg him to come, and brought him back with me, as he has always had great kindness and friendship for us, and from that day he always saw her in company with bendini. but the disease increased more and more, and she already breathed with difficulty, but preserved in her thoughts and words serenity and resignation. then began those most painful alternations of disease--a little better and then a little worse--and always the same story over and over again. there is no pain more cruel and stinging than the delusion of a hoped-for good; the heart that opens anxiously to hope is as if crushed and torn from one's breast by implacable delusion. he who has experienced these painful alternations knows that they are more cruel than even death itself. o great god of israel, sustainer of all faithful souls, look down upon the affliction of thy servant! oh assist him in all things to come! this affliction that came to us by god's will broke down my pride, and spread over my family a veil of sadness; it gave a shock to my beloved marina's health, and perhaps accelerated her death. [sidenote: amalia makes a monument to her.] luisina expired in the first morning hours of the day of the ascension of the most holy mary. she had, whilst living, the semblance, the thoughts, and the affections of an angel; and she seemed to fall asleep in the virgin's arms, and fly away with her to heaven. in this belief i find comfort and a sweet peace that not only compensates for her loss, but even more, makes me taste of so pure a pleasure that no words could express and no worldly care could disturb. her body rests in our chapel in the new cemetery at fiesole, and there my daughter amalia has erected a little monument to her. the sepulchral urn is placed in a niche with a flat background, and on it lies sculptured the dear child in peaceful slumber, holding the crucifix in her right hand. everybody could see, and none better than i, how much poor amalia suffered in completing this sorrowful work. i attempted to dissuade her from this most painful duty she had imposed upon herself, but the strong affection for her dead sister suggested perhaps to her that in offering this tribute of sister and artist the pain would be somewhat softened. i know that this remembrance, and the thoughts that have dictated it, may make some smile; but in time they will think better of it, and will know that sadness is worth more than laughter, for the heart becomes better for the sadness in the face. and with this i have finished talking of my gigina, keeping her memory always in my heart. [sidenote: , lire is stolen from me.] to narrate the death of my luisina, i have omitted a circumstance, and not a trifling one in my life--that of the theft that occurred to me of fifty thousand _lire_. i hasten to declare that until that day (it was in ) i never had been the possessor of such a sum, and as soon as i was, it was stolen from me. this is how i came into possession of the money, why i kept it intact, and how it was stolen from me. i had only begun on cavour's monument a short time before, and in accordance with the form of the contract, had received the first remittance of fifty thousand _lire_. at the same time, i was arranging to buy a house in the via pinti that i thought i should be able to adapt and make into a spacious studio, such as was necessary for me in modelling the colossal figures for the monument. as the sale of the house was to take place from day to day, i was persuaded also, by the advice of my lawyer, not to employ this money in any way, so as to have it ready to give in payment for it. and as i had kept the little sums of money that i had had in hand up to that time in a secret drawer of the closet in my own room in the studio, i placed this also there. at this time i was working on the marble of a statue, the "tired bacchante," which had been bought by the king of portugal. i had a young roman girl as a model, and she came accompanied by her mother. this woman also had a son (so, at least, it was said; then it was no longer so; in fact, there was some mystery that i don't remember, because naturally such things were of no importance to me). the boy came also for a model, and appeared to be a good fellow, as well as the girl. [sidenote: how the theft took place.] one morning (i was still in bed, but about to get up) my poor wife came into the room and said-- "here is bardi, who wants to speak to you." "what can he have to say to me? does he not know that in half an hour i shall be at the studio? he could wait. let us hear what is the matter." bardi was one of my studio men, the rougher-out, whom i had brought up from a boy, and he had been with me twenty-three years. he was a thin, white-looking man, with a black beard, and dark lines under his eyes in his normal condition. that morning, as soon as i saw him, he really frightened me, for he looked absolutely like a dead man, or as dante says, _cosa rimorta_. he took me aside, that my wife should not hear, and he told me that he had found the door of my room open, and having waited and listened awhile to ascertain if by chance i had arrived before him and was inside, but not hearing a sound after having called me, he entered the room and saw the closet open, the drawers on the ground, and the papers scattered about. he asked me anxiously if i kept anything of value there. "all, my dear bardi! all that i possessed in money was there." and having almost no breath for words, i went out with him, rushing through the street. it is easier imagined than told how i felt on seeing all the drawers upset and empty, and the papers and thousand little objects they contained scattered about the ground. all the men of my studio gathered about me, and pitied me without even suspecting that it was a matter of such a sum of money. my good friend cavaliere raffaello borri, being told what had occurred, came to me at once, and with rare generosity offered me his purse and his credit, and accompanied me home, with my heart full of anguish to be obliged to give this news to my poor wife. my friends rivalled each other in consoling me, some with offerings and some with affectionate words; and i can never forget the charitable proposition made by monsignore the archbishop giovacchino limberti, to collect a certain sum for my benefit amongst those who were best able to give, and who knew me and loved me. all these i truly thanked from the bottom of my heart, saying that for the moment i was not in straitened circumstances, and if i was no longer in possession of that money--for which, thank god, i was not in debt--yet it was not lawful for me to accept help of any kind, for in substance i could not call myself strictly in need, and i remembered in the past having really been poor and not having accepted or asked for anything, because my principle is that every one ought to be sufficient for himself. [sidenote: a portion of the money found.] how the thieves were discovered, how some escaped from justice, how one was taken and condemned, and how, finally, part of the money stolen was saved, the sum of , _lire_ returned to me, besides the gold medal that i had obtained at the universal exhibition of paris in , and which was shut up in the same place with the stolen money,--all this appears in the judiciary chronicle of that time. nor do i feel inclined to mix in such mire, and the reader could not follow me without disgust. it was well that in the part of the theft recovered my paris medal was found, not only because by this the reality of the robbery committed on me was proved and the restitution instantly made, but still more because it silenced some, i don't know how to qualify them, who seemed to doubt the misfortune that had befallen me, as if almost i had invented it--as if i had been a vulgar impostor, and had invented this fable to avoid payment ... of what? i had never had debts before that time, then, or since; and that i had no engagements to meet is proved by the refusal i made to those who so kindly and willingly offered to come to my aid. [sidenote: i forget a promissory-note.] but yes, once i had a debt, but merely by chance, or i had better say by forgetfulness. when this happened i was very young--at the beginning of my artistic career, if i mistake not. then i was making the "cain." in order to put it into marble i went to carrara, found the block that suited me, and said that i would pay for it when the marble itself arrived. the trader answered, "all right! i shall send the marble at once; and as to the payment, i shall draw out a promissory-note for the first of the month." i had before me some twenty days' time. my mind being entirely possessed by the marble, i took no note of the day when the money became due. i knew that i had to pay, but the date escaped me, and one fine day i suddenly beheld before me a man from a bank, who came to receive the money that i had not got in full. i stammered out something, as a man might do about to be hanged. "oh, don't hurry yourself much," said the man; "suit your own convenience--i will return later; there is time until three," and he went away. how i felt can easily be imagined by those who know me. i became whiter and harder than the marble that i had then before me on the ground. i must find there and then, in the beat of a drum, the three or four hundred _scudi_ that were wanting; and where to find them, i, who had never before asked for anything in loan? a good inspiration came to me. "yes," said i, "sor emanuele can do me this favour;" and putting on my coat, i ran into the square to the fenzi bank. sor emanuele was there at the back in his study, and you could see through the open glass door that fine jovial witty face of his. [sidenote: an incredulous colleague.] when he saw me he exclaimed, "how are you?" "sor emanuele, this and this is the matter," and i told him everything. he gave me a slightly frowning look, and then burst into a fit of laughter that made his subalterns who were behind turn round, and he said, "look here, we will do so;" he tore off a cheque, wrote the sum on it, and continuing to laugh, added, "pass on there to bosi and give him this; and _au revoir_ until this evening" (i used to frequent his house); but when he had turned he called me back again and said: "listen--i want to give you a counsel. you must never again sign any promissory-notes if you can help it; or if you do, make a note of them and look at it every day,"--and he began again to write, smiling to himself. will you believe it, sor reader, i have never again signed any bills, although more than thirty-six years have gone by? yet (to return to the robbery), amongst those who doubted my misfortune there was a colleague of mine, who, listening that day with an incredulous air to the account of what had occurred, and hearing that the sum in question was fifty thousand _lire_, with a smile on his lips and bad feeling at heart, came out with these words-- "fifty thousand _lire_! that is rather too much!" this colleague of mine was not the only one, nor one of the worst. some few years ago a little thing happened which shows the uprightness and generosity of another of my colleagues! [sidenote: statue of cardinal forteguerri.] [sidenote: sighinolfi's model rejected.] cavaliere nicolô puccini, in dying at pistoia, left orders in his will that a statue of cardinal forteguerri should be made and placed in the piazza del duomo of that city. cavaliere puccini's idea was, as every one can see, a wise and generous one, and belied reports, which made him out odd and unfriendly to the priests. this statue was to be assigned by competition, and with the obligation of presenting a model in plaster representing the cardinal in his robes, with the insignia of his office, and the size of life. it is evident to all that this obligation was a serious one, and would cause many to withdraw from the competition, as really happened. one person, however, went in for the competition, and this was signor cesare sighinolfi of modena, who, having left my teaching but a short time before, set himself to model this statue in too trivial a way--without a model, without the necessary robes, and without even caring a pin as regards asking me anything concerning the composition, or the requisite means for not making a jackanapes instead of a cardinal! vivacious and careless as he was then, he had the pretension of being able to model a cardinal's statue life-size by only consulting some prints or pictures of cardinals, and the result was--as it should have been--that the statue was a very bad one. an article in the programme for this competition provided that the adjudication of the prize should be given by the florentine academy. i was not present at the meeting, to avoid giving a vote against it, as i was not unaware how the work had turned out. the poor statue, therefore, was judged and condemned without mercy. then, after the first ebullition of juvenile impetuosity that had made him run on so foolishly was over, he returned to his senses, remembered me, and as at the same time though he had so much youthful light-heartedness, he had also a certain tenacity of will and self-love that had been wounded by the rejection of his work, he ran to me and entreated me to intercede with the commission that organised the competition, and obtain for him the concession of another trial. i willingly agreed to do so, seeing the despair he was in, and appreciating the no small amount of courage required to recommence from the very beginning a difficult, expensive, and uncertain work; but i had to say to him, "... that is, if you are only in time, because the commission having just fulfilled its duty, and the competition turned out null, is now free to give the statue to whomsoever it likes without the obligation of competition." it was therefore necessary to make an appeal to the commission to obtain its consent that another competition should be opened, and this was done by sighinolfi, accompanied by a recommendation from me; and that it should have more value, and the second trial be conceded, i advised sighinolfi to have this appeal signed by all my other colleagues. he did so, and hurried by rail to pistoia to present his request to the commission; but what was his surprise when, on his arrival there, and just as he was going up the stairs to present his paper to the secretary of the commission, he saw coming down one of the professors who had backed and signed his appeal! the poor youth divined all, but still wished to make the attempt; and he did well to do so,--in fact the secretary in the most polite manner tried to persuade the young artist that now there was no longer time, that the competition had resulted in nothing, and that another trial would only draw things out to too great a length; and finally, that as an offer had just been made to the commission in shape of a request for this work whereby its own responsibility was covered, so that it would come out of the affair with honour, he thought the commission would not accord the petition, but that he would take it, and officially present it, so as to give it its due course. as soon, however, as that excellent gentleman had set his eyes on the paper, and had seen the recommendation and signature of the same individual that only a short time before had made a request for the work for himself, he was so filled with indignation that, turning to sighinolfi, he said-- [sidenote: the competition reopened.] "go back to florence, make another trial, and as you are recommended by professor duprè, he will assist you, and the commission will trust, i am certain, to the words and help of your master." these, or words to the same effect, were reported to me by sighinolfi on his return, and i saw myself doubly pledged that the young man should really this time succeed. here i am met by a reflection. was it not perhaps quite lawful for an artist to present himself and ask to have that work to do himself, which, by reason of an unsuccessful competition, any one was free to ask for and obtain? lawful it certainly would have been for any one who had not recommended the young man for a second trial, but certainly it was not praiseworthy in one who had made this recommendation; so, at least, it seems to me. [sidenote: cardinal corsi lends his robes.] therefore, as matters stood thus, i thought it my duty to advise and direct the youth to follow a sure road, and the only good one by which to come safely into port. and, satisfying myself first as to his firm will to do all and follow in everything what i advised, i ordered him to make a small sketch, enough to get lines grateful to the eye. then, remembering the kindness that cardinal corsi, archbishop of pisa, had always shown me, i wrote him a letter nearly in the following terms: "eminence,--signor cesare sighinolfi, my scholar, is the person who presents this letter to you. he has to make the statue of cardinal forteguerri for pistoia, but could not possibly make anything good without having the robes appropriate to that high office. see, _eminenza_, if it would be possible for him to obtain them from you--as, for instance, if your eminence had a robe, even a worn-out one, that you could let him have for a short time--you would be doing a great act of charity; for i repeat, without this neither he nor any one else could succeed in doing anything. i am here to guarantee that the sculptor will take the greatest care of it, and return it as soon as possible," &c., &c. sighinolfi, although he is not, i believe, one of those many would-be devourers of priests, yet was, and still is, a most decided liberal, and the dignity and the face of a cardinal must have had the same effect upon him as coming in contact with a most antipathetic person would have upon you or me. but, as the proverb says, one must make of necessity a virtue, and having crossed himself, he presented himself before his eminence. great was his surprise to find that prelate most jovial and pleasant, and quite ready to grant his request; and that worthy man pushed courtesy and amiability to the extent of making him sit down at the table while he was taking his breakfast. it is as true as the gospel that i have seen some democrats more aristocratic than his eminence corsi. he then called his secretary, codibò, and told him to have a whole suit of his best clothes, from the hat to the shoes, given to sighinolfi, and dismissed him with kindness. i don't know if sighinolfi offered to kiss his hand; but even if he had, it would have been the same thing, for corsi would not have allowed him to kiss it, as i well know, for he would never allow me to do so. [sidenote: the statue adjudged to sighinolfi.] with this precious bundle of cardinal's clothes he was able to dress one of our models, who, although somewhat ridiculous, lent himself admirably to being dressed in that way; and this is the only means of doing serious work. the model was made under my direction, and exhibited to be judged by the academy, and declared worthy of being executed in marble. so ended the difficulties arising from the light-headedness of a young artist, and made still harder by the intervention of an artist who was neither generous nor just. chapter xxi. the universal exhibition at paris in --the imitators of vela--inedited music by rossini and gustave dorÉ--domenico morelli--group of prince trabia's children and the thieves--"stick no bills"--the statue of marshal pallavicini--the empress maria teresa and marshal pallavicini--a memorial monument to fra girolamo savonarola--the universal exhibition at vienna--a tiny room--excellent and very dear--on harmony of sounds--on the harmony in the animal world--the harmony of the human form as manifested by the inner beauty of the soul--the campanile of st stephen's and canova's monument. it is now necessary for me to speak of the universal exhibition at paris in ; but first, i wish frankly to give my opinion on the utility or non-utility of such exhibitions, monstrous agglomerations of manufactures, machinery, raw material, food, liquid for drink, sacred utensils, machines for war, &c., all exposed by the different nations of the world at the same time and in the same place. it has been said that this serves to create rivalry and emulation in the people of the different civilised nations, by placing their industries in contact with each other, to be judged by special men named for the purpose to give them their merited reward. the idea seems to be a fine one; in fact, it is so much too fine that the excess deforms it. on the contrary, i believe that all this assemblage of things in an immense edifice, with thousands and thousands of visitors, on one of the pleasantest and most smiling sites, in the most beautiful part of the year, in one of the great metropolises of the world, answers admirably to the economical and political aims of the state that assembles the exhibition; gives an opportunity to travellers and exposers to see, to divert and enjoy themselves, and make acquaintances, sometimes good, but oftener bad; brings money into the pockets of intriguers and swindlers in proportion to their dexterity, and gives or increases the renown of tizio or caio, to the detriment of sempronio, in the opinion of some with justice, and in the opinion of others with great injustice. but who has the rights of it? the rights of it are at the bottom of a well, and need the grappling-irons of time to drag them out. [sidenote: influence of world exhibitions.] i should believe in the utility of these world exhibitions if they were by sections--industries, manufactures, machinery, and agriculture--everything separate; and separated always absolutely from all the rest, in time and in place, the fine arts, to which i should wish to see prizes awarded, not by a medal, but rather by the purchase of the work itself, or if this be already disposed of, by the commission for another. it may be somewhat useful to artists to see the works of others, their variety, and the different modes of feeling and seeing of their authors; it may infuse into them new life, new strength, and stimulate them to search within themselves for what they find in the works of others: but if this examination, this comparison, this stimulating fever be of assistance to some, to the greater number it is a stumbling-block, and the cause of their going astray. it is useless to have any illusion. the greater number of young artists allow themselves to be taken by the bait of novelty, only because it is novelty, without being able to discern the hidden reasons for which good sense and experience concede or deny merit to such novelty. to but few belongs the power of examination and criticism,--to them alone who, having by nature the sentiment and cult of art, exercise themselves by constantly holding up the mirror before it; for they find in it always something new and varied, and on this very account do not ignore the reasons and laws that willingly give consent to these varieties and novelties. but the others allow themselves to be dazzled, and accept the novelty whatever it may be, choosing by preference the strangest and most unusual, which for that very reason is sure to be the least true; and so they fall into double error--into imitation which lands one in mediocrity, and into oddity which has affinity with error. as with both--that is to say, amongst those who do not depreciate novelty, and amongst the others that are seduced by the false attractions of mere novelty--there are some who are capable of appreciating the good only so far as the means for being able to manifest it is made apparent to them. to these, great exhibitions are of use; but to the first named they are not of use, as they have no need of them--and to the others even less so, for to them they can do harm. [sidenote: the milanese school of sculpture.] when, now many years ago, vela and others of the milanese school taught a new and totally different way of looking at and treating drapery, flesh, and more especially hair, they would never have believed, i think, that their imitators would have gone to such lengths, and have so exaggerated that method as to have rendered it supremely false, ridiculous, and incomprehensible. in fact, things have got to such a pass to-day that hair looks like anything but hair--more like stalactites or beehives, salad or whipped cream; and this last the hair made by some of the imitators and exaggerators of that peculiar way of seeing nature particularly resembles. at the great exhibition at paris one saw both master and scholars; or it would be better to say, the initiator and the imitators. vela with his sobriety of purpose, full of life, here and there with rough-and-ready touches as art and taste counsel, and nature and harmony teach--the others, with little taste, great self-reliance, and equal audacity, striving their best to muddle up everything together in a topsy-turvy fashion. taste, which is an individual sentiment, was reduced to a system, or rather a manner; sobriety was transformed into hardness, and a studied neglect of certain parts, exchanged for a systematic and excessive carelessness; and on the contrary, as if in contrast, an affected imitation of little folds, bands, lace, and polished beads and necklaces, the delight and admiration of women and children, little and big. [sidenote: frivolous and affected art.] at the exhibition in paris, amongst the fops and the milliners this alluring kind of work was received with enthusiasm, because a novelty always makes a greater impression on the frivolous; but serious people of good taste, as well as the judges, did not allow themselves to be attracted by such superficiality. it is true, however, that they were too severe with works of merit, and if it had not been that the limited number of prizes prevented them from being more liberal, the jury that i belonged to would have been to blame. but it is not requisite for me to repeat here what i said on sculpture, and what i wrote officially on that exhibition. i became acquainted at that time with the best french artists, and they showed me almost brotherly kindness. i sat at their meetings at the academy, of which i had been a member since , and was afterwards raised to the rank of corresponding member, which is the highest honour the academy can confer. although unworthy to do so, i had giovacchino rossini's seat. [sidenote: rossini's house in paris.] rossini's house was the genial meeting-place of all there was of most distinguished then in paris, not only of the musical class, but of the artistic and literary. he had music, and often sat down to the piano and accompanied his inedited songs. i remember two of singular beauty; one most sad in subject, words, and notes, of a father from whom his little son had been stolen. it was a lament, refined, delicate, and touching, and at the end of every verse came the _ritornello--"chi l'avesse trovato il mio piccino!_" the words, i was told, were by castellani of rome. the other song was brilliant, strong, thrilling. it was an outburst of love, where a tyrolese _jodel_ was interpolated and sung by that brilliant imaginative genius gustave doré. here one met with choice conversation, fruitful, instructive, amiable, and vivacious, from which one came forth with the mind more elevated and a greater warmth at heart; but.... to that exhibition i sent a plaster cast of my bas-relief representing the "triumph of the cross," the marble group of the "pietà," and the model for the base of the egyptian vase. for these works the great medal of honour was conferred upon me. in painting, professor ussi had the same great medal for his picture "la cacciata del duca d'atene." domenico morelli for his "torquato tasso," and vincenzo vela for his "dying napoleon," obtained the first-class gold medal, but they also deserved to have had the great medal. a fine genius is domenico morelli, as well as a loyal and generous friend, for he greatly rejoiced when ussi obtained the great prize for italian painting; and i remember that he said, "as long as there is the great prize, be it awarded to myself, ussi, or any one else, it is of small consequence as long as italy does not fall behind. long live art and italy!" [sidenote: influence of the paris exhibition.] for the matter of that, one art (i speak of painting) was most worthily represented, and brought forward a virgin element--subject to discussion and confirmation, it is true, yet fruitful of good result, such as recalling art to its fundamental principle, which is the imitation of nature, and relieving young men from the conventional trammels learnt on the benches of the academy (i wish i could say learnt in the past), making them breathe a more ventilated, healthy air, placing before their eyes that infinite variety and beauty of which nature is composed in all its parts, in all its effects, and in all its forms--in the heavens, in the sea, on the hills, in the plains, in the forests, in the animals and in men--and every one of these things always varying according to light, according to the quietness or the emotions of nature, according to temperament, to the habits of animals and men; all of which things are so well taught by nature to those holding a constant firm will to study her. this element, i say, appeared with but slight deviations at the world's exhibition in paris, and did good. it rejuvenated art, and lifted it out of some conventionalities, whilst it placed others in bad repute. but enough of this for the present; let us speak of something else. [sidenote: life-size group for prince trabia.] one of the reasons that spurred me on to write these memoirs is this: allowing that my works may with time not be entirely forgotten, i have wished to register them all in this book, that it should not occur after a certain time that some copy, some imitation, or unknown piece of sculpture, more or less praiseworthy than mine, should be attributed to me. for this reason, from the first i have mentioned even such works as are of no great size and importance, and will continue to do so, excluding, be it understood, reproduction, which would carry me to too great lengths. the signora maria galeotti, _nata_ petrovitz, ordered from me a life-size group of her grandchildren, sons of prince trabia. this group reminds me of that most unfortunate robbery that i have spoken of further back, and this is why i am reminded of it. in the closet where i kept the money shut up that was stolen from me, there was a little of everything, papers, designs, tools, books, medals, and various little trinkets, that were respected--that is, not taken away, for they were scattered about on the floor. in this closet i also kept my clothes; and for convenience, or out of carelessness, amongst other things i had left a straw hat there. this straw hat of mine the thieves had put on the head of one of the little ones in the trabia group, and it would have been really ridiculous to see the statuette of that little boy with my great straw hat hiding half of his head, had it only been at another time, because even now (and a good many years have passed), only to think of it--no, indeed, it does not make me laugh! and to think that of those gentlemen thieves, for there were several, some escaped the claws of justice, and some must have come out of "college" by this time, and if by chance they meet me, may smile to themselves under their beards at my simplicity. so goes the world; it is so fashioned, and has always been the same, even from the so-called prehistoric ages, and no instruction, either more or less obligatory, will change it one atom. as for me, when i am minister of "justice and mercy" (devil take it, why not?) i will have engraved upon all the corners where one now reads "stick no bills," the eighth commandment, "thou shalt not steal; or if so, the whip will be administered and plenty of it;" and to my colleagues in favour of progress who rise up in arms against me i will answer: "a little luxury as regards the whip, my good gentlemen, will bring about great economy as regards the prisons and domiciliary compulsion, and what is more, will bring about a considerable rise in the funds--of public security. but it is said the lash degrades humanity. perhaps it is degraded less by theft? in times not very remote, theft was punished much more severely even when it was not a very grave matter; but if it was grave and accompanied by the breaking open of drawers, the thieves were hanged outright. certainly this punishment was excessive, draconian, and in a word barbarous; and yet, in those days arnolfo built, giotto painted, and dante wrote his immortal poem. be it as it may, this is most certain, that thieves were then conspicuous by their very scarcity, whereas to-day they shine by their frequency; and _vice versâ_, arnolfo, giotto, and dante then existed, _e questo è quanto_, as marchese colombi would say." [sidenote: the whip for thieves.] count antonio pallavicini, a man cut out after the old-fashioned stamp,--one of the few who in their hearts keep to the religion of gratitude and affectionate remembrance of their dear relations,--gave me the order for a statue of his grandfather, marshal pallavicini, who was in the austrian service under the reign of maria teresa. the count told me an anecdote of this excellent grandfather that i wish to repeat, so that one may see how, though in a foreign service, the heart--i will not say of an italian, for italy was hardly spoken of then, but--of a genoese and good republican beat. here it is: the republic of genoa--i know not on what question with austria--had become discontented, and threatened to resist by force the pretension of that powerful empress, who, either because she was by nature careless and unmindful of public virtue, or because she thought of obtaining a better result, decreed that marshal pallavicini should move at the head of an army to put down genoese arrogance. but this brave soldier--this worthy patriot--on coming into the presence of the sovereign, took off his sword, and placing it on the table, said with calm dignity-- [sidenote: marshal pallavicini.] "your majesty, it is impossible for me, a genoese, to make war against my own country; and i therefore to-day give up this sword that i have so often used in the defence of your empire, that it may not be stained by the blood of my brothers." at which the empress smilingly answered-- "take back your sword, that is so well suited to you, and that you use so valorously; and as your service is denied us in reducing to obedience your dear but obstinate brothers, be at least our envoy to arrange the difficulties and treat of peace." and peace was concluded. it must be agreed that the subject was a fine one and a worthy one, and the statue was made and placed in the cemetery of the certosa at bologna; but the above-mentioned anecdote, that i would have so willingly treated in bas-relief as portraying vividly the character of this personage, was not given me to carry out, because the base was entirely occupied by long latin inscriptions that the count would at all costs have engraved upon it, to set forth the whole family history, and the reasons for his gratitude and the erection of the monument. about that time i had to make a little monumental memorial of frate girolamo savonarola. the reason for my having this order was this,--that in germany--i do not remember in what town--a monument had been put up to luther, and one of the figures that adorned this monument was fra girolamo savonarola; and how much to the purpose, all, excepting those good germans, can see, for they know savonarola as well as i do the emperor of the mississippi. the promoters of this work were gino capponi, bettino ricasoli, niccolò tommaseo, raffaello lambruschini, augusto conti, cesare guasti, and isidoro del lungo. i assisted at their meetings, and the idea that prevailed was to make the statue of savonarola and place it in the cloisters of st mark; but this intention we did not fulfil, because another commission had already been formed with the same purpose of doing honour to savonarola, and this had already asked for and obtained the place in the cloister, the more readily as the statue was already made by professor enrico pazzi. we therefore had to change our project, and after many propositions it was decided that the monument should consist of a bas-relief and bust to be placed in the friar's cell. this was done accordingly, and there it is to be found. the subject of the bas-relief is savonarola before the gonfaloniere and priori of the comune, reading the government statutes proposed by him for the florentine republic. on one of the sides or flanks of the bas-relief is the youth savonarola in pensive attitude meditating leaving the world and dedicating himself to monastic life, and on the other one are represented the last moments of his life when he is on the way to his martyrdom. the bust is in bronze. [sidenote: monument to savonarola.] six years have not passed since the honour befell me of sitting amongst those famous men who wanted this work to be made by me, and three of them are already dead. gino capponi, tommaseo, and lambruschini--they are dead, but their names and their works live, and will live as long as truth and good are loved and revered. [sidenote: universal exhibition at vienna.] in the universal exhibition at vienna took place, and i was named on the jury in the italian section on sculpture, in company with my dearest friend giovanni strazza, so early lost to his family, to art, and to his country, which he so honoured and loved. on an occasion like this i had the means of knowing the clear acumen and kind heart of my illustrious colleague, be it either in his judgment on works of art, or in his intimate relation of friendship with our colleagues. i will not speak of that great gay city, nor of the works of art in which she is so rich, nor of the pinacoteca, her galleries and magnificent library--for this is not what i have undertaken, and these are things that can be found in the guide-books; and even if i wished to make some observations about them, it would be impossible for me to do so, because at that time i was most unhappy in the recent loss of my dear daughter luisina; and therefore, alone and far from my family, i felt a void around me, and a most vivid desire to see them again, so that i looked at everything most hurriedly and through a veil of sadness and anguish. [sidenote: music in vienna.] i was lodged at the hotel britannia on the schillerplatz, on the fourth floor, up one hundred and thirty-seven steps, in a small room, even smaller than that of my own maid-servant; there was only one window, and this opened on an inner court. the furniture consisted of a little bed, too small, but soft and sufficiently clean; a table, two chairs, a wardrobe, a looking-glass, a dressing-table--and that was all. all this for the miserable sum of ten _lire_ a-day. i will say nothing about the meals; but the breakfast, i mean the early one of coffee and milk, a roll and butter, was sixty _kreutzers_--a _lira_ and a half; and with the little refreshment of ice in your water (it was in june), twenty _kreutzers_ more--half a _lira_. a cigar was half a _lira_, the washing and doing up of a shirt one _lira_, an ice one _lira_, and so on to your taste. for the matter of that, if i had had a little of the good-humour that my italian companions petrella, boito, govi, bonghi, palizzi, mussini, cantoni, colombo, and mariani had, without counting jorick, who had to give and to spare, i should have remained there longer, and should have amused myself--for the city is really beautiful, most animated and bright, especially in the evening, well lighted, with fine theatres and music. oh, for music, you must hear it at vienna! i do not mean by music german music--for on the contrary, i love our own italian; but i speak of the execution, of which we have (setting aside exceptions) but a most imperfect idea. it cannot be otherwise. there the musician has an assured position. there there is an institute where he is trained to be a professor of music--that is to say, as far as execution goes--where music is provided for, and nothing else is taught. during the day he studies, and in the evening he plays, and the next day the same thing over again, and so on until the day comes for receiving holy unction. i defy any one, therefore, not to play well! i heard one sunday, at the st stephen's cathedral, music so sad and so sweet that i was almost carried away by it, it seemed as if it were a sweet and loving lament of the angels. these seemed not to be the voices of the instruments of this world, but a something superhuman, celestial, that filled one with emotion. oh, music comes directly from heaven! the harmony of sounds is something of a more intimate, secret, and mysterious nature than the harmony of lines and colours; for what constitutes the beauty, harmony, and attraction of exterior things, is not there alone in appearance, but radiates from the spirit within: therefore it is that the beautiful, emanating from the divine harmony of sound, is more exquisite and more living, because it is the manifestation of the soul and the spirit without encumbrance. our intellect grasps hold of it and falls in love with it, because it is itself also a part of that immortal beauty to which it feels an irresistible attraction to unite itself. but the impression of the beautiful, visible or invisible, we receive imperfectly, because the senses through which it is revealed to us are only so fitted as to enable us to receive it in part--that part which gives us pleasure, for its entire splendour would kill us. harmony has laws of order and unity, and relations and affinities, inexplicable. we feel that certain combinations of notes express sorrow, others joy, others love, and so on; but given without that order and unity, without those relations and affinities, they express nothing, and are only unpleasant sounds. why is it so? oh, friend biaggi, if i speak profanely, make the sign of the cross and correct me! [sidenote: the charm of music.] [sidenote: nature is not always beauty.] the same can be said of all things that have form and colour, that are animate or inanimate. there is in nature, in the configuration of certain parts of the country and certain places, a something, i know not what, of gloominess and melancholy, that, when we look at them, fills us with sadness. others, on the contrary, are bright, happy, and joyous. it is just the same with one's self, and not by reason of the more or less fertility in this or sterility in that, nor by reason of the state of one's soul, but entirely from the effect of lines and colours. and so it is, again, with things animate. there are beautiful animals, and animals that seem ugly--some, in fact, absolutely repulsive--and why? perhaps because they are harmful? yet no; for there are most beautiful animals that are really bad and most dangerous--for example, the lion, the tiger, and the leopard; whilst others, as for instance a spider, a mouse, a tarantula, a black beetle, a worm, and a scorpion, which do no harm, or very little, seem to us so ugly, so repulsive, that we are obliged to turn away from them. be it observed that this sort of aversion is felt the most by those natures that have the most exquisite feeling and love of the beautiful--the reason being that these animals have in their form a harmony certainly necessary to the universal order of nature, but most ungrateful to our eyes; whereas the lion, tiger, leopard, and above all, the horse, are beautiful and attractive to them. therefore, in nature, to our way of seeing, there is the beautiful and the ugly--there are beings that attract and others that repulse us. "certainly there are," i am answered. "what sort of a discovery do you think that you have made?" very well, i am delighted with this answer, because the above tirade was made by me for the benefit of those who affirm that all is beautiful in nature,--in fact, their formula is, _nature is beauty_. instead of which, i, with what i have said and am about to say, would wish to demonstrate that ugliness has a negative harmony all her own, and only in conformity with her cold and obtuse vitality; and therefore, nothing of it radiating on us, we are not attracted by it, but rather repulsed. in as far as the animal is perfect in living harmony, so much the greater the light that emanates from him. man, who is the most perfect of animate creation, radiates so much the greater _light_ in proportion as the interior harmony of order, of justice, and of love makes its impress upon and forms the body that encloses it. in the serenity of the brow one observes the majesty of order, in the erect bearing of the person and the temperate firm use of words the dictates of justice, and love is in the intense calm look of the eyes and almost happy expression of the mouth, which, with the eyes, are, as it were, the windows of the soul, from which that beauty radiates that attracts and impels to admiration and to love. [sidenote: st stephen's cathedral.] man, therefore, is the most living manifestation of the beautiful, and he is also the being that most thirsts for the enjoyment of it. he looks for it everywhere--in the splendour of the heavens, over the expanse of the sea, on the high mountain-sides, in the mysterious shadows of the forests, and in the solitude of the valleys, when the dying sun casts languidly over them its violet light. at night, when man and beast rest after the fatigues of the day, and silence and quiet begin, he feels a tender harmony, delicate and mysterious, as the memory of the days of innocence, or as the hope of a future life. the harmony of night is, as it were, the breath of sleeping nature. look, now, into what a labyrinth i have been dragged by the music i heard at st stephen's! the campanile of this cathedral is pointed and very high; it can be seen from all parts of the city. one sees at once that it is the campanile of the _ecclesia major_. i wished to see it. the cathedral is always the first thing that attracts the stranger's curiosity when he arrives in a place, because therein is expressed the religious sentiment of the people who have built it, which is the first of all sentiments, and then follows that of the citizen. first the cathedral was made by the people of old, and then the town-hall, and in the same order i also look at them and think of them. i wished to see it, therefore; but being at a distance, i stopped a cab and said to the driver that i wanted to go there. bravo! and without knowing a bit of german! i told him in three languages--in italian, in french, and in latin (macaronic, of course); but it was dense darkness to him. i pointed with my hand to the campanile in the distance, and this time he understood! he answered, "_ja, ja_," and whipping up his horses, off he went for some time; but as we never arrived, i again pointed to the campanile. "_ja, ja_," and on we went, but away from the place i indicated. then i stopped him, paid him, and got out. on the venture, i jumped into an omnibus, just to leave the man, who was going who knows where, returned to the centre, and got out at oberring. there i found a friend, who took me in a short time on foot to st stephen's, where i heard that wonderful music, the remembrance of which still excites me to ecstasy. this does not often happen to me, but it does sometimes. [sidenote: canova's maria christina.] from there--that is, not from my ecstasies, but from st stephen's--i went to the church of the augustins, where canova's famous monument in honour of maria christina is. as to its being beautiful, i say nothing, but an artist who was with me extolled it to the seventh heaven; though to me, with the music of st stephen's still in my ears, it seemed that canova in other works had arrived at greater perfection, both as regards general conception and as regards sentiment of truth. but, i repeat, it may have been the music that made it seem to me--and i say so in all reverence--a little conventional. i was there in vienna, however, to form part of the jury on the sculpture of to-day, and not to criticise the art of the past; so that a little want of appreciation or a judgment too lightly given may be forgiven me. for the matter of that, canova is canova, and the braying of donkeys, as the proverb says, does not reach heaven. chapter xxii. the palace of the exhibition at vienna--why, with my attributes of president, i was in such haste--michael angelo and garibaldi--a viennese cabman--the camerini monument--duke camerini--an anecdote of his life--statue of michael angelo in the future--the centenary festival of michael angelo--signora adelina patti--a greedy young man of little judgment--the favard monument. the palace of the exhibition was built on the prater. it cost twenty millions of florins (fifty millions of _lire_), without counting, be it remembered, the sum expended by other nations on their special buildings. it is not my intention to describe this immense edifice, and all the smaller ones around it, in that large and most delightful prater. i will not even speak of the exhibition, excepting only as regards my department--that of sculpture. without expectations or merits on my part i was elected president of the department in sculpture; and this honour was most prized by me, because it enabled me to hasten on the work in our section with all the alacrity compatible with the number and importance of the works submitted to our judgment; and this, indeed, was not a trifling matter, for, between statues and groups, there were two hundred and fifteen, without counting large and small busts. there was a great deal of german sculpture; but with few exceptions, it was somewhat hard and conventional. ours, with some honourable exceptions,--and amongst them monteverde's group of jenner, fine in the choice of subject, well grouped, and admirably modelled--and a few other works,--were like the usual old woman's tale, trivial in conception and ungainly in form. it is painful to say so, but the french sculpture at this exhibition surpassed, and more than surpassed, ours; and if it proved possible to divide the number of medals between the french and us, it is due to the condescension of the french members of the jury, dubois and masson, to the germans, and to my obstinacy in upholding our art as much as i possibly could. [sidenote: universal exhibitions are fairs.] ugh! these blessed universal exhibitions! what good do they do to art, to true art, to great art? none whatever. i believe, at the best, they only bring about the sale of some smart humoristic or coarse statuette, and nothing more. i am aware that vela's "napoleon i.," which was sold in paris, will be brought up in opposition to this. that is an exception to the rule; and then--who knows?--if napoleon iii. had not been on the throne, perhaps vela's beautiful statue would have come back to the artist's studio at turin. many fine italian statues returned at that time; and did not the "jenner" come back from vienna? these universal exhibitions--let us say it in plain words--are fairs and markets, in which the merchandise most appreciated is something odd, humoristic, or ridiculous. but of this i have spoken elsewhere, and do not like to retrace my steps. i have said that the office of president was grateful to me because it enabled me to hasten on the work in our section; but i have not given the reason for this hurry. the poor artists, the greater part of them strangers, that had never seen vienna, felt a longing to do so; and when at mid-day, after three hours of work, i suspended the meeting until one o'clock, they said to me, "mr president, have a little patience; be reasonable. we have never seen anything of this city. we will work as much as you wish in the mornings, but only let us be free the rest of the day." and i answered: "have a little patience yourselves. let us work now that we are at it: it is for this reason we have come here. as soon as we have finished, we will rest and amuse ourselves, and will enjoy all the beautiful objects in the town and in the country; but now that we are here, we must stick to work. good-bye; i shall see you again shortly--at one o'clock." and with very long faces they went away. but why, wherefore, all this hurry--this uninterrupted work, without rest? this is why: i was there alone; and when i am alone, away from home, without one of my daughters, whatever may be the city or country, however beautiful and attractive, everything bores me to a superlative degree. when, in answer to my colleagues, i said that as soon as our work was finished we would amuse ourselves and see and enjoy all the wonders of the town, i repeated mentally to myself, i will take the fastest direct train, and without leaving the railway carriage, in thirty-six hours will get back to florence; and i did so. [sidenote: work and amusements at vienna.] notwithstanding all my persistence, we took, however, one or two half-days' rest, and each one of us went the way he liked best to satisfy his desire of amusing himself. as for me, i wrote long letters home, and in the evening went to the theatre, where they were singing (and really singing) wagner's 'lohengrin'; or joined, in brotherly symposiums, the italian, german, hungarian, or french members of our jury. the viennese and hungarian members gave us a dinner, and it went off in a most gay and friendly fashion: the toasts burst forth, one after the other, in a bright rapid line of fire. there is no doubt about it--art fraternises all nations. our speeches, half french and half italian and hungarian-latin, were spoken freely, and without giving even a thought that a phrase or word might offend the political opinion or oratorical taste of any one. everything was good, everything applauded, and we drank to everything. i remember a hungarian artist, who, drinking to the toast of art and the italians, said that italy had always been great; and if, in days gone by, she had been able to glory in michael angelo, to-day she gloried in garibaldi! and we drank even to this, although the comparison seemed to us to be very far-fetched. but i repeat, when once we opened our mouth, it did not much matter what came out of it. i also spoke, and was applauded; but if i wanted to repeat what i said, i should have to draw upon my imagination, because i don't remember a word of it. [sidenote: dinners at vienna.] we enjoyed other evenings of feast and merriment, but none like this one. we were invited to a dinner given by the italian general commissioner, which went off most splendidly, but was naturally more dignified. we were all italians, but not all artists; for, in fact, the greater number were scientific men--and where there are scientific men, all is at an end, and seriousness at once walks in. the imaginative, frisky, and reckless words of the artist do not venture to come out at such meetings; and the talk there gains as much in rhetoric as it loses in living art, sincerity, and unexpectedness. [sidenote: an adventure with a cabman.] we were also invited by his imperial highness the archduke ranieri to an entertainment, which was most splendid, cordial, and brilliant. the archduke talked to every one in his own language; and if he expressed himself with the same exactness and propriety to the english, russians, or spaniards, as he did to us italians and to the french, he is really a wonderful polyglot. at this _fête_ something happened to me which proves that the viennese cabmen are more quarrelsome than ours. this is how it was. i got into the cab at the hotel, and said that i wanted to go to the palace of his highness archduke ranieri, to remain there two hours, and then return to the hotel; and for this the price of six florins (fifteen _lire_) was agreed upon. having stayed my time at the _fête_, i descended to look for my charioteer. he was not there. to be sure, the cab was there, and the poor beast in harness seemed to be deep in thought or sleeping; but the coachman was not there. he was looked for everywhere, in all the neighbouring beer-houses, but could nowhere be traced. so in a rage i had to go up again, and coming down about half an hour afterwards, i called him, but he was not there. the poor beast stood with his nose nearly on the ground, i do not know whether more from sleepiness or hunger; and i in a rage, as may well be imagined, got inside the cab to wait for him. finally, after about half an hour the man returned, and i abused him roundly; but it was like speaking to the wall, for he understood nothing, and off he drove. on arriving at the hotel i put the six florins briskly into his hand; he refused to take them, and i could not understand why. the porter of the hotel intervened, and said that the cabman had agreed to wait at the _fête_ for two hours, instead of which i had kept him there three hours. i explained to the porter the whole thing, and what a rascal he was! but not to discuss the matter any longer, i paid even for the hour that i had to wait that _canaille's_ convenience. really i would have paid anything to have been able to say two or three words after my own heart in german to the miserable scamp. [sidenote: monument to count luigi camerini.] my duty was now ended. i gave a last look at the beautiful schiller platz, where my hotel was, saluted the academy of fine arts, then building, and with open heart, filling my lungs with a great breath of country air, i flew in thought to beautiful florence, to my family, and to the studies i loved. i plunged into the most comfortable railway carriage that i could find, and never again turned to the right or to the left. i think that i was the first of the italian jury that returned to our beautiful country. at this time i was making the monument to duke silvestro camerini that had been ordered from me by his illustrious and most noble nephew, count luigi. senatore achilli mauri had first spoken to me of it on his behalf, and had shown me a design by signor gradenigo of padua, in which there were to be two statues that the count wished me to make. the design did not please me, and i answered that i would make the monument, but that i wished to compose it after my own fashion. the count was content. i made a design; he saw it, it pleased him, and all was settled in a friendly way by a few frank words, without all those precautions of contract, seal register, witnesses, and caution that are invented by distrust to protect one from rascals. it is thus that honest men deal with honest men; and of such is count luigi, and of such by god's mercy am i, and i can proclaim it loudly in the broad light of the sun. i am certain that, of the many persons who have given me commissions, not one has had any question with me, nor even the slightest feeling of unpleasantness! the thought of this, and the certainty of being able to proclaim it _coram populo_, is to me a consolation so complete and grateful, that it forms, so to speak, my happiness. [sidenote: count luigi camerini.] amongst those who have given me commissions, count luigi camerini has been one of the most courteous--a true friend. every time that i went to padua or piazzola on account of the work i was engaged on, besides the glad welcome that he and his amiable wife gave me, he managed to arrange some excursions for our pastime and pleasure--now to venice, now to passagno, now to vicenza, and sometimes even farther; and he pushed courtesy and friendship to the extent of taking us all as far as turin, on the occasion of the inauguration of cavour's monument. as i said, to do this, besides being amiable and kind, one must also be rich, and he is rich indeed. i remember that one day, during one of these excursions, we found ourselves in a first-class railway carriage with the princess troubetzkoi and her husband, duke talleyrand. we all talked together more or less about everything--all except the duke, who gathered himself up in his corner, with his travelling-cap pulled down on his forehead, intent on reading a french newspaper. he had never lifted his eyes on us, so absorbed did he seem in his reading. i do not know how it was that the conversation fell on the heaviness of the taxes. i am greatly afraid that it was i who started the subject, because on this key i am wonderfully eloquent; i storm about the laws, agents, cashiers, everybody, and everything. "let them lay a heavy hand," i was saying, "on play, on luxury, on vices, on property, but leave in peace the labour, industry, and talent that are the bonds of civilisation and health, because the public conscience rebels against this." [sidenote: description of the monument.] the good duke did not even move; for him it was as if i was neither in the wrong nor the right. my friend camerini, perhaps to allay my indignation, quietly smiled and said-- "you are right; certainly these taxes are very heavy. but what can one do about it? one must pay, and that is all----" "certainly," i continued, repeating his favourite word, "one must pay--and i pay; but it is too much--these taxes are too high." "i agree, i agree.... just imagine that i pay annually in taxes (beyond the indirect ones, you understand), two hundred and fifty thousand _lire_!" at the mention of this sum the duke turned slightly towards camerini, looked fixedly at him a short time over his spectacles, then took them off very slowly, folded them and put them in their case, set aside his newspaper, and entered into a conversation with him that only came to an end when we separated. "oh the power of gold!" said i to myself.... let us return to the monument. it is composed thus: on the first foundation a great urn, above which rises the base, on which is placed the seated statue of the duke in a thoughtful attitude, dressed in the clothes he wore, and wrapped in a cloak. at the sides of the urn, which form two semicircles, are two statues. beneficence is standing and offering money to a youthful workman, who, in an attitude of affectionate gratitude, wishes to kiss the hand that with such loving wisdom has lifted him out of misery, and ennobled him by the sanctity of labour, so that this payment is only the legitimate recompense of his work. this group represents one of the virtues of duke camerini, who made use of his very large rent-roll to alleviate the misery of his fellow-beings, and give them encouragement and work; and certainly no one more than he could feel the usefulness of work, because from being a humble workman (although of a respectable family) he elevated himself to the highest rank of society, and to riches as honourable as they were great. corresponding to this statue, on the other side kneels gratitude, who scatters flowers on the urn; and although gratitude is one of the virtues that adorned that great man, as i shall explain hereafter, yet this statue refers to that sentiment of affectionate remembrance by which his nephew, count luigi camerini, wished to honour the memory of his munificent uncle. the lower base is ornamented by a bas-relief, representing duke camerini when, during one of the inundations of the po, an immense population of that desolate country were left without a roof to their heads and without bread, he rescued them, encouraged them, and helped them, giving bread and work to all, ordering the work of new embankments immediately to be undertaken, avoiding most wisely by so doing greater disaster, and saving from misery and hunger that wretched population. this bas-relief is an admirable work of professor luigi ceccon, of padua; and this, as well as the execution of all the architectural and ornamental parts of the monument, count camerini and i intrusted to him. [sidenote: character of duke camerini.] [sidenote: anecdote of duke camerini.] the moral character of duke camerini is worthy of being remembered and honoured. it is certainly not my task to relate his life, but i cannot pass by in silence a most notable instance in it, the knowledge of which strengthened the study and affection that i put into the modelling and chiselling of this monument. when the youth silvestro, in the capacity of simple labourer, worked at i know not what improvement of land in the neighbourhood of ferrara, he used to go during the hour of rest to a small eating-house to recruit his strength with his usual temperance. it happened one day that he found himself without money, and as he was a daily customer, frankly, with an honest man's conscience, he said to the host, "i will pay you to-morrow." but this man, who was hard and brutal, answered that "when one has no money, one should not order anything to eat;" to which the youth was about to reply, when a young gentleman, who happened by chance to be shooting in those parts, and had come in to take some refreshment, seeing the embarrassment of the young labourer and the hardness of the host, tossed a bit of money on to the counter, saying to the latter, "take your pay for what this man has eaten here." the host took the money and returned the change; but the excellent gentleman said, "no; give the rest of the money to this youth. he seems to me to have the air of being an honest man, and he can use it another day when his own money fails him." it was not such a small matter either, for the money he had given to be changed was a golden _genova_. then on one side excuses were made and restitution offered, whilst on the other a mild but determined insistence, which ended in the shaking of hands and leave-taking. from that day forward silvestro camerini had no more need to go on credit, not because the remainder of that piece of gold could place him for ever beyond necessity, but because those insulting and brutal words had been a lesson to him, with his high and noble spirit, never again to place himself in a similar position. camerini went out from that house much moved in spirit and full of gratitude towards the gentleman, whose name he inquired and ever kept in his memory. in the meantime, by good conduct, economy, and work, he was able to save something; and as by nature he had a mind much superior to his condition, he was able to take upon himself the direction of some works, and always advancing in his activity, economy, and good administration, he gradually made a considerable fortune, all of which he put into land. but the noble gentleman who had so opportunely helped him, either through bad administration, too much liberality, or some other reason, lost his fortune, and was obliged to sell all his lands to pay his debts. one day the last villa belonging to him, and the one he cared most for, was about to be put up to auction; and that day, so full of sadness for him, turned out perhaps the brightest and happiest of his life. camerini, who had already become rich, bid at the auction for it, and having obtained it, went to the unhappy gentleman and presented it to him. his surprise, joy, and incredulity are more easily imagined than described. he said, "what is the meaning of this? in what way? wherefore? is it perhaps a restitution? so much has been stolen from me that----" "yes, really," answered camerini, "it is a restitution, but not of anything stolen." and he then told him, or rather reminded him, of the youth that he had benefited so many years before. the worthy gentleman at first held back, and wished to refuse the gift; but at last overcome by emotion and admiration, he wept and embraced his friend--a true friend indeed, for all the others he had known in his prosperity had disappeared with it. [sidenote: noble restitution.] this anecdote deserves to be told, because it draws to the life the lovable, grateful, and most liberal character of duke camerini. it was told me by count antonio pallavicini of bologna, the friend and contemporary of duke camerini and the other gentleman, whose name, i regret to say, i do not remember. the anecdote that i have just told, and many others that illustrated the character of this great man, as well as the nobility and generosity of his worthy nephew, who intrusted to me the execution of this monument, spurred me on and facilitated my undertaking. [sidenote: rejected offers.] if the reader has a good memory, he will remember that elsewhere i have spoken of my offers to execute works for their mere cost--that is to say, my proposals to give my time, work, and study _gratis et amore dei_. he will remember, also, that these offers were not accepted, and that having been taught by so many lessons of this kind, i advised young artists to abjure and chase from their mind these utopian ideas that experience had fully shown me could not be carried out. to confirm them in this opinion, i must now add a new and more striking instance of a work offered by me that was not accepted; and i trust that the account of this new fact will not be wanting in importance, and will serve as a good lesson. [sidenote: centenary of michael angelo.] when my excellent friend commendator giuseppe poggi had finished the beautiful piazzale michael angelo, and before the inauguration of the monument designed by him, with the statues of the divine artist himself, had taken place (and this occurred before the centenary), he proposed that the statue of michael angelo should be placed in a commanding position under the middle arch of the loggia that fronts on the piazzale; and it was his intention (for which i thank him from the bottom of my heart) that this statue should be made by me. knowing, however, that on account of its colossal proportions, as well as the importance of the subject, it would require no small expense, and as even then the municipality foresaw its present straits, he said to me, in a pleasant and friendly manner, that it was his hope, as well as that of others, that i would make the statue for its mere cost. "i am ready," said i to myself. "i like the subject, and i can satisfy my friend in his legitimate pride of citizen and artist, and also place there a sign of my veneration for michael angelo, and a testimony of affection and disinterestedness to my country, but at no slight sacrifice, it is true--that is to say, by working at least a year _gratis et amore dei_." i am mistaken; there is something else i should add--that is the income-tax and tax on the exercise of my art, &c., that the tax agent would naturally have insisted on exacting, even if it had been proved to him that i was working to gain nothing. but i had given my word, and said i am ready; and when i say i am ready, i stick to it. in the meanwhile time passed, the centenary drew near, and the municipality decided nothing about the statue; and, so far, all was well--it meant that they found it inconvenient to give even those few thousand _lire_ required for the marble and the roughing out of the statue; and wished to save them. about this i say nothing, for, in fact, i am in favour of saving; but now comes the best of it. when the day for the famous centenary arrived, the festivities were conducted admirably, with an exhibition of all michael angelo's works, a visit to his tomb in santa croce, to his house, which is a most precious museum, and, at last, to the piazzale, where the monument was inaugurated. there was music in the great hall of the cinquecento at the palazzo vecchio, illuminations on the great piazzale and on the colli, and everything was done with the utmost order and decorum, thanks to the exquisite tact of our president of the committee for organising the centenary festivals, commendatore ubaldino peruzzi. among these festive meetings one was arranged to take place in the old senate hall, which had for its object the pronouncing of eulogies on the great artist; and to all, the academy of fine arts and the della crusca academy were invited, as michael angelo was not only to be honoured as an artist supreme in the imitative arts, but also as a philosopher, literary man, and poet. this was splendidly done by the two presidents of the academy of fine arts and the della crusca academy, commendatore emilio de' fabris and commendatore augusto conti. they were surrounded by the members of these two academies united in solemn assembly, and the semicircle was filled by a crowd of distinguished artists, literary and scientific men, foreign and native, and was honoured by the presence of his highness prince cazignano. my friend de' fabris spoke of michael angelo as an architect, and my friend conti enlarged upon him as philosopher, citizen, and poet. they had begged me to read a few words on that occasion; but i, being aware of my insignificance, and, to speak frankly, my incapacity to think and speak on so great a subject, at first refused to do so; then i tried jotting down something in writing, and made my friend luigi venturi read it--and as he did not dislike what i had written, i accepted, and on the day before mentioned i read my little scrap of writing, in which i treated particularly of michael angelo as a sculptor. that day the idea of the statue was again brought forward, and some of the gentlemen, in the name of the committee, came to my studio and asked me if i would agree to make the statue of michael angelo for the mere cost and expenses. i answered that i would, and added that i had promised to do so once before, but that nothing more had been done about it. in the meanwhile a subscription list was sent the rounds, and my illustrious friends meissonnier and guillaume, who had come to florence for the centenary festivals, put their names down each for a hundred _lire_. and then, after all, as god willed it, nothing more was done about it; and in fact, on the spot where the statue was to have been placed, there is now a _café restaurant_, very clean and convenient, and of a summer's evening it is enlivened by concerts of a band of music. looking at the thing from this point of view, it is certainly much more comfortable and amusing than to see a statue of michael angelo standing there. [sidenote: fiasco about the statue of angelo.] the fact is, that there are sometimes fruitful enthusiasms and sometimes barren enthusiasms: the fruitful enthusiasms are those in which one finds the quickest and most perceptible enjoyment. in these days (it was ) there were people running in crowds to see and hear signora adelina patti--spending an amount of money that they would have had great difficulty in spending on an object less sensible, or, rather, less enjoyable, such as in fact a statue might be, that promises to give you the rather meagre enjoyment, it is true, of making its appearance two or three years after it has taken the money out of your pocket. it is true, however, that the enjoyment of song and sound passes in a moment--its waves die upon the air, and our ears catch their last echo--while the view of a statue, with all its beauty and meaning, remains, so to speak, to all eternity. but this is a rather subtle and abstract consideration that not all can understand. thinking over it well, i do not believe the _fiasco_ about the statue of michael angelo occurred for want of enthusiasm for art or statuary, or much less for the subject. the deuce take it! michael angelo is out of the question; besides belonging to the world, he is a florentine,--and then, too, enthusiasm has not been wanting in any town in italy, and certainly not in florence, even when it has been a question of immortalising in marble men oftentimes very unlike buonarroti. besides, did one not see about this time, and in fact during these very days, several thousands of _lire_ got together for a bust of gino capponi? and why was this? if i had asked to make that statue, it might have been supposed that the artist was not liked, and that no confidence was felt in him; but it was not so: in fact i was looked for and even begged to make it, which is natural when one desires to have work done for nothing but the pure cost and expenses. confidence in the artist, therefore, was not wanting: there must have been some other reason, and i have found it is this, that work asked for and offered for nothing seems almost as if it had no attraction; no one wants it. one must, if one can, get as much pay as possible. listen to this other instance; they grow like cherries. [sidenote: fiasco of another statue.] when i had made the "christ after the resurrection," for which my good friend ferdinando filippi di buti gave me the order, the idea came to the worthy syndic, signor danielli, to erect in his village (which seemed as if it ought to be sacred to minerva, it was so buried in a forest of olive-trees) a statue in honour of professor del rosso, who had been such a worthy representative of science and of his native place. the good and most lively signor danielli was full of ardour to carry out his project; and to obtain its success, he pressed me to accept this commission at the smallest possible price, almost for its mere cost. i accepted. the subscription list was sent the rounds, and i know that my illustrious friend professor conti, an old pupil of del rosso, gave himself a great deal of trouble in getting subscriptions; but neither he nor any one else obtained the desired result, and the statue remains where it was--in the future. in the same way, it seems, ended the affair of the bust of pius ix., that a pious committee in this city proposed to have cut in marble and placed in our cathedral. [sidenote: ingratitude.] so, as i have said, these instances grow like cherries. let us remember, although above i have spoken about the necessity of getting well paid, yet at times, either as a matter of duty, friendship, or gratitude, one can and one ought to work for little. i remember a young scholar of mine who enjoyed a little pension, given to him by a gentleman from his village, who, to enable the young man to work from life, went so far as to allow him to model his head, and, to encourage him, desired that he should put it into marble,--but before giving him the commission, wanted to know what the expense would be. the youth, in telling me this, asked me what he ought to ask for it. i answered, "you must ask nothing; the gentleman is over and above good to give you the pension. would you also ask him to pay for the bust? you will give this answer: i have asked my master about the expense of the marble and the roughing of it out, and he has answered me that one hundred _lire_ is necessary for the marble and two hundred for the roughing it out; as to finishing it, i will finish it myself, and so learn to work on marble, because no one can call himself a sculptor who does not work on the marble himself." but the youth showed no judgment, did not follow my advice, and asked the gentleman a thousand _lire_, and the avidity and ingratitude thus shown by the person he had benefited so disgusted him, that he did not let him make it. when i heard how matters had gone, i did not fail to call him an ass, and he really was one. born and bred a peasant, he had learnt nothing in town by mixing with educated young men. he was tall of person, and endowed with uncommon strength; he used to exercise himself--making it more a business than a simple pastime--at the game of _forma_, and, challenged or challenger, was always the winner. he died from breaking a blood-vessel in his chest; and for the matter of that, as no one was left behind to weep for him, for he was an orphan, and as he had no talent or judgment, it was better so. [sidenote: building one's own monument.] let us therefore understand each other. one must always get one's pay, excluding the case or cases of gratitude like the one i have mentioned above, and even between friends, there must not be one that gives and the other that takes. i remember now, many years ago, that luigi acussini made my portrait, and i his; and later, cisere painted my portrait and that of my wife, and i made a bust of his wife, _amici cari e borsa del pari_. presents don't answer well, and therefore it is rare to find those who make them; and if any one with heart and no head does so, he makes a _fiasco_. a singular taste, and one that i can enter into completely, is that of preparing one's own place of burial whilst living; and for those who can, besides the burial-place, also the chapel and monument. it does one good to see, whilst living, the place where one will sleep the last sleep. amongst those who agree with me in this, besides marchese bichi ruspoli of siena, and signor ferdinando filippi di buti--whose monuments i made some fifteen years ago, and who are still living, hale and hearty, so that i even think that the thought of death and the sight of the monuments prolong their lives--is the baroness favard de langlade, who also wished to have her monument made; and after having had the illustrious architect giuseppe poggi construct the beautiful chapel in the park of the villa at rovezzano, which is adorned by the beautiful paintings of annibale gatti, she ordered from me the monument wherein her body is to rest. [sidenote: the favard monument.] the difficulty of this kind of work is not to give umbrage to the modesty of the person who gives the commission. at first sight it seems like vanity and pride to order one's own monument; but besides the fact that he who orders a monument does not order it for himself alone, but also for his family, the artist composes his work in such a way as not to give the least offence by adulation and flattery, which is the more contemptible in the person who offers it in measure as the adulated person is in a high position. the artist, however, who has a proper respect for his own dignity, and wishes that of the person in question also to be respected, will find a way of making his work, even though it be grandiose, so as to enable both him and the person who is to die to look at each other in the face without blushing. the subject that i treated for the favard monument was the angel of the resurrection, who, poised on his wings, offers his hands to the dead woman, who is in the act of rising, to lead her to heaven. she has half lifted herself up on the sarcophagus where she was laid out, and her expression shows her happiness in awakening to eternal day. the only adulation--excusable, i think--that i offered to that lady was having made her appear younger than she was,--not more beautiful, for one can still see that she must have been most beautiful. i regret that this work of mine is almost hidden--first of all, because it is far from town, as i have already said,--at rovezzano; for although the noble lady has given orders to have it shown to any one who asks to see it, yet the double difficulty of the distance and the asking prevents many--those who are lazy and who are lukewarm, who are the most in number--from being able to see it. it is still worse as concerns my "christ after the resurrection," which is on a hill in the neighbourhood of buti, a little village, nearly hidden from view and out of hand, between pisa and lucca. chapter xxiii. pius ix. objects to having me make his bust--i go to rome to see the pope--the exhibition at naples--again on idealism and naturalism--the masters of italian melody--vincenzo bellini and his monument--conclusion. i narrated, all in its proper place, how it happened that i was not enabled to make king victor emmanuel's portrait; and it is necessary for me now to explain how i did not obtain the concession to make a bust of pius ix. marchese pompeo bourbon del monte, the president of the working men's catholic association in florence, had the intention of giving me an order to make a bust of the pope, to place in a niche in our duomo, with an inscription commemorative of the great pontiff's passage through florence, and his consecration of four bishops there. naturally the pope was first asked whether he was willing that his bust should be made and should be placed in our duomo. with both of these propositions the pope showed his great satisfaction, and he was therefore asked the favour of giving some sittings to the sculptor; but on hearing my name, he refused to do so, because, having made cavour's monument, he did not wish me to take his portrait. to speak the truth, this species of censure on the part of the pope was most unpleasant to me. as long as some of the prejudiced journalists of the extreme party, in blaming me for having executed this work, assailed me on the ground that some of the nude allegorical figures (just imagine, children of seven!) were obscene, i let it pass; but the condemnation of the holy father was a great vexation to me. as monsignore archbishop cecconi had been the intermediary, i wrote him a letter expressing my regret, and went over the story of the monument, and how i had accepted it, and what expression i had given to it, saying that i had not thought i was doing any harm, and that i was extremely pained to have met with the holy father's displeasure, and begging monsignore to make known these sentiments of mine to the pope. in fact the pope heard of my letter, or at least a part of it, and answered that he had never doubted my sentiments or my good intentions, but for all that he was not willing to have his portrait taken by me; and that, to prevent the matter from appearing _ad hominem_, he would not give permission for it to be made by any one else. [sidenote: audience of pius ix.] a few months after this, wishing to go to naples to see the italian exhibition, i stopped on my way in rome, and saw the pope, but not in a private audience. nevertheless, he spoke benevolently to me, and said, "dear duprè, what fine works are you doing now?" i who, i must admit, never find myself embarrassed by any one, stood there perfectly nonplussed, and was not able to utter a word; and that poor saintly old man, to put an end to my embarrassment, continued, "i pity you; the political vicissitudes and the noises of war distract the mind of the artist, and are, in fact, opposed to the development of his genius." then turning to my daughter, he said, "and you, too: well done, my sculptress; i bless you together with your father." it really gave me pleasure to see him again, and listen for the last time to that vibrating, and, at the same time, benevolent voice. something within me told me that he would soon be missing to us; and in fact, barely eight months after, he died, and but a few days after the king, to whom, during his last moments, he had sent his benediction; and report has it that he even said he would have gone himself to comfort the king, whom he personally loved, during his last hours, had he not been really so ill himself. these words of his gained for him the goodwill of those who were not his friends. [sidenote: exhibition at naples--idealism.] now i must speak of the exhibition at naples, and most particularly of the naturalistic element that manifested itself there in sculpture. it deserves being studied with attention, so as to enable young artists of good purpose, and for whom i have most particularly written these memoirs, to acquire something that may be useful to them. naturally the vast question of realism and idealism rises again to the surface. those who know me, know that i am neither a realist nor an idealist, be it understood, as is generally intended and practised. idealism, in my opinion, is nothing else but a species of vision that the artist creates by strong love in his mind when he thinks of a given subject. idealism is therefore the idea of the subject, and not in the least the idea of the parts of the form. it is true that even these are associated pleasantly together in the mind, but it is wrong and false to believe that we can grasp hold of them only by the help of memory, and without having nature before us. the idealist, as i should understand him, seeks in nature for the models appropriate to his idea and his subject. he does not content himself with one alone, because he does not find in one, or even in two, the multiplicity of parts by which his idea is composed. from one he takes the several masses and movement, and will take great care in these never to change from his model; from another he will take the head, or the hands, or other parts of the body in which the model for the general masses may have been defective, and will be careful that in age and character they be not dissimilar from the principal model--that is to say, the model that he has used for the general form. if he departs here or there from this simple method, the idealist will fall into academical conventionalism, or into the vulgar and defective. corrections of the model's defects made from memory bring us to conventionalism, and the exact imitation of the model alone drags us down to the vulgar and defective, because it is humanly impossible that one model can have in himself, besides the whole, all the perfections of parts that constitute beauty, which is the aim of art. such, and nothing else, is the idealist; and so am i, and such has always been my teaching. [sidenote: realism.] now let us see the realistic. the naturalistic, to my way of seeing, is simply intolerant of long study of the many rules and dogmas of the academicians that teach one to make statues in very nearly always the same way, with the same measures and with the same character--be it a virgin or a venus, a messalina or an ophelia, and so on. he is in love with his own subject, and wishes to give it expression in its true character and with its own individual expression, and even with those particularities and imperfections that distinguish it from others. bartolini did so in his "ammostatore," in his "putti" for demidoff's table, and in almost all his works; and so did vela with his "napoleon i." and his "desolazione"; and lastly, although in a much more minute manner, did magni with his "reading girl"; and up to this point i am naturalistic, and stand up for it. but in these days there is another species of naturalistics--better call them realistics--who love truth and nature to the extent of accepting even the ugly and bad in form and the useless and revolting in idea. and truly here i am neither with them, nor can i advise any one to hold in esteem this school, that i should rather be inclined to call the hospital or sewer of art. but what i have said so far is enough, for elsewhere i have touched upon the same subject, and do not want to repeat myself, but only to mention the question again, because at the great show in naples the naturalistic school appeared in sculpture in all its audaciousness, and, i must frankly say, in all its power, worthier of a better cause and better intentions; and this, it is presumably to be hoped, may be at last more easily recognised by the young men who look for the truth, even wallowing in ugliness, than from those who fill their heads with the idea of looking for the beautiful in their memory and conventionalism. from this it is evident that i have a predilection for the naturalist who caresses an idea and the idealist who is a faithful and not a timid friend of truth. the artist is not a servile copyist of nature--of ugly nature; not the imitator of statues, even though they are beautiful; not the slave of the name and teaching of the masters, ancient and modern. [sidenote: naturalists and idealists.] i like the artist to be free in his imaginations, free in his feeling, free in his way of expressing himself and in his method, but yet strongly and tenaciously bound to nature and the beautiful. by this means we could have more good artists and fewer mediocre ones; but as long as there is official teaching it is useless to hope for it. government schools, in spite of the difficulty of admission and advancement from one class to another, will always have too many scholars, amongst whom some--the very few, those who are really destined by nature for art--will have lost too much time in long academic courses; the others, the many, will have lost it entirely, because it is difficult with official teaching for any graduate to be expelled from school on account of tardy development or want of talent. [sidenote: influence of academic teaching.] i do not say, indeed, that young men ought not to study, or ought to study only a little. quite the contrary. they ought to study very much--study always; but with freedom--perfect freedom in their way of seeing and feeling and expressing the multiformity of nature; and as this freedom does not and cannot exist in official teaching, young men ought to select a master after their own taste. certainly masters who do not belong to these academies will accept but few scholars, and will retain still fewer--that is to say, the best, those who give promise of succeeding--and the rest they will send away. and here is the great gain, because the minor arts--subsidiary, so to speak, to the fine arts, will take possession of these young men, who, instead of becoming mediocre artists, will become good workmen. official teaching in the fine arts ought to be confined to architecture; in fact, there it ought to be amplified by the study of mathematics, engineering, and its mechanical application. the purse and the safety of citizens must surely be protected. this little digression on teaching, which i have elsewhere treated more at length, has sprung up and been jotted down here after having seen the exhibition of the works of art of the neapolitan school. i say the school, and not the academy--i should better say the grades of the naturalistic school of neapolitan sculpture. it is undeniable that various works in sculpture, exposed to the solemn trial of the neapolitan exhibition, show that the young sculptors have emancipated themselves outright from the trammels of academical teaching, and have entered with full sails into the interminable sea of nature. this sea is beautiful, full of agitation and life, and in its greatness rouses the desire of research into the unknown; and to him who navigates therein with strength and purpose, promises unknown lands, rich in supreme beauty. but it is easy enough, by steering one's boat badly, or missing one's direction, to get stranded or dashed to pieces against the rocks. [sidenote: signor d'orsi's parasites.] signor d'orsi exposed a group in plaster representing the parasites. nothing could have been better imagined than those two (i don't know how to call them) creatures. brutified by food and wine, they sleep or drowse on a _triclinium_, leaning against each other. they are a literal imitation; and in this is all the merit of the work. it is not minute imitation, that battle-horse of small minds, but really the true expression of the conception and intention of the artist; but the idea is hideous, enormously hideous, so that to many it appeared disgusting and revolting; and i felt on looking at the work two opposite feelings--one that drove me from it, and another that kept me fixed to the spot. the ugliness of the subject and its forms repelled me; the knowledge and art by which it was expressed attracted me, and forced me to admire the talent of signor d'orsi. "this man," said i to myself, "has not come out of the academy; he is looking for a passage through the vast sea of nature, and a shore to land on. will he find it?" [sidenote: amendola's "cain and his wife."] a group in plaster of "cain and his wife" is the subject exhibited by signor giov. battista amendola. considered from the point of view of expression, it is of wonderful truthfulness. this man, guilty of fratricide, cursed by god, stands there transfixed to earth; the anguish that oppresses him overcomes his arrogance; and not even the sweet words and caresses of his companion are able to appease that sullen brow and ferocious look. but signor amendola, who has so well entered into the human sentiment of passion, pain, and rage that agitates the heart and upsets the mind, has made a mistake in the physical character that he has, with intention, given his figure. for since cain and his wife are of a savage ugliness, more resembling the family of the orangoutang than the human being, he seems to be a follower of darwin's theories, which, if they are desolating as regards science and human dignity, are absolutely revolting when represented in art. the truth is, that i think the primitive type of our race, although fierce and uncultivated, was much more beautiful than it appears to-day in our young men and young girls, who are with difficulty built up by preparation of iron and sea-baths. then beauty was undoubtedly coupled with vigour and strength; but bad habits, mistaken education, effeminacy, and vice, have so diminished its vigour and physical beauty, that if one desired nowadays to make a "cain," an "abel," or an "adam," it would be difficult to find amongst our young men a model who even distantly resembled them in their splendid strong beauty. it is also strange and absurd to look for them amongst the savages of new zealand. i admire signor amendola's strength of conception and expression, but i blame his application of it in the selection of his types. he also is an artist that does not seem to be an academical student; and if to originality of subject and truth of expression, of which he has given proof in his group of "cain and his wife," he adds study and love in the research of the beautiful in nature, he will get on and be an artist, and what counts more, an original artist, but otherwise he will not. to make cain, and even his wife, one must not, therefore, look for a model amongst the anthropophagi or amongst the young men who live between doney's and the piazza del duomo. first of all, the type of such a subject, like any other, must be clearly in the mind of the artist, and then, with a great deal of study and love, he must seek for it in nature, abandoning in part or entirely those places where such types have no existence. [sidenote: type of cain.] when i made my "cain," i had the good fortune to find the model without the slightest difficulty; and the model i used was a strong and beautiful man, and what was more, he had feeling for action and expression, so that i copied him to the best of my ability, without even giving a thought to the classical style so much recommended by academicians, although not copying with servility all the little accidents of veins, wrinkles, and so forth (nowadays some people even imitate the corns and glands). i answered the signora laura bianchi of siena in these same words, or something like them, when she asked me, at the instance of thorwaldsen, who was in intimate relations with the family, and made the monument to her husband, cavaliere giulio, what style i had used in making that statue, which he had not yet seen. later i became personally acquainted with this distinguished artist, at a ball in casa larderel at leghorn, in , and explained this by word of mouth, modifying my expression, because dignity of name and years must ever be respected by young men, and he being an academician, might have been offended by the harshness of my words on the classical style. i will continue my examination of the naturalistic neapolitan sculpture. signor raffaele belliazzi exhibited a group in plaster, representing the approach of a storm, and a sleeping calabrian, each the size of life. in these works the artist shows a real sentiment for truth in the expression of the woman holding the little girl firmly by the hand, both of them with their heads bent down, eyes tightly shut to avoid the sand that the wind is blowing with great force into their faces--their quick step and close clinging garments blown about them, showing the violence of the wind and approach of the storm. it is, if you will, a common subject, not very attractive, and at best more suitable to be rendered in small proportions than in life-size; for nothing that has great movement and lightness of touch can well be reproduced in large size in statuary. now there is nothing more full of movement than clothes blown about by the wind; the eye can hardly see them, much less retain an impression of them, and therefore the artist is obliged rather to indicate them as they possibly might be, than definitively or accurately to reproduce them, as he should in a large work. i repeat, these momentary impressions are excusable, and may even succeed in being praiseworthy, if they limit themselves to expression in small figures with rapid touches, after the manner of a sketch; but in great dimensions they are not. the other work of signor belliazzi, "the sleeping calabrian," is a very beautiful study from life, most accurate and pleasing. signor belliazzi is of the naturalistic school; he loves nature, but he does not feel, or does not care to devote his thought to, what there is in nature of choice, attractive, and great, be it either in conception or in form. it is, however, also true that neither of his works can be put down as bad and ugly. [sidenote: works of signor belliazzi.] one who loves, feels, and reproduces nature with refinement and grace, seems to me to be signor constantino barbella, as it is shown in his little _terra cotta_ group called "a love song." it consists of three young girls singing as they walk along, their arms interlacing each other. they are dressed in the rich and peculiar costume of the abruzzi mountains; and this dress on these figures, so young and so beautiful, flexible and lifelike in their movement of walking, the joy expressed in their faces for the charm and virtue of song, make an admirable composition which one can look at with ever new pleasure. here the small size of the figures, and the material in which they are made, is all forgotten, and it seems as if one could hear the song,--the very breath and joy of those young girls. this peaceful work seems to be one of the most beautiful of the neapolitan naturalistic school, and in this measure i like the naturalistic. [sidenote: neapolitan sculpture.] the study of nature, so felt and understood, draws the artist nearer to the ideal conception--that is to say, to the reproduction of beautiful nature in all its most varied forms; it opens the mind to ideas and serious thoughts of loveliness and grace, for which phidias, giotto, orgagna, and michael angelo were celebrated, and will remain so to the end of the world. the study of the material imitation of nature, especially when it is defective and ugly in conception and form, besides rendering these particular statues disagreeable, drives the artist away from the ideal conception of monumental works, to which sculpture should be specially devoted. the design for the monument to salvator rosa, the work of signor d'orsi and signor franceschi, go to prove the truth of my assertion. these few words on neapolitan sculpture are said to prove how much and how far the naturalistic school is to be accepted; and i have selected these examples because in them are demonstrated the power, audacity, and error, as well as the beginning of a healthy and fruitful innovation, provided it be upheld and sustained by the sentiment of the beautiful. [sidenote: bellini.] delightful naples, rich in vineyards and orange-trees, with her splendid sky and enchanting sea, in which the city mirrors itself, and ever rejoices and sings, recalls to my mind the beautiful school of italian melody of scarlatti, pergolesi, and bellini. bellini, a name beloved and venerated by all who value beautiful melody--whose song is so passionate and graceful, expressing in its suave sweetness passion and love, rage and remorse, and creating dramatic situations from the very notes themselves, more than from the words; bellini, a master without pedantry or artifice, clear without being common, profound without being abstruse, and really of the future (because i believe that both thought and ears will soon be tired of being obliged to listen too attentively to catch, here and there, _rari nantes_ in _gurgite vasto_ some half phrase obscure and _slegato_);--bellini, i say, who is indeed a great man, is soon to have a monument erected to him. this monument was to have been made by me, and god only knows how willingly i would have worked to have made a statue of that graceful and strong genius! that work, however, has fallen into excellent hands; for giulio monteverde, whom i love and esteem, is to be the fortunate artist. but if i am glad that this important and most sympathetic work has fallen into good hands, i am none the less sorry not to have it to do myself, the more so that the way it was taken from me seems inexplicably strange. this is how it was. some years back i had a commission from marchese del toscano, of catania, to make the bust of the maestro pacini. at that time i was also asked by the same marchese, who was then syndic of the town, if i would be willing to make a great monument to bellini, that the city and province proposed to put up to their great fellow-townsman. naturally i met such a request with pleasure, although it was accompanied by considerations of economy that, whilst they were not in the least to diminish the grandioseness of the monument, in view of the place where it was to be erected, and the dignity of the subject, led him to suppose (and in this the worthy gentleman was not mistaken) that the artist would have to be discreet in his demands, so as to facilitate the work of the organising committee. i answered as a disinterested artist who was desirous of doing the work should. "tell me the sum at your disposal, indicate the size of the place where you wish to erect the monument, and i shall make you a sketch for it which, i hope, will give you satisfaction; for i shall not look in the least to my interest, as this great man is so dear to me, and i highly approve the idea you have had of doing him honour." [sidenote: the monument to bellini.] in the meanwhile things proceeded very slowly; the sums of money collected were not sufficient to make the monument of the proposed size, and to this effect they wrote me after some time had passed; when at last, one fine day, a letter arrived from the secretary of the municipality, saying that the sum had been collected for the bellini monument, that the municipality intended at once to have the work begun, and that, with this object in view, the syndic would soon forward the order of the commission to me. naturally, i looked for the letter from the syndic, which did not keep me long waiting; but i leave it to the reader to judge of. the marchese del toscano was at that time no longer syndic of catania, and in his stead there was another, whose name i do not remember; for i have the good fortune to forget the names of those who treat me badly, and so bear them no resentment. i say this merely for the sake of truth, that no one may suppose me possessed of a virtue that i have not. i have read somewhere, but i do not remember where, that the person offended engraves in porphyry the name of the offender, and the nature of the offence; whilst on the other side it is but traced in the sand, that the slightest breath of wind cancels. this may be true; but as regards me, i must confess candidly that the very reverse occurs: and i thank god for it, and so live on most happily, and my blood gains in colour and vitality every day that i grow older. [sidenote: monteverde.] here is the sense, if not the very text, of the signor sindaco's letter: "it is some days since my secretary wrote to you, to ask if you would accept the order for bellini's monument for this city. it must be finished in eighteen months. answer at once, for i have no time to lose, and otherwise we shall appeal to monteverde." one cannot deny that this epistolary style is of an enviable brevity and clearness. i answered that i had received the letter from the secretary, but as he had announced to me that the syndic himself would write, i had waited for this letter so as not to have to answer both, because i also had no time to lose. i said that i could not accept under such close conditions, and with such limited time; and as to appealing to monteverde, he did well, as he was a most talented artist, but i doubted whether even he could accept for the same reason--want of time. monteverde was given five years' time, and the price increased not a little from what was proposed to me. my best wishes to the artist are that he may be well inspired and make an excellent work; that the good catanese may have reason to be satisfied with their way of proceeding; and that the monument to vincenzo bellini may in its lines recall the passionate phrases of melody of the divine master. [sidenote: the end of my memoirs.] here my memoirs come to an end. those who have followed me with open trusting minds, know me as if they had been with me from a child. they know my humble origin; they remember my early years when i wandered here and there with my father in search of work he found little of, and that with difficulty; my attempts to study, to satisfy an inward yearning that i knew not how to appease; the difficulties in my position of satisfying that craving; the efforts that i made to content it, and the dangers to which a quick nature abandoned to itself is exposed. they have learnt how i chose for my companion a young girl as judicious and good as she was gentle and beautiful, who was my providence and my angel, the educator of the family, and an example of temperateness, patience, and faith to me (who am so intolerant and easily angered), and whose loss i feel even more heavily to-day, when i think that by god's mercy i could now have made her life more peaceful and easy. i wished to explain my principles on questions of art, on teaching, and on the relations that the young artist has with his colleagues, with his masters, and with his subjects. i wished to prove that justice and temperance, in judging and sentencing works of art, are the foundation of urbane and friendly artistic life. index. agostini, raffaelo, . ala-ponzoni, marchese, _et seq._ alberti, dr, , , . albertini, augusta, of verona, . aleardi, , , , . aloysio juvara, tommaso, , , . altamura, . amendola, giov. battista, . ammanati, gaetano, . angelico, fra giovanni, . angelini, cavaliere, , . angelo, michael, . antoinetta, princess, of naples, . ara, carlo, of palermo, , _note_. arcangeli, giuseppe, , . arese, count, . arrivabene, count, . augusta, princess, . baccani, . baccio d'agnolo, . balzico, the sculptor, , . barbella, constantino, . barbetti, angelo, . bardi, the rougher-out, . bargagli, cavaliere luigi, . barili, . bartolini, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . barzellotti, dr, . batelli, . bazzanti, . beauharnais, prince, viceroy of italy, . becheroni, enea, . belliazzi, raffaele, . bellini, . bendini, dr, . benericetti-talenti, giovanni, . benino, count f. del, , , , . benvenuti, . benvenuti, professor pietro, , , , , . bernini, , . bertoli, . bezzuoli, professor, , . biaggi, . bianchi, carlo, . bianchi, cavaliere giulio, . bianchi, laura, of siena, , . bianchi, luigi, . bianchini, romualdo, . bianciardi, bartolommeo, , , . bichi-ruspoli, marquis alessandro, , , . bimboni, giovacchino, . bini, carlo, . bonaini, commendatore francesco, . bonghi, ruggero, , , . boni, dr costantino, . borghese, prince, . borghesi, count scipione, , . borghi, . borri, cavaliere raffaello, . "braccio di ferro," _et seq._ breme, marchese di, . brina, the model, , . brucciani, the caster, . brunellesco, . bulletti, the wood-carver, . buoncompagni, . buti, ferdinando filippi di, . byron's "cain," . caggiano, emanuele, . calamatta, , , , , . camaldoli, the eremo of, . cambi, professor ulisse, , , , , , , , . camerini, count luigi, . camerini, duke silvestro, _et seq._ canini, a gilder, . canova, , , , . capponi, marquis, , , , . caracci, the, . carnevali, clementina, . cartei, . caselli, ludovico, , , . cassioli, . castellani of rome, . cavalieri, angelo, of trieste, , _note_. ceccon, professor luigi, . celentano, . cellini, benvenuto, . ceppi, professor, . chiarini, "baco," , _et seq._ chiarini, giovanni, . ciacchi, cabinet-maker, . ciardi, cavaliere antonio, , . cimabue, . cipolla, professor, . ciseri, antonio, , , , . coletti, physician and poet, . constantine, grand duke, of russia, . constantine, prince, of russia, . conti, augusto, , , . coppino, professor michele, . correggio, . corsi, cardinal, _et seq._ corsini, . corsini, amerigo, . corsini, prince andrea, , . costa, pietro, . costoli, aristodemo, , , . crawford, lord, , . dall'ongaro, professor, . d'ancona, commendatore, . danielli, signor, . dante, , , . david, the painter, . dei, professor, . della gherardasca, lady emilia, . della porta, count carlo, . della robbia, luca, , . del monte, marchese luca bourbon, . del monte, marchese pompeo bourbon, . del punta, luigi, _et seq._ del toscano, marchese, _et seq._ del sarto, the engineer, , . demidoff, princess matilde, _et seq._, , . demidoff, prince anatolio, _et seq._, _et seq._, _et seq._ donatello, , . donati, professor g. b., . doney, , . don sebastian, prince, . duprè, amalia, , _et seq._, , , . duprè, atanasio, . duprè, beppina, , , . duprè, clementina, , . duprè, emilia, . duprè, francesco, , _et seq._, _et seq._, , , , . duprè, giovanni, , , , , , , , , _et seq._ _passim._ duprè, lorenzo (brother of giovanni duprè), , , , _et seq._ duprè, lorenzo (grandfather of giovanni duprè), . duprè, luisina, , , , , _et seq._, . duprè, maddalena, , . emmanuel, king victor, , . fabris, emilio de, , , . fanfani, paolo, , . favard, baroness, , . fedi, , , . fenzi, carlo, , . fenzi, orazio, , . fenzi, priore emanuel, , , . ferrari, count corbelli, . filippi di buti, ferdinando, , , . fiorelli, commendatore, . floridi, the draughtsman, , . folchi, ferdinand, . fraccaroli, professor innocenzo, . franceschi, signor, . francesco, prince, of naples, . franchi, . fusinato, . galeotti, maria, . galeotti, the advocate, . gargiolli, girolamo, . garibaldi, . gatti, angiolo, . gatti, annibale, . gerini, marchese, . ghiberti, , . giganti, the water-colourist, , . giotto, , . giusti, the poet, , , , , _et seq._ giusti, ulisse, . gordigiani, . gori, count augusto dei, , . gozzini, doctor, . gualterio, filippo, , , . guasti, cesare, . guerrazzi, , . guicciardini, count piero, . guillaume, . haynau, marshal, _et seq._ ingres, . isabella, princess, . isabella, queen, . la farina, , , . lajatico, marquis, . lambruschini, raffaello, . lelli, the caster, . leonardo, , , . leopold ii., grand duke, , , , . leopold, king, . letizia, madame, . leuchtenberg, prince of, , , . limberti, archbishop giovacchino, . lippi, . liverani, tonino, "tria," _et seq._, . lombardi, victoria, . loredan, . lucca, blosi di, . luigi, di, . luitpoldo, prince, . lusini, giovanni, . macartney, mrs letitia, , _et seq._ maccari, . maffei, andrea, , . magagnini, . magi, luigi, , , , , , , , , , , . magni, , . majoli, luigi, , , , , , _note_. maldarelli, . manara, . mancinelli, giuseppe, , , , , . manetti, antonio, . mantegna, . manzoni, , . maranghi, gabriello, . marchesini, signora, . maria antoinetta, grand duchess, , , . maria carolina, grand duchess, . maria, grand duchess, of russia, , , . mariani, , . marina, _et seq._, , , , , , _et seq._, , , , , , , , , , , , . mariotti, lorenzo, , , , . martelli, professor giuseppe, . martellini, professor gaspero, . marrocchetti, _et seq._ masaccio, . mauri, senatore achilli, . mayer, enrico, . mazzoni, stefano, . meissonnier, . menzicoff, general, . minardi, , . moisè, filippo, . montalvo, ramirez di, , , , . montanelli, professor giuseppe, . montazio, , . monteverde, , , . mordini, antonio, . morelli, , . morelli, domenico, . mussini, luigi, _et seq._, , , , , . muzzi, , _note_. napoleon i., , , , , , , . niccolini, giovanni battista, , , , . nicholas, emperor of russia, , , _et seq._ nicolaiewna, maria, . nigra, the minister, . norfini, . nuovo, berio, . orgagna, , . orlandini, f. s., . orloff, count, . overbeck, , , . pacetti, brothers, , , , , . pacetti, tonino, . palizzi, , , . pallavicini, count antonio, , . pampaloni, professor, , , . papi, professor clemente, , , , , _et seq._, . parenti, carpet-manufacturer, . patti, adelina, . pazzi, enrico, , , , , . peruzzi, ubaldino, , . petrai, antonio, , , . phidias, , , , , , . piatti, giulio, , . piccolomini, signora, . pieraccini, luigi, . pini, carlo, . pius ix., , , _et seq._ poccianti, professor, . podesta, the painter, . poggi, michele, . poggi, professor commendatore giuseppe, , , . poldi, marchioness, of milan, , . pollastrini, enrico, . poniatowsky, prince joseph, . pradier, . prati, , , , . puccini, cavaliere nicolô, _et seq._ quieroli, . raphael, , , , _et seq._, , , . rauch, _et seq._, _et seq._ regina, , , , , . renard, engineer, . reni, guido, . riboisière, madame de la, . ricasoli, beltino, . ricci, stefano, sculptor, , . ricciardelli, . ristori, signora, _et seq._ rivalta, augusto, _et seq._ romoli, . rossini, , , , , . rossini, signora olimpia, . sabatelli, professor, , . sabatelli, professor giuseppe, , , . saladini, , _et seq._ saltini, dr giuseppe, , . sanesi, . sani, luigi, , , . sani, paolo, , , , , , , _et seq._, , , . santarelli, professor emilio, , . saracini, cavaliere alessandro, . sarrocchi, tito, , , , , , . savonarola, frate girolamo, _et seq._ sclopis, count federigo, . selvatico, pietro, . serristori, governor of siena, . sferra, antonio, . sighinolfi, cesare, _et seq._ sloane, cavaliere, . smargiassi, professor, _et seq._, . spence, william, , , . strazza, giovanni, . talleyrand, duke, . tartaglia, professor, . tasso, the carver, , , . tasso, torquato, , . tenerani, , , . thorwaldsen, . thouar, , . tommaseo, niccolò, . tommasi, signor, of leghorn, . travalloni, the engraver, . troubetzkoi, princess, . uccelli, fabio, . ussi, professor, . uzielli, sansone, of leghorn, . vannucci, atto, . varesi, signora, . varni, professor santo, . vela, , , , _et seq._, _et seq._, , . venturi, luigi, , , , , , , , , , . verdi, giuseppe, _et seq._, , . vincenzi, de, . visconti, , _et seq._ vonwiller, signor, . vulpes, professor, . wagner, . wellington, duke of, _et seq._ wolf, the sculptor, , . zannetti, professor, . zocchi, emilio, of florence, , . zotti, ignazio, _et seq._ the end. printed by william blackwood and sons. * * * * * transcriber's notes: some minor obvious typographical errors have been corrected silently. all quotation marks left as per original, except for those listed below. footnotes have been moved to underneath the paragraph they refer to so as to not disrupt the flow of the text. the headings that appeared at the top of each page in the original publication and have been treated as sidenotes and moved to above the paragraph they refer to so as not to disrupt the flow of the text. corrections made: pg. : "after pius ii. [added comma]" pg. : "in the railway-carriages. guerazzi [replaced with "guerrazzi"]" pg. : "they are presenting arms. [added doublequote mark]" pg. : "the "triumph of caesar." mantegua [replaced with "mantegna"]," pg. : "i will get out and go home. [added doublequote mark]" pg. : "drowse on a _trichinium_ [replaced with "triclinium"]" the following names appearing in the index have been changed to match the spelling appearing in the text: pg. : "della gherardasca [replaced with "gherardesca"], lady emilia" pg. : "fraccaroli, professor innocenzi [replaced with "innocenzo"]" pg. : "gatti, anjiolo [replaced with "angiolo"]" pg. : "masacio [replaced with "masaccio"], ." pg. : "meisonnier [replaced with "meissonnier"], ." pg. : "puccini, cavaliere nicolo [replaced with "nicolô"]" multiple versions of the same name appear and have not been changed: the grand duchess "marie antoinetta", "maria antoinetta", "maria antonietta" lampeggi, lappegi andrea pisani, andrea pisano schiller platz, schillerplatz san niccolo, san niccolò sienese, siennese ciseri, cisere both versions of the following words appear in the text: buttonhole, button-hole nicknamed, nick-named storehouse, store-house images generously made available by the internet archive.) auguste rodin the man--his ideas--his works by camille mauclair author of "the great french painters and the evolution of french painting from " "the french impressionists," etc. translated by clementina black with forty plates new york e. p. dutton & co. to eugÈne carriÈre and roger marx my dear friends, one of you is a great painter, whose art and mind are fraternally akin to rodin's. the other is the first french art critic of our day, and has nobly defended rodin from the outset. for these reasons i felt it just and natural to dedicate this book to both of you, as a testimony of my affection, given in the presence of the english public, and under the auspices of a name that unites all three of us in the love of beauty. c. m. the photographs used as illustrations to the present volume are kindly lent by m. buloz, art publisher of paris, to whom we offer our sincere thanks; and for five of them--very remarkable in their effect (the _bellona,_ the bust of _hugo_, the two studies of torsos for the _st. john the baptist,_ and the _fair woman who was a helmet-maker_) we are indebted to messrs. haweis and coles, to whom we are no less grateful. the very faithful portrait of m. rodin is the work of m. eckert, of prague. preface auguste rodin is certainly the contemporary french artist about whom most has been written, especially during the last ten years. in addition to innumerable articles in newspapers and reviews, several books have been devoted to him. in offering the present work to the english public i think it desirable to define exactly the aim which i propose to myself. to begin with, as my limits of size are somewhat narrow, i shall endeavour to condense into a restricted space as many interesting details as i can give, and to neglect nothing that may contribute to a clear and precise presentment of rodin's personality and work. but such details have already been collected in some french works; and if i were to content myself with presenting a new version of them to the public i should have fulfilled but half of my task and my duty. the other half interests me far more keenly. it seems to me that after having told the reader all that he ought to know about a man, a critic should then try to make a closer and deeper study of him--come into contact with his ideas and his soul, form an original judgment of him, and in short pass from the iconographie or biographic side to the artistic and psychological side of his work. i have tried, therefore, to begin where my fellow-workers have left off and to say exactly what they do not appear to me to have said. the things written about rodin have been mainly literary compositions, admiring and lyrical passages, to which his favourite subjects have served as texts. much less has been heard about his personal ideas upon the technical principles of sculpture, or about his methods of work. the reason of this is primarily a fear of fatiguing the public, to whom the technicalities of an art--which involve dry explanations--are less interesting than the results. moreover, it must be owned that few writers understand these questions. in painting, as in sculpture, persons who do not practise these arts, or who are not sufficiently familiar with the brush and the chisel to understand the secrets of works of art, even if not to produce them, generally prefer to avoid these dangerous aspects and keep to literary eulogy. a work is proclaimed great, and the reader is adjured to believe it so, but it is infinitely more difficult to give him a clear, technical explanation of why that work is great. towards that quarter, therefore, i have chosen to turn, expecting to find there things to say that cannot be read elsewhere. rodin has not merely created beautiful statues. he is an innovator, (or rather a renovator), in his methods of sculpture, and that fact has called down severe criticism on his head. a long-standing friendship, which i reckon as an honour, has allowed me to have numerous conversations with him upon the very basis of his art, upon the manner in which he practises it, and upon his ideas in relation to his own work and to ancient and modern sculpture. to these ideas the synthetic mind of rodin imparts so much vigour that they are the motives of his work and cannot be separated from it. my desire has been to present them; and instead of giving the public my own opinions, in passages of more or less brilliancy, i wished to give those--so infinitely more interesting--which have been uttered by the artist himself. often, in the course of this book, i shall be merely the transcriber while he speaks, and i think my readers will be grateful to me for that. furthermore, in regard to technical points and to the way in which rodin conceives composition and modelling, i may--and even, in order to inspire a just and necessary confidence, i should--say that when rodin exhibited his _balzac_ his first innovation in his present manner, he had so much faith in my friendship and in my critical powers that he entrusted to me the duty of explaining these delicate points in the french reviews,[ ] and in a later lecture given at the paris exhibition of , in the pavilion where he was exhibiting the whole of his works. these explanations, in their main lines, i have rewritten here. in that portion i have endeavoured to do original critical work, after having satisfied the biographical demands of the reader. i have avoided discussions of too abstract an æstheticism; i believe that everything can be said simply and in simple forms; i believe also that even in the most subtle questions of art there is an inner light that renders them accessible to all whose minds are sincere, and whose hearts are open to emotion. but i hope that, in reading this book, people will understand very exactly why a statue by rodin is different from any other statue, and why he made it so--a matter which too few writers have explained. it is not so much my business to display abundantly the admiration which i feel, but which, no more than my friendship, shall induce me to turn my essay into a hymn of praise. rodin himself is the first man to be wearied by some praises, and a just observation upon his methods gives him much more pleasure. like every man of high intelligence, he would rather be understood than praised. i believe myself to be filling a gap and satisfying a wish by giving at the end of this volume some remarks upon the artists whom rodin has influenced. he is commonly treated as "a force of nature"; "an isolated phenomenon"; people affect to consider him as a sort of immense unconscious producer. these are absurd hyperboles. rodin is a man of strong will, logical, and conscious of what he is doing, and strongly linked to the greeks and to the gothic school; he has very definite theories, and several sculptors, of whom rodin's extreme admirers do not speak, preferring to leave their divinity alone in the clouds, draw their inspiration from his views. i shall name some men to whom rodin is much attached and in whose work he takes pleasure in following the development of his principles, for he knows what he wishes, whence he comes and whither he goes, and has a horror of being thought a visionary--a phenomenon, as people say in their indiscreet zeal; on the contrary, he holds himself to be a real classical artist, whose example cannot possibly be harmful. i have thought it well, also, to conclude by a summary of the principal works or essays dealing with rodin, at least in france; and by a chronological list of his statues--that is to say, of course, an approximate list, for many fragments of this great mass of work have been destroyed by rodin himself, especially in the earlier part of his career, before . no such list has ever been made, and it may add to the interest of the present volume; i give it under the artist's authorisation, for i made it in his house and according to his advice. it is bad to repeat oneself. yet i am anxious to say once more--and my insistence will be understood--that my long friendship and personal admiration for auguste rodin and my gratitude for the affectionate regard that he shows me count for nothing here. a study is asked of me, not a panegyric. when i have reckoned up the vast quantity of work, the maker's life, theories, talks, doings, and influence, very little room will be left for compliments. it will be for the reader to think them. many people who would have had a difficulty in talking of sculpture have found rodin a convenient subject for literary declamations--too many for me to wish to imitate them. such a course would be pleasing neither to the artist nor to the public, and would content them no more than it would content me. precise details about the man, the work, and the iconography; clear explanations of technicalities and ideas--these form all my ambition. the statement of facts will be enough to arouse love and admiration for rodin; louder than all praises and with a stronger claim speaks the work of thirty years. c. m. [ ] "the art of rodin," _revue des revues,_ paris, th june, ; and lecture, st july, . contents preface i. youth and early work of rodin--his first attempts; his time at carrier's--his stay in brussels and work there--"the age of brass" at the salon of ; the incident arising in regard to it--the "st. john the baptist"; beginning of rodin's reputation ii. rodin's studio--his works from to --"eve"; some busts; the monument to victor hugo--"the gate of hell"--"the danaid"--the "thought"--the exhibition of claude monet and rodin, in --the monument to claude lorraine at nancy ( )--"the burghers of calais" ( - ) iii. rodin's work from to --small groups--the statue of "balzac"--the incident of the sociÉtÉ des gens de lettres--the "technique" of the "balzac"--rodin's ideas upon modelling and composition--his opinions about the greeks, the gothic style, classicism, and mythological subjects--rodin's "antique" period iv. works since the "balzac"--small works in marble--plan of the monument to labour--drawings and etchings v. rodin's private life--his person, studio, and home--his influence; sculptors inspired by his ideas--rodin's place in the french school--his present position in respect to academic sculpture vi. appendix--chronological list of rodin's principal works--list of the principal books or articles written about him--quotations referring to him--an opinion of eugÈne carriÈre's; an opinion of henley's--various notes index list of illustrations eternal spring (photogravure) _frontispiece_ the age of brass the age of brass st. john the baptist preaching eve sketch for the monument to the defenders of the nation ugolino and his children bellona bellona victor hugo (dry-point) victor hugo (dry-point) bust of victor hugo monument to victor hugo (fragment) victor hugo (fragment) nereids (group at base of the victor hugo monument) shades (for the top of _the gate of hell_) the thinker danaid danaid thought the fair helmet-maker a nymph (bronze) puvis de chavannes jean paul laurens bust of madame v. the burghers of calais a burgher of calais a burgher of calais a burgher of calais balzac balzac primitive man young woman between good and evil counsel iris nude study auguste rodin corner of rodin's studio at meudon corner of rodin's studio at meudon study in bronze for the "balzac" nude figure (photographed in the open air, at twilight, in the garden in meudon) auguste rodin i youth and early work of rodin--his first attempts; his time at carrier's--his stay in brussels and work there--"the age of brass" at the salon of ; the incident arising in regard to it--the "st. john the baptist"; beginning of rodin's reputation auguste rodin was born in paris, in the val de grâce quarter, on the th of november, , of a family of humble employés. the child at first attended a day-school in the rue saint jacques, then went to a boarding-school at beauvais, kept by his uncle. at fourteen he returned to paris and entered the school of art in the rue de l'École de médecine. a period of desperate industry at once set in for him. in addition to the lessons of this little school, where from eight to twelve young rodin learned the elements of drawing, and later on of modelling, copied drawings in crayons and reliefs in the louis xvi. style, he went twice a week to barye's classes at the jardin des plantes; "barye," he says, "did not teach us much; he was always worried and tired when he came, and always told us that it was very good." but rodin, together with barye's son and some other lads, had arranged a sort of studio for themselves in a cellar of the museum, making seats of tree-trunks, and already attempting sculpture. at six in the morning he used to go to draw animals, then he copied the anatomical objects in the museum. he remembers that, being too poor to buy an anatomy of the horse, he copied it piece by piece. after barye's class, or the classes of the rue de l'École de médecine, he would lunch on a bit of bread and some chocolate and hasten to the louvre, and in the evenings he would go to draw and study at the gobelins. then he worked for a maker of ornaments, since it was necessary to earn a living. from fourteen to seventeen years old rodin led this fevered existence. "in those three years," he has often repeated to me, "i came to understand the meaning of a drawing from the life, the synthesis of my art, and the rhythm of animals. i remember that a companion of those days,[ ] of whom i have since lost sight, made me see, in a couple of hours, on a very true and simple principle, an observation of the necessary equilibria of movement not taught in the schools, the secret of the plans of a figure. that lesson has influenced my whole life. as for the ornament-maker, in whose workshop i earned a scanty wage, i long deplored being constrained to do so, but i have since thought with affection of it, understanding that there are as many sources of beauty in ornament as in the face." his work at the ornament-maker's allowed rodin to earn his living as an art-worker and as a strenuous and silent student; and he vegetated in this manner until he attained his twenty-fourth year, never ceasing, in spite of his poverty and of his daily labour, to work at sculpture. then he offered himself as an assistant and pupil at the studio of carrier-belleuse. carrier-belleuse was then at the full height of his reputation as an elegant sculptor, whose real gifts of spontaneous invention were being rendered insipid by his desire to please. rodin remained six years at carrier-belleuse's, and worked there without gaining much instruction. but he meditated and taught himself. from his twenty-fourth year dates the head known as _the man with the broken nose_, which is a masterly work, strongly inspired by the antique, and already foreshadowing all his future. this clay head, which the young man sent to the salon of , was refused. from time to time rodin tried to compete for admission to the École des beaux arts; he was thrice refused. this disgusted him with the usual career upon which his lack of any income invited him to enter. his ideas, his independent temper, his presentiments, and his love of an art personal to himself, showed him that he would never gain anything, and never have the academic discipline necessary to succeed. he took advantage of an opportunity. carrier-belleuse had a commission at brussels and did not care to execute it; rodin got permission from his master, who esteemed him, to undertake it in his name, and, after having spent six years in the fashionable sculptor's studio, he went to brussels, where rude had already spent a considerable time. he was destined to remain there until , working with the belgian sculptor, van rasbourg, at the pediment of the bourse, where his sign manual may still be seen, as it may upon some caryatids of a house on the boulevard d'anspach and upon some other works. of this exile at brussels we know that the artist retains only kindly memories, but he is too sparing of personal details to enable us to analyse with any certainty this part of the life of a tenacious, concentrated man who, entirely occupied with his dreams, with indefatigable study, the anxieties of poverty, and his lonely pride, had no desire to be known. "i worked very hard over there," he says, to sum up the matter. it is certain that rodin was at this time already in possession of that formidable will which led to his success, and also of that disdainful obstinacy which prefers obscurity and lack of success to any compromise. he speaks little or not at all of the drama that was being worked out in him at this time, or of the way in which he refined and cultivated his perceptions, nor of the painting lessons that he took of lecoq de boisbaudron, in company of alphonse legros, who became his intimate friend; but this influence of lecoq de boisbaudron must not pass unnoted. it does great honour to that master teacher who has formed so many eminent modern artists. his seven years' stay at brussels allowed rodin to live modestly but decently, amid quiet surroundings, to reflect, and to shape himself intellectually; it was a sort of spiritual retreat that did him good, apart from the fact that he gained a thorough knowledge of the flemish primitives and of the gothic masters who were so strongly to influence him. no biography, however, could render comprehensible the way in which, for example, the brain of a low-born and poor child was able, amid poverty and incessant manual labour, to grow into the wide and deep brain of a thinker familiar with the synthesis of art; these things are the secrets of personality. [illustration: the age of brass] rodin was destined to emerge suddenly from obscurity at the age of thirty-seven, that is to say, at a time of life when many men think themselves hopelessly sacrificed, and when he had already produced much and suffered much; for it may be said that the whole of his work from - is unknown and lost, and yet what labour it represents! except _the man with the broken nose_, none of it is ever mentioned; the pediment of the bourse at brussels is crumbling away, time is devouring rodin's work upon it no less than van rasbourg's; he will not speak of the many figures that he made to the order of carrier-belleuse and interpreted according to his own free inspiration; and he only occasionally alludes to a large figure that was broken in a household removal, and was, in his opinion, one of the best he ever made in his life. in _the man with the broken nose,_ in marble, was admitted to the salon. this determined rodin in to send in his statue, _the age of brass,_ and this gave rise to an incident, the very injustice of which was to bring him into notice. the jury,[ ] astonished by this work, admitted it, but accused the artist of having taken a cast from life, so perfect was the modelling. the practice of taking a cast from the life is unhappily frequent, and we know he praised academicians who employ this artistic fraud without any scruple. rodin protested. he had had a belgian soldier for his model in brussels: he had photographs taken of him and sent them to the jury, who did not even open the packet, and persisted in the allegations. three sculptors, however, desbois, fagel, and lefèvre, who thenceforward became rodin's friends, protested in his favour, some critics spoke of the affair, and rodin's work made so much impression that the secretary of the fine arts, turquet, bought _the age of brass_ (which stood for a long time in the luxembourg gardens and is now in the museum). rodin waited until to exhibit _st. john the baptist_. meanwhile turquet had conceived a friendship for him and wished to wipe out the unjust accusation brought against _the age of brass._ the inspectors of the fine arts department disowned the purchase of that work and declared it cast from life. rodin, discouraged, remained silent; a chance saved him. as he was continuing to look for work in order to support his young wife and himself, and to defray the expenses of his art, he chanced to be executing a group of children in a composition for the sculptor boucher. his facility was prodigious; boucher saw him improvise the group in a few hours and went, thunderstruck, to tell some of his friends. he had the honesty to declare that such a man, having done thus before his own eyes, was capable of making _the age of brass._ chapu, thomas, falguière, delaplanche, chaplin, carrier-belleuse, and paul dubois insisted loyally, and rodin's cause was won. turquet, delighted, and free to act, bought the _st. john the baptist_ and gave rodin a commission. then the artist answered: "i am ready to fulfil it. but to prove surely that i do not take casts from the life i will make little bas-reliefs--an immense work with small figures, and i think of taking the subject from dante." this was the origin of that celebrated _gate of hell_, which is not yet completed, and which, continually handled afresh, has finally become the central motive of all rodin's dreams, the storehouse of his ideas and researches. [illustration: the age of brass] from that time forward ( ) rodin was what he is to-day; he had emerged, once for all, from obscurity, and went on to display without interruption and without hesitation the succession of works that have rendered him celebrated. he knew his path, his method, his field of thought. from the age of sixteen to that of forty he had, by unknown persistent labour, been ripening his individuality. and his work, from _the age of brass_ to the _balzac_, is but a visible development of that hidden period. the period from the _balzac_ to our own day testifies to a new theory that he has framed. but one may say that the rodin of the years from to was entirely contained in the unknown man of the preceding period. it was, indeed, that slow preparation that gave to the revelation of the works that appearance of certainty, of sudden mastery, which so struck people's minds. we are accustomed to see artists make youthful successes with works of brilliant promise, then we follow their course and see them growing greater. rodin came to light in twenty-four hours. he was thought to be a young beginner; his past struggle was unknown; people were aware of him only when he had done with scruples and had, as he says, "made peace with himself." from this fact came his prestige. from it came also his well-defined attitude in regard to academic art. [illustration: st. john the baptist preaching] we need to recall the graceful, effeminate, and conventional statuary of the generation from to in order to comprehend fully what _the age of brass_ and _st. john the baptist_ brought into the exhibitions when they made their appearance there. rough truth, a sense of movement, an intense realism, an absolute scorn of the pleasing, a lofty style, a deep feeling of organic life, power due to the eager love of form, of muscular formation and physical activity; all these things inevitably shocked the gentle sculptors who were enamoured of the academic style and of mythology. moreover, rodin was unknown; he had no claim, knew nobody, had never asked for anything, and was a son of the people. that carrier-belleuse's former workman should take upon himself to make statues all by himself aroused scorn. his technical skill was so great that there could be no possibility of denying it. therefore, in spite, the accusation of casting from the life was invented. the accusers did not reflect upon the splendid testimonial that would be given to the artist if he should succeed in proving that his skill alone had created this perfection. the amusing thing is that the same people who declared this skill too great to be anything but a reproduction, accused rodin, twenty years later, over his _balzac_, of not knowing his craft! apart from this question of fact, and these professional jealousies, the style of these works could not fail to displease. in them there was already a sort of symbolic and savage beauty, which has become a characteristic of rodin's art. the pained, awakening movement of the man in _the age of brass_, the gesture of _st. john the baptist_, and still more his wild face with its open mouth, were so much outside the usual conventions as to make everybody feel that here was an artist resolved to take no account of the "École" and its principles. these two splendid studies of the nude already contained a very special thought. rodin, therefore, was hated in the first place as a man who would be revolutionary. he was hated because he was powerful, because he emerged suddenly from obscurity, and because he was felt to possess an obstinate individuality. it was also for these very reasons that warm sympathies went out to rodin from among artists opposed to the spirit of the "École," and from independent writers who divined in him a man capable of expressing in his art thoughts and emotions that had ceased to be found in art. [illustration: eve.] [ ] this unknown student was called constant simon. rodin remembers him as a remarkable man. [ ] the hanging committee of the salon is called a "jury."--trans. ii rodin's studio--his works from to --"eve"; some busts; the monument to victor hugo--"the gate of hell"--"the danaid"--the "thought"--the exhibition of claude monet and rodin, in --the monument to claude lorraine at nancy ( )--"the burghers of calais" ( - ) rodin's previous works, from to , had been produced in modest abodes in the rue des fourneaux and the boulevard de vaugirard, and later, in a little studio, granted by the government, at the dépôt des marbres, in the rue de l'université, where a certain number of studios are given to sculptors. from onwards the government granted rodin two larger studios there, which he still occupies. at a later date he also had, at his own expense, a studio in an odd corner of the boulevard d'italie, at a place called the clos payen, besides a house at sèvres, and eventually one at meudon, in which he still lives and of which i shall speak again. among these were distributed his studies and his finished works: _the gate of hell_ was sketched in at the rue de l'université, and there, too, rodin's assistants are at work upon his present groups. [illustration: sketch for a competition. monument to the defenders of the country] from rodin worked at sèvres, having been introduced by carrier-belleuse, and a vase decorated by him may be seen there. in he made a fine competitive design for the _monument to the defenders of the nation,_ which was not accepted. in he made a figure of _adam_, which he destroyed, and an _eve,_ which must be reckoned among his noblest creations--an _eve_ ashamed of her faults, bowed down by terror, vaguely tormented less by remorse for her sin than by the idea of having created beings for future sorrow. this _eve_ is a bronze of formidable appearance and all rodin breathes in it. as in the _st. john the baptist,_ we feel the effect of a definite conception of sculpture, but here the design is more spiritual and the scheme of modelling simpler and larger. from that time onward we shall find the artist producing regularly, putting forth a peaceful power, and working in complete possession of himself, not free certainly from doubts and searchings, but allowing nothing of the sort to be seen. rodin's way of working is very peculiar; he does not begin one piece of work, carry it to its conclusion, and then devote himself to another. he has had from the outset a certain number of thoughts that correspond to forms, and although he has only shown his works one after another, he has nevertheless elaborated them side by side, working at them simultaneously and modifying them one by another. thus _the gate of hell_ has been made and remade for more than twenty years; thus the monument to hugo, not yet handed over, goes back, by the sketches for it, to ; while the studies for _the burghers of calais_ date from , though the monument was only completed in ; thus, too, among the little groups on which rodin is still at work, are many that have grown out of rough sketches made fifteen years ago. rodin has a store of ideas and emotions dear to him, upon which he has patiently meditated, which he has promised himself to execute, and which he brings to ripeness in silence, remaining throughout long years without appearing to concern himself with them. "strength and patience" might be his characteristic motto. like all great artists, he thought out the essential lines of his work at once, lines that i shall define at the end of this book. his is a synthetic and generalising mind, which can only begin its active course after slow meditation, and conceives no isolated thing; spontaneous and at the same time prudent. he had that time of meditation at brussels, not hastening to produce, not permitting himself to express an idea until he had prepared in detail the technical expression, the necessities of the craftsman. [illustration: ugolino and his children] the _ugolino_, a cast, of which rodin exhibited the first sketch in , is the first sign of that preoccupation with dante, which was to be shown in all his later work. he has read comparatively few things, and that designedly; he attaches himself strongly to a few great and profound works, and meditates upon them indefatigably. his whole symbolic imagination has been fed by dante and his whole sensuous imagination by baudelaire. these two gloomy poets have impressed him, and it may be said that he has absorbed them. almost all rodin's great symbolic figures refer to the _inferno_, and all his little groups of lovers have the neurotic subtlety, the refined, homesick melancholy of the _fleurs du mal._ he has a constant need to evolve from realism to general ideas, from thought to delight or sorrow, and the ideal of dante or of baudelaire is strangely mingled in him with love of the antique and worship of mythology. it is, indeed, this quite individual fusion that forms the basis of his personality. the _ugolino_, which was exhibited, first alone and then with his dying children, over whom he is crouching, haggard and already almost like a wild beast, is a tragic and powerful work. the same year rodin produced the bust of alphonse legros, which has taken so high a place in england in the opinion of the best judges, and in that of the lamented w. e. henley, whose penetrating criticism paid homage from the first to our sculptor's art. [illustration: bellona _page_ ] [illustration: bellona] _the genius of war,_ the _monument to general lynch_, and the very curious _bellona,_ date from ; the _president vicunha_[ ] and a _bust of a young woman_, from . this was rather a period of groping than of production; rodin was continuing his studies, and becoming more confirmed in his technical methods. we must go on to the year to reach the revelation of three of his finest sculptures--the three busts of _dalou_, _victor hugo,_ and _antonin proust_, which powerfully declare his personality. these are works that are not disputable, that cannot be accused of having a "literary" intention, mere bits of sculpture giving evidence of mastery and showing surfaces, planes, and high lights worthy of the very finest busts of the french school. as time goes by, the ideas, the philosophy, the symbolism, the "dramatisation" of rodin's compositions may come to be disputed, or exact comprehension of them may be lost; but works like these will always, by their mere professional worth, bear witness for him. life, thought, strength, and character are carried as far as is possible. the bust of hugo was the outcome of some few studies that the artist was able to make from the life. hugo declared david of angers to have made so good a bust of him that he considered it unnecessary ever to sit again. rodin wished to obtain sittings, but failed; the poet admitted him to his table, and merely said to him, "come when you like, observe me ... and do what you can." at table rodin took sketches of hugo in cigarette-paper books; he had a stand and some clay in the ante-room, and from time to time he would run in to note down anything that had just struck him. victor hugo. (dry point) victor hugo. (dry-point) in this manner was that admirable bust completed, which (with the two etchings here reproduced) was the only material of which rodin could make use for the hugo with the bowed head of his future monument, the commission for which was given him by the government after the death of the national poet in , and which is on the eve of completion. the next year ( ) rodin exhibited the scheme of the monument itself, which has since undergone several variations, but of which the central theme is always as follows: hugo, naked and half-draped, like a god, is seated on a rock at the edge of the sea. with his outstretched left arm he makes a silencing gesture towards the sea and the nereids, and thus begs them to let him listen to the muse of his inner voice, who rises, pensively, behind him, and to the muse of anger, who, crouched on a rock above his head, seems ready to fly up into the sky. this muse may also be interpreted as an ins, the messenger of the voices of the elements, and the muse of the inner voice is also called meditation. she is of the greatest beauty; hers is one of the figures in which, before the _balzac_, rodin indicates his new method of amplifying the relief and systematically altering the proportions, in order--according to an idea which i shall analyse in detail in the next chapter--to secure a decorative effect. nothing can be more expressive and more supernatural than the harmonious sadness of this great drooping shape; it is really a soul incarnated in a movement of modesty and secret contemplation that disturbs and moves us as we gaze. the hugo himself is truly olympian in the majesty of his gesture, the vastness of his heroic nudity, and the magic of the shadow that bathes his face bowed partly down over his breast; and the monument as a whole is of magnificent decorative unity. there are to be two monuments to victor hugo, one for the pantheon, the other for the luxembourg gardens, and they are to have slight variations, not in the attitude of hugo himself, but in the significance and style of the adjacent figures. these two monuments, however, have not been accepted without great difficulties caused by the very nature of rodin's conception; and the fact that they are accepted has not prevented the place victor hugo from being disfigured by a hideous and gigantic monument, the work of barrias, which fills the place of those that rodin had not completed. rodin's slowness, which arises from the scrupulous circumspection of his mind--never satisfied with itself--and from his habit of working simultaneously at several subjects, has always contributed towards driving away official commissions from him; while the jealousy of his fellows and the exceptional character of his work have further helped to bring about strained relations between him and the official circle. rodin does not care about pleasing or about being understood by everybody, and he has no idea of concessions. thus almost all his important works have given rise to incidents likely to disturb his peace and hinder his work. [illustration: bust of victor hugo.] [illustration: victor hugo monument. (a fragment)] [illustration: victor hugo. (a fragment)] together with the sketch of the hugo monument, a bust of henry becque, and a curious etching made from it, rodin exhibited in the first drawings belonging to _the gate of hell_, or at least to the work which people have agreed to call by that title. i have already related the origin of that government commission. in the beginning rodin had been asked to make a door in high-relief, intended for the musée des arts décoratifs. but the sculptor's imagination, beset by ideas of dante, soon deviated from the original scheme. the door really exists in the studio of the rue de l'université, under the aspect of a vast rough model in plaster and beams, in the very simple shape of a two-leaved door ½ feet high, with a frieze, a tympanum, and two lateral capitals. it was, at first, to have been surmounted by the two figures of adam and eve, but rodin gave them up. he now seems determined to place the _shades_, here reproduced, in the highest plane.[ ] on the uppermost beam _the thinker_ is to be seated. in the panels of the door and upon the wide uprights are enshrined figures--to the number of over a hundred--detached in high-relief, exactly as upon the gates of the baptistery in florence, which rodin has, quite simply, taken as his model. these figures were, at first, direct interpretations from dante, in particular paolo and francesca da rimini and divers inhabitants of the inferno. then rodin intermingled figures due solely to his inspirations from baudelaire and to his own sharp perception of tragic perversity. he enlarged dante's conception as he modernised it, and has ended by making this door into what he smilingly calls "my noah's ark." that means that he is continually putting in little figures which replace others; there, plastered into the niches left by unfinished figures, he places everything that he improvises, everything that seems to him to correspond in character and subject with that vast confusion of human passions. the size of these figures is greatly restricted; the largest scarcely exceed thirty-nine inches in height. the dimensions of the final rendering, however, still remain to be fixed. the splendid figure called _the thinker_ is carried out in bronze larger than life, and rodin is credited with an intention of bringing up all the other figures to the same dimensions, which would represent an unheard-of outlay and a gate nearly a hundred feet high--a cyclopean work indeed! _the thinker_, who has been so called on account of the likeness between his attitude and that of michael angelo's _pensieroso_, is much more truly an image, with his stunted body and a primitive man's face, of the cave-dweller, the prognathous savage beholding the crimes and passions of his progeny unroll themselves below him. immediately beneath him may be seen the most celebrated characters of the dante cycle, notably the lovers of rimini entwined and falling into hell.[ ] then as we descend towards the ground the figures become more independent of the subject, more personally invented by the artist, and at the foot we find "women damned," such as baudelaire conceived, amid characters from heathen mythology. [illustration: nereids (group at the base of the victor hugo monument.)] it may thus be said that, although, perhaps, the celebrated doorway may never be finished, it is a storehouse of rodin's creations. it stands by him as a theme for inspirations, and he brings into it a whole category of thoughts and works, never troubling himself about the architecture or the actual scheme. he will be for ever improvising some little figure, shaping the notation of some feeling, idea, or form, and this he plants in his door, studies it against the other figures, then takes it out again, and if need be, breaks it up and uses the fragments for other attempts. many of these little figures have developed into important separate groups. rodin is ruled primarily by the need to create and to satisfy an irresistible vocation; he cares little what may be the ultimate transformation of his inventions, and his sculpture is, furthermore, so conceived that it may be executed on a large scale or a small; this is indeed so much the case that it is often impossible to judge from a photograph what are the dimensions. [illustration: shades (for the top of "the gate of hell".)] _the gate of hell_ might therefore better be called "the pandemonium," or some quite other name. if it were to be carried out it could not contain all the figures destined for it by the artist. there they stand, innumerable, ranged on shelves beside the rough model of the door, representing the entire evolution of rodin's inspiration, and forming what i call, with his consent, "the diary of his life as a sculptor." to enumerate these figures and groups would take too long; suffice to say that the larger part of rodin's small marbles and bronzes are but completions of these sketches, and that on account of the essentially decorative character of the outlines and the intense originality of the proportion and balance of the figures, they can be conceived either as statuettes or as lifesized works. such as it is, _the gate of hell_ is the plan of a piece of work unique in the sculpture of modern days, a plan slowly elaborated, and of which every detail has been foreseen and analysed for years. no one has dared to undertake so audacious an assemblage of figures upon such a scheme, and the scheme is present to rodin in its entirety. he by no means forgets the decorative effect nor the harmonious aspects, the concords that the gate should have, and if ever government should require him to deliver his work he would be able to do so without delay. twenty years in the studio have matured it in his mind. the work that dante inspired has assumed a more general significance. low-relief, high-relief, figures standing free, groups, single figures, all the styles of sculpture are gathered into the symphony of a throng, lost amid whirling mists of hell and converging towards the figure of the thinker. the conception embraces centuries. ugolino is there, and so are centaurs, female fauns, satyrs, and creatures dreamed of by baudelaire, abstract personifications of vices--in particular, there is the extraordinary group of the miser dying of hunger over his treasure beside a prostitute _(avarice and lewdness)._ the thinker, in his austere nudity and pensive strength, is at one and the same time the alarmed adam, the implacable dante, and the compassionate virgil of this frightful unrestrained humanity, but he is, above all, the ancestor, the first man, simple and unconscious, looking down on what he has begotten. the symbolism and philosophy of the artist are independent of any religious doctrine; his spiritual ardour excels in setting free the symbols of the various creeds, and he is supported mainly by deep and incessant consultation of nature, and by his exceptional sense of expression in movements. he attains the decorative harmony of his work not by additions, but by systematic suppressions, as the gothic artists and those of the renascence did. [illustration: the thinker] _the gate of hell_ is the outcome of studies made by rodin from the gothic sculptors, during his stay in brussels. in this, and in _the burghers of calais_, he resumes the deep influence that he there underwent. as to the influence that the antique had upon him, that only showed itself later, in his smaller works in marble, and especially in the _balzac_ and recent productions. the _gate_ corresponds to the period in which rodin's great aim was to create, through intensity of movement and originality of attitude and outline, a _new system of the dramatic_ in his art, which the taste of the day had frozen into a false "neo-greek nobility," obtained by immobility, by inertia of outline, and by a fear of seeing too living a movement break the general harmony. to seek a fresh harmony in the very study of movement, to create, side by side with _static_ art, a _dynamic_ art, such, in a brief formula, was rodin's idea. he was shortly to exhibit a work which was still more significant of the thoughts with which he was busy. for, though i have spoken at once of that famous _gate,_ which is the _leit-motiv_ of rodin's art, it must be remembered that in nothing was known of it but drawings. only by degrees have groups and fragments of it been seen, and the work itself has never left the studio in the rue de l'université. it was _the burghers of calais_ which revealed most clearly to the public rodin's capabilities in the way of style and of composing a whole work, and i will speak of the _burghers_ in this chapter, although the work was not completed until and was not set up in calais until . [illustration: danaid] [illustration: danaid] [illustration: thought] in we may note _perseus and the gorgon_, and a marble _head of the beheaded st. john_, which belongs to the marchioness of carcano. in was exhibited the exquisite _danaid,_ one of the most tender female figures that were ever lovingly moulded by this sculptor of the energetic, and one which has a subtle delicacy of soul that seems strangely placed between two works of power. at the same time a naked figure was also shown at the exposition des beaux arts, in brussels--a _man walking_, which was no other than one of the _burghers,_ and of which the robust execution made an impression. the year marked an increase of the artist's activity. he was busy upon preparatory work for the monument of claude lorraine, which he had been commissioned to make for nancy. he was going on with _the gate of hell._ he completed a statue of bastien-lepage for the cemetery of damvilliers. he began upon the busts of the art critics, octave mirbeau and roger marx, finished an admirable little _dream-group_ in marble, in which a young man is lying back and trying to hold fast a sphinx-woman who takes flight, wild and fateful. an impressionist sketch of _hecuba_, crouching down and shrieking, and _thought_, in marble, completed the record of this well-filled year. _thought,_ a proud, sweet head rising from a block, is one of rodin's best known works and the very symbol of his art. it occupies a place in the museum of the luxembourg, where it is in company with _the danaid,_ the _st. john, the kiss,_ a masterly female bust, and a bronze statuette. _the fair helmet-maker,_ from villon's poem, is a work on a very small scale, but containing the depth and strength of tragedy--the whole drama of a human body's ruin. [illustration: the fair helmet-maker] in rodin and claude monet together held, in the george petit gallery, an exhibition which has remained famous and which united our two greatest artists. rodin sent to it the _women damned_, the _beheaded st. john_, some _fauns_ and _bacchantes_, _bastien-lepage,_ in all some thirty works, among which was _the burghers of calais_, shown complete for the first time. the sensation produced was immense. rodin now tasted unmistakable fame, and his reputation spread all over the world. this fame, however, did not disarm the official circle, and not until the last three or four years have the critics been unanimous in their praise of the great french sculptor, whose every important work has given occasion to a battle, because its beauty arose from principles opposed to the whole system taught in the schools. the five following years were marked by various works which did not, however, interfere with the threefold parallel continuation of the _victor hugo, the burghers of calais,_ and _the gate of hell_, which were exhibited in various states in the salon. rodin considers it his duty, indeed, to submit to the public the phases of his work, rough attempts, clay, marbles, or bronzes, before the final completion; and understanding very well that his style is, or seems to be difficult, he thus explains himself to the public in the exhibitions, and allows people to follow the stages through which his thought passes. in addition to these works may be noted, for the year , the bust of a young woman, in silver, _brother and sister_, bronze, and the _torso_ of st. john the baptist. in , _the caryatid_, a marble figure of a young woman with a stone upon her shoulder, the group of _the young mother_ (first bronze and then marble), and _a nymph._ in , the busts of _rochefort_ and of _puvis de chavannes,_ which, with those of _dalou, jean paul laurens_, _hugo_, and _falguière,_ form an incomparable series from rodin's hand of portraits that surpass all modern french sculpture, and are admirable alike in execution and expression. the _puvis de chavannes_ is perhaps the finest; it is a work that does not pall even beside donatello himself. in the _burghers_ and the _claude lorraine_ were completed. the _burghers_ waited three years for their setting up, but the monument to lorraine was inaugurated immediately, thanks to the devoted efforts of that great art-worker in glass, Émile gallé, and of roger marx, who by his writings and his incessant activity has had a most noble effect upon modern french art. these two eminent men, both natives of nancy, enforced the acceptance of the work. the monument consists of a statue of lorraine, standing, palette in hand, his head raised eagerly towards the east, and of a pedestal from which apollo and his rearing horses stand out in splendid high-relief. thus did rodin seek to pay homage to the master-painter who adored movement in light, by acclaiming both these in his turn. fault has been found with the importance of the pedestal in comparison with the statue, the objectors failing to understand that this allegory of apollo incarnated the very soul of the great artist whose effigy towered over the whole work, and that this whole could not be dissevered. the idea animating this composition was criticised by the authorities. here, once more, rodin with his symbolic vision, his tendency to bold simplifications of the general, synthetic idea, was found disturbing. he was asked for the _sculptured portrait_ of a man, and he preferred to give prominence to a symbol that expressed the dream and the essential genius of that man, the sun-painter--an idea which was logical, but which ran counter to the received prejudice as to portrait statues. the propagandist persistence of gallé and roger marx, however, convinced the people of nancy, who are now very proud of their monument. the horses and the apollo are the most living, palpitating, and lyrical things that rodin has produced. [illustration: puvis de chavannes] [illustration: jean-paul laurens] in rodin made the bust of madame _séverine,_ the medallion of _césar franck,_ and several works in marble; _galatea, the death of adonis, the education of achilles,_ and _the wave._ from date the _eternal spring,_ one of his tenderest and purest works, besides an _orpheus and eurydice,_ an _adonis and venus,_ and finally _christ and the magdalen._ for, by degrees, he was returning to religious and mythological subjects, after having expressed only general symbols or pieces of pure realism; and i shall have to call attention at a later point to the original manner in which rodin was bold enough to interpret these subjects which the academic classicism seemed to have worn out and left insipid for ever. the year at last beheld the inauguration, on the rd of june, of _the burghers of calais_ at calais. to the same year belongs another fine work in marble: _illusion, the daughter of icarus,_ besides a vigorous bronze, _the crouching man,_ a medallion of _octave mirbeau,_ and--at this early date--some nude studies for the _balzac,_ for the _balzac_ was studied minutely in the nude, a point of which many people know nothing, before appearing draped in the famous dressing-gown which was destined, in , to arouse so much clamour. [illustration: bust of madame v.] the _burghers_ were set up, by subscription, in a square in calais.[ ] the monument is one in which rodin has deliberately departed from all the rules of official art. these require that the effect should be pursued primarily by a compact grouping, the same thought being translated by the same gesture from all the persons. rodin, on the contrary, desired to leave their full individuality to his six burghers going in their shirts and with halters on their necks to surrender themselves to king edward, and he has isolated them on their one base. these six men are walking, one behind the other, two by two, half naked and miserable, with their emaciated faces--men besieged, sacrificed. one devotion unites them in the name of their town's salvation, but their characters and their thoughts remain distinct, and in each may be read a different drama of the conscience. they have not the factitious enthusiasm and the declamatory gesture with which an ordinary sculptor would have thought well to furnish them; they are simply citizens who have resolved to fulfil a fatal duty, and are going to perform it without cowardice, but nevertheless were, yesterday, trades-people and family-men with no pretensions to the heroic. they bear with them their regrets, their inner heartbreak, and are not thinking of striking an attitude in the eyes of history. they are the unknown, obscure heroes of a fatality such as often arose in their rough times; and of how many dead men, devoted like them, has history forgotten the deeds and names! there is eustace de st. pierre, with his shaven magistrate's face, stiff and controlled, carrying the key of the town; behind him andrieux d'andres, with his hands clenched over his sobbing face, turns back, this last time, towards the city. jean de fiennes, with his rough beard and weak, old man's shoulders, is listening to jean d'aire, who, younger than he, is murmuring words that perhaps confide to him his horror of death, and entreat from the old man encouragement in renunciation. but in front of all the others the two brothers, jacques and pierre de wissant, advance resolutely; and one turns back to hasten his friends, while one exhorts them, pointing with a restrained gesture towards heaven. [illustration: the burghers of calais] the entire reality of these figures is no less striking than their ideality, just as is the case in the beautiful creations of the "primitives." these are men whose absolutely real nakedness reveals itself beneath the coarse sacks that clothe them, a nakedness not harmonised into any style, but shown in all its veracity by an artist who has chosen models suitable to his characters without any care to arrange them or to give them that pretended _beauty_ which would be merely a falsehood and an enfeeblement. these are six wretched men, shivering with cold and anguish. the scene is as close as possible to history, and the faces are real--ugly or ordinary. but an idea transfigures them. the tragedy of their sacrifice gives them a strange greatness, and they become fine because their soul is fine. we guess the gradation of their reflections: none faces his fate just like another, and the reason is that, though what they will is one, what they leave is different for each, and everything in them speaks, from their faces down to the least attitude of their limbs. their expression is sober; a heavy silence enwraps them; we follow them with our eyes as the dwellers in calais must have done from the heights of their walls; and they are so grouped that from every point we see them separately, presenting a distinct aspect, and yet the one base unites and uplifts them. this is a marvel of psychological composition. technical skill assists this composition; we find the power of the _st. john_, but more simplification. only the essential lines attract the eye, the details are subsidiary to the whole. admirable bits of flesh modelling are only noticed after long examination; the substance is scarcely thought of, so much is the mind held at first by the intellectual drama, and this was what rodin desired. these six beings, side by side, are august in their sorrow, and they move us by means of their simplicity and by the absence of any theatrical gesture. we feel the bodies under the shirts, for rodin made six complete models in the nude before he threw upon them these rags of stuff and knotted ropes. the feet are strongly attached to the earth; we guess that their limbs are heavy, because, though their will bids them walk, every step leads towards death. the impression is extraordinary and such as perhaps no sculpture ever gave before. this is a reality of all time: the epic of the sacrifice of the humble. as for the style, it recalls the gothic sculptors by the rugged power of the moulding, the asceticism of the heads, and the strength of the knotty limbs. we are compelled to think of the flemish "primitives," and especially of those genial burgundian sculptors and image-makers of genius who produced the immortal figures of philippe pot's tomb in the louvre. there is the same desire for expression in sculpture, which seeks beauty solely in intensity of character, and finds style in the sincere study of reality--all these things concurring towards the greater synthesis of the work's general thought. rodin there shows himself an essentially french and northern artist, alien from all that the academies, hypnotised by the italianism of the second renascence, have chosen to invent as dogmas of beauty. _the burghers of calais_ is a work of the true french classic tradition--of the national classicality which has nothing in common with that classicality imported from italy in by which our indigenous artists have so long been oppressed, thanks to the "École de rome." standing before such a creation we recognise this truth sharply--this truth which is the secret of rodin's genius and of the enthusiasm that he aroused. better than rude, better than barye, better even than carpeaux, has he found the way to free himself, and to go back, by power of thought and mastery, to our true national lineage. [illustration: a burgher of calais] [illustration: a burgher of calais] [illustration: a burgher of calais] the _burghers_ ought, according to rodin's idea, to be placed in front of the old hotel de ville of calais, facing the sea; and he wished the group to be placed on a very high pedestal, so that the figures should stand out against the open sky, or else, on the other hand, almost on the level, so that everyone could walk round them, live with them, almost elbow them. a bad site has been chosen and a pedestal of moderate height and ordinary appearance. the _burghers_ are very fine all the same, and are certainly the most powerful piece of sculpture of the epoch. i have promised to be sober in my praises of rodin, but i do not see why in speaking of such a work as this i should hide my convictions. those who have seen it cannot fail to consider it, as i do, the work of a thinker and of an artist of genius. [ ] it is curious to recollect that the very fine equestrian statue of general lynch and the monument to president vicunha, sent to america by rodin, were never paid for, and that, owing to revolutions, they actually disappeared, so that these works may be considered lost. only the spoiled rough models and some photographs remain. [ ] these _shades_ are a symbolic representation of men who are just dead, and who are bending down with folded hands in misery and terror gazing at the hellish crowd into which they are about to fall. [ ] the final version of this group has been treated by rodin separately, and is known by the name of _the kiss_. the marble group is in the museum of the luxembourg. [ ] a statue of eustace de st. pierre had been asked for. rodin sent the six effigies of burghers, and this gave rise to fresh difficulties with the authorities. iii rodin's work from to --small groups--the statue of "balzac" --the incident of the sociÉtÉ des gens de lettres--the "technique" of the "balzac"--rodin's ideas upon modelling and composition--his opinions about the greeks, the gothic style, classicism, and mythological subjects--rodin's "antique" period. the year was occupied by the continuation of work for the hugo monument. the _muse of anger_ and the _muse of the inna' voice_ were brought to their full completion. in addition to these rodin made a very fine head of _minerva,_ in marble, with a silver helmet; a statue of a _conqueror_, holding a statue of _victory;_ and two groups--_the poet and the life of contemplation_ (for m. fenaille, the faithful admirer, who was, at a later date, to publish his sketches) and _the eternal idol,_ a marvel of inspiration. a young naked woman is in a half-sitting posture, her head bent, her gaze lost in a dream. a man kneeling before her, his arms behind him and his desire restrained, puts his head gently forward and kisses the idol beneath the left breast over the heart, with mute fervour, and with a mystic, amorous concentration of his whole being. rarely does sculpture allow of so much pulsating life and so much psychological emotion united to plastic perfection and originality of arrangement. from date the marble group of the _women bathing,_ the last studies for the _balzac,_ and the studies for the _monument to president sarmiento_, a statue upon a pedestal in high-relief. small groups in marble and in bronze are a form of which rodin is fond. he has been led to devote himself largely to them on account of _the gate of hell,_ the dimensions of which necessitated small figures. moreover, rodin reserves this form of art for certain categories of works that have a character of passion and intimacy. it should be possible to pass easily round them, to lean over them, almost to touch them and move them about; one should be able to live with them, as one cannot do with large figures meant to be looked at from below. the happy form of the small sculptured block, which the eighteenth century had employed to so much advantage, allows this constant communion of the spectator and the work of art. rodin, who executes his bigger figures in so large a style, reserves for these a style that is minute but never mannered. the outlines remain large, so much so, indeed, that the work would always bear an enlarged scale; but the modelling is wrought with an almost caressing touch and with a strange love of form. here the rough sculptor, so gothic in his austerity, fingers the marble with the care and the delicacy of a lover; he reveals himself as a fervent adorer of smooth, womanly flesh; he plays with the subtlest variations of light upon the inflexion of marble surfaces, and the man who is reproached with caring for nothing but "character" and with despising "beauty" creates arms, necks, knees, and bosoms of exquisite perfection. his favourite type of woman is the long, delicately made woman, with a small bust, largely curved hips, and a face full of will, the nervous, feline, voluptuous woman, of head rather than of heart, such as baudelaire and rops have imagined. the characteristic feature of rodin's small groups is the seeking after new combinations of movement. i have said already that his essential idea was the production of _dynamic_ art; that is to say that, finding himself face to face with an academic school that had grown inert owing to its care for pseudo-harmony, he had determined to draw sculpture out of this blind alley and to show, before all things, how the expression of movement might lead to an entirely new conception of decorative outline. from this endeavour arose those little groups of lovers in which the attitudes are so infinitely varied, those curious presentments in which the arms and legs are placed as freely as in a painting. but the painting has the help of shadow, of backgrounds, and of values, which allow the light to be concentrated on a single point and the rest to be blurred. rodin has attempted so to compose his most audacious movements that, in walking round, a new aspect of them is constantly presented, whereas ordinary sculpture, meant to be seen from a single point, does not allow the spectator to pass behind it. this difficulty and this main idea have led rodin to treat modelling and composition in a way upon which i shall dwell more fully later on, and to invent a style of statuary which borrows some of the laws of painting. these thoughts had long been ripening in rodin when at last he resolved to apply them to his _balzac_, which was really not his first attempt in this direction, but the first that was seen in public. when this statue appeared in the salon of , it created such a commotion that for a week the public forgot, over it, the events of that vast serial story, the dreyfus affair. the clamour was extraordinary; some people raged at what they considered a scandalous practical joke, others warmly defended the new work. the société des gens de lettres, already irritated by rodin's delays in finishing the statue, declared plainly that it refused the _balzac_, a decision which led to the resignation of the committee. rodin might have brought an action and won it, for, strictly speaking, his agreement required the society to accept the work such as he delivered it. he preferred to withdraw his work without claiming its price or discussing the matter. once again his art encountered violent opposition from the official camp--but to struggle is repugnant to his temper. inflexible in his will as a producer, he is timid and proud in his attitude towards contradictions. opportunity, moreover, offered him a roguish and witty revenge. falguière was commissioned to make a _balzac._ this put falguière in a very awkward position; after all the fuss made about rodin's statue, he must needs produce something finer, or at the very least equally interesting. he was certain of a bad reception at the hands of rodin's admirers and he was bound to please the others. falguière only succeeded in producing a mediocre work. the _balzac_ that may be seen at the present time in the avenue de friedland is nothing but a half-hearted imitation of rodin's; it is rodin's _balzac_ seated, and without character or interest. this work appeared in , at a time when opinion was already beginning to recognise the injustice done to rodin, and it pleased nobody. then rodin, to show that the incident had in no way altered his friendly relations with falguière,[ ] made an admirable bust of his fellow-worker, which was as fine as the second _balzac_ was poor, and thus gave to falguière and to the public, also, a silent and ironical lesson. what, then, was this _balzac_ which was so much detested, and about which the most abusive and extraordinary things were written? merely the image of the great writer, draped in a dressing-gown, with empty, hanging sleeves; he has risen in the night and is walking up and down, disturbed and sleepless, pursuing an idea that has suddenly presented itself. he is bent forward, his head thrown back, the eyes deep-set, and the mouth contracted in a smile of challenge. the powerful neck--the neck indeed of a bull--emerges from the open wrapper. rodin made use of various daguerreotypes, and especially of a celebrated portrait of balzac, that shows him in shirt-sleeves with one brace, and folded arms. the enormous proportions of the head, the amazing strength of the thorax, the monstrous and leonine character of the face are all exact. "his was the countenance of an element," said lamartine of balzac, "with a torso that was joined to the head by an enormous neck, short legs, and short arms." these words absolutely justify the statue. rodin had made studies for it in the nude (there are some fine clay models of the subject in his studio), then he clothed it with a gown (or to be more exact, with a bath-wrap, for that is what balzac's famous monk's robe was), and proceeded to simplify the folds until he had left only the two or three essential ones. the result thus obtained, with the disproportion of body and legs, led rodin to hide the short, ugly, useless arms under the drapery, and the figure thus assumed pretty much the appearance of a mummy, of a sort of monolith, from which nothing stood out but the one point of interest, the savage and magnificent animality of the head, with its darkened gaze and the bitterly curved mouth, of which rodin had made a separate small study in bronze. a great heave of the shoulders throws the body slightly backward, causing it to rest upon one leg, which is apparently bent, while the other is moved forward to walk. [illustration: balzac] the whole work gives the impression of a _menhir_, a pagan dedicatory stone. interest is concentrated solely upon the head. rodin considered that the representation of a celebrated figure offered no corporeal interest. it is evident that a great error prevails on this subject. the ancients have transmitted to us naked or draped statues. it must be remembered that this homage was almost always paid to warriors, athletes, or courtesans; to represent these at full length was to express their fame. their beautiful shape received fit homage. the gods were conceived as incarnations of moral beauty in physical beauty. but as time and morality have gradually brought us to honour men who are great in thought, the bodily representation of them has strayed into an extremely false path. dress and physical exterior ceased to be of plastic interest, but the manner of our homage remained the same. busts with pedestals commemorating in writing the deeds or the works would have been the right form of celebration. but this, the only intelligent form, appeared to our modern statue-maniac ages too scanty. this heretical opinion has given birth to the gentlemen in frock-coats who disfigure our present towns and are hoisted upon pedestals in our public squares. to this absurd point have we come: in order to honour the soul we reproduce its husk, the body, which is destined to the nothingness of the grave, and we represent the shoes and coats as exactly as the head. we attempt in our pious regard for the essence of a thinker to represent that part of him which was transitory. the result is photography in bronze, a wretched artistic contradiction. nevertheless, if we are to bow to custom and represent a man at full length of whom the head is the only important fact, we must indeed give him a body that is like reality; but the artist should try to concentrate interest as much as possible on the face. so illogical is this style in itself that the bodies and clothes are copied from chance models; the head of the person to be glorified is stuck on to them, and it is the merest bit of luck if it has been possible to shape this head itself from actual evidence! for plenty of statues represent individuals who never looked like them, and of whom no authentic likeness exists, which is the height of absurdity and the very burlesque of an honour.[ ] [illustration: balzac] in such cases an allegorical monument should be a matter of necessity; yet we behold hundreds of such statues, all the same, and our prejudice in favour of verisimilitude requires us to contemplate the embroidery of their doublets or the trimming of their coats. rodin, for his part, to whom such ideas, which degrade his art to the lowest level, are revolting, believes that composition and expression should be so arranged as to make the spectator forget the _plastique_ of the body. in his busts he neglects the inevitable linen collar, coat-collar, and necktie. the graceful dress of _claude lorraine_, the shirt and rope of _the burghers of calais,_ had served his purpose well, and in the statues of _general lynch_ and _bastien-lepage_ he had reduced the modern dress to large bronze reliefs without precise details. especially in the image of a thinker he seeks to annul the costume. the olympian character of hugo allowed of the nude; for the massive deformity of balzac the dressing-gown was appropriate. the majority of those who mocked did not even know that this careless costume was habitual to the author, and that rodin chose to surprise him in his home and in the fever of work, instead of showing him in the street with a hat and stick, as they would no doubt have expected. the _balzac_, then, presents the aspect of a sheath of stone pushed out by a few twisting folds, which give it the appearance from behind of an upright sarcophagus. the size of the head, the abnormal largeness of the chest and neck, which have aroused mockery, are historic. apart from these points, one honestly wonders what it is that can have shocked people in this bold and sincere work. the face is admirable in its pride, its strength of will, its haughty irony, and penetrating power of thought. the modelling and the leading lines are masterly. the rather ghostly look of the clay disappears in the bronze, as may be seen from the little head in that material, of which the monument was to be made. it is the freedom, the spontaneity, the life of the statue, which, as in the case of the _burghers,_ gave a shock to the conventions of the official world and disturbed the ideas of the public at large. it is true, nevertheless, and is generally admitted even by its most active adversaries that this great figure possesses a strange haunting power; when one had seen it in the salon one could see nothing else after it, and could not succeed in getting away from it. people returned to it, in order to attack it, but they did return to it inevitably. the same official sculptors who in had accused _the age of brass_ of being cast from life because the figure was so exact did not shrink from accusing this same rodin, matured by twenty years of work, of "not knowing the figure" and hiding his balzac under a robe out of weakness. besides these reproaches, which were made in bad faith, reproaches arose which exclaimed at rodin's madness or hypocritically regretted that a man of so much talent should have made so great a mistake. but one thing which the _bahac_ never encountered was indifference; what was the spell which compelled everybody to regard it as an irritating puzzle, as a challenge, as a work out of the ordinary run? plenty of hostile faces were to be seen, but many of them showed a secret fear of being in the wrong, of misunderstanding a fine thing, a work which was a forerunner. this same fear might have been read as early as upon the faces of the detractors who stood in a ring around manet's first works. the spell lay in the extreme simplification, the reduction of the elements to a powerful unity, according to a scheme with which rodin had made experiments in silence and which he now revealed. and at this point i am led to a brief explanation of rodin's ideas upon the technical part of his art. at the time of the _balzac's_ appearance i gave an account of the way by which rodin had been led to a new conception of sculpture. this was in an article[ ] that has been reproduced more or less everywhere, and that rodin has been good enough to consider as the emanation and direct expression of his artistic wishes. i cannot enter into all the details. the scale of this book would not allow of that, but the following are the principal points of that evolution. rodin's is above all a temperament inclined to the expression of passionate and tragic character. thence comes his constant study of movement. as i said before, that study has led him to give unlooked-for values to the general outline and to produce works which may be viewed on all sides and which continually show a fresh and balanced aspect that explains the other aspects: otherwise the daring gestures and the bold combinations of the limbs would have given an air of absurdity to the groups. rodin is at the same time very reflective and very instinctive. he matures a thought slowly, but he often passes by chance from that thought to its realisation. this is the predominant feature of his nature, and it explains his entire art. rodin often appears unconscious, astonished at what he had in him and at what he has brought into existence, to such a degree that he explains it badly enough. he sees his thought in the whole of nature and finds it there again; that thought, indeed, is fed by general ideas, and is, if i may say so, almost "elemental." from this point of view rodin's _genius_ is independent of his _talent_ as a sculptor. it sometimes happens to him to see a block of marble or a knob of wood, and the form of such an object will show him what he will make and the movement of the figure. he adapts to it one of the ideas which he always has in reserve: the aspect of the wood or the marble determines the passage of the thought to the material which will incarnate it. i said one day to rodin: "one would say that you knew there was a figure in that block, and that you do nothing beyond breaking away the stone that hides it from us." he answered that that was exactly his feeling as he worked. upon the naked figure rodin has ideas that are peculiar to his nature as a mystic and a realist. he considers the body with its four limbs as a cypher, of which the combinations are infinite. that is an old idea that was held by primitive theologians of the eastern religions. and it is the fact that rodin has invented an immense series of attitudes and combinations that one would not have thought possible: he attaches little groups to the side of a block of marble with the freedom of a painter throwing a figure upon a background. he makes his people light, he makes them soar, he entwines them in surprising positions. it was therefore absolutely essential that he should find means to constitute a logical harmony _on every side_ of his works. scholastic statuary is opposed to this principle. its tendency is to treat groups as bas-reliefs. the spectator must stand in front, at a certain spot, and whatever is behind is accessory: the decorative line produces its effect only from that point. so true is this that statues are very often so placed in public squares that people cannot pass round them. the academic sculptors treat a piece of sculpture like a picture; it has a right side and a wrong side. rodin, shocked at this method, began by working in quite a different way. he made successive sketches of all the faces of his works, going constantly round them so as to obtain a series of views connected in a ring. travels in italy had led him to think that the ancients proceeded in this manner and that their great endeavour was to get the design of the outline by means of movement, which continually modifies the anatomy. anatomy, indispensable to the artist, becomes the source of all the academic errors if once we forget that it is but inertia, the state of non-action, and consequently incapable of expressly teaching us about life and about the modifications that thought imposes upon flesh. the real value of a living figure is given by profiles studied successively in a full light. rodin was delighted by this way of working. but his pictorial inclinations, his ideas about the possible formation of a _background_ in sculpture as in painting, were not satisfied. when the academic school wishes to make use of a background to a figure it confines itself to a hollow or a relief. rodin desired that a statue should stand free and should bear looking at from any point, but he desired nevertheless that it should remain in relation with light and with the surrounding atmosphere. he was struck by the hard, cut-out aspect of ordinary statues, and asked himself how an atmosphere might be given to them. painting has two means to this end: of which the first is _values. values_ are independent of colour. values, an element common to both arts, are in painting and sculpture _the relations as to opacity or transparence of an object and the background against which it is seen._ they may be dark on a light ground, light on a dark ground, or light upon a ground that is likewise light; but they are always the very life of the outline, and the important point is to fix that outline first of all. when we see a person placed between the sun and ourselves, against the light, we do not at first perceive the details within the outline, but we do see the general mass of the body, and that mass is filled with more or less intense colour, in which we presently distinguish details. our perception at the moment is as much sculptural as pictorial. rodin, struck by the importance of this idea, devoted himself to obtaining, _at once and together,_ the _volume;_ that is to say, the equivalent in sculpture of the _value,_ and the design of _successive views of one movement._ but the second means in painting is the employment of intermediate tones encircling the figure and combining with the background. how could an equivalent be found for that? logic led rodin on to a step which alarmed him: he made experiments after examining the antiques very closely. he took fragments of his statues and began to raise them in certain places by layers of clay, intensifying the modelling and enlarging the lines. he observed that the light now played better upon these enlarged lines; the refraction of light upon these amplified surfaces was softer, the hardness of the cut-out outline vanished, and a radiant zone shaped itself around his figures and united them gradually with the atmosphere. in this way, therefore, by means of this systematic accentuation of the outlines, an intermediate tone, _a radiancy of the forms,_ was produced. rodin understood at once that he had found his way to the deepest secret of his art; that is to say, to the ideal limit where through its hidden laws a plastic art touches the other arts in a negation of all that is merely materialistic. the intermediate tones in painting, the radiating surfaces in sculpture, are the same principle as the nervous radiations noted in photographing a hand, where it may be seen that the fingers are prolonged by emanations. nothing is fixed, limited, or finished in nature, and the radiating state is the only real one. but this was a dangerous discovery for a sculptor, since people would immediately exclaim upon the _deformation_ _of what was seen_, the alteration of the fact, the falsification of anatomy. therefore rodin proceeded in silence and with very great prudence. the point was not, of course, _to enlarge_ _all surfaces equally_, for that would have produced only an increase of scale. the thing was _to amplify_, with tact, _certain parts of the modelling_, the edges of which were swept by the light, so as to give a halo to the outline. at the same time, rodin experimented in a series of drawings made on purpose, forbidding himself to give any detail, tracing only the outlines of bodies filled in with one wash of water-colour that gave the _value._ i shall return to these sketches. they cannot be understood without a knowledge of their original purpose. this theory, to which rodin approved of my giving the name of _deliberate amplification of surfaces_, is simply the critical principle of greek sculpture, which has been entirely misunderstood by the academic school. that school, which is supposed to honour the greeks, is really false to their spirit and their teaching. moreover, this principle, which belongs to all the primitive statuary that was made for the open air, is to be found among the egyptians and the assyrians. it calls in question the academic tradition whereby _exactitude_ is confounded with _truth._ in reality it may be said to be a profoundly classic principle which has been denied by the academic school. here, as in painting, classicism is opposed to the academic. hence it should be concluded that in reality rodin is by no means an _innovator_ opposing himself to a school that retains classic traditions, but, speaking precisely, a classic, returning to nature, replacing himself in the state of mind of a greek before his model, and opposing himself to a school that has overloaded art with methods, formulas, and expedients that change the character of antique and gothic art. rodin has a horror of what is called "originality," and an even greater horror of what is called "inspiration." he only trusts completely to work and to minute, sincere observation of nature. "slowness is a beauty," he often says. he has the greatest antipathy for "sculpture with literary meanings," and has often been galled, without saying so, by certain praises, in which writers, reeling off pages of description about his works, have thought to please him by dwelling on the idea and not on the execution. "i invent nothing," he says; "i rediscover. and the thing seems new because people have generally lost sight of the aim and the means of art; they take that for an innovation which is nothing but a return to the laws of the great sculpture of long ago. obviously, i think; i like certain symbols, i see things in a synthetic way, but it is nature that gives me all that. i do not imitate the greeks; i try to put myself in the spiritual state of the men who have left us the antique statues. the 'École' copies their works; the thing that signifies is to _recover their method._ i began by showing close studies from nature like _the age of brass._ afterwards i came to understand that art required a little more largeness, a little exaggeration, and my whole aim, from the time of the _burghers_, was to find a method of exaggerating logically: that method consists in the deliberate amplification of the modelling. it consists also in the constant reduction of the figure to a geometrical figure, and in the determination to sacrifice any part of a figure to the synthesis of its aspect. see what the gothic sculptors did. look at the cathedral of chartres; one of the towers is massive and without ornament: they sacrificed it to give value to the exquisite delicacy of the other tower. "in sculpture the projection of the muscular _fasciculi_ must be accentuated, the foreshortening forced, the hollows deepened; sculpture is the art of the hole and the lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodelled figures. ignorant people, when they see close-knitted true surfaces, say that 'it is not finished.' no notion is falser than that of _finish_ unless it be that of _elegance_; by means of these two ideas people would kill our art. the way to obtain solidity and life is by work carried out to the fullest, not in the direction of achievement and of copying details, but in that of truth in the successive schemes. the public, perverted by academic prejudices, confounds art with neatness. the simplicity of the 'École' is a painted cardboard ideal. a cast from life is a copy, the exactest possible copy, and yet it has neither motion nor eloquence. art intervenes to exaggerate certain surfaces, and also to fine down others. in sculpture everything depends upon the way in which the modelling is carried out with a constant thought of the main line of the scheme, upon the rendering of the hollows, of the projections and of their connections; thus it is that one may get fine lights, and especially fine shadows that are not opaque. everything should be emphasised according to the accent that it is desired to render, and the degree of amplification is personal, according to the tact and the temperament of each sculptor; and for this reason there is no transmissible process, no studio recipe, but only a true law. i see it in the antique and in michael angelo. to work by the profiles, in depth not by surfaces, always thinking of the few geometrical forms from which all nature proceeds, and to make these eternal forms perceptible in the individual case of the object studied, that is my criterion. that is not idealism, it is a part of the handicraft. my ideas have nothing to do with it but for that method; my danaids and my dante figures would be weak, bad things. from the large design that i get your mind deduces ideas." rodin, then, is convinced that he is classical, and rebels against the "École" which claims to be so. he has the greatest admiration for the renascence, but declares that he does not so clearly understand the genius of the gothic sculptors. he admires it, but has not thoroughly penetrated it. "i feel it, but i cannot express it," he says. "i cannot analyse the celtic genius to my own satisfaction. in the middle ages art came from groups, not from individuals. it was anonymous; the sculptors of cathedrals no more put their names to their works than our workmen put theirs on the pavement that they lay. ah! what an admirable scorn of notoriety! the signature is what destroys us. we do portraits, but what we do is not so great. these kings and queens, on the cathedrals, were not portraits. the fellow-workers stood for one another, and they interpreted; they did not copy. they made clothed figures; the nude and portraiture only date from the renascence. and then those fellows cut with the tool's end into the block, that is why they were called sculptors. as for us, we are modellers. and what a disgraceful thing that casting from life is, which so many well-known sculptors do not blush to use! it is a mere swindling in art. art was a vital function to the image-makers of the thirteenth century; they would have laughed at the idea of signing what they did, and never dreamed of honours and titles. when once their work was finished, they said no more about it, or else they talked among themselves. how curious it would have been to hear them, to be present at their gatherings, where they must have discussed in amusing phrases, and with simple, deep ideas!... whenever the cathedrals disappear civilisation will go down one step. and even now we no longer understand them, we no longer know how to read their silent language. _we need to make excavations not in the earth, but towards heaven._..." an admirable saying that rodin has often repeated to me and that i have never heard without deep emotion! he has the secret of these true formulas, and his words, which are not eloquent, but, rather, obscure, are suddenly lighted up by them. his speech, like his sculpture, is born from sincere contact with the essence of nature. in regard to the renascence and michael angelo, he reports that he received no decisive lesson from either until after a journey to italy in . "i believed before that," he says, "that movement was the whole secret of this art, and i put my models into positions like those of michael angelo. but as i went on observing the free attitudes of my models i perceived that they possessed these _naturally_, and that michael angelo had not preconceived them, but merely transcribed them according to the personal inspiration of human beings moved by the need of action. i went to rome to look for what may be found everywhere: _the latent heroic in every natural movement._ [ ] "then i gathered the elements of what people call my symbolism. i do not understand anything about long words and theories. but i am willing to be a symbolist, if that defines the ideas that michael angelo gave me, namely that the essence of sculpture is the modelling, the general scheme which alone enables us to render the intensity, the supple variety of movement and character. if we can imagine the thought of god in creating the world, he thought first of the construction, which is the sole principle of nature, of living things and perhaps of the planets. michael angelo seems to me rather to derive from donatello than from the ancients; raphael proceeds from them. he understood that an architecture can be built up with the human body, and that, in order to possess volume and harmony, a statue or a group ought to be contained in a cube, a pyramid; or some simple figure. let us look at a dutch interior and at an interior painted by an artist of the present day. the latter no longer touches us, because it does not possess the qualities of depth and volume, the science of distances. the artist who paints it does not know how to reproduce a cube. an interior by van der meer is a cubic painting. the atmosphere is in it and the exact volume of the objects; the place of these objects has been respected, the modern painter places them, arranges them as models. the dutchmen did not touch them, but set themselves to render the distances that separated them, that is, the depth. and then, if i go so far as to say that _cubic truth, not appearance, is the mistress of things,_ if i add that the sight of the plains and woods and country views gives me the principle of the plans that i employ on my statues, that i feel cubic truth everywhere, and that plan and volume appear to me as laws of all life and all beauty, will it be said that i am a symbolist, that i generalise, that i am a metaphysician? it seems to me that i have remained a sculptor and a realist. unity oppresses and haunts me." "what," says rodin again, "is the principle of my figures, and what is it that people like in them? it is the very pivot of art, it is balance; that is to say, the oppositions of volume produced by movement. that is the striking, material fact in art, with all due deference to those persons who conceive art as distinct from 'brutal' reality. art is like love. for many people it is a dream, a psychological complication, a palace, a perfume, a stage scene; but nothing of the sort! the essential of love is the pairing; all the rest is only detail, charming, and full of passion, but detail. it is the same in art: people come and praise my symbols and my expressions to me; but i know that the plans are the essential thing. respect the plan, make it exact from every point; movement intervenes, displaces these volumes and creates a fresh balance. the human body is like a _walking temple,_ and like a temple it has a central point around which the volumes place and spread themselves. when one understands that, one has everything. it is simple, but it must be seen, and academism refuses to see it. instead of recognising that that is the key to my method they prefer to say that i am a poet. that expression signifies that people feel, confusedly, the difference between an art resting on conventions and one derived from truth; only they think that the 'poetic' art is the conventional one. they call that _inspiration._ that is the belief that has led to the theory of genius being madness. but men of genius are just those _who, by their trade-skill, carry the essential thing to perfection._ people say that my sculpture _is that of an 'exalté.'[ ]_ "i do not deny that there is exaltation in my works; but that exaltation existed not in me, but in nature, in movement. the divine work is naturally exalted. as for me, all i do is to be true; my temperament is not 'exalted'; it is patient. i am not a dreamer, but a mathematician; and if my sculpture is good it is because it is geometrical." from these fragments of conversation the reader will conceive how rodin's generalising spirit leads him from the realism of his daily work to the synthesis of a sort of ideo-realistic metaphysical system. he has the sense (belonging only to genius) of the _continuity of the universe_, and he certainly had it at a time when, unlettered as he was, he would not have known how to explain it specifically to himself. he constantly formulates this metaphysical system, as i have seen it formulated by stéphane mallarmé, who could never see anything without instantly bringing together two ideas or images that no one would ever have thought of connecting. spontaneous analogy is the mark of genius and the secret of all real poetry. this is why i consider rodin as a very great poet--not in the sense that he dislikes, but on the contrary, by giving to the word "poet" its deep etymological significance according to the greek, that of "making, creating, vivifying." we may understand, too, in how great a degree an intellectuality of this kind offers a living challenge to the ideas of the "École." the man who thinks thus is necessarily isolated and has struggled all his life, never making a concession and saying nobly, "the artist, like the woman, has an honour to preserve." i will further quote from rodin the following reflection[ ]: "where you follow nature, you get everything. when i have a beautiful woman's body for a model the drawings that i make from it give me images of insects, birds, and fishes. that seems improbable, and i had no suspicion of it myself. formerly i used to be seeking shapes for vases, either to use them at sèvres, where i used to work, or elsewhere.... i never succeeding in finding a beauty of proportions and lines such as i had the feeling of, because i only founded my attempts upon _imagination._ since that time i have drawn women's bodies, and one of these bodies gave me, in the synthesis of it, a magnificent shape for a vase, with true and harmonious lines. the point is not to create. creation and improvisation are useless words. genius only comes to the man who understands with his eye and his brain. everything is in the things about us. manufacture and ornamental art want reforming according to these ideas. i should have liked to see that. everything-is contained in nature. there is an harmonious, continual, uninterrupted movement. a woman, a mountain, a horse, in conception they are all the same thing, they are made on the same principles. young artists compose instead of following their models and understanding that therein lies infinity." here rodin directly touches a scientific truth--the relative monotony of nature's productive forms. nature does everything with very few forms: the variations are so infinite that there are no two leaves alike, but the nerves of a leaf, the lines of a vein, an artery, a bird's wing, a fishbone, a nerve-cell, are identical; multiplicity derives from identity and returns to it, so that everything is reduced to a fundamental geometry which perhaps is but the effect of a single cellular generation. in this respect the laws of art and of science are the same, even as among all the arts there is a synthesis of common laws, an identity where we seem to behold a difference. recent work in science, by establishing the existence of states of radiation (crookes, röntgen, hertz) is busy undermining our old conception of matter, showing us the identity of it with the immaterial, and thereby abolishing our preconceptions about the idea and the fact, music and sculpture, considered as different manifestations. i remember that i one day kept rodin's curiosity excited for a long time by explaining the details of this theory to him; he was not acquainted with it, and listened to me as to a writer in love with general ideas. but it was clear that in his mere province as a sculptor he knew far better and had penetrated far more deeply into this enthralling problem of identity. his is a luminous mind, of the same kind as the electric rays; it rather penetrates than surrounds what is obscure to it. on that day he was disturbed, and i was irritated by certain declamations which had been written about his "philosophy," and of which the author had assuredly not comprehended the logical consequences; and we came to the conclusion that it would be much better for rodin's peace of mind to keep silent upon these points, for his "philosophy" could only be made comprehensible to those who could understand the method of his sculpture. it is time, however, to pause in this path and to return simply to the question of sculpture. nor was it my purpose to tire the reader by these abstractions when i began to say a few words about rodin's opinions concerning the antique. it must be understood, then, that the _balzac_ and even the _hugo_, as well as some figures, were the result of all these preceding reflections. "when i saw my _balzac_ brought into the yard from the storehouse of the statues in order to go to the salon," says rodin, "i had it purposely placed beside _the kiss,_ which had been finished rather earlier. i was not dissatisfied with the simplified vigour of that group, to which i had already applied these experiments. but i saw that it looked slack, that it did not hold its place beside the _balzac_ as michael angelo's torso does beside a fine antique, and then i understood that i was in the right path. i have had hesitations, you know, pangs that i do not speak of. and then, little by little, as i looked at nature, as i came to understand it better and to throw aside my prejudices more frankly, i took courage. it seemed to me that i was doing better. when i began i did skilful things, things that were smartly done, but they were thin and dry, but i felt there was something beyond, and that something is amplification. i only ventured on it when i was over fifty years old, but do you not think i have a right now to disregard the objections of the mob and the newspapers? i have taken time to know why i was doing as i did. the essential things of my modelling are there, and they would be there in less degree if i 'finished' more. as to polishing or repolishing a toe or a curl, i find no interest in it; it impairs the large line, the soul of what i desired to do, and i have nothing more to say to the public on that point. there the line of demarcation comes between the confidence that the public ought to have in me and the concessions that i ought not to make to the public." to this firm and discreet resolution rodin has kept in all the works wrought out by him since . [illustration: primitive man.] i cannot better set forth his opinions about the antique than by quoting the following fragments from two articles that he wrote for the _musée_, a review of ancient art, in january and february, ; for rodin sometimes writes, quite unpretentiously, but with the same lucidity of thought that he shows in his familiar conversation. one of these articles refers to a greek statuette in the museum of naples, the other to the lesson that the ancients give us. "in the first place, the antique is life itself. nothing is more alive, and no style in the world has rendered life as it has. the ancients were the greatest, most serious, and most admirable observers of nature who have ever existed. the antique was able to render life because the ancients saw the essential thing in it--large blocks. they confined themselves to the large shadows cast by these large blocks, and as truth itself lies in that, their figures being so made could never be feeble. moreover, the antique is simple, and that gives it astonishing energy. and then there is much more study in it than appears; that was brought home to me once. when i had finished my _age of brass_, i went to italy and i found an apollo whose leg was in exactly the same position as one in _the age of brass_ that had taken me six months' work. then i saw that though on the surface everything seems to be done at a stroke, in reality all the muscles are built up and one sees the details come to light one by one. that is because the ancients studied everything in its successive profiles, because in any figure and every part of a figure no profile is like another; when each has been studied separately the whole appears simple and alive. "the great error of the neo-greek school is really this: it is not _type_ that is antique, but modelling. for want of having understood that, the neo-greek school has produced nothing but papier-mâché. it is bad to put the antique before beginners; one should end, not begin with it. if you wanted to teach someone to eat, you would give him fresh food, that he might learn to chew; it would never occur to you to give him food already triturated to exercise his teeth upon. well, when you want to teach sculpture to anyone, set him face to face with nature, and when he has gained plenty of power to deal with nature, then say to him: 'now, here is what the antique has done.' and that will give him a new source of energy. whereas if you give the antique to the beginner who has never struggled with nature, he does not understand anything about it, and loses his individuality over it. you make a plagiarist of him, and instead of making his own prayer to nature he will repeat the prayer of the antique without understanding the words of it. he will die an old pupil; he will not die a man. "to teach the antique at the outset of a man's studies is to render the antique incomprehensible. in the first place, no one can teach the antique, it is not possible; that art of truth and simplicity cannot be taught. the sculptor works from nature, and afterwards he goes to look, in the galleries, and see how the antique rendered what he has been trying for from the life. but if he goes straight to the antique, shutting his eyes to nature, as the antique has always been done from nature, our sculptor will only be able to carry that vision into his own work in a factitious way; he will be neither antique nor modern, but bad. "a man may do antique work in our day, not in the false sense of producing the _antique type,_ but in the true sense of _modelling like the antique._ such a man (painter, etcher, or sculptor) will take nature, and if he has the power of the antique he will produce antique work, which will entirely disagree with what is taught as such, but will agree with that in the museums. the 'École' begins at the end; when a man begins with nature, he may go on to the most improbable inventions; the antiques themselves show that. do you know of anything more impossible than the centaur? but is there anything finer in olympia? the ancients knew nature so well that they became her fellow-workers and created, not phantoms, but beings that were alive in spite of physical impossibilities. to my mind it would be better not to study the antique than to study it wrong. it is not the artist's alphabet, but the reward of his work. the command which it gives us is not to copy it, but to do like it. [illustration: young woman between good and evil council.] "to say that the antiques, which portray the plain marvel of life, are beautiful is a superficial sort of praise. beauty is not the starting-point, but the point of arrival; a thing can only be beautiful if it is true. truth itself is only a complete harmony, and harmony is finally only a bundle of utilities. the miracle of life could not be perpetuated but for the constant renewal of universal balance. the ancients felt that vast rhythm, and their art, being modelled upon it, appears to us as a natural and sublime expression of beauty.... one of the ancients made a statue. how did he set about it? it is useless to bring in rules that only grew up in the brains of commentators dissecting a series of works, centuries afterwards. the antique remains uncomprehended because we have not a simple enough spirit. it is not by studying the antique that we shall learn its secret; in order to understand, not its nomenclature, but its spirit, we must begin by studying nature. rembrandt cannot be understood by copying him at the louvre, he can only be understood when we travel through nature to him. well, nature is always there, waiting patiently for antiques to be made afresh; the model is there waiting for someone to come at last, no matter whence. for it is an error to think the antique comes from the south: it comes from everywhere. the antique can be produced from a dutch woman or an american woman; the type is nothing, the modelling is everything. "what makes the strength of the antique is the plan, the connection of all the profiles. the neo-greeks say: 'the antiques are _line,_ and their works, in which all the lines, except two, dance about, show their error. the antiques, we will say, are _lines_ or rather _plan._ look at an antique; you can guess the full face from the profile. the eye cannot grasp the shape on the opposite side to that which it beholds, but it deduces it from this side: walk round, and the study of the profiles will afford you an _irrefragable_ proof by _rule of three._ the sculptor swells the half-tones by slight exaggerations, so as to heighten the light by a tone. the drapery lives; like the body that it hides, it receives life from that body without needing the subterfuge of wetted drapery.'[ ] "there is in the antiques an astonishing mystery of life which causes all idea of dimension to disappear. a figure an inch or two high might just as well be life-size; when a thing is well organised, the greatness is in the modelling and not in the size. if one were to photograph a tanagra figure and the eiffel tower, and were to show the two photographs to some person unacquainted with either object, i am sure he would declare the tanagra figure to be larger than the tower. a pear or an apple, from the point of view of modelling, is as large as the celestial sphere. thus the splendour of truth is such that finding no word to render it, we have called it 'ideal.'" these quotations will suffice, i hope, to show rodin's inmost thought. these judgments are implicit condemnations of the "École"; they are also definitions of his classical art, which is by no means "literary," and which is governed, even in its lyrical and tragic developments, by good sense, that is to say, by an inborn taste for balance in the midst of boldness. if i am anxious to insist so strongly upon rodin's profound _normality_, this is, i repeat, in order to forewarn the public against the declamations of some of his untoward admirers, who reckon one of his merits to be an "originality" which they confound with that exaggeration, that emphasis and eccentricity that never mark the great artist. whatever tragic or passionate subject a great artist may treat, to whatever height of strangeness his imagination may rise, beauty of form will, if he is, like rodin, a master of _technique_, confer upon _t_ him an exalted and permanent serenity. rembrandt and delacroix come from the depth of their vastly differing worlds to meet raphael and watteau in that conciliatory region where we admire the great masters--and rodin is already placed in that region. [ ] rodin has never forgotten falguière's loyalty at the time of _the age of brass_ affair. [ ] a recent example in paris is the double statue of the chemists who invented quinine. when will people understand that a discovery of this kind, however honourable, is nevertheless quite incapable of being associated with any plastic idea? the same thing is true of the statues of chappe and lavoisier, flanked by instruments of telegraphy and chemistry. these are ridiculous signboards, melancholy compliments translated by a tradesman's art that renders our streets hideous. [ ] _revue des revues_ (of paris), june th, . [ ] i find myself underlining-: it is not rodin whose voice makes this emphasis. but i am attempting to mark out in this way the formulas which spring up in his conversation, and which, collected together, will give the public an idea of his instinctive synthesis, deduced from life. [ ] the word _exalté_ has in this use no precise equivalent in english. "enthusiast," as the eighteenth century knew the word--that is, with the infusion of a touch of lunacy--conies perhaps nearest.--trans. [ ] an observation noted by mlle. judith cladel in her curious volume, _rodin, drawn from life._ (Éditions de la plume, .) [ ] loïe fuller has obtained, by means of stuffs not wetted, the effects that the 'École' loves, because her plastic dance is logically derived from nature. iv works since the "balzac"--small works in marble--plan of the monument to labour--drawings and etchings "i shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. i would write on the lintels of the door-post, _whim._ i hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation.... whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist ... must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must inquire if it be goodness. nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind. absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world." i quoted these high-minded words of emerson's to rodin at the time of the _balzac_ incident. "they are," i said to him, "the very epigraph of your whole life." nor have they ceased to epitomise the man and the artist. from the time of the _balzac_ rodin's work has proceeded very regularly and on the same principles. the _victor hugo_ is being finished in marble, in its two versions, in the studio of the rue de l'université. the group in which hugo, his extended arm commanding silence of the waves, sits surrounded by muses is almost ready; the other, in which hugo, dreamily listening to the counsels of iris, stands on the edge of a rock washed by waves, amid which nereids are entwined, is not quite so far advanced. _the gate of hell_ is ready to receive its finally chosen and ordered figures. in the salon of rodin exhibited the three _shades_ from its summit, inspired by the celebrated _lasciate ogni speransa._ in rodin only showed two or three old productions at the universal exhibition, because his work was collected in a special pavilion at the rond-point de l'alma, the concession of which pavilion was made uncomfortable for him by his colleagues, so much so that the artist was obliged to remove on the very day of closing, with less delay and consideration allowed to him than to the most unimportant industrial exhibitor. this special exhibition was, nevertheless, a great international success for rodin, and the amazing development of his fame may be said to date from it. before rodin stood in the position of an exceptional artist, celebrated but envied, isolated and challenged, whose relations with the government were strained, whom a minority upheld, but on whom the official world looked coldly. since that time his eminence is so firmly established that he now holds the rank that puvis de chavannes held in the estimation of all artists. his triumphant journey to prague ( - ), london's enthusiastic reception, and rodin's recent election to be president of the society over which whistler presided, have finally given him the acknowledgment so long looked for. in his marble bust of hugo aroused enthusiasm, and at the salon of the colossal bronze _thinker_ had a most flattering reception, and disarmed the last of his former detractors. a woman's bust accompanied _the thinker_ to the salon. rodin, who does portraits now and again, had previously made an admirable one of mme. fenaille, wife of the art-patron who had been of such great service to him; and he is attempting a curious variation of it. he has just finished a bust of a helmeted minerva, as impressive as a donatello, and this, too, is a portrait. various works have been produced by rodin since the _balzac,_ in addition to the _monument of president sarmiento,_ which shows an admirable bas-relief of a radiant apollo. these works are nearly all in marble, and small. it is almost impossible to describe and classify them; a much larger book would be required, and my main purpose here has been to give a general idea of rodin's art and an explanation of principles. i have spoken about some of his poems of the flesh, especially that _eternal idol_, which will be the glory of thought in modern sculpture. rodin's recent works in marble have the same inspiration. some demand special notice: _the hand of god,_ a gigantic hand, between the fingers of which, and amid a handful of clay, two beings are tenderly embracing; _icarus,_ falling from the sky to be crushed on the earth amid his whirling wings; several groups of lovers, entwined, and breathing immeasurable tenderness, the most celebrated of which is _spring_ or _love and psyche._ another _psyche,_ alone, is discovering love asleep, with extraordinary restrained emotion; and there are several attempts at _poets and muses,_ embracing or consoling one another, as well as a splendid sketch of the _magdalen wiping christ's body with her hair._ rodin has thus sometimes touched religious subjects, but with an undogmatic symbolism, philosophic and wide. we may also enumerate another version in marble of the _nereids_ of the hugo monument, a winged _inspiration_ coming to breathe upon the sleeping poet, and holding back the tips of her wings with one hand lest she should make a sound in closing them; a faun drawing towards him a nymph, who struggles in silent, fierce resistance; two high-reliefs of _summer_ and _autumn_ in stone; tall women with children, intended for the town of evian, where baron vitta is accumulating treasures of modern art; _pygmalion_ beholding his statue come to life, who, as soon as she feels herself live, turns from him with a surprising movement of coquetry and aversion. such works as these cannot be described in words. in them rodin has excelled to an unparalleled degree in rendering the profoundest psychological complexities, refined intentions, and the hesitations of feeling. i will further note a sketch of _sappho_, seated at rest, with her arms leaning upon two little naked women, which is a work inspired equally by the greeks and by the eighteenth century; it bears witness to the artist's wish of avoiding the massive, and making as many holes as possible within the general block, so as to give lightness and to allow a circulation of light, as the greeks did in works that were meant to stand against a background of sea or of sky. many studies of men and women crouching, or squatting, in curious attitudes, recall the art of the japanese bronzes, which rodin immensely admires. we must further note some groups of _women damned,_ in which rodin's art attains the highest point of voluptuous tension, audacious suggestiveness, and tragic eagerness of the flesh aspiring to impossible delight. this whole world of figures is ruled by the same lyrical and poetic imagination, the same symbolism incarnated in impeccable forms. everywhere we find the same nervous art, agitating, sad, and ardent in its voluptuous character, expressing the insatiability of human souls; the aspiration of a troubled time towards an ideality which would deliver it from the solicitations of pessimism; the hope of escape by the way of desire; and love sought for in the over-excitement of neurosis. rodin, gloomy psychologist of passion, understands the disease of the age, and at the same time pities it; a true thinker, he extracts its mournful beauty without ceasing to retain faith, admiration, and affection for the human creature. bending over life and over his work, he is himself his own _thinker_, attentive and reverent before an unknown and terrible divinity. never did any other sculptor attempt to vivify his art with such intellectual superiority and by such meditations, and rodin is at once the most realistic and most metaphysical of poets in stone and bronze. [illustration: isis] two or three works of more important dimensions stand out from his recent productions; besides a nude female torso (in bronze) of startling truthfulness, and two plaster studies that astonished at the salons, and besides _the christian martyr_, so masterly in its modelling, rodin has continued to work at his _ugolino,_ taken out of _the gate of hell_, and has put the finishing touch to two plans. one of these is the _monument to labour_, a grand conception, which one may dream of seeing carried out and rising up in some square of busy paris, but which want of money will prevent from ever being realised. it is a column upon a vast rectangular base, with a crypt in it. two colossal figures of _night_ and _day_ would stand at the entrance. in the crypt would be shown, in bas-relief, different subterranean works--mining, etc. around the column would run a covered spiral staircase, and upon the column itself would be figured in bas-reliefs all the various manifestations of labour, so that as one ascended the stairs all the divers phases of human genius could be successively studied. on the top would hover the _benedictions_, two--winged spirits, descended from heaven, which are already executed in marble on a small scale, and are among rodin's finest conceptions. this colossal project was conceived as long ago as . the rough model is in the studio at meudon-val-fleury. [illustration: nude study] the monument to puvis de chavannes was entrusted to his friend rodin, and is already finished. rodin conceived it in an original and charming way. instead of making the customary statue, he considered the purely greek quality of puvis' genius and chose to pay homage to him in a form reproduced from the antique. the bust of the great painter is placed on a plain table, as the ancients placed those of their dead upon little domestic altars. a fine tree loaded with fruit bends over and shades the head. leaning on the table behind the bust is a beautiful naked youth, who sits dreaming in a well-chosen supple attitude. the whole design is intimate, gentle, and pure. placed on the ground in a garden this votive monument would show how much delicacy and caressing lightness sometimes lies in rodin's sombre and pathetic thoughts. another important group is that of _orpheus and eurydice._ orpheus has fallen on one knee and is lifting his great lyre towards the gods whom he has just implored. above him, almost on his back, suspended in a way that would appear to contradict the laws of equilibrium and the material conditions of sculpture, soars eurydice, compassionate and almost vaporous, truly an immaterial shade, with a smile of despair. i regret that the unfinished condition of this model does not allow me to publish a photograph of it, for nothing would give a clearer impression of rodin's originality in the matter of contour and in the mutual relation of figures. the extreme freedom of his attitudes and his caprices of balance are, indeed, the newest features that he has brought into his art and are not to be found in anyone else in any country or time. in these is his true signature, and by them his work might be recognised among a hundred statues of all periods. as to the expressive beauty of the faces and bodies, that is supreme. no one has better comprehended than rodin all that can be rendered by the naked human body and all the intellectual significations that it can hide. the nude is to rodin a whole language. in his latest spiritualised works there is something correggio-like in the vibration of light upon the softened forms and amplified surfaces. they suggest the _antiope,_ at once soft and muscular, and rodin often speaks of "morbidezza" as a quality which he no longer distrusts, whereas he formerly banished it from his ascetic, sinewy, and dry figures. he gives his women the pulpy flesh of fruits. the lines of landscape seem to him to correspond to the planes of the body; he lately said to me that since he has lived at meudon, opposite the flowing seine, the wooded hills and the fields, he has found useful resemblances between the modelling of the body and that of a horizon. i have even once suggested to him the title of "the hill" for the body of a young man reclining, the outline of which did in truth resemble the undulations of a hill, and he retained the name and the analogy, for he delights in everything that binds the human being to the earth, and, like a true metaphysician, conceives of nothing isolated or distinct in nature. i come now to rodin's drawings, drawings which were not made to be shown, but which, having nevertheless become known, have surprised and puzzled people. rodin's drawings, like some other drawings by sculptors, are not themselves works of art; they are thoughts noted down, and are not comprehensible unless they are seen with the statues of which they indicate the first idea, or some variation. rodin has published some of his sketches; and has produced some dry-points (in particular the _ronde_,[ ] _antonin proust_, the three portraits of henry becque, full face and two profiles upon the same sheet, and two heads of hugo), some drawings for books by m. mirbeau and m. bergerat, and a complete set of illustrations of the _fleurs du mal,_ in the form of marginal drawings for a unique copy belonging to m. gallimard. many drawings in black or colour have been published (by the clever lithographer clot), and m. fenaille has superintended an admirable _edition de luxe_ of drawings by rodin.[ ] notwithstanding this partial publicity, these works must be considered as _standing apart;_ and to consider them by themselves would actually be to injure rodin with the public at large, since they form an integral part of his statues. for this reason i have not chosen to reproduce any of them here, studies so purely professional not seeming to fall within the scope of a work intended to give a general idea of an artist's work. having said so much, i wish to dwell upon the great beauty of these drawings--a special and terrible beauty. many deal with dante. rodin did some painting under lecoq de boisbaudron, landscapes, a portrait of his father, and sketches after rubens; but there has never been any danger of painting intruding upon his vocation, and his sketches rapidly became nothing but notes for sculpture. the objective reality of his dantesque figures is vague, if their subjective reality is intense. rodin, anxious to note down his impressions, and not to _illustrate_, made his sketches into a sort of passionate writing, only devoting himself to the scheme and to the contrasts of black and white, and neglecting every detail. in these violent washes, these pencillings and pen-scribbles, the spectator who is not forewarned sees nothing, but the lover of art, who knows beforehand what to seek, follows the creative thought. nothing can be less like what is generally known as "a drawing." after the regular drawings, the "painter's drawings" of his first period, which have but a restricted interest, and which are no longer known, those of his second manner are confusions of light and shadow, and show fantastically. i will quote at this point a passage from an essay by m. clément jasmin, a discerning critic, whose noisy rivals do not give him his due place, and who has described these works excellently. "these sketches are altogether the work of a sculptor, even in their colour, which seems to have sunk into plaster or clay, and especially in the firmness of their modelling, which is imparted by shaded touches of body-colour, on grey paper, or rendered by spaces left white. these blanks, these white spaces, are the extreme point of the modelling, the 'high light' of some projection, which lower down is wrapped in half-tints that carry the eye to the shadows of the inflections or the hollows. there is a constant relation between the contour and the interior modelling. a thrill is communicated by the fantastic lighting of some sketches. rodin adds further strength to this dramatic distribution of lights and shadows by one or two tones that accentuate the impression or fix a plan. often his ink will become blue or yellow, (water-colours, sepia, or coloured inks being employed), in order to settle a value or intensify a feeling. such is the case in the fenaille publication, with the gloomy red in the face of the ugolino, of the dantesque mahomet, whose entrails are hanging out, and of some other figures dashed in, in black, on a violet background. one plainly feels the material in which the work, of which the sketch is the first idea, will be executed. it is always a sculptor who is at work, even when he exchanges the chisel for the pen or the brush." painters would scorn these drawings. they commonly believe that sculptors cannot express upon a plane surface the mass and movement of a body. in reality a painter's sketch and a sculptor's sketch differ in intention and execution. rodin's are translations of movements, in no way decorative and not attempting to express either modelling or detail, but, if we may say so, the abstract geometry, the thought that commands the movement. the use of coloured inks, which are solely meant to modify certain values that black or white would not express to rodin's mind, has given rise to mistakes. these colours are not there to express real tints, as is the case in ordinary drawings thus touched up; inaccurate things have been said about these colourings, and about the fantastic and almost japanese appearance of some of the plates. rodin is certainly not thinking of prints in colour. he makes these notes instinctively, and displays not so much a deliberate thought as a natural faculty of transcription. in his early drawings rodin _refers to_--for i must insist upon the point that the drawings do not _represent_ things--many of dante's persons and many fanciful animals, and later, to his statues. now he does not draw at all from literary impressions, but solely from the living model. he uses ordinary cheap paper, a pencil or a pen; he makes his model take some transitory, absolutely free position, often in the rest between two sittings, and rapidly draws contour without taking his eyes from the model and without looking at his sketch. sometimes the stroke will fall upon emptiness, the sheet of paper will be too small, a head or a limb will fail to find its place. naturally this instantaneous sketch will be deformed in the most unexpected way; the proportions are false, but the scheme of the contour and the modelling of each piece are true. often the hurrying pencil will miss the curve of a breast or a leg. then the artist will return to that point with hasty, intermingled, impatient strokes that play around the true line. his only concern is to fix the first view, the absolutely living impression. afterwards, in tracing his sketch, he rectifies, but his chief aim is to amplify the impression of the life, taken spontaneously, according to his principle of enlarging the form, in order to place it better in the atmosphere (about in the proportion of / instead of / ). then he connects the contours and further enlarges the modelling, filling the outline with a wash of burnt-sienna, which gives the general value, or sometimes with blue or red water-colour. rodin likes this practice in catching movements, and he has in his studio hundreds of drawings of this kind that differ from his early ones. those aimed at the imaginative transcription of tragic and literary elements under strange illuminations, and were almost like the drawings of odilon redon; the later ones are merely graphic notes of movements, and are incapable of having any direct aim or meaning. i must add a few words upon a delicate point of which i should not have spoken if others had not spoken mistakenly upon the subject. rodin's drawings, especially those of the present time, have shocked some people who have seen them by their licentious character. why should we assume embarrassment in explaining this? in all rodin's work there is a profound and violent sense of the voluptuous, and the stern painter of the vices and damnations of hell does not need to think of prudery. the elevation and dramatic character of his conceptions clothe the most daring attitudes with the severe chastity of the beautiful. in his sketches, made for himself alone, and in the privacy of his studio, rodin no more fears erotic positions than did hokusai. beneath the original animality he perceives nature; and feminine sexuality, its movements, and impulses interest him, because therein woman is psychologically revealed. everything, in physical desire, that exalts, maddens, contorts, and fevers the human body is, for the sculptor, the object of an intensely interested study that he does not communicate to the general public; nor is he the only one among the great artists of form whom the erotic has interested from this point of view. only mediocre minds and minds capable of low intentions see anything low in the movements of life. rodin's studies from the model, naked and free, without spectators, in the serious presence of work, never sully his grand and melancholy inspiration; and his daring art is assuredly that which most leads away the beholder from erotic ideas, because it notes in every human being the melancholy of the insatiable, and makes the pleasure of the senses a suffering of the flesh and the spirit. by this point he touches the profound morality of art, and his consciousness is free from any equivocation. the recent drawings in which he catches the animal attitudes of the model are thus no more questionable, from the delicate point of view of which i am speaking, than anatomical plates, or the sad immodesties of a post-mortem examination. he adds to them the power of expressing passion with which he is endowed, but since he only shows these drawings to friends and artists in whom nudity does not arouse silly thoughts, this concerns no one else. a comparison cannot even be ventured between these drawings and the masterly etchings of rops, which are deliberate illustrations of licentious subjects, relieved only by beauty of execution, and which should only be shown with express reservations. rodin admires certain bronzes in the secret museum at naples, and certain japanese prints, because in these, too, art has done its work by expressing a secret and essential spring of the nervous and psychological life of humanity; a fierce and serious subject which only fools consider laughable or indecent, because their minds approach it with indecorum and ridicule. but i do not know that rodin ever even yielded to the fancy of modelling one of these subjects for himself, as rubens and many others did not forbid themselves to do. it is time, therefore, to have done with this question in regard to the great french sculptor. i do not know for whom he intends these recent drawings, a whole framed collection of which occupies one of the storerooms of his country house. perhaps he will have them destroyed; in any case, they are but studies of movements and masses, and in no way direct representations of life. rodin's drawings are "rough drafts" to be compared with those of a writer. some are very impressive, and all constitute precious evidence of his psychological preoccupations and of his desire for simplification. but they remain on the margin of his work, and neither the public nor the critics have those rights over them that belong to biographers and friends. that is a point to be plainly specified, and i desire to repeat that that is the reason this book contains none of them. [ ] this word may mean either a certain sort of dance, or the "round" of a patrol.--trans. [ ] album of sketches, reproduced in heliogravure by m. manzi and published by goupil, . these sketches in wash or colour have been selected according to the advice of m. fenaille, their owner, who lent them, from the most imaginative of rodin's drawings in his second manner. v. rodin's private life--his person, studio, and home--his influence; sculptors inspired by his ideas--rodin's place in the french school--his present position in respect to academic sculpture auguste rodin is in person a man of middle height, with an enormous head upon a massive torso. at first sight one sees nothing of him but this leonine bust, the head with its strong nose, flowing grey beard, and small, keen, light-coloured eyes, slightly veiled by short sight and by a gentle irony. the impression of power is accentuated by the rolling gait, the rocky aspect of the troubled brow under the rough brush of hair, the bony thickness of the aquiline nose and the ample curls of beard. but the first impression is partly contradicted by the reticent line of the mouth, the quick look, penetrating, simple, and arch, (one of the most composite glances i have ever seen), and especially by the voice, which is hollow, not easily modulated, with deep inflections and sudden returns to a dental pronunciation, and of which the meaning and intention are further modified by certain very expressive tossings of the head. he appears simple, precise, reserved, courteous, and cordial, without liveliness. little by little his shyness gives place to a calm and remarkable tone of authority. he is neither emphatic nor awkward, and would seem rather dispirited than inspired. an immense energy breathes in his sober and measured gestures. the slowness and apparent embarrassment of his speech and the pauses in his conversation give especial significance to what he says; moreover, rodin has acquired of late years a genuine case as a talker and even as a writer, which previously he did not possess. i was intimately acquainted with stéphane mallarmé, who, measured by rodin, was incomparably eloquent, and i often associate these two men in my thoughts. the voices were alike, and rodin, too, with his improvised phrases, has the same veiled circumspect way of speech, hitting suddenly upon words that illuminate the idea. [illustration: auguste rodin] rodin, in speaking of any work of his, has a way of explaining it that is very elliptical, but very clear, and which has caused some brilliant chatterers to say, because he did not offer a prolix commentary, that he did not know what he had done. in reality he utters the essential, and his gesture, which seems to model his thought in space, completes his words. he looks lovingly on his creations, and sometimes seems to meditate in astonishment at the idea of having created them; he speaks of them as though they existed apart from himself. gradually, beneath rodin's essential simplicity, one discovers features that were at first hidden; he is ironical, sensuous, nervous, proud. he contains as possibilities all the passions that he expresses with so vibrating a magnificence, and one begins to perceive the secret links between this calm, almost cheerful man and the art that he reveals. at certain moments his clear and rather vague eyes become full of phosphorescent points, the face grows sardonic and almost faunlike; at others it saddens and discloses a sickness for infinity. this man is the comrade of his dumb white creatures; he loves them, follows their abstract life, has moral obligations towards them. fundamentally the one thing with which rodin is really concerned is the life of permanent forms. of late celebrity, age, and experience have disposed him to become an adviser, a master, and he has begun to talk aesthetics. but his ideas and opinions are restricted. he perceives human beings only very summarily, his cordiality is a way of fulfilling his social duties hastily. he has, if i may venture the expression, very fine moral antennae, and they serve to recognise the persons whom he will like. very capable of friendship, rodin reduces friendship to tacit agreements upon the essential subjects of thought, and it is only if one meets him upon one of these points that one takes a place in his remembrance or his liking. he does not put his faith in individuals, but in general ideas. he loves nothing but his work, and endures everything else with civil boredom. he has a horror of debates and disturbances. i have never heard him speak ill of bad artists; he neglects, but does not criticise. he has a silent humour which leads him to make busts of official and mediocre sculptors, with an amusing good grace. uncompromising in everything that touches his art, rodin has throughout his whole career endured severe struggles and grave injustices, and, too proud to dispute, has never shown his secret revolts. at the time when the _balzac_ was refused all rodin's friends said to him: "resist, force your work upon them; you ought, for the work's sake, and a court would surely decide for you, for your agreement is definitely in your favour." he listened and thanked them, always good-tempered, and then withdrew his statue without saying anything. it is not weakness, for rodin has had an excessively hard life and is strong and patient; it is dignity of the inner life and profound indifference for the life about him. rodin is a high dignitary of the legion of honour, a president of the judges of sculpture of an important society of artists (the société nationale), he is honoured all over europe, has been received in england as a genius, and has succeeded whistler as the head of a chosen band of artists; but he remains the man that he was when he was unknown and poor in his solitude at brussels. he likes few things, but likes those thoroughly. he reads little, but what he reads strikes home to him as to no one else; baudelaire and rousseau, in whom he delights, are instances. he is passionately fond of music, especially of gluck, but seldom speaks of it. he simplifies everything, sees only the main lines in morality as in art, lives by two or three principles, and has an aversion for everything that is not essential. [illustration: a corner of rodin's studio at meudon] when one knows rodin well one ceases to be able to separate him from his work. he can no longer think otherwise than symbolically by slow deposits of accumulated sensation which work on in the deep strata of his consciousness and suddenly blossom and take a name. his statues are states of the soul. he is himself a representative being, surprised at his own immanence, and his intelligence is outdone by his instinct. that is how it comes about that he does not always know how to name the beings that he has discovered, as we discover, by means of pain, corners of our consciousness that we had not suspected. in the same way that rodin seems to break away the fragments of a block from around an already existing statue hidden in it, he is himself a sort of rock concealing shapes within it and embracing in its secret recesses immense crystallised arborescences. with a simple enough personal psychology he expresses infinite shades and inflexions of emotion. his thought is like the monad of leibnitz; it seems, when one sees the man, to have no window to the outer world. rodin's opinions upon social life are vague. he contents himself with repeating that work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness. to love life and natural forms, and to attempt nothing disobedient to nature or her aims, that is his whole morality. he sees very few people and visits nobody. he would baffle visitors accustomed to elegant, literary, well-informed, brilliant artists. his studio in the rue de l'université, at the end of an old yard encumbered by blocks of marble and shaded by aged chestnut trees, is like the work-place of a poor beginner. neither a carpet nor an ornament is to be seen; the stone floor, the bare walls, a few rush chairs, some modelling stands, some cloths, a shabby deal table loaded with papers, sketches piled up on shelves, blouses hanging on nails, a cast-iron stove--these and nothing more are found by the many foreign admirers who come to see rodin, and whom he receives with invariable amiability amid his assistants at work upon the hugo monument or upon some smaller piece of marble. [illustration: a corner of rodin's studio at meudon] setting aside his journeys to london and prague and his travels in germany and italy, rodin leads an extremely retired life in paris, and is rarely to be met. he invariably lunches at his own house at meudon, then goes to the rue de l'université to work, and goes home again to dinner. formerly, before he had his house at meudon, he used to lunch at a _café_ in the place de l'alma, where he was to be seen for twenty years, and to which people used to go to see him, rather as people go to see ibsen in christiania. the house, of a sixteenth-century style, that rodin has inhabited at meudon since , is situated amid vineyards, and stands alone at the end of a sort of cliff, overlooking all paris, the seine, and the bois de boulogne, and facing the wooded heights of saint cloud and bellevue. the site is open and fine; rodin enjoys immense expanses of sky, sunsets, storms, and moonlight nights that delight him. the house is spacious, light, furnished with extreme simplicity, and adorned by a few pictures, the works of friends (in particular his portraits by sargent and legros). rodin has added to it the pavilion in iron and glass, in which he exhibited all his work, at the rond-point de l'alma, in the exhibition of . this pavilion, rebuilt and full of brilliant sunlight, contains all the artist's statuary. there are also several small studios, in which rodin has his marble rough-hewn, keeps the casts of his statues or accumulates the collections of bronzes, marbles, antique or gothic, and fragments which he is never tired of finding out and buying. in this place, which, after a life of difficulties and worries, rodin has been able to purchase, he leads a life that fully suits his tastes, among beautiful trees and flowers, with a majestic landscape before him. it is touching to see the man, here, amid the enormous mass of his work, a whole world of statues, with which he lives and which sums up all his labours and all his existence. a photograph which i am able to add to the illustrations of this volume will give a partial idea of that surprising and imposing cohort of figures in clay, marble, and bronze--that impassioned or tragic throng. rodin receives very few visitors at meudon--hardly any but old friends, and he spends his mornings in his garden or in his light and cheerful studio drawing or superintending his workmen. it is chiefly at meudon that he prepares his rough drafts, the main lines of his compositions; and in order to see an effect he will often hastily put together with clay some of the plaster limbs that he keeps in a number of glass cases--quite an anatomical museum in fact, filling a whole storey, and containing hundreds of pieces and of attitudes piled together. [illustration: study (in bronze) for the "balzac"] rodin appears to stand alone in his own time; first, by his genius; and secondly, by the special character of his artistic conception. this solitude, however, is only apparent. rodin's ideas, as opposed to the teaching of the "École," form a body of logical principles which are slowly attracting the adhesion of young artists. the long struggle of impressionism against academism has now entered upon its last phase: the return to the french tradition, to national affiliation in opposition to the roman neo-classicism. that idea, which is the programme of all independent and interesting critical intelligence in our country, finds in rodin its perfect demonstration, and the only one afforded by contemporary sculpture. until now rodin has preached only by example, and we know how slow the critics and the public are in extracting from a work the ideas that it contains. but the extraction is now begun, and rodin himself speaks with undisputed authority. since the exhibition of his moral position stands ten times higher. youth greets him as a chieftain and his detractors are silent. while the synthetic and symbolic mind of rodin arouses the enthusiasm and inspires the thoughts of writers, the theory of the amplification of the modelling is making its way in the studios of sculptors. "rodin has opened a large window in the pale house of contemporary sculpture," declares pierre roche, the sculptor; "out of the timid and much impaired craft that was before his day he has shown that a bold art full of hope can be made." this opinion of one of the most delicate artists of our generation is precisely that of many independent sculptors. among these we must quote emile bourdelle, rodin's pupil and friend, an impassioned, vibrating, and generous artist, whose works are among those first looked for in each salon. others are the two brothers gaston and lucien schnegg, the latter of whom exhibited in the salon of so beautiful a head of aphrodite, almost worthy in the mysterious and vaporous beauty of its planes, of the ancients, and of rodin; jules desbois, of the first rank in technical skill and of a violently original temperament; alexandre charpentier, a former collaborator of rodin's, whose success in applied art has not turned him aside from his expressive and vigorous work in statuary; mlle. camille claudel, rodin's pupil, who is the first woman sculptor of existing-art in france, and whose name has appeared upon admirable works; and finally, pierre roche, although his supple and decorative fancy denies itself the expression of the tragic. the swiss sculptor niederhausern-rodo, george minne, the sculptor of ghent, who has a powerful creative genius, not understood, and the italian sculptor rosso, are also partisans of rodin's art, and so is the englishman bartlett. in another direction it is very interesting to note the curious reciprocal influence of auguste rodin and eugène carrière, who are united by friendship and by the same aesthetic creed. eugène carrière, the most profound painter of the inner life existing in the french school of to-day, has great analogies with rodin, both as a man and as an artist. he, too, reduces his art to essentials, to the main lines and the deliberate amplification of surfaces. thus his figures, bathed in shadow, are akin to rodin's statues, while the latter, bathed with dewy light, seem to be pictures by carrière. the painter becomes massive and powerful, the sculptor becomes vaporous. rodin seeks the bland, half-shadows of correggio, and carrière desires that his figures should have the powerful relief of bronze. the painter sacrifices colour to the sole study of values, and by his black-and-white comes back to sculpture. very curious is this point of junction between two great artists. rodin is beginning to explain himself with the pen; and eugène carrière has, for some years past, been writing--too rarely--passages upon art of which the style is admirable and the concentration of thought astonishing, passages which recall mallarmé and baudelaire, and leave far behind the commonplaces of journalistic criticism. rodin and carrière have their school, their circle of chosen admirers, and their double influence may soon be the most decisive, if not the most brilliant and the noisiest, in french art of to-day. nude figure (photographed in the open air at twilight in the garden at meudon) the prevailing note of opinion about rodin among his friends and his detractors is that he is like no one else, and that no statue can, in a manner, be looked at beside his, so individual is the conception from which they spring. by the mere fact that they exist, they compel us to choose between them and the others. their silhouettes, their planes, the quality of their shadows, and their lights, make them technically works apart. if such a man understands sculpture thus, either he is right, against everybody, or he is totally mistaken; we cannot like him and also approve of ordinary statuary. his psychological and tragic genius conquers the admiration even of those who oppose his material execution. rodin does not set himself up as a chief, nor recognise followers; yet he is a chief by his very work. he is the greatest living french artist, and one of the most complex and powerful movers of thought in modern art. he does not found a school, but he influences the soul of a generation. he remains alone, not susceptible of imitation; but if he did not exist sculpture would be deprived of its greatest regenerator.[ ] by inscribing passions in symbols, he touches the sensibilities of all, and is a master to poets as much as to sculptors, because his subjects are moral, affecting, never commanded by an anecdote, bathed in the universally lyric. attempts have been made to blame him because of the admiration of writers; it has been said, with an inflexion of scorn (especially in the circles of his fellow-artists), "he is a _littéraire_." an injustice easily committed at a time when the intellect of painters and sculptors seems to blush at itself, and when they make it a sort of false merit to show that their eye and hand are separate from their brain. rodin's splendid technical power annuls the reproach and retains the praise. resting firmly upon nature, his symbols may rise high. rodin delights poets because he makes the infinite emanate from the most finite of arts. everything has been patiently meditated by him. he dares, but is never overbold; his balance and his taste are those of a classic, despite the uncomprehending astonishment of the academic sculptors, hypnotised by the sophistry of _finish_ and _elegance_, and confusing the _exact_ with the _true._ there is a synthesized form, that corresponds to reality synthesized in symbols, a _second truth;_ and that proportion is observed by very few artists. most of them, contenting themselves with an immediate, momentary, anecdotic truth, translate it by picturesque observation, or by minutely detailed copying. this attempt of a sterile cleverness to transcribe the instantaneous is the very contrary of art, the first character of which is to display the laws of vital permanence underlying fugitive aspects. herein lies the reason why sculptors become uneasy over rodin, while writers, more familiar with general ideas, become enthusiastic. the impressionist crisis--the study, that is to say, of instantaneous lights and actions--hardly got over, he brings in this _second truth,_ the transcription of general and permanent feelings into a form that speaks as much to the mind as to the senses. such a man dominates impressionism as much as he does academism. a whole order of curious and fundamental relations between nervous sensibility and thought has arisen out of his work. rodin's personality is specially representative in the line of french sculptors. he goes back, as i have said, to the egyptians and the greeks in the matter of technical ideas. in his tragic feeling he proceeds directly from the gothic artists. it is from them that he descends, and especially from the sculptors of the french renascence, in particular germain pilon; and he blends his greek remembrances, passed through an italian influence, with a conception altogether national, vigorous, and decorative. rodin's actual part is to take up sculpture exactly at the moment of the french evolution.[ ] since that time we have had some great masters; native genius has been triumphantly upheld, in opposition to the false school that came from the alps, by coysevox, houdon, puget, pajou, pigalle, clodion, falconet, couston, rude, carpeaux, and barye, a line of splendid inventors of shapes, all of whom, in contradistinction to the official school, have represented the inmost qualities of their race. all these men rodin emulates by the importance of his work; perhaps the future may regard him as the magnificent outcome of their efforts carried on through three centuries. in this succession of artists, puget, rude, and barye are those with whom his technical relations are closest.[ ] but he has been less decorative than puget and less hampered by the themes imposed upon him; he has gone further than the great rude in the expression of inward emotion, and he surpasses even barye in power of modelling and boldness of silhouette. he has created a world which is fully his own, a feeling and a pathos not to be found elsewhere, which are the very soul of his time. rodin, then, can be set only beside puget and rude. like puget, he is overflowing with vitality and with passionate frenzy; he worships power and heroic beings; but his are sad, and nearer to gothic asceticism and to the nervous derangement of baudelaire than to the resplendent pomp of the seventeenth century, into which puget transposed his heroes of rome and of corneille. like rude, he is attracted by deep things, by soul tragedies; but he is more abstract than the creator of the _napoleon awakening to immortality_, the _joan of arc,_ or the _marseillaise._ rodin is more general, more synthetic; he turns his mind to permanent symbols, outside of ages and races. taking up, as if in challenge, the mythological subjects that the "École" had most spoiled, he has shown how a great mind can renew all things and impress upon them the magic of its vision. he is the most symbolic of our men of genius; and if the modelling of the greeks, gothic austerity, the strength of puget and of rude, have helped rodin to make up his personality, the fusion of these elements and the addition of a personal imagination and an extraordinary contemplative faculty have enabled him, like wagner, who descended from bach, beethoven, and liszt, to create, after and apart from all of them, work that resumes them and forgets them, to become in its turn an initiator. the point in which rodin is inimitable is the expression of the voluptuous with all its latent woes; and this point strongly recalls to memory _tristan and isolde_, which is such a paroxysm as might touch the most perilous region of exceptional art; but rodin is kept within the bounds of the normal, and protected from the audacities of his strange and troubled imagination, by his imperturbable technical certainty and by his admiration for some few masters. as was the case with baudelaire and with poe, his purity and grandeur of form save him; like dante, this lover of gloomy beauty hangs over the verge of passion's hell without falling into it. rodin's art is healthy because it feeds upon natural truth and general logic. he is the supreme painter of man bowed by intense, melancholic, feverish, constricting thought; but also, with a candid tenderness unknown to wagner, he is the caressing creator of women in love, the poet of youth, embracing and radiant. only a genius can have the diversity of mind that produces _the burghers of calais_, ascetic and mediæval, the spasmodic _hell_, the almost abstract _balzac_, the bronze busts worthy of donatello, and the images of women carved in the radiant and golden marble of attica by a sensuous and subtle enthusiast who has rediscovered the soul of hellenic beauty. this union of technical skill, evolved according to the secrets of the antique with a power of expressing all human sentiments from gentleness to lewdness, from the mystic to the pathetic, from nervous disorganisation to carnal frankness, this union of contraries and this universality are not to be found in any of our forerunners. not puget, nor rude, nor any of our masters has had such intellectual ubiquity, such strength of condensation; in these points it is allowable, even in our own day, to acknowledge rodin as supreme in the rich french school, and thus to anticipate the judgment of the future, in whose eyes he will loom yet larger. in any case it was high time he should appear; he has been as useful as was manet by his intervention in french art. in spite of dalou, sculpture had fallen very low after the death of carpeaux and barye; the deplorable school of the second empire had brought it into degeneracy, and we could reckon no one in sculpture to correspond to the great impressionists. such men as dujalbert, chapu, mercié, frémiet, saint marceaux, and falguière, are but sham great sculptors, nothing of whose work will last; the "École" group, from paul dubois to barrias, aube and guillaume, is a mere example of pretentious insignificance. the few vigorous temperaments, or workers of genuine technical merit, like denys puech, jean dampt, gardet, camille lefèvre, devillez, and jean bassier, did not know how to put together their efforts in such a way as to found a real school. they produced without attaining a cohesion of thought capable of guiding a fresh generation. bartholomé, thoughtful, pure, dreamy, and proud, stands apart. mme. besnard and m. théodore rivière are charming, but without influence. i have spoken of the group that has spontaneously placed itself around rodin. amid this interesting, unequal, and scattered sculpture he appeared with the authority of a master and a prophet; his work set the question upon its true basis again, showing whence we came, what was to be avoided, and whither we were to go; and all this with such clearness of evidence that the appearance of rodin becomes, in like degree with that of goujon and that of puget, a capital date in the history of the french school, i declared in the preface my intention to avoid any extravagant eulogy of rodin, and have uttered my dislike of the idolatry by which some people think it necessary publicly to emphasise their admiration, with its snobbish accretions. but i should fall into the opposite fault if i did not declare the truth and the importance of what such an artist brings to his art, and did not mark his exact place in the line of his country's sculpture. henley has called rodin the michael angelo of the modern world. that opinion of a foreign critic, a critic justly esteemed one of the most upright in contemporary literature, france may justly make her own, far from extravagant and puerile praises, and in the face of the work accomplished. i shall be but too happy if i have contributed to make clearer to the public certain secret reasons, certain inner frameworks, of that logical and beautiful work. [ ] a vehement but indiscriminating critic, m. octave mirbeau, has seen good to write, by way of affirming that rodin's art moved him strongly: "a style takes rise from him." i have neither the space nor the wish to recriminate; but it would be dangerous to let such artistic heresies pass without protest. rodin is an admirable example, but to say that a style arises from him is to say that he may become the creator of a perishable formula, and to understand nothing about his art. [ ] some surprise may be felt at my having failed to insist upon the name of michael angelo. everybody has hit upon the obvious comparison. it is the exceeding obviousness that leads me to distrust it. rodin is much nearer to puget than to michael angelo, who is muscular strength carried to heroic proportions. rodin, like puget, and more than puget, is nervous strength. rodin appears much more akin to michael angelo than he really is. careful study causes us more and more to leave behind that preliminary likeness which has sufficed so many critics. [ ] we might perhaps say the same in regard to the great carpeaux, too, who carried the art of movement and expression to so high a degree, and who did the same liberal work against the "École" as rodin was to do at a later time. but their visions, aims, and minds differ profoundly. vi appendix--chronological list of rodin's principal works--list of the principal books or articles written about him--quotations referring to him--an opinion of eugÈne carriÈre's; an opinion of henley's--various notes chronological catalogue of rodin's works is almost impossible to draw up. i do not think rodin himself could do it. it must be remembered that before he made a quantity of studies which he destroyed, and such a producer as he is willing to neglect things of which others would keep count. in his poor and wandering days rodin must have abandoned many things. how would it be possible to recount the figures that were retouched or even executed at carrier-belleuse's, the earliest independent works, the characters executed by him at brussels, the statues that were planned and left unfinished for lack of money, those that were broken or that failed--all the immense store of work accomplished in the course of twenty years by a man who worked every day? how would it be possible even to enumerate the sketches and varied renderings of different subjects piled up in the studio at meudon, in the clos payen, in the rue des fourneaux, and at vaugirard? it is a whole world. i will confine myself, therefore, to a statement of known and exhibited works: and these, indeed, are what is essential. list of the principal exhibited works . _the man with a broken nose._ - . works in the studio of carrier-belleuse. - . friezes upon the bourse and various works at brussels. . _the primitive man (the age of brass)._ decorative work on the trocadéro. - . _saint jerome. saint john the baptist._ works in the manufactory of sèvres. competition for the national defence monument. . _adam_ (destroyed). _eve._ . _ugolino_ (a sketch taken up again later). busts of _alphonse legros_ and _iv. e. henley._ studies for _the gate of hell._ . _bellona. general lynch_ (equestrian statue). _the genius of war._ . monument of _president vicunha. bust of a young woman._ . _the man and the serpent._ busts of _dalou, hugo,_ and _antonin proust._ . first sketch of the hugo monument. drawings dealing with _the gate of hell._ bust of _henry becque. the kiss_ (a small group). . _perseus and the gorgon. head of st. john beheaded._ . _the danaid. alan walking._ nude study for one of the _burghers of calais._ several little groups. . studies for the _gate of hell_ and the monument to _claude lorraine. torso of a woman._ group of _the dream. the dream of life. women damned_ (in marble). _hecuba._ bust of _roger marx. destitution. thought_ (in marble). . _bust of a young woman_ (in silver). _torso of saint john. brother and sister._ . _the caryatid. the young mother. a nymph._ . busts of _puvis de chavannes_ and _henri rochefort. grief. claude lorraine. the burghers of calais._ . _the death of adonis._ medallion of _césar franck. galatea._ bust of _séverine. the crest and the wave. resurrection. the child achilles_ (group in clay). . _eternal spring. hope_ (a reclining figure in back view.) _orpheus and eurydice_ (first version). _christ and magdalen._ . inauguration of _the burghers of calais. illusion,_ the _daughter of icarus._ medallion of _octave mirbeau._ nude studies for the _balzac. man crouching._ . _the inner voice. the muse of anger_ (for the hugo monument). _the conqueror. minerva. the poet and the life of contemplation. women bathing._ studies for the _balzac._ . _victor hugo. balzac._ monument of _president_ _sarmiento._ . statue of _balzac._ bust of a _young american._ bust of _madame f._ statue of _sarmiento,_ with a high relief of apollo in marble. monument of _labour. the benedictions_ (marble). _twilight. clouds._ _the parcæ and the young girl._ . works for the hugo monument. . marble groups. exhibition at the rond-point de l'alma. . _shades_ (for _the gate of hell)._ . groups in marble. _the hand of god._ busts. . bust of _hugo. the poet and the muse._ various sketches. _ugolino_ (fresh version). _the prodigal son._ . _the thinker_, and various works in marble in process of execution.[ ] the work of rodin may thus be estimated at about ten works on a grand scale, forty groups or statues, some thirty important busts, and perhaps two hundred figures or portraits, without counting sketches, from to . i come now to the mention of some significant writings that deal with his aesthetic theory or with his work; and, as may be supposed, i leave out of question a quantity of valueless articles, for rodin has been directly or indirectly the pretext for a great mass of writings, and is the modern french artist who has been most talked of, justly or unjustly. the works quoted are such as may be consulted with advantage. [ ] to these may be added, in , a bust of the rt. hon. _george wyndham_, and _the hand of god._ articles or books relating to rodin "balzac and rodin," by roger marx (_le voltaire,_ march, ). "claude lorraine," by roger marx (_le voltaire,_ june, ). (excellent studies in the criticism of sculpture.) "auguste rodin," by roger marx (_pan,_ and _the image,_ september, ). drawings by rodin, plates, containing heliogravures (goupil and co., ), from the suggestions and loans of m. fenaille. "rodin's studio," by edouard rod (_gazette des beaux arts,_ may, ). "rodin," by gabriel mourey (_revue illustrée,_ october, ) _exhibition of : rodin's works,_ with four prefaces by eugène carrière, jean paul laurens, claude monet, and albert besnard. "rodin and legros," by arsène alexandre (_figaro,_ june, ). "the gate of hell," by anatole france (_figaro,_ june st, ). _la revue des beaux arts et des lettres,_ january st, . _la plume,_ . special number. _les maîtres artistes,_ special number, october th, . (illustrated collections, containing a certain number of critical studies by various authors.) _rodin,_ by léon riotor: a pamphlet, reproducing in french, german, english, italian, spanish, and russian, a study that appeared in the _revue populaire des beaux arts,_ april th, . _rodin, the sculptor,_ a volume of criticism, illustrated; by léon maillard (floury); . _the sculptor rodin, drawn from life._ a volume by mlle. judith cladel (_la plume_ office, ). _rodin,_ a study by l. brieger-wasser (vogel. strassburg; ). _rodin,_ by george treu (_jahrbuch der bildenden kunst._ berlin, marstersteig, ). _rodin,_ by r. m. rilke (berlin, bard, ). "rodin." articles upon, by w. e. henley, ; d. s. maccoll, ; henri duhem, ; karel b. made (prague); vittorio pica (rome). of these various writings devoted to rodin, those of roger marx should be particularly noted, on account of their technical understanding; léon maillard's volume is a sincere, well-informed, well-illustrated book, produced by a man who comprehends. the book by mlle. judith cladel, daughter of the distinguished novelist, is an originally conceived volume, the only one that relates certain conversations, and attempts, with charming acuteness, to present rodin in his private character. it is a work that deserves to be much better known and appreciated, and of which rodin's first panegyrists, jealous of being the only "inventors" of the artist, have been very careful not to speak. the article by the graceful painter, henri duhem, is likewise excellent; and i consider mr. maccoll's very remarkable, on account of its elevation and precision of judgment. the others have such value as belongs to admiring articles written hurriedly in newspapers: they express sympathetic feelings, or comment in a poetical way upon the subjects, but their critical value is négligeable, and there is nothing to be quoted from them for the information of my readers. the _balzac_ gave rise to a shoal of newspaper articles. georges, rodenbach, and france, on that occasion, said the acute and witty thing's about rodin that they say about all manifestations of thought, and m. mirbeau made rodin the theme of some of those polemical variations, conjoining hyperbolical praise with abuse of his adversaries, which he is accustomed to offer as art-criticisms, and which have gained him a reputation of a certain kind. there is nothing to note in these pamphlets mixed with eulogistic effusions, the whole of which do not contain the substance of twenty lines by henley or of eugène carrière's admirable preface, which i am desirous of reproducing here because it is a masterpiece of synthetic divination.[ ] [ ] preface to the catalogue of the rodin exhibition in the pavillon de l'alma, . (the work mentioned above; other prefaces by claude monet, a. besnard, and j. p. laurens.) "the art of rodin "rodin's art comes from the earth and returns to it, like those giant blocks--rocks or dolmens--which mark deserts, and in the heroic grandeur of which man recognises himself. "the transmission of thought by art, like the transmission of life, is the work of passion and of love. "passion, whose obedient servant rodin is, makes him discover the laws that serve to express it; she it is that gives him the sense of volumes and proportions, the choice of the expressive prominence. "thus the earth projects external apparent forms, images, and statues that fill us with a sense of its internal life. "these terrestrial forms were the real guides of rodin. they have set him free from scholastic traditions, in them he found his being and the creative instinct of men whom humanity celebrates. "trees and plants revealed to him their likeness to those fair women, with sleek limbs rising, like delicate columns, to the moving torso and swelling breast, above which the head hangs heavily in the company of a strong and supple neck, even as a fine fruit full of savour weighs down its branch. "the massive brow overshadows the eyes, and the cheek brings the lip softly to the lover's entreaty. "forms seek and meet in voluptuous desires of violence and of resignation, rebellious and obedient to laws from which nothing escapes; everywhere conscious logic triumphs. "the generalising spirit of rodin has imposed solitude upon him. it has not been his lot to work upon the cathedral that is not, but his desire of humanity links him to the eternal forms of nature." after such a passage, in which every word is significant and eloquent, and is a great artist's reflection, everything seems pale. i will not, however, confine myself to a mere dry mention of the essay by vittorio pica, the great italian critic, who generously arranged for rodin's participation in the venetian exhibition (gallery of modern art, ), and i should have liked to quote anatole france's fine article, and some assertions of mr. maccoll's, who very logically recalls to our memory the sculptor auguste préault, who is too much forgotten, and who was, indeed, a sort of imperfect precursor of rodin. i must at least transcribe a few lines from w. e. henley, who was, from the very beginning, a clear-sighted admirer of rodin, and who spoke of him with eloquence and passion:-- "m. dalou ... has declared that when the century goes out it will remember the aforesaid doors" (i.e. _the gate of hell_) "as its heroic achievement in sculpture. and if that be true--as i believe it to be true--then where, between himself and michael angelo, is there so lofty a head as rodin's?... his busts alone were enough to place him in the future, the style of them is so complete, the treatment so large and so distinguished, the effect so personal, yet so absolute in art.... here, if you will, are a thousand hints of the possibilities of human passion: from paolo and francesca melting into each other: "'la bocca mi bacio tutta tremante' as no man and woman have done in sculpture since sculpture began.... here is sculpture in its essence.... you may read into it as much literature as you please, or as you can; but the interpolation is not rodin's, but your own.... it is not literature in relief, nor literature in the round; it is sculpture pure and simple.... passion is with him wholly a matter of form and surface and line, and exists not apart from these.... he is our michael angelo; and if he had not been that, he might have been our donatello. and with phidias and lysippus all these some-and-twenty centuries afar, what more is left to say of the man of genius whose art is theirs?" we see that henley's admiration returns to the comparison of michael angelo and rodin. i persist in thinking that the resemblance rather lies in moral identity, in conception than in technicalities. the muscular enlargement of the italian hero is not rodin's amplification nor his expressiveness, _which is altogether nervous._ it is none the less true that these two men are the only ones who have imagined and realised a sculpturesque conception of so vast a reach. not even puget and rude, who came between them, ventured such wholes as _the tomb of the medici_ or _the gate of hell._ museums rodin has in the luxembourg museum (paris) the following works:-- _the age of brass,_ originally placed in the luxembourg gardens near the school of mines. _the danaid_ (marble). _thought_ (marble). _st. john the baptist preaching_ (bronze). _the fair helmet-maker_ (bronze). bust of _jean paul laurens_ (bronze). _the kiss_ (marble). bust of _mme. v._ (marble). at the petit palais (ville de paris), one work. at beziers, cognac, dijon, douai, lille, and lyons, several works. at brussels, one work. at copenhagen, several works. at new york, boston, chicago, and philadelphia, works. at helsingfors, one work. at rotterdam, one work. at geneva (rath museum), three works. at venice, christiania, st. petersburg, stockholm, düsseldorf, munich, weimar, vienna, prague (town hall), one work in each town. at hamburg, three works. at hagen, three works. at berlin (new gallery of charlottenburg), five works. at crefeld, two works. at buda-pest, five works. in london (victoria and albert museum), two works; (british museum), one work. at glasgow, one work. museum of marseilles, _the inner voice_ (clay). the new works in these various museums are originals or casts. private collections m. vever (_eve,_ in marble). m. pontremoli (the _national defence._) m. antony roux (_the kiss_). m. roger marx (bust, _the young mother_). m. blanc (_the eternal idol._) m. desmarais (the _idyll._) mme. durand (_thought_, in marble, given to the luxembourg). m. peytel (various groups). mme. russell (_minerva._) m. fenaille (_the spring, bust of mme. f., the poet and the life of contemplation,_ a twisted column with figures, surmounted by a mask). baron vitta (high-reliefs in stone). the marquise de carcano (_head of st. john beheaded,_ marble). this, of course, is a very cursory list, and includes only collections in paris. i must add separately to the works published about rodin those for which i am responsible: ( ) a study, called "the art of m. rodin," _revue des revues,_ th june, ; this has been approved by the artist, and very frequently reproduced. ( ) a lecture delivered on the st of july, , at the rodin exhibition, and published by _la plume_, with four unpublished drawings. ( ) an essay upon the surroundings, personality, and influence of rodin, which appeared in the _revue universelle_ in , and has likewise been reprinted, particularly in the _maîtres artistes_ (special number, th october, ). the high price of the work published by messrs. goupil (_a hundred and fort-two drawings by rodin_) prevents that fine volume from being accessible to the public. the amateur photographer druet has taken photographs of all rodin's work, which are rather misty, but which render admirably the caressing touch of light on the main planes, and which in a measure reproduce the artistic atmosphere of the statues. messrs. haweis and coles have likewise taken some beautiful and curious proofs. more classic, but also more definite, are the fine photographs which the art publisher buloz has recently taken, and which have been employed to illustrate this volume. portraits there is a remarkable portrait of rodin by mr. john sargent (dating from about twenty years ago). another, by m. alphonse legros (a profile), is more of a fancy head, and wears a sort of tiara. a more recent portrait has been produced by mr. alexander. there is a very forcible bust by mile. camille claudel, as well as a bust by j. desbois, a lithograph by eugène carrière, and some amusing studio sketches by mile. cladel. an interesting lithograph of "rodin in his studio," by w. rothenstein, appeared in the _artist-engraver,_ april, . a curious photograph, taken by m. steichen; a poster for the rodin exhibition, containing a portrait, and drawn by carrière; and some excellent photographs taken at prague (of which the one here reproduced is astonishingly faithful) complete this list of likenesses. index _achilles, the education of_ _adam_ (destroyed) _adonis, the death of_ _age of brass, the_ antiope (of correggio), the antique, the, influence of, on rodin rodin's analysis of its right use its truth and beauty aphrodite (by lucien schnegg) _apollo,_ the two reliefs aube _autumn_ (stone) _avarice and lewdness_ _balzac, statue of_ barrias; his monument to hugo bartholomé bartlett barye bassier, jean _bastien-lepage, statue of_ baudelaire beauvais _becque, henry, bust of_ dry-point portraits of _bellona_ _benedictions, the_ bergerat, m., rodin's drawings for his book besnard, mme. boisbaudron, lecoq de boucher, the sculptor bourdelle, emile _broken nose, the man with the_ _brother and sister_ brussels _burghers of calais, the_ burgundian sculptors, busts, rodin's portrait, , , , , , , carcano, marchioness of carpeaux carrier-belleuse carrière, eugène his opinion of rodin's art _caryatid, the_ celtic genius, the chaplin chappe, a statue of chapu charpentier, alexandre chartres, the cathedral of _christ and the magdalen_ _christian martyr, the_ cladel, mlle. classicism, rodin's clodion clot, lithographer _conqueror, a, holding a statue of victory_ corneille correggio costume in sculpture, the question of couston coysevox _crouching man, the_ dalou; rodin's bust of dampt, jean _danaid, the_ dante david of angers devillez _day_ delacroix delaplanche desbois donatello drawings and sketches, rodin's _dream-group_ dry-points, rodin's dubois, paul duhem, henri dujalbert dutch painting egyptian sculpture eiffel tower emerson quoted erotic subjects, rodin's treatment of etchings, rodin's _eternal idol, the_ _eve_ exhibited works exhibition with claude monet, the fagel falconet falguière his "balzac" rodin's bust of _faun and nymph fauns and bacchantes_ _fenaille, bust of mme._ fenaille, m.; his edition of rodin's drawings _fiennes, jean de,_ finish, false notions of flemish primitives fleurs du mal, baudelaire's rodin's illustrations to florence baptistery gates, as model of _the gate of hell_ france, anatole _franck, medallion of cæsar_ frémiet fuller, loïe _galatea_ gallé, emile gallimard, m. gardet _gate of hell, the_ _genius of war, the_ gluck, gothic sculptures, rodin's study of goujon greek sculpture guillaume _hand of god, the_ _hecuba_ _helmet-maker, the fair_ henley, w. e. his opinion of rodin's art hokusai houdon _hugo, victor, bust of_ dry-point portraits of the _monument to_ _icarus_ _illusion, the daughter of icarus_ _inferno,_ dante's inspiration _iris_ italy, rodin's travels in japanese bronzes and prints, rodin's admiration of jasmin, clément joan of arc, rude's _kiss, the_ _labour, monument to_ lamartine _laurens, jean paul, bust of_ lavoisier, a statue of lefèvre, camille legros, alphonse; bust of _lorraine, claude, the monument to_ louvre, the _love and psyche_ _lovers, groups of_ luxembourg, the _lynch, statue of_ maccoll, d. s. _magdalen, the_ _mahomet_ (drawing) mallarmé, stéphane manet _man walking_ _man with the broken nose, the_ (clay head) (marble) marseillaise, rude's marx, roger bust of _meditation_ meudon, rodin's house and studio at michael angelo _minerva_ (helmeted bust) (marble and silver) minne, george mirbeau, octave bust of medallion of rodin's drawings for his books monet, claude _monument to the defenders of the nation_ morbidezza _mother, the young_ _muse of anger_ _muse of the inner voice_ museums nancy naples museum napoleon awakening to immortality, rude's neo-greek school, errors and defects of _nereids, the_ niederhausern-rodo _night,_ nude, the _nymph, a,_ _orpheus and eurydice_ paintings, rodin's pajou pantheon, the _perseus and the gorgon_ pica, vittorio pigalle pilon, germain poe _poet and the life of contemplation, the_ _poets and muses_ préault, auguste private collections _proust, antonin, bust of_ dry-point of _psyche_ puech, denys puget puvis de chavannes; bust of monument to _pygmalion_ raphael redon, odilon rembrandt renascence, rodin's admiration for the, - _rimini, paolo and francesca da_ rivière, théodore _rochefort, bust of_ roche, pierre, in rodin, auguste, birth, parentage, and schooling early art-training under barye works for ornament-maker in carrier-belleuse's studio early works in sculpture goes to brussels; work there friendship with legros takes painting lessons from lecoq de boisbaudron accepted at salon accused of casting from life his first sale cleared of accusations sudden emergence from obscurity slow development attitude to academic art his originality and power noticed studios granted him by government works at sèvres his stay in brussels a formative time deeply impressed by dante and baudelaire (and see under these names) monument to hugo described impatience of officialism _gate of hell_ described exhibition with claude monet in monument to claude lorraine described _burghers of calais_ described friendship with m. fenaille the _balzac_ and the controversy it excited visits to italy; articles in the _musée_ quoted at length at the paris exhibition of visit to prague, ; welcomed in london elected president of the international society honours personal appearance portraits of him private life and home house and studios tastes travels as a talker social opinions influence friends and pupils characteristics of his art artistic descent and affinities place in the french school lost works paintings dry-points drawings and treatment of voluptuous subjects photographs of his works essentially a poet; as thinker classicism, his his symbolism his composition his conception of his art analysed fondness for small groups his treatment of costume his treatment of flesh his principles of portraiture his endeavour to give atmosphere his works treated to be viewed from all sides his modelling his study and power of representing movement dynamic character of his art his synthetic power his veracity his favourite type of woman, ; influence and value of the antique _ronde, the_ (dry-point) rops rosso rousseau rubens rude _st. john baptist_ _st. john baptist_ (torso) _st. john, head of the beheaded_ (marble) saint marceaux _st. pierre, eustacede_ salon, the _sappho_ sargent _sarmiento, monument to president_ schnegg, gaston and lucien _séverine, bust of madame_ sèvres _shades, the_ société des gens de lettres _spring, eternal_ _spring_ _summer_ tanagra figures _thinker, the_ thomas _thought,_ _torso_ (nude female bronze) turquet _ugolino_ (drawing) values in painting and sculpture van der meer van rasbourg _venus and adonis_ _vicunha, monument to the president_ villon wagner, , watteau, _wave, the_ whistler _wissant, jacques and pierre de_ _woman, bust of_ _woman, bust of a young_ _woman, bust of a young_ (silver) _women and children_ _women bathing_ _women damned_ rodin the man and his art with leaves from his note-book compiled by judith cladel and translated by s.k. star with introduction by james huneker and illustrated with photographs new york the century co. [illustration: rodin photographed on the steps of the hotel biron.] auguste rodin by james huneker i of auguste rodin one thing may be said without fear of contradiction: among his contemporaries to-day he is preëminently the master. born at paris, ,--the natal year of his friends, claude monet and zola--in humble circumstances, without a liberal education, the young rodin had to fight from the beginning; fight for bread as well as an art schooling. he was not even sure of his vocation. an accident determined it. he became a workman in the atelier of the sculptor, carrier-belleuse, though not until he had failed at the beaux-arts (a stroke of luck for his genius), and after he had enjoyed some tentative instruction under the animal sculptor, barye (he was not a steady pupil of barye, nor did he care to remain with him) he went to belgium and "ghosted" for other sculptors; it was his privilege or misfortune to have been the anonymous assistant of a half dozen sculptors. he mastered the technique of his art by the sweat of his brow before he began to make music upon his own instrument. how his first work, "the man with the broken nose," was refused by the salon jury is history. he designed for the sèvres porcelain works. he executed portrait busts, architectural ornaments, caryatids; all styles that were huddled in the studios and yards of sculptors he essayed. no man knew his trade better, although it is said that with the chisel of the _practicien_ rodin was never proficient; he could not, or would not, work at the marble _en bloc_. his sculptures to-day are in the museums of the world, and he is admitted to possess "talent" by academic men. rivals he has none. his production is too personal. like richard wagner he has proved a upas tree for lesser artists--he has deflected, or else absorbed them. his friend eugene carrière warned young sculptors not to study rodin too curiously. carrière was wise, yet his art of portraiture was influenced by rodin; swimming in shadow his enigmatic heads have more the quality of rodin's than the mortuary art of academic sculpture. a profound student of light and movement, rodin by deliberate amplification of the surfaces of his statues, avoiding dryness and harshness of outline, secures a zone of radiancy, a luminosity which creates the illusion of reality. he handles values in clay as a painter does his tones. he gets the design of the outline by movement which continually modifies the anatomy; the secret of the greeks, he believes. he studies his profiles successively in full light, obtaining volume--or planes--at once and together; successive views of one movement. the light plays with more freedom upon his amplified surfaces, intensified in the modeling by enlarging the lines. the edges of certain parts are amplified, deformed, falsified, and we enjoy light-swept effects, luminous emanations. this deformation, he declares, was always practised by the great sculptors to snare the undulating appearance of life. sculpture, he asserts, is the "art of the hole and lump, not of clear, well-smoothed, unmodeled figures." finish kills vitality. yet rodin can chisel a smooth nymph, if he so wills, but her flesh will ripple and run in the sunlight. his art is one of accents. he works by profile in depth, not by surfaces. he swears by what he calls "cubic truth"; his pattern is a mathematical figure; the pivot of art is balance, i.e., the opposition of volumes produced by movement. unity haunts him. he is a believer in the correspondence of things, of continuity in nature. he is mystic, as well as a geometrician. yet such a realist is he that he quarrels with any artist who does not recognize "the latent heroic in every natural movement." therefore he does not force the pose of his model, preferring attitudes or gestures voluntarily adopted. his sketch books, as vivid, as copious, as the drawings of hokusai--he is studious of japanese art--are swift memoranda of the human machine as it dispenses its normal muscular motions. rodin, draughtsman, is as surprisingly original as the sculptor rodin. he will study a human foot for months, not to copy it, but to master the secret of its rhythms. his drawings are the swift notations of a sculptor whose eye is never satisfied, whose desire to pin to paper the most evanescent vibrations of the human machine is almost a mania. the model may tumble down anywhere, in any contortion or relaxation he or she wishes. practically instantaneous is the method of rodin to register the fleeting attitudes, the first shivering surface. he rapidly draws with his eye on the model. it is often a mere scrawl, a silhouette, a few enveloping lines. but there is vitality in it all, and for his purpose, a notation of a motion. but a sculptor has made these extraordinary drawings, not a painter. it may be well to observe the distinction. and he is the most rhythmic sculptor among the moderns. rhythm means for him the codification of beauty. because, with a vision quite virginal, he has observed, he insists that he has affiliations with the greeks. but if his vision is greek his models are french, while his forms are more gothic than the pseudo-greek of the academy. as mr. w.c. brownell wrote: "rodin reveals rather than constructs beauty ... no sculptor has carried expression further; and expression means individual character completely exhibited rather than conventionally suggested." mr. brownell was the first critic to point out that rodin's art was more nearly related to donatello's than to michael angelo's. he is in the legitimate line of gallic sculpture, the line of goujon, puget, rude, barye. dalou, the celebrated sculptor, did not hesitate to assert that the dante portal is "one of the most, if not the most, original and astonishing pieces of sculpture of the nineteenth century." this dante gate, begun thirty years ago, not finished yet--and probably never to be--is an astoundingly plastic fugue, with death, the devil, hell, and human passions, for a complicated four-voiced theme. i first saw the composition at the rue de l'université atelier. it is as terrifying a conception as the last judgment. nor does it miss the sonorous and sorrowful grandeur of the medici tombs. yet how different. how feverish, how tragic. like all great men working in the grip of a unifying idea, rodin modified the technique of sculpture so that it would serve him as sound does a musical composer. a lover of music his inner ear may dictate the vibrating rhythms of his forms; his marbles are ever musical, ever in modulation, not "frozen music," as goethe said of gothic architecture, but silent, swooning music. this gate is a frieze of paris, as deeply significant of modern inspiration and sorrow as the parthenon frieze is the symbol of the great clear beauty of hellas. dante inspired this monstrous yet ennobled masterpiece, and baudelaire's poetry filled many of its chinks and crannies with ignoble writhing shapes; shapes of dusky fire that, as they tremulously stand above the gulf of fear, wave ineffectual and desperate hands as if imploring destiny. but rodin is not all hell-fire and tragedy. of singular delicacy and exquisite proportion are his marbles of youth, of springtide, of the joy and desire of life. at paris, , in his special exhibition salle, europe and america awoke to the beauty of these haunting visions. not since keats and wagner and swinburne has love been voiced so sweetly, so romantically, so fiercely. though he disclaims understanding the celtic spirit one might say that there is celtic magic, celtic mystery in his lyrical work. he pierces to the core the frenzy of love, and translates it into lovely symbols. for him nature is the sole mistress--his sculptures are but variations on her themes. he knows the emerald route, and all the semitones of sensuousness. fantasy, passion, paroxysmal madness are there, yet what elemental power is in his "adam," as the gigantic first man painfully heaves himself up from the earth to the posture that differentiates him forever from the beast. here, indeed, two natures are at strife. and "mother eve" suggests the sorrows and shames that are to be the lot of her seed; her very loins crushed by the future generations hidden within them. one may freely walk about the "burghers of calais" as rodin did when he modeled them; a reason for the vital quality of the group. around all his statues we may walk; he is not a sculptor of a single attitude but a hewer of humans. consider the "balzac." it is not balzac the writer, but balzac the prophet, the seer, the enormous natural force that was balzac. rodin is himself a seer. that is why these two spirits converse across the years, as do the alpine peaks in a certain striking parable of turgenev's. doubtless in bronze rodin's "balzac" will arouse less wrath from the unimaginative; in plaster it produces the effect of a snowy surging monolith. as a portraitist rodin is the unique master of characters. his women are gracious delicate masks; his men cover octaves in virility and variety. that he is extremely short-sighted has not been dealt with in proportion to the significance of the fact. it accounts for his love of exaggerated surfaces, his formless extravagance, his indefiniteness in structural design; perhaps, too, for his inability, or let us say, his lack of sympathy, for the monumental. he is a sculptor of intimate emotions. and while we think of him as a cyclops destructively wielding a huge hammer, he is more ardent in his search for the supersubtle nuance. but there is always the feeling of breadth, even when he models an eyelid. we are confronted by the paradox of an artist as torrential as rubens or wagner, carving in a wholly charming style a segment of a child's back, before which we are forced to exclaim: donatello come to life! his myopic vision, then, may have been his artistic salvation; he seems to rely as much on his delicate tactile sense as on his eyes. his fingers are as sensitive as a violinist's. at times he seems to model both tone and color. a poet, a precise, sober workman of art, with a peasant strain in him, he is like millet, and, like millet, near to the soil. a natural man, yet crossed by nature with a perverse strain; the possessor of a sensibility exalted and dolorous; morbid, sick-nerved, and as introspective as heine; a visionary and a lover of life, close to the periphery of things; an interpreter of baudelaire; dante's _alter ego_ in his grasp of the wheel of eternity, in his passionate fling at nature; withal a sculptor, profound and tortured, transposing rhythm into the terms of his art, rodin is a statuary who, while having affinities with classic and romantic schools, is the most startling apparition of his century. and to the century which he has summed up so plastically and emotionally he has propounded questions that only unborn years may answer. he has a hundred faults to which he opposes one imperious excellence--a genius, sombre, magical and overwhelming. ii rodin deserves well of our young century, the old did so incontinently batter him. the anguish of his own "hell's portal" he endured before he molded its clay between his thick clairvoyant fingers. misunderstood, therefore misrepresented, he with his pride and obstinacy aroused--the one buttressing the other--was not to be budged from his formulas or the practice of his sculpture. then the art world swung unamiably, unwillingly, toward him, perhaps more from curiosity than conviction. he became famous. and he is more misunderstood than ever. he has been called _rusé_, even a fraud, while the wholesale denunciation of his work as erotic is unluckily still green in our memory. the sculptor, who in was accused of "faking" his lifelike "age of bronze"--now in the luxembourg--by taking a mold from the living model, also experienced the discomfiture of being assured some years later that, not understanding the art of modeling, his statue of balzac was only an evasion of difficulties. and this to a man who in the interim had wrought so many masterpieces. a year or two ago, after his magnificent offer to the city of paris of his works, there was much malevolent criticism from certain quarters. rodin takes all this philosophically. he points out that the artist is the only one to-day who creates in joy. mankind as a majority hates its work. workmen no longer consider their various avocations with proper pride--this was a favorite thesis of ruskin, william morris, and renoir. furthermore, argues rodin, the artist is indispensable. he reveals the beauty and meaning of life to his fellows. he struggles against the false, the conventional, and the used-up; but the french sculptor slyly adds: "no one may benefit mankind with impunity." he considers himself as having a religious nature; all artists are temperamentally religious, he contends, though his religion is not precisely of the kind that would appeal to the orthodox. to give rodin his due he stands prosperity not quite as well as poverty. in every great artist there is a large area of self-esteem; it is the reservoir from which he must, during years of drought or defeat, draw upon to keep fresh the soul. without the consoling fluid of egotism genius would soon perish in the dust of despair. but fill this source to the brim, accelerate the speed of its current, and artistic deterioration may ensue. rodin has been fatuously called a second michael angelo--as if there could ever be a replica of any human. he has been hailed as a modern praxiteles; which is nonsense. and he is often damned as a myopic decadent whose insensibility to the pure line and lack of architectonic have been elevated by his admirers into sorry virtues. nevertheless, is rodin justly appraised? do his friends not over-glorify him? nothing so stales a demigod's image as the perfumes burned before it by worshipers; the denser the smoke the sooner crumbles the feet of their idol. however, in the case of rodin the fates have so contrived their malicious game that at no point in his career has he been without the company of envy and slander. often when he had attained a summit he would be thrust down into a deeper valley. he has mounted to triumphs and fallen to humiliations; but his spirit has never been quelled; and if each acclivity he scales is steeper, the air atop has grown purer, more stimulating, and below the landscape spreads wider before him. with dante he can say: "la montagna ch'e drizza voi ch'e il mondo fece torti." rodin's mountain has always straightened in him what the world made crooked. the name of his mountain is art. a born nonconformist, rodin makes the fourth of that group of nineteenth century artists--richard wagner, henrik ibsen, edouard manet--who taught a deaf, dumb, and blind world to hear, see, think, and feel. is it not dangerous to say of a genius that his work alone should count, that his personality is negligible? though rodin has followed flaubert's advice to artists to lead an ascetic life that their art might be the more violent, nevertheless his career, colorless as it may seem to those who love better stage players and the comedy of society--this laborious life of a poor sculptor should not be passed over. he always becomes enraged at the prevailing notion that fire descends from heaven upon genius. rodin believes in but one inspiration--nature. nature can do no wrong. he swears that he does not invent, he copies nature. he despises improvisation, has contemptuous words for "fatal facility," and, being a slow-thinking, slow-moving man, he only admits to his councils those who have conquered art, not by assault, but by stealth and after years of hard work. he sympathizes with flaubert's patient, toiling days. he praises holland because after paris it seems slow. "slowness is beauty," he declares. in a word, he has evolved a theory and practice of his art that is the outcome--like all theories, all techniques--of his own temperament. and that temperament is giant-like, massive, ironic, grave, strangely perverse; it is the temperament of a magician of art doubled by a mathematician's. books are written about him. with picturesque precision de maupassant described him in "notre coeur." rodin is tempting as a psychologic study. he appeals to the literary critic, though his art is not "literary." his modeling arouses tempests, either of dispraise or idolatry. to see him steadily after a visit to his studios at paris or meudon is difficult. if the master be present then one feels the impact of a personality that is misty as the clouds about the base of a mountain, and as impressive as the bulk of the mountain. yet a sane, pleasant, unassuming man interested in his clay--that is, unless you happen to discover him interested in humanity. if you watch him well you may in turn find yourself watched; those peering eyes possess a vision that plunges into the depths of your soul. and this master of marble sees the soul as nude as he sees the body. it is the union in him of sculptor and psychologist that places rodin apart from other artists. these two arts (psychology is the art of divination) he practises in a medium that hitherto did not betray potentialities for such performances. walter pater is right in maintaining that each art has its separate subject matter; still, in the debatable province of rodin's sculpture we find strange emotional power, hints of the pictorial, and a rare suggestion of music. this, obviously, is not playing the game according to the rules of lessing and his laocoön. let us drop the old aesthetic rule of thumb and confess that during the last century a new race of artists sprang up and in their novel element they, like flying-fishes, revealed to a wondering world their composite structure. thus we find berlioz painting with his instrumentation; franz liszt, tschaikowsky, and richard strauss filling their symphonic poems with drama and poetry; while richard wagner invented an art which he believed embraced all the others. and there was ibsen who employed the dramatic form as a vehicle for his anarchistic ideas; and nietzsche, who was such a poet that he was able to sing a mad philosophy into life; not to forget rossetti, who painted poems and made poetry of his pictures. sculpture was the only art that resisted this universal disintegration, this imbroglio of the seven arts. no sculptor before rodin had dared to shiver the syntax of stone. for sculpture is a static, not a dynamic art--is it not? let us observe the rules though we call up the chill spirit of the cemetery. what mallarmé attempted with french poetry rodin accomplished in clay. his marbles do not represent, but present, emotion; they are the evocation of emotion itself; as in music, form and substance coalesce. if he does not, as does mallarmé, arouse "the silent thunder afloat in the leaves," he can summon from the vasty deep the spirits of love, hate, pain, sin, despair, beauty, ecstasy; above all, ecstasy. now, the primal gift of ecstasy is bestowed upon few artists. keats had it, and shelley; byron, despite his passion, missed it. we find it in swinburne, he had it from the first. few french poets know it. like the "cold devils" of félicien rops, coiled in frozen ecstasy, the fiery blasts of hell about them, charles baudelaire boasted the dangerous gift. poe and heine felt ecstasy, and liszt. wagner was the master-adept of ecstasy: tristan and isolde! and in the music of chopin ecstasy is pinioned within a bar, the soul rapt to heaven in a phrase. richard strauss has given us a variation on the theme of ecstasy; voluptuousness troubled by pain, the soul tormented pathologically. rodin is of this tormented choir. he is revealer of its psychology. it may be decadence, as any art is in its decadence which stakes the part against the whole. the same was said of beethoven by the followers of haydn, and the successors of richard strauss--debussy, stravinsky, and schoenberg--are abused quite as violently as the wagnerites abused richard strauss, turning against him the same critical artillery that was formerly employed against wagner. nowadays, rodin is looked on as superannuated, as a reactionary by the younger men, the cubists and futurists, who spoil marble with their iconoclastic chisels and canvas with their paint-tubes. that this ecstasy should be aroused by pictures of love and death, as in the case of poe and baudelaire, wagner and strauss and rodin, is not to be judged an artistic crime. in the far east they hypnotize neophytes with a bit of broken mirror, for in the kingdom of art there are many mansions. possibly it was a relic of his early admiration for baudelaire that set wagner to extorting ecstasy from his orchestra by images of love and death. and no doubt the temperament which seeks such synthesis, a temperament commoner in medieval times than ours, was inherent in wagner, as it is in rodin. both men play with the same counters: love and death. in pisa we may see (attributed by vasari) orcagna's fresco of the triumph of death. the sting of the flesh and the way of all flesh are inextricably blended in rodin's gate of hell. his principal reading for half a century has been dante and baudelaire; the divine comedy and "les fleurs du mal" are the keynotes in the grandiose white symphony of the french sculptor. love and life, and bitterness and death rule the themes of his marbles. like beethoven and wagner, he breaks academic rules, for he is auguste rodin, and where he magnificently achieves, lesser men fail or fumble. his large, tumultuous music is alone for his chisel to ring out and to sing. contents the career of rodin rodin and the beaux-arts sojourn in belgium--"the man who awakens to nature"--realism and plaster casts. flemish painting--journeys in italy and france. rodin's note-book i ancient workshops and modern schools ii scattered thoughts on flowers iii portraits of women iv an artist's day v the line and the structure of the gothic vi art and nature vii the gothic genius the work of rodin i the study of the cathedrals--influence of the gothic on the art of rodin--"saint john the baptist" ( )--"the gate of hell" ii "the burghers of calais" ( )--rodin and victor hugo--the statue of balzac ( ) list of illustrations rodin photographed on the steps of the hotel biron frontispiece portrait of a young girl la pucelle minerva psyche the adieu rodin in his studio at the hotel biron representation of france the man with the broken nose caryatid man awakening to nature the kiss bust of the countess of w---- the poet and the muse the thinker adolescence portrait of rodin head of minerva the bath the broken lily portrait of madame morla vicuñha "la pensée" hotel biron, view from the garden rodin photographed in the court of the hotel biron portrait of mrs. x rodin in his garden the poet and the muses the tower of labor headless figure rodin's house and studio at meudon the tempest the village fiancée metamorphosis according to ovid eve rodin at work in the marble peristyle of the studio at meudon statue of bastien-lepage danaiade portrait bust of victor hugo monument to victor hugo statue of balzac the head of balzac the studio at meudon romeo and juliet spring bust of bernard shaw a fête given in honor of rodin by some of his friends. the man and his art the career of rodin several years have already gone by since the career of rodin attained its full growth. from now on, therefore, it can be envisaged as a whole, and we can trace the formation and the unfolding of his complex talent and disentangle the influences that have directed and sustained it. in the course of the chapters that follow, rodin, with the authority, the calm strength, and the lucidity that characterize his thought, often speaks himself of these influences, but rather in a casual, gossipy, reminiscent vein, reflecting his personal observations. he does not attempt to disengage the broad lines by which he has reached the summit of art, or to map out, so to speak, that scheme of his intellectual development which so naturally appertains to the man who has reached the apogee of talent and which he contemplates with the satisfaction of a strategist face to face with the plan of the battles he has won. it is to living writers that he seems to address himself. rodin to-day can be studied like an old master, donatello, michelangelo, or pierre puget. one perceives quite in its entirety the distinct, the rigorously sustained plan that he has followed with unswerving will in order to realize himself; and the witnesses, the historians of this heroic life of the sculptor, have the advantage of being able to trace it with exactitude, as they could not do in the case of a vanished artist. they are able to interrogate the hero in person; they are able to consult with rodin himself, who is admirably intuitive and quite aware of what he owes to certain favorable conditions of his life and above all to his illustrious forerunners, those who have fought before him on the battle-field of high art. the study of nature, of the antique, greek and roman, of the art of medieval france and that of the renaissance--these are the springs at which he has constantly refreshed one of the most irrefutable sculptural talents that has ever been known. these are the expressions of the beautiful among which his profound and searching thought has traveled unceasingly, seeking to attain to a still larger vision, a more exact understanding of that most magnificent of all the arts, sculpture. the superior man is always the product of an exceptional gift and of an energy peculiar to himself, which effectuates itself despite circumstances. he is the highest incarnation of the spirit, of the struggle for existence. in the case of an artist the struggle is all the more severe, for he has nothing but himself to impose upon the world and he has, as weapons of offense and defense, nothing but his intelligence, the tiny substance of his brain. it is therefore only by means of the history of his intellectual life that one can understand him. external happenings only very slightly influence the obstinate march of true genius toward the accomplishment of its destiny. at most they delay it but a few hours. it forces its way through the most difficult obstacles; it even makes use of these obstacles in order to redouble its strength and confirm its superiority. nothing impedes the formidable will of those who are under the spell of beauty, those who see truth and know it and desire to express what they see. they can no more escape the fruition of their faculties than the giant can escape the attainment of his full stature. rodin has been one of these. certainly he has been assisted by circumstances, but above everything how has he not compelled circumstances to assist him? what demands preëminent recognition in his case is the gift, a splendid, a dazzling gift for the plastic arts, the realization of which has been imposed upon him, as it were, by the command of destiny. whence did it come? from whom did he inherit it? from what ancestor, sensitive to the enchantment of beauty, suffering, and in travail from the necessity of proclaiming it, but imperfectly endowed and powerless to forge for himself a talent in order to express the tremors of his soul? it is a mystery. no one can tell, rodin himself least of all. science has not yet taught us anything about those obscure combinations, those endless preferences of the vital force, thanks to which a person possesses the faculties of genius. in this, as in other things, we are unable to divine the cause and can only marvel at the effect, the prodigy. discredited to-day are the theories of lombroso and his school, once so warmly welcomed by mediocre minds athirst for equality, in which great men were considered as degenerates of a superior variety, and the most sensitive spirits qualified as candidates for the madhouse! all one can say is that nature abhors equality, that the indwelling will delights in raising up lofty mountain masses above the uniformity of the plains and the valor of the chosen few above the multitude. the function of the man of genius is, precisely, to possess in a supreme degree the sense of inequality and to transcribe its infinite nuances in their ever-changing, ever-moving, ever-renewed variety. he alone perceives the diversities whose play is the law of the universe itself, and he grasps them equally in a fragment of inanimate matter and in the vastest aspects of the world. far from being half mad, this unique being, this prodigious mirror of a million facets, achieves his aim only because he possesses far more intelligence than the most brilliant of his contemporaries, because he is in touch with a more profound order of things and a more comprehensive method, because he combines the qualities of continuity in sensation and of discernment which constitute that supreme sensibility of all the senses acting together--taste. but it does not please ordinary mortals to believe things of this kind, and one can easily understand how the crowd, repudiating any such humiliating notion, are all too willing to follow the lead of exotic pseudo-scientists and look upon great men as lunatics, considering themselves far more rational. as to what rodin himself thinks of this privilege that providence has conferred on him, there is no telling; he has never talked very much about it. the fact is, he has such faith in the value of hard work and will-power, he knows so well how extraordinarily much of these even the most exceptional natures have to exert in order to accomplish anything, that this privilege of divine right, otherwise just as authentic as that which sovereigns in former times profited by, amounts to nothing in the end but the account which he draws up in order to calculate the sum of his efforts. "when i was quite young, as far back as i remember, i drew," he says; "but the gift is nothing without the will to make it worth while. the artist must have the patience of water that eats away the rock drop by drop." alas! will and work, master, are also gifts; but the supreme spirit maliciously amuses itself by leading us into error, inspiring us with the illusion that it lies with us to acquire them. rodin's case, then, is an example of absolute predestination, assisted by a will of iron. one must add also the happy influence of the varied environment in which his life has been placed and the excellent artistic education he received in the schools where he studied, an education that was fruitful, thanks to the preservation of the true traditions of french art, kept alive in the schools since the eighteenth century. childhood. youth. first studies auguste rodin is the son of a norman father and a lorrainese mother. each of these two french provinces, normandy and lorraine, produces a race eminently realistic, but realistic in quite different ways. the lorrainer, opinionated and courageous, hardy in character, and vigorous like his country itself, sees things clearly and precisely in the light of a spirit that has been fashioned by the age-old struggle between teuton and gaul on our eastern frontier. the things that surround him, the aspects of his native soil, like the sullen obstinacy of the enemy that seeks in vain to drag him away, present themselves to his eye as a reality stripped of illusions. when one has to fight there is no time to dream, and one must be able to estimate with precision what one is fighting for. when the man of lorraine utters his feeling about the things he loves and defends, it is with a loyalty rather dry in expression and impression, but also with a force of consciousness that is imposing. [illustration: portrait of a young girl. a work of rodin's youth.] as for the norman, like his country he overflows with an abundance of life from which he derives a passionate need for the pleasures of sense. far from stifling in him the love of the beautiful, this appetite for triumphant realities engenders, on the contrary, an exaltation of the senses that leads to the most exquisite taste in the production of art. compounded of sensuality and mysticism, the twin characteristics of these rich spirits, very like those of belgium, to whom, by virtue of ancient migrations, they are closely allied, the artists of normandy necessarily respond to the manifold requirements of their temperament. we know with what a profusion of monuments, robust and imposing in structure and miraculously clothed in the most delicate lacework of stone, the gothic architects of normandy have covered not only the soil of their province, but also, beyond the sea, that of the two sicilies, strewn even to this day with beautiful cloisters and sumptuous churches of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which the norman conquest carried there. the child of normandy and lorraine was born in paris, november , . his father was a simple employee. he dwelt in one of the oldest and most curious quarters of the great city, the quartier saint-victor in the fifth _arrondissement_. rodin saw the light in the rue de l'arbalète. it is a little, hilly street, quite provincial in its aspect and its quietness, that winds among the rows of old houses, some low, as if crouched down, others narrow and high, as if they wished to look over their shoulders at what passes below, very like a crowd of living people. its name, the rue de l'arbalète, is full of suggestion of the middle ages, like that of the rue des patriarches, in which it comes to an end, and that of the rue des lyonnais and the rue de l'epée-de-bois, which are its neighbors. it crosses the famous rue mouffetard near the little church of st. médard on the last slopes of the montagne-sainte-geneviève, which has been, since the thirteenth century, the seat of the university and the schools; below is the plain of the gobelins, where once the river bièvre ran exposed. even to the present day this corner of the city has not suffered too much from the destructive changes of modernity. at the time of the childhood of rodin it was still virtually untouched. crowded, picturesque, and in certain parts dirty and squalid, like an oriental city, with its little interlacing streets, its countless shops, its swarms of people given over to a thousand familiar trades carried on in public,--open-air kitchens, fruit-stands, grocery shops, clothing shops, and shops of ironmongers, coal-venders, and, wine-sellers,--it is an almost perfect fragment, a human fragment, of the old gothic paris. truly rodin was fortunate: he was born in a chapter of victor hugo's "notre dame de paris." destiny preserved the first glances of his artist's eyes from the disenchanting banality of our modern streets. it placed before them, as if to give them a hatred of uniformity, as if to disgust him forever with the misdeeds of the straight line, adopted the world over by the rank and file of contemporary architects,--those congenitally blind and mutilated souls,--a population of houses having a physiognomy and a soul of their own, which, with their sloping roofs, their irregular gables, etch their amusing profiles against the sky and seem to gossip with the birds and the clouds, putting to shame the few regular buildings that have intruded and lost themselves amid this congregation so touched with spirituality. all this rodin saw; with a child's innocent eye, he absorbed all this fantasy of past ages; he studied the little shops with their low ceilings dating from the period of the gilds; he noted through the tiny panes of their windows the rembrandtesque effects of shadow and golden light, in which the humblest objects live a life that is full of intimate mystery and familiar charm. about them he saw a people full of life, alert, awake, always in action, always in dispute, unconsciously falling into a thousand beautiful, simple attitudes, the eternal attitudes associated with drinking, eating, sleeping, working, and loving. what admirable, powerful precepts this teaching, without effort, without professors, without pedantry, thus forever imposed upon the memory of the future sculptor! yes, rodin there enjoyed a priceless good fortune. as child and young man, his walks and his duties took him incessantly past notre dame, the queen of cathedrals, appearing, from the heights of ste. geneviève, magnificently seated on the bank of the seine that devotedly kisses its feet; in front of it, ste. etienne-du-mont, surrounded by convents, with its nave, that treasure of grace bequeathed to us by the renaissance. there also is the ancient little roman church of st. julien-le-pauvre; and st. séverin, that sweet relic of gothic art, about which lies unrolled the old _quartier des truands_, with the rues galande de la huchette and de la parcheminerie, which the pick-axes of the housebreakers are now giving over to the universal ugliness. the panthéon and the buildings that surround it taught the young rodin that the public monuments of the style of louis xv, although colder and stiffer, still offer a certain grandeur by virtue of their beauty of proportion and character. close beside the somewhat formal solemnity of these buildings, the gardens of the luxembourg that invite the passer-by with all their tender, smiling charm, the exquisite parterre, the elegant little pilastered palace, the medici fountain, whose charming statues pour out their water that murmurs beneath the branches of the trees spread out above like a tent of lacework, taught him the enchantment of the architectural harmonies of the renaissance, harmonies of chiseled stone, noble shadows, and carpeting flowers. like all artists, rodin adores the luxembourg. more than this, he would not for anything in the world see those statues of the queens of france banished, those enormous stone dolls of a quality, as regards sculpture, little calculated to satisfy lovers of rich modeling. no matter, he loves the gray mass they make under the fragrant summits of the limes and the hawthorns; they are part of the scenery of his youth; he remains faithful to them as to old playthings. was it not these that he sketched in those first attempts of his? his aptitude quickly revealed itself. this man, whom ignorant critics were to reproach one day with not knowing how to draw, handled the pencil from his earliest childhood. his mother bought her provisions from a grocer in the neighborhood. the grocer wrapped up his rice, vermicelli, and dried prunes in bags made from cut-up illustrated papers and engravings that had been thrown away. rodin got hold of these bags, and they were his first models. he copied these wretched images passionately. toward the age of twelve, he was sent to beauvais, to the house of an uncle who undertook to bring him up. beauvais and its unfinished cathedral was another silent lesson, never to be forgotten--that cathedral which is nothing but a choir, but how marvelous a choir! of course at the time he did not appreciate its splendor. with the indifference of his age, he studied its architecture and its sculpture, which, for that matter, all his contemporaries, even the cultivated, despised from the depth of their ignorance. that was the time when art critics and professors of esthetics denied gothic art without comprehending it, the roman school being in the ascendant in the admiration of the public. nevertheless, the jewel in stone did not fail to speak in the language of beauty and truth to this predestined young man. his sensibility registered its impressions, noted down those points of comparison which he was to find later in the depths of his memory and which were to enable him to judge and appreciate. under the vault of the majestic nave he listened to the mass, he took part in the grand, sacred drama, whose phrases touched his imagination profoundly, sometimes exalting it to the point of mysticism and impregnating it with the nobility of the symbols and of the catholic ritual tempered by eighteen centuries of usage. rodin was placed in a boarding-school. he found the scholar's life dreary and dull; his comrades seemed to him noisy young barbarians, absorbed in brutal and too often vicious pastimes. certain studies were repugnant to him, mathematics and _solfeggio_. near-sighted, without being aware of it, he could not make out the figures and the notes the masters wrote on the blackboard; he understood nothing and was almost bored to death. this myopia was destined to have the most vital influence on his art. because of his difficulty in perceiving total effects, his instinct has only rarely led him to the composition of monuments on a very large scale, in which the architectural construction is of nearly as great importance as the sculpture proper. the most considerable that we owe to him is that of "the burghers of calais"; and there is also "the gate of hell," which, almost inexplicably, remained incomplete even in the very hour when it was given over as finished. the great sculptor, at the time when he turned it over to the founders, perhaps unconsciously experienced a lapse of vision, an insurmountable fatigue of the eyes, over-strained by the prolonged effort to grasp the ensemble of the edifice and the harmony of the countless details of this superb composition. but if he has been turned aside, by his physical constitution, from monumental art, it has only served to concentrate him with all the more ardor upon the minute work of modeling, for which, by a sort of compensation, he is endowed with an eye whose penetration has had no equal since the time of the renaissance. at the age of fourteen he returned to paris. his parents judged that the moment had come for him to choose a career. observing his astonishing gifts, they decided to let him take up drawing, but, having small means, they were unable to provide him with special masters. they entered him at the school of decorative arts, another piece of good fortune. this school, called by abbreviation the petite ecole, in distinction from the great school, that of the beaux-arts, is situated in the old rue de l'ecole de médecine, close to the faculté de médecine and the sorbonne. it was founded in , under the name of the free school of design, by the painter jean-jacques bachelier, a clever artist and student of styles in art no longer practised or little known, who had been well thought of by madame de pompadour, the favorite of louis xv, the charming and virtually official minister of fine arts during the reign of that monarch. it was she who placed bachelier in charge of the _ateliers de décoration_ at the sèvres manufactory. in creating the petite ecole, the painter seemed to be following out, after the death of his gracious protectress, the impulse she had communicated to french art during her lifetime. [illustration: la pucelle.] thus we see rodin at the school of the marquise de pompadour, placed once more in a _milieu_ full of originality and life. he found himself there surrounded by a little world of beginners in every line, budding artists; almost everybody of his generation has passed through this course. they came there to learn to draw, paint, and model. in the evening the halls were filled with amateurs who, after their day's work was over, sought to acquire a certain artistic skill as tapestry-workers, ornament-makers, workers in iron, marble, etc. they were energetic, turbulent, poor. rodin, like them, was energetic and poor, but silent, laborious, and pertinacious. he applied himself to the copying of models of all sorts, most frequently red chalks by boucher and plaster casts of animals, plants, and flowers. the school had possessed these things since the eighteenth century and, like almost everything that was created in that bountiful epoch, they were very well done, composed after nature, their elegance full of warm truth; they were models in bold _ronde-bosse_. that is to say, they presented that quality of relief to which drawing, like sculpture, owes its rich oppositions of light and shadow. to those who copied them they communicated the science of relief, the fundamental basis of art, and the living suppleness of the best periods, which has almost entirely disappeared to-day. one day rodin entered the modeling class. he worked there after the antique. he had his first experience of working in clay; it was a revelation, an enchantment. he fell in love with this _métier_, which seemed to him the most seductive of all; he became obsessed with the desire to mold this soft material himself, to search in it for the form of things. his first attempts overjoyed him; he was not fifteen years old and he had found his path! we see him executing a fragment; he models the head, the hands, the arms, the legs, the feet; then he sets about the whole figure; there is no deception; there are no insurmountable difficulties for him; he understands at once the structure of the human body; in the phrase of the atelier, "ses bonshommes tiennent"; the arms and the legs adjust themselves naturally to the body: he is a born sculptor. every day he arrives at the class at eight o'clock in the morning; he works without faltering till noon, in company with five or six pupils. at that hour they stop work; they are happy; they leave their seats and take a turn about the model. in the evening things are different; from seven to nine, the class is over-full; one can study the model then only from a distance; a superficial, wretched method that is practised on a large scale at the ecole des beaux-arts and against which rodin has protested all his life. thus we find him entered on his artistic career not as a dilettante, as an amateur, as happens too often, but as a veritable workman. like general kléber, he could long say, "my poverty has served me well; i am attached to it." it placed him, from his childhood, in the presence of realities. it steeped him in life itself. it safeguarded him from the artificial education that debilitates the young middle-class frenchman and destroys in him the spirit of initiative and personality. it deprived him luckily of the pleasures that rich young men too easily offer themselves, the abuse of which renders them unsteady, capricious, and indifferent. rigorously held to his path by necessity, he consecrated all his time and all his energies to study. he became diligent, serious, and prudent. he had the opportunity of seeing his modeling corrected by carpeaux. the great sculptor, in fact, taught at the petite ecole. upon his return from rome, he had asked for a modest post as an assistant master that would help to assure his equally modest existence; they had granted his request, but without seeking to give him anything more! his young pupils scarcely understood his high worth, the substantial and delicate grace of his talent, his voluptuous elegance, inherited from the eighteenth century and united with a certain nervous seductiveness that was altogether modern, a certain palpitating quality of the soul and of the flesh that had not been known before, manifesting itself through the ductility of his modeling. but instinctively they admired him; they marveled, among other things, at the precision and the rapidity of the corrections the master executed under their eyes. later, when experience had come to him, rodin greatly honored jean-baptiste carpeaux; he was one of those for whom the appearance of the famous group "the dance," in the parvis of the opéra, was a veritable event. at that moment he discovered again in himself the influence of this beautiful spirit which had been slumbering in him since he left the petite ecole; then he became almost the disciple of carpeaux. i know a figure of a bacchante of rodin's, a marble that is almost unknown, the flesh of which is so supple and so light that one would say it was molded of wheat and honey and the work of the sculptor of "the dance." there floats also in its countenance that spirituality, that expression as of a sort of angelic malice which carpeaux seems to have borrowed occasionally from the figures of leonardo da vinci. [illustration: minerva.] when the clocks of the sorbonne quarter struck noon, rodin left the petite ecole; he walked to the louvre, eating, as he went, a roll and a cake of chocolate which was all he had for lunch. he sketched the antiques. from there he went on to the galerie des estampes at the bibliothèque nationale, where they loaned out, without any too much good will, misplaced as that is with students, the albums of plates after michelangelo and raphael and the great illustrated work, "l'histoire de costume romain." because of this miserliness of theirs, he did not always obtain the volumes he wished for, which were reserved for habitués who were better known. this did not prevent him from becoming initiated into the science of draperies. he executed hundreds of sketches from memory, at last developing in himself the faculty of remembering forms. from the rue de richelieu, always on foot, he would repair to the gobelin manufactory. there each day, from five to eight o'clock, he followed the course in design. placed before nature itself, before the nude, he absorbed more excellent principles. the teaching of the eighteenth century was practised there also, and his work became permanently impregnated by it. in the morning, at daybreak, before going to the petite ecole, he found the time to walk to an old painter's he knew, where he kept a number of canvases going. in the evening he made careful copies of the sketches he had jotted down at noon in the galleries of the louvre and the bibliothèque. he drew far into the night; he drew even during supper, at the frugal board of his family, surrounded by his father, his mother, and his young sister, bending over his paper utterly regardless of his health, a course of things that soon brought on gastric disorders from which he suffered cruelly. in short, he toiled incessantly, ardent and patient, obstinate, and full of self-confidence. assuredly he never in the world imagined that he was to become in time one of the most illustrious representatives of the french art of the nineteenth century, that he was to be the equal in renown of celebrities like lamartine, alfred de musset, or michelet whom he saw occasionally in the luxembourg gardens, without even daring to bow to them; but he possessed a fixed and a precise idea of what was required to be a good sculptor and the resolution to realize it. little did he care how long it would take, how tardy success might prove, how slow fortune might be in coming; little did he care for obstacles, even for misery. he was going the right way, unhesitating, untroubled, not compromising with himself or with anybody. he possessed the irresistible will of a force. i have had occasion to examine one of the note-books of rodin's youth. it is quite filled with sketches after engravings from the antique, animals or human figures. the drawing is strangely compact, wilful, for the boy of sixteen or seventeen that he was then. already, in its accumulation of strokes and hatchings which, during an entire period of his artistic development, render the drawing of rodin restless and personal like a piece of writing, it exhibits an obstinate search for relief, it speaks to us like hieroglyphics, revealing the power of his grasp. his progress was rapid. at seventeen, he finished his first studies. the moment came for him to pass from the school of decorative arts to that of the beaux-arts and to prepare himself, like his companions, for the examinations and for the competition for the _prix de rome_, the famous _prix de rome_ that seemed to rodin, inexperienced student as he was, the crown of the most rigorous artistic studies. rodin and the beaux-arts rodin presented himself at an examination for entrance into the ecole des beaux-arts. he was rejected. he presented himself a second time, but with the same result. what was the reason for it? neither he nor his fellow-students could discover. they used to form a circle about him when he worked. they admired the keenness and precision of his glance, the already astonishing skill of his hand. they told him that he would be accepted. he failed a third time. finally a fellow-student who was shrewder than the others gave the solution of the enigma. it requires a somewhat long explanation. the great school is under the direction of the members of the academy of fine arts. these professors correct the work of the students, set the examinations, and award the prizes. they are recruited from members of the society, are, in short, the representatives of official, or conservative, art. official art is a product of the revolution of . up to that time there were not two kinds of art in france. at the most, until the time of louis xiv only one secession disported itself under the influence of lebrun, painter to the king. art was a unit, and its divine florescence spread from france over all europe. the church, the kings, and their court of great lords and cultivated ladies were the protectors and, indeed, the inspirers, of that flowering of beauty that had grown from the time of the first capets, indeed from the time of the merovingians, down to the end of the eighteenth century. the first empire marked in effect the beginning of the artistic decadence of europe and, one may say, of the world. artists at that time divided themselves into two camps, the conservatives, with, at their head, david and his school, who pictured an art of convention and approved formulas, and the independents, who continued, although in a somewhat revolutionary and extravagant spirit, the true traditions of french art. among those fine rebellious men of talent of the first order were rude, barye, and carpeaux in sculpture, and baron gros, eugène delacroix, courbet, and manet in painting. [illustration: psyche.] by a singular contradiction, louis david was as baneful a theorist as he was a great painter and, above all, an excellent draftsman. that explains itself. the quality of his drawing he owed to the eighteenth century, in which he had appeared and a pupil of which he was; but he derived his esthetic doctrine from the revolution, which made use of the same sectarian zeal to obtain the triumph of certain false ideas that it used to advance the right principles that were its glory. through one, david produced works of great worth and some admirable portraits; through the other, he wrought great havoc among artists. the world was, moreover, well disposed to submit to these principles. when art restricts itself to repeating attitudes, gestures, approved receipts, without having studied or observed them in nature in her constant changes, it means decadence. if david was able to have his theories accepted, it was because the time was ripe to receive them, to be contented with them; and to say that the time was ripe is only to say that it was a degenerate time, satisfied to be relieved of the task of reflecting, of discovering for itself the laws of beauty, or, in short, of working from the foundation. official painter of the revolution and the empire, louis david proclaimed his doctrine with the authority of a pontiff. he made a set of narrow rules which advocated a superficial imitation of the antique, a copying of the works of greece and rome, not in spirit, but in letter; not in that accurate knowledge of construction and of the model, which made up their supreme worth, but in their conventional attitudes and expressions. even from beyond the grave david continued to rule the academy of the beaux-arts in the name of the artificial idealism which he had proclaimed, and whoever rejected his sorry instruction saw himself without mercy shown to the door of the national schools arid academies. they had shown the door to rude, the author of the masterpiece of the arc de triomphe, "the departure of the volunteers of ." they had shown it to the unhappy carpeaux, treated all his life as a heretic and persecuted by the official class, defenders of the so-called heroic achievements and stereotyped forms. they went to every extreme in their contest with free and determined genius. as a last resort they employed every weapon of treachery against the undisciplined great, those fallen angels of the false paradise of the institute--weapons that later they did not scruple to use against rodin. they accused carpeaux of indecency, and in order to strengthen the miserable falsehood, a perverse idiot flung a can of ink on the adorable group of "the dance," that song of the nymphs, clamorous with youth, laughter, and music. this digression in the story of rodin's life explains his whole life. by his manly independence, his persistent refusal to follow the dictates of the school, he naturally found himself placed at the head of those who antagonized the official class. against an opponent of his strength and obstinacy the struggle naturally took on new energy. it recalled to mind the violence of the famous intellectual quarrels of other days --the quarrel of the ancients and the moderns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and that of the classicists and the romanticists in . when rodin presented himself at the great school, how, in his inexperience, could he foresee the war of wild beasts that rages in the thickets of art? it needed indeed a better-informed comrade to disclose the situation to him. then his eyes were opened. he understood then that he would only be wasting his time in striving to force the bronze doors that are closed against the influences of great nature and her triumphant light, the implacable denouncer of the false in art. perceiving it at last, he renounced the thought of entering the school. later he gloried, in the fact that he had done so. possibly he saw the danger that he would have run of parching his spirit and chilling his eye. "ah," his friend, the sculptor dalou, exclaimed long after, "rodin had the luck not to have been at the ecole des beaux-arts!" dalou himself had not had that luck, and despite beautiful gifts and love for the eighteenth century, he had not recovered from the false teaching. rodin, then, without knowing it, had fought his first battle, the slight skirmish to the incessant fight that was to open. after that time the name institute, by which he understood the group of protagonists of a bad form of art, took in his speech a formidable meaning. when he says, "the institute," he seems to call up some mythological monster, the hydra of a hundred heads, from the malignant wounds of which the brave usually die slowly. for him the institute has come to mean a company of able men who substitute dexterity for conscience, who, for long toil in obscurity and poverty, substitute a premature eagerness for all that it may bring--profitable relations, orders from the state, fortune, and honors. in his opinion all that ought to come slowly in order not to distract the artist from the study that alone can give him strength. to him the rewards are secondary; true happiness lies in untrammeled and passionate toil, in the exercise of growing intelligence that is determined not to be stopped on the road to discovery. [illustration: the adieu.] although the struggle is less clamorous to-day, it has not ended, and it never will be ended, despite the wide fame of the master, now known throughout the world as the greatest living artist. this rodin understands. what the contestants now seek to conquer is the public, some for the purpose of obtaining from it consideration and profit, and others an appreciation of true art. one class strives to flatter its taste, which is bad; the other seeks to inculcate a knowledge of true art in its own work. at the outset the contest is frightfully unequal, for the ignorance of the public is abysmal. incapable of discerning true beauty, it relies only on the labels placed by the institute on its own works and on those of its partizans. they say to a man, "this is the sort of thing that should be admired," and straightway he admires it, if one can apply this expression of the highest pleasure of the spirit to the vapid and dull contemplation that the public accords to the works marked for its approval. no, at best the public does not know how to admire; it does not understand the language of beauty. at eighteen or nineteen, rodin, being wholly without fortune, could not continue his studies without quickly finding some means of support. it was therefore necessary for him to earn his own living, and at once he bravely entered upon his work as an ornament-maker, and became a journeyman at a few francs a week. we need not regret it. this son of the people, by remaining in the ranks of the working-class, consolidated in himself the virtues of the class--their courage and industry, which are the strong qualities of the humble, and, in the aggregate, those of the whole nation. and the curiosity of a superior man for all the rewards of the exercise of his intelligence led him to cultivate himself unceasingly. his limited studies as a school-boy had not been extensive enough to surfeit him; he now brought to the study of letters a mind keenly alert, and with a joy as alive as love itself he devoted himself to a study of great minds. he read the poets and the historians; he became acquainted with the greece of homer and Æschylus, the italy of dante, the england of shakspere, and the france of jean-jacques rousseau; but up to that time he had concerned himself with only one thing--his trade. he worked as a real artisan, with no wider vision, with no thought of formidable power. he saw only his model and his clay; he thought only of these, he loved only these. thus he had become a journeyman ornament-worker in clay. that did not prevent him from perfecting himself in sculpture. on the contrary, it aided him. the art of ornamentation was then considered, as it is still to-day, an inferior art. people said, still say, of the sculpture of architecture, as of the frescos and mosaic work of a building, that it is only decoration. they declare it in a tone of indulgence that finds an excuse for any mediocrity. all this is a profound mistake. sculptured ornament springs naturally from architecture; it is the flowering of its fundamental elements. it is an inherent part of the whole, as the mass of flowers and foliage that crowns a tree is in a way the culminating point of the whole vegetable organism. ornament demands the same qualities that the fundamental architectural structure demands, and fully as much talent and perhaps even more; because, as rodin says, one sees in it more clearly, without distracting features, the form of genius. if it is not well done in itself, its function, which is rigorously subordinated to the whole, and consists in molding the contours of the structure by underlining and marking them off, is reversed. it is then only an excrescence, an arbitrary addition. only mediocre artisans, when employed on a building or a jewel, use ornament capriciously, without proportioning and subordinating it to the mass; they weary and disgust the beholder. rodin and his companions did not content themselves with copying, and more or less distorting, their greek, roman, and renaissance models, which were repeated to satiety in all the workshops of the world, and done over and over again so many times, out of place and out of proportion, that they had lost all significance. their employer possessed a beautiful, but neglected, garden, where a profusion of plants ran riot. here were models in abundance. here, in reproducing these, the young craftsmen refreshed their vocation; they copied their ornaments from nature; they studied foliage and flowers from life. to do new work, they had only to borrow from the vegetable world its inexhaustible combinations of beauty. here rodin, by his cleverness and rapidity, became without a peer among them all, and drew to himself the admiration of his fellow-workers. it was here that he met constant simon, his elder by many years, who was the first man to teach him to model in profile. it was one of the great epochs in his life. one may say that from that time the two great laws that have given his sculpture its power--the study of nature and the right method of modeling--passed into his blood, as it were. the secret that simon imparted to him was like a philter that inflamed his soul with enthusiasm. he became intoxicated with the idea of seeing clearly and of holding his hand strictly accountable to what his eyes disclosed. and he possessed, too, both youth and an indefatigable vigor. he sketched everything he could, wherever he could. one saw him making sketches on the street, in the horse-market, jostled by the beasts, repulsed by men, yet indifferent to all difficulties in his enchantment in his discovered prize, at the jardin des plantes, where he passed hours before the cages and in the parks, studying the poses of the deer and the grace of the moving antelopes. [illustration: rodin in his studio at the hotel biron.] at that period barye taught at the museum. rodin had become acquainted with the son of the celebrated sculptor. the two had discovered a corner of the basement, a sort of cave, damp and gloomy, where they installed some seats made of old boxes and delighted themselves in modeling from clay. from the museum they borrowed a few anatomical specimens, fragments of the parts of animals, and these they carried to their cavern and pored over in their efforts to copy them. sometimes barye himself would come to cast his eye over their work and give them a word of advice, and then would go away, buried in a silent reverie. he was a man of simple habits, with the appearance of a college tutor, in his well-worn coat, but giving an impressive suggestion of great force and worth. his son and rodin little understood him; they feared him somewhat and only half profited by his suggestions. later the author of "the burghers of calais," kindled by the genius of the gloomy, severe man whom he had misunderstood, felt a deep remorse at not having rendered to barye, while living, the homage of admiration which the master merited, and which perhaps would have been sweet to his solitary heart. rodin has had only rarely the chance to model animals. he has never received an order for an equestrian statue, and he has regretted it. we have from him only one small rough model of a statue of general lynch on horseback, which was never executed, and the beautiful relief of the chariot of apollo which forms the pedestal of the monument of claude lorrain at nancy. but though he has not modeled animals, he has many times sketched them, and he has studied profoundly their anatomy and poses. it is not so much in the powerful sketches that all his life he has continued to make with the same daily care with which a pianist practises his scales that rodin shows the chief characteristic of his nature, as it is in accumulating these that he has been enabled to understand relationship between different forms, and to establish the unity between the forms of man and the animals, between the mountains and the vegetable world. it is by understanding this unity that he can occasionally interpret with a scientific exactness this common relationship. in modeling a centaur or the chimera or a spirit with powerful wings, the mythological creature that appears from his hands does not appear less a transcript from reality than each bust or each statue that has been vigorously wrought from the living model. there is no weakening in the points where the bust of the man or of the woman attaches itself to the body of the animal, no doubt that the beautiful, strong wings of the angels are as perfectly united to their bodies and are as necessary as their arms or legs. when about twenty-two or twenty-three rodin entered the atelier of carrier-belleuse. at that time the vogue of this charming artist was great. he well represented the spirit and workmanship of the eighteenth century in the knickknack art of the second empire. he was a clodion of the boulevard. besides the spirited busts, some of which, like those of ernest renan, jules simon, and the actress marie laurent, were celebrated, he sent out from his atelier, in the rue de la tour d'auvergne at montmartre, hundreds of designs to be used in industrial art: mantelpieces, centerpieces for tables, vases, ornamental clocks, and decorative figures and groups. rodin, then, applied himself to executing for carrier-belleuse a variety of statuettes and figures. there was in the task a great danger, for he saw the risk of limiting himself to a facile use of his art that was both remunerative and attractive; but his sturdy northern temperament was able to protect him against every danger, whether of success or poverty. carrier had an astonishing skill, and not only worked without a model, but compelled his employees to work without one. his rough sketches were admirable, but he weakened in working them out. rodin never trifled with his art. before going to the atelier he always took care to study his subject in the nude and to fix it in his memory as firmly as possible. as soon as he reached his bench he transferred to the clay the result of his remembered observations. on returning to his home in the evening he consulted his model anew in order to correct his work of the day. it was for him an excellent exercise of memory. the true workman is quick to turn to advantage all the inconveniences of a situation. i have heard rodin relate that often in the course of a quarrel with a friend or a relative he would completely forget the subject of the contention and the anger of his opponent in his absorption, from the point of view of a sculptor, in the play of the muscles and their influence on the expression of the face of the angry speaker. [illustration: representation of france--in the monument to champlain.] rodin remained about five years with carrier-belleuse. what works his active hands accomplished there in a day! one still finds them in the shops of the sellers of bronzes, in the shops of the dealers of the marais and the faubourg st. antoine. certainly hundreds of examples were brought there, to the great profit of tradesmen, but to the injury of the artist; for he drew from them only such wages as the least competent workers are to-day content with. one may see in the gallery of mrs. ---- of new york certain little terra-cotta busts which date from that period. they represent pretty parisian women in hats, whose wild locks veil glances full of spirit and roguishness. creatures of youth and frivolity, they are sisters of the elegant ladies that alfred stevens drew with his delightful brush, and which were the charm of paris under napoleon iii. who could believe that they had sprung from the hands of rodin, the austere creator of "the burghers of calais" and of the "victor hugo"? but before becoming the audaciously personal genius that he now is, he was subjected to the most varied influences--influences that have been felt by the modern sculptors with whom he has worked and those that guided the old masters. he has none the less shielded himself from the world. he declares indeed, with the authority that permits the freedom, that originality signifies nothing; that that which counts is the quality of the intrinsic sculpture; that if the temperament of the artist is truly steadfast, he always finds himself after the necessary study; and finally that it is of little importance whether a statue bears the name of praxiteles or that of one of his pupils. the essential thing is that it is well done, that it appears in a great epoch. anonymous, it proclaims none the less to the eyes of the man of taste the signature of genius. in order to live rodin applied himself to the most varied occupations; thus he gained the liberty to labor at his own work for a few hours. he chipped at stone and marble for the benefit of sculpture to-day unknown, but then in vogue; he made sketches for trinkets for certain fashionable jewelers, and fashioned objects of decorative art ordered of him by manufacturers. despite a considerable loss of time, he obtained thus a true apprenticeship in art wholly like that which in earlier days was obtained by ghiberti, donatello, and most of the great artists of, the renaissance, who were proud to be good artisans before they were accounted great sculptors. thus finally he was enabled to realize his first dream--to have an atelier of his own. his atelier! it was a stable, at a rental of twenty-four dollars a year, in the rue lebrun, in the quarter of the gobelins, near which he was born. it was a cold hovel, a cave indeed, with a well sunk in an angle of one wall that at every season exhaled its chilling breath. it did not matter. the place was sufficiently large and well lighted. the artist, young and strong, and as happy as possible in his stable, felt his talent increasing. there he accumulated a quantity of studies and works until the place was so crowded that he could scarcely turn himself about; but being too poor to have them cast, he lost the greater part of them. every day he spent hours moistening the cloths that enveloped them, yet not without suffering frightful disasters. sometimes the clay, through being too soft, would settle and fall asunder; sometimes it would become dry, crack, and crumble. one day, in moving, the great figure of a bacchante that had been tenderly molded for months was seized by the rough hands of the furniture-movers, and broke, crashing to the ground. what lost efforts! what destroyed beauty! even to-day when the artist speaks of it his heart bleeds anew. at that time he carried about the ateliers of paris a design to which he gave the name of "the man with the broken nose." struck by the curious face of an old shepherd, flat-nosed, with every appearance of a slave that had been crushed under heel, rodin made a bust of the man and strove to portray the energy and imposing simplicity that had astonished him in the antique busts and the statue of "the knife-grinder" that he had seen in the galleries of the louvre. the solidity of the design, the patience shown in the composition, and the strength of the details coöperated in producing an admirable whole. the wrinkles of the forehead, the creased eyelids, the deep furrows of the face converged toward the base of the broken nose in an expression of old age and hardship, presenting an admirable head of a thessalian shepherd. alas! one frosty day the clay contracted, and the skull of "the man with the broken nose" fell to the ground, leaving only the face. rodin did not make over the composition. too honest to restore the skull by approximation, he contented himself with modeling the face, to-day become famous. he cast it in plaster, and sent it to the salon of . there it was rejected. thus the opposition that had closed the door of the beaux-arts against him was renewed at his first attempt to take rank among contemporary artists. the reason was the same; it will always and invariably be the same: this sculptor of the naked truth, this fervent lover of nature, offends, shocks, and wounds the majority of the followers of formulas, the imitators of the past, the makers of smooth and pretty wares, things without conscience or significance. the artist remains alone with his deception. the day has not yet come when enlightened amateurs can understand in which school true talent is to be found, when they are able to renounce the moldings on nature, the theatrical postures, the irritating silliness of figures a thousand times repeated. [illustration: the man with the broken nose.] they will some day learn to perceive truth, observation, strength, and grace. when that day comes they will throw out of the window all the trumpery art of which they will have become tired, in order to collect that of rude, barye, carpeaux, rodin, jules desbois, camille claudel, those glories of the nineteenth century. the year of the salon of may serve to close the first period of rodin's career. it is difficult, indeed impossible, to place between fixed dates the events of a life that has been an example of uniform continuity; but nevertheless it is permitted to one to say that the year marks the end of the first youth of the master. his preliminary studies, those which one may call the studies of his mere profession, were ended. he was then at the beginning of larger studies; he was about to visit belgium, italy, and france; he was about to come face to face with the most varied geniuses and examine their work. he was about to question them rigorously, to demand of them their technical methods. he was also about to exalt himself in the presence of these immortal thoughts, to become intoxicated with the desire to equal them in science and greatness. from that time on he approached them as a disciple, as a man who had already thought much and comprehended much, and who was worthy to study them and follow in their footsteps: in a word, as an artist of their own lineage. sojourn in belgium--"the man who awakens to nature"--realism and plaster casts rodin worked under carrier-belleuse from to . he remained in paris during the franco-german war. what influence did this event have upon him? he has said little about it. although he has a strong attachment for his native land, he has none of the extravagant patriotism of a rude, whose great soul was caught up in the flames of the national epopee. rodin has too contemplative a temperament; he is too devoted to reflective work to allow himself to be long disturbed by external facts, even the gravest. at the signing of the peace, he went to belgium, drawn by the promise of work in decorative art. he remained there five years, staying first in brussels, then in antwerp. this period of his life left with him a delightful memory. he was poor and unknown, but full of the vigor of youth, and free in how splendid a freedom! he had all his time to himself, without any of those thousand obligations that eat up the days of a celebrated man and break down his ardor. life in belgium was at that time simple, easy-going, family-like. many small pleasures made it attractive; the cleanliness of the streets and the houses was a constant delight to the eye; the bread, the beer, the coffee were excellent and cost almost nothing. on sundays bands of children, fair-haired, robust, healthy, dressed in aprons very white and very well starched, ran about laughing and singing; the women went to church; the men assembled in the sanded gardens of the public houses to play at ball, sipping glasses of _faro_ and _lambic_. the whole scene was full of the charm of intimacy and happiness which for the artist served as a sort of frame, so to say, for the old pictures. the works of the flemish painters are so impressive in all their power, in the splendor of their fresh coloring and their gem-like finish, that brussels, ghent, bruges, antwerp, mechlin seem to have been built and decorated by the brueghels, the jan steens, the tenierses, whose dazzling canvases strike one almost as if they had been the plans for the construction of these queenly cities instead of being simply mirrors of them. as for nature, its grandeur and its nobility are disconcerting in such a little country. rodin rented a modest room in the chaussée de brendael, in one of the quarters of the capital quite close to the bois de la cambre. he worked there during the whole of the day; his young wife did the housework, went out marketing, sewed beside him, posed for him, helped him to moisten his clay, made herself, as she said proudly, his _garçon d'atelier_. he modeled caryatids for the palais de la bourse at brussels; for the palais des académies he made a frieze representing children and the attributes of the arts and sciences; he was charged also with the execution of decorative pieces for different municipal buildings of the city of antwerp. nowadays the belgians display with pride these works, in which, without flattering them, one can recognize the touch of a future master. intent as he was upon his modeling work, rodin did not abandon drawing; he added to it landscape-painting in oils. the brabant country-side is one of the most beautiful in europe. the forest of soigne, which surrounds brussels, is full of the lofty trees of the northern countries, splendid beeches, healthy as the bodies of athletes, reaching up into the sky like columns of light bronze, planted in regular rows, giving the impression of an immense and solemn temple. narrow avenues, alleys, pierce the long naves; one's soul seems to glide lingeringly along these shadowy paths drawn on to the end by the far-away glimmer like stained glass. the light that falls from above through the tree-tops slips down the long green trunks, gray or silvery, bringing with it a touch of the sky. there is no exuberant vegetation, none of that undergrowth trembling with delicate little leaves, such as that which makes the spiritual grace of the ile-de-france, arranged for the frolic of nymphs and fawns. this is the gothic forest, the tree-cathedral, a fitting place for the miracles of christianity and the devout walk of solitaries. rodin fell in love with this forest. his grave soul, his youth, which knew nothing of frivolity, found itself here. his nature, so full of self-contained enthusiasm and the profound and slowly moved spirit of admiration, not yet capable of expressing itself, found its true element under the protection of these age-old beeches. but one corner enchanted him, a verdurous hollow filled with running water that breaks the austerity of the wood, the valley of groenendael. there the majestic colonnade of trunks opens out, with the condescension of giants, before the caprices of an undulating glade. it is covered with a down of grass, like an immense green cloud, always pure, always fresh, which spring and autumn embroider with delicate shoots of a multitude of flowers, like the tapestries of the flemish masters. little ponds shyly spread out their mirrors, full of the sky, full of reflections. an old low-built house, entirely white, speaks of security, of calm shelter, of good nourishment, in the midst of this verdurous solitude, where one hears only the song of the birds and where squirrels cross in their flight like sudden flames. the valley of groenendael is far enough away from brussels to be almost always deserted and silent. it was the site the famous brabançon mystic, ruysbroeck the admirable, chose in the fourteenth century for a monastery. at that time the forest of soigne sheltered no less than eleven monastic houses in its fragrant, shadowy depths. at the north of the valley the ground rises and the path leads one to the modest chapel of notre dame de bonne-odeur. at this period rodin certainly knew nothing of the great contemplatives of the fourteenth century or of this same ruysbroeck whom later a glorious compatriot, maurice maeterlinck, kinsman by election of the hermit, was to translate and interpret; but in the peaceful glade, the vallon vert, as under the vaults of the great forest, the soul of the sculptor rejoined those of the old monks who perhaps still wander there at times; it shared with them the religion of this beauty which their dumb love of nature had come thither to seek. at dawn he would start out, loaded down with his box of colors. his companion followed him, proud to carry part of the artist's paraphernalia. he was on his way to make sketches, to take notes of the landscape, to jot down his impressions; but often the day passed without his touching his brushes. it was not indifference or indolence on the part of this great worker, but simply that he had not the strength to interrupt his delightful contemplations. time lost? in the case of another, perhaps. not for him. his excursion had no immediate result; that was all: but how he would observe, how he would compare, how he would reflect! he was initiating himself in the sense of proportion, grandeur of style, and the nobility of simplicity. he was studying the laws of the light and shade distributed by the columns the true work of the architect. it was no longer school lessons that he was prosecuting here; it was the mighty exercise of personal talent, the ripening of his taste that was taking place, thanks to the technical knowledge he already possessed. the sense of the eternal laws comes only to those who can contrail them through long experience. later, when the time came for rodin to visit the cathedrals, he was to understand better than any other this art which has sprung from the forests of france, engendered by their mysterious grandeur, once full of terrors and marvels. the benefit which he derived immediately from his acquaintance with belgium was the experience of those intellectual joys and that happiness which await any one who is serious, loyal, reverent in the presence of the divine work that offers itself as an object of study to the assiduous. another besides himself had already received this teaching of nature in exactly this place. rude, whom the bourbons had exiled on their return to france because of his worship of napoleon, passed several years in brussels and executed there a number of works, among others the famous bas-reliefs of the château de tervueren, since destroyed by fire; "la chasse de méléagre," of which the authorities of the belgian department of fine arts were fortunately able to take casts. on his way between brussels and tervueren, rude went every day several leagues on foot, crossing the forest of soignes, where he, too, endeavored to forget the lessons of the ecole des beaux-arts, on the benches of which he had, according to his own confession, lost many years. [illustration: caryatid--taken at meudon in rodin's garden.] in addition to these works of decorative art, rodin executed a number of busts and sketches. he even found time to make a large figure modeled after his wife, a figure draped like a gothic statue, which he worked over lovingly. it had the same disastrous fate as that which befell the other one at paris, and for the same reason; poverty prevented the artist from having a cast taken of his work in time: like the "bacchante," it was completely destroyed. despite this loss, the sculptor was not discouraged; work for him was a happiness which was begun anew each day; he at once began on another subject. this time he took for his model a young man whose acquaintance he had made and who willingly consented to pose for him. this young man was not a model by trade, spoiled by the conventional attitudes which the parisian sculptors impose on professionals. he was a soldier, living in barracks near rodin's house. as soon as the sculptor saw, disengaging itself from the clothes, the graceful figure of this boy of twenty-five who was not aware of his beauty and did quite simply whatever his companion asked him, he promised himself not to abandon this work before he had carried it as far as his skill permitted him to go. his model disposed himself in simple attitudes, which were not vitiated by any pretentious forethoughts. one day he came toward him, his arms upraised, his head thrown back, with an air of youthfully voluptuous lassitude that filled the artist with enthusiasm. one would have said that he was a young hero staggering under the shock of a wound. and rodin set himself to execute the statue of the wounded hero. but nature lends itself to infinite interpretations. the sense of an attitude that is well rendered creates of itself more comprehensive ideas. when we contemplate one who is wounded or ill, obscure impressions agitate our spirit, impelling it toward ideas higher than those of wounds and illness. it skirts the frontiers of death, the enigma of annihilation or of the world to come, and all those unformulated sentiments, which in their confused flight haunt the profound regions of the soul. before his beautiful model rodin experienced these emotions and transcribed them upon his sculpture. in its unblemished nudity, it bears the sign of no one epoch; it is the eternal man touched in his innermost sensibility by something of which he knows not the cause. is it his soul, is it his flesh that trembles? one does not know. no knowledge comes without suffering. rodin, aware immediately of this effect of transposition, in the delicious surprise of the artist who sometimes sees himself surpassed by his own work, christened the statue, "the man of the age of bronze," that is to say, one who is passing from the unconsciousness of primitive man into the age of understanding and of love. a few years later he gave it this still happier final name, "the man who awakens to nature." he worked over it eighteen months. there is no part of this harmonious figure that has not been passionately thought out. he had to render, beneath the supple covering of the skin, those firm, fine muscles which possess the elasticity of youth and its sobriety. in giving the sense of the presence of these things, one creates the illusion of their activity. this is the secret of great sculpture and of all the arts, to evoke that which we do not see by the quality of that which we do see. "carefully examine the venus de medici," rude used to advise his pupils, "and under the polish of the skin you will see the whole muscular system appear." rodin did not spare either his own strength or that of his model. an implacable goddess led him on, his conscience. he did not content himself with rendering only the masses that his direct vision gave him. in this way he would have possessed only two dimensions, the length and width of the human body. he needed the exact relief of masses, which is the basis of _ronde-bosse_, of "cubic sculpture." he studied his profiles not only from below, but from above. he mounted a painting ladder and looked down over his model; he measured the surface of the skull, which, seen from above, has an ovoid form; he took and compared with his clay model the dimensions of the shoulders, the chest, the hips, the feet as they appeared with the floor as a background. he observed the points where the arm muscles were inserted, and those of the thighs and the legs. how, after such a rigorously minute process of noting his masses, could his work be flat? that became impossible. but the geometric labor, the taking of measurements, was not all. the next question was to reassemble the different profiles by careful transcription. there is an entire school of conscientious sculptors who believe that they can obtain reality by the simple method of making identical points correspond. they multiply the measurements taken from the model with the aid of a plumb-line and a compass; it is only a mechanical process which does not even give good practical effects. to unify the manifold surface of the human body, to endow the whole with the suppleness of life, with its harmonious continuity and poise, the personal judgment of the artist must unceasingly intervene. his own special taste is supremely what adjusts the elements which are waiting to be unified by him in order to take on animation and to live one beside another. it is during this last effort that the expression, summoned up by the truth of the ensemble, comes almost of itself to the fingers of the sculptor. if the preceding principles have not been scrupulously observed, it seems to refuse to come; it is the reward only of conscience joined with intelligence; it is the fruit of this indissoluble union that works in the spirit of the true artist. the true expression is that to which we give the indefinable name of poetry. [illustration: man awakening to nature.] since the creation of "the man who awakens to nature," in which during two years he had eagerly sought it, this became the characteristic of rodin's talent. he had conquered it for all time; and so while his insatiable will applies itself with no less energy to other researches, that of movement, of character, of lighting, and sometimes over-emphasizes them, the work that comes from his hand may appear strange, excessive; it will never be mediocre, never indifferent. and now let us glance at the image of this young man, this proud, unblemished human plant. all we have just been saying is forgotten in the force of our impression. the most powerful impression, first of all, is indolence. it is absorbed in itself; it exhausts like a great draught of life the veins of those who respond to it. hence the silence, the long, dumb contemplation, the sense of incertitude one experiences in the presence of its beauty. it is not to our spirit that it first addresses itself. its voluptuousness, whencesoever come, enchants our senses; then the intellect demands an explanation, studies it, traces back the sensation to its sources through one of those rapid and manifold changes which are the law of such natural phenomena as light, sound, electricity. "the man who awakens to nature," said rodin, in the presence of his statue. indeed the body bends over, as if under the exquisite caress of the breezes of spring. the hand rests itself upon the head, flung back as if to hold in the somewhat mournful splendor of some too beautiful vision. the whole torso is gently stirred by the emotion springing up from the depths of the flesh to die out upon the surface of the imperceptibly agitated muscles. he leans lightly backward, bending like a bow and at the same time like a traveler walking toward the dawn; he is drawn on by the desire to renew this inner emotion that swells his human heart almost to the bursting-point. by this double movement reconstituting life, the action does not interrupt itself. it evokes the past and the future; the obscure shadows out of which this soul is endeavoring to emerge and the bright regions toward which it advances. auguste rodin was at this time thirty-five years old. in the career of the artist, this admirable figure has a special significance, that of something symbolic. it marks one of the happiest phases of the sculptor's life, the period of revelation through which he had just been living during his sojourn by the forest of groenendael. he, too, had awakened to nature in the heart of the sacred wood; he, too, had come to know the somewhat dazzling torment of a being fully awake to the beauty of the world. this beauty he had at last penetrated; he felt it with all the strength of a ripened heart, he adored it; he made it his religion. such is the inner history of this statue. there is another, a history of the anecdotal sort, which is well known to-day, but which it is proper to recall in a complete biography of the master. the adventure of "the age of bronze" was the first resounding battle that rodin fought in his struggle for the cause of art. it was a victory, but only after great combats. the plaster model appeared in the salon of . before this proud and spirited figure a number of visitors paused, ravished by a sensation that was absolutely new. in itself there was nothing clamorous, no attempt to attract attention by extravagance of gesture or exaggerated expression--quite the contrary; the fragrance of a shy beauty, an idyllic freshness, mingled with the passionate poetry of a virile, artistic conscience, an exquisite sense of measure, a delightful elegance characteristically french, of the north of france, grave and restrained, and with a something hitherto unseen, a vigor till then unknown diffused through this adolescent flesh, irradiating it with tenderness, with a noble charm, a caressing sadness. immediately the rumor began to circulate, welcomed here, spurned there, by the world of professionals, amateurs, and journalists: the anatomy of the new work was too exact, its modeling too precise for it to be an interpretation of the model; it was a cast from nature, and the sculptor who gave out as the result of his own labor this mechanical copy of a human body was nothing but an impostor. what does it matter? thought the public in its up-and-down common sense. there are plenty of fine casts from nature; so much the better for the name of rodin if he has been particularly successful in this line. but rodin was indignant. this nude, so obstinately worked over, a cast! that he should have committed such a deception, he the scrupulous molder of clay! oh, he knew well enough that most of the great modern sculptors do not burden themselves with so many scruples and lend themselves too often to the hasty method of taking casts; he condemned it with all the force of his own probity. he knew well that in this very salon of more than fifty pieces of sculpture about which nothing was said owed their existence to this malpractice of which he was accused and of which he would never be guilty, because he considered it the very negation of art. for of course taking casts is nothing but the reproduction of nature in its immobility. by means of it one is able to take the impression of forms, but one cannot grasp movement or expression. it is possible to take the mold of an arm, a leg, an inert body; one can take a good cast of the stiffened mask of the dead; one cannot calculate through the medium of the plaster the attitude and the modifications of form of a man walking or falling or the eloquence of a face lighted up by the reflection of the inner mind. this transcription of the whole is the exclusive privilege of the artist. he alone seizes and fixes the general impression; for it is made up not only of the immediate movement, but of that which precedes and that which follows. his eye alone registers the rapid succession, and his skill reproduces it. while the cast, like the photograph, only constitutes a unity detached from the whole, sculpture from nature reëstablishes the whole itself and represents the uninterrupted vibration which is life. that explains how there happen to be, on the one hand, so many hard figures, weak and cold images, turned out hastily by lazy and conscienceless sculptors, and, on the other, those works that possess a charm that is mysterious to those who know nothing of its source, who are unaware of this method of observation and labor which a supreme effort veils in the easy grace and the apparent facility that enchants us in the things of nature. the accusation brought against rodin became more definite. there was a veritable upheaval of opinion in the world of the salons. he protested, with the firmness of an artist resolved to suffer no blot upon his honor. he insisted upon receiving justice. unknown, without means of support, without fortune, he might well have waited a long time for it. he turned toward belgium, seeking defenders in the country where he had made "the age of bronze"; but the academic virus did not spare him; the official sculptors remained deaf to the appeal of their confrère. for that matter, where did he come from, this ambitious stone-cutter who claimed the title of sculptor without waiting on the good pleasure of the pontiffs? rodin's model alone, the young soldier of brussels, became indignant at the affront to his sculptor. he wanted to hasten to paris and exhibit himself naked before the eye of the jury of honor which had just been constituted and cry out to them that he had posed nearly two years for the artist who had been so unjustly attacked. but nothing is simple. he had posed, thanks to the special good will of the captain commanding the company to which he belonged, and in defiance of military regulations. to reveal this fact would be to compromise the officer, and so he had to remain silent. rodin had photographs and casts taken from his model and sent them to the experts. all this was costly and uncertain. it was only after months of waiting that they were examined. on the jury were several art critics, including charles iriarte, a learned writer and distinguished mind, and paul de saint-victor, author of the "deux-masques," the sumptuous writer of so much brilliant prose. alas! the most insignificant sculptor, provided he had only been sincere, could have settled rodin's case a hundred times better. a man of his own trade, possessing the elements of justice, would have immediately decided the question according to the facts, while the critics and writers relied wholly upon personal impressions, and, to the great bitterness of the sculptor, when they delivered an opinion they did not altogether reject the accusation that he had taken casts, allowing doubt to rest upon the honesty of rodin. he himself did not know what to do next. chance was more favorable to him than men. at that time he was executing for a great decorator some ornamental motives destined for one of the buildings of the universal exposition of . the sculptor, alfred boucher, a pupil of paul dubois, came one day on a business errand to see the decorator. in the studios he noticed rodin at work on the model of a group of children intended for a cartouche. boucher, who knew about the accusation that hung over him, observed him with the liveliest interest. he witnessed the rapid, skilful, amazingly dexterous execution producing under his very eye a tender efflorescence of childish flesh on the firm and perfectly constructed little bodies. _and rodin was working without models!_ alfred boucher was a product of the ecole; he had taken the _grand prix de rome_; he was ten years younger than rodin; but he was an honest man; he hastened to relate to his master, paul dubois, what he had seen. the creator of the "florentine singer" and "charity" in his turn wished to see things for himself. with claude chapu he went to the decorator's and both of them decided then and there that the hand that molded so skilfully from memory the figures of the cherubs was certainly capable, in its extraordinary knowledge of human anatomy, of having executed that of "the age of bronze." thereupon they convinced their confrères and decided to write the under-secretary of state a solemn letter in which all of them, answering for the good faith of rodin, declared that he had made a beautiful statue and that he would become a great sculptor. the letter was signed by carrier-belleuse, paul dubois, chapu, thomas delaplanche, chaplin falguière. [illustration: bust of the countess of w----.] this tempered considerably the rancor of the artist. it is a strange fact that for years he underrated this statue. in he gave his first great exhibition of all his work. it was to the maison d'art of brussels that the honor of this project was due, and it was carried out in a style and with a good taste which no later exhibition of the master has surpassed, or even attained. as he had charged me with the supervision of the sending off of his works, to the number of fifty, i begged him to include among them "the age of bronze." i hoped that the public, and especially the artists of belgium, might be able to study the evolution of his technique through his typical works, executed at different periods of his career. nothing could induce him to consent to it. he declared that in twenty years his modeling had undergone a complete transformation, that it had become more spacious and more supple, and that the exhibition of this statue could serve no purpose and be of good to nobody. i urged him to go and look at it again. the bronze, sent to the salon of , with the plaster figure of "st. john the baptist in prayer," awarded, oh splendor of official miserliness! a medal of the third class, had been bought by the state a few years later and set up in a corner of the luxembourg gardens, an out-of-the-way corner, but one that the light shadows of the young trees made charming. the master refused. two or three years afterward, one morning while we were talking, i led him unsuspecting toward this little grove. thinking of something else he lifted his head, casting an indifferent glance at the solitary bronze. surprised, he examined it, while a happy emotion lighted up his face; then he walked slowly around it. finally he admitted quietly that he had been mistaken, that the statue seemed to him really beautiful, well constructed, and carefully sculptured. in order to comprehend it he had had to forget it, to see it again suddenly, and to judge it as if it had been the work of another hand. after this readoption, his affection for it was restored; he had several copies cast in bronze and cut in stone, and it has become perhaps one of his most popular and most sought-after works. museums of europe and america, lovers of art in both hemispheres, consider it an honor to possess replicas. it was the first of rodin's great statues, or, rather, the first that has been preserved. several other works of capital importance serve as landmarks in the progress of his talent. around them are grouped fragments, busts, innumerable delightful little compositions, all treated with the same care and equally reflecting the result of his studies; but, as ever, it is the major works that mark most visibly the points of departure and arrival of the different periods of his artistic development. these works are: "the age of bronze" ( ); "saint john the baptist" ( ); "the gate of hell" ( - --, not finished); "the creation of man" ( ); "the burghers of calais" ( ); "victor hugo" ( ); "balzac" ( ); "the seasons" (pediments of stone, ); "ariadne" (in course of execution). these works will be described and characterized, in the course of this book, at the dates of their appearance. flemish painting--journeys in italy and france during his stay in belgium, rodin studied the flemish painters. free from the prejudices of the schools, unaware of the theories of the critics, sensitive to the beautiful in every form, following only his personal taste supported by the study of the masters, he ranged over the vast domain of art through regions the most dissimilar and superficially the most opposed. of course he had his preferences; he returned unceasingly to the antique and the gothic; but his preferences did not blind him. his admiration passed rapidly from the splendors of greek and roman architecture to the voluptuous graces of the seventeenth century. his love for donatello and michelangelo did not prevent him from appreciating bernini. attracted first by the marvelous flemish gothic artists, memling, massys, the van eycks, he was later delighted with the homely scenes of jan steen, of brueghel, of teniers; he enjoyed them as an artist and as a simple man who knew the value of domestic joys. then he was haunted by the sensual pomp of jordaens and above all rubens. [illustration: the poet and the muse.] the triumphant brush of rubens sculptured as much as it painted. the science of foreshortening and that of ceiling painting, his way of modeling forms in the light and by means of light--all this brought his art into the realm of sculpture; and when rodin came to seek effects of light and shadow that were new to sculpture, he remembered the lessons of the antwerp master. from that time on rubens was for him a splendid subject for study and would have fortified him, had that been necessary, in the love of drawing; for beautiful drawing leads, to everything, to _color_, in sculpture as well as in painting. flemish art was not enough to satisfy this thirst for understanding that devoured the soul of the artist now in the full swing of the fermenting force of his faculties. he wished to see italy or at least to catch a glimpse of it. his resources were so slender indeed that his journey could not have been long. it did not matter. he would form an idea of the immensity of its treasure and confirm in himself the desire to return. he wished also to see france, as alluring to him as greece, and whose cathedrals are perhaps not less beautiful than the parthenon. he started for italy in , and he accomplished his first tour of france in . he set forth. he was young and strong; he made the pass of mont cenis on foot. he was unknown and without connections. what did it matter? in the midst of these scenes so radiant with memories of history and art, did he not feel an intoxication such as the soldiers of bonaparte alone must have experienced, catching sight of the plains of lombardy, where they were to forget the hardships of the campaign? for rodin, italy meant the antique; it meant donatello and michelangelo. the antique he had already to a considerable extent studied in the louvre. donatello and michelangelo conquered him at the first glance--a tumultuous conquest. the severity of donatello's style impassioned him; the rigid honesty of his realism, the desire of this younger brother of dante to see things grandly, the equal desire to see things simply, this gothic genius deeply moved "in the mid-way of this our mortal life" by pagan beauty and touched by the breath of the renaissance, impressed the french artist and became a dominating memory. from that time on in the most beautiful of his busts, those of jean-paul laurens, puvis de chavannes, lord wyndham, lord horace walden, mr. ryan, he was to appear as a disciple of the florentine master, not by a literal imitation of his methods, which he thoroughly grasped, but by similar qualities of observation and synthesis. still, this was not until after he had made other studies, while michelangelo took hold upon him immediately and completely and became an actual obsession that might have proved dangerous to a sculptor less severe with himself, less determined to discover his own path. the dazzling richness of modeling, the majesty of the great figures of the prodigious florentine, and their fullness of movement--for their immobility is charged with movement--the somber melancholy of his thought, his flaming and shadowy soul, his literary romanticism, a romanticism like that of shakspere, overwhelmed rodin with that formidable sense of an almost sorrowful admiration that all experience who visit the medici tombs in the new sacristy. he studied also the later marbles of michelangelo, which stood at that time in the gardens of the pitti palace and have since been removed to the municipal museum of florence. every one knows these powerful blocks, these vast human forms, only half disengaged from the marble, from which they seem to be endeavoring to escape in order to give birth to themselves by a rending effort that is characteristic with all the force of a symbol of the tragic genius of buonarroti. "unfinished works"; it is thus the catalogues designate them. unfinished works, indeed, but why? was it age that stilled, before the end, the hand of the giant of sculpture? or was it not rather that he judged them too strangely beautiful in their incompleteness, that they seemed to him more powerful thus, still captive to the material that bound them groaning, as it were, in their tremulous flesh? the public pays little attention to these sublime masses because it is told that they are not _finished_. not finished? or infinite? that is the question. far from weighing them down, the marble that envelops them throws about them the charm of the indeterminate and by means of this unites them with the atmosphere. the parts that are wholly disengaged enable one to divine those that remain hidden; they are veiled without being obliterated, like mountain-tops among the clouds; and this half-mystery, instead of diminishing, increases the harmony of the bodies trembling with life under their mantle of stone. in the presence of an effect so marvelous, so calculated, one cannot cease from asking if it was really death or if it was not rather the sovereign taste of the workman that arrested the chisel. while he was fashioning his statues out of the marble itself, with that fury that has passed into legend, did he not find himself, face to face with these unexpected effects which the material offered him of itself, in the midst of one of those happy situations by which the talent of the masters alone enables them to profit? however that may be, rodin was struck as if by a revelation. what the progress of his work had tardily disclosed to michelangelo was soon to become for his disciple a principle of decorative art. instead of disengaging his figures entirely, he was to leave them half submerged in the transparent marble. this method, which has become famous to-day, seemed an unheard-of thing to those who were unfamiliar with the florentine blocks; but rodin has never failed to acknowledge the paternity of the sculptor of "the thinker." following in his steps, many artists have employed this method at random, without possessing the essential qualities that enable one to control these effects, and under their powerless chisels the enchanting device no longer possesses any meaning. [illustration: the thinker.] rodin himself waited until he possessed a thorough knowledge of marble and the manner of treating it; it was a stroke of fate by which he rediscovered the phenomena of envelopment that had so transported him in the municipal museum. he had by that time the wisdom to guard himself from doing anything inconsistent with his material. he followed out the suggestions it gave him, and developed an infinite variety in the methods of handling it. on his return from italy he continued to be haunted by the unsurpassable vigor of michelangelo's workmanship. he sought to discover what was the outstanding gift that conferred upon him this power and this mysterious empire over the spirit. until then, with the majority of artists of the modern school, he had believed that the chief quality of sculpture lay in seizing the _character_ of the model; but he came to see how many works concerned only with expressing character fail of real significance. since how many romanticists have sacrificed to character without leaving any works that are lasting! after his journey rodin decided that the strength of michelangelo lay undoubtedly in his _movement_. returning to his studio, he executed a quantity of sketches and even large figures like "the creation of man," the title of which, although he had not been to rome, is a souvenir of the frescos of the sistine chapel; he made busts like that of bellona, after having directed his models to assume michelangelesque poses. for all this, he did not attain to the grandeur, the soul-disturbing authority of the florentine master. without becoming discouraged, he went on observing ceaselessly. far from imposing upon his model positions thought out in advance, he left him free to wander about the studio at the pleasure of his own caprice, ready to arrest him at a word when a beautiful movement passed before his eyes. then, six months after his return from italy, he found that the model assumed of his own accord the very poses of which michelangelo alone had seemed to him to possess the secret; he realized that the sublime sculptor had taken them direct from nature, from the rhythm of the human body in action, and that he had done nothing but seize and immortalize them. "michelangelo," he says, "revealed me to myself, revealed to me the truth of forms. i went to florence to find what i possessed in paris and elsewhere, but it is he who taught me this." this does not prevent certain critics from asserting out of the depth of their incompetence that he has never felt the influence of this master and that he has never even given his work serious consideration. those who know rodin well know that, on the contrary, he never fails to give serious consideration to anything which is worth considering at all and that his power of observation is the basis of his genius. always seeking a final method, he came back to the idea with which his earliest education had already inspired him and which his self-communings had only confirmed: that the value of sculpture lies entirely in the _modeling_. this is the secret of michelangelo; it is also that of the ancients and of all the great artists of the past and of modern times. for the rest, through his spacious movements, his balancing of equal masses, the sculptor of the tombs taught him that the supreme quality consists in seeking in the modeling the _living, determining line of the scheme_, the supple axis of the human body. he himself held this principle of the ancients, of whom he was a disciple, as far as modeling is concerned, while in his composition and his handling of light he is a gothic. soon after his return from italy, rodin executed the great study entitled "the creation of man." in it he exaggerated the rhythm so characteristic of the florentine, the balancing of masses, the melancholy contraction of the body under the weight of an inexpressible inner suffering. when one examines the figure, this exaggeration certainly suggests something overworked, something forced, which michelangelo knew how to avoid and which here creates a somewhat painful impression. but later, when rodin conceived the idea of placing his statue at the summit of "the gate of hell," this strained appearance disappeared. seen thus, a lofty shape lighted up from below, it takes on true beauty; it is in its right place; it dominates the work and, as it were, blesses it. it has the affecting gesture of christian charity. [illustration: adolescence.] rodin's note-book introductions by judith cladel i ancient workshops and modern schools at a period in which, among the many manifestations of intellectual activity in the nations, art is placed in the background, the advent of a great artist invariably calls forth the same phenomena: a few men of taste become enthusiasts, the majority become indignant, and the public, not being possessed of sufficient esthetic education, and intolerant because of their lack of understanding, ridicule the intruder who has overthrown the accepted standards of the century. friends and foes alike consider him a revolutionist; as a matter of fact, he is in open revolt against ignorance and general incompetence. little by little the great truth embodied in such a man is revealed. comprehension, like a contagion, seems to take hold of the minds of people, and impels them to study his art at first hand. a study not only of his own significance, but of the principles which he represents, quickly reveals that the work of this innovator, this revolutionist, is, in fact, deeply allied to tradition, and, far from being a mysterious, isolated manifestation, is, on the contrary, closely linked to general artistic ideals. our aim is to penetrate the doctrines of this master, his method, his manner of working--all that which at other times would have been called his secrets. auguste rodin's career has passed through the inevitable phases. he, who has been so generally discussed and attacked, is to-day the most regarded of all artists. he likes to talk of his art; for he knows that his observations have a priceless value, that of experience--the experience of sixty years of uninterrupted work--and of a conscience perhaps even more exacting to-day than at the time of his impetuous youth. he says, "my principles are the laws of experience." the combination of these principles embodies his greatest precept; namely, that of thinking and executing a thing simultaneously. we must listen to rodin as we would listen to michelangelo or rembrandt if they were living. for his method may be the starting-point of an artistic renaissance in europe, perhaps throughout the whole world. definite signs of a decided resurrection in taste are already manifesting themselves, and it is a splendid satisfaction for the illustrious sculptor to receive such acknowledgment in his glorious old age. for, like every great genius, he has a profound love for the race from which he springs, and feels a strong instinctive confidence in it. indeed, how should this be otherwise? in the course of centuries, has not this wonderful celtic race on various occasions reconstructed its understanding and interpretation of beauty? auguste rodin expresses himself by preference on subjects from which he can draw an actual lesson. he is no theorist; he has an eminently positive mind, one might even say a practical mind. his teachings, unlike the abstract teachings of books, can be characterized by two words, observation and deduction. his are not more or less arbitrary meditations in which personal imagination plays the principal part; they are rather the account of a sagacious, truthful traveler, of a soldier who relates the story of his campaigns, or of a scholar who records the result of an analysis. reality is his only basis, and with justice to himself he can say, "i am not a rhetorician, but a man of action." we hear him chat, it may be in his atelier about some piece of antique sculpture which has just come into his possession or about a work he has in hand, or during his rambles through his garden, which is situated in the most delightful country in the suburbs of the capital, or on a walk through the museums, or through the old quarter of paris. for in his opinion "the streets of paris, with their shops of old furniture, etchings, and works of art, are a veritable museum, far less tiring than official museums, and from which one imbibes just as much as one can." * * * * * i use the words of the people, of the man in the street; for thoughts should be clear and easily comprehended. i desire to be understood by the great majority, and i leave scholarly words and unusual phrasing to specialists in estheticism. moreover, what i say is very simple. it is within the grasp of ordinary intelligence. up to now it has been of hardly any value. it is something quite new, and will remain so as long as the ideas which i stand for are not actively carried out. if these ideas were understood and applied, the destruction of ancient works of art would cease immediately. by bad restoration we are ruining our most beautiful works of art, our marvelous architecture, our gothic cathedrals, renaissance city halls, all those old houses that transformed france into a garden of beauty of which it was impossible to grow weary, for everything was a delight to the eye and intelligence. our workmen would have to be as capable as those of former times to restore those works of art without changing them, they would have to possess the same wonderfully trained eye and hand. but to-day we have lost that conception and execution. we live in a period of ignorance, and when we put our hand to a masterpiece, we spoil it. restoring, in our way, is almost like jewelers replacing pearls with false diamonds, which the ignorant accept with complacency. the americans who buy our paintings, our antique furniture, our old engravings, our materials, pay very dearly for them. at least we think so. as a matter of fact they buy them very cheaply, for they obtain originals which can never be duplicated. we mock at the american collectors; in reality we ought to laugh at ourselves. for we permit our most precious treasures to be taken out of the country, and it is they who have the intelligence to acquire them. my ideas, once understood and applied, would immediately revive art, all arts, not only sculpture, painting, and architecture, but also those arts which are called minor, such as decoration, tapestry, furniture, the designing of jewelry and medals, etc. the artisan would revert to fundamental truth, to the principles of the ancients--principles which are the eternal basis of all art, regardless of differences of race and temperament. construction and modeling in the first place, art is only a close study of nature. without that we can have no salvation and no artists. those who pretend that they can improve on the living model, that glorious creation of which we know so little, of which we in our ignorance barely grasp the admirable proportions, are insignificant persons, and they will never produce anything but mediocre work. we must strive to understand nature not only with our heart, but above all with our intellect. he who is impressionable, but not intelligent, is incapable of expressing his emotion. the world is full of men who worship the beauty of women; but how many can make beautiful portraits or beautiful busts of the woman they adore? intelligence alone, after lengthy research, has discovered the general principles without which there can be no real art. in sculpture the first of these principles is that of construction. construction is the first problem that faces an artist studying his model, whether that model be a human being, animal, tree, or flower. the question arises regarding the model as a whole, and regarding it in its separate parts. all form that is to be reproduced ought to be reproduced in its true dimensions, in its complete volume. and what is this volume? it is the space that an object occupies in the atmosphere. the essential basis of art is to determine that exact space; this is the alpha and omega, this is the general law. to model these volumes in depth is to model in the round, while modeling on the surface is bas-relief. in a reproduction of nature such as a work of art attempts, sculpture in the round approaches reality more closely than does bas-relief. to-day we are constantly working in bas-relief, and that is why our products are so cold and meager. sculpture in the round alone produces the qualities of life. for instance, to make a bust does not consist in executing the different surfaces and their details one after another, successively making the forehead, the cheeks, the chin, and then the eyes, nose, and mouth. on the contrary, from the first sitting the whole mass must be conceived and constructed in its varying circumferences; that is to say, in each of its profiles. a head may appear ovoid, or like a sphere in its variations. if we slowly encircle this sphere, we shall see it in its successive profiles. as it presents itself, each profile differs from the one preceding. it is this succession of profiles that must be reproduced, and that is the means of establishing the true volume of a head. each profile is actually the outer evidence of the interior mass; each is the perceptible surface of a deep section, like the slices of a melon, so that if one is faithful to the accuracy of these profiles, the reality of the model, instead of being a superficial reproduction, seems to emanate from within. the solidity of the whole, the accuracy of plan, and the veritable life of a work of art, proceed therefrom. the same method applies to details which must all be modeled in conformity with the whole. deference to plan necessitates accuracy of modeling. the one is derived from the other. the first engenders the second. these are the main principles of construction and modeling--principles to which we owe the force and charm of works of art. they are the key not only to the handicraft of sculpture, but to all the handicrafts of art. for that which is true of a bust applies equally to the human form, to a tree, to a flower, or to an ornament. this is neither mysterious nor hard to understand. it is thoroughly commonplace, very prosaic. others may say that art is emotion, inspiration. those are only phrases, tales with which to amuse the ignorant. sculpture is quite simply the art of depression and protuberance. there is no getting away from that. without a doubt the sensibility of an artist and his particular temperament play a part in the creation of a work of art, but the essential thing is to command that science which can be acquired only by work and daily experience. the essential thing is to respect the law, and the characteristic of that fruitful law is to be the same for all things. moreover, such was the method employed by the ancients, the method which we ourselves employed till the end of the eighteenth century, and by which the spirit of the gothic genius and that of the renaissance and of the periods of culture and elegance of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were transmitted to us. only in our day have we completely lost that technic. these rules do not constitute a system peculiar to myself. they are general principles which govern the world of art, just as other immutable laws govern the celestial world. they are mathematical principles which i found again because my work inevitably led me to follow in the footsteps of the great masters, my ancestors. the traditional laws of ancient art in days of old, precise laws were handed down from generation to generation, from master to student, in all the workshops of the workers in art--sculptors, painters, decorators, cabinet-makers, jewelers. but at that time workshops existed where one actually taught, where the master worked in view of the pupil. in our day by what have we replaced that marvelously productive school, the workshop? by academies in which one learns nothing, because one sets out from such a contrary point of view. these principles of art were first pointed out to me not by a celebrated sculptor, or by an authorized teacher, but by a comrade in the workshop, a humble artisan, a little plasterer from the neighborhood of blois called constant simon. we worked together at a decorator's. i was quite at the beginning of my career, earning six francs a day. our models were leaves and flowers, which we picked in the garden. i was carving a capital when constant simon said to me: "you don't go about that correctly. you make all your leaves flatwise. turn them, on the contrary, with the point facing you. execute them in depth and not in relief. always work in that manner, so that a surface will never seem other than the termination of a mass. only thus can you achieve success in sculpture." i understood at once. since then i have discovered many other things, but that rule has remained my absolute basis. constant simon was only an obscure workman, but he possessed the principles and a little of the genius of the great ornamentists who worked at the châteaux of the loire. on the st. michel fountain in paris there are very beautifully carved decorations, rich and at the same time graceful, which were made by the hand of this little modeler, who knew far more than all the professors of esthetics. such was the purpose the workshops of old served. the apprentice passed successively through all the stages and became acquainted with all the secrets of his handicraft. he began by sweeping the studio, and that first taught him care and patience, which are the essential virtues of a workman. he posed, he served as model for his comrades. the master in turn worked before him among his students. he heard his companions discuss their art, he benefited by the discoveries that they communicated to one another. he found himself faced every day by those unforeseen difficulties which go to make an artist till the moment when the artist is sufficiently capable to master his difficulties. alternately, they were both teacher and companion, and they conveyed to one another the science of the ancients. what have we to-day in place of those splendid institutions which developed character and intelligence simultaneously? schools at which the students think only of obtaining a prize, not attained by close study, but by flattering the professors. the professors themselves, without any deep attachment for their academies, come hurriedly, overburdened by official duties and all sorts of work; weighed down by perfunctory obligations, they correct the students' papers hastily, and hurriedly return to their regular occupation. as to the students, twenty or thirty work from a single model, which is some distance from them and around which they can hardly turn. they ignore all those inevitable laws which are learned in the course of work, and which escape the attention of an artist working alone. they attend courses, or read books on esthetics written in technical language with obscure, abstract terms, lacking all connection with concrete reality--books in which the same mistakes are repeated because frequently they are copied from one another. what sort of students can develop under such disastrous conditions? if one among them is seriously desirous of learning, he breaks loose from his destructive surroundings, is obliged to lose several years first in ridding himself of a poor method, and then in searching for a method which formerly one had mastered on leaving the atelier. that is the method that i preach to-day as emphatically as i can, calling attention to the numerous benefits and advantages of taking up a variety of handicrafts. aside from sculpture and drawing, i have worked at all sorts of things--ornamentation, ceramics, jewelry. i have learned my lesson from matter itself and have adapted myself accordingly. only in being faithful to this principle can one understand and know how to work. i am an artisan. will my experience be of benefit to others? i hope so. at all events, we have a bit to relearn. it will take years of patience and application to rise from the abyss of ignorance into which we have fallen. however, i believe in a renaissance. a number of our artists have already seen the light--the light of intellectual truth. acts of barbarism against masterpieces cannot be committed any more without arousing the indignation of cultivated people. that in itself is an inestimable gain, for those works of art are the relics of our traditions, and if we have the strength to become an artistic people again, to reincarnate an era of beauty, then those are the works of art that will serve as our models, expressions of a national conscience that will be the milestones on our path. * * * * * judged by his work, auguste rodin is the most modern of artists; judged by his life and character, he is unquestionably a man of bygone days. as a sculptor, he is such as were phidias, praxiteles, and the master architects of the middle ages; that is to say, he is of all times. one single idea guides his thoughts, one single aim arouses his energies--art, art through the study of nature. it is by the concentration of his unusual mind on a single purpose that he attains his remarkable understanding of man, physical and moral, his contemporary, and of the spirit of our age. in the lifelike features of his statues he inscribes the history of the day. they seem to live, and the potency of their life enters into us and dominates us. for the moment we are only a silent spring, merely reflecting their authority. through this secret of genius, his statues and groups have an individual charm. they have taken their place in the history of sculpture. there is the charm of the antique, the charm of the gothic, and the charm of michelangelo. there is also the charm of rodin. [illustration: head of minerva.] ii scattered thoughts on flowers in rodin's statues we find his conception of eternal man--man as he really is. they are molded on modern thought, with all its variations. one might suppose that these beautiful beings of marble and bronze had been named by the characteristic poets of the century, victor hugo, musset, baudelaire. beginning with the renaissance and particularly during the seventeenth century, the royal courts were the great salons in which the taste of the day was developed. necessity made courtiers of the artists, for to obtain orders, they had to win the good-will of the sovereigns, the great lords, and the financiers. art then lost its collective character, the artist his independence and strength. there was no longer the united effort of artists, inspired by love of beauty, to create great masterpieces such as cathedrals, city halls, and castles. the artist wasted his abilities in fragmentary bits, his time in worldly duties. to-day it is even worse. keeping house, traveling, receiving, exhibiting in a hundred different places, living in great style, carrying on his life-work--all these crowd out the first, and formerly the essential, object of the artist, his work. it is these that lower art to the last degree of decadence. rodin has kept aloof from this manner of living, has avoided these innumerable occasions for wasting time, or, rather, has never allowed them to take possession of him. modest, unpretentious, traveling little or within a limited radius, the unremitting study of the divine model and of the masterpiece, man, forms his whole ambition, while it is also the source of endless delight to him. "admiration," he says, "is a joy daily kindled afresh," and again, "i talk out of the fullness of life; it belongs to me in a sense larger than that of ownership." in his villa at meudon, in the midst of his collections of antiques, he pursues this study incessantly. he who is admitted to the modest garden of the great master first beholds with delight a greek marble in an arbor. at the turn of a path there is the torso of a goddess resting on an antique column; in a niche in the wall, a roman bust. beneath the high arch of the peristyle of the studio, the architecture of which blends into the surrounding background as in the paintings of claude lorrain, there is a magnificent torso. finally dominating the garden and the valley it overlooks, standing on a knoll and projected against the clear sky, there is an isolated façade from a castle of the seventeenth century, its delicate balustrades and casements outlined against the blue sky as in the decorative paintings of paul veronese. these ruins are the remains of the château d'issy, the work of mansart. rodin saved them at the moment when their destruction at the hands of ignorant workmen was imminent, and at great expense reconstructed them near his residence. these fragments, this noble portico, seem as though placed by chance, but the keen observer quickly perceives the correctness of taste that has determined their disposition. each fragment forms part of an ensemble with the trees, the grass, the light, and the shadows, and to change any of these in the slightest degree would sacrifice some of its beauty. sculpture at its finest is architecture, and architecture is perhaps the greatest art, because it collaborates directly with nature. architecture lives through the life of things, and every hour of the day lends it a new expression. innumerable reflections were aroused in the mind of the master rodin when he essayed to place his treasures: the effect of the changing light on the object, the balancing of values, the relation of proper proportions, the appearance of the object in full light. all these he examined and studied, and he searched into the depths of the language of forms, to him as clear and as mysterious as beautiful music. this remarkable gift for determining the value of the object in its setting--a gift the secret of which is beyond the knowledge of the ignorant--has brought forth that peculiar poetic charm which permeates this little garden in a suburb of paris, a refuge of persecuted beauty. here the master confers with the artists of greece and france of other days. these are his elysian fields. in paris, where he is daily and where he works every afternoon, he lives in an exquisite, but ruinous, mansion of the eighteenth century, situated in a rustic, neglected park. there he finds his delight in the study of flowers and applies himself to it with his intense, never-dormant desire for understanding. his antique pottery is filled with anemones, carnations, and tulips. during his frugal meals they are before him, and his reverent love of them arouses his desire to understand them as completely as he does human beings. he analyzes and searches out their details without becoming insensible to the beauty of the whole. he jots down his discoveries, his words picture them; like la rochefoucauld, he searches into their character; but watching over their life admiringly and tenderly until they wither, he does not dissect them, does not destroy them. is not the flower the queen of ornaments, the inspiration of all races and ages, the very soul of artistic decoration? have not the hands of genius contrived to employ the most durable as well as the most fragile material to express this delicate beauty in greek and gothic capitals, in the stone lacework of cathedrals, the fabrics of gold and silk, brocades, tapestries, wrought iron-work, old bindings? is the splendor of stained-glass windows aught else than the splendor of a mass of beautiful flowers? [illustration: the bath.] "were this thoroughly understood," says rodin, "industrial art would be entirely revolutionized--industrial art, that barbarous term, an art which concerns itself with commerce and profit. "the young artists of to-day understand nothing; they copy to satiety the classic ornaments and designs, and reproduce them in so cold a manner that they lose all meaning. the ancients obtained their designs from nature. they found their models in the garden, even in the vegetable garden. they drew their inspiration from its source. the cabbage-leaf, the oak-leaf, the clover, the thistle, and the brier are the motives of the gothic capital. it is not photographic truth, but living truth, that we must seek in art." rodin writes his observations. he notes them down at the moment as they occur to him in all their freshness, and in this form they will be given here. at first glance, the reader may be surprised at their apparently fragmentary form. they may seem devoid of general continuity, but when one comprehends the great master's method, one sees that a bond much firmer than that of the mere word binds them together. they seem disjointed because here, as in his sculpture, the artist accepts only the essential, and rejects all superfluous detail. in reality they have the continuity of life, which is felt, but not seen, and which renders arbitrary transition unnecessary. this is the prerogative of genius, while all else is within the grasp of any one. his authority strikes us dumb; it puts to rout mere commonplace cleverness. * * * * * i have had primroses put in this little flower-pot. they are a bit crowded, and their poor little stems are prisoners; they are no longer in their garden. i look at them on my table like a vivisector. i admire their beautiful leaves, round-headed, vigorous, like peasants. they point toward me, and between them is the flower. the one on this side is resigned, and as beautiful as a caryatid. in profile it seems to hold up the leaf against which it leans and which gives it shade. these little flowers are not beautiful, nor are they radiant. they live peaceably, gently contented in their misery; and yet they offer something to one who is ill, as i am to-day, and cause him to write to ward off weariness. i always have flowers in the morning, and make no distinction between them and my models. many flowers together are like women with heads bowed down. there is no longer the sap of life in flowers in a vase. the lace work of the flower of the elder-tree--venice. the anemone is only an eye, cruelly melancholy. it is the eye of a woman who has been badly used. these anemones are flowers that have stayed up too late at night; flowers that are resplendent, with their colors as though spread over them superficially and wiped away. even in the spring, in the hour of anticipation, they are already in the fullness of enjoyment. like the flower of seduction, the anemones slowly change their form outlined in various ways, always restrained, however, and inclosed within their sphere. their petals have not a common destiny: some curl up, others are like a becoming collaret, still others seem to be running away. the delicate droop of the petals, standing out in relief, is like the eyelid of a child. although old, that one does not shed its petals. poor little flower with bent head, you are not ridiculous; you are pensive now that you are dying. you suffer from the cruelty of the stem which holds you back. flowers give their lives to us; they should be placed in persian vases. near them, gold and silver seem of no value. ah, dear friends, we must love you if we would have you speak to us! we must watch you or you fall from the vase, despairing, your leaves withered. the flowers and the vase harmonize by contrast. in this bouquet there are some with flexible stems which seem to leap up gracefully. the flower, surrounded by its frail, straight leaves, is as if suspended from the ledge of a wrought-iron balcony. ah, the adorable heart of adonis is incased within these flowers! the hyacinth is like a balustrade placed upside down. a bed of hyacinths resembles a mass of balusters. thus that great invention of the renaissance, the balustrade, allows us to gain through it a glimpse of nature. this ray of art, the flower, this delicate inspiration, unknowingly requires the intelligence of man to develop its possibilities. superb is this little rose-like flower among its spreading leaves. it is like an assumption. the double narcissus is a bird's-nest viewed from above. strange flowers, like so many throats! what a frail marvel they are! these three little narcissi group themselves like a cluster of electric lights. the dignity of nature impresses us on every hand. it is greatly apparent in flowers; and yet so small are they that some look on them merely as the decoration at a banquet. i will cast a narcissus in bronze; it shall serve as my seal. a maiden on a lake, that is the narcissus. little red marguerite, not yet open, sister to the strawberry, huddled in the shade which caresses you. the full-blown marguerite seems to play at _pigeon-vole_. it has rained for four hours; this is the hour when flowers quench their thirst. a marguerite in profile, a serpent's head with open jaws, stretching out its tongues! petals, white, like a little collar. seen in full face, its yellow-tinted heart is a little sun; its long petals are like fingers playing the piano. these white flowers are gulls with wings outstretched. they fly one after the other; this one, in adoration, has its petals thrown backward, like wings. whoever understands life loves flowers and their innocent caresses. these marguerites seem to retreat like a spider that finds itself discovered in the road. their buds stretch out their serpent-heads at the end of long stems, divided by intercepting leaves and entangling knots. does not love travel in a similar path rather than straight as an arrow? there is so much regularity in these dark-green leaves, extending at fixed intervals to right and left, and in the eternal dryness of the bouquet, that it calls to mind a persian miniature. no man has a heart pure enough to interpret the freshness of flowers. we cannot give expression to this freshness; it is beyond us. when it sheds its petals, the flower seems to disrobe and go to sleep on the earth. this is its last act of grace, showing its submission to god. what spirit possesses these flowers that die in silence! we should listen to them and give thanks. this red and black ranunculus proclaims the carnival; it is the carnival itself. the carnival is the very emblem of flowers. like them it, also, wears masks and costumes. it wears their colors, bright yellow, red--an imitation of the flowers of the sun. delightful carnival! delightful interpretation of flowers! for a long time in my youth i undervalued them. i am happy now to see them under another aspect, as the splendor of rome and the lavish intelligence of a bygone time. some one gave me tulips. they fascinate me variously. how great an artist is chance, knowing the last secret by which to win us! these yellow tulips, dipped in blood! what a treat to see true colors--reds, blues, greens, the art of stained glass! one is quite taken aback before these flowers, in which nature has expressed more than one can comprehend. it imparts that great mystery which is beyond us and signifies the presence of god. how magnificent the flower becomes as its youth passes! even the flowers have their setting sun. my bouquet is always the same, yet i never cease to look at it. a whirlwind, a very cyclone, this tulip has perished in the storm. like the wife of lot, it is possessed of fear. this one is open, all aflame like a burning bush. that one, all disheveled, comes toward me. full of ardor, it springs up, its petals strong and expanding, like a mouth curling forward. the violence of passion in flowers is pronounced. ah, the softness of love is found only in women! great artists, curb your curiosity, neglect the pleasures which offer themselves to you, so that you may better understand the secrets of god. iii portraits of women rodin's busts of women are perhaps the most charming part of his work. but to say this is almost a sacrilege, an affront to the grace of the small groups that, in this giant's work, swarm about the superior figures. but we need not search too far into this or yield to the pedantic mania for classifying to death. let us rather look at them without transforming the joy of admiration into the labor of cataloguing, and give ourselves up wholly to the pleasure of seeing and understanding. yes, these portraits of women are the graceful aspect of this work of power. they are the achievements of a force which knows its own strength, and here relaxes in caresses. if some among them disturb the spirit, most of them shed upon us a calm enjoyment, the delightful security that one breathes among all-powerful beings that wish to be gracious. they allay the sense of unrest aroused in us by those dramas in marble and bronze which a powerful intellect has conceived--that mind from which sprang "the burghers of calais," the two monuments to victor hugo, "the tower of labor," that imagination, glowing like a forge, which produced "the gate of hell," the sarmiento monument, the statue of balzac. here rodin's art extends to the utmost confines of grace. he has contrived to discover the most delicate secrets of nature. he models the petals of the lips just as nature curls the frail substance of the rose-leaf. by imperceptible gradations he attaches the delicate membranes of the eyelids to the angle of the temples just as nature in springtime attaches the leaves to the rough bark of trees. [illustration: the broken lily.] great thinkers never cease to be moved by the charm of weakness. the "eternal feminine" is just that, the power of grace over the manly soul. the strongest feel this attraction most, are most possessed with the desire of expressing it. i am thinking of homer, leonardo da vinci, shakspere, balzac, wagner, and rodin in saying this. they have created a feminine world, the figures of which, lovingly copied from living models, become models in turn. they haunt thousands of souls, fashion them in their image. in her complicated ways, nature avails herself of the artist to modify the human type. we have some terra-cotta figures of rodin, modeled when he was between twenty-five and thirty, while working at the manufactory at sèvres, in the studio of carrier-belleuse, that accomplished sculptor. they are charming little busts, with the perfume of the eighteenth century breathing from them, treated a little in the manner of carpeaux, with the velvety shadow of their black eyes on their sparkling faces. one of them, now in a private gallery in new york, has a hat on its head, coquettish, tender, innocently provocative; it is full of parisian allurement because it is characteristically french. one can find its kindred among certain renaissance figures, and even among the mischievous faces of gothic angels. with all this there is that ephemeral prettiness which is called "fashion," that caprice of styles which does for the adornment of cities what the flowers of the field do for the country. if rodin had pursued his path in this direction, he would have been a portrait-sculptor of great taste, and would doubtless have attained celebrity sooner, but a celebrity which is not glory. at that time he was chiefly concerned with copying the features of his models with all the sensitiveness of his admiration; he did not yet attempt those large effects of light and shade which were to become the object of his whole career, and are so still. he has made the religion of progress his own by reflective study. progress is for him the chief condition of happiness. present-day philosophies commonly put it in doubt; but if happiness exists, it is surely in the soul of the artist. but it is recognized with difficulty because it is called by an equivocal name, the ideal. let us look at the "portrait of the artist's wife." here, in this noble effigy, this severe image with its lowered eyelids, the artist passes beyond the promise of his first period. the face, rather wide at the cheek-bones, lengthens toward the chin, where the sorrowful mouth reigns. it expresses melancholy, gravity, dignity, christian charity. it is rather masculine, and seems less youthful than the original was at the time. it is as if the artist had sought to bring out the character by conscientious modeling, without any softening; all the features are underlined, as on a face that has attained a ripe age. he had not yet discovered the art of softening his surfaces, of blending them in a general tonality, and of obtaining that softness, that flesh quality, with all the shades of youth, which touches the heart in his more recent busts. even then he did know, however, how to gather under the boldly molded superciliary arch of the brows the diffused shadows which, in the future, were to lend mystery and distance to most of his portraits. this mask is all that remains of a standing figure dressed in the manner of gothic figures. rodin was then living in brussels, still young, poor, and unknown, but happy. he tasted the perfect happiness of long days of absorbing labor, of that enthusiasm for work which nothing disturbs. to-day he sometimes yearns for those years free from the never-ceasing bustle of a celebrated man's existence, a giant assailed by a thousand pin-pricks. yet his poverty was excessive, for the beautiful statue, modeled during successive months with much love, fell to pieces. for want of money, the sculptor had not been able to have it cast. among his women's busts, one of the most famous and one which remains among the most beautiful is that of madame morla vicuñha. it dates back about twenty-five years, but it is resplendent in eternal youth. since then rodin has added to his knowledge and experience. he has made personal discoveries in the plastic art. he has become the master of color in sculpture. nevertheless, this portrait, as it stands, remains an adorable masterpiece. who that has looked at its softly gleaming marble in the luxembourg has not been overcome by a long dream of tenderness, of uneasy curiosity? who has not hoped to make this woman speak, to press her heart in order to draw from her a confession of her desires, the secret of her happiness and her melancholy? it is more than a bust, it is woman herself. because the beautiful shoulder slips tremulously from the heavy mouth, which lies against the smooth, polished flesh; because this shoulder rises again toward the head, slightly bent and inclined, as if to draw toward it some loved one; because the neck swells like that of a dove, and the head is stretched forward to offer a kiss, we seem to catch a glimpse of the whole body and its delicate curves. it is a beautiful bust. i should like to see it alone in a room hung with dim tapestries, drawing forth its charm like a long sigh, which nothing should disturb. this masterpiece demands the distinction of solitude. how beautifully modeled the head is in its firm delicacy! the framework of the narrow skull appears under the texture of hair fastened over it like a rich handkerchief. we can almost see the impatient hand, trembling with feeling, that has twisted the firm knot under the nape of the neck. everywhere, level with the temples, at the bridge of the nose,--the aquiline nose marking the spaniard of race,--this bony framework stands out. the face catches a feverish character from it, tortured by the longing for intimate expression, and reveals a being with whom happiness borders closely upon sorrow. the nostrils tremble as if to the perfume of the flowers pressed voluptuously against the warm bosom. the mouth is at once mobile and firm, and all the curves of the features converge toward it--toward the kiss which causes it to swell softly. the light steals gently into every line and fold of the face. it borders the eyelids, glides under the brows, outlines the bridge of the nose and the nostrils, emphasizes the opposed arches of the lips. it spreads like a spring, separating into a thousand streams. it is a network, like the tracery of the woman's nerves made visible. it is as if the sculptor and the light had begun a dialogue--a dialogue kept up with endless graces and coquetries. he contradicts it, refutes it; it escapes, returns. he gathers it up, as if to force it into the sinuous folds of the figure. again it flees, and then, summoned back, it returns cautiously, and at last bathes the statue in generous caresses. this bust will live. in its enigmatic grace it will become more and more the expression of the woman who loves, just as "la gioconda" ("mona lisa") is the expression of the woman who is loved. the one is all instinct, the other all spirit. the one offers herself; the other promises herself. the one is tenderness directed toward the past; the other smiles toward the future. [illustration: portrait of madame moria vicuÑha.] in the same gallery of the luxembourg, there is that other famous head called "la pensée." what a contrast! it is strangely bound within a block of marble, placed like a living head on a block. and yet it tells only of the slightly resigned calm of meditation, or of melancholy, without bitterness, of long autumn days, with their diffused brilliancy. the outlines are firm, regular, placid, of remarkable moderation in their distinction. the head leans forward, because thought is a weighty matter. the brow and the eyes are the dominant features. on them the sculptor has focused all the light not only in the high lights, but in the still surface as well. the caprice of the artist has covered this head with a light peasant-cap. this hides the details of the hair, and concentrates the glance on the face. "caprice" expresses the idea badly, for it is taste and the will of the artist that have directed all. these dreamy features express the practical mysticism of women, the effort of intelligent devotion. it makes one think of st. geneviève, of jeanne d'arc, of the overwhelming courage of a weak being carried beyond and out of herself by a great purpose. "la pensée" has the striking character that almost all the busts of rodin assume in the future, and which they owe on the one hand to their intense lifelikeness, and on the other to the atmosphere with which the sculptor surrounds them. there are no hard-and-fast limits which separate them from the circumambient air; on the contrary, they are bathed in it. the "blacks," which give a hard, dry look when used to excess, are handled marvelously. the women's busts, especially, almost start up before us with this slightly fantastic look of life increased tenfold, with the charm of phantoms of marble, monumental, and yet as light as beautiful mists. these effects of light and shadow perhaps harmonize best with the softness and delicacy of the feminine flesh. they convey to us naturally the mystery of an inner life more secret, more intimate than that of man. even with works that are similar, the public does not recognize their common origin. it sees the result of an extraordinary amount of observation and intelligence, yet it does not reflect more than a child. for the public the sculptor, whoever he may be, is a creature of instinct, with a trained eye and hand, but without mind and culture. he is a sculptor, that is all. a common proverb strengthens the belief in this lasting folly. it may be told, then, that the master with whom we are here dealing studies his models not only as a sculptor, but as a writer studies; that often his hand drops the chisel for the pencil, in order to set down his observation more exactly, to search even further into nature. perhaps the public will at last grasp the fact that the true artist, under penalty of ceasing to be one, must, above all, expend an amount of attention of which other men are incapable, and that it is by this power of attention that the strength of intelligence is measured. for example, rodin is facing his model, a young woman stretched out in an attitude of repose. he writes, and in his style we find all the power of the great draftsman. he marks the outlines, he specifies the details, slowly, patiently, with pertinacity. he never confuses the impression, always so ready to elude one--the impression, the divine reward of the artist. * * * * * the dazzling splendor revealed to the artist by the model that divests herself of her clothes has the effect of the sun piercing the clouds. venus, eve, these are feeble terms to express the beauty of women. the head leans to one side, the torso to the other, both inclining indolently, gracefully. this body has been glorified. the contours flow, descend, repose, like immortality personified. the breasts follow the same curve. the flowing lines are all in the same direction. unchangeable, heaving above the half-opened screen of the dress, the breath scarcely lifts them. it does not stir or agitate them. the beautiful human monument is balanced in repose. it is unassailable. it is the gradation of contours. i do not draw them, but i see them in place, and my spirit is content, accustoms itself to the impression. in memory i still make drawings of this model, and these moving lines are repetitions, done over again a hundred times; for i repeat the drawing constantly, like a caress. this torso resigns itself, like an ariadne whose contours melt away in the evening, in the dark. but the lightning of day has flashed there. it is there always. it is now the pale gleam of flesh. my mind, carried along, takes this form as its model. the hand, the arm, support the head, the sidelong glance from which is so full of sweetness. one might call it a "mona lisa" reposing. this head feels the need of resting on the supporting hand, a delicate support like the handle of a vase. like an urn about to pour out its water, its thought, it inclines. lying back on the cushion, the head is in high relief. the features are placed according to their due regard, which is the very soul of balance. it has made the eyes symmetrical; the eyebrows straight; the nose, where beauty and symmetry meet, expressive of a wholesome conformity. when a woman is very beautiful, she has the head of a lion. from the lion is copied that splendid regularity of the eyes, which the oval of the face accentuates. the tawny mane is also lion-like in its regularity and majesty, without any other expression. arches are formed without effort of all the parts of the eye. the hinges of the eyes open and close. the open mouth keeps back neither the thoughts nor the words that have been spoken. there is no need for her to speak. her age, her thoughts, all is a confession here--the features, the arch of the frank, noble mouth, as well as the form of the nose and the sensitive nostrils. and this infantile glance under a woman's eyelid! our soul demands that, by an agreement with the heavens, the feminine glance should be celestial. [illustration: la pensÉe.] how i bathe in the calm beauty of these eyes, with their regular drawing! how they themselves declare their tranquil joy! sometimes eyes like these seem to be inhabited by spirits. they close, and i see the horizontal lashes, the lower lid, which just rests against the upper. i see as a whole the soft oval of these long eyes, the double circle of the lids themselves, and the circle beneath, so modest now, but which one calls the circle of love. the eyeball in moving shows the clear pupil, and all about it press the circles of the delicate lids. the soul finds a refuge in these secret hiding-places, and throws out its circles of attraction like a lasso. this sensuous soul is the soul of beautiful portraits. the cheeks curve against the socket of the eye; the double arch of the brows prolongs itself behind them. the surface of the cheeks extends to the extremity of the nose, forms a double depression by the sinking of the cheek, which grows hollow toward the convex lip, and surrounds the mouth and the two lips. these facial lines and surfaces all stop at the chin, toward which all the curves converge. the facial expressions proceed from, spread, and move in another circle. they all disappear in the cheeks, just as do the movements of the mouth. one curve passes down from the ear to the mouth; a small curve draws back the mouth and also the nose a little. a circle passes under the nose, the chin, to the cheekbones; a deep curve, which starts back to the cheekbone, cuts in a small hollow to the eyebrow. the features are distinct; but when they move, they merge into one another. the smile passes over the face by a circle defining the mouth. the edge of the mouth is defined by a mezzotint at the point of union. the loose hair surrounds the cheek, and the head seems like a golden fleece on a distaff. it hangs like loosened garlands. how beautifully these garlands of hair are arranged, with the profile in a three-quarter view, standing out against the fine, tawny hair! the impressive harmony between the flesh and the hair! they seem altogether in accord; they lend each other languor and charm; they are united and separated at the same time. these drooping clusters of chestnut-blond hair are a frame. one might call them long flowers hanging from the edge of a vase. the neck no longer holds erect the head, which moves in ecstasy. it drowns itself in the wavy flow of hair, which becomes undone at the moment. this inundation of hair, so to speak, what a generalized expression of opulence it is! before its beauty i feel imbued with love. i am seized with enthusiasm, aflame with it. this gold, this dull copper, is like a field of grain, a field of corn, where the sheaves are of gold bound together. these sheaves, slightly disordered in their lengthening curves, turning in all directions, imitate the tone of subdued flesh tints. in this veil, transparent and colored like a dead leaf, the ear is hidden in shadow, where the hair flies back at random in strands, twists about, and returns. o head, beautiful ornament, drooping against the edge of the couch like a lovely motive in architecture at the edge of a console, you express the prolonged weakness of a lovely languor! the shoulder extends its beautiful curve before the face, resting on its side; the line rises, passes near the nose, descends, and shows the red line of the mouth, just as the bees continually enter and go out of the opening of the hive. the face turns, but the eye returns to me, passes by me, and again gazes upon me. in it there is the softness of the dog's eye, a spirit which becomes motionless when the tyranny of passion has disappeared. when passion is in control, she sucks like a vampire that delicate flesh, which is the model of calm, the exquisite remainder of calm. this crown of beauty is not made for one woman alone, but for all women. they do not know it, and yet all in turn attain this beauty, as a fruit ripens. this calm is more potent in them than in the most beautiful statues. they are unaware of it, and the men who are near them are unaware of it also. they have not been taught to admire. they have not been educated in the science of admiration. when, in the galleries of the louvre, magnificent rooms where are gathered the collections of antiques, day enters through the windows and lightly touches these beautiful sculptures which are the adornment of great palaces, do they understand any better? do they realize the collaboration between the sculptor and the light? [illustration: hotel biron. view from the garden.] iv an artist's day the residence of rodin, the hôtel biron, is situated at the extreme end of the rue de varenne, in the faubourg st. germain. the long straight street is lined on both sides with old mansions that lend a distinctive nobility to this district of paris. the street is solemn, the quiet austere. only rarely a carriage rumbles by. like the tide of a river, the air sweeps down this street from the boulevard des invalides, which at its other end opens upon the esplanade des invalides, like a great lake. now and then one catches glimpses of the spacious courts, the steps, the peristyles, and the ornate, but at the same time simple, pediments. most of these mansions were, and many of them still are, inhabited by families associated with the history of france. the northern façade of the hôtel biron and the courtyard through which one enters are hidden behind a high convent wall, for in the nineteenth century the old residence of the duc de biron was transformed into a religious school of the sacred heart. there the daughters of the aristocracy were educated. in consequence of the law of relating to the religious orders, the mansion was vacated, and taken possession of by the state, which rented it in apartments. rodin, ever in search of old buildings, in which alone he can think and work in comfort, soon became the main tenant. to ring the bell one must reach high. with difficulty one turns the handle of the door, which swings slowly. it is a portal made for coaches to pass through. under its monumental arch one seems as insignificant as an insect. to the right of the court is the old chapel of the religious community. its somber character stands out against the neighboring secular buildings. the cold style of charles x, in which it is built, forms a strange contrast to the charming structure of jacques gabriel, the celebrated artist who in the eighteenth century endowed paris with many works of art, among others this pavilion of the rue de varenne, the hôtel biron. nevertheless, had it not been for rodin, this building would have been torn down. it is a vast mansion, extremely simple, and built on the lines of an elongated square. its great charm is due wholly to its correct proportions and to the grace and variety of its beautiful, tall windows, some straight, others rounded, and surmounted by an inconspicuous ornament, the signature of the artist. all of them are enlivened by little squares of glass, which are to a window what the facets are to a diamond. the spacious vestibule is paved with black and white marble, its ceiling supported by six strong columns. a charming stone staircase rises here. all is in the style of louis xv, a style that is dignified when it is not delightfully elegant and coquettish. the house was to be torn down, and sold as junk; but rodin was on guard. ever since he had learned that this masterpiece was condemned his heart had bled, and for the first and only time in the course of his long existence an outside interest took him from his work. he wrote letters, took legal steps, called to his assistance artists, people of culture, and men in politics. m. clémenceau, then president of the cabinet; m. briand, who succeeded him; m. gabriel hanotaux, one of his great friends; m. dujardin-beaumetz, under-secretary of state of fine arts, all listened to his indefatigable pleading. finally his plea was heard, and the hôtel biron was classified as a historical monument, henceforth inviolate. then the speculators had to abandon their idea of filling the park with hideous modern structures, and of disfiguring in six months this unique quartier des invalides, to construct which the architects had given years of work and all their intelligence. rodin's admirers soon conceived the idea of converting the hôtel biron into a museum for the master's works, which they pledged themselves to defend with a tenacity equal to that which rodin had just displayed. * * * * * i knock at the door of the studio and rapidly pass through two large rooms containing no furniture, only busts of bronze and groups of marble. when i enter the study, rodin is not here; i glance about. all the details of this room are familiar to me, but they always seem new, because everything is in harmony here, with a harmony which varies according to the day and the hour. it is a morning in spring. the bright light sheds its rays on the various antiquities that the master has assembled here: empire chairs, with faded velvet coverings; a louis xiv arm-chair of gilded wood and cherry-colored silk, in which one might fancy molière seating himself to chat with rodin, who, ever ready as he is with a bit of raillery, would surely not have failed in repartee. on a round table there is a persian material, and some japanese vases filled with tulips and anemones. on the mantelpiece are bronzes from the far east and a statuette of porcelain in marvelous blues that rodin calls his "chinese virgin." on the walls, close together like the stones in a mosaic, are many of the master's water-colors. their well-chosen tones harmonize with and intensify those of the flowers, the fabrics, and the ceramics of bygone days. scattered pedestals support huge bronze busts, which call to mind warriors of the middle ages, and some unfinished pieces. they consist of small groups that, under the eye of the master, seem to grow out of the white marble, and in the golden sunlight look as soft as snow. on this table, where rodin takes his meals and writes, is a greek marble, a little torso without arms or legs; i know it well, for he showed it to me while murmuring words of admiration. this is his latest passion. i enter the garden, where he is enjoying a moment of rest, for he has been working a long while. owing to his habits as a good workman, he rises at five every morning. i pass through one of the big doors which open upon the park. the beautiful view always captivates me anew. the light, the air, the expanse of sky, the magnificent groups of trees, this rustic solitude in the heart of paris, take one by surprise, inspire and elevate the spirit. rodin is here, smiling and in good humor. we are on the terrace that overlooks the expanse of green and forms a sort of slanting pedestal for the pavilion. below stretches a broad alley, almost an avenue, overgrown with a rich carpet of grass and moss, which loses itself in the distant wood. fruit-trees, growing wild, form impenetrable screens on both sides of this alley. the grandeur of this park is largely due to the age of the trees. stepping to the edge of the balustrade, i can see toward the right the dome of the invalides, standing alone, outlined against the sky, like a burgrave on guard under a helmet of gold. [illustration: rodin photographed in the court of the hotel biron.] the northern façade of the pavilion has a severe character. it is the façade which visitors and passers-by see, and for this an elegant simplicity suffices. but this other side, bathed in the midday sun, is meant for friends. all the delicate splendor that the architect conceived is expressed in these stones. this sculptured pediment, this balcony with its console of flowers, and the graceful windows, with their semicircular transoms, are models of elegance. the hôtel biron is not large, but it is imposing. the blockheads who inhabited it during the last century, blind to its beauty, deaf to its appeal, demolished and sold the wrought-iron balustrades of the windows, balconies, and staircases, but they were not able, thank heaven! to destroy its innate beauty. "let us go to work," said rodin. i go back to the statues; rodin begins to draw. in a little while he will model. during his hasty luncheon he has the little greek torso placed before him, and he makes notes all the while. true genius is as changeable as nature. it finds as many ways of expressing its ideals as it finds subjects. but what always remains the same is the desire to be sincere. yet the artist, with the best of intentions, is often the victim of his own sincerity. rodin is no exception to this rule, for even he has had his portraits rejected. "there is no resemblance!" people declare, while, on the contrary, the resemblance is too true. with his keen insight he penetrates too far beyond the mere flesh of the model. people are frightened at seeing their hidden personality brought to the light of day, are taken aback at being compelled to know themselves. they consider the sculptor indiscreet and dangerous. if, in his portraits of men, he pries to their very souls, if he reveals without pity those of his own sex, his equals, his companions in life's struggle, in his portraits of women he is discreet and respectful. with delicacy he unfolds their delicate mystery. he does not say anything which is not true, but frequently he does not express the whole truth. genius is ever in quiet complicity with womanhood, and leaves it in that half-obscurity which is its greatest power. in the bust before us of mrs. x---- , one wonders what he refrained from expressing. surely neither the unusual beauty of the woman nor her air as of an archduchess. i remember the day when i saw this bust for the first time. it was in the salon, placed at the head of a high staircase. the marble was brilliant. something regal and also lovable attracted those who came toward it. resplendent in beauty, the shoulders emerge from the folds of a wrap with the proud grace of one who is to the manor born. the small, well-shaped head, supported by the plump, though delicate, neck, is half turned to the slightly raised left shoulder. the hair is drawn up high to form a crown, throwing forward some light strands that shed their soft shadows over the forehead, like a thatching of moss. the beautiful eyebrows, too, lend mystery to the glance of the eyes, so full of sweetness and understanding. the small ear is partly hidden under the waves of the well-groomed hair. the lines of delicate symmetry which run from the chin to the ear, and from the ear to the shoulder, and the coronet of hair, give the bust its distinguished look of race. here we see, too, the firmness of beautiful flesh, hardened by exercise, radiating that spirit of joyous life that springs from a thoroughly healthy body, as we feel it in some of the tanagra figurines. the quiet reserve which stamps the refined anglo-saxon is revealed, but not overaccentuated. the nose is straight and slightly raised at the tip, the mouth frank and regular. those same changing shadows which beautify flowers, when the sun strikes them through the leaves of a tree, play over this countenance, and bathe it in a variety of delicate tones from the eyes to the chin. but beneath this placid beauty there is a restless soul eager to act, to express its goodness. the chin and the throat retain their look of youth, even of something childlike for those whom she loves; but the thoughtful brow is slightly wrinkled, as if from the intelligent search for happiness. this bust, almost greek in its simplicity, is one of the most purely beautiful that has come from rodin's hands. when we note the facility with which these works are produced, seemingly a natural growth, like vintage and harvest; when we contemplate these fruits of knowledge, we are too apt to overlook the laborious efforts involved, and to forget that a life has been given, drop by drop, to achieve this result in small steps of progress. even when we know all this, we often prefer to give the credit to external causes, which appeal more strongly to our superficial minds, rather than to that endless patience that is, and always will be, the secret of genius. i watched rodin model the head of hanako, the japanese actress. he rapidly modeled the whole in the rough, as he does all his busts. his keen eye and his experienced thumb enable him to establish the exact dimensions at the first sitting. then the detailed work of modeling begins. the sculptor is not satisfied to mold the mass in its apparent outlines only. with absolute accuracy he slices off some clay, cuts off the head of the bust, and lays it upside down on a cushion. he then makes his model lie on a couch. bent like a vivisector over his subject, he studies the structure of the skull seen from above, the jaws viewed from below, and the lines which join the head to the throat, and the nape of the neck to the spine. then he chisels the features with the point of a pen-knife, bringing out the recesses of the eyelids, the nostrils, the curves of the mouth. yet for forty years rodin was accused of not knowing how to "finish"! with great joy he said one day, "i achieved a thing to-day which i had not previously attained so perfectly--the commissure of the lips." in making a bust rodin takes numerous clay impressions, according to the rate of progress. in this way he can revert to the impression of the previous day, if the last pose was not good, or if, in the language of the trade, "he has overworked his material." thus one may see five, six, or even eight similar heads in his studio, each with a different expression. hanako did not pose like other people. her features were contracted in an expression of cold, terrible rage. she had the look of a tiger, an expression thoroughly foreign to our occidental countenances. with the force of will which the japanese display in the face of death, hanako was enabled to hold this look for hours. little by little, under the sculptor's fingers, the mask of clay reflected all this. it cried out revenge without mercy, the thirst, for blood. a baffling contrast this--the spirit of a wild beast appearing on the human countenance. i have one of these studies before me now. it has been cast in a composition of colored glass, and the vivid flesh coloring lends reality to the work. this mask is not disfigured by rage. the bloodless head, with its fixed stare, lies on a white cushion, and no one escapes its disquieting influence. some people shudder when they see it. "one might think it the head of a dead person," they say. [illustration: portrait of mrs. x----.] whenever i enter the spacious room i am irresistibly drawn toward it. my feelings are different every time, but always there is a feeling of uneasiness. i cannot say that it resembles death; on the contrary, it is so lifelike that it is almost supernatural. one might call it a condemned person, a being so terrified by the approach of death that all the blood has rushed to the heart. it is a spirit frozen with fear, the eyes looking toward the unknown, the large nostrils scenting death. the bulging forehead, the high, mongolian cheek-bones, and the flat nose make the face still more singular. all the lines of the face run toward the mouth, with its remarkable expression. obstinate, although conquered, it will draw its last breath without a cry. meanwhile life seems to throb in every cell. this head, so like a being that has been put to death, has the soft, pliant flesh of a ripe fruit. at night i return to look at it by the light of a candle. it looks entirely different. the shadows vary as i move the candle, and the features grow mobile. how gentle and touching it seems now! it is no longer bloodthirsty and savage; that exotic expression which repelled me has quite disappeared. these features, expressing the innermost self under a stress of emotions, reveal a poor creature that has loved and suffered. it is a pitiable face that has been molded by life. i have seen that same sad, tired expression of anguish in one whose whole strength is gone, but who still makes an effort to understand misfortune in order to strive against it. i have seen it on my mother's face when one of us was ill. * * * * * a morning in the garden it is still night; the dawn is just breaking. i open my window to let the refreshing air drive away my drowsiness. from the end of the garden, in the underbrush, and now all about me, i hear much lively chirping. it tells of the blessing of love, of springtime. it is almost day. the blackbird has ended his scene of love; no one was about when he sang his song of spring and harmony. the flowers listened, and blossomed at the call of this unseen orpheus. the air is laden with misty melodies. these songs do not disturb the silence; they are part of it. later we shall still hear the happy call of birds, but no longer these songs of love that proclaim the eternal reign of our mother earth. now is the time for sighs of happiness; the flowers consecrate themselves to the beautifying of demeter, goddess of the under-world. orpheus searches for eurydice; he calls her, and his notes break the harmonious silence. i must bathe my brows in the vague mist, in the fragrance of the earth, in the light of the dawning day. spacious room, i leave you. i shall return to you to work, for here only have i known complete silence. i hurry into the garden, where i find inspiring freshness. i had looked forward to it; my whole body was awaiting it. a sprouting twig proclaims the fullness of life. i am freed from the memory of yesterday, born anew for all the seasons to come. in the _palais_ thoughts are more subdued and modest, content to be bounded by the splendid proportions of the apartments--proportions that are correct, but nothing more. the flight of time is marked by the song of the blackbird, and, as in mozart's music, one cannot quite define whence its charm springs. it is everywhere, to the right, to the left. that voice seems to pierce through the gaps and hollows of the wood, for now one hears it as an echo, now as a solo, at the farthest end of the wood. my flight of steps is my place for reflection, my _salle de pas perdus_.[ ] at the foot of the steps the verdant carpet, sown with little stars of green, stretches out. it might be an old arabian material or a rich marble. bits of earth are to be seen in delicate gray patches. the shadow of night still enshrouds the garden in a cloudy veil. in the distance, outlined against the horizon, are the bleak walls of houses, like huge stones. about me stretches that enormous babylon, that paris where my tired nerves relax, where the substance of my life is woven, where my heart has found appreciation and no reproach, and where my mind, imbued with the true knowledge of life, has taught my soul the gracious lesson of submission. this broad, beautiful lane is like a corot, and recalls his nymphs. the bare trees look like limbs. a bright carpet of turf moistens their roots. now a rabbit runs by. in the distance the carriages rumble like artillery. this is a fitting haunt for fauns, their rustic arbor. the trees serve as a roof, their green shoots melting into the sky. the freshness of new life is everywhere, and little exclamations of admiration spring from every creature. with this universal youth new thoughts are born. in this delightful retreat one feels that only an antique statue could add to its beauty. the trees expand with vigor, their buds outlined against the sky. the rest of the lane seems an avenue of enchantment. far down at the end i seem to see happiness. but no, i am wrong: it is not only in the distance; it is here, all about me, now. the slanting rays of the sun strike the trees and the grass; over the lane bluish shadows play. the spreading shade of the trees falls softly on the fresh green. those little dashes of blue among the grass are forget-me-nots. those beautiful trees, garbed only since a week ago, trail their lovely green draperies on the ground, while detached garlands cling to the shrubs. the majesty of youth in nature is unique; it is charm itself, an inimitable thing. yet some men of genius have been able to express the spirit of spring. [illustration: rodin in his garden.] the very soul of meditation dwells in this garden, in this alley of trees. polyhymnia, the muse, in her graceful draperies, walks with me, and i follow her reverently. away from the turmoil, i can forget the constant hurry of our days. how we allow ourselves to be harassed! reaching out for everything without possessing anything truly, we do not even realize what treasures we have lost. a few puffs of empty air are not poetry, and seeing happiness in the distance is not enjoying it. what hurries you? ah, your life is out there, elsewhere? go, then; but i shall remain here with the antique in my charming garden. i will sit down on this old stone bench, surrounded by dense shrubs. the dead wood is piled in little heaps. the tree-tops form a semicircle, and stand out like a pantheon against the sky. the branches bear the marks of lightning and grow in zigzag. the sap of the earth rises in the arteries of the trees, ever ready to take part in the great festival of spring. now the charm of the alley consists in the differences of light and shade. as the one strives to advance, the other recedes toward the dale. the shadows disperse for the morning, leaving behind their beneficent moisture for their friends, the flowers of this dale. before me, on a knoll, stands a beautiful column, as if in prayer. it seems to have sprung from the kingdom of pluto, and now, like us, it stands in the bright sunlight, a part of the out-of-doors. stone, pure and beautiful material, destined for the work of men, just as flax is destined for the work of women. a gift scarcely hidden under the earth, man has seized upon stones with rapture, carefully drawing them from their dark hiding-place, to raise them on high as in church towers, making them tractable, transforming the crude rocks, and appropriating them for masterpieces. under the protection of man's sacrilegious hand, these stones lend beauty to our cities. they have a tender sympathy with the trees, the roots of which join their own. both hard and soft stones have a place in man's esteem. sculpture has glorified them. the column is like a tree, but simpler than a tree, with a silent life of its own. and like the plants which cling about it, it also has its foliage and leaves. the artist who conceived the sphinx made her to be the guardian of temples and secrets. that column there rises up like a druid-stone, as though to converse with the moon at night. it awaits the appearance of man in the solemn ritual of night, for in its immensity it bears witness that man has created it. man, too, has had his part, an ephemeral part, in the creation; his idea strives with the works of god, as israel strove with the angel. his illuminating thought, expressed in stone, arouses those who otherwise might be insensible to beauty. the hand of man, like the hand of god, can transform a soul and make it new. mystery in which i have lived, but which i understand only now that i am about to depart. the marvel of it all! and to think that one must leave it! well, that is the lot of all other living creatures. and now the blue of the sky has grown darker, without a shadow, while beauty itself has taken its abode in these avenues of trees. now and then passing clouds dim the glory of this splendid youth of nature, but the green is brilliant even in the shadow. high up among the trees, i see a blue river, the sky, while the great clouds, mountains of water, are hanging above to quench the thirst of the flowers. [footnote : _salle de pas perdus_ is the name given to the large hall of the gare st. lazare, paris.] an antique fragment twenty times a day i walk in front of this little torso. i bring all my friends to see it, for greek sculpture is the very source of beauty. why am i surprised whenever i look upon this torso? i think it is because nature, which is behind this work of art, always calls forth new, unlooked-for sensations. venus, glorious venus, model of all women, your purity survives even after two thousand years. your charm charms me--me who have admirers for my own sculpture. before you they remain cold; but i, with a spirit that sees further--i admit my defeat as an artist, my poor ability vanishes before your grace. form, as i used to express it, seems a mere illusion before the harmonious strength of your lines, which embody the very truth of life. divine fragment, i shall live by you! what days you recall to me! perhaps the last moments of the soul of greek sculpture, ever-increasingly my muse. this torso shows the suppleness and strength of the joints. it is a summing-up of former masterpieces of the artist. those endless studies that grow into experience and all the qualities of balance are here concealed beneath the beauty and the gracious inspiration of the figure. the inspired sculptor has just discovered all these qualities, and in appreciation has given expression to them with his very soul. an antique piece of sculpture cannot be imitated. this torso seems to have a soul. are not the shadows trembling on it there? one can see them move. what a progress toward truth we find in the advance from assyrian and egyptian to greek art! antique things, if we knew how to look at them, would bring about a new renaissance for us, we who stagnate in the parisian spirit. the parisian spirit, young though it is, is already too old to serve us. it is like those pretentious monuments, those constructions in plaster, which are hollow and horrible under their crumbling stucco. greece was the land of sculpture beyond all others. the subject of their sculpture was life. the people concealed it under names and symbols,--jupiter, apollo, venus, the fauns,--but behind all these was the eternal truth of life. this torso on my table looks as though it had been washed to the shore by the loving waves, as boats are stranded on the beach at low tide. what more beautiful offering could be made to men and gods? for is this fragment not an eternal prayer? the thoughts expressed in this torso are numerous, infinite. i could write about it forever. do i bring these thoughts with me? is it i who put them into the marble? no, for when it is out of my sight, this divinity of life vanishes from me at the same time. since it ceases to be in me, it must be the fragment which possesses it. it teaches a sculptor more than any professor could. it whispers secrets to me, and if i am true to it, it will tell me more and more; it will transform me in harmony with the soul of its friend, the greek sculptor. for are not the thoughts of god expressed all the world over? are they not the fruitful germs, now growing within a brain, now in a beautiful grouping of stone, and now captured by those magicians, the poets? and are sculptors, too, not like poets? where can one find more perfect harmony than in this fragment? it is a monument. and is it not providential? it is only a fragment, yet it seems to embody the whole acropolis. truth, that lasting joy, fills in all that is missing. it is a fact that this torso, which weighs one hundred and sixty pounds, seems as light as the woman herself would be, as light as her gracious, swelling flesh. i know contours, but the contours of a masterpiece always surprise me anew. whenever i see you, beautiful little torso, my eyes and my soul feast on you. masterpiece, you are my master, too. if, as they say, stones have fallen from heaven, this surely must be one of them. i leave it in the condition in which i found it, as it first appealed to me, with all its charm, as i carried it in my arms to this table. the changing lights of day mold it; but i shall not touch it, i shall not change it. it is truth itself, and it shines in no matter what surroundings. this torso has within it the seductiveness of woman, that garden of pleasure the secret charms of which imbue old and young alike with a terrible power. feminine charm which crushes our destiny, mysterious feminine power that retards the thinker, the worker, and the artist, while at the same time it inspires them--a compensation for those who play with fire! it is not by analysis that you will learn to understand art, you who are ignorant. greek art eludes the imbeciles and ignorant who have always undervalued it. how can one comprehend this beauty by mere analysis? where lies the secret of force? it is ever shifting. and the shadow, so genially arranged, varies with the way the light strikes it. in art, what do we call life? that which speaks to you through all your senses. if this torso were to bleed, it could not be more lifelike. the harmony of its lines dominates my soul. the soul lives and grows on masterpieces. that is why we have a soul. is it surprising, then, that i live with these antiques of mine, poets far more inspiring than any of our day? they have created beings that will live to survive us. an evening in the garden i leave my exacting work always more and more its slave. walking, because of its regularity, always refreshes me. such a walk means a great deal to me. it puts my nerves into a state of delightful tranquillity. the trees are still bare of leaves and have a wintry look. at their base there are dainty sprouts, clouds of green. the lawns are ponds of emerald green. the charm of this alley is partly due to the twigs and shoots that sprout out of the ground and spring up like a cloud of lace. there is a faint decline in this soft brightness, for now the sun is setting. the sun-god is moderating his power for the benefit of the little flowers which otherwise would dry up and fade. this is the hour when the sun lends full value to the works of man, so that architecture stands out in all its beauty, while at the same time the sun softly colors the lovely clouds. the pediment of the palais biron is brilliant in the sunlight. the balcony casts shadows on the grimacing consoles, and the shell-work is luminous in this glorious light. the window-panes glow in glory. the great staircase seems arranged for ladies to descend on their way to the garden, graciously trailing their long robes, which rustle over the steps. like a pilgrim, full of hope, who rests a moment at the gates of a town, and breathes the balmy evening air, so i seat myself in this garden. the hour passes quickly, but it could not be better employed than in absorbing these marvels. when the sun drops behind the horizon, with its glowing colors like the flaming fires of a forge, our hearts are filled with wonder and awe. it gilds all in a last golden glory of triumph, the sky so brilliant that one cannot define the line of the horizon. there, where the sun disappeared, the sky is now orange. everything is fading away; another immensity spreads out before us. the glory of night is about to extend over the firmament its melancholy charm. [illustration: the poet and the muses.] the corner of this garden is a corner of happiness, a corner of eternity. here thoughts can thrive and worship, for here they have everything. for the great things in life are not the exceptional things, but the beauties of every day, which we do not stop to notice. these vast treasures, within our grasp, which we do not even touch, they are the things that count. the public believes that one is happy in the admiration of nature; but there are various degrees of happiness. doubtless a glorious feeling of admiration may take hold of one; but if one does not constantly cling to one's admiration as a matter of habit, one grows weary and becomes superficial. indeed, i do not know why we demand another life, since we have not learned to enjoy and understand this one fully. in any case, if we find this a bad world, it is our fault. we are childish about it. we belittle one another wilfully. fancy the trees doing that, if one could suspect them of such a thing! when i descend the steps, i am overwhelmed by that fluid which is life. i am in touch with life. what more can i want? this tenderness which surrounds me everywhere, this ever-varying nature which says so much to me, the atmosphere which envelops me--am i already in heaven, or am i a poet? v the line and the structure of the gothic one of rodin's friends, m. léon bourgeois, the eminent, highly cultivated french statesman, has said, "rodin is himself a cathedral." this remark wonderfully characterizes rodin's intellectuality as it appears to us to-day. rich in years and experience, his intellect is in truth as complicated as a cathedral, but like it, too, superbly simple in its general structure. his intellect possesses the wealth of detail that makes up life and the calm balance of the laws that govern nature. his mind, formed on principles scrupulously controlled by observation, abounds in that wonderful artistic imagination which is the poetry of life. ever renewing itself, ever active, his mind inspires intense confidence because it is deeply rooted in truth. it looks at its subjects of study with such conscientious devotion that it perceives every phase of reality; for it is only love such as this, a love springing not from impatience and passion, but from faith and hope, that is always victorious in the end. churches! he lives near them, so as to study them in the fleeting changes of the hours. he likes to be enveloped by the sound of the church bells that for seven or eight centuries have spoken the same language of discipline to the spirit of france. day and night he visits the naves. there his soul feels the sacred mystery. the churches are truly the cradle of his artistic faith. but it is only recently that the joys which he drew from them reached their height; for although he was long under the influence of gothic art, that most extraordinary product of the hand of man, only in the last few years has he learned to penetrate its principles and understand its methods. how often in my youth i questioned him about the cathedrals! he always replied with that caution which in deep natures is a form of deference: "i am pervaded by the marvel of this art; but i cannot as yet explain it to myself. the gothic is the world foreshortened. where am i to begin? for more than thirty years i have been accumulating and comparing my observations. perhaps eventually i shall succeed in deducing the rule, the law of divine intelligence; but perhaps i shall not have sufficient time. then it will be the task of another, younger than myself, who will start his researches earlier, and who, besides, will have been informed by me." on his return from each of these pilgrimages he was possessed by the happy restlessness of one who would soon be able to give expression to his secret. one felt that "the law of divine intelligence" was being formulated in his mind. i then hoped and expected that soon he would reap the fruit of his long labors. at last one day rodin took me to notre dame, beautiful among the beautiful, despite the modern restorations that have detracted from the grace and suppleness of its sculpture. notre dame of paris is beautiful in itself and in its situation on the banks of the seine, that river of feminine grace, which in its innocent course draws with it the memory of many terrible historic events. from notre dame to saint-eustache, from the tour saint-jacques to saint-etienne-du-mont, during this long walk of ours rodin talked, quite unaware of the curious glances of those who recognized him, and of the scoffing of the street urchins, who mistook the great frenchman for a stranger discovering the capital of france. later he gave me numerous notes that supplemented his conversations. his words and notes combined form the clearest and most important lesson on gothic art that has been handed down since the days of the gild of the francs-maçons, by one of their own sort, a craftsman such as they were, a veritable sculptor, a stone-cutter loving the material in which he works. has rodin, after so thoroughly grasping the secrets of the builders of bygone days, never felt the desire to apply them in the execution of some work of architecture? was he never tempted by their example and by that of michelangelo to expand his resources beyond those of the sculptor? those who know the creative power and the vastness of imagination of the modeler of "the burghers of calais" and of "the gate of hell" may well ask this question. well, yes, he has had that great dream, which in more prolific times would have become a glorious reality. he hoped to revive the spirit of a day when a whole nation of artists covered france with masterpieces; he hoped to organize labor collectively, and to gather about him a legion of artisans to work together on a monument which should become in a certain sense the cathedral of the modern age. he even drew up plans for that wonderful project, the subject of which was to be the glorification of labor, that triumphant force of our present civilization. he did not plan to rival the gothic style, the prodigious achievement of which would have required throngs of workmen thoroughly organized and disciplined, well trained under the system of master and apprentice, accomplishing their common task in the joy of work and the enthusiasm of faith. he planned to approximate the art of the renaissance, less removed from modern intellectuality, and simpler of execution. [illustration: the tower of labor.] in rodin's studio at meudon one can see the plan for this monument. the axis is a high column calling to mind trajan's column, and, like it, covered with bas-reliefs. a tower broken by large openings, as in the tower of pisa, encircles it. in the interior a gradually inclining way leads one from the base to the top along the bas-reliefs. these represent all the active crafts and trades: those of the cities, such as masons, carpenters, weavers, bakers, brewers, glass-workers, and goldsmiths; and those of the country, such as plowmen, harvesters, vintagers, vine-dressers, shepherds, and farmers. on the exterior, between the arches, stand statues of the great geniuses that have led humanity, whose efforts have raised them to celestial heights; that is, to the peace and happiness of creating. there great thinkers, inventors, and artists have their niches, just as the prophets have theirs in the vaults of cathedrals. the edifice rests on a crypt where groups of sculpture are devoted to the glorification of work under the earth and its obscure heroes, miners, divers, pearl-fishers. at the time when the plan for this monument was advanced, and was exciting the imagination of european writers and journalists, an ardent admirer of rodin even proposed to build the tomb of the master under the crypt, where he would have had a resting-place worthy of a pharaoh. on each side of the entrance is a statue representing morning and evening, and at the summit of the column two angels, messengers of god, their hands outstretched toward the earth with a gesture of exquisite tenderness, shed the blessings of heaven on the work of man. alas! this noble, stirring project will not be realized during the life of the artist. will there some day be another possessed of the ardor and love of beauty necessary to build this mountain of stone? for a time rodin's friends hoped that america, the nation of work par excellence, would seize upon this idea. they pictured the philanthropists of the new world in characteristic fashion pouring forth millions for this work of universal art and national glorification; they saw rodin being called to the united states, gathering about him not only american artists, but all the intelligent forces of the world of culture. they saw the tower of labor, with its angels bestowing their benediction over some formidable industrial city, new york, pittsburgh, or chicago. this might have been the starting-point for a new era of art, for nothing is more contagious than the realization of beauty in actual form. doubtless the writers of france did not discuss the matter long or forcibly enough, and the tour de travail, which might have been the ardent expression of a whole race, will remain the idea of a solitary genius, a last offshoot of the masters of the middle ages. but if the hour has not yet struck for the construction of the modern cathedral, at least we possess, thanks to the man who dreamed of erecting it, the secrets and principles of those who constructed the cathedrals of bygone days. * * * * * to acquire a thorough and fruitful understanding of the cathedrals, we must break away from the narrow and cold spirit of the present day. the spirit of our time does not harmonize in architecture with the monuments of the past. first let us contemplate the whole. the church is a cliff. the construction of the slender side springing up is quite in the spirit of our race. the gothic towers are stones set up like druidic monuments. the church is laid out like a dolmen, and the towers are the menhirs. like the menhirs, they have beautiful, flexible lines; they possess the eloquence of natural outlines, which are never cold or meager. the line of the gothic tower is slightly curved, swelling like that of a barrel. a straight line is hard and cold. the greeks perceived that; they refrained from straight lines, and the columns of their temples also show a slight swelling. the two sides of the gothic tower are not alike. the architects considered that preferable to obvious symmetry. look at the tour saint-jacques in paris. one of the sides shows a long, sloping hollow, making it look quite different from the other, which, again, is like stones set on high. the hollowed line permits protuberances, details of ornamentation that soften and harmonize with the line of the ensemble. it has been restored, and therefore from near at hand seems cold, for our workmen have lost the science and art of modeling. but the beauty of the general structure remains; they could not detract from that. this softened line, this line full of life, is one of the chief characteristics of the gothic. the sky of our northern climates ordained it so, for the architects of the middle ages carved their monuments out of doors. once the general plan was established, they easily found the details while working with their tools, guided by the light and influenced by natural conditions. our light is not that of greece. humanity the world over is akin; but to what the greek expressed in a chastened manner, in keeping with his eternally pure light, we have added the oblique slant of our sun, our reality, our country, our autumns, the sting of our winters, our less definite spirit, our remoteness from the glaring olympian sun; and, last of all, we have added our trees. we also have light, but it is frequently obscured by passing clouds. is it not natural that we should reproduce them in our art? and the line, the abundant line, is more accentuated in the half-night of our long autumns. thus we are more in the mood of our woods and our forests. our souls have more shadows than the greek soul, our determinations are more varied; for our clouds and our forests are reflected in our hearts. artists, let us, then, revert to the interpretation of our race, but in the spirit, not in the letter. let us copy only the soul of our external nature, not its gothic form, for a mere copy is cold and dead. beautiful architecture is a reproduction by man, but from a divine model. from this it receives the warmth of life. if architecture is true to the spirit of nature, it is embraced by the trees, the rocks, the clouds; they are the silent company of beauty. o cathedral! sphinx of northern life! although mutilated, are you not eternal? do you cease to live? from a distance, and in the evening, when dusk sets in, you seem truly a great sphinx crouching in the country. the drama that unfolds itself on the stone pages of the churches recalls to us with a very few gestures and movements the silent drama of antiquity, the sculptures, illustrations of Æschylus and sophocles. from the greek type, in truth, sprang the thoughts that guide man, and again from the egyptian granite; and eventually from the stone of the gothic, that gothic which leads to the period of louis xvi, and which in france is always the principal path of art. other styles were derived from it, those of the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. their basis is gothic; therefore the gothic is the fundamental style, which ought to keep us from the path of decadence, if that is possible. you do not understand it? you say you prefer the greek? o ye mortals that wish to pass judgment on all matters, take heed lest these masterpieces prevail against you! the cathedral is as beautiful, perhaps more beautiful, than the parthenon. if you do not understand this style, then you are still further removed from the greek, which is of another country and epoch. it is more beautiful, perhaps more concise, more marble; but we belong more with stone and forests, we are more autumnal, more of the cold and melancholy season. the gothic builders are realists do not let us lose sight of the fact that beneath this poem of stone there is a foundation of knowledge based on a close and comprehensive study. to-day i understand it. as a result of study, one truth after another comes to light. at the outset one is lost before these marvels. where is one to begin studying? one's thoughts and one's admiration rise like clouds. the mind makes prodigious leaps to grasp again what it already knows, to combine it with the recently acquired knowledge, to attempt to draw conclusions which simplify and generalize the study, and thus to discern the fundamental law. for a long time during my youth i thought, like many others, that gothic art was poor. i was so ungrateful during the first enthusiasm of my liberty! i learned to understand its grandeur only through traveling. observation and work led me back to the right road. in the course of my efforts i have grasped the meaning of the thoughts of the masters. my persistent work was not futile, and, like one of the magi, i have at last come to bow in humble reverence before them. a true artist must penetrate the primordial principles of creation; only by understanding the beautiful does he become inspired, and that not through a sudden awakening of his sensibilities, but by slow penetration and perception, by patient love. the mind need not be quick, for slow progress should imply precaution in every direction. the gothic builders are the greatest observers of nature that have ever existed, the greatest realists, despite all that professors and critics say to the contrary. they call them idealists. they say the same of the greeks and of all artists whose profound knowledge has enabled them to borrow their effects and charm from nature. idealists! that is a term which signifies nothing and merely confounds cause and effect. builders of the middle ages, you independent scholars, models of a profound intelligence, this is what our age has found as an explanation of your masterpieces! i have devoted my whole life in endeavoring to catch a glimpse of the rules, the secrets of experience, which you transmitted to one another, and it is only now, when my days are numbered, that i am at last grasping the synthesis of beauty. to whom shall i confide the fruit of my research? some future genius will gather it. the cathedral is eternal, rising toward the sky. when we think it has attained its ultimate height, it rises again higher still, like a mountain of truth. plans and oppositions the architects of our churches subordinated detail to arrive at a more effective whole. that is why our churches are so beautiful when seen from a distance. they sacrificed everything to the essential, the "plan." the plan? like all synthetic conceptions, this is difficult to define. it is the space that an object displaces in the atmosphere, its volume. when an artist is able to determine exactly the space an object occupies in the atmosphere, be he painter, sculptor, or architect, he possesses the real science of plans. what is detail in a plan? nothing. the towers of the church at bruges are superb in their bareness, while our modern houses, overladen with detail, are hideous to look upon. of the two towers of the cathedral at chartres, the one is bare, just a huge wall; the other is covered with ornamentation, and the first is possibly the more beautiful because of the potency of its plan. what does this force of simplicity express to us? it is the soul of a nation. a people expresses its nature through the medium of its architecture. stones are faithful when we do not retouch them. they are the signatures of a nation. [illustration: headless figure.] through the science of plans the great oppositions or contrasts of light and shadow are obtained. they give life and color to the structure. according to the position of the sun, the appearance of a building varies. one part is in the shade, the other in the light, and between these two is the gradation of shadings. the master architects did not set their edifices apart from the universe; they gave them the benefit of all the phenomena of nature--dawn and dusk, twilight, cloud effects, haze, and fog. every moment of the day adds to or detracts from their effect. sometimes i stand before a cathedral, and it does not seem at all beautiful. i feel i should like to alter it. then i revisit it at another hour and see it in a different lighting. the light strikes it aslant, the shadows are deeper; the cathedral is absolutely beautiful, and i feel abashed at my former impatience and critical mistrust. the science of equilibrium these great effects of light and shade, obtained by the plan--effects simple in their means, yet mysterious in their power of attraction for us, have strengthened the idea that gothic art is idealistic. the masses who see the cathedral dominating the city, with its two slanting roofs like hands joined at the finger-tips, certainly feel in it the great idea, the poem. they do not realize that the sentiments aroused in them by the beauty of the building are wholly due to the science of the plans. by means of what principle did the master builders support the weight of these enormous masses of stone, which yet join lovingly in the imponderable atmosphere? by obeying the law of equilibrium of the human body. the human body, standing upright, the feet joined, in equilibrium, is the basis of the greek column. pediments and roof, supported by a series of these standing bodies, these human columns, that is the greek temple. the architecture of the parthenon reproduces the equilibrium of the body in a state of rest. in action the body sways; that is to say, the weight rests on only one leg, while the body inclines to the opposite side to regain its balance by counterpoise. that is the sway of gothic architecture. this sway constitutes the law of motion for the body of man and animal, ever seeking perfect equilibrium. without this law we could not move; we would be like blocks of stone. every motion that we make produces an initial swaying, which an opposing weight instantaneously balances. thus without any consciousness on our part a perpetual balancing is taking place within us, a change as facile and immediate as the changes which take place in the phenomena of respiration and circulation. all goes on with the speed, order, and silence that exist in the domain of electricity. it is a perpetual prodigy to which we do not even give a thought. it is not surprising that the gothic masters, who copied from all nature, took from man and animals the charm of balance. the ogive (pointed arch) of the cathedral, is achieved by two opposing thrusts. but the archivolts do not always harmonize with the capitals; they are not set exactly over them, they are out of the perpendicular. two movements of equal force, exactly opposed, cause a stable equilibrium. just so the masses of stone are supported by this same opposition of thrusts. the interior of the cathedral is high and vast, broken by large windows that diminish the resistance and help to support the great weight. it was necessary to find a way of reëstablishing the equilibrium, lest the nave break down under its own weight. that is the purpose of the flying buttresses. like the arms of giants, they throw their opposing weight against the exterior walls. some have drawn the conclusion that cathedrals are imperfect, since they cannot stand without this support. it is a characteristic idea of our age. just as though one would reproach the human body for bearing first on one leg and then on the other. these powerful buttresses are wonderfully effective in their contrast to the lacework of the sculpture. what is more beautiful than notre dame in paris at night, with its island as its pedestal? it is the huge skeleton of the france of the middle ages which appears to us here. how attractive the light and shade on the buttresses! indeed, it took genius to bring out beauty in that which is in reality only the skeleton of the edifice, and which could be offensive, were it badly carried out. the lacework of stone the gothic style exists by virtue of oppositions, contrasts in effects and in balance. they built huge bare walls, but in the upper heights ornamentation flourishes and abounds. there the "increase and multiply" of the bible has been figuratively carried out. once the basis of construction was established, the masons embellished the "line" by admirable ornamentation, due to their splendid workmanship. we should never forget that modeling supplies the life-blood to the mass; without it we can have neither grace nor power. formerly i did not understand the architecture; i merely saw the lacework of the gothic. but even in my conception of that i was mistaken, for i thought it a caprice of genius. i did not know that it had a scientific _raison d'être_; namely, to break and soften the line. now i see its importance: it rounds off the outlines; it gives them life and warmth. these statues, these graceful caryatids, propping up the portals, these copings in the covings, are like vegetation which softens the rigid summit of a wall. there again we find the gothic artists as skilful colorists as the cleverest painters, because they have gained insight from the vegetation of our country. in our plants, in our trees, all is light and shadowy, and from them they gained their wonderful mastery of the art of depth, which brings out the finest shadings of light, the mellowness of half-tints. to-day we misuse black, the medium of power. we use it too extensively; we put it everywhere for the sake of effect, and therefore lose its effect entirely. the gothic is nature transposed and reproduced in stone. to show admiration for this form of art is to preserve the memory of the creation. the artist is the confidant of nature. shakspere says in "king lear," we ... take upon 's the mystery of things, as if we were god's spies. the nave a church is spread out like a dolmen between two menhirs. the interior breathes the solemn calm of a forest, the columns are the trees, the masses of the base are the rocks, the pointed arches are the massive roots, the vaultings are the caves, and the windows are radiant flowers in large bowls. when i emerge from the darkness of a cathedral, i feel as if i came from the shadow of a vast, extinguished world. without the brightening light of the stained-glass windows, our churches would be sad. in spain the gloom is funereal, but the genius of france has understood how to capture the caressing light through its windows. the productiveness of the celtic spirit is also noticeable in the capitals. gothic art abandoned greek ornament, which had been reproduced so often that it lost all significance. it found its models in the woods and gardens. from the oak it took its crown of foliage, from the thistle and cabbage their gracefully drooping leaves, and from the bramble its intertwined thorns. they made wonderful capitals by reversing the acanthus, and copying the languid grace of falling blossoms. the cathedral of bourges--the vastness of this church makes me tremble. one might say there are three churches in its three naves. grandeur demands repetition. the superbness of this work of architecture enforces silence. people attribute their emotion here to religious sentiment alone, and do not realize that it is due also to the correct calculations of art. they do not realize that the impressive darkness of the vast church, its lighting, the wax tapers here, and the daylight with its brilliancy there, have all been planned beforehand. the stained-glass windows of bourges are dazzling, almost terrible, in their beauty. there are flashes as red as blood, and dashes of blue, a flame--the wounds of christ, the funeral pile of jeanne d'arc. when the sun sinks, the bright light will fade away; then we have before us only the charming effect of bowls of flowers. the legends which are told on the stained-glass are good enough to amuse children; but the glass itself, the splendor of its colors, the extent to which it harmonizes with the nave--all that is the actual result and object of profound thought. the middle ages put life into everything; they worshiped life. they drew extensively from nature, wisely realizing that its source is inexhaustible, while the day of man is fleeting. the molding the science of plans, balance of volumes, and proportion in the moldings govern the spirit of gothic art. of late i believe i have discovered how the masters struck upon the beautiful gothic molding, that undulating molding which gives so much suppleness to the architecture. i have found something new in the well-known, and beauty in forms which i did not understand before. this change is due above all to my work. having always studied more intensely, i can say that i have always loved more ardently. i believe the masters of gothic art got their ideas of molding through their understanding of the human body, and perhaps above all of the body of woman. the body, that human column, seen in profile is a line of projections and protuberances, of the nose, the chin, the breast, the flank. thence springs the beautiful undulating line which is the outline of gothic molding. for gothic molding, like the greek, is soft and swelling. the "doucine" (a molding, concave above, convex below), a term of the trade, tender as the name of a woman, well expresses the charm of the beautiful french molding. the proportions of molding exist in nature, but in such form that we have not yet been able to subject them to rules. it required men of positive taste, of most profound understanding, to grasp the harmony of these proportions and to express them in sculpture. one might say the gothic architects understood molding by means of their intelligence as well as by means of their heart. by means of the cathedral the artists of the middle ages have shown us the most impressive drama in existence--the mass. the mass has the grandeur of the antique drama. greek tragedies are in fact only a form of the mass. the human mind starts afresh at different epochs. when the priest officiates, his gestures have the beauty of the antique, and this beauty merges into that of the church music, that sublime tongue, the voice of the sea. then, when the crowds prostrate themselves, when they arise simultaneously, the undulation of their bending bodies is like the waves of the ocean. truly the gothic master builders were the familiar friends of the sublime. from what source did these men spring! from what minds did those ideas arise! god has shared his power with some of his sons. vi art and nature criticizing nature is as stupid as criticizing the cathedrals. it is the vice of our cold and petty age to criticize. it is the evil of decadent races. we are constantly being told that we live in an age of progress, an age of civilization. that is perhaps true from the point of view of science and mechanics; from the point of view of art it is wholly false. does science give happiness? i am not aware of it; and as to mechanics, they lower the common intelligence. mechanics replace the work of the human mind with the work of a machine. that is the death of art. it is that which has destroyed the pleasure of the inner life, the grace of that which we call industrial art--the art of the furniture-maker, the tapestry-worker, the goldsmith. it overwhelms the world with uniformity. once artisans created; to-day they manufacture. once they rejoiced in the pleasure of making a work of art; to-day the workman is so bored in his shop that he has invented sabotage and has made alcoholism general. the sight of a modern monument throws one into melancholy even while an ancient one has not ceased to enrapture. i visit a small city, and, losing my train, am obliged to wait for the next one. i take a walk about the ancient church, a delicious thing, very simple, but with its gothic ornaments placed with taste, in a delicate relief that, in the light, provides an enchantment for my friendly glances. in the little nave, which invites to calm, to thought,--thought as soft and composed as the light shadows that move slowly across the pillars,--i settle myself. ah, i come away charmed. if i had waited in the station, i would have been wearied to death, and would have returned home fatigued and discontented. as it is, i have gained something--the beautiful counsels of moderation and the fine charm of a monument of former days. art alone gives happiness. and i call art the study of nature, the perpetual communion with her through the spirit of analysis. he who knows how to see and feel may find everywhere and always things to admire. he who knows how to see and feel is preserved from ennui, that _bête noire_ of modern society. he who sees and feels deeply never lacks the desire to express his feelings, to be an artist. is not nature the source of all beauty? is she not the only creator? it is only by drawing near to her that the artist can bring back to us all that she has revealed to him. when one says this, the public thinks it a commonplace. all the world believes that it knows that; but it knows it only in seeming, the truth penetrates only the superficial shell of its intelligence. there are so many degrees in real comprehension! comprehension is like a divine ladder. only he who has reached the top rounds has a view of the world. the public is astonished or shocked when some one goes against its preconceived notions, against the prejudices of a badly interpreted or degenerate tradition. words are nothing; the deed alone counts. it is not by reading manuals of esthetics, but by leaning on nature herself that the artist discovers and expresses beauty. alas! we are not prepared to see and to feel. our sorry education, far from cultivating in us the feeling for enthusiasm, makes us in our youth little pedants who without result overwhelm ourselves and others with our pretensions. those who too late, by long efforts, escape this demon of folly arrive only after that education has fatally sapped their strength and has destroyed the flower of enthusiasm that god had planted in them as a sign of his paradise. people without enthusiasm are like men who carry their flags pointed down to the ground instead of proudly above their heads. constantly i hear: "what an ugly age! that woman is plain. that dog is horrible." it is neither the age nor the woman nor the dog which is ugly, but your eyes, which do not understand. one generally disparages the things that are above one's comprehension. disparagement is the child of ignorance. as soon as you discover that, you enter into the circle of joy. [illustration: rodin's house and studio at meudon.] man, animals, down to the smallest insects, down to the infinitesimal; the earth, the waters, the woods, the sky--all are marvelous. the firmament is the vastest landscape, the most profound, the most enchanting, with its variations, its effects of color and light, which delight the eye, astonish the thought, and subjugate the heart. and to say that artists--those who consider themselves such--attempt to represent all that simply as it appears to them, without having studied it, without having deciphered it, without having felt it! i pity them. they are prisoners, slaves of stupidity. i was like them in the first periods of my perverted youth, but i have delivered myself. i have regained the liberty to approach the things that i love by the pathway of true study. who follows me on the road? who can learn it from a study of sculpture and design in books? you who have caught a glimpse of the splendor of that tree, of that giant whose magnificent column has been denuded by autumn of its leafy capital, but which is perhaps more beautiful in the nudity of its members; you who admire the structure of its branches and twigs, etched in an infinitude of forms against the sky, where they resemble the lacework of the windows of our churches, would you not understand far better that beauty, would not your pleasure be far more complete, if you sketched that tree not only in the mass, but in the innumerable details of its framework? and to think that the schools recommend to pupils, painters, and sculptors research on the subject! the subject! the subject does not exist in that--the poor little arrangement that you, one and all, summon up while poring over the same anecdotes, the same conventional attitudes. the human imagination is narrow, and you do not see the hundred thousand motives of art that multiply themselves under your eye. i could pass my whole life in the garden where i walk without exhausting them. the subject is everywhere. every manifestation of nature is a subject. artists, pause here! sketch these flowers; writers, describe them for me, not in the mass, as has always been done, but in minute detail, in the marvelous precision of their organs, in their characteristics, which are as varied as are those of animals and men. how beautiful to be in the same moment an artist and a botanist, to paint and model the plant at the same time that one studied it! those great realists, the japanese, understand this, and make the knowledge and cultivation of plants one of the bases of their education. we place love and sensual pleasure in the same category. undoubtedly it is nature herself who has led is astray in this by the instinct to perpetuate ourselves, in youth this instinct is like an overflowing river; it sweeps away everything, yet pleasure is everywhere about us. i imbibe it in the forms of the clouds that build their majestic architecture in the sky, in the rapture of this woman who holds her child in her arms, an attitude divine, so beautiful indeed, that the poet of the gospels has deified it. it is the attitude of the virgin. i imbibe it in the atmosphere which bathes me now, and will still continue to bless me, bringing me peace, rest, and health. for that which is beautiful in a landscape is that which is beautiful in architecture--the air, space. no one in these days realizes its depth. it is this quality of depth that carries the soul where it wishes to go. in a well-constructed monument that which enraptures us is the science of its depths. the throngs in the churches attribute their emotion to mysticism, to the transport of the soul toward divinity. they are unaware that they owe their emotion to the exact knowledge of great planes possessed by the architects of former days. even upon the most ignorant beholder they impose this. man disregards that which he already has, and longs for something else. he longs for swiftness, to have wings like a bird. he does not know that he already enjoys this pleasure of moving through space. he rejoices in it in his soul, which takes wing and goes where it pleases, through the sky, on the waters, to the depths of the forests. all the misfortune here below arises from a lack of comprehension. we classify our limited knowledge in narrow systems, like the card-systems of an office, and these pitiful conventions we take seriously. they teach us disconnected things, and we leave them disconnected. those who have a little patience assemble these isolated facts; but such patient ones are rare, and nothing is so unbearable as that man who, not having it, speaks ill of him who has a sense of the truth. to see accurately is the secret of good design. objects dart at one another, unite, and throw light on one another, explain themselves. that is life; a marvelous beauty covers all things like a garment, like an ægis. god created the great laws of opposition, of equilibrium. good and evil are brothers, but we desire the good, which pleases us, and not the evil, which seems to us error. when we consider matters from a distance, does not evil often seem good, and good, evil? that is only because we have judged without proper consideration. just as white and black are necessary in a drawing, so good and evil are necessary in life. sorrow ought not to be cast out. as long as we live it is as strong a part of life as radiant joy. without it we would be very ill trained. to comprehend nature it is of importance that we never substitute ourselves for it. the corrections that a man imposes upon himself are a mass of mistakes. the tiger has claws and teeth and uses them skilfully; man at times shows himself inferior. possessing intelligence, too often he strives to turn to that. animals respect everything and touch nothing. the dog loves his master, and has no thought of criticizing him. the average man does not care that his daughter should be beautiful. he has in his mind certain ideas of manner and instruction, and the beauty of his daughter does not enter into the program that he has made. but the daughter herself feels the influence of nature, and displays her modest and triumphant movements, which this blind one does not see, but which fascinate the artist. the artist who tells us of his ideal commits the same error that this average man commits. his ideal is false, in the name of this ideal he pretends to rectify his model, retouching a profound organism which admirably combined laws regulate. through his so-called corrections he destroys the ensemble; he composes a mosaic instead of creating a work of art; the faults of his model do not exist. if we correct that which we call a fault, we simply present something in the place of that which nature has presented. we destroy the equilibrium; the rectified part is always that which is necessary to the harmony of the whole. there is nothing paradoxical here, because a law that is all-powerful keeps the harmony of opposites. that is the law of life. everything, therefore, is good, but we discover this only when our thought acquires power; that is to say, when it attaches itself indissolubly to nature, for then it becomes part of a great whole, a part of united and complex forces. otherwise it is a miserable, debased, detached part contending with a whole that is formed of innumerable units. nature, therefore, is the only guide that it is necessary to follow. she gives us the truth of an impression because she gives us that of its forms, and if we copy this with sincerity, she points out the means of uniting these forms and expressing them. sincerity, conscience--these are the true bases of thought in the work of an artist; but whenever the artist attains to a certain facility of expression, too often he is wont to replace conscience with skill. the reign of skill is the ruin of art. it is organized falsehood. sincerity with one fault, indeed with many faults, still preserves its integrity. the facility that believes that it has no faults has them all. the primitives, who ignored the laws of perspective, nevertheless created great works of art because they brought to them absolute sincerity. look at this persian miniature, the admirable reverence of this illuminator for the form of these plants and animals, and the attitudes of these persons which he has forced himself to render just as he saw them. how eagerly has he painted that, this man who loved it all! do you tell me that his work is bad because he is ignorant of the laws of perspective? and the great french primitives and the roman architects and sculptors! has it not been repeatedly said that their style is a barbaric style? on the contrary, it has a formidable beauty. it breathes the sacred awe of those who have been impressed by the great works of nature herself. it offers us the strongest proof that these men had made themselves part of life and also a part of its mystery. to express life it is necessary to desire to express it. the art of statuary is made up of conscience, precision, and will. if i had not had tenacity of purpose, i should not have produced my work. if i had ceased to make my researches, the book of nature would have been for me a dead letter, or at least it would have withheld from me its meaning. now, on the contrary, it is a book that is constantly renewed, and i go to it, knowing well that i have only spelled out certain pages. in art to admit only that which one comprehends leads to impotence. nature remains full of unknown forces. as for me, i have certainly lost some time through the fault of my period. i should have been able to learn much more than i have grasped with so much slowness and circumlocution; but i should not have tasted less happiness through that highest form of loss; that is, work. and when my hour shall come, i shall dwell in nature, and shall regret nothing. the antique--the greeks if the artists of antiquity are the greatest of all it is because they approached most closely to nature. they studied it with magnificent sincerity and copied it with all their intelligence. they never wasted their time in trying to invent something. to invent, to create, these are words that mean nothing. they contented themselves with rendering the adorable model that enchanted their eyes. this love and this respect for creation has never since their time been surpassed. they did not copy literally what they saw; to a certain degree they interpreted the character of forms. the aim of art is not to copy literally. it consists in slightly exaggerating the character of the model in order to make it salient; it consists also in reassembling in a single expression the successive expressions given by the same model. art is the living synthesis. this is what the ancients did, with what taste, what incomparable science! from this science that respected unity their works derived their calm, contained force, the sentiment of grand serenity, the atmosphere of peace that envelops them. the ignorant and the professors of esthetics who do not know the source of all this have named it greek idealism. this is nothing but a word that serves to conceal a want of understanding. there is no idealism in the ancients; there is an exercise of choice, a marvelous taste; but it is by the most realistic means that they render human beauty. [illustration: the tempest.] we others, we moderns, are carried away by the restlessness of the epoch; we are superficial, we only regard things cursorily, and we have concluded from this sublime simplicity that greek art is cold. to us indeed it seems very cold. it is really warm. to it alone belongs in this respect the quality of life, reality in forms, and precision in movement. it is through this that it attains perfect equilibrium. but that is beyond our little spirit of detail. we seek nothing but detail; the greek, for his part, saw nothing but the whole; that is to say, the equilibrium, the harmony. the richness of the antique lies in modeling the value of the antique springs from _ronde-bosse_. it possesses in a supreme degree the art of relief. how can the critics and the professors explain this, being what they are? they do not belong to the trade. art should not be taught except by those who practise it. observe any fragments of greek sculpture: a piece of an arm, a hand. what you call the idea, the subject, no longer exists here, but is not all this debris none the less admirably beautiful? in what does this beauty consist? solely in the modeling. observe it closely, touch it; do you not feel the precision of this modeling, firm yet elastic, in flux like life itself? it is full, it is like a fruit. all the eloquence of this sculpture comes from that. what is modeling? the very principle of creation. it is the juxtaposition of the innumerable reliefs and depressions that constitute every fragment of matter, inert or animated. modeling creates the essential texture, supple, living, embracing every plante. it fills, coördinates, and harmonizes them. it penetrates everything, it animates everything, as well the depths as the surfaces. it comprises the minute as well as the immense. mountain, horse, flower, woman, insect equally owe to it their form. when god created the world, it is of modeling he must have thought first of all. if you consider a hand, you notice its contours and the character of the whole. but the eye of the artist, that eye, sees more: it sees the infinite assemblage of projections and depressions forming a texture more closely knit, more exactly blended than the most perfect mosaic. it is this that he seeks to render; this that he translates, if he is a sculptor, by the science of depression and relief, if he is a draughtsman or painter by that of light and shadow. for light serves, in conformity with depressions and reliefs, to give the eye the same sensation that the hand receives from touch: titian is just as great a modeler as donatello. to-day the sense of _ronde-bosse_ is completely lost, not only in europe, but among the peoples of the orient. it is the age of the _flat_. no one knows anything about it. men love what they do themselves, until they are made to see that it is not beautiful; but it takes years and years for this to penetrate into their consciousness. in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries china and japan still produced charming works. in ancient times their art was very great; it approached the greek. at the exposition of , we were enabled to see antique japanese statues, superb nudes nearly as fine as those of greece. in our time the pest of flatness has contaminated the asiatic races as well as the european: decadence is universal. we are so far removed from antique beauty that when we photograph the works of the ancients we take them in the spirit of our own taste, which is that of low-relief; we take from them that flower of beautiful modeling, their richness, their crowning grace. when i say low-relief, i do not use this term exactly; it is only that i know no other means of expressing the modern evil of uniformity; but i know that good low-relief is as full and as fruit-like as sculpture in the round, that it is sculpture in the round itself, as in the friezes of the parthenon, as in our buildings of the renaissance and of the seventeenth century. the great concern of my life is the struggle i have maintained to escape from the general flatness. all the success of my sculpture comes from that. although it has little enough taste, the public, despite all, is tired to death of this flatness. the charm of _ronde-bosse_ is so great that it captivates the ignorant even without their knowing it. ronde-bosse and chiaroscuro observe this little torso of a woman; it is a little venus. it is broken; it has no longer a head, arms, legs, yet i never weary of contemplating it; each day, each hour for me adds to this masterpiece because i only understand it better. what could it say to our indifferent glance? for me it has the ineffable voluptuousness of softly maturing flesh. the effect lies in no part and in every part. it is perfection. this little childish body, has it not all the charm of woman? it does not catch the light, the light catches it, glancing over it lightly; without any effect of roughness, any dark shadow. here shadow can no longer be called shadow but only the decline of light. she does not become dark, she grows pale in imperceptible depressions, in delicious undulations. she is indivisible; she is whole or incomplete, but her unity is not disturbed. and this passage that joins the abdomen to the thighs, this little declivity of graces, this valley of love! everything is full of the calm, the lightness, the serenity of pure beauty in the perfect confidence of nature. the ideal that you imagine you find in a gesture, in a momentary attitude, is here; it is here because of the infinite love of the flesh, of the human fruit. what you call the ideal is nothing but the perfume of beautiful modeling. what more could you ask? when i look at this marble in the evening by candle-light, how the wonder deepens! if those who have been telling us for a hundred years that greek art is cold studied it with care, could they for one hour maintain this absurdity? this sculpture, on the contrary, is of an extraordinary living complexity, which the flame reveals; the whole surface is nothing but depressions and reliefs, but united, melted together in the great, harmonious force of the _ensemble_. i turn the little torso about under the caressing rays of the light. there is not a fault, not a weakness, not a dead spot; it is the very continuity of life, its intoxicating voluptuousness hidden in the bosom of the molecule. why should such artists have sought to create an abstract beauty by the idealization of forms? these men of genius loved nature too well to presume to correct her. they knew well that despite their genius, they still remained beneath her. nothing can surpass the marvel of creation. the conception of an idealistic art comes from the academy. before the purity of the antique forms people used to believe that the beauty lay solely in the exterior profiles. it is really beautiful because of the interior modeling. and still we make this distinction between the profiles and the modeling, thanks to our mania for dividing things; but we know that the one is inseparable from the other; the surfaces are nothing but the extremities of volumes, the boundaries of the mass. all the sculpture of the period of louis-philippe was imitated from the antique, but only by means of the exterior profiles. if it had been practised by true modelers, by geometrical minds, it would have been as beautiful as its original. what pleased people in that epoch, what pleases people in ours, is not at all the antique; it is the fashion in which we see it. it was the renaissance that really understood the greek. it created works exactly the same in feeling, though somewhat different in arrangement and general color. for color does not exist in painting alone. its rôle is equally great in sculpture. to-day this color is bad; it fails to obtain the chiaroscuro which derives from _ronde-bosse_. good sculpture owes to chiaroscuro clarity, unity, charm, even, i might say, the voluptuousness of breathing flesh. shadow, at once luminous and mysterious, models the fulness of the body in the exuberance of health; it makes one understand abundance, solidity. in the art of the renaissance and the eighteenth century shadow is always supple and warm as in greek art; it has the tender coloring of the vegetation of our country, the sweetness of which our great artists have captured. the chiaroscuro of the antique consists of the density and depth of light falling over the entire modeling. chiaroscuro penetrates to every plane and renders the reality of them; it is reality itself. this is because the antique and nature are part and parcel of the same mystery, the infinitely harmonious mystery of force in suspense. the great artists compose as nature itself operates. undoubtedly the greeks possessed certain methods which they handed down from master to pupil, as has been the case in all artistic epochs. they had celebrated ateliers, schools, where they taught their principles. by the fifth century they had established a canon of the human body; but they never made use of it without consulting the model. as for us, we have imagined that we could use it like a magic formula. it is not the formula that makes the art; it is the experience of the artist that creates the formula. if we abandon nature for a rule, if we do not constantly vivify the one by means of the other, we soon speak a language that means nothing. one cannot repeat this enough: the ancients are realists; they work in _ronde-bosse_. this explanation seems commonplace and even vulgar; it is the whole truth. it can be understood by the humblest artisan, provided only that he knows his trade. but it is as difficult to get it into the heads of people to-day as it is to restore faith in a man who has lost it. rome and roman art what i have said of greek art applies equally well to roman. another opinion has been adopted by critics and the world in general: the roman is less beautiful than the greek. it is less beautiful perhaps, by a certain shade, a shade which those who speak of it are incapable of appreciating. it is a little less substantial, but it is superb. it is greek, with a different character, a certain ruggedness, and more! the maison carrée at nîmes, that little temple, the flower of austerity, the smile of the race as sweet as the smile of greece; the pont du gard, that heroic masterpiece, that giant which bestrides the country, which imposes the power of rome on the peaceful landscape, these are what they criticize! rome is magnificent. we say it, but we do not believe it; otherwise it would not be despoiled. no, in rome itself, they have no idea of the beauty of rome. where are there artists great enough to appreciate you, severe genius, splendid city, daughter of the she-wolf? your genius they pillage every day. they destroy its proportion, and that is to strike at the foundation of the master work. proportion is the law of architecture. ... in the very midst of the ancient city they are setting up atrocious monuments, enormous or too petty. in rome, as in athens, as in the france of gothic art, the architect of old planned the monument in relation to the landscape; he harmonized it with the outline of the mountains, with the expanse of the surrounding country-side; he determined its proportions according to its environment. the architect of to-day plans out his monument in his own study on a piece of paper and produces it ready-made. whether this mass of stone obliterates the buildings that surround it or whether, on the other hand, it turns out a miserable little contrivance in the midst of great works of the past matters little to him: he does not see it. the french academy sends students to work in rome. but they get nothing from rome, they can get nothing; they come there with a spirit entirely opposed to it. at a time when i did not know the city i heard the bridge of sant' angelo spoken ill of and fun made of the contorted angels; but they are all very well in their place; they are needed there; there is enough repose elsewhere. bernini, so often sneered at, is as beautiful as michelangelo, although he is not so fine. it is he who made the rome of the seventeenth century. they do not know that the appian way is sublime. it will disappear one of these days. these things are awaiting their condemnation. they are constructing quays like ours. if they do not put a stop to it, rome will be destroyed. those who have not seen cities such as this was in the nineteenth century will not understand anything. i have said as much to my italian friends, who appeared greatly astonished; for nobody makes these reflections which come to me constantly in my studies. they consider me a gloomy fellow, a misanthrope. gloomy, yes; for it is painful to live in a decadent epoch; but i have no _parti-pris_; i only wish to try to arrest the general massacre. in france, as everywhere, we commit exactly the same faults. we destroy our monuments by surrounding them with great open spaces; we have ruined the effect of notre dame, on the side of the parvis. at brussels, in the musée du cinquantenaire, they have set up a model of the parthenon; but they have placed it in the midst of enormous objects that annihilate it. we have come to that! we have killed the parthenon! barbarism could go no further. we live in a barbarous age. there is no doubt about that! people cry out that we must create schools for people to learn art; we bungle the most beautiful of all schools--the museum. for america these things ought to be said again and again to the point of satiety, if we wish to save any remnants. coming from me, whose opinions carry some weight, they are repeated when i am no longer on the spot. people feel the justice of them, the shaft goes home. a few who are more ardent than the rest propagate them and stir up a current of opinion that may lead to reform. there is no reason therefore to fear repeating them in america, where also people have fallen into the general error. american artists have followed our teaching, altogether in a bad sense. notwithstanding that in taking their point of departure they could have escaped into the good epochs of art, they have saddled themselves with the poverty of modern taste. let them return to the school of the past; above all, let them return to nature; it is as beautiful with them as elsewhere. the mountains, the trees, the vegetation, the men and women of their own country--these should be their masters in architecture and sculpture. america is full of will. it desires to be a great nation. it stops at no expense in order to obtain instruction; it creates immense universities, libraries, museums. it pours into them streams of money. the favor with which my work has been received there is the sign of a movement toward truth in art; they are developing an affection for this naturalistic school which borrows from life its charm and its variety. but all this will be as nothing unless america creates work of its own; unless it breaks with the old errors of the nations of europe in order to find the path of true science. [illustration: the village fiancÉe.] vii the gothic genius to the renaissance and the eighteenth century notre-dame notre dame--notre dame de paris--more splendid than ever in the half-light of this winter day. the veils of the atmosphere redress the evils that modern restorations have done to this monument; the folds of the mist soften the sharpness of the retouched outlines: the elements are more respectful to this masterpiece than are men. i come upon it at the turn of the bridge. at once i drop out of this industrial epoch of ours, so poor despite its love of money; my sculptor's soul escapes from its exile. the gothic sphinx rises before me. the strength of its beauty overwhelms me. i struggle against it and i am broken by it. then it attracts me anew with its sweetness; it exalts me. my spirit makes the ascent of this sculptured mountain. what power in these motionless stones to create the sense of movement in the mind! what makes this possible? the mason of genius; the science of oppositions. that whole effect of power--he has put it in the thickness of the foundations, the enormous walls, the buttresses. they are as formidable as the tiers of a dike, as a breakwater planted in the sea. one would say that this church was built to combat the forces of nature: the temple of peace and love has the air of a fortress. one's spirit is weighed down by the bareness of the stone, but stirred by the height of the structure and the towers; it soars toward them as toward a world that reassures it; the hard material has become humanized; the genius of man is at play there amid the lacework of stone. he has placed there angels, saints, animals, fruits, flowers, all the gifts of the seasons; it is life in its entirety such as the creator in his infinite munificence has bestowed upon him. the gothic artist knows that paradise is on earth; he has no need to invent another. the childish and monotonous heaven presented to us in our legends is nothing but a poor copy of the marvels of our life. let us enter. i tremble. the beauty is terrible. i am plunged into night, a living night in which i do not know what mysteries are being enacted--the cruel mysteries of the ancient religions? there are shimmering rays from the long windows, the rose windows. hope enters my heart: there is light here, then? i am no longer alone. my eyes grow accustomed to this populous obscurity. there is a world about me, a world of columns. it seems terrible, it _is_ terrible because of its power, but this power has its _raison d'être_. it seems frightening to me but it is only necessary. it is distributed power; therefore it is beneficent. it holds the vault in the air, the prodigious weight of stone that it maintains aloft, above my head, as lightly as the canvas of a tent. marvel of equilibrium, calculation of the intelligence, how is it possible not to adore you? it is you that one comes here to worship under the name of god. the darkness grows lighter; it becomes chiaroscuro. we are in a picture by rembrandt, that great gothic of the sixteenth century. the forest of pillars divides the nave into spaces of shadow and light. it is the order of nature which knows nothing of disorder. this i rediscover with joy: the eye does not love chaos. i familiarize myself with the people of the columns. i recognize them: they are romans. it is the roman, the romance, hardly altered, that comes to receive the gothic arch. the immense nave which i thought a forest full of hidden dangers i see, i understand, i read like a sacred book. the mystery is not that of cruelty; it is only that of beauty. it grows lighter gradually in order to allow the spirit to approach slowly the joy of a perfect interior. this solemnity of the nave, this immense void, is like the bed of a great river; the columns range themselves respectfully on each side in order to give free passage to the flood of human piety. it flows like a majestic river; it bears onward toward the tabernacle, about which it spreads itself like a lake of love under the rays of the thought of god. amid the stones the architect has known how to play the part of the apostle: he has created faith. art and religion are the same thing; they are love. saint-eustache it is the interior of this church that should be admired. here i do not experience the same commotion of the spirit as in notre dame. i am bathed in the fine light of the sixteenth century. at notre dame it was the shadow of rembrandt; here, it is the clear tonality of french painting, of a clouët. admirable is the _élan_ of this renaissance nave; it is as bold as, and even perhaps bolder than that of the gothic buildings. it proceeds on the same plan. the skyward lift is only to be found in the gothic; it is of the very spirit of the race. are the vaults round and no longer pointed? what does it matter if they are equally elegant, if they have the same aërial grace as the ogive? what i rediscover in saint-eustache, less austere than its grand sister of the middle age, but with a sweetness which is itself noble, is the determination of the architect to subordinate everything to the effect of simplicity, to the total effect. on each side of the nave the columns cutting the side wall are disposed fanwise in order to hide the light of the lateral windows. one sees nothing but the stone, and yet there is no effect of heaviness; one could not make anything lighter. this is because the color of the stone is admirably varied by the diversity of the flutings that line the columns. the main fluting marks the outline, and the others, less emphatic, shading off, give it a velvet-like quality. the light throws a golden haze between the great columns, among the deep gorges, and is, on the other hand, channeled, streaked by the little nerves that impel it upward toward the vaults. by this effect of lightness the building seems to rise; it is an assumption. it is no longer the forest of trees that one finds here, but the forest of creepers. these vertiginous columns are like fine, delicate vines. above the altar the great lights of the windows, with their beautiful glass, harmonize well with the general color. the light, at once abundant and restrained, has the coolness which the renaissance recaptured from greece. this church welcomes one as with an immense smile; it has the sweetness of christ holding out his hands: "suffer the little children to come unto me." intelligence has planned it, but it is the heart that has modeled it. if we enter saint-eustache at nightfall, we could almost believe ourselves in a gothic building. the renaissance did not bring about such profound transformations in architecture as people think. there is a heavy italian renaissance element that is altogether alien to us; but in the true french renaissance the celtic taste was not betrayed: it was modified with a certain grace and elegance. grace is an aspect of strength. a nation no more escapes from its racial quality than a man from his temperament. the celtic mingled with the roman produced the romance, out of which the gothic sprang directly--the romance, that is to say, the roman which has passed through the spirit of the franks. it has the severity, the roman qualities, united with the imagination of the barbarians, since we have agreed so to call them. the romance of the second epoch has already sprung forth; it rises during the eleventh and twelfth centuries and goes to make the gothic. the gothic elevates and magnifies the romance. it detaches the buttresses, even to the point of separating them from the walls, in order to carry them further out to sustain the height of the nave. as for the renaissance, it continues the gothic. we could not have a more striking example of this than just here in saint-eustache. here are the same lines, the same idea, with a different ornamentation. it is the same body, clothed in a new way. it is another age of the gothic; sweeter, less powerful, the final florescence of the french genius, which, despite the adorable eighteenth century, follows a descending path down to the first restoration. contrary to what has been thought and taught for so long, the renaissance already marks a stage of decadence. the most beautiful epoch in architecture and sculpture is the middle age, an age as beautiful as, perhaps more beautiful than, the great age of greece, and almost universally despised by our nineteenth century, the century of criticism and pretension, the century of ignorance. yes, with the renaissance things begin to give way. and yet to say that is almost a sacrilege! it is as if one struck one's father! our ravishing gothic of the sixteenth century has charmed france with its masterpieces; it has made artists cherish a whole country, the sweet country of the loire. despite its misalliance with the italian renaissance, it stood firm, it did not bend; it remained the grand french style. witness the louvre with its high pavilions; that sprang, that too, from the gothic vein; the sculptors of the renaissance decorated it less severely, but the general aspect remains the same. the gothic under different names has been the main path of our genius during five hundred years. it has been the blessing of france; it was its active principle down to . if we wish to return to art it will only be through comparative study--the comparison with nature of our national style. the beautiful lines are eternal. why are they used so little? concerning color in sculpture the true difference between the gothic and the renaissance does not lie in the structure of the building but in the quality of the sculpture and in its color. what is meant by color in sculpture and in architecture? it is the law of light and shade, the great law of oppositions which constitutes the charm of nature, the beauty of a landscape at dawn, its splendor at sunset. the color springs from the quality of the modeling; it is the relief which gives the light tones and, by contrast, the dark, in the parts that do not stand out. the ensemble of the intermediary diminutions of light and shade produces the general coloring, whose nuances can be infinitely varied according to the skill of the artist. modeling is the only way in which to express life; and there is only one thing that counts in sculpture and in architecture--the expression of life. a beautiful statue, a well-made monument, live like living beings; they seem different according to the day and the hour. how beautiful it is to give to stone, through nothing but the values of planes, through the handling of shadow and light, the same charm of color as that of living nature, of the flesh of a woman. in the plastic arts, the color betrays the quality of the planes as a beautiful complexion reveals health in a human being. the antique has shorter planes than the gothic; it lacks therefore those deep shadows that give to the gothic such a tormented and tragic aspect. the greek balances the framework of the human body on four planes, the gothic on two only. the latter produces a stronger effect, a more _hollowed_ effect, that _effet de console_ which is essentially gothic. nevertheless, the shadow that results from it is more sustained than in the antique and nothing could be softer or more full of nuances. the roman presents an abundance of dark shadows which, in turn, create an effect of heaviness and density. the greek puts in just enough of them to quicken the general coloring. the roman gives a flatter effect, which shows nevertheless a magnificent vigor. as for us, we copy these styles endlessly without understanding them, for if we did understand them we should do quite otherwise. we abuse the black, the powerful lines, we put them everywhere; we do not know how to shade light. that is why our sculpture is so poor, why our monuments appear so hard, so dry. the bourse, the corps législatif, might be made of iron with their columns set against a uniform background which prevents the light and air from circulating about them and enveloping them and destroys the atmosphere. this is what people call a simple style. it is not simple, it is cold. the simple is the perfect, coldness is impotence. the renaissance recaptured the antique measure and imposed its generous color upon the gothic plane. it used less shadow than our sculptors of the middle ages; it diminished the reliefs. the effect in consequence was lighter. this was because the renaissance was enchanted by all the greek statues that were discovered at this period; and in its enthusiasm it recreated greek art, not by copying it, but by copying nature according to antique principles. it is perhaps a little less beautiful but it has quite the same feeling of gentle strength, of delicacy. one feels the joy of the artist who throws himself against the problem of the nude in the open air. till then statues had been draped, but under the draperies was concealed a carefully studied nude. in the renaissance the drapery was dropped: the nymphs of jean goujon, of germain pilon--i recognize them; these long bodies of women, these undulating bodies, are gothic statues unclothed and set in another light. our whole sixteenth century is a song of grace rising from the gothic heart to the art of the parthenon. but nowhere than in the country of the loire is there renaissance art more gentle and amply luminous. this is the greek part of france. the tranquil river touched the heart of our architects and bestowed on them some of its calm and smiling majesty. from it, from the air impregnated with its vapors, came those châteaux so happy in their beauty and those lovable cottages; for the artist worked as beautifully for peasants as for kings. before ussé, before chenonceaux, blois, azay-le-rideau, i am not in the presence of dead things but of a living spirit, the spirit of divine beauty that animated equally the antique and the gothic. charming sixteenth century france, it is you who have forced me to the study of chiaroscuro. formerly i tried my best to understand your motives, your thousand nerves, but the general law escaped me. i did not see your soul, which consists entirely in the voluptuous shadings of light; i did not perceive your principle, the modeling which impressed movement upon everything and gave the movement life. the eighteenth century the eighteenth century is the exaggeration of the sixteenth. our elegant houses, our houses in the style of louis xv and louis xvi have always the gothic line with its proud, graceful air. without moldings, without ornaments, their beauty lies in their very lack of ornaments, in their nudity. but what proportions they have! the finest of the fine! the eighteenth century is considered too frail, too affected. it is, on the contrary, full of life and strength. it possesses admirable sculptors: pigalle, creator of that immortal masterpiece, the tomb of marshal saxe; houdon, whose busts to-day are bought for their weight in gold without even then bringing their proper price. there were thousands then, the whole rank and file of the trade, who created marvels, with a sureness of hand accustomed to every difficulty. the outline of a table, of a chest, was as much considered as that of a statue. for that matter, what difference did the dimensions of a work make? it was the modeling that counted. the peasant himself sat down in a well-made chair. artists and artisans had a taste, an alert grace, and a dexterity sufficient to fit out the whole world; but their dexterity was based on a foundation of intelligence as an ornament is based upon a building. the dexterity we possess nowadays is nothing but mockery, a kind of banter that touches everything without discernment; it kills force. the louis xv and louis xvi styles possessed grandeur. we call it the art of the boudoir, but the boudoir of that period had a nobility like that of those white and gold salons where the seats are disposed with dignity like persons of quality. the music had the same character; the dances also, the dances, those charming scenes in which men and women with the natural spirit of play threw themselves into the cadence, translating it with the eloquence of youth. the dance--that was architecture brought to life. the eighteenth century was a century which _designed_; in this lay its genius. nowadays people are searching for a new style and do not find it. style comes unawares through the concurrence of many elements; but can we achieve it without design? to-day we design no longer and our art, which is altogether industrial, is bad. the central matter in art is the nude, and this we no longer understand. how can we be expected to have art when we do not understand its central principle? the minor arts are the rays that go out from the center. when i draw the body of a woman i rediscover the form of the beautiful greek vases. through design alone we arrive at a knowledge of the shading of forms. the forms that delight us in the art of past centuries are nothing but those presented by living nature, those of human beings, animals, verdure, interpreted by men of supreme taste. the art that people are struggling to discover to-day might be deduced from my sculpture and my drawings, for i have always drawn with passion. the quality of my drawing i owe in large measure to the eighteenth century. i am nothing but a link in the great chain of artists, but i maintain the connection with those of the past. at the petite ecole they made us copy the red chalks of boucher and the models of flowers, animals, and ornaments. they were louis xvi models, very well executed; they certainly gave me a little of the warmth of the artists of that period. in my youth i made drawings by the hundreds, by the thousands. at the petite ecole we were badly placed, badly lighted by poor candles; when we touched them we made them sticky with the clay with which our fingers were covered so that they were worse than ever afterwards. it did not matter; we were working according to the right principles. to-day the petite ecole is entirely in the power of the larger school, that of the beaux-arts. far from learning one gets spoiled there for the rest of one's life. one copies the antique, but one copies it badly. i am speaking with the experience of a genuine artistic life. there was a time when i never talked; to-day i hold forth! if i am understood it will not have been in vain. but how much effort it will take to reestablish truths which are so self-evident, so obvious, so fundamental that one is ashamed to repeat them so many times! nevertheless they are _essential_. the public is a thousand miles away from them, the public, by which i mean the general taste. if it does not become enlightened, art will disappear. observe its attitude before the works of the new school, before the pictures of those who call themselves cubists: sarcasm, anger. these artists show us squares, cubes, geometrical figures colored according to their own ideas. they name them: _portrait of mme. x._ or _landscape_. this exasperates the public. what does it matter? is it good? that is the whole point. is the ornament well treated? that is the capital question, the only one that is not discussed. their canvases are combinations of color recalling mosaic or even stained glass. we have accepted many other things; we have accepted the green or rather the violet women of our later salons, and women with wooden heads, but we do not wish to admit the squares of the cubists. why? they are not portraits, we say. they are not landscapes. so much the better! they are something else. what does it matter if the artist has deceived himself knowingly or wilfully on a matter so insignificant as the subject? it is ornamental, that is enough. they are curious, these quarrels that break out, these sects that are created for reasons like this--for a sock put on inside out! ignorance inflames the passions. there are struggles whose aim is great; others that appear useless have their use perhaps. it may be that this slackening of taste and knowledge is necessary. perhaps it is a period of transition, a fallow period required by the intelligence like that required by a soil that has been productive for too long. if ignorance is prolonged it will mean that the history of france is ended; it will mean the annihilation of the celtic genius which has fertilized europe for two thousand years. we shall become like asia. roman art declined for four or five centuries after augustus. with us the decadence has only been going on for a hundred years. during the present war marvels have been destroyed. formerly, even during the religious wars, the monuments were spared; it is for this reason that france is still so rich. when stone is no longer respected, it means decadence. the cannon turn up the earth like a plow, leveling everything. this war appears therefore like an explosion of barbarism; at bottom it indicates a latent state of soul which has been shaping itself since the beginning of the nineteenth century. during this period the world has ceased to obey the law of beauty and love; it has lived for nothing but business. what is the leading idea that has precipitated the nations against one another? trade: the desire, the longing to make more money than one's neighbor. trade is the anxious care of people who think of nothing but their own petty welfare; it is not the basis on which is founded the grandeur of peoples. it alone regulates at present the relations between things. the war is nothing but the consequence of such habits and their natural conclusion. [illustration: metamorphosis according to ovid.] do you ask me what will spring out of the conflict? i am not a prophet. i know only that without religion, without art, without the love of nature--these three words are for me synonymous--men will die of ennui. but nothing easily resigns itself to death. an outburst of courage has just transfigured the world. can we preserve this courage during peace? the patience of the soldier, the patience of the trenches surpasses in sublimity the virtue of the ancients. will it produce a rebirth of intelligence? shall we have, in study, the force of soul that we have had in the great struggle? that is the question. of course the stupid, the ignorant will not suffer any transformation through the war; but men of character will be reinvigorated by the hardships of the military life; we have recaptured patience and we have yet to learn what we can expect from this virtue. genius is as much character as talent. if we have men of force in this country where taste is a natural gift, it seems to me impossible that this force will not quicken the gift and develop it and that we shall not have once more an era of beauty. auguste rodin. the work of rodin i the study of the cathedrals--influence of the gothic on the art of rodin--"saint john the baptist" ( )--"the gate of hell" in rodin visited our most illustrious cathedrals, rheims, amiens, chartres, soissons, noyon. during his youth, the choir of beauvais and notre dame de paris appealed more to his imagination than to his taste, and it required many years of travel and comparison to enable him to grasp the splendors of that gothic art which he was to admire thenceforth at least as much as the antique. as a splendidly gifted, but inexperienced young man, he shared the error of his epoch: the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century had despised the roman and the gothic; they had ridiculed them and called them barbaric; the nineteenth century, while flattering itself that it appreciated them, did still worse--it restored them. the romantic writers of the schools of chateaubriand and victor hugo had exalted the art of the middle ages, but chiefly because of their hatred of the classic and without understanding its true worth. what struck them, especially, was the immensity and the picturesqueness of the buildings, the luxuriousness of this stone vegetation, but not the unique character of their architecture and sculpture. victor hugo was perhaps one of the few to discover the precise explanation of this beauty: relief and modeling. this all-powerful writer, this architect of words who constructed poems like cathedrals, understood the plastic intelligence of the master masons because he himself possessed the _sense of mass_. one is convinced of this not only in reading his descriptions of cities and monuments, but in studying those astonishing pen-and-ink drawings which he multiplied in idle moments. if the romanticists have failed fully to explain medieval art to us, let us still be grateful to them: they gave our cathedrals back to us, they denounced ignorance and scourged the stupidity that would have ended by tearing down those sublime piles. finally if the writers and art critics of this epoch have not given them superlative praise, if on their behalf they have not burned with apostolic zeal, it is because it was necessary for this prophecy of art to come from a man of the craft, a man dominated, captivated, himself, by the craft, a man who understood stone and adored it because he had married it in spirit with all its difficulties and its dazzling possibilities. that man was to be rodin. although he has been listened to by the ignorant and superficial multitude, it has not been chiefly because of the authority of his genius, of the general renown that he has enjoyed. he has truly thrown a new light over the mystery of gothic construction. thanks to him, we understand in a measure, for tangible reasons, the reasons of an actual carver, this "world in little" that constitutes the gothic cathedrals. what study, what researches are necessary in order to comprehend the art of stonework! does any one suppose that rodin himself has attained this in a day? by no means. that lover of perfection in detail does not possess the instantly penetrating glance that is often the property of genius: to the task of deciphering our monuments he brought that slow-minded, customary patience of his, together with his energy. he had first of all to rid himself of the false current ideas. after that thirty years of observation were necessary for him to reach conclusions that satisfied his artistic conscience. even to-day he is far from affirming that he has understood everything, that he has grasped the full significance of the gothics. read his book, "the cathedrals of france," published in ; observe the carefullness of his judgments, the gropings of his thought, the constant retracing of his steps. he makes attempts, ventures; he never proclaims his opinion in the peremptory tone dear to specialists in criticism, but endeavors to approach respectfully, as closely as possible, to the spirit of the masters. sometimes a flash of genius springs from his brain and illumines to the depths of its mysteries the gothic universe; but nothing is suggested that does not spring from a prolonged observation, and when at last he speaks it is in the tone of a man who mistrusts himself. it must be confessed that in this work, "the cathedrals of france," something is lacking, even though it is prefaced by a long and very learned introduction by one of our good writers, charles morice. it lacks the magnificent lesson that the reader will find in these pages, signed with rodin's name. this lesson constitutes really a vital page that is, as it were, the key and the summary of the whole work; but the master, having given me the first rights in it, had scruples, as had charles morice, about including it in his own book. before obtaining this page, with what insistence did i have to question rodin not once, not twice, but twenty times, during the course of a number of years. every time he came back from one of his pilgrimages to some old city of the provinces, to our churches, our town halls, i renewed my questions without receiving any satisfactory answer. in my heart i could not but honor this rigorous honesty which was unwilling to venture anything lightly on so vast, so noble a subject. in , after having accomplished his first tour of france, he came back filled with wonder. but the impression that he carried with him was still confused; he did not know at what point to begin the analytical study of french architecture, for in what concerned sculpture he had immediately been struck with amazement and adoration before the essential beauty of the status of chartres, amiens, and rheims. he had returned from italy haunted by the antique and michelangelo, and now here he was haunted by the modeling and the rhythm of the gothic figures. but in order to understand them entirely he had to rediscover this modeling and these movements in nature, he had to verify them in the living model. fortune favors those who seek greatly. when one is the victim of an idea unexpected elements arise to nourish and develop it. one day two italians knocked at the door of his studio. one of them, a professional model, had already posed for rodin and he introduced the other, his comrade. he was a peasant from the abruzzi who had come to seek his fortune in paris. he was fresh from his native province. his robust body, his fierce head, his bristling beard and hair, and above all his expression of indomitable force charmed the artist. he undressed, climbed upon the model's stand, planted himself firmly on his legs, which were spread like a compass, the head well raised, and, continuing to talk, advanced with a gesture full of ardor. rodin, struck by this wild energy, immediately set to work. he made the man such as he saw him; he desired to capture this movement of the legs, this brusk forward movement that complemented the movement of the arms, the shining eyes, the open mouth. he surrendered himself to a great study, without any preconceived idea, without any intention of treating a _subject_. what he made was _a man walking_. the name has stuck to the figure. the first study remains incomplete; rodin has sculptured neither the head nor the arms; what he sought eagerly, passionately, was the equilibrium of the torso and of the legs cast forward into space. he succeeded; he made a superb fragment, "the man walking." thirty years later it occurred to a group of his admirers to ask the state to acquire this study and erect it in the court of the french embassy at rome, in the farnese palace; but the official architects up to the present time have objected to the erection of this statue, and for the last seven or eight years it has awaited, in some obscure shed, the good pleasure of these gentlemen. rodin, in the presence of his italian peasant, had rediscovered, to his great joy as a seeker, the peculiar equipoise of the gothic figures. in the antique statues the plumb-line falls through one of the legs, while the other, lightly raised, impresses on the different planes of the body the graceful effect that has become classic. in gothic statues, on the contrary, the line of equilibrium passes through the middle of the body and falls right between the two legs as they are planted on the earth. in "the age of bronze" rodin has adopted the balanced rhythm of greek sculpture; in his new figure he passed to the gothic equipoise, with a harmony that is less gracious, but with a reality stronger and more living. what he did not abandon was the rigorous construction and the strength of modeling which his study of the antique had given him. "the man walking," as well as the greater part of his subsequent works, thus exhibits the union of the two great principles of sculpture that have governed the occidental genius. rodin, strengthened by study, now made a complete statue with head and arms. while he was working he discovered that his model was half a savage, still close to the animal and its ferocious instincts. sometimes his eyes burned, his jaws, armed with powerful teeth, were thrust forward as if to bite something; he resembled a wolf. at other times a kind of strange passion inflamed him. his face radiated faith and will; he spoke with such energy that he seemed to be haranguing a crowd; one would have thought him a prophet of the primitive ages, a visionary bursting forth from the desert to preach and to convert the people. rodin regarded him in amazement. it was no longer his model, but a man from the bible; surely it was a prophet that stood before him: it was saint john the baptist brought back to life. the sculptor bowed before the command of nature: his statue should bear the name of the forerunner. [illustration: eve.] he thought at first of emphasizing the disturbing impression: he placed on the shoulders of saint john a simple cross. but here was revealed the all-powerful instinct of the sculptor, making the subject, the anecdote, the literary connotation a matter of secondary importance. the cross, the sublime symbol, would be here only an accessory, not really needed. it would complicate the simplicity of line dictated by the laws of sculpture, destroying the appositions of equilibrium of the great body and distracting the attention from that speaking head. so rodin gave it up. he came at last to the decision that his work should remain free from what was not of the very essence of art. he sent it off in the form in which it appeared in the salon of , adding also "the age of bronze." the artists, the true artists, those whose enthusiasm was not poisoned by envy and jealousy, applauded these two superb figures artistically so different, but so similar in their sincerity; they acclaimed them with the grave joy of generous souls who perceive the dawn of a great talent. the name of rodin became fixed forever in their memory. as for the jury of this salon, it considered it sufficient to award the "saint john the baptist" and "the age of bronze" a medal _of the third class_. let us, in turn, give it our reward--the reward for its insensitiveness--by not disclosing the names of the sages who composed it. "the gate of hell" while finishing these works, which he was not even certain of being able to sell, rodin was still compelled to provide for his own subsistence and that of his family; he had also to meet the expenses of his trade. a costly trade! it requires a studio, models, large fires to keep them warm, clay, tools of every kind. it was luck enough if the sculptor, still unknown, was able to have plaster casts made of his work. but this did not satisfy him; he dreamed of seeing them take on a new aspect in the richness of marble and bronze. alas! in many cases he had to wait until middle age to have this dream realized. rodin has never complained of the slowness of fortune. he knows that in order to attain the fullness of his productive power it is well for the artist to be thwarted, exalted by difficulties, the desire to conquer. after a five-years' stay in belgium he had returned to paris to take part in the work of the world exposition of , and he had taken a position with the ornament-worker legrain, in whose workshop he met jules desbois, the future great sculptor, to whom he became attached for life. what innumerable decorations he executed at that time--decorations which disappeared like the leaves and flowers of the season when the stucco palaces of the exposition vanished! only the masks ornamenting the palais du trocadéro remained. at the same time he accumulated busts, studies, large figures with a fury of work which from then on was to resemble that of the most powerfully productive minds, the fecundity of a rubens, of a balzac, of a michelet, of a hugo. in the studios which he rented in the faubourg st. jacques, from to , besides the "saint john the baptist," he executed the admirable little tough model of the "monument commemorating the national defense"; after his wife, whose characterful features and naturally tragic countenance he had often reproduced, he made a helmeted bust, a "bellona." he exhibited three life-sized figures: "the creation of man"; "adam," since destroyed; and "eve," the bronze of which did not appear until the salon of . he did the busts of w.e. henley; the painter jean-paul laurens (to mention some of the most beautiful), carrier-belleuse, the etcher alphonse legros, all in the midst of difficulties and injustices which did not in any way disturb the depths of his serenity, the noble tranquillity of the artisan sure of attaining his end by labor. is it possible to-day to believe that the model of the "monument of the defense" was not only refused, but was not even classed among the thirty designs that were retained by the jury of after the first choice had been made? this same jury, the composition of which is also worthy of passing into history, decided on a solemn confection by m. barrias for the _prix de rome_, the result of which was that four years later its creator was elected a member of the academy of fine arts. i do not know whether many collectors contend for reproductions of m. barrias's monstrous design for a clock; but rodin's group, a wounded soldier entirely enveloped by the wings of a prodigious figure of a warrior goddess crying out for aid, which was later renamed "the genius of the defense" or "the appeal to arms," and which has acquired to-day so pathetic a character of actuality, is coveted by most of the museums and art collectors of europe and america. as if these works, which have since acquired such glory, were nothing but fragments of secondary importance, rodin attacked a great piece of work, like those that used to be executed in the great ages of art: he undertook the famous "gate of hell." at the time of the affair of "the age of bronze" there was at the head of the ministry of fine arts, an under-secretary of state named edmond turquet. to him fell the task of deciding in the last resort the case of rodin. m. edmond turquet was a brilliant lawyer who had become _procureur_ under the empire, which did not altogether qualify him for the part of director of fine arts under the republic. in the field of art he knew no more than any one else, rodin says; but he was a very fair-minded man, and his honesty had the effect of quickly straightening out the affair of the sculptor. in his genuine desire to atone for the wrong done to rodin in the eyes of public opinion he not only offered to obtain for him a position in the porcelain factory at sèvres, in order to assure him a regular livelihood, but ordered from him a great ornamental piece, a door destined for the palais des arts décoratifs. in addition, by a special privilege created in favor of artists under louis xiv,--a privilege the traditions of which the french government has happily perpetuated,--m. turquet granted rodin a good studio in the dépôt des marbres, so that he could execute his order. "and what will you represent on that door?" enquired the under-secretary of state. "i am sure i don't know," replied the artist. "but i shall make a quantity of little figures; then no one will say that they are casts taken from the life." thus we find him at sèvres, a ceramist; he has carried on so many different trades that he succeeds marvelously with this one. it was his task to decorate vases of delicate clay; he modeled light bas-reliefs, representations of mythological scenes, idylls. nymphs, cupids, fauns, evoked by his miraculously delicate fingers, were born out of the milky, transparent material, bringing back to life the flowery graces of the drawing-room art of the eighteenth century, the dainty elegances of the wax figures of clodion, but with a graver sense of the mystery of nature and of love. unfortunately, when these vases left the hand of the master they were overladen with hideous ornaments in the style of louis-philippe. moreover, the officials at the head of the factory did not like them. they were carried up to the attics, they were left lying about on the floor, in the secret hope of seeing them broken by the feet of some careless or ill-willed workman. the feeling of being isolated and misunderstood at times threw a shadow over the soul of the sculptor; but on the other hand he felt himself so strong, so solidly based in his will, in his self-confidence, and in the virtue of labor that these moments of depression passed away quickly. besides, he knew the secret of the poor, the secret of creating happiness for oneself out of everything that the rich and powerful despise: a simple life, health, regular work, the contemplation of nature, and a few real friendships. rodin earned at sèvres only two or three francs an hour and lost a great deal of time on the railroad. what did it matter? he found pleasure and rest in these little journeys. every day he set out from paris by train, and, the day over, winter and summer, his wife came to meet him. they returned together on foot either along the banks of the seine, charming in their profusion of little hills and islands, covered with meadows or fine trees, or through the woods of meudon and clamart, with their vistas of paris, its heights, its buildings, its changing sky full of light and spirit. at the end of four years of opposition and annoyance rodin gave up pottery in order to consecrate himself wholly to his own work. the museum of the factory preserves a vase signed by him, and the future musée de l'hôtel biron can show a second example. what has become of the others? what price would not be paid for them to-day by admirers of the master? these supplementary works did not turn him away from his essential task; whatever were the technical means employed, his efforts tended toward one unique end, the plastic quality, and he gave himself up desperately to this search in executing his new order, the "gate." rising at four in the morning, as he had done in his youth, he studied the plans and the details of this great work. he had announced a series of little figures. how was he to group them? what visions surged in the sculptor's imagination? of what legendary theme, what theme of history or poetry, should he make use in order to realize his program? he had never ceased to be a passionate reader. he read especially the greek poets and dramatists, the roman historians, the old french chronicles, dante, shakspere, victor hugo, and baudelaire. he did not wish to draw the subject of his future work from homer, Æschylus or sophocles; the school of the beaux-arts had so abused the theme of the antique, already immortalized by greek sculptors, that it had entirely lost its freshness. the moderns attracted him less, but he was obsessed by the work of the great poet of the renaissance, by the "divine comedy" of dante. he had read and reread it and made a sort of commentary in the form of innumerable sketches which he jotted down mornings and evenings at table, while walking, stopping by the wayside to dash off attitudes and gestures on the leaves of his note-book. he rediscovered in the poem of dante the fateful grandeur of the greek dramas, but with an atmosphere more modern, closer to ourselves, more mournfully familiar to our anguishes and our torments. the idea took shape in his imagination, "that imagination ceaselessly rumbling and groaning like a forge"; it exalted his bold spirit. genius joins to the richness of the intellect the simplicity of heart that creates faith. genius _believes_ ever more than it _thinks_. it has the strength which succeeds in anything, and it possesses also that supreme gift, the ingenuousness of the child who doubts nothing. rodin believed the poem of dante as if he had lived it, as dante himself believed in vergil. what a magnificent homage great men render to one another in this credulity of genius toward genius! [illustration: rodin at work on the marble.] the subject chosen by rodin for his decorative panels, then, was hell--hell as dante conceived it in a vision that lends itself, for that matter, marvelously to a plastic realization. the "gate" would be a poem, an immense sculptured poem; that is to say, a résumé of the attitudes and gestures of life called forth by the release of the passions, a strange catalogue of the expressions of the human body under the shock of sorrow and of joy. if the imagination of rodin caught fire like that of a visionary, he remained beyond everything and above everything the sculptor, and he plunged immediately into the search for the general scheme of the work. the truth of the movements, the poetry of the evocations, his models would give him; he could feel at ease as to that: the resources that nature would offer him were inexhaustible. but the plan, that he must find himself; he must do the work of the builder, almost of the geometrician. there could be no self-deception as to that. the fuller the ornamentation was to be of figures and movements, the more solid must be the frame of the immense picture, the more vigorous and compact must be the general plan of the work. rodin's mind wavered between two great schools, that of the renaissance and that of the middle ages, that which had produced the doors of the baptistry at florence and that to which we owe the portals of the gothic cathedrals. the celebrated gates of florence are a series of bas-reliefs arranged symmetrically in a regular framework; they present a series of separate pictures having no common bond except their subject. the execution is admirable, and it is perhaps impossible to surpass it. lorenzo ghiberti has done there the work of an incomparable modeler, actually a goldsmith; but he has in no way troubled himself with regard to architecture. now, architecture is the great french point of view. the roman and the gothic have placed in their monument (the church) that other monument (the portal). the portal is complete in itself; the art of the sculptor and that of the architect have united and become indistinguishable here in order to realize an absolute beauty. rodin, profoundly french, inheriting the instinct and taste of his ancestors the master-masons, having to compose a door, was fated to conceive a portal. on the other hand, he could not escape the influence of the antique, the result of his early studies. this was the entirely different element which in the course of the work he had undertaken was to mingle with the gothic element. it was not the first time that the mingling of these two great conceptions of art had occurred in france. from it had sprung our renaissance sculpture; in that epoch the sculpture of the greeks united itself with the gothic architecture, the hellenic sunlight brought to blossom the majesty of our monuments. does not rodin himself, with his vast outlook over the whole field of art, call this period of national art, the sixteenth century, the french gothic? "the gate of hell," then, took on in its general structure a renaissance aspect. it preserves the graceful line of the gothic portal and has the luminous whiteness inspired by greek sculpture. this singular work has touched all contemporary artists. most of our writers have described it, and, after them, the critics of other countries. this living multitude, this suffering, groaning multitude that covers the two panels with a thousand passionate movements, has drawn into its magic whirlpool the world of literature, which has been able to liberate itself only by means of innumerable printed pages. the poem of dante has come forth as it were revivified from the hands of rodin. fresh tears, one would say, have bathed the most poignant passages; the pity of a man of to-day, of one like ourselves, our brother, has enveloped the terrible work of the florentine poet, that man of the middle ages, with an atmosphere of tenderness and compassion which seems the emotion of christianity at its purest, its original source. in order to become our own, it has passed through the great soul of rodin. it is not surprising, then, that the sensibility of our artists, reanimated by this new spectacle, should be touched to so voluminous an expression by this haunting work. but what has not been sufficiently remarked is that the "gate" is, above everything, a piece of architecture of the highest order. when we see it we are at once struck with an impression of majesty, of calm strength and plenitude. it seems even longer than it actually is. it is a rectangle six meters high and two and a half meters wide, but the source of the illusion is the justness of the proportions and the value of the masses. the powerful frame is furrowed with deep depressions. it rests on the ground upon a strong base from which rise the two door-posts, as robust as pillars and mounting together toward the summit. a pediment in the shape of an entablature overhangs the entire monument, casting over it a deep shadow full of nuances; and it is this shadow, skilfully graduated, that gives to the work its rich, soft color. the body of the portal is divided into two panels; a vast tympanum surmounts them transversally. this tympanum, surmounted by a large cornice, dominates the work. without weighing it down, it gives it its mass, it attracts, it obsesses, the eye; it is the soul of the edifice, its intellect. no word can more justly describe it than the word brow, for it is magnetic, haunting, mysterious, like the forehead of a man of genius. the panels sink deep into a shadow that is heavy, but not harsh, while in the foreground the pillars advance into the light; the delicate bas-reliefs that cover them keep them in a silvery atmosphere, the source of the great softness which envelopes this work, otherwise severe and tragic, the source of the fugitive lightness of the lines, which strike up from the earth toward the somber and tormented upper regions. carried away by this marvelous technic, the spirit of the visitor succumbs; it follows this ascending movement of the door-posts, to lose itself in the sorrowful dream sculptured on the tympanum. on the panel writhe the clusters of human figures, the eddies of the multitude of damned souls pursued by the rage of the elements, by the devouring tongues of the infernal fire, by the frozen waters, by the wind that tears them and stings them. "it is," says the eminent art critic gustave jeffroy, in the most beautiful pages that have been consecrated to a description of this work, "the dizzy whirl, the falling through space, the groveling on the face of the earth of a whole wretched humanity obstinately persisting in living and suffering, bruised and wounded in its flesh, saddened in its soul, crying aloud its griefs, harshly laughing through its tears, chanting its breathless fears, its sickly joys, its ecstatic sorrows." the genius of rodin became intoxicated with all the resources of his art. master of a technic of the first order, he delighted in every kind of effect, arranging them as a great symphonist arranges the instruments of an immense orchestra. low-relief, half-relief, high-relief, and sculpture in the round, he omitted none. he did not yield to the literary temptation. at the height of his fever of invention he was circumspect, measured, guided by his knowledge as a modeler. the poet thinks, but the carver speaks; he speaks justly, he speaks admirably, because he uses only his own true and personal language, which he knows from the ground up. that is the whole secret of the way in which this man inflames our soul and subjugates our imagination. two principal notes, two motives form, above the whirlwind of the infernal fires, a resting-place for the eye troubled by so much vehemence: one, in the midst of the tympanum, is the figure of dante. it is dante, but it is even more the eternal poet. seated, leaning over the abyss of suffering, thrilled with anguish, he seems to seek in the very depths of the pit itself the word of infinite pity that will deliver this sorrowful humanity. higher yet, above his bowed head, rising suddenly from the frame and splayed in a large protuberance, a group of three entwined figures crowns and completes the brow. with the same despairing gesture they point to the multitude of the damned. one does not know what these shuddering beings are, but they have the sweetness of angels; at once we seem to hear their lips murmur the words of the grand florentine, "_lasciate ogni speranza_"; but across their forms, their compassionate forms, their fraternal forms, one feels passing a tremor of love and pity. far from condemning, their clasped hands offer to the sad wreckage of fatality that writhes at their feet a sign, a unique sign, the sign of good-will of pity. * * * * * "the gate of hell" was shown only once to the public. this was at the universal exposition of . although it was nearly finished, it was seen then only in an incomplete state. the day of the opening arrived before the master had been able to have placed on the _fronton_ and on the panels of his monument the hundreds of great and small figures destined for their ornamentation. people saw the "gate," then in the nudity of its construction, grandiose assuredly, but despoiled of its extraordinary raiment of sculpture. that day was a sad one for the true friends of art and of rodin. a band of snobs, full of their own importance, crowded about the great man. having considered the work with the hasty and casual glance of men of the world of the sort that are concerned above all to get themselves noticed, they remarked to rodin, in a tone of augury, "your doorway is much more beautiful like that; in no circumstances do anything more to it." this absurd advice befell at an evil moment: the artist felt worn out from overwork and anxieties of all kinds and, moreover, was troubled over the fate of his exhibit the failure of which might in truth have ruined him completely. in these circumstances he did not have the freedom of spirit necessary to judge correctly the value of his own work. and besides he had seen it too much during the twenty years in which it had been before his eyes. he was tired of it, weary of it. [illustration: peristyle op the studio at meudon.] thus everything combined to make him lend an ear to the unfavorable opinions of the parisian aviary. had he been in better health, more the master of himself physically and morally, he would have replied to the prattling of these excited paroquets and guinea-hens: "take more room, examine my 'gate' from a little farther off, and you will see once more the effect of the whole--the effect of unity which charms you when it is deprived of its ornamentation. you must understand that my sculpture is so calculated as to melt into the principal masses. for that matter, it completes them by modeling them into the light. the essential designs are there: it is possible that in the course of the final work i may find it necessary to diminish such or such a projection, to fill out such or such a pool of shadow; nevertheless, leave this difficulty to my fifty years of artisanship and experience, and you may be sure that quite by myself i shall find the best way of finishing my work." but the master was silent. later, carried away by the abundance of his conceptions, by his ever-deepening researches, he lost all interest in the "gate" and has never taken the trouble to have it entirely mounted. fortunately, casts of it have been carefully preserved. it would be only an affair of a few months to reconstruct the work in its original integrity. since the universal exposition time has rolled forward, and events also. auguste rodin has entered into the great serenity which age brings with it. he composes less, he corrects his work, he judges himself, and he does not deny his "gate," one of the most exceptional of his works. at last the creation of the musée rodin has been decided upon by the state. "the gate of hell" will be one of its important pieces; we shall be able to contemplate it then in all its majesty; it will not then simply be molded in plaster, but cast in bronze and cut in marble. it will offer a noble example of what work can accomplish when it is served by that supreme gift, will; for it will testify as much to resistance against the powerful enemies of the life of thought as to the intelligence of the man who created it. it forces upon us not only a formidable impression of strength, labor, talent, but also an impression no less lofty of method, order, and inner harmony. the multitude, who through their profound instincts approach much closer than one might suppose to the man of genius, will exclaim in contemplating this work, this true monument which undoubtedly the sculptor has raised through his own force of character, "whoever erected this beautiful thing with his indefatigable hands was truly a man." ii "the burghers of calais" ( )--rodin and victor hugo--the statue of balzac ( ) at the time the plaster model of "the burghers of calais" was first offered to the judgment of the public, in , nearly seven years had gone by since rodin had originally undertaken the group. this is the period of my own childish memories of the master. he was a frequent visitor at the home of my father, who lived in sèvres, on the outskirts of paris. rodin, with his silent nature, apparently so full of calm and meditation, delighted in the ardor, the patriotic enthusiasm, the ferment of character, the brilliant conversation of that powerful, original writer, my father; he loved his books, too, spirited and passionate like himself, and possessing a vigor of expression that was new to french letters. léon cladel received his friends on sundays. in winter they gathered in the drawing-room, in summer on a terrace shaded by great chestnuts and limes, where thousands of birds twittered and chattered so energetically that at dusk they ended by drowning the voices of the visitors. among the latter were writers, painters, and sculptors, several of whom have since become famous. among them were auguste rodin and his colleague, his dear comrade, jules dalou, creator of many fine works, notably the monument to eugène delacroix which stands in the luxembourg gardens. the sculptor of "the burghers of calais" was then barely fifty. he was far from possessing the immense fame that is his to-day, but artists already regarded him as a master. of medium height, robust, with large shoulders and heavy limbs, placid and deliberate in appearance, never gesticulating, he himself resembled a block of stone; but above this heavy base his countenance, with its broadly designed features and its gray-blue eyes, expressed an extraordinarily keen intelligence and finesse. despite my youth i was struck by this physiognomy, so singular and so penetrating, and also by the remarkable shyness that made the sculptor blush whenever he was addressed. since then innumerable portraits have familiarized people with these features, which with age have settled into an expression of authority and firm will; his strange timidity has disappeared with time, with the consciousness of his strength, with his having become accustomed to glory. moreover, rodin has become a ready talker. of old he listened intently, but always held his peace; at most a few words, spoken in a soft, clear voice, escaped from the waves of his long beard. he would at once relapse into silence, while with a slow movement giving his beard an instinctive caress with his large, square, irresistible hand, the true hand of a builder. but when he raised his eyelids, almost always lowered, the transparent eye, that limpid gray-blue eye, betrayed a perspicacity that was almost malicious, almost cunning: one felt that he penetrated through the forms of people to their very souls; and this he fixed so skilfully in the clay of his busts that his models were not always pleased with it. many of rodin's portraits have been refused by sitters offended by their pitiless realism. [illustration: statue of bastien-lepage.] sometimes my father kept rodin and jules dalou to dinner. the two sculptors were devoted to each other. they were comrades from of old who had traveled together the hard road of beginners; since their student days at the petite ecole they had many times reëncountered each other in the same workshops, where they had received the same contemptuous wages for their long days of labor. they felt a profound esteem for each other's talent, different as these talents were, altogether opposed, in fact, as were their natures; and it was a fine, a lovely thing to see them bring forward each other's respective merits. alas! i shall have to tell later how an artistic rivalry came one day to destroy this noble friendship. the appearance of "the burghers of calais" aroused a flood of enthusiasm in the world of art. i remember it well. at that time i was only a young school-girl, and my father was unwilling to allow me to "miss my classes" in order to accompany him to the opening of the rodin exhibition. after all, the lessons i received that day, following them quite absent-mindedly, were they worth the lesson i should have received from the contemplation of that masterpiece, even if my age would have prevented me from quite understanding it? beauty is always the most fertilizing teacher. a rich art-lover, acting with the municipal authorities of calais, had ordered from rodin the statue of eustache de saint-pierre, the calais hero whose devotion had in the fourteenth century, during the hundred years' war, saved the city when it was besieged by king edward iii of england. rodin, true to his principles, sought as ever to approach his subject from the quick of reality. he consulted history. he read the old chronicles of france, above all those of jean froissart, who was contemporaneous with the event and almost a witness of it. froissart was a man of the fourteenth century, a man of the age of the cathedrals, and therefore himself a gothic. his narrative has the force, the savor, the naïveté, the simple and profound art of the masters of that marvelous epoch. what a source of emotion for rodin, a gothic likewise in his faith and his artistic rectitude! he caught fire at the recital of the old master as at the voice of a brother-in-arms. he read, he learned that edward iii would not consent to spare the city of calais from pillage and destruction unless six of her richest citizens would come out to him dressed only in their shirts, barefoot, with ropes about their necks, bringing him the keys of the city and their own heads to be cut off. in response to this terrible message, eustache de saint-pierre and five of his fellow-citizens, taking counsel with the notables of the place, at once rose to go to the king's camp. they set forth immediately, escorted on their way by the hunger-stricken multitude, weeping and groaning over their sacrifice and "adoring them with pity." this was the vision which from that time on took possession of rodin, dominating him and never leaving him. but it was not an isolated person detached from his environment that he saw: it was the six martyrs just as they appeared in history, just as they were in life. in his thought he followed this band of heroes marching to the sacrifice in the midst of the weeping city. he could not bring himself to separate them either from their whole number or from their tragic surroundings. therefore, in accordance with the genius of his theme, that is to say, with historic truth, he would make all six of them, and he would insist that they should be set up in the midst of the city, among the old houses, where they would continue to live their sublime life in the heart of the very town that they had saved. for the price of one statue, therefore, rodin set out to execute six. he rented a vast atelier in the rue des fourneaux, in the vaugirard quarter. he worked unceasingly. to keep this enormous group in good condition, to maintain the proper temperature, he moistened the clay morning and evening, having as his _garçon d'atelier_ no one but his devoted wife, who had become thoroughly experienced in these matters. despite all, accidents would happen: the clay would give way, an arm, modeled with his habitual exactitude, would fall and have to be laboriously repaired; but the fervent modeler never hesitated in his work, and on the day when he exhibited "the burghers of calais" at the house of georges petit the praise and the homage that sprang forth from the soul of all true artists recompensed him magnificently, bringing him the intoxicating caress of dawning glory. they spoke, in connection with the "burghers," of the image-makers of our cathedrals; they spoke of the statues of claus sluters, of the famous statues of the "well of moses" at dijon. really, in the calais monument rodin is more than ever under the gothic influence in subject, in thought, and in execution. the equilibrium of the figures composing the group is the same as that of the "saint john the baptist." the long shifts that cover the naked bodies of his heroes recall those draperies in vertical folds dear to the middle ages. the very modeling of the figures and of the faces increases this effect of elongation caused by the fall of the fabric; the modeling in large planes, the vigorous accents, the simple and pathetic movements are certainly those of the sort that out-of-door sculpture calls for. in twenty years rodin had made innumerable visits to the gothic monuments. here was the result of his tours of france. he had made them in order to recapture the traditions of art from the hands of our wonderful old stone-cutters, and his heart must have throbbed with joy when he was told that in his own hands that tradition had suffered no loss. naturally, the appearance of "the burghers of calais," even that, could not fail to have its share of comic anecdote, that bitter and painful humor that marks the adventures of genius in its struggle with vulgarity. let us not complain too much. the contrast between these adventures and the proud way of life of a great man, the regularity of his hours of toil--it is this that creates opposition, movement, life. the elect soul feels a savage joy in these blows which shake it like a tree tormented by brutal hands, a tree aware of the vigor of its resistance and its ever-increasing tenacity. the municipality of calais, hearing that there were to be six statues instead of the one that had been ordered, took umbrage, and deliberated for two years. the heroic group waited, and, as it encumbered rodin's atelier, where other works were going forward, it was placed in a stable. at last the worthy town authorities decided to assign it a site. naturally, the site in question was exactly opposed to the ideas of the master--ideas that had been thought out and that were perfectly logical, based on the laws of decorative art and still more determined by that infallible criterion, taste. rodin desired that his monument should be in the center of the town; they placed it on the edge of the sea. he counted on emphasizing the tall stature of his figures by enshrining it in the narrow frame of the houses; they placed it against a horizon without limits. he requested that the group should be placed very low, almost on the ground, or else very high on an elevated pedestal, like the "colleoni" at venice or the "gattamelata" at padua; they placed it at a middle height, thus diminishing the effect of its imposing proportions. the lesson had to come from foreign lands. the city of antwerp has erected, in front of its museum of fine arts, two of the statues of the celebrated group, and england, which does things splendidly when it is a question of embellishing its cities or of rendering homage to the valor of its adversaries, has erected the effigies of the six heroes of calais on one of the most beautiful sites in london, before the palace of westminster. * * * * * by this time the reader is sufficiently familiar with the technic of rodin for it to be unnecessary to analyze here in detail this well-known work. what must not be forgotten is that the sculptor had first modeled these six powerful bodies entirely in the nude. this is his invariable method when he executes draped figures. one realizes this, even without knowing it, before these arms, these hands, these legs, and these feet constructed with that rigorous conscience which, with the true artist, is at once a necessity and a delight; one divines the slope of the torsos bent with grief or rigid in the pride of sacrifice. "yes, they are beautiful," the master said to me one day when i was talking with him. "the shirt, the blouse are garments the folds of which yield simple planes and effects that, rightly rendered, are those of true sculpture. but there is something better still, and that is sackcloth. if i had clothed my 'burghers of calais' in sackcloth, they would certainly be more beautiful. i did not dare to. some one else will do this and will succeed. it is sufficient to express an idea and leave it to its destiny." we ought to love in rodin this intellectual vigor that skirts the borders of the impossible. in our age, consumed with indecision, it is a priceless aid, a resting-place, a _point d'appui_ from which one starts forth afresh, fortified, one's nerves recharged with vitality, to the conquest of one's share of knowledge or of talent. this accounts in part for the irresistible influence which for thirty years the illustrious sculptor has exercised over the minds of artists. one feels that this fount of strength condensed in his virile soul comes from something deeper than his personality alone; it comes from the very depths of the national reserves. the conviction, the energy of rodin are those of the workman who knows his trade, of the laborer impassioned by the culture of his own soil. this endurance is the foundation of the french temperament; the events happening now have proved it. when a country possesses such individualities through the course of history, the roads of the future open out before it brilliant with hope despite passing shadows, and promise the highest surprises. [illustration: danaiade.] rodin and victor hugo the creation of "the burghers of calais" marks the middle of a period of truly prodigious fecundity. from to , monuments, busts, statues, and groups of every kind issue without interruption from the ateliers of rodin, and the more numerous the works his hand models, the more it grasps the contexture of the work, the more it refines the execution. orders for portraits pour in; collectors hold it an honor to possess a marble, a bronze, signed with a name which every day increases in celebrity. in comes that jewel of marble, the bust of madame morla vicuñha, and the monument to claude vicuñha, president of the republic of chile; in , the bronze portrait of dalou, the statue of bastien-lepage, that admirable head "la pensée," acquired by the musée du luxembourg. in comes the portrait of mme. russell, a bust in silver, of noble simplicity, which one would say was the head of a roman matron, with the luminous veil upon her thoughtful forehead and the flower of good-will blossoming upon her delicately swelling mouth. then there is "the danaïd," "la vielle heaulmière," and a great study, a long woman's torso, "la terre." in , not to mention delightful minor works like "the young mother" and "brother and sister," appear two masterpieces: the bust of puvis de chavannes and that of henri rochefort, magnificent contrasts in construction and execution. the painter-gentleman carries his haughty head like an old leaguer chief, and the pamphleteer bends over the destinies of france, which for fifty years he has defended day in, day out, with his flaming pen, an enormous brow--a brow like a spherical vault that seems to contain a world. "you have made it grander, you have made it more beautiful than nature," some one said to rodin one day. "one can never do anything so beautiful as nature," he replied. in this same year, , he exhibited the charming monument to claude lorrain, in which he recaptured the spirit of the eighteenth century. it was the town of nancy that ordered this figure of its painter and has placed it in its vast park. one cannot mention everything. forms and attitudes renew themselves, but not the terms that express them. to measure the abundance of this work one should read the catalogue, till now incomplete,--for it has been impossible to compile one that was not so,--of the master's works; only so can we realize how almost dizzily his productiveness became accelerated with the epoch of his maturity. mythological subjects dominate it, but are always treated with a profoundly human understanding of the poetry and the grace of the form in which they achieve an aspect delightfully new. such titles as "venus and adonis," "the education of achilles," "the death of alcestis," "cupid and psyche," "the faun and the fountain," "pygmalion and galatea," rodin inscribed only as an afterthought on the pedestals of his groups. they are not the result of a necessary preliminary conception; it is his figures themselves that breathe them, his models unconsciously repeated the combinations of movement and gesture through which are translated the eternal sentiments immortalized by the legends of paganism. so true is this that rodin obtained his charming groups by assembling in harmony with his researches the animated little figures that encumbered the windows of his ateliers. he amused himself by uniting them, by marrying their attitudes; with these little figures, these puppets of genius, he composed actual little intimate dramas or idylls revived from the antique. in the hollow of a greek bowl he places a little nude body, and one would say that it is the soul of the wave that conceals itself against the side of the vase. he enlaces three feminine figures, upright, beside the body of a recumbent youth: they are the graces, who come to bend over the dying poet. thus he perpetuates the fantasy of things through that of his own taste; he eternalizes the most delicious caprices of nature. * * * * * we come now to the year and the appearance of the "monument to victor hugo." this monument had been ordered for the panthéon. rodin, who had modeled in the bust of the singer of the "légende des siècles," was doubly, on this account, entitled to the order. in the midst of what difficulties had he achieved that bust! it required all his patience, all the tenacity of a lorrainese peasant, to accomplish it. when he had begged the honor of reproducing those illustrious features, the poet, already nearing his end, tired out with having posed for mediocre plaster-daubers and unaware of the superiority of his new sculptor, consented to pose only for two hours. all the same, he authorized rodin to come as often as necessary and make as many sketches as he needed while he, hugo, worked or received his friends. rodin accepted these difficult conditions. was it not victor hugo with whom he was dealing, the father of modern poetry? and then what a spectacle for his artist's eyes, that of the great man bending over his papers that jupiter-like head of his in which thought, in gestation, swelled the sublime brow with a tumult of ideas! when he talked, what majesty in "this face of a lion in repose"! [illustration: portrait bust of victor hugo.] the sculptor placed a stool, some clay, some tools in the corner of a gallery; it was there that he worked out the general form of the bust. then, studying his wonderful model for months, he made hundreds of sketches of him, under every aspect; at times, having used up the pages of his note-books, he even covered entire blocks of cigarette paper with rapid notes and jottings. then he transferred this record of observations to his clay. working in this manner, it took him three months to finish his bust. he exhibited it, in bronze, at the salon of . one cannot fail to admire the volumes, the beautiful mass of the whole, even though it does not show that brilliant touch of genius which strikes us before the bust of jean-paul laurens or that of rochefort; but later, relying upon this document and upon his own special memory of forms in action, rodin was to restore for us this moving head in his monument of the poet, which was to be one of his very loftiest works. this same bust of victor hugo was to rupture the friendship between rodin and jules dalou--dalou of whom he sent to the same salon of , by a curious coincidence, an incomparable bust that puts one in mind of those of donatello. the family of victor hugo did not like rodin's portrait of the master. when the poet died ( ), it was dalou whom they called to execute a death-mask of the features of the great poet. filled with ambition and eager for official glory, dalou had the weakness to accept, forgetting what he owed to rodin, not even informing him, in fact. deeply hurt, the latter withdrew his affection for his old friend. my father, saddened by this occurrence, which destroyed so rare and noble a friendship, brought the two friends together at his table in the hope of reconciling them; but nothing could melt the wall of ice that had fallen between these dissevered hearts. ten years afterward a magnificent compensation was offered to rodin. from him was ordered the monument of the poet for the panthéon. he represented him nude, under the folds of a vast cloak, and seated on a rock, as if by the seashore, with his wonderful head bowed in an attitude of meditation, just as rodin had often contemplated it in priceless hours. this manner of representing a great man, quite simply revived from the renaissance and the eighteenth century, shocked to the last degree the administrative staff of the department of fine arts. why this nude personage, instead of a quite respectable victor hugo in the frock-coat of an academician? why not one of those statues that peacefully occupy some corner of a public square without attracting any one's attention, one of those statues that are not made to be looked at? as for this poet, who resembled a homer, a hero or a demigod, this grand body, outrageously beautiful and simple, is it not scandalous in the midst of the conformity of bourgeois civilization, enslaved by the ugliness of fashion, whose perverted taste can no longer recognize the beauty of the nude? the painter david used to say of his epoch, in which, however, the mode of dress was less displeasing than it is to-day, "what misery to be obliged to spend one's life in fashioning coats and shoes!" rodin, like david, and like phidias, preferred the trade of the sculptor to that of the tailor. such an uproar arose that he had to withdraw the model of his monument and promise another. but everything comes with time, even the best: the fortunes of politics brought to the ministry of fine arts an intelligent and cultivated director, the dramatic critic gustave larroumet. delighted with rodin's scheme, the magnificent symbolization of french poetry, he confirmed the order for the audacious monument, no longer for the panthéon, but for the luxembourg gardens; and, not satisfied with this reparation, charged the master with the additional execution of another monument destined for the panthéon. one can imagine the anger in certain circles--two orders on the same subject to the same sculptor! what an aberration! what madness! but the decision was made and well made. rodin took six years to perfect his first "victor hugo"; the marble was not exhibited until . the vigor of the work and the sovereign gesture by which the bard of contemplation seems to impose silence upon the voice of nature in order that the voices struggling within himself, in the depths of his genius, may be the better heard, the suppleness of the material, of this carrara marble, with its warm reflections, as if melted under the pressure of a fiery hand, obstinately make one think of michelangelo; one has the disturbing sensation, not of an imitation, but of a resurrection of the plastic power reincarnated out of nature, of a new spring of sap from the same vein of genius. the original plan allowed, in addition, for two allegorical figures, "the inner voice" and "the tragic muse," which, placed beside the poet, should breathe into him thought and inspiration. but, very beautiful in themselves, they gave to the monument, once they were executed and placed, an anecdotal quality that diminished its force; they weakened the grandeur of the olympian gesture and destroyed that feeling of solitude inseparable from such a personality as that of the great man: an island in the midst of the flood of the human multitude, genius itself is aware of its own splendid isolation. [illustration: monument to victor hugo.] this is what i ventured to express one day to the master, not without hesitation. nothing equals the simplicity of rodin face to face with what he knows is sincere and animated by a true love of art. he listened, gazed at his work, and, turning toward me, gave me a joyous glance. "you are right," he replied, with a spontaneity that put my sense of responsibility on its mettle. "i sacrificed to the mania of the age, which is to overload things. my modeling is there, the eloquence of the gesture also. the rest would only spoil the essential things. it is a stroke of genius. i am going to write to the under-secretary of state that my monument is ready." in lieu of the two figures that were to have accompanied the statue of victor hugo, to indemnify the government rodin gave to the musée du luxembourg a series of his most beautiful busts in bronze, including the head of the poet. as for the marble, it was in the garden of the palais royal that it was finally erected; but this site is not of the happiest: a large lawn separates the spectator from the monument; one sees it from the wrong angle, and this destroys the equilibrium of its planes. moreover, in our damp climate marble quickly loses the charm of its purity and transparency; streaks of brown already stain and deface that of the "victor hugo." let us hope that the organizers of the musée rodin will find it possible to place it in one of the rooms of the future museum, substituting for it a bronze upon which the inclemencies of the atmosphere will serve to produce a beautiful patina. the statue of balzac ( ) this is the most famous and the least known of rodin's works. newspaper controversies have made it famous throughout the whole world; but it has, nevertheless, made only one brief appearance in public, in , at the salon of the société nationale des beaux arts. it marks at the same time a vital stage in the career of the master and the most poignant period of his life as a fighter. it is the point of equilibrium in the perpetual balancing of the art of rodin between the several great traditions. it was the object of a famous quarrel, in which the glory of the sculptor, momentarily all but eclipsed by ridicule, recovered itself, nevertheless, and rose higher than ever. what strikes one in this statue, at first sight, is its strange block-like aspect, its monolithic simplicity. people say quite rightly that it looks like a stone _lovée_, a druidic monument. ever since "the burghers of calais," one of the figures of which at least, that of the man with the key, already suggests the idea of a monolith, rodin had been going further and further in his stubborn search for the simplification of planes, and here he finally achieved his object. in order to obtain it, he went back all the way to the primitive gothic and even to the archaic greek, which likewise preserves in the general outline of its statues the rigid aspect of those statues of wood that had preceded it. in all these early epochs of art one finds the form of the tree trunk in which their sculpture was cut. one of the examples of this art that had most forcibly impressed rodin was the statue of hera of samothrace in the louvre. the beauty of this figure, denuded of all foreign artifice in the exact research for masses, the public little comprehends; but the sculptor perceives its justness, the power of its relief and its modeling, disconcerting in these primitive artists, qualities that are concealed under the extreme simplicity of its appearance. in this magnificent hera it is as if one saw the rotundities of woman coming to birth and undergoing in the tree, the vegetal column, one of those metamorphoses familiar in the fables of paganism. the "balzac," with its athletic body, veiled in a spread robe that envelopes it, does not it also resemble a powerful tree trunk from the summit of which looks down, like a solitary, monstrous flower, the head of the inspired writer? this statue had been ordered by the société des gens de lettres, and was intended for one of the public squares of paris. after victor hugo, balzac. after the giant of modern poetry, the giant of the novel. what a redoutable honor, but also what a homage to the talent of the great sculptor! what joy for artists in the association of these two names, balzac and rodin! on the other hand, how many adversaries rejoiced in the hope of seeing rodin come to grief with this task, fraught not less with peril than with glory! he did not conceal from himself that the statue of balzac would be a severe problem to solve. we possess no authentic bust of the creator of the "comédie humaine," not even a death-mask giving the exact measure of the cranial bones and hence the actual planes. we know through his contemporaries that the author was fat and short. fat and short--that is far from facilitating the composition of a work of decorative art. but, more precious than mediocre portraits, there is a famous page about him by lamartine, another great genius. "balzac," he says, "was the figure of an element ... stout, thick-set, square at the base and at the shoulders, ample, much as mirabeau was; but not heavy in any way; he had so much soul that it carried _him_ lightly." [illustration: statue of balzac.] it was this essence that he set out to render. a frank artist takes no liberties with reality. it alone gives him force; the "majesty of the true" is alone durable. nature, which dowered balzac with one of the most prodigious intellects known to us, dowered him at the same time, to support this intellect, with the physical breadth of a colossus. to have altered anything that went to make up the harmony of the structure would have been to commit a grave error; it would have been to denaturalize the divine work. on the other hand, above this mass of flesh it was necessary to make that marvelous spirit hover, that sparkling spirit, that myriad-faceted spirit of the greatest of novelists. rodin knows by experience that nature repeats herself. has not a humorist said: "it is useless to make a bust of you; it exists already. you have only to look for it in the museums"? he set out to find a man who resembled balzac, going all the way to touraine, the writer's native province, a hundred times depicted by him in his books. the family of balzac was originally from languedoc, but that made no difference; the intuition of a great artist is always rewarded. rodin found at tours the model he desired; he was a young countryman, a carter, who resembled his hero to an almost miraculous degree. of him he made a very animated bust, in which one sees the full face, the nose, concave and large at the end, but voluptuous and full of spirit, the rounded chin, the vast shoulders of the master of the "comédie humaine." there was lacking, however, the flame of thought that spiritualized and rendered buoyant this mass of human substance. rodin modified the expression, illuminating the physiognomy with delicacy and frank gaiety. it is balzac at twenty-five, a peasant balzac, breathing at every pore youth, self-confidence, and the love of life. not yet is it the man tormented by fate, the tragic visionary of the "comédie humaine," the slave of his work who in twenty years wrote fifty novels, staged a thousand characters, and gave life to an entire society. it is not the man who has suffered, thought, meditated, with all the power of one of the most extraordinary organisms known to us; it has not the appearance of a phenomenon. after this rodin skilfully altered these features; he gave them the scars of the interior effort, he made them soft and hollowed them, he made them old and grave. in a few weeks he did the work that nature had taken years to accomplish. he finished by creating that titan's mask which we know, that head as round as a bullet and, like a bullet, terrible in its concentrated force. later he augmented this; that is to say, he doubled its proportions: and this head, almost frightening in its expression, recalls the masks which the greek tragedians wore when they played in the open air. finally he modeled the body of the colossus, making it entirely nude, with arms crossed, braced against the earth with the tension of the whole will, evoking the idea of some prodigious birth. then he draped this heavy body in the monk's robe in which the writer used to envelope himself for work and the straight folds of which enwrapped him like the sheath of a mummy, offering to the sight nothing but the tumultuous head--the head ravaged by intelligence and savage energy. rodin felt almost frightened by his own work. he kept it a long time before turning it over to the cast-makers. he had worked it out in his atelier, but it was destined for the open air. how would it appear in broad daylight? the gestation of this work was accompanied by a thousand miseries. the committee of the société des gens de lettres incessantly demanded the "balzac"; they were dumfounded before the extraordinary figure that was shown to them, before this white phantom the conception of which was so utterly the reverse of all current ideas. not knowing what to say, they insisted that it should be modified and urged haste upon rodin, whose extraordinary dexterity became slowness itself when it was a question of putting the final touches upon a great work. the press began to take note of the affair. he himself became troubled and nervous. with what transports would he have left it, fled, gone away to rest and to dream of something else for a few weeks! the time of the salon was approaching. quite suddenly he made his decision, gave the clay to be cast, and ordered an enlargement. the statue was brought back to him at the dépôt des marbres, in the rue de l'université; it was twice as large as the original model. it was placed in the garden that stretched out in front of the studio. he examined it as it rose against the depths of the open sky and the bright spring light. it was as if he had never seen it, and suddenly his mind was illuminated. the work was grand, simple, strong; the essential modeling was there, and the details they had exhorted him to add would only have diminished its unsurpassable unity. rodin had made up his mind. he sent his "balzac" to the salon. immediately there was war. the press, worked upon by the committee of the société des gens de lettres, was unfavorable in advance. on the day of the opening of the salon the word was passed around, and the official art world _s'esclaffe_. there was a crowd at the foot of the lofty image, near which rodin took up his position, calm according to his wont, and talked quietly with his friends. some, a very few, told him how they admired this work so proudly offered, so strange in its banal surroundings. the next day the press broke forth. what an uproar! everything went off at once: the heavy artillery of the great newspapers scolded solemnly, the light artillery crackled in the political sheets, and the grape-shot of the minor papers spat their rage, only too happy for so rich a prey to cut to pieces. the institute, as might have been foreseen, fanned the conflagration. the public, excited, in turn broke loose, in the fury of ignorance stirred up against knowledge. [illustration: the head of balzac.] it became a "case," an affair, the _affaire de balzac_. the committee of the société des gens de lettres mobilized; by a vote of eleven to four it declared that it "did not recognize the writer in the statue of m. rodin." the president of the same society, the poet jean aicard, refused the chance of immortality which this stupidity was to confer upon his colleagues and flung his resignation in their faces. a group of members of the municipal council of paris decreed that it would be ridiculous to accord "this block" a place in one of the squares of the city. for two months music-halls and café-concerts vented every evening the wit of the gutter on the scandalous statue and its sculptor; peddlers sold caricatures of it in plaster, balzac being represented as a heap of snow or as a seal. in short, such was the event that it required nothing but the pen of aristophanes to note down the harmonies of this chorus of frogs. the health of rodin suffered a reaction from his long effort and from this battle. then, too, there are hours when the strongest are seized with nausea before the bad faith and the stupidity of people. nervous, his mind aching, a prey to insomnia, the master offered a melancholy spectacle, that beautiful serenity of his destroyed and his working strength put in jeopardy. "for all that," says m. léon riotor, who tells the story with eloquence, "rodin had a wonderful awakening. all the young world of letters rose up to declare its sympathy with the vanquished in this new skirmish. a number of painters and sculptors joined in. and the protest that was circulated came back covered with signatures." no, rodin was not vanquished. he retired for a moment from the mêlée to recover and to meditate in peace, but without deviating by a single step from his line of conduct. a collector offered to buy the "balzac." a group of intellectuals started a public subscription; funds flowed in. although he was not yet wealthy, rodin courteously declined these offers, and, declaring that "an artist, like a woman, has to guard his honor," decided to withdraw his monument from the salon and not have it erected anywhere. the epic statue was transported to meudon, and placed in the garden of the villa. in its loftiness it imposes itself against the sky, against the hills, against the trees that surround it, with the quality of nature herself. like a gigantic pole it triumphs in the open air. it is specially on clear nights that its disturbing authority strikes the soul. the great phantom appears then formidable in the extreme simplicity of its planes, which, as in strong architecture, distribute over large spaces the masses of shadow and light. the american painter steichen has passed nights in this enchanted garden in order to take of the "balzac" photographs that are more beautiful than engravings. haughty, with a ferocious majesty in the moonlight, the master of the "comédie humaine" brings his soul face to face with nature; he listens to its silence, he sounds its mysteries, he questions it in mute dialogue, the like of which has not been heard since the colloquy of _hamlet_ with the shade of his father. for it is of _hamlet_, of the most profound symbolization of the human spirit wrestling with the unknown, that one dreams before this meditating balzac, alone, under the nocturnal light. this is what rodin has known how to make out of that short, thick-set man who was the author of the "etudes philosophiques"; this is how he has lighted the fires of the intelligence on the mask of genius. it is at the musée rodin that we shall rediscover this statue. time will have progressed, and ideas also. when they see it anew, how many people will be astounded at having formerly scoffed at the work and offended the master, struck dumb and secretly humiliated at having thus contributed to the writing of the hundred thousandth chapter of that endless book, the book of human stupidity. the exposition of --the bas-reliefs of evian--rodin and the war in , rodin exhibited a large part of his work at brussels and in holland. the effect produced upon artists and upon the cultivated portion of the public was such that he resolved to repeat this experiment at the universal exposition of paris. it was foreordained that nothing should be easy for the great toiler, that it would be necessary for him to conquer everything through effort and struggle. the administration of the exposition, which had granted innumerable requests for space addressed to it by the industrialists and business men of the whole world, by bar-keepers, itinerant booth-holders, and managers of café-concerts, raised a thousand difficulties when it was a question of according a few feet of ground to the greatest of living sculptors. it required all the insistence of his most devoted and powerful friends to gain his point. rodin finally received the authorization to construct a pavilion not in the exposition itself, but outside the grounds in the place de l'alma. once again, so much the better. how much finer for a man of the élite to stand aside from the rout! according to the master's plan, there was erected a hall simple in appearance, elegant, reservedly in the louis xvi style, a veritable repose for the eye strained by the strident architecture of the great fair of . there were assembled the people of his sculpture. [illustration: the studio at meudon.] once more rodin experienced an hour of trial, a formidable hour. if for the last dozen years he had left poverty behind, he had not yet achieved wealth, and it was a great risk to assume the expenses of his exhibition. if these expenses were not covered by the entrance-fees and the sale of his sculpture, how would he come out? he would be forced to a kind of transaction that he had always spurned, he would have to turn over all or part of his work to the art dealers. these groups, these busts, so painstakingly cast, or cut in the most beautiful marble by excellent workmen, and often by renowned sculptors, once the dealers had acquired rights in them, would they not be duplicated in a quantity of replicas of mediocre workmanship or, worse, reproduced by undiscriminating stone-cutters, who would disfigure the modeling and the character? the idea was odious to the scrupulous sculptor. he had reached the age of sixty, and if he did not show it, thanks to the vigor of his temperament and the persistent youth that goes with great minds, it was not less painful for him to put his apprehensions to the test. too dignified, too proud, to give way to vain lamentations, he made only the most reserved references to his ordeal. the success of the exhibition remained uncertain during the first weeks: many people hoped it would be a failure. at the end of a month or two, visitors from abroad, to whom thanks be given, began to pour in; the principal museums of europe wished to possess some important figure of rodin's. soon the number of purchasers increased day by day, and i do not have to mention here how many art-lovers from the united states decided to enrich their collections with some rare piece signed by the master. in short, during the latter months rodin had the joy of perceiving that he could remain the sole possessor of his work, that nothing could now separate him from his dear family of bronze and marble. it was happiness for him; it signalized also the great glory that comes with outstretched wing, bringing fortune with it. the pretty pavilion in the place de l'alma was transported and reërected in the garden at meudon, and he filled it with masterpieces. since then the whole world of art and literature and that portion of the political world that esteems art has passed through it. the french aristocracy and that of england, the most eminent personages of the two americas, have been eager to visit it. one receives in it an impression at once grand and touching, giving one the highest idea of the supremacy of intellectual valor above the other goods of this world when one perceives the contrast of these artistic treasures with the altogether modest little house, almost bare, attended by a single servant, where rodin continues, in the midst of the luxury of an epoch intoxicated with pleasures, to maintain the simplicity of his life in the sober company of his old single-spirited, faithful-hearted wife. this impression i never felt more vividly than on the occasion of the visit of the late king of england. edward vii, like others, had conceived the desire to render this homage to french art. the day before, when i encountered the master in paris, he said to me, without further explanation, "come and have a look at the studio." it was a beautiful afternoon in may. when i entered the pavilion, i could not restrain a cry of admiration. marbles, nothing but marbles, of a dazzling whiteness! he had brought together all that he possessed, all those that his friends and the purchasers of his work had consented to lend him for the occasion, and one would have said that it was these groups of young, enlaced bodies, these busts of women, with their transparent, rosy flesh, that gave forth the light with which the apartment was filled. it was a unique vision, a vision which, in its purity and its unity, surpassed in delicate splendor that of the most celebrated collections, with all their accumulation of pictures, tapestries, bronze, and jewels. i wondered in silence; i wondered at the sure taste of the artist, but i wondered also at his will: everything of him was there. who can deny that it was necessary for him to put pressure on himself to decide on such a choice, to sacrifice the bronzes, the sketches, the terra cottas, and many charming pieces? nothing but marble, the kingdom of marble, but also that of life; for the sumptuous material trembled and palpitated under the play of the light that entered through the bay-windows of the atelier, bringing with it the soft brilliance of the season. since the exposition of , rodin's reputation has increased steadily in france and abroad. england and italy have organized triumphal receptions for him of a sort reserved hitherto for the most illustrious men of state. the artists of london have acclaimed him, and have charged him, on the death of whistler, with the presidency of the international society of painters, sculptors, and engravers. oxford university has given him a doctorate. the municipality of rome has greeted him with special homage at the capitol; the court of greece, having invited him, awaits his visit; at prague, where he was received by the society of young czech artists, they accorded him royal honors, the public unharnessing the horses from his carriage and applauding at the same time the personal genius of this great frenchman and the free ideas of his country. without altering in any way his life of labor, which these tributes have at times slightly interfered with, he has permitted himself only one luxury as the result of his fortune--a collection of antiques. this he has formed with passion. it is, once more, for purposes of study, and what a study, to possess a few of these sublime fragments, to feel them and handle them under all aspects of light! rodin has placed a certain number of them in his garden, arranging them among the trees, among the shrubs; he has placed them on the fresh grass, where they seem to live in another and a happier way than in the rooms of museums. at a stroke the little garden at meudon, with its pedestals, its statues, with its grove where a charming little marble, the "sleeping cupid," reposes, has become like the villa of a roman citizen of the time of augustus. * * * * * the art of rodin has in a certain measure shown the effect of these happy events. during these latter years he has grown calm; he displays a serenity of spirit and a self-possession that increases day by day. but if the struggle in his composition has been tranquilized, his workmanship has grown freer. the sculptor's effort concentrates itself now in the search for a modeling ever more ample and suppler, which with him constitutes a new and decisive manner. it is to this that we owe those exquisite marbles, "psyche bearing the lamp," "benedictions," "the young girl and the two genii," "romeo and juliet," "the fall of icarus." this has been the epoch also of the busts of mrs. simpson and the proud and handsome george wyndham, the english statesman. it is the epoch, finally, of the "monument to president sarmiento," which offers at the same time, in happy opposition, the two most recent and most characteristic methods of rodin. the bronze statue of the great argentine statesman has an aspect at once romantic and realistic that recalls that of "the burghers of calais," and the marble pedestal that supports it, a vanquishing apollo emerging from the clouds all luminous with youth and glory, belongs to the latest period. of this monument, ordered by the city of buenos aires, france does not possess a replica, though the model has been preserved. the musée rodin will soon contain a duplicate. from to there was an uninterrupted creation of figures and of portraits, among them the busts of sir howard walden, berthelot, gustave geffroy, mme. hunter, and bernard shaw. one must add the myriad drawings that rodin has never ceased to execute. the will to sustain his eye and his hand instead of permitting them to become weakened with age has become a passion with him. he draws as a writer thinks. he thinks pencil in hand; his drawings are aphorisms. line-sketches, stump-drawings, water-colors in strange tints multiply themselves like the leaves of a tree and quite constitute alone a complete work. the master has sold and given away quantities of them, yet; nevertheless, the musée will contain more than three thousand. i have been honored with the charge of counting them over and classifying them. after days of this work one has a sensation of dazzlement, as i have discovered, before this accumulation of toil and beauty. the most precious of these drawings are the most recent. the study of light has been carried in these to the supreme nuances. more and more rodin detests what is black, what is hard, what is dry. he adores, on the other hand, that which is supple, enveloped, drowned in the light mist of the atmosphere. he conceives everything through an almost imperceptible veil which softens the contours, and which he discerns with an eye that grows every day more sensitive. his sculpture has followed the same path. in the greater part of his marbles he has pursued the effects of mass and of the ensemble in what concerns the volumes and the effects of gradation, the study of the diminutions of light in what concerns the coloring. the color that obtains uniquely in the art of shadow and light is the charm of beautiful sculpture. rodin thus captures the variations with a competence that ravishes our eyes, accustomed to the dryness of limits that are too distinct. it is in the reliefs entitled "the seasons" that rodin has attained the apogee of this science of luminous modeling. these works, executed for la sapinière, the estate of baron vitta at evian, comprise three high-reliefs fashioned on a gate and two fountain basins, or monumental garden urns. they are cut in the stone of the estaillade, a white stone the richness of grain and delicate golden tone of which make it unsurpassable for the interpretation of the human body. they were exhibited for a short time in february, , at the musée du luxembourg, on the initiative of m. léon bénédite, the very accomplished curator and critic of art, who arranged them with perfect taste. but far from being embraced and vindicated, as he would be now by the present administration of fine arts, rodin was still regarded as a revolutionist whose example could neither be followed nor trusted. this was made quite plain to the audacious curator who decided quite by himself to exhibit the latest works of the master before their departure for evian. after this _coup d'état_ he was for several years the victim of attacks from academic circles, and underwent, on the part of the government, a sort of disgrace. since then he has been brilliantly compensated, and to-day he has been placed in charge of the installation of the musée rodin at the hôtel biron, a great work in which i have the happiness to be his collaborator. the decorative designs of the villa of evian adorn the vestibule of the home of baron vitta. "their subject," says m. bénédite, in an excellent notice which served as a catalogue for the exhibition of , "if one wishes to speak of the motive that serves as their pretext, is the most banal in the world. one would find it difficult to count the number of times that it has served artists since antiquity. so true it is that the commonest, the most general, the most seemingly worn-out themes are those in which the great artists find themselves the most at home. without difficulty they renew them, and stamp them unforgettably with their own peculiar mark. rodin has calmly returned to the four seasons, confident that they would bear without effort the impress of his personality and his time and that they would suffice to express his whole conception of beauty and of life." rodin has figured "the seasons" under the aspect of four sleeping women. their beautiful forms model themselves in the warm-tinted stone, which itself seems animated with the reflections of the living flesh. their mysterious sleep evokes the successive phases of the year. now it marks the quietude of the earth, full of the joy of yielding up her flowers and her fruits under the caresses of the sun, now it is death revealing itself through a nature tormented with the heavy travail of generation. in the "spring" it is a young body that lies voluptuously under a rose-bush the fragrant petals of which are mingled with her own flesh, enveloping her in the dream of their perfume. in the "autumn," the sleeper crouches close to the ground under the fruits and the vine-leaves, oppressed by the intoxicating aroma. the "winter" presses her chilled limbs closely against the cavities of the denuded earth, while above her the roots of the trees enlace themselves intricately, like sacred serpents charged with protecting her slumber. the "summer" is a siesta upon the bosom of a nature _en fête_, lulled by the golden sounds of harvest balanced on the breeze and the murmur of a spring that pours forth freshness and quietude. but in what, you ask, resides the originality of these decorative commonplaces, their brilliant, unquestionable originality? in the deliberate simplicity, in the spirit of sobriety that has presided over their composition, and, above all, in their execution. it is through their execution that the sculptures of evian occupy a place apart in the work of rodin. since the beautiful greek epoch, stone has perhaps never assumed such a living sweetness under any human hand. one might believe that it had not been touched by the steel of the chisel, but caressed by a touch as delicate as it is firm, molded like wax under the warmth of that hand. these mellow figures do not detach themselves from the living framework in which they are set; they stand out, thanks to an insensible transition which leaves them enveloped, in the reflections of the fair material; they mass themselves under a sifted light, among the flowers and the clusters of grapes. with all this there is no insipidity. under the skin one feels the plenitude of bodies rich with health, harmonious organisms: it is a force that has found its equilibrium, a force relaxing in sweetness. strangely enough, when one seeks for antecedents to which it is possible to relate the reliefs of evian, it is not in the domain of sculpture, but in that of painting, that one finds the terms of comparison. the intense power, carefully measured as it is, of this vibrant modeling and this color drenched in sunlight we find again among the tenderest creations of correggio, of rubens, and, closer to ourselves, of renoir. the two jardinières which complete this unique series represent groups of children mad with joy and with liberty; in the one case playing and jostling one another in a field of wheat, in the midst of the moving sea of spears, and in the other, spread out on the green summer grass, rapturously holding up in their little arms, already robust, the grapes heavy with wine. they are exquisite fantasies of movement, of grace, of mad life just beginning. here, too, the flesh of these little laughing gods, melting in the mass of ripe corn and tottering vines, seems bathed in the clearness of a beautiful day, full of air and of light. these five works of the old age of the master might be entitled the "poem of youth." it is the privilege of genius to return, in its decline, to its point of departure, to remount to the sources of life, which remain ever the most intoxicating. the sensations of infancy and adolescence solicit him with all their unforgettable seductiveness, and he surrenders himself lovingly to the sweetness of this lost dream; but it has cost him his entire, existence to acquire the gift of translating it. this search for the envelopment of forms fruitful of new effects is the decisive point in the career of rodin; it is the supreme thought, the end and aim of sixty years of toil and reflection. therefore it is a very happy thing for french sculpture that rodin has been able to live long enough to realize completely this definitive conception of his art. for from the summit attained by him other artists can spring forth afresh, to renew once more perhaps the manifestations of the national genius. the resources indicated by rodin have hardly been used hitherto; to bring them fully into employment meanwhile there will perhaps be born a new school of sculpture. [illustration: bust of bernard shaw.] what constitutes the originality of a great artist is that it is never isolated. it belongs at once to the past, to the present, and to the future; it is altogether a derivative and a root. it springs from the past through atavism, through study, and through admiration for the masters; it is of the present through contact with those of the artist's contemporaries who march at the same time with him along the road of discovery; finally, it influences the future by bequeathing to the generations that follow a new conception and new methods. to-day we see clearly the sources from which have come the ultimate aspect of the talent of rodin. they are the art of greece; they are also certain marvels of gothic art in which miraculously reblossomed the hellenic suppleness and sweetness, as if the springs of the greek genius had mysteriously coursed under the earth from athens to france, bursting forth at last in the walls of our cathedrals; then there are those unfinished marbles of michelangelo from which rodin derived the idea of vapor and flow in sculpture. but other artists have arrived, at about the same time, at the same end, or almost the same end, by different paths. among these are two of our great painters, friends and comrades of rodin, renoir and carrière. does not this community of thought prove how profound is the vitality our country continues to possess in the domain of art? we are less struck by this phenomenon than when we verify its effects in the past, when we see them related and summed up in the history of art; because we are not in a position to disengage it from our present life, which is encumbered and complicated, and to draw a conclusion from it. and then, too, the present political régime does little to signalize the great artists, to muster them before the untutored admiration of the multitude, to give value to the intellectual wealth of the country. as a rule, when a man of genius receives the homage he deserves, it is when he is near his end, if it is not after his death. what public festivals have been given in france in this century to honor the glories of our artistic and scientific life, victor hugo excepted? when and how have we celebrated men like puvis de chavannes, rodin, renoir, carrière, claude monet, besnard, odilon redon, and bartholomé, to mention only masters of the chisel and the brush? occasionally they have been gratified by the boredom of an official banquet, where they have been assigned a rank considerably lower than that of the least important politician, and they are expected to be thankful when they have had bestowed upon them a few parchments and some bits of ribbon. fortunately, their joys are in another sphere, whither no one who is not their equal can follow them. in their ardent effort toward a similar end, then, it is necessary to associate rodin, renoir, and carrière. all three, for that matter, have mutually admired and even influenced one another. whether in the course of their work or in their conversations, one cannot deny that the attempt of the impressionist school, which consists precisely in not separating the being or the object from its atmosphere, in prolonging its life in the life of that which envelopes it, really succeeds only in the work of these masters. they have, if not recreated, at least broadened the law of the distribution of shadow and of light in their intricate fusion. certainly others had already manifested and realized similar ways of seeing things, according to their various temperaments, such men as fantin-latour and henner in the study of the human figure and claude monet in landscape. but, except for monet, no one affirms them with the authority of a rodin, a carrière, a renoir. if carrière, too early interrupted by a cruel death, is a tragic, a somber genius, a genius of the gothic line, which in him does not exclude great sweetness, renoir and rodin, in their maturity, are happy geniuses, masters of young beauty and of a serenity which art has scarcely known since ancient greece. a like sentiment of serenity, a like aspiration for harmonious unity, therefore a closer contact with nature, bring them together. this serenity, this aspiration for unity, rodin and renoir have sought during their whole life, and it is in the radiant works of their old age that it triumphs. the genius of form and its union with the universal has been the master thought, the plastic ideal, which their fraternal minds have realized simultaneously by different methods. "with rodin a style begins," said octave mirbeau twenty years ago. the phrase stirred up a tempest. all the time that has passed since then has been required to make people admit its truth. the great writer might have said with more exactitude, but with less force, "with rodin style itself has begun anew." will it continue? it has never entirely ceased to exist, even if it has no longer the force of expansion with which, from france and through her, it spread through all europe. will it begin again with its vigor as of old? the question touches those problems raised by the events that are to-day overturning the world and also the profound modifications which the war will bring. the master gives us his opinion on this matter in a few words, circumspect and measured, as he himself always is. how could he be otherwise before the formidable unknown that still hides from us the next turn of destiny? it is fitting, then, to leave him the last word on this subject. fortunately his word has the warm ring of hope. [illustration: a fÊte given in honor of rodin by some of his friends.] this hope he draws in a measure from himself, from his own strength, which is, he feels, a distinct outgrowth of the national strength, of the unconquerable soul of our ancestors; he draws it also from the consciousness of a task accomplished in the face of the hard blows of life; and finally from the promise of the artistic youth of the country, of that which belongs to his school. for if with two or three exceptions he has not directly formed pupils, his artistic principles, his faith in the virtue of character and labor, supported by the example of an unequaled body of work, have given him innumerable disciples. the lesson which he offers us and which will soon be offered to all at the museum in the hôtel biron, will endure for centuries. he says himself justly, with pride and modesty, that this museum will form a true home of education. * * * * * a few words more about this life which in the fecundity of its unexpected incidents remains for the attentive witness profoundly significant to the very end. at the moment when the war of broke out, the master was in his villa at meudon. when the german armies approached paris, he thought of leaving his home. he had excited great admiration in the land of schiller and goethe, he had been urged to take part in numerous expositions there; but he had quite special reasons for knowing that his work, were it to fall into their hands, would not be spared by the soldiers from beyond the rhine. overwhelmed by the terrifying surprise of the invasion, he did not know where to go. as he had many friends in england, i offered to guide him there. he therefore crossed the channel, accompanied by his wife, the companion of his good and evil days. it was without a word of bitterness that he set out, without expressing a regret for all that he was leaving behind him. before the immensity of the national misfortune he seemed to have completely forgotten the menace that hung over the work of his whole life. in the train that carried us by night to one of the french ports, he said in his clear and always tranquil voice: "yes, i am leaving much behind me. it is the work of an entire life that will disappear, perhaps." that was all. this attitude of an old exiled king inspired a respect free from all compassion. the fate of his collection of antiques caused him more disquietude. "if they take them, that is nothing; they will still exist. but if they break them! they will have destroyed what is irreplaceable." he did not wish to remain in london. too many relationships would have hindered him from collecting himself and from preserving that dignity of solitude, that reserve of a refugee which was proper to his situation. he preferred to accompany us to a small country town, where for six weeks he lived a modest life, very retired, interested only, but passionately interested, in the reading of english newspapers, which we translated for him. when we apprised him of the burning of rheims cathedral, he replied with a laugh of incredulity. for two days he refused to believe it. it seemed to him an invention of the press designed to stir the public and increase recruiting. at last, convinced, he said, with inexpressible sadness: "the biblical times have come back again, the great invasions of the medes and the persians. has the world, then, reached the point where it deserves to be punished for the egotistical epicureanism in which it has slumbered?" after this he became absorbed in his own thoughts. the battle of the marne, in saving france and the world, saved also that little temple of art, the museum at meudon. rodin, on his return from england, found it intact. he took up his work again, without a pause, with that unalterable patience of his--that patience of the peasant that turns him back to his field the moment the enemy has passed. he awaits there sadly the dawn of peace. * * * * * during the last months of the year the question of the musée rodin, broached five years ago, became again a living one; it was brought before the assembly. certain of the master's adversaries who have not been calmed even by the events of the present affected a righteous indignation that the discussion of this question of art should at this moment have any place in the order of the day, and they tried to make people believe that it was he who had chosen this tragic hour for debates of this kind. let us repeat that five years ago rodin offered this gift to his country, and that the delay in settling the matter is imputable solely to the procrastination of public affairs. on the day i write these lines the creation of the musée rodin has been determined upon. the two chambers have voted by a majority that proves that everything france contains in the way of cultivated intelligence desires to assure a home worthy of itself for the works of its greatest sculptor. but before we have arrived there what other mishaps may not befall! it is too soon to write the history of the musée rodin. its adventure is not less singular than all the others that have marked this long career, certain of which have been summed up in these pages. the more forceful the personality, the more it is in contradiction with the passions of the vulgar, the more are the incidents that spring up in the contact of these two opposite elements. it would require a whole volume to recount those that have punctuated the life of rodin during these later years. despite the bitterness of the combat, the master has had nothing to complain of and does not complain. the outcome of his life-story is most beautiful, and if this beauty already strikes us, it is in the years to come that it will attain its full glory. for if the gesture with which rodin offers to france his work and his dearest possessions is that of those who count in the annals of their country, no one perhaps has ever received such a homage as that which the country has bestowed upon him in the manner of accepting his gift. in the midst of war, in the very hour when the country is suffering unheard of evils, it has self-possession enough in the firmness of its indomitable soul to honor in a magnificent way the work of one of its sons--a work accomplished in time of peace. turning its attention for an instant from the necessities of war, from the front where it struggles, suffers, and dies, it remains calm enough, sufficiently sure of itself, to offer to one of its heroes of toil, and of the thought which its soldiers defend, a testimony of its gratitude and admiration. the end this ebook was produced by david schwan <davidsch@earthlink.net>. sculpture of the exposition palaces and courts descriptive notes on the art of the statuary at the panama-pacific international exposition san francisco by juliet james to a. stirling calder who has so ably managed the execution of the sculpture, and to the vast body of sculptors and their workmen who have given the world such inspiration with their splendid work, this book is dedicated. foreword what accents itself in the mind of the layman who makes even a cursory study of the sculptors and their works at the panama-pacific international exposition is the fine, inspiring sincerity and uplift that each man brings to his work. one cannot be a great sculptor otherwise. the sculptor's work calls for steadfastness of purpose through long years of study, acute observation, the highest standards, fine intellectual ability and above all a decided universalism - otherwise the world soon passes him by. it is astonishing to see brought together the work of so many really great sculptors. america has a very large number of talented men expressing themselves on the plastic side - and a few geniuses. the exposition of has given the world the opportunity of seeing the purposeful heights to which these men have climbed. we have today real american sculpture - work that savors of american soil - a splendid national expression. never before have so many remarkable works been brought together; and american sculpture is only in its infancy - born, one might say, after the centennial exposition of . the wholesome part of it all is that men and women are working independently in their expressions. we do not see that effect here of one man trying to fit himself to another man's clothing. the work is all distinctly individual. this individualism for any art is a hopeful outlook. the sculpture has vitalized the whole marvelous exposition. it is not an accessory, as has been the sculpture of previous expositions, but it goes hand in hand with the architecture, poignantly existing for its own sake and adding greatly to the decorative architectural effects. in many cases the architecture is only the background or often only a pedestal for the figure or group, pregnant with spirit and meaning. those who have the city's growth at heart should see to it that these men of brain and skill and inspiration are employed to help beautify the commercial centers, the parks, the boulevards of our cities. we need the fine lessons of beauty and uplift around us. we beautify our houses and spend very little time in them. why not beautify our outside world where we spend the bulk of our time? we, a pleasure-loving people, are devoting more time every year to outside life. would it not be a thorough joy to the most prosaic of us to have our cities beautified with inspiring sculpture? we do a great deal in the line of horticultural beautifying - we could do far more - but how little we have done with one of the most meaningful and stimulating of the arts. let us see to it, in san francisco at least, that a few of these works are made permanent. take as an example james earle fraser's "end of the trail." imagine the effect of that fine work silhouetted against the sky out near fort point, on a western headland, with the animal's head toward the sea, so that it would be evident to the onlooker that the indian had reached the very end of the trail. it would play a wonderful part in the beauty of the landscape. or take edith woodman burroughs' "youth." what a delight a permanent reproduction of that fountain would be if placed against the side of one of the green hills out at golden gate park - say near the children's playground - with a pool at its base. it is only by concerted action that we will ever get these works among us. who is going to take the lead? the contents introduction the fountain of energy the mother of tomorrow the nations of the occident the nations of the orient the alaskan the lama the genius of creation the rising sun descending night winter the portals of el dorado panel of the fountain of el dorado youth the american pioneer cortez the end of the trail panel from the column of progress the feast of the sacrifice the joy of living the man with the pick the kneeling figure the pegasus panel primitive man thought victory the priestess of culture the adventurous bowman pan air the signs of the zodiac the fountain of ceres the survival of the fittest earth wildflower biographies of sculptors sculpture around the fine arts lagoon the illustrations the fountain of energy - a. stirling calder, sculptor the mother of tomorrow - a. stirling calder, sculptor the nations of the occident - a. stirling calder, frederick roth, leo lentelli, sculptors the nations of the orient - a. stirling calder, frederick roth, leo lentelli, sculptors the alaskan - frederick roth, sculptor the lama - frederick roth, sculptor the genius of creation - daniel chester french, sculptor the rising sun - adolph alexander weinman, sculptor descending night - adolph alexander weinman, sculptor winter - furio piccirilli, sculptor the portals of el dorado - gertrude vanderbilt whitney, sculptor panel of the fountain of el dorado - gertrude vanderbilt whitney, sculptor youth - edith woodman burroughs, sculptor the american pioneer - solon hamilton borglum, sculptor cortez - charles niehaus, sculptor the end of the trail - james earle fraser, sculptor panel from the column of progress - isidore konti, sculptor the feast of the sacrifice - albert jaeger, sculptor the joy of living - paul manship, sculptor the man with the pick - ralph stackpole, sculptor the kneeling figure - ralph stackpole, sculptor the pegasus panel - bruno louis zimm, sculptor primitive man - albert weinert, sculptor thought - albert weinert, sculptor victory - louis ulrich, sculptor the priestess of culture - herbert adams, sculptor the adventurous bowman - herman a. macneil, sculptor pan - sherry fry, sculptor air - robert ingersoll aitken, sculptor the signs of the zodiac - herman a. macneil, sculptor the fountain of ceres - evelyn beatrice longman, sculptor the survival of the fittest - robert ingersoll aitken, sculptor earth - robert ingersoll aitken, sculptor wildflower - edward berge, sculptor sculpture of the exposition palaces and courts "the influence of sculpture is far reaching. the mind that loves this art and understands its language will more and more insist on a certain order and decorum in visual life. it opens an avenue for the expression of aesthetic enjoyment somewhere between poetry and music and akin to drama. - arthur hoeber the fountain of energy a. stirling calder, sculptor [see frontispiece] the fountain of energy is a monumental aquatic composition expressing in exuberant allegory the triumph of energy, the lord of the isthmian way. it is the central sculptural feature of the south garden, occupying the great quatrefoil pool in front of the tower. the theme is energy, the conqueror - the over lord - the master; energy, mental and physical; energy - the will, the indomitable power that achieved the waterway between the oceans at panama. the earth sphere, supported by an undulating frieze of mer-men and women, is his pedestal. advancing from it in the water at the four relatively respective points of the compass, north, south, east and west, are groups representing the atlantic and the pacific oceans and the north and the south seas; groups richly imaginative, expressing types of oriental, occidental, southern and northern land and sea life. the interrupted outer circle of water motifs represent nereids driving spouting fish. vertical zones of writhing figures ascend the sphere at the base of the victor. across the upper portions of the sphere, and modeled as parts of the earth, stretch titanic zoomorphs, representing the hemispheres, east and west. the spirit of the eastern hemisphere is conceived as feline and characterized as a human tiger cat. the spirit of the western hemisphere is conceived as taurine and characterized as a human bull. the base of the equestrian is surrounded by a frieze of architecturalized fish and the rearing sea horses that furnish the principal upper motif for the play of water. energy himself is presented as a nude male, typically american, standing in his stirrups astride a snorting charger - an exultant super-horse needing no rein - commanding with grandly elemental gesture of extended arms, the passage of the canal. growing from his shoulders, winged figures of fame and valor with trumpet, sword and laurel, forming a crest above his controlling head, acclaim his triumph. the fountain embodies the mood of joyous, exultant power and exactly expresses the spirit of the exposition. its unique decorative character has been aptly described as heraldic, "the power of america rising from the sea." a. stirling calder the mother of tomorrow a. stirling calder, sculptor with upturned face, with steady onward gaze, the stalwart mother of tomorrow moves ahead. hers is the firm, determined purpose, the will to do - to accomplish that for which she has started. she marches ahead of the types of the occident. it has taken all these types striving with common purpose to produce the future, therefore they form the mother of tomorrow, the matrix from which the future generations are to come. mr. calder's high, splendid ideals are directly mirrored in this one figure. it is not hard to read the man in his handiwork. the nations of the occident a. stirling calder, frederick roth, leo lentelli, sculptors into the great court of the universe, from the top of the arch of the occident, march the types of men who have made the western civilization. from left to right - the french-canadian, the alaskan, the german, the latin-american, the italian, the anglo-american, the squaw, the american indian. in the center of this well-balanced pyramidal group, surmounted by enterprise and drawn by sturdy oxen, comes the old prairie schooner. to right and left atop are seen the heroes of tomorrow - one a white boy, the other a negro type. in front marches the splendid mother of tomorrow. the nations of the orient a. stirling calder, frederick roth, leo lentelli, sculptors atop the arch of the orient is the superb tableau representing the types of men that form the orientals. from left to right - the arab sheik, the negro servitor, the egyptian warrior, the arab falconer, the indian prince and spirit of the east, the lama, the mohammedan warrior, the negro servitor, the mongolian warrior. on they come to join the nations of the west in the great court of the universe. this group is as fine as any group ever seen at an exposition. it rises in its impressive pyramidal height to a climax in the spirit of the east - a fitting pivot on which to turn the types. the alaskan frederick roth, sculptor frederick roth has fashioned one of the most expressive figures of the exposition sculpture, but so far above the eye is she and so overshadowed by her companions, that we do not see her in her true light. it is the alaskan indian of the nations of the occident. she is moving on with her totem poles and blankets. you feel her tug and strain, for her load is growing heavier with each step, and she has yet a long way to go. the modeling of the figure, the foot, the rigid arm and hand, all tell of sustained effort that is truly life-like in expression. the lama frederick roth, sculptor the priest of thibet, the lama, passes on his onward march before you. you do not wonder what race claims him. he is of mongolian blood. he stolidly passes by, looking neither to the right nor to the left. he is used to being obeyed. his rod of authority tells you that what he says is law. indifference and arrogance are on his face. his very posture, the very way in which his robe hangs from his shoulders, the position of his nerveless fingers that hold the rod, speak of centuries of indifference to everything except what he thinks. the genius of creation daniel chester french, sculptor the spirit of creation is a bisexual being, and yet you feel the spirit and not the flesh. its idealism is of the highest order, being largely produced by the hood drawn far over the face, throwing such deep shadow that personality is lost sight of and only creative force is left. high on a mighty boulder it sits with arms raised. the word has just been spoken and man and woman have come forth - their feet on the serpent, the symbol of wisdom and eternity. at the rear of the group their hands meet as if in mutual dependence, while above appear the alpha and omega - "i am the beginning and the end." the rising sun adolph alexander weinman, sculptor this fresh, strong young sun is about to start on his journey - dawn is soon to break upon the world. with muscles stretched, the wind blowing through his hair, the heavenly joy of the first move expressed upon his face, the vigor of young life pulsating through his body, he will start the chest forward and move those outstretched wings. let us preserve this glorious figure for our western city. it would so admirably suggest the new light that has been shed upon san francisco by the exposition of nineteen hundred and fifteen, as well as the new light occasioned by the opening of the panama canal. descending night adolph alexander weinman, sculptor the figure on the page opposite is a beautiful lyric poem. she might be called "a hymn to the night." every line of her figure is musical, every move suggested, rhythmical. seen at night, she croons you a slumber song. how subtly mr. weinman has told you that she comes to fold the world within her wings - to create thru her desire a "still and pulseless world." the muscles are all lax - the head is drooping, the arms are closing in around the face, the wings are folding, the knees are bending - and she too will soon sink to slumber with the world in her arms. what a fine contrast of feeling between the tense young "sun" and relaxed "descending night." winter furio piccirilli, sculptor naked winter stands before you. it is the period of the year when the leaves are of the trees and the bark is splitting. after the activities of autumn man is resting. the fruits have been gathered - the golden apples and the purple grapes - so man's labors have ceased. it is the period of conception. the sower has just cast forth the seed. mother earth will nurture the little seed until the cold winter has passed and the warm sunshine comes again to give each clod its "stir of might." the portals of el dorado gertrude vanderbilt whitney, sculptor there was once among the south american tribes a belief that in a certain far-off country lived a king called el dorado, the gilded one. he ruled over a region where gold and precious stones were found in abundance. the story influenced a vast number of adventurers who led expeditions to seek the land of golden treasure; but notwithstanding the fact that their searched most carefully and for long periods, they all failed to find it. the idea of the unattainable gave the suggestion to mrs. whitney for her fountain. the gold of el dorado was used as a symbol of all material advantages which we so strongly desire - wealth, power, fame, et cetera. panel of the fountain of el dorado gertrude vanderbilt whitney, sculptor in the panel are seen men and women in their mad race for the unattainable. many have had a glimpse of the gilded one, and are rushing on to pass the mysterious gate behind which the desires of life await them. some faint by the roadside or stop in their race for the goal to contend or to loiter by the way, but those nearest the el dorado increase their speed. beside the gateway that has only just allowed the gilded one to pass thru are two mortals who have come close to the land of their desires, but only to find the door shut and slaves beside it barring the way. their strength is expended, their courage gone in the long race for material things. youth edith woodman burroughs, sculptor a little figure of innocence and purity in all her virgin loveliness stands before you - the incarnation of all that is fresh and wholesome. she is only a slip of a girl and yet the dignity of her carriage betokens hopeful days for her womanhood later on. her form is exquisitely moulded. those little bony shoulders will all too soon fill out and she will bloom into womanhood. the chief charm of this little lady is her simplicity. mrs. burroughs uses such beauty of line, such sweet language to tell her story. the american pioneer solon hamilton borglum, sculptor erect, dignified, reflecting on the things that have been, the american pioneer appears before us, reminding us that to him should be given the glory for the great achievements that have been made on the american continent. he it was who blazed the trail that others might follow. he endured the hardships, carved the way across the continent, and made it possible for us of today to advance thru his lead. all hail to the white-headed, noble old pioneer who, with gun and axe, pushed his way thru the wilderness; whose gaze was always upward and onward, and whose courage was unfaltering! cortez charles niehaus sculptor one of the finest equestrians at the exposition is cortez by charles niehaus. as we look upon the rider on his sumptuously caparisoned horse we are convinced that he is every inch a conqueror. he is represented absolutely motionless - his feet in the stirrups - and yet you feel that he is a man of tremendous action. you also feel his fine reserve, and yet how spirited he is! this is that intrepid spirit that desired the land of the montezumas. after determined invasions he conquered the country in the early part of the sixteenth century. the end of the trail by james earle fraser, sculptor "the trail is lost, the path is hid, and winds that blow from out the ages sweep me on to that chill borderland where time's spent sands engulf lost peoples and lost trails." - marion manville pope. one of the strongest works of the exposition in its intense pathos is this conception of the end of the indian race. over the country the indian has ridden for many a weary day, following the long trail that leads across a continent. a blizzard is on. he has peered to right and left, but alas! the trail is gone and only despair is his. so has it been with the indian. his trail is now lost and on the edge of the continent he finds himself almost annihilated. panel from the column of progress by isidore konti, sculptor the four panels on the column of progress show the different mental conditions of men on their onward march thru life. in the center of the panel stands the man of inspiration - the eagle, bird of inspiration, perched on his shoulder. he goes thru life with upturned face, depending upon his god for strength. beside him on the right is seen the warrior who wins his way by sheer physical strength. on his left stands the ascetic philosopher, who through constant vigils "hath a lean and hungry look." to the extreme left falteringly steps the man who fears the unknown future; his wife and mother sustain him by spiritual cheer. the figures are in very high relief so that they seem almost human as you gaze upon them. the feast of the sacrifice albert jaegers, sculptor in your imagination you see as of old the harvest procession marching around the fields. it is led by the great bulls for the sacrifice to the gods, that the harvest may yield bounteously. on either side of the bulls are the youths and the maids carrying flowered festoons. the long procession passes on and halts before the altar where the bull being sacrificed, the head with its festoons is placed upon the side of the altar. a most decorative group is this feast of the sacrifice - brute strength and the graceful form of the maid making a splendid play of line that most satisfactorily charms the eye. the joy of living paul manship, sculptor with perfect abandon come these maidens into the court of the universe, carrying their festoons of wild roses. they bring to the great festival joy and love of life - a telling addition to all that has been expressed in the court. they savor of old greek days, these maidens of archaic hair and zigzag draperies. paul manship loves the classic which brings with it much of free expression, and he has adopted the archaic style that recalls the figures such as are seen on old greek vases. no one is more joyous among the sculptors than this man. he has a rarely beautiful gift from the gods. the man with the pick ralph stackpole, sculptor an ordinary workman with his pick - and yet how impressed you are with his sincerity. in him is asserted the dignity, the usefulness, the nobility of all labor. he helps to turn the wheels of trade, to further the interests of the world. he works patiently day by day, notwithstanding the fact that those above him reap the benefits. mr. stackpole has been most happy in his expression. the broad treatment is thoroughly suitable to just such work as this. there are no accessories employed. the work is absolutely direct. the kneeling figure ralph stackpole, sculptor with the love for all that is beautiful in life, in what god has made and in what man has fashioned, the grateful devotee has mounted the steps that lead to the altar at which she offers up her devotion. she bows her head in humble reverence to her god for all that he has given her to enjoy - all that is good, pure, true, beautiful, uplifting. and we onlookers, too, would join the moving throng that bend the knees at the altar of beauty and truth. across the lagoon we gaze upon the great stillness, and we with her murmur, "father, i thank thee." the pegasus panel bruno louis zimm there are no reliefs more classically inspiring than are these superb reliefs by bruno zimm. the one on the opposite page is of great beauty. the young artist has caught the inspiration of his art - he has bridled pegasus. beside him march the arts - literature, holding aloft her symbol, the lamp; sculpture extending in front of her the statuette, a devotee admiring, and music leading the procession, stilling ever the beasts - a veritable orpheus. mr. zimm has been most successful in the fine working out of his subject in a classical way, for the style of relief work accords well in feeling with the superb classic architecture it decorates. primitive man albert weinert, sculptor long ages past i lived and gave no thought of time or doing aught save going as my fancy took me. ofttimes i took my bow and arrow and hide me to the mighty forests where herds of nature's roaming kind served as my food when i required it. again i followed to the sea where, casting in my net, i drew up myriads of the finny tribe to satisfy my appetite. oft drew i up such numbers vast that having naught to do but to amuse myself i fed my extra fish the friendly pelican that had become companion in my walks along the shore. a simple man was i with not too many thoughts and only few desires. my body was my foremost daily thought, and little cared i for aught else besides. thought albert weinert, sculptor the ages have passed on and i more thoughtful have become, for mighty revolutions have gone on within my frame. my mind, a once too puny thing, has year by year grown stronger, until to-day i realize that feeble is my flesh - a thing to be abhorred, and mind does rule above all else. my very face which once was rude and lacked that fire that strong intelligence does give now has a steady purpose and fine spirit writ upon it. it is as if my flesh of old had dropped and like a cast-off cloak had fallen at my feet. then come those days when tumult as of yore is waged within me, and then i grasp my new-made self and yearn to hold my old position within the body walls. thought more strong than flesh does wield its strength and back i crouch beneath the feet to stay till thought is off his guard again. victory louis ulrich, sculptor against the blue sky, with wings poised and draperies blown back, appears a victory from every gable point of the palaces of the exposition. she is positively charming in her sweep forward. poised far above you, she holds the laurel wreath ready for the victor. blessed victories! we rejoice that there are so many of you for we have found so many victors. sideview, against the clear blue sky, she suggests the great victory of samothrace. mr. ulrich, we feel sure that the lady samothrace has exerted her subtle influence. the priestess of culture herbert adams, sculptor there are few sculptors with greater refinement or more cultured reserve than herbert adams. he understands the selection of the significant and in many ways seems most fitting to represent the priestess of culture. this figure at the base of the dome of the rotunda of the fine arts palace, on the inside, is eight times repeated. simple, dignified, beautifully balanced, with elegance expressed in every line of her garment with its rich border sparingly used, she holds in either arm an overflowing cornucopia, the symbol of what she is able to give you. the adventurous bowman herman a. macneil, sculptor at the top of the column of progress where the sea-wind blows thru his locks, stands the adventurous bowman, the symbol of achievement. at the base of the column are seen figures representing the progress of men thru life. we watch them file past, but it is with this man of splendid daring, of consummate achievement, that we are most concerned. he has striven and has reached the top. he has only just pulled the chord of his bow, and his arrow has sped on. with confident eye he looks to see it hit the mark. the laurel wreath and palm of victory await his efforts. pan sherry fry, sculptor you cannot look upon this little figure without feeling that he is inimitably charming. pan, a god of the woodland, the symbol of the festive side of the exposition, sits among the shrubs in front of festival hall. he has selected a marble capital on which to sit - quick reminder of those classic days when he roamed the greek glades. over the cold seat he has spread his fawn-skin. he has just been moving his lips over the pan-pipes, but a rustle among the leaves has caused him to pause in his melody. in the grass he sees a lizard which is as intent on pan as pan is on him. care-free pan with pointed ear and horned brow, we love thee, for dost thou not give us all our jollity and fun, the tonic for our daily walks! air robert ingersoll aitken, sculptor robert ingersoll aitken has added to the cosmical meaning of the court of the universe his four elements - monumental, horizontal compositions of pronounced decorative effect. air is the one of finest poetic feeling. she holds the star to her ear and listens to the music of the spheres. the eagle, the symbol of the air, is used with finely balanced effect. on her back are fastened wings, and man, puny man, is aiming, by attaching wings to himself, to overcome her - a subtle suggestion of airships. the signs of the zodiac herman a. macneil, sculptor one of the loveliest gems of beauty in the court of the universe is herman a. macneil's cameo frieze of gliding figures. in the centre, with wings outstretched, is atlas, mythologically the first astronomer. passing to left and right glide maidens, two and two, carrying their symbols - for these are the signs of the zodiac. these maids are the hyades and pleiades, the fourteen daughters of atlas. it is as if the figures of some rare old greek vase had suddenly distributed themselves along the top of the great piers. for absolute refinement, for a certain old greek spirit in the court of the universe, these reliefs could not be excelled. the fountain of ceres evelyn beatrice longman, sculptor the architectural side of the fountain of ceres, with its pleasing proportions, is most satisfying to the eye. it was a happy selection to place the goddess of agriculture between the food products palace and the palace of agriculture. ceres strikes the keynote of this delightfully beautiful court. with corn sceptre and cereal wreath, ceres is poised on the globe, the winds of the golden gate blowing thru her drapery. below on the die of the fountain are graceful figures in relief suggesting the decorations of a greek vase. eight joyous, happy creatures trip past you, some with tambourines, others with pipes sounding roundelays, or carrying festoons of flowers. the survival of the fittest robert ingersoll aitken, sculptor this is the initial expression of martial spirit, when the first combat is seen and man by physical force seeks to override the power of his fellows. far back in the childhood of history one finds, as often to-day is the case, that woman is the motive for the fray. three combatants are here - the one on the right separated from the most powerful by the hand of her who loves him. the cause of the trouble stands at the left, steadfastly watching to see which of those that seek her is to be the victor. a glance tells you that he of powerful build in the center of the panel is to hold sway. he it is who is the most fitting survivor. earth robert ingersoll aitken, sculptor a very remarkable figure, her head hanging forward, lies stretched in slumber. it is the sleeping earth. from her come the great trees whose ramifying roots extend in all directions. man is seen wresting from her stone and precious metals. wonderfully has robert aitken worked out the mother earth idea. she has brought forth many times and yet is ever young. it is keenly interesting to look at "earth" and then at michelangelo's "night" to see the source of inspiration. wildflower edward berge, sculptor at sight of your form, i seem now to see a bright stretch of color across a broad lea, where the wildflowers sway to and fro in the breeze, where the winds sing soft lullabies up in the trees where all is as fresh, free and wholesome as you, little wildflower, blooming, so sweet and so true. and i come from the flight of my far-away dream as i look and i listen, to me it would seem that i hear a small voice in a most charming way say, "goodmorrow! goodmorrow! take time while you may, just step up yet closer; i'll give you a chance to have something far sweeter than just a bright glance." appendix the sculptors the planning, the placing, the naming of all this noble sculpture has practically been done by two men - the late karl bitter of new york, a man of great executive and technical ability as well as of immense inspiration, and a. stirling calder, on whom the honor for the great bulk of the work rests. besides acting as personal overseer for the execution of the sculpture of the palaces and courts of the exposition, mr. calder has designed the nations of the orient, the nations of the occident, the fountain of energy, the stars, column of progress and its sculpture, and the oriental flower girl. since the sculpture is one of the strongest factors of this exposition, we should extend to mr. calder our heart-felt appreciation of all that he has done to help make this exposition such a wonderful, artistic success. robert ingersoll aitken robert ingersoll aitken was born in san francisco in . he was a pupil of arthur f. mathews at the mark hopkins institute of art and later of douglass tilden, the well-known california sculptor. he has done a great deal of very strong, compelling work. the examples of his sculpture seen at the panama-pacific international exposition are of pronounced virility and of fine composition. he is a man who excels in technique. he has done in san francisco the victory for the dewey monument in union square, the mckinley monument, the bret harte monument and the hall-mcallister monument. in the metropolitan museum of new york is "the flame." at the fine arts palace are a number of works from his chisel - the gates of silence, the gates' memorial, being by far the finest. herbert adams herbert adams was born in vermont in . he has had many advantages, not the least of which were the five years spent in paris. while there he did the beautiful bust of adelaide pond, who afterwards became his wife. in he returned to america, becoming instructor in the art school of pratt institute, brooklyn. he has done a number of works for the congressional library, the vanderbilt bronze doors of the st. bartholomew church of new york, the tympan of the madonna and child in the same church, a statue of william ellery channing and many others. his beautiful busts of women are said to be unsurpassed even in france. edward berge edward berge was born at baltimore, maryland, in . he was admitted quite early in life to the maryland institute of art, and the rhinehart school of sculpture of baltimore, following this instruction by the usual finishing-off at paris. he had the good fortune while in paris to study under the great rodin. he won bronze medals at both the pan-american exposition of and the st. louis exposition of . his many very interesting fountain figures seen at the panama, pacific international exposition have won deserved praise from the many who have seen them. solon borglum solon borglum was born in at ogden, utah. the greater part of his early life was spent on the plains of nebraska, lassoing wild horses and photographing at the same time every detail of this strange life upon his brain. he spent a short time in california, where he began his life as an artist. realizing his limitations, he went to the cincinnati art school, where he studied some time under rebisso. it was while here that he spent all of his spare time on the anatomy of the horse. the time soon arrived for a sojourn in paris. his "little horse in the wind" excited pronounced attention at the salon that first year abroad and honors were bestowed upon him as long as he remained in paris. he has given the indian the greatest attention, and is one of the best sculptors of the red man in the united states. he has but one group in the fine arts palace - "washington." edith woodman burroughs one of the chief women sculptors of the united states is edith woodman burroughs, born at riverdale-on-the-hudson, in . she was a pupil at the new york art students' league under augustus saint-gaudens, later studying in paris with injalbert and merson. in she was married to bryson burroughs, a new york artist. she has made a specialty of fountain sculpture. no one who has ever seen her fountain of youth at the panama-pacific international exposition can forget it. it will always be a source of regret that the appropriation for the panama-pacific international exposition sculpture was reduced, thus preventing the public from seeing the speaking, simple groups of "arabian nights entertainments." mrs. burroughs is represented at the metropolitan museum of new york by "john la farge," a remarkably interesting portrait head, full of character. she has the power of speaking her language in a few words - but just the right ones. a. stirling calder the man at the wheel in the management of all the works of sculpture at the panama-pacific international exposition has been a. stirling calder. he was born at philadelphia in . having studied four years at the pennsylvania academy of fine arts, he had the advantage of two years in paris. for some time he has been connected with the philadelphia school of industrial arts. he is a man of splendid imagination, of dignified and noble purpose, being one of the sincere men of his art who keeps the standards where they should be. one of his early works, "the man cub," in the pennsylvania academy of fine arts, is most original and interesting in its treatment. it stands a most unique figure in the line of sculpture. it is said that his "martha w. baldwin memorial" is one of the best designs for a figure and pedestal yet produced in america. mr. calder lived some time in southern california and when there did the sculptured work on the portico of throop polytechnic institute of pasadena. this work was done by means of enormous castings made in fine concrete. mr. calder originated this method and it will probably be the means of revolutionizing the relief work done on many of the public buildings in the future. mr. calder's rare intellectual fiber, added to his accurate knowledge of his subjects, with his exalted outlook, has placed him among the foremost american sculptors. james earle fraser james earle fraser was born at winona, minnesota, in . his father was a railroad constructor, so that the lad had a good chance in traveling around the country to study the free types and life of the west. being very impressionable, he imbibed a great deal which he has turned to good account in his chosen work. at fourteen he started to carve figures from the chalk that conventionality required to be used on blackboard problems. at eighteen he entered the chicago art institute, where he stayed for but three months. he soon went to paris, going first to the beaux arts and later to the colorossi and julian academies. he won many honors during his three years stay in paris. in he won the prize offered by the american art association in paris for the best work in sculpture. augustus saint-gaudens was on the jury and immediately became interested in the talented boy who later on held the place of chief assistant in the saint-gaudens studio. he became instructor of the art students' league of new york in , holding the position until . he it was who made the new five-cent piece design - the indian head on one side, the bison on the other. he is particularly interested in personalities, having done a number of very clever portrait busts. it is enough to look at the portrait bust of mrs. harry payne whitney's boy to realize what he is able to do in the line of portraiture. he has produced nothing finer in that line. he is a master of character records. daniel chester french since the passing of augustus saint-gaudens, daniel chester french has been regarded by many as standing at the head of american sculpture. he was born in exeter, new hampshire, in . after having one year at the massachusetts institute of technology, he studied with doctor rimnier of boston, the first teacher of art anatomy in the united states. later he studied with thomas ball of florence, italy, and a short time in paris. he has been practically his own instructor. his work is of the noblest type. it is anatomically correct, of a high intellectual order, perfect technique and of fine imagery. his first important work was "the minute man" of concord, massachusetts. among his many works are "death and the sculptor," "the alice freeman palmer memorial," the head of "emerson" (which caused emerson to say, "this is the head i shave"), "the milmore memorial," "the alma mater of columbia college," and finest of all, the wonderful "mourning victory" in sleepy hollow cemetery, concord. his memorials are of high spiritual import. sherry e. fry sherry e. fry was born in iowa in . he has been most fortunate in having the best instruction, having studied at the chicago art institute, the julian academy and the beaux arts of paris, a year in florence, and later with mcmonnies, barrias, verlet and lorado taft. he has traveled extensively, so has had the opportunity of seeing the best that the world holds for the artist. he won the national roman prize in and held it for three years. he has been a careful student of the indians. his work at the panama-pacific international exposition is distinctly graceful and decorative. albert jaegers albert jaegers, a man who has taught himself his art, having fine powers of observation and much invention, was born at elberfeld, germany, in . he has been an indefatigable worker, holding his art above all else. solving technical problems by himself, studying the world around him with an intense love in all his undertakings, albert jaegers has come to be a power among his fellows. he has exhibited at several expositions, has done considerable municipal work - the finest figure probably being his "baron steuben," of washington - and many fine portraits. his "uncle joe cannon" in the fine arts palace, shows his power as a portraitist. his work has brought him decorations from the german emperor. isidore konti a foreign sculptor living in new york, isidore konti has steadily risen in the excellence of his work until to-day he stands among the foremost american sculptors. he was born at vienna, in . his father's capture by the viennese in the war against hungary, where the father lived, and his subsequent compulsory connection with the viennese army made the son, isidore, long for the freedom of america. he came to america as a boy, living in chicago. he exhibited at the chicago exposition in , and later attracted much favorable comment at the pan-american exposition at buffalo. his works in the fine arts palace are of a very high order and are exquisitely modeled. the more sober life of the individual, with appreciation of sentiment and longing, are evident in his works. leo lentelli leo lentelli was born in bologna, italy, in . he came to the united states in , where he has been permanently located in new york. his most notable work is seen in the cathedral of saint john the divine, new york, where he has done "the savior with sixteen angels" for the reredos. he has recently completed a group which has been placed over the entrance to the new branch public library of san francisco. he is still another of the sculptors who is self-taught. evelyn beatrice longman evelyn beatrice longman has risen constantly in her work since she took her first step in art at the chicago art institute. she was born in ohio of english parents, being one of six children. at fourteen she began to earn her own living in chicago, studying at night at the chicago institute of art. she saved her money, using it on her education at olivet college. she returned to chicago and studied drawing and anatomy. so clever was she that at the end of the first year she began to teach those subjects at the institute. later, she went to new york where she studied with herman macneil and daniel chester french. she really made her debut in sculpture at the st. louis exposition, where she showed "victory," a male figure which was so excellent in invention and technique that it was given a place of honor on the top of festival hall. in john quincy adams ward offered a prize for the best portrait bust. this competition was open to all american sculptors. charles grafly won in the competition, but miss longman won the second place with her "aenigma." besides some excellent portraits, she has done two remarkable bronze gates at the entrance to the chapel of the united states naval academy at annapolis, and much fine figure work. daniel chester french says "she is the last word in ornament." herman a. macneil herman a. macneil was born in , at chelsea, massachusetts. after graduating from the state normal school of massachusetts, he went to paris, where he studied under chapu of the julian academy, and two years under falguiere of the ecole des beaux arts. he came home and soon answered a call to cornell, where he remained three years. then three years were spent in teaching art at the chicago art institute. while there, he taught miss carol brooks of chicago, whom he married in . she is a very clever sculptor herself. her "listening to the fairies," "the first wave," "the first lesson," "betty," in the fine arts palace of the exposition, readily show how very charming her work is. mr. and mrs. macneil studied together in rome for four years and on their return to america established themselves in new york, where the macneil studio is. he is the teacher of modeling of the national school of design, new york. he has made a specialty of indian subjects, "the sun vow," "the coming of the white man," and the "moqui runner" being some of his best pieces. to him the indians are as fine as greek warriors and most worthy of careful study. whatever he does in sculpture is in its very essence national. he is extremely refined, a superb modeler and one whose every piece of work is strong and of the first rank. paul manship standing quite apart from the other sculptors in his special joyous line of work is paul manship, a young man from st. paul, minnesota, born in . he obtained the prix de rome from the american academy, which prize allowed him to study in rome and greece for three years, from to . his study in greece gave a most interesting, individual touch to his work, for he united to his fresh, vigorous western style the classic precision of the greek. he has a certain archaistic mannerism in his work recalling the aeginetan marbles, which individuality puts a manship stamp upon his work, striking a distinctly personal note. his statuettes are most charming and natural - little bursts of spirit and intense feeling. his work is always interesting - the kind you cannot pass by. he fills a niche all his own and is a most promising, gifted young sculptor. his "spring awakening" and "playfulness" in the twachtman room of the fine arts palace are delightfully exhilarating little figures. charles niehaus charles niehaus' great talent lies in the lines of monumental sculpture. he was born in cincinnati, in . he was a pupil of the mcmicken school of art of that city, later attending the royal academy of munich, germany, where he took the first medal ever won by an american. he has won gold medals at the pan-american exposition, the charleston exposition and also at the exposition of st. louis. his work is of the extremely dignified order, and shows great simplicity of line. it is always the spirit of the work that claims you in all that he undertakes. he has done nothing finer than his "garfield" at cincinnati. his astor memorial doors of trinity church, new york, his "doctor hahnemann" of washington, d. c., and his "driller," symbolic of the energy of labor, are among his best works. furio piccirilli living in new york in truly florentine style is the piccirilli family - a household of five families. it is said that nowhere in america is the old florentine style of the fourteenth century way of living so well exemplified. the men of the family were marble cutters, but within the last few years attilio, an elder brother, has been expressing himself in sculpture of a pronounced order. furio is a young member who is coming to the front thru the very lovely representations of his work at the panama-pacific international exposition. he has given a fine human touch to his work. it stands quite apart in its italian feeling from the robust american sculpture. frederick roth frederick roth is one of the greatest animal sculptors of the united states and is studying abroad year by year. he was born in brooklyn, new york, in , and was fortunate in being sent to berlin and vienna to pursue his studies when he was very young. he attracted very favorable attention at the pan-american exposition by his great originality and technical skill. he is extremely fond of modeling small animals, many of which can be seen in the fine arts palace of the exposition. "the equestrienne" is as clever and spirited a small work as he has done. ralph stackpole ralph stackpole, one of the younger sculptors, was born near grants pass, oregon, in . at the age of sixteen he began his art study at the san francisco school of design, remaining here for the short period of four months. he later studied with g. f. p. piazzoni and arthur putnam, and considers that from these men he received his best instruction. in he went to paris, where he continued his studies at the ecole des beaux arts and atelier merces, where he remained two years. he exhibited his work at the salon in . you meet the man face to face in his work on the varied industries palace. he is sincere, broad, direct. as to his reverence and refined feeling, you need but to look at his "kneeling figure" at the altar in front of the fine arts palace to see that he possesses these qualities in abundance. louis ulrich the world is probably receiving its first introduction to louis ulrich, a pupil of the joint school of the national sculpture society and the society of beaux arts architects. he has achieved a "crowning success" in his dignified figure of sweeping lines. albert weinert albert weinert was born at leipzig, germany, in . he studied at the art academy at leipzig under meichior zur strapen, later coming to america, where he is now located in new york. he has done a great deal of municipal work of a high order, among which can be mentioned sculpture work on the interior of the congressional library at washington, a monument to president mckinley for toledo, ohio, a "lord baltimore" for maryland and some very excellent statues on the facade of the masonic building, san francisco. his work in the court of the ages has added greatly to the interest of that court and is forceful, virile work. adolph alexander weinman adolph alexander weinman, one of the poets of the sculpture world, was born in karlsruhe, germany, in . when but a boy of ten, he came to america with his parents. in his youth he began his student life in art with the great augustus saint-gaudens, attending also cooper union, new york. each year has seen him move successfully ahead until now he is among our finest american sculptors. he is one who stimulates the imagination and raises the standards of art in whatever he models. his work is pregnant with life and is thoroughly individual, so that you feel when you look upon his figures that you have met more than mere bronze or marble. his portraits are of a very high order, many of which can be seen in medal form in the fine arts palace. he lives in new york, where he is well appreciated. mrs. gertrude vanderbilt whitney mrs. gertrude vanderbilt whitney is one of the foremost american woman sculptors. the fountain of el dorado is her first public contribution. bruno zimm bruno zimm, living in new york, was a pupil of the late karl bitter. he has designed work for former expositions, and we trust that his name will be better known in the future. he has added great beauty to the fine arts palace by his classic friezes designed in effective, bold masses. the archaic style used in his work is evident in many of the sculptural forms at this exposition. sculpture around the fine arts lagoon the first group of statuary in the following list is located on the south-east side of the fine arts lagoon. proceeding thence to the left and through the colonnade, the most important subjects will be found in the order described. sea lions. frederick g. r. roth most carefully studied as to form and babies; you almost: hear the bark of the great mate. the scout. cyrus edwin dallin the horse and the indian wait motionless; his hand shading his eyes from the sun, the indian looks intently into the distance for sign of the enemy. wind and spray. anna coleman ladd a ring of figures - male and female - fleeting and gay - like the wind and the spray. diana. haig patigian the goddess of the hunt appears with her bow; the arrow has just left the string. peace. sherry fry quiet, serene, she stands, her brow bedecked with olive leaves; her serpent bordered robe may betoken the wisdom of peace. the kirkpatrick fountain (extreme left). gail sherman corbett erected to dr. wm. kirkpatrick, superintendent of ononda salt springs from to and from to , at syracuse, new york. the bison ( ). a. phimister proctor the last of a vanishing race - fine, powerful figures. henry ward beecher memorial. j. q. a. ward a noted american clergyman, lecturer, reformer, author, journalist; lived between and ; a man of forceful personality and fine intellect; he looks the very man of opinions who would not hesitate to give them to you - and you would be prone to accept them. william h. taft. robert ingersoll aitken one of america's greatest statesmen. halsey s. ives. victor s. holm was director of the fine arts palace, pan-american exposition. seated lincoln. augustus saint-gaudens the firm man of thought and action; a replica of the seated lincoln of lincoln park, chicago. piping pan. louis saint-gaudens he stands, utterly thoughtless, with his double pipes - passing the hours in amusement; we see him at a musical moment. flying cupid. janet scudder with the rhyton, the greek drinking-horn in his hand, cupid stands above the globe, his little toes holding on firmly so that he will not slip. a muse finding the head of orpheus. edward berge the mourning muse has just chanced upon the severed head of orpheus which had been cast into the stream by the thracian maidens; short pieces of marble are left to support parts easily broken. michael angelo. robert ingersoll aitken we seem to hear him say "and now where next to place the chisel?" he is creating "day," which is seen in the medici chapel, church of san lorenzo, florence, italy. nymph. isidore konti a poetic conception of the origin of the stream, from which the fawn drinks. young pan. janet scudder a favorite subject. pan is piping his woodland notes and marching to his own music. such expressive little hands are those that hold the pipes! the crab comes up to listen and is held - spellbound. wildflower. edward berge everybody's love! a real darling! a little flower of the fields. mother and child. furio piccirilli a typical mother-expression as she croons over her baby - such a dear one! eurydice. furio piccirilli orpheus has just looked back-eurydice, realizing that he is forever lost to her, looks mournfully after him. great longing fills her soul. boy and frog. edward berge an independent young chap stands among the rushes - and how expressive are those toes! the frog, as the fountain, spouts water. the dancing nymph. olin warner her pine-cone wand thrown down, her pan-pipes cast aside, the ivory-crowned nymph indulges in the dance. the outcast. attilio piccirilli a powerful nude; his very toes portray his grief; surely suggested by rodin's work. boyhood. charles cary rumsey the youth who is just beginning to gather his sheaves, looks up and sees the stars! a new treatment in sculpture. the pioneer mother. charles grafly a simple, dignified woman dressed in home-spun. at her knees a boy and a girl - the future builders of the western country. she has crossed the cactus-covered plains, has endured the greatest hardships, that she may rear her sturdy little ones to lay the foundations of a mighty western empire. the bulls' heads are symbolic of sacrifice; oak leaves symbolize strength. she is best seen in the afternoon. thomas jefferson. karl bitter the seated president, with a world of thought upon his face, has on his lap the declaration of independence. lincoln. daniel chester french the rugged man of magnificent understanding, whose every thought was for the betterment of the race. relief from the boston museum of fine arts. richard h. recchia illustrating sculpture. the commodore barry monument. john j. boyle. a naval hero who died . fought in the american revolution. victory rides at the prow with laurels for him. the "eagle" shows for whom he fought. relief from the boston museum of fine arts. richard h. recchia this panel represents architecture. earl dodge memorial. daniel chester french earl dodge, scholar and athlete, was a greatly beloved princeton student - a senior who died just as his college gown was about to be placed upon his shoulders. the young franklin. robert tait mckenzie with all his earthly possessions wrapped in a bandana, with upward gaze and confident gait, benjamin franklin goes to seek his fortune. lafayette. paul wayland bartlett the young lafayette who helped the united states in the revolutionary war and was present at the surrender of lord cornwallis. relief. bela l. pratt representing sculpture. relief from the boston museum of fine arts representing sculpture. a relief of simple sweeping lines of great beauty. the awakening. lindsay morris sterling the day has dawned and with it life awakens. beyond. chester beach a girlish figure wonders what is coming with the future years. best seen from across the road. william cullen bryant ( - ) an american poet of the first rank. he sits thoughtfully - his manuscript before him. laurels grace his pedestal. the sower. albin polasek along the field he goes, scattering his seed. centaur. olga popoff muller this bestial creature is in the act of abducting a beautiful woman. she has almost swooned from fright. the boy with the fish. bela pratt they are singing for joy - the fish seeming to be most comfortably at home. even the little turtle is happy. the little toes must not be overlooked. returning from the hunt. john j. boyle the indian is advancing under the weight of a huge bear across his shoulders, and the huge skin of a companion bear being dragged at has side. l'amour (love). evelyn beatrice longman a group of tender, loving trustfulness. in the background are seen angel heads, denoting the spiritual side of love. the serpent below suggests the great wisdom born of love. it overcomes all death (the skull). the oak leaves symbolize eternal love. garden figure. edith woodman burroughs is this little adam with the apple, or only a little boy with a ball? youth. victor h. salvatore a little maid in sweet simplicity - against the shrubbery. soldier of marathon. paul noquet recalling one of the niobids of the uffizi gallery, florence. the last dying agony of a greek soldier. his shield stands at the left. primitive man. olga popoff muller he hauls the quarry home. would the nose of primitive man be so lacking in primitiveness? the scalp. edward berge the indian stands exultant! his hands alone betray what has happened. the rest of the work is most carefully treated to cover the barbarous side of the subject. apollo hunting. haig patigian "i shot an arrow into the air." this muscular figure recalls the work on machinery palace done by the same sculptor. a faun's toilet. attilio piccirilli an awkward, somewhat bashful, wholly boyish faun - his costume an ivy crown. duck baby. edith barretto parsons a gleeful little soul with chubby toes - more gleeful than the quacking ducks she squeezes. a maiden of the roman campagna. albin polasek like an antique bronze from pompeii. the anemones in her braided hair are surely some of those that grow so plentifully on the great campagna beyond rome. head of lincoln. adolph alexander weinman he might have looked like this at the time of his gettysburg speech. daughter of pan. r. hinton perry a girlish satyr most intent upon the echoes that she makes when blowing through her double pipes. mother of the dead. c. s. pietro the old mother though grief-stricken, accepts the inevitable, while her motherless grandson, not understanding, feels that something is wrong. destiny. c. percival deitsch does destiny decree that man shall lead, while woman meekly follows, as she did in ancient egyptian days? chief justice marshall ( - ). herbert adams a dignified seated figure - one of the greatest chief justices the united states ever had. he held the position from to . the united states is symbolized by the eagle. rock and flower group. anna coleman ladd a decorative group with no special meaning. it might be called "idle moments." great danes. anna vaughan hyatt watchful danes guard well the portals. their names might easily be "keenly alert" and "in sober thought." bondage. carl augustus heber the mother, tightly bound, thinks not of herself as she turns away, but of the weeping child beside her. saki - a sun dial. harriet w. frishmut a nymph acts as a pedestal for a sun-dial. sun - dial boy. gail sherman corbett how interested he is in the chameleon which has curiously crept up to see who it is that gazes at him. sun - god and python. anna coleman ladd apollo, the god of light, shoots at the python (the symbol of darkness). triton babies. anna coleman ladd i.e., children of the sea-gods, the tritons. bird fountain. caroline evelyn risque the little boy holding the bird clings to the globe with his toes. a simple and very appropriate bird fountain. prima mater. victor s. holm the "first mother" holds her babe to her breast. the fountain of time, lorado taft the great ocean of time is rolling on, carrying with it men and women of all conditions of thought. some advance blindly, some hopelessly, some fearfully, some buffeted by the great waves as they roll on. nymph - a garden figure. edward t. quinn showing how any figure gains in beauty by being placed among the shrubbery. the dying lion. paul wayland bartlett a powerful and most realistic group. the poor animal is in the last agony - is evidently starving. new bedford whaleman. beta pratt such was the type of man who left the town of new bedford, massachusetts, a whaling port, to seek his occupation in northern water. http://www.archive.org/details/donatello crawuoft transcriber's note: in the original text the name "verrocchio" is, except for one instance, misspelled as "verrochio"; the name "buonarroti" is twice misspelled as "buonarotti"; the name "orcagna" is once misspelled as "orcagra"; and the name "vasari" is once misspelled as "vassari." these have been corrected in this e-text. variants, archaic forms, or anglicizations of other names (e.g., "michael angelo" for "michelangelo"; "or san michele" for "orsanmichele"; "brunellesco" for "brunelleschi") have been retained as they appear in the original. characters with macrons are indicated in brackets, e.g. [=u]. characters following a caret character are superscripted, e.g. m^a. donatello by lord balcarres [illustration: _alinari_ christ on the cross sant' antonio, padua] [illustration: desormais] london: duckworth and co. new york: charles scribner's sons all rights reserved printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. at the ballantyne press preface an attempt is made in the following pages to determine the position and character of donatello's art in relation to that of his contemporaries and successors. the subject must be familiar to many who have visited florence, but no critical work on the subject has been published in english. i have therefore quoted as many authorities as possible in order to assist those who may wish to look further into problems which are still unsettled. most of the books to which reference is made can be consulted in the art library at south kensington, and in the british museum. foreign critics have written a good deal about donatello from varied, if somewhat limited aspects. dr. bode's researches are, as a rule, illustrative of the works of art in the berlin museum. the main object of dr. semper was to collect documentary evidence about the earlier part of donatello's life; gloria and gonzati have made researches into the paduan period; lusini confines his attention to siena, centofanti to pisa; m. reymond and eugène müntz are more comprehensive in their treatment of the subject. with eleven or twelve exceptions i have seen the original of every existing piece of sculpture, architecture and painting mentioned in this book. i regret, however, that among the exceptions should be a work by donatello himself, namely, the salome relief at lille--my visits to that town having unfortunately coincided with public holidays, when the gallery was closed. i must express my thanks to the officials of museums, as well as to private collectors all over europe, for unfailing courtesy and assistance. i have also to acknowledge my indebtedness to the invaluable advice of mr. s. arthur strong, librarian of the house of lords. .vi. contents page introduction competition for the baptistery gates first journey to rome the predecessors of donatello first work for the cathedral the cathedral faÇade the daniel and poggio st. john the evangelist and the marble david statues of the campanile st. john the baptist jeremiah and the canon of art habakkuk and the sense of distance the zuccone, "realism" and nature the zuccone and the sense of light and shade abraham and the sense of proportion drapery and hands minor works for the cathedral or san michele, st. peter and st. mark st. louis st. george donatello and gothic art the crucifix and annunciation martelli, david, and donatello's technique early figures of st. john donatello as architect and painter the siena font michelozzo and the coscia tomb the aragazzi tomb the brancacci tomb stiacciato tombs of pecci, crivelli, and others the second visit to rome work at rome the medici medallions the bronze david donatello and childhood the cantoria the prato pulpit other children by donatello boys' busts niccolÒ da uzzano and polychromacy portrait-busts relief-portraits san lorenzo the bronze doors the judith the magdalen and similar statues the altar at padua the large statues the bronze reliefs the symbols of the evangelists the choir of angels the pietÀ and the entombment donatello's assistants bellano and the gattamelata tombs gattamelata smaller reliefs and plaquettes the madonnas the pulpits of san lorenzo donatello's influence on sculpture early criticism of donatello character and personality of donatello appendix i appendix ii appendix iii index illustrations christ on the cross _frontispiece_ joshua _to face page_ poggio " mocenigo tomb " marble david " st. john the evangelist " jeremiah " habakkuk " the zuccone " abraham and isaac " st. mark " st. george " st. george " annunciation " san giovannino " st. john baptist, marble " clay sketch of crucifixion and flagellation " niche of or san michele " the marzocco " the martelli shield " salome relief, siena " tomb of coscia, pope john xxiii. " effigy of pope john xxiii. " tomb of cardinal brancacci " tomb plate of bishop pecci " tabernacle " the charge to peter " the bronze david " cantoria " cantoria (detail) " the prato pulpit " bronze amorino " san giovannino " niccolò da uzzano " bronze doors " judith " st. mary magdalen " st. john the baptist " saint francis, the madonna, and saint anthony " miracle of the speaking babe " miracle of the miser's heart " miracle of the mule " symbol of st. matthew " choristers " choristers " christ mourned by angels " super altar by giovanni da pisa " tomb of giovanni, son of general gattamelata " tomb of general gattamelata " shrine of st. justina " general gattamelata " colleone " madonna and child " "pazzi" madonna " madonna and child " madonna " side panel of pulpit " end panel of pulpit " _the reproductions from photographs which illustrate this volume have been made by messrs. j.j. waddington, ltd. henrietta street, w.c._ donatello the materials for a biography of donatello are so scanty, that his life and personality can only be studied in his works. the renaissance gave birth to few men of productive genius whose actual careers are so little known. unlike many of his contemporaries, donatello composed no treatise on his art; he wrote no memoir or commentary, no sonnets, and indeed scarcely a letter of his even on business topics has survived. for specific information about his career we therefore depend upon some returns made to the florentine tax-collectors, and upon a number of contracts and payments for work carried out in various parts of italy. but, however familiar donatello the sculptor may be to the student of italian art, donatello the man must remain a mystery. his biography offers no attraction for those whose curiosity requires minute and intimate details of domestic life. donatello bequeathed nothing to posterity except a name, his masterpieces and a lasting influence for good. the _denunzia de' beni_, which was periodically demanded from florentine citizens, was a declaration of income combined with what would now be called census returns. donatello made three statements of this nature,[ ] in , and . it is difficult to determine his age, as in each case the date of his birth is differently inferred. but it is probable that the second of these returns, when he said that he was forty-seven years old, gives his correct age. this would place his birth in , and various deductions from other sources justify this attribution. we gather also that donatello lived with his mother orsa, his father having died before . the widow, who is mentioned in , and not in , presumably died before the latter date. one sister, tita, a dowerless widow, is mentioned in the earliest _denunzia_, living with her mother and donatello, her son giuliano having been born in . it is probable that donatello had a brother, but the matter is somewhat obscure, and it is now certain that he cannot be identified with the sculptor simone, who used to be considered donatello's brother on the authority of vasari. [footnote : gaye, carteggio, i. . see appendix ii. a.] * * * * * [sidenote: competition for the baptistery gates.] the year marks an event of far-reaching importance in the history of italian art. having decided to erect bronze doors for their baptistery, the florentines invited all artists to submit competitive designs. after a preliminary trial, six artists were selected and a further test was imposed. they were directed to make a bronze relief of given size and shape, the subject being the sacrifice of isaac. few themes could have been better chosen, as the artist had to show his capacity to portray youth and age, draped and undraped figures, as well as landscape and animal life. the trial plaques were to be sent to the judges within twelve months. donatello did not compete, being only a boy, but he must have been familiar with every stage in the contest, which excited the deepest interest in tuscany. a jury of thirty-four experts, among whom were goldsmiths and painters as well as sculptors, assembled to deliver the final verdict. the work of jacobo della quercia of siena was lacking in elegance and delicacy; the design submitted by simone da colle was marred by faulty drawing; that of niccolo d'arezzo by badly proportioned figures; while francesco di valdambrino made a confused and inharmonious group. it was evident that ghiberti and brunellesco were the most able competitors, and the jury hesitated before giving a decision. brunellesco, however, withdrew in favour of his younger rival, and the commission was accordingly entrusted to ghiberti. the decision was wise: ghiberti's model, technically as well as æsthetically, was superior to that of brunellesco. both are preserved at florence, and nobody has regretted the acceptance of ghiberti's design, for its rejection would have made a sculptor of brunellesco, whose real tastes and inclinations were towards architecture, to which he rendered services of incomparable value. * * * * * [sidenote: first journey to rome.] for a short time donatello was probably one of the numerous _garzoni_ or assistants employed by ghiberti in making the gates, but his first visit to rome is the most important incident of his earlier years. brunellesco, disappointed by his defeat, and wishing to study the sculpture and architecture of rome, sold a property at settignano to raise funds for the journey. he was accompanied by donatello, his _stretissimo amico_, [transcriber's note: probably should be "strettissimo."] and they spent at least a year together in rome, learning what they could from the existing monuments of ancient art, and making jewelry when money was wanted for their household expenses. tradition says that they once unearthed a hoard of old coins and were thenceforward known as the treasure-seekers--_quelli del' tesoro_. but the influence of antiquity upon donatello was never great, and brunellesco had to visit rome frequently before he could fully realise the true bearings of classical art. it has been argued that donatello never made this early visit to rome on the ground that his subsequent work shows no traces of classical influence. on such a problem as this the affirmative statement of vasari is lightly disregarded. but the biographer of brunellesco is explicit on the point, giving many details about their sojourn; and this book was written during the lifetime of both donatello and brunellesco. the argument against the visit is, in fact, untenable. artists were influenced by classical motives without going to rome. brunellesco himself placed in his competition design a figure inspired by the bronze boy drawing a thorn out of his foot--the _spinario_ of the capitol. similar examples could be quoted from the work of luca della robbia, and it would be easy to show, on the other hand, that painters like masaccio, fra angelico, and piero della francesca were able to execute important work in rome without allowing themselves to be influenced by the classical spirit except in details and accessories. moreover, if one desired to press the matter further, it can be shown that in the work completed by donatello before , the year in which he made his second and undisputed visit, there are sufficient signs of classical motive in his architectural backgrounds to justify the opinion that he was acquainted with the ancient buildings of rome. the relief on the font at siena and that in the musée wicar at lille certainly show classical study. at the same time, in measuring the extent to which donatello was influenced by his first visit to rome, we must remember that it is often difficult and sometimes impossible to determine the source of what is generically called classical. the revival or reproduction of romanesque motives is often mistaken for classical research. in the places where christianity had little classical architecture to guide it--ravenna, for instance--a new line was struck out; but elsewhere the romanesque had slowly emerged from the classical, and in many cases there was no strict line of demarcation between the two. but donatello was very young when he went to rome, and the fashion of the day had not then turned in favour of classical study. the sculptors working in rome, colourless men as they were, drew their inspiration from gothic and pre-renaissance ideals. in florence the ruling motives were even more gothic in tendency. it is in this school that donatello found his earliest training, and though he modified and transcended all that his teachers could impart, his sculpture always retained a character to which the essential elements of classical art contributed little or nothing. * * * * * [sidenote: the predecessors of donatello.] florence was busily engaged in decorating her great buildings. the fourteenth century had witnessed the structural completion of the cathedral, excepting its dome, of the campanile, and of the church of or san michele. during the later years of the century their adornment was begun. a host of sculptors was employed, the number and scale of statues required being great. there was a danger that the sculpture might have become a mere handmaid of the architecture to which it was subordinated. but this was not the case; the sculptors preserved a freedom in adapting their figures to the existing architectural lines, and it is precisely in the statuary applied to completed buildings that we can trace the most interesting transitions from gothic to renaissance. it is needless to discuss closely the work which was erected before donatello's return from rome: much of it has unhappily perished, and what remains is for the purposes of this book merely illustrative of the early inspiration of donatello. piero tedesco made a number of statues for the cathedral, mea and giottino worked for the campanile. lorenzo di bicci, sculptor, architect, and painter, was one of those whose influence extended to donatello; niccolo d'arezzo was perhaps the most original of this group, making a genuine effort to shake off the conventional system. but, on the whole, the last quarter of the fourteenth century showed but little progress. indeed, from the time of the later pisani there seems to have been a period of stagnation, a pause during which the anticipated progress bore little fruit. orcagna never succeeded in developing the ideas of his master. the shrine in or san michele, marvellous in its way, admirable alike for diligence and sincerity, stands alone, and was not imbued with the life which could make it an influence upon contemporary art. * * * * * [sidenote: first work for the cathedral.] the first recorded payment to donatello by the domopera, or cathedral authorities, was made in november , when he received ten golden florins as an instalment towards his work on the two prophets for the north door of the church, which is rather inaccurately described in the early documents as facing the via de' servi. fifteen months later he received the balance of six florins. these two marble figures, small as they are, and placed high above the gables, are not very noticeable, but they contain the germ of much which was to follow. the term "prophet" can only be applied to them by courtesy, for they are curly-haired boys with free and open countenances; one of them happens to hold a scroll and the other wears a chaplet of bay leaves. there is a certain charm about them, a freshness and vitality which reappears later on when donatello was making the dancing children for the prato pulpit and the singing gallery for the cathedral. the two prophets, particularly the one to the right, are clothed with a skill and facility all the more remarkable from the fact that some of the statues made soon afterwards, show a stiff and rigid treatment of drapery. closely allied to these figures is a small marble statue, about three feet high, belonging to madame edouard andré in paris. it is a full-length figure of a standing youth, modelled with precision, and intended to be placed in a niche or against a background. like the prophets just described, it has a high forehead, while the drapery falls in strong harmonious lines, a corner being looped up over the left arm. it is undoubtedly by donatello, being the earliest example of his work in any collection, public or private, and on that account of importance, apart from its intrinsic merits. * * * * * [sidenote: the cathedral façade.] donatello soon received commissions for statues of a more imposing scale to be placed on the ill-fated façade of the cathedral. all beautiful within, the churches of florence are singularly poor in those rich façades which give such scope to the sculptor and architect, conferring, as at pisa, distinction on a whole town. the churches of the carmine, santo spirito and san lorenzo are without façades at all, presenting graceless and unfinished masonry in place of what was intended by their founders. elsewhere there are late and florid façades alien to the spirit of the main building, while it has been left to our own generation to complete santa croce and the cathedral. the latter, it is true, once had a façade, which, though never finished, was ambitiously planned. a large section of it was, however, erected in donatello's time, but was removed for no reason which can be adequately explained, except that on the occasion of a royal marriage it was thought necessary to destroy what was contrived in the _maniera tedesca_, substituting a sham painted affair which was speedily ruined by the elements. the ethics of vandalism are indeed strange and varied. in this case vanity was responsible. it was superstition which led the sienese, after incurring defeat by the florentines, to remove from their market-place the famous statue by lysippus which brought them ill-luck, and to bury it in florentine territory, so that their enemies might suffer instead. ignorance nearly induced a pope to destroy the "last judgment" of michael angelo, whose colossal statue of an earlier pontiff, julius ii., was broken up through political animosity. one wishes that in this last case there had been some practical provision such as that inserted by the house of lords in the order for destroying the italian tombs at windsor in , when they ordained that "they that buy the tombs shall have liberty to transport them beyond the seas, for making the best advantage of them." the vandalism which dispersed donatello's work could not even claim to be utilitarian, like that which so nearly caused the destruction of the famous chapel by benozzo gozzoli in the riccardi palace (for the purposes of a new staircase);[ ] neither was it caused by the exigencies of war, such as the demolition of the monastery of san donato, a treasure-house of early painting, razed to the ground by the florentines when awaiting the siege of . the cathedral façade was hastily removed, and only a fraction of the statuary has survived. two figures are in the louvre; another has been recently presented to the cathedral by the duca di sermoneta, himself a caetani, of boniface viii., a portrait-statue even more remarkable than that of the same pope at bologna. four more figures from the old façade, now standing outside the porta romana of florence, are misused and saddened relics. they used to be the major prophets, but on translation were crowned with laurels, and now represent homer, virgil, dante and petrarch. other statues are preserved inside the cathedral. before dealing with these it is necessary to point out how difficult it is to determine the authorship and identity of the surviving figures. in the first place, our materials for reconstructing the design of the old façade are few. there were various pictures, some of which in their turn have perished, where guidance might have been expected. but the representations of the cathedral in frescoes at san marco, santa croce, the misericordia and santa maria novella help us but little. up to the eighteenth century there used to be a model in the opera del duomo: this also has vanished, and we are compelled to make our deductions from a rather unsatisfactory drawing made by bernardo pocetti in the sixteenth century. it shows the disposition of statuary so sketchily that we can only recognise a few of the figures. but we have a perfect idea of the general style and aim of those who planned the façade, which would have far surpassed the rival frontispieces of siena, pisa and orvieto. we are met by a further difficulty in identifying the surviving statues from the fact that the contracts given to sculptors by the chapter do not always specify the personage to be represented. moreover, in many cases the statues have no symbol attribute or legend, which usually guide our interpretation of mediæval art. thus donatello is paid _pro parte solutionis unius figure marmoree_;[ ] or for _figuram marmoream_.[ ] even when an obvious and familiar explanation could be given, such as abraham and isaac, the accounts record an instalment for the figure of a prophet with a naked boy at his feet.[ ] [footnote : cinelli, p. .] [footnote : , xii. .] [footnote : , xii. .] [footnote : , v. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ joshua cathedral, florence] [sidenote: the daniel and poggio.] nine large marble figures for the cathedral are now accepted as the work of donatello. others may have perished, and it is quite possible that in one at least of the other statues donatello may have had a considerable share. with the exception of st. john the baptist and st. john the evangelist, all these statues are derived from the old testament--daniel, jeremiah and habbakuk, abraham and the marble david in the bargello, together with the two figures popularly called poggio and the zuccone. among the earliest, and, it must be acknowledged, the least interesting of these statues is the prophet standing in a niche in the south aisle close to the great western door of the cathedral. it has been long recognised as a donatello,[ ] and has been called joshua. but, apart from the fact that he holds the scroll of a prophet, whereas one would rather expect joshua to carry a sword, this statue is so closely related to the little prophets of the mandorla door that it is almost certainly coeval with them, and consequently anterior in date to the period of the joshua for which donatello was paid some years later. we find the same broad flow of drapery, and the weight of the body is thrown on to one hip in a pronounced manner, which is certainly ungraceful, though typical of donatello's early ideas of balance. it probably represents daniel. he has the high forehead, the thick curly hair and the youthful appearance of the other prophets, while his "countenance appears fairer and fatter in flesh,"[ ] reminding one of michael angelo's treatment of the same theme in the sistine chapel. [footnote : osservatore fiorentino, , rd ed., iv. .] [footnote : daniel i. .] like several of donatello's statues, this figure is connected with the name of a florentine citizen, giannozzo manetti, and passes for his portrait. there is no authority for the tradition, and vespasiano de' bisticci makes no reference to the subject in his life of manetti. the statue is, no doubt, a portrait and may well have resembled manetti, but in order to have been directly executed as a portrait it could scarcely have been made before , when manetti was thirty years old, by which date the character of donatello's work had greatly changed. these traditional names have caused many critical difficulties, as, when accepted as authentic, the obvious date of the statue has been arbitrarily altered, so that the statue may harmonise in point of date of execution with the apparent age of the individual whom it is supposed to portray. a second example of the confusion caused by the over-ready acceptance of these nomenclatures is afforded by the remarkable figure which stands in the north aisle of the cathedral, opposite the daniel. this statue has been called a portrait of poggio bracciolini, the secretary of many popes. poggio was born in and passed some time in florence during the year . it has, therefore, been assumed[ ] that the statue was made at this time or shortly afterwards, either as donatello's tribute of friendship to poggio or as an order from the cathedral authorities in his commemoration. this theory is wholly untenable. we have no record of any such work in . the statue does not portray a man seventy-six years old. distinguished as poggio was, his nature did not endear him greatly to the florentine churchmen; and, finally, the style of the sculpture predicates its execution between and . we can, of course, admit that poggio's features may have been recognised in the statue, and that it soon came to be considered his portrait. in any case, however, we are dealing with a portrait-statue. the keen and almost cynical face, with its deep and powerful lines, is certainly no creation of the fancy, but the study of somebody whom donatello knew. it is true there are contradictions in the physiognomy: sarcasm and benevolence alternate, as the dominating expression of the man's character. the whole face is marked by the refinement of one from whom precision and niceness of judgment would be expected. it is not altogether what poggio's achievements would lead one to expect; neither is it of a type which, as has been suggested, would allow us to call it the missing joshua. the idea that job may be the subject is too ingenious to receive more than a passing reference.[ ] [footnote : semper, i., p. .] [footnote : schmarsow, p. .] [illustration: _alinari_ poggio cathedral, florence] there is one detail in the statue of poggio which raises a problem familiar to students of fifteenth-century art, especially frequent in paintings of the madonna, namely, the cryptic lettering to be found on the borders of garments. in the case of poggio, the hem of the tunic just below the throat is incised with deep and clear cyphers which cannot be read as a name or initials. many cases could be quoted to illustrate the practice of giving only the first letters of words forming a sentence.[ ] in this case the script is not arabic, as on verrocchio's david. the lettering on the poggio, as on donatello's tomb of bishop pecci at siena and elsewhere, has not been satisfactorily explained. even if painters were in the habit of putting conventional symbols on their pictures in the form of inscriptions, it is not likely that this careful and elaborate carving should be meaningless. the solution may possibly be found in vettorio ghiberti's drawing of a bell, the rim of which is covered with similar hieroglyphics. the artist has transcribed in plain writing a pleasant latin motto which one may presume to be the subject of the inscription. if this were accurately deciphered a clue might be found to unravel this obscure problem.[ ] [footnote : the conclusion of dello's epitaph, as recorded by vasari, is h.s.e.s.t.t.l.--_i.e._, _hic sepultus est, sit tibi terra levis_. the bas-relief of faith in the bargello is signed o.m.c.l., _i.e._, _opus mattæi civitali lucensis_. there is a manuscript of st. jerome in the rylands library at manchester in which long texts are quoted by means of the initial letters alone.] [footnote : ms. sketch-book in bibl. naz., florence, lettered "ghiberti," folio a.] [illustration: _alinari_ mocenigo tomb san giovanni e paolo, venice] closely analogous to the statue which we must continue to call poggio is a striking figure of justice surmounting the tomb of tommaso mocenigo in the church of san giovanni e paolo at venice. mocenigo died in , and the tomb was made by two indifferent florentine artists, whose poor and imitative work must be referred to later on in connection with the st. george. but the justice, a vigorous and original figure, holding a scroll and looking downwards, so absolutely resembles the poggio in conception, attitude, and fall of drapery, that the authorship must be referred to donatello himself. it is certainly no copy. one cannot say how this isolated piece of donatello's work should have found its way to venice, although by donatello's reputation had secured him commissions for orvieto and ancona and siena. but it is not necessary to suppose that this justice was made to order for the mocenigo tomb; had it remained in florence it would have been long since accepted as a genuine example of the master. * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ st. john the evangelist cathedral, florence] [sidenote: st. john the evangelist and the marble david.] the third great statue made for the façade by donatello is now placed in a dark apsidal chapel, where the light is so bad that the figure is often invisible. this is the statue of st. john the evangelist, and is much earlier than poggio, having been ordered on december , . two evangelists were to be placed on either side of the central door. nanni di banco was to make st. luke, niccolo d'arezzo st. mark, and it was intended that the fourth figure should be entrusted to the most successful of the three sculptors; but in the following year the domopera changed their plan, giving the commission for st. matthew to bernardo ciuffagni, a sculptor somewhat older than donatello. ciuffagni was not unpopular as an artist, for he received plenty of work in various parts of italy; but he was a man of mediocre talent, neither archaic nor progressive, making occasional failures and exercising little influence for good or ill upon those with whom he came in contact. he has, however, one valued merit, that of being a man about whom we have a good deal of documentary information. donatello worked on the st. john for nearly seven years, and, according to custom, was under obligation to complete the work within a specified time. penalty clauses used to be enforced in those days. jacopo della quercia ran the danger of imprisonment for neglecting the commands of siena. torrigiano having escaped from england was recalled by the help of ricasoli, the florentine resident in london, and was fortunate to avoid punishment. donatello finished his statue in time, and received his final instalment in , the year in which the figures were set up beside the great porch. this evangelist, begun when donatello was twenty-two and completed before his thirtieth year, challenges comparison with one worthy rival, the moses of michael angelo. the moses was the outcome of many years of intermittent labour, and was created by the help of all the advances made by sculpture during a century of progress. yet in one respect only can michael angelo claim supremacy. hitherto donatello had made nothing but standing figures. the st. john sits; he is almost inert, and does not seem to await the divine message. but how superb it is, this majestic calm and solemnity; how donatello triumphs over the lack of giving tension to what is quiescent! the penseroso also sits and meditates, but every muscle of the reposing limbs is alert. so, too, in the moses, with all its exaggeration and melodrama, with its aspect of frigid sensationalism, which led thackeray to say he would not like to be left alone in the room with it, we find every motionless limb imbued with vitality and the essentials of movement. the moses undoubtedly springs from the st. john, transcending it as beethoven surpassed haydn. in spite of nearly unpardonable faults verging on decadence, it is the greater though the less pleasing creation of the two. the st. john surveys the world; the moses speaks with god. [illustration: _alinari_ marble david bargello, florence] the fourth statue made for the cathedral proper is contemporary with the st. john. the marble david, ordered in and completed in , was destined for a chapel inside the church. the town commissioners, however, sent a somewhat peremptory letter to the domopera and the statue was handed over to them. it was placed in the great hall of the palace, was ultimately removed to the uffizzi, and is now in the bargello museum. the david certainly has a secular look. this ruddy youth of a fair countenance, crowned with a wreath, stands in an attitude which is shy and perhaps awkward, and by his feet lies the head of goliath with the smooth stone from the brook deeply embedded in his forehead. the drapery of the tunic is close fitting, moulded exactly to the lines of his frame, and above it a loose cloak hangs over the shoulders and falls to the ground with a corner of cloth looped over one of the wrists in a familiar way.[ ] it would be idle to pretend that the david is a marked success like the st. john. it neither attains an ideal, as in the st. george, nor is it a profound interpretation of character like the habbakuk or jeremiah. its effect is impaired by this sense of compromise and uncertainty. it is one of the very rare cases in which donatello hesitated between divergent aims and finally translated his doubts into marble. [footnote : _cf._ madame andré's prophet and figures on mandorla door.] * * * * * [sidenote: statues of the campanile.] we must now refer to a group of statues which adorn the campanile, the great bell tower designed by giotto for the cathedral. not counting the numerous reliefs, there are sixteen statues in all, four on each side of the tower, and in themselves they epitomise early florentine sculpture. donatello's statues of jeremiah, abraham, and st. john the baptist offer no difficulties of nomenclature, but the zuccone and the habbakuk are so called on hypothetical grounds. the zuccone has been called by this familiar nickname from time immemorial: bald-head or pumpkin--such is the meaning of the word, and nobody has hitherto given a reasoned argument to identify this singular figure with any particular prophet. as early as donatello received payment for some of this work, and the latest record on the subject is dated . we may therefore expect to find some variety in idea and considerable development in technique during these twenty years. donatello was not altogether single-handed. it is certain that by the time these numerous works were being executed he was assisted by scholars, and the abraham was actually made in collaboration with giovanni di bartolo, surnamed il rosso. it is not easy to discriminate between the respective shares of the partners. giovanni was one of those men whose style varied with the dominating influence of the moment. at verona he almost ceased to be florentine: at tolentino he was himself; working for the campanile he was subject to the power of donatello. the prophet obadiah, which corresponds in position to the st. john baptist of donatello on the western face of the tower, shows rosso to have been a correct and painstaking sculptor, with notions much in advance of ciuffagni's; noticeable also for a refinement in the treatment of hands, in which respect many of his rivals lagged far behind. judging from the inscription at verona, rosso was appreciated by others--or by himself:[ ] he is, in fact, an artist of merit, rarely falling below a respectable average in spite of the frequency with which he changed his style. [footnote : on the brenzoni tomb in the church of san fermo: "quem genuit russi florentia tusca johañis: istud sculpsit opus ingeniosa manus."] * * * * * [sidenote: st. john the baptist.] rosso does not compare favourably with donatello. obadiah is less attractive than st. john the baptist, its _pendant_. the test is admittedly severe, for the st. john is a figure remarkable alike in conception and for its technical skill. were it not for the scroll bearing the "ecce agnus dei," we should not suggest st. john as the subject. donatello made many baptists--boys, striplings and men young and mature: but in this case only have we something bright and cheerful. he is no mystic; he differs fundamentally from the gloomy ascetic and the haggard suffering figures in siena and berlin. so far from being morose in appearance, clad in raiment of camel's hair, fed upon locusts and wild honey, and summoning the land of judæa to repent, we have a vigorous young tuscan, well dressed and well fed, standing in an easy and graceful attitude and not without a tinge of pride in the handsome countenance. in short, the statue is by no means typical of the saint. it would more aptly represent some romantic knight of chivalry, a victor, a maurice--even a st. george. it competes with donatello's own version of st. george. in all essentials they are alike, and the actual figures are identical in gesture and pose, disregarding shield and armour in one case, scroll and drapery in the other. the two figures are so analogous, that as studies from the nude they would be almost indistinguishable. they differ in this: that the saint on the campanile is john the baptist merely because we are told so, while the figure made for or san michele is inevitably the soldier saint of christendom. it must not be inferred that the success of plastic, skill less that of pictorial, art depends upon the accuracy or vividness with which the presentment "tells its story." under such a criterion the most popular work of art would necessarily bear the palm of supremacy. but there should be some relation between the statue and the subject-matter. nobody knew this better than donatello: he seldom incurred the criticism directed against myron the sculptor--_animi sensus non expressisse videtur_.[ ] the occasional error, such as that just noticed, or when he gives goliath the head of a mild old gentleman,[ ] merely throws into greater prominence the usual harmony between his conception and its embodiment. the task of making prophets was far from simple. their various personalities, little known in our time, were conjectural in his day: neither would the conventional scroll of the prophet do more than give a generic indication of the kind of person represented. donatello, however, made a series of figures from which the [greek: êthos] of the prophets emanates with unequalled force. [footnote : pliny, xxxiv. , .] [footnote : bargello david.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ jeremiah campanile, florence] [sidenote: jeremiah and the canon of art.] the jeremiah, for instance, which is in the niche adjacent to the still more astonishing zuccone (looking westwards towards the baptistery), is a portrait study of consummate power. it is the very man who wrote the sin of judah with a pen of iron, the man who was warned not to be dismayed at the faces of those upon whose folly he poured the vials of anger and scorn; he is emphatically one of those who would scourge the vices of his age. and yet this jeremiah has his human aspect. the strong jaw and tightly closed lips show a decision which might turn to obstinacy; but the brow overhangs eyes which are full of sympathy, bearing an expression of sorrow and gentleness such as one expects from the man who wept for the miserable estate of jerusalem--_quomodo sedet sola civitas!_ tradition says that this prophet is a portrait of francesco soderini, the opponent of the medici; while the zuccone is supposed to be the portrait of barduccio cherichini, another anti-medicean partisan. probabilities apart, much could be urged against the attributions, which are really on a par with the similar nomenclatures of manetti and poggio. the important thing is that they are undoubted portraits, their identity being of secondary interest; the fact that a portrait was made at all is of far greater moment to the history of art. later on, savonarola (whose only contribution to art was an unconscious inspiration of the charming woodcuts with which his sermons and homilies were illustrated) protested warmly against the prevailing habit of giving magdalen and the baptist the features of living and well-known townsfolk.[ ] the practice had, no doubt, led to scandal. but with donatello it marks an early stage in emancipation from the bondage of conventionalism. not, indeed, that donatello was the absolute innovator in this direction, though it is to his efforts that the change became irresistible. thus in these portrait-prophets we find the proof of revolution. the massive and abiding art of egypt ignored the personality of its gods and pharaohs, distinguishing the various persons by dress, ornament, and attribute. they had their canon of measurement, of which the length of the nose was probably the unit.[ ] the greeks, who often took the length of the human foot as unit, were long enslaved by their canon. convention made them adhere to a traditional face after they had made themselves masters of the human form. the early figures of successful athletes were conventional; but, according to pliny, when somebody was winner three times the statue was actually modelled from his person, and was called a portrait-figure: "_ex membris ipsorum similitudine expressa, quas iconicas vocant!_" not until lysistratus first thought of reproducing the human image by means of a cast from the face itself, did they get the true portrait in place of their previous efforts to secure generalised beauty.[ ] in fact, their canon was so stringent that it would permit an apollo belvedere to be presented by foppish, well-groomed adolescence, with plenty of vanity but with little strength, and altogether without the sign-manual of godhead or victory. despite shortcomings, donatello seldom made the mistake of merging the subject in the artist's model: he did not forget that the subject of his statue had a biography. he had no such canon. italian painting had been under the sway of margaritone until giotto destroyed the traditional system. early italian coins show how convention breeds a canon--they were often depraved survivals of imperial coins, copied and recopied by successive generations until the original meaning had completely vanished, while the semblance remained in debased outline. nothing can be more fatal than to make a canon of art, to render precise and exact the laws of æsthetics. great men, it is true, made the attempt. leonardo, for instance, gives the recipe for drawing anger and despair. his "trattato della pintura"[ ] describes the gestures appropriate for an orator addressing a multitude, and he gives rules for making a tempest or a deluge. he had a scientific law for putting a battle on to canvas, one condition of which was that "there must not be a level spot which is not trampled with gore." but leonardo da vinci did no harm; his canon was based on literary rather than artistic interests, and he was too wise to pay much attention to his own rules. another man who tried to systematise art was leon battista alberti, who gave the exact measurements of ideal beauty, length and circumference of limbs, &c., thus approaching a physical canon. the absurdity of these theories is well shown in the "rules of drawing caricatures," illustrated by "mathematical diagrams."[ ] development and animation are impossible wherever an art is governed by this sterile and deadening code of law. the religious art of the eastern church has been stationary for centuries, confined within the narrow limits of hieratic conventions. mount athos has the pathetic interest of showing the dark ages surviving down to our own day in the vigour of unabated decadence. though not subjected to any serious canon, the predecessors of donatello seemed at one time in danger of becoming conventionalised. but donatello would not permit his art to be divorced from appeals to reason and intellect; once started, his theory held its own. donatello was bound by no laws; with all its cadence and complexity his art was unsuited to a canon as would be the art of music. he seems almost to have disregarded the ordinary physical limitations under which he worked. he had no "cant of material," and whether in stone, bronze, wood, or clay, he went straight ahead in the most unconcerned manner. [footnote : in . see gruyer, "les illustrations," , p. .] [footnote : c. müller, "ancient art and its remains," p. .] [footnote : pliny, xxxvi. .] [footnote : printed in richter's "literary works of leonardo da vinci," vol. i.] [footnote : by francis grose, the antiquary. london, .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ habakkuk campanile, florence] [sidenote: habbakuk and the sense of distance.] we do not know much about habbakuk. he left two or three pages of passionate complaint against the iniquity of the land, but his "burden" lacks those outbursts of lyric poetry which are found in most of the other minor prophets. donatello gives him the air of a thinker. he holds a long scroll to which he points with his right hand while looking downward, towards the door of the cathedral. it is a strong head, as full of character as the jeremiah. but habbakuk is less the man of action, and the deep lines about the mouth and across the forehead show rather the fruits of contemplation. there may be a note of scepticism in the face. but this habbakuk is no ascetic, and there is much strength in reserve: his comment though acrid would be just. the veins in the throat stand out like cords. they are much more noticeable in the photograph than when one sees the statue from the piazza. it must be remembered that these figures on the campanile are something like fifty-five feet from the ground: they were made for these lofty positions, and were carved accordingly. they show donatello's sense of distance; the zuccone shows his sense of light and shade, the abraham his sense of proportion. donatello had the advantage of making these figures for particular places; his sculpture was eminently adapted to the conditions under which it was to be seen. in the vast majority of cases modern sculpture is made for undetermined positions, and is fortunate if it obtains a suitable _emplacement_. it seldom gets distance, light and proportion in harmony with the technical character of the carving. donatello paid the greatest care to the relation between the location of the statue and its carving: his work consequently suffers enormously by removal: to change its position is to take away something given it by the master himself. the judith looks mean beneath the loggia de' lanzi; the original of the st. george in the museum is less telling than the copy which has replaced it at or san michele. photography is also apt to show too clearly certain exaggerations and violences deliberately calculated by donatello to compensate for distance, as on the campanile, or for darkness, as on the cantoria. the reproductions, therefore, of those works not intended to be seen from close by must be judged with this reservation. the classical sculptors seem to have been oblivious of this sense of distance. cases have been quoted to show that they did realise it, such as the protruding forehead of zeus or the deep-set eyes of the vatican medusa. these are accidents, or at best coincidences, for the sense of distance is not shown by merely giving prominence to one portion or feature of a face. in roman art the band of relief on the column of trajan certainly gets slightly broader as the height increases: but the modification was half-hearted. it does not help one to see the carving, which at the summit is almost meaningless, while it only serves to diminish the apparent height of the column. so, too, in the triumphal arches of the roman emperors little attention was paid to the relative and varying attitudes of the bas-reliefs. from greek art the parthenon frieze gives a singular example of this unrealised law. when _in situ_ the frieze was only visible at a most acute angle and in a most unfavourable light: beyond the steps it vanished altogether, so one was obliged to stand among the columns to see it at all, and it was also necessary to look upwards almost perpendicularly. the frieze is nearly three feet four inches high and its upper part is carved in rather deeper relief than the base: but, even so, the extraordinary delicacy of this unique carving was utterly wasted, since the technical treatment of the marble was wholly unsuited to its _emplacement_. the amazing beauty of the sculpture and the unsurpassed skill of phidias were never fully revealed until its home had been changed from athens to bloomsbury. * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ the zuccone campanile, florence] [sidenote: the zuccone, "realism" and nature.] the zuccone is one of the eternal mysteries of italian art. what can have been donatello's intention? why give such prominence to this graceless type? baldinucci called it st. mark.[ ] others have been misled by the lettering on the plinth below the statue "david rex": beneath the jeremiah is "salomon rex."[ ] these inscriptions belonged, of course, to the kings which made way for donatello's prophets. the zuccone must belong to the series of prophets; it is fruitless to speculate which. cherichini may have inspired the portrait. its ugliness is insuperable. it is not the vulgar ugliness of a caricature, nor is it the audacious embodiment of some hideous misshapen creature such as we find in velasquez, in the gobbo of verona, or in the gargoyles of notre dame. there is no deformity about it, probably very little exaggeration. it is sheer uncompromising ugliness; rendered by the cavernous mouth, the blear eyes, the flaccid complexion, the unrelieved cranium--all carried to a logical conclusion in the sloping shoulders and the simian arms. but the zuccone is not "revenged of nature": there is nothing to "induce contempt." on the other hand, indeed, there is a tinge of sadness and compassion, objective and subjective, which gives it a charm, even a fascination. _tanto è bella_, says bocchi, _tanto è vera, tanto è naturale_, that one gazes upon it in astonishment, wondering in truth why the statue does not speak![ ] bocchi's criticism cannot be improved. the problem has been obfuscated by the modern jargon of art. donatello has been charged with orgies of realism and so forth. there may be realism, but the term must be used with discretion: nowadays it generally connotes the ugly treatment of an ugly theme, and is applied less as a technical description than as a term of abuse. donatello was certainly no realist in the sense that an ideal was excluded, nor could he have been led by realism into servile imitation or the multiplication of realities. after a certain point the true ceases to be true, as nobody knew better than barye, the greatest of the "realists." the zuccone can be more fittingly described in bocchi's words. it is the creation of a verist, of a naturalist, founded on a clear and intimate perception of nature. donatello was pledged to no system, and his only canon, if such existed, was the canon of observation matured by technical ability. we have no reason to suppose that donatello claimed to be a deep thinker. he did not spend his time, like michael angelo, in devising theories to explain the realms of art. he was without analytical pedantry, and, like his character, his work was naïve and direct. nor was he absorbed by appreciation of "beauty," abstract or concrete. if he saw a man with a humped back or a short leg he would have been prepared to make his portrait, assuming that the entity was not in conflict with the subject in hand. hence the zuccone. its mesmeric ugliness is the effect of donatello's gothic creed, and it well shows how donatello, who from his earliest period was opposed to the conventions of the pisan school, took the lead among those who founded their art upon the observation of nature. a later critic, shrewd and now much neglected, said that titian "contented himself with pure necessity, which is the simple imitation of nature."[ ] one could not say quite so much of donatello, in whom, curiously enough, the love of nature was limited to its human aspect. he seems to have been impervious to outdoor nature, to the world of plants and birds and beasts. ghiberti, his contemporary, was a profound student of natural life in all its forms, and the famous bronze doors of the baptistery are peopled with the most fanciful products of his observation. "i strove to imitate nature to the utmost degree," he says in his commentary.[ ] thus ghiberti makes a bunch of grapes, and wanting a second bunch as _pendant_, he takes care to make it of a different species. the variety and richness of his fruit and flower decoration are extraordinary and, if possible, even more praiseworthy than the dainty garlands of the della robbia. with donatello all is different. he took no pleasure in enriching his sculpture in this way. the angel of the annunciation carries no lily; when in the tabernacle of st. peter's he had to decorate a pilaster he made lilies, but stiff and unreal. his trees in the landscape backgrounds of the charge to peter and the release of princess sabra by st. george are tentative and ill-drawn. the children of the cantoria, the great singing gallery made for the cathedral, are dancing upon a ground strewn with flowers and fruit. the idea was charming, but in executing it donatello could only make _cut_ flowers and withered fruit. there is no life in them, no savour, and the energy of the children seems to have exhausted the humbler form of vitality beneath their feet. years afterwards, when donatello's assistants were allowed a good deal of latitude, we find an effort to make more use of this invaluable decoration: the pulpits of san lorenzo, for instance, have some trees and climbing weeds showing keen study of nature. but donatello himself always preferred the architectural background, in contrast to leonardo da vinci, who, with all his love of building, seldom if ever used one in the backgrounds of his pictures: but then leonardo was the most advanced botanist of his age. [footnote : edition , p. .] [footnote : _e.g._, milanesi, catalogo, , p. .] [footnote : cinelli's edition, , p. .] [footnote : raffaelle mengs, collected works. london, , i., p. .] [footnote : printed in vasari, lemonnier ed., , vol. i.] * * * * * [sidenote: the zuccone and the sense of light and shade.] speaking of the employment of light and shade as instruments in art, cicero says: "_multa vident pictores in umbris et in eminentia, quæ nos non videmus_." one may apply the dictum to the zuccone where donatello has carved the head with a rugged boldness, leaving the play of light and shade to complete the portrait. davanzati was explicit on the matter,[ ] showing that the point of view from which the zuccone was visible made this coarse treatment imperative, if the spectator below was to see something forcible and impressive. "the eyes," he says, "are made as if they were dug out with a shovel: eyes which would appear lifelike on the ground level would look blind high up on the campanile, for distance consumes diligence--_la lontananza si mangia la diligenzia_." the doctrine could not be better stated, and it governs the career of donatello. there is nothing like the zuccone in greek art: nothing so ugly, nothing so wise. classical sculptors in statues destined for lofty situations preserved the absolute truth of form, but their diligence was consumed by distance. what was true in the studio lost its truth on a lofty pediment or frieze. they preserved accuracy of form, but they sacrificed accuracy of appearance; whereas relative truth was in reality far more important--until, indeed, the time comes when the lights and shades of the studio are reproduced in some art gallery or museum. [footnote : in introduction to his translation of tacitus.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ abraham and isaac campanile, florence] [sidenote: abraham and the sense of proportion.] the statue of abraham and isaac on the east side of the campanile is interesting as being the first group made by donatello. the subject had already been treated by brunellesco and ghiberti in relief. donatello had to make his figures on a larger scale. abraham is a tall, powerful man with a long flowing beard, looking upwards as he receives the command to sheath the dagger already touching the shoulder of his son. the naked boy is kneeling on his left leg and is modelled with a good deal of skill, though, broadly speaking, the treatment is rather archaic in character. it is a tragic scene, in which the contrast of the inexorable father and the resigned son is admirably felt. donatello had to surmount a technical difficulty, that of putting two figures into a niche only intended for one. his sense of proportion enabled him to make a group in harmony with its position and environment. it _fits_ the niche. statues are so often unsuited to their niches; scores of examples could be quoted from milan cathedral alone where the figures are too big or too small, or where the base slopes downwards and thus fails to give adequate support to the figure. there is an old tradition which illustrates donatello's aptitude for grouping. nanni di banco had to put four martyrs into a niche of or san michele, and having made his statues found it impossible to get them in. donatello was invoked, and by removing a superfluous bit of marble here, and knocking off an arm there, the four figures were successfully grouped together. the statues, it must be admitted, show no signs of such usage, and nanni was a competent person: but the story would not have been invented unless donatello had been credited in his own day with the reputation of being a master of proportion and grouping. donatello, however, never really excelled in the free standing group. his idea was a suite or series of figures against a background, a bas-relief. the essential quality of a group is that there should be something to unite the figures. we find this in the abraham, but the four martyrs by nanni di banco are standing close together as if by chance, and cannot properly be called a group in anything but juxtaposition of figures. il rosso helped to make abraham. the commission was given jointly to the two sculptors in march , and the statue was finished, with unusual expedition, by november of the same year. the hand of rosso cannot be easily detected except in the drapery, which differs a good deal from donatello's. the latter must have been chiefly responsible for the grouping and wholly so for the fine head of abraham. * * * * * [sidenote: drapery and hands.] rosso's drapery was apt to be treated in rather a small way with a number of little folds. donatello, on the other hand, often tended to the opposite extreme, and in the campanile figures we see the clothes hanging about the prophets in such ample lines that the zuccone and jeremiah are overweighted with togas which look like heavy blankets. habbakuk and the baptist are much more skilfully draped, deference being shown to the anatomy. "to make drapery merely natural," said sir joshua reynolds, "is a mechanical operation to which neither genius nor taste are required: whereas it requires the nicest judgment to dispose the drapery so that the folds have an easy communication, and gracefully follow each other with such natural negligence as to look like the effect of chance, and at the same time show the figure under it to the utmost advantage."[ ] the sculptors of the fifteenth century did not find it so easy to make drapery look purely natural, and we are often confronted by cases where they failed in this respect. it arose partly from a belief that drapery was nothing more than an accessory, partly also from their ignorance of what was so fully realised by the greeks, that there can be very little grace in a draped figure unless there are the elements of beauty below. another comment suggested by donatello's early work in marble is that he was not quite certain how to model or dispose the hands. they are often unduly big; michael angelo started with the same mistake: witness his david and the madonna on the stairs. it was a mistake soon rectified in either case. but till late in life donatello never quite succeeded in giving nerve or occupation to his hands. st. mark, st. peter, and st. john all have a book in their left hands, but none of them _hold_ the book; it has no weight, the hand shows no grip and has no sense of possession. neither did donatello always know where to put the hands, giving them the shy and self-conscious positions affected by the schoolboy. the bargello david is a case in point. his hands are idle, they have really nothing to do, and their position is arbitrary in consequence. it is all a descent from the gothic, where we find much that is inharmonious and paradoxical, and a frequent lack of concord between the component parts. st. george, standing erect in his niche, holds the shield in front of him, its point resting on the ground. but, notwithstanding the great progress made by donatello in modelling these hands--(so much indeed that one might almost suspect the bigger hands of contemporary statues to be faithful portraits of bigger hands)--one feels that the shield does not owe its upright position to the constraint of the hands. they do not reflect the outward pressure of the heavy shield, which could almost be removed without making it necessary to modify their functions or position. it was reserved for michael angelo to achieve the unity of purpose and knowledge needed in portraying the human hand. he was the first among italian sculptors to render the relation of the hand to the wrist, the wrist to the forearm, and thence to the shoulder and body. in the fifteenth century nobody fully understood the sequence of muscles which correlates every particle of the limb, and donatello could not avoid the halting and inconclusive outcome of his inexperience. [footnote : discourses, , p. .] * * * * * [sidenote: minor works for the cathedral.] there remain a few minor works for the cathedral which require notice. in october an unfinished figure by ciuffagni was handed over to donatello and il rosso. it is probable that dr. semper is correct in thinking that this may be the statue on the east side of the cathedral hitherto ascribed to niccolo d'arezzo, though it can hardly be the missing joshua. we have here a middle-aged man with a long beard, his head inclined forward and supported by his upraised hand with its forefinger extended. donatello was fond of youth, but not less of middle age. with all their power these prophets are middle-aged men who would walk slowly and whose gesture would be fraught with mature dignity. donatello did not limit to the very young or the very old the privilege of seeing visions and dreaming dreams. two other statues by donatello have perished. these are colossi,[ ] ordered probably between and , and made of brick covered with stucco or some other kind of plaster. they stood outside the church, on the buttress pillars between the apsidal chapels. one of them was on the north side, as an early description mentions the "_gigante sopra la annuntiata_,"[ ] that is above the annunciation on the mandorla door. the perishable material of these statues was selected, no doubt, owing to the difficulty and expense of securing huge monoliths of marble. in this case one must regret their loss, as the distance from which they would be seen would amply justify their heroic dimensions. but the idea of colossi, which originated in egypt and the east, is to astonish, and to make the impression through the agency of bulk. the david by michael angelo is great in spite of its unwieldiness. michael angelo himself was under no illusions about these colossi. his letter criticising the proposal to erect a colossal statue of the pope on the piazza of san lorenzo is in itself a delightful piece of humour, and ridiculed the conceit with such pungency that the project was abandoned. finally, donatello made two busts of prophets for the mandorla door. the commission is previous to may , when it is noted that donatello was to receive six golden florins for his work. they are profile heads carved in relief upon triangular pieces of marble, which fill two congested architectural corners. they look like the result of a whim, and at first sight one would think they were ordered late in the history of the door to supplement or replace something unsatisfactory. but this is not the case. half corbel and half decoration, they are curious things: one shows a young man, the other an older bearded man. both have long hair drawn back by a fillet, and in each case one hand is placed across the breast. they have quite a classical look, and are the least interesting as well as the least noticeable of the numerous sculptures made for the cathedral by donatello. the domopera evidently appreciated his talent. to this day, besides these busts and the two small prophets, there survive at least nine marble figures made for the duomo, some of them well over life size. there were also the colossi, and it will be seen later on that the domopera gave him further commissions for bronze doors, cantoria, altar and stained glass; he also was employed as an architectural expert. years of donatello's life were spent on the embellishment of santa maria del fiore, a gigantic task which he shared with his greatest predecessors and his most able contemporaries. the task, indeed, was never fully accomplished. the campanile is not crowned by the spire destined for it by giotto: the façade has perished and the interior is marred by the errors of subsequent generations. but the cathedral of florence must nevertheless take high rank among the most stately churches of christendom. [footnote : they were standing as late as . baldinucci, p. .] [footnote : memoriale, .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ st. mark or san michele] [sidenote: or san michele, st. peter and st. mark.] from the earliest times there used to be a church dedicated to st. michael, which stood within the _orto_, the garden named after the saint. the church was, however, removed in the thirteenth century and was replaced by an open _loggia_, which was used for a corn market and store. in the following century the open arches of the _loggia_ were built up, again making a church of the building, in which a venerated madonna, for which orcagna made the tabernacle, was preserved. the companies and merchant guilds of florence undertook to present statues to decorate the external niches of the building. besides donatello, ghiberti, verrocchio, gian bologna and nanni di banco were employed; and there are also some admirable medallions by luca della robbia. donatello made four statues--st. peter, st. mark, st. louis and st. george. he was to have made st. phillip as well, but the shoemakers who ordered the statue could not afford to pay donatello's price and the work was entrusted to nanni di banco. two only of donatello's statues are left at or san michele, the st. louis being now in santa croce, while the st. george has been placed in the bargello. all these statues were put into niches of which the base is not more than eight feet from the ground, and being intended to be seen at a short distance are carved with greater attention to detail and finish than is the case with the prophets on the campanile. st. peter is probably the earliest in date, having been made, judging from stylistic grounds, between and . this statue shows a doubt and hesitation which did not affect donatello when making the little prophets for the mandorla door. the head is commonplace and inexpressive; the pose is dull, and the drapery with its crimped edges ignores the right leg. there is, however, nothing blameworthy in the statue, but, on the other hand, there is nothing showing promise or deserving praise. had it been made by one of the _macchinisti_ of the time it would have lived in decent obscurity without provoking comment. in fact the statue does not owe its appearance in critical discussions to its own merits, but to the later achievement of the sculptor. thus only can one explain bocchi's opinion that "living man could not display truer deportment than we find in the st. peter."[ ] one of the figures from the cathedral façade now in the louvre, an apostle or doctor of the church, shows whence donatello derived his prosy idea, though the st. peter is treated in a less archaic manner. the st. mark is much more successful: there is conviction as well as vigour and greater skill. michael angelo exclaimed that nobody could disbelieve the gospel when preached by a saint whose countenance is honesty itself. the very drapery--_il prudente costume e religioso_--[ ] was held to contribute to michael angelo's praise. the grave and kindly face, devout and holy,[ ] together with a certain homeliness of attitude, give the st. mark a character which would endear him to all. he would not inspire awe like the st. john or indifference like st. peter. he is a very simple, lovable person whose rebuke would be gentle and whose counsel would be wise. in the _linaiuoli_, the guild of linen-weavers, gave their order to select the marble, and in the commission was given to donatello, having been previously given to niccolo d'arezzo, who himself became one of donatello's guarantors. the work had to be finished within eighteen months, and the heavy statue was to be placed in the niche at the sculptor's own risk. the statement made by vasari that brunellesco co-operated on the st. mark is not borne out by the official documents. it is interesting to note that the guild gave donatello the height of the figure, leaving him to select the corresponding proportions. the statue was to be gilded and decorated.[ ] a further commission was given to two stone-masons for the niche, which was to be copied from that of ghiberti's st. stephen. these niches have been a good deal altered in recent times, and the statues are in consequence less suited to their environment than was formerly the case. judging from the plates in lasinio's book, the accuracy of which has not been contested, it appears that the niches of st. eligius and st. mark have been made more shallow, while the crozier of the former and the key in st. peter's hand are not shown at all, and must be modern restorations. [footnote : cinelli ed., p. .] [footnote : bocchi, ed., p. .] [footnote : _spira il volto divozione e santità_, cinelli, p. .] [footnote : gualandi, "memorie," series , p. .] * * * * * [sidenote: st. louis.] the st. louis is made of bronze. the reputation of this admirable figure has been prejudiced by a ridiculous bit of gossip seriously recorded by vasari, to the effect that, having been reproached for making a clumsy figure, donatello replied that he had done so with set purpose to mark the folly of the man who exchanged the crown for a friar's habit. vasari had to enliven his biographies by anecdotes, and their authenticity was not always without reproach. in view of his immense services to the history of art one will gladly forgive these pleasantries; but it is deplorable when they are solemnly quoted as infallible. one author says: "... _impossibile a guardare quel goffo e disgraziato san lodovico senza sentire una stretta al cuore_." this is preposterous. the statue has faults, but they do not spring from organic error. the bishop is overweighted with his thick vestments, and his mitre is rather too broad for the head; the left hand, moreover, is big and donatellesque. but the statue, now placed high above the great door of santa croce, is seen under most unfavourable conditions, and would look infinitely better in the low niche of or san michele. its proportions would then appear less stumpy, and we would then be captivated by the beauty of the face. it has real "beauty"; the hackneyed and misused term can only be properly applied to donatello's work in very rare cases, of which this is one. the face itself is taken from some model, which could be idealised to suit a definite conception, and in which the pure and symmetrical lines are harmonised with admirable feeling. every feature is made to correspond, interrelated by some secret necessary to the art of portraiture. the broad brow and the calm eyes looking upwards are in relation with the delicately chiselled nose and mouth, while the right hand, which is outstretched in giving the blessing, is rendered with infinite sentiment and grace. st. louis, in short, deserves high commendation, as, in spite of errors, it achieves something to which donatello seldom aspired; and it has the further interest of being his earliest figure in bronze, a material in which some of his most renowned works were executed. the whole question of donatello's share in the actual casting will be considered at a later stage. it will be enough to say at this point that the st. louis, which was probably finished about , was cast with the assistance of michelozzo. * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ st. george in niche on or san michele] [sidenote: st. george.] the st. george is the most famous of donatello's statues, and is generally called his masterpiece. the marble original has now been taken into the museum, and a bronze cast replaces it at or san michele. the cause of this transfer is understood to be a fear that the statue would be ruined by exposure, although one would think that this would apply still more to the exquisite relief, which remains _in situ_, though unprotected by the niche. in the side-lighted bargello, the st. george is crowded into a shallow niche (with plenty of highly correct detail) and is seen to the utmost disadvantage; but no incongruity of surroundings, no false relations of light can destroy the profound impression left by this statue, which was probably completed about , in donatello's thirtieth year. vasari was enthusiastic in its praise. bocchi wrote a whole book about it,[ ] in which we might expect to find valuable information; but the interest of this ecstatic eulogy is limited. bocchi gives no dates, facts or authorities; nothing to which modern students can turn for accurate or specific knowledge of donatello. cinelli says the st. george was held equal to the rarest sculpture of rome,[ ] and well it might be. the st. george was made for the guild of armourers; he is, of course, wearing armour, and the armour fits him, clothes him. it is not the clumsy inelastic stuff which must have prevented so many soldiers from moving a limb or mounting a horse. in this case the lithe and muscular frame is free and full of movement, quite unimpeded by the defensive plates of steel. he stands upright, his legs rather apart, and the shield in front of him, otherwise he is quite unarmed; the st. george in the niche is alert and watchful: in the bas-relief he manfully slays the dragon. the head is bare and the throat uncovered; the face is full of confidence and the pride of generous strength, but with no vanity or self-consciousness. fearless simplicity is his chief attribute, though in itself simplicity is no title to greatness: with donatello, sophocles and dante would be excluded from any category of greatness based on simplicity alone. st. george has that earnest and outspoken simplicity with which the mediæval world invested its heroes; he springs from the chivalry of the early days of christian martyrdom, the greatest period of christian faith. greek art had no crusader or knight-errant, and had to be content with harmodius and aristogeiton. even the perseus legend, which in so many ways reminds one of st. george, was far less appreciated as an incident by classical art than by the renaissance; and even then not until patron and artist were growing tired of st. george. m. reymond has pointed out the relation of donatello's statue to its superb analogue, st. theodore of chartres cathedral. "_c'est le souvenir de tout un monde qui disparaît._"[ ] physically it may be so. the age of chivalry may be passed in so far that the prancing steed and captive princess belong to remote times which may never recur. but st. george and st. theodore were not merely born of legend and fairy tale; their spirit may survive in conditions which, although less romantic and picturesque, may still preserve intact the essential qualities of the soldier-saint of primitive times. the influence of the st. george upon contemporary art seems to have been small. the mocenigo tomb, which has already been mentioned, has a figure on the sarcophagus obviously copied from the st. george; and elsewhere in this extremely curious example of plagiarism we find other figures suggested by donatello's statues. the little figure in the palazzo pubblico at pistoja is again an early bit of piracy. in the courtyard of the palazzo quaratesi in florence, built by brunellesco between and , an early version of the head of st. george was placed in one of the circular panels above the pillars. it is without intrinsic importance, being probably a cast, but it shows how early the statue was appreciated. a more important cast is that of the bas-relief now in london, which has a special interest from having been taken before the original had suffered two or three rather grievous blows.[ ] verrocchio made a drawing of the st. george,[ ] and mantegna introduced a similar figure into his picture of st. james being led to execution.[ ] but donatello's influence cannot be measured by the effect of st. george. in this particular case his work did not challenge competition; its perfection was too consummate to be of service except to the copyist. in some ways it spoke the last word; closed an episode in the history of art--[greek: eschatos tou idiou genous]. [footnote : "eccelenza della statua del san giorgio di donatello," .] [footnote : bellezze, , p. .] [footnote : "la sculpture florentine," vol. ii. p. .] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, , .] [footnote : uffizzi, frame .] [footnote : eremitani, padua, about - .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ st. george bargello] [sidenote: donatello and gothic art.] the relation of st. george and other italian works of this period, both in sculpture and painting, to the gothic art of france cannot be ignored, although no adequate explanation has yet been given. st. george, the baptists of the campanile and in rome, and the marble david are intensely franco-gothic, and precisely what one would expect to find in france. the technical and physical resemblance between the two schools may, of course, be a coincidence; it may be purely superficial. but st. theodore might well take his place outside or san michele, while the st. george (in spite of the difference in date) would be in complete ethical harmony with the statues on the portals of chartres. even if they cannot be analysed, the phenomena must be stated. donatello may have spontaneously returned to the principles which underlay the creation of the great statuary of france, the country of all others where a tremendous school had flourished. but what these fundamental principles were it is impossible to determine. it is true there had always been agencies at work which must have familiarised italy with french thought and ideas. from the time of the dominant french influence in sicily down to the papal exile in france--which ended actually while donatello was working on these statues, one portion or another of the two countries had been frequently brought into contact. the cistercians, for instance, had been among the most persistent propagators of gothic architecture in italy, though nearly all their churches (of which the ground-plans are sometimes identical with those of french buildings) are situated in remote country districts of italy, and being inaccessible are little known or studied nowadays. france, however, was herself full of italian teachers and churchmen, who may have brought back northern ideas of art, for they certainly left small traces of their influence on the french until later on; their presence, at any rate, records intercourse between the two countries. a concrete example of the relation between the two national arts is afforded by the fact that michelozzo was the son of a burgundian who settled in florence. michelozzo was some years younger than donatello, and it is therefore quite out of the question to assume that the st. george could have been due to his influence: he was too young to give donatello more than technical assistance. in this connection one must remember that french gothic, though manifested in its architecture, was of deeper application, and did not confine its spirit to the statuary made for the tall elongated lines of its cathedrals. what we call gothic pervaded everything, and was not solely based on physical forms. indeed, whatever may be the debt of italian sculpture to french influence, the gothic architecture of italy excluded some of the chief principles of the french builders. it was much more liberal and more fond of light and air. speaking of the exaggerated type of gothic architecture, in which everything is heightened and thinned, renan asks what would have happened to giotto if he had been told to paint his frescoes in churches from which flat spaces had entirely disappeared. "once we have exhausted the grand idea of infinity which springs from its unity, we realise the shortcomings of this egoistic and jealous architecture, which only exists for itself and its own ends, _régnant dans le désert_."[ ] the churches of umbria and tuscany were as frames in which space was provided for all the arts; where fresco and sculpture could be welcomed with ample scope for their free and unencumbered display. donatello was never hampered or crowded by the architecture of florence; he was never obliged, like his predecessors in picardy and champagne, to accommodate the gesture and attitude of his statue to stereotyped positions dictated by the architect. his opportunity was proportionately greater, and it only serves to enhance our admiration for the french sculptors. in spite of difficulties not of their own making, they were able to create, with a coarser material and in a less favourable climate, what was perhaps the highest achievement ever attained by monumental sculpture. the italians soon came to distrust gothic architecture. it was never quite indigenous, and they were afraid of this "german" transalpine art. vasari attacks "_questa maledizione di fabbriche_," with their "_tabernacolini l'un sopra l'altro, ... che hanno ammorbato il mondo_."[ ] one would expect the denunciation of milizia to be still more severe. but he admits that "_fra tante monstruosità l'architettura gottica ha alcune bellezze_."[ ] elsewhere mentioning the architect of the florentine cathedral (while regretting how long the _corrotto gusto_ survived), he says, "_in questo architetto si vede qualche barlume di buona architettura, come di pittura in cimabue suo contemporaneo_."[ ] he detects some glimmer of good architecture. sir joshua reynolds was cautious: "under the rudeness of gothic essays, the artist will find original, rational, and even sublime inventions."[ ] it should be remembered that the word _tedesca_, as applied to gothic art, meant more than german, and could be almost translated by northern. italians from the lakes and the valtellina were called _tedeschi_, and italy herself was inhabited by different peoples who were constantly at war, and who did not always understand each other's dialects. dante said the number of variations was countless.[ ] alberti, who lived north of the apennines during his boyhood, took lessons in tuscan before returning to florence. the word _forestiere_, now meaning foreigner, was applied in those days to people living outside the province, sometimes even to those living outside the town. thus we have a record of the cost of making a provisional altar to display donatello's work at padua--"_per demonstrar el desegno ai forestieri_."[ ] no final definition of gothic art, of the _maniera tedesca_ is possible. some of its component parts have been enumerated: rigidity, grotesque, naturalism, and so forth; but the definition is incomplete, cataloguing the effects without analysing their cause. whether donatello was influenced by the ultimate cause or not, he certainly assimilated some of the effects. the most obvious example of the gothic feeling which permeated this child of the renaissance, is his naturalistic portrait-statues. donatello found the form, some passing face or figure in the street, and rapidly impressed it with his ideal. raffaelle found his ideal, and waited for the bodily form wherewith to clothe it. "in the absence of good judges and handsome women"--that is to say, models, he paused, as he said in one of his letters to castiglione. one feels instinctively that with his gothic bias donatello would not have minded. he did not ask for applause, and at the period of st. george classical ideas had not introduced the professional artist's model. life was still adequate, and the only model was the subject in hand. the increasing discovery of classical statuary and learning made the later sculptors distrust their own interpretation of the bodily form, which varied from the primitive examples. thus they lost conviction, believing the ideal of the classicals to surpass the real of their own day. the result was bandinelli and montorsoli, whose world was inhabited by pompous fictions. they neither attained the high character of the great classical artists nor the single-minded purpose of donatello. their ideal was based on the unrealities of the baroque. [footnote : "mélanges d'histoire," p. .] [footnote : introduction, i. .] [footnote : "vita de' architetti," .] [footnote : _ibid._ .] [footnote : "discourses," , p. .] [footnote : "qua propter si primas et secundarias et subsecundarias vulgaris ytalie variationes calculare velimus, in hoc minimo mundi angulo, non solum ad millenam loquele variationem venire contigerit, sed etiam at magis ultra."--de vulg. eloq. lib., i., cap. x. § .] [footnote : , iv. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ annunciation santa croce, florence] [sidenote: the crucifix and annunciation.] donatello loved to characterise: in one respect only did he typify. where there was most character there was often least beauty. this is illustrated by two works in santa croce, the christ on the cross and the annunciation. they differ in date, material, and conception, but may be considered together. as to the exact date of the former many opinions have been expressed. vasari places it about , manetti about , schmarsow , cavalucci , bode , marcel reymond - . it is quite obvious that the crucifix is the product of rather a timid and uncertain technique, and does not show the verve and decision which donatello acquired so soon. it is made of olive wood, and is covered by a shiny brown paint which may conceal a good deal of detailed carving. the work is sober and decorous, and not marred by any breach of good taste. it is in no sense remarkable, and has nothing special to connect it with donatello. its notoriety springs from a long and rather inconsequent story, which says that, having made his christ in rivalry with brunellesco, who was occupied on a similar work, donatello was so much saddened at the superiority of the other crucifix that he exclaimed: "you make the christ while i can only make a peasant: _a te è conceduto fare i cristi, ed a me i contadini_".[ ] brunellesco's crucifix,[ ] now hidden behind a portentous array of candles, is even less attractive than that in santa croce. brunellesco was the aristocrat, the builder of haughty palaces for haughty men, and may have really thought his cold and correct idea superior to donatello's peasant. to have thought of taking a contadino for his type (disappointing as it was to donatello) was in itself a suggestive and far-reaching departure from the earlier treatment of the subject. in the fourteenth century christ on the cross had been treated with more reserve and in a less naturalistic fashion. the traditional idea disappeared after these two christs, which are among the earliest of their kind, afterwards produced all over italy in such numbers. as time went on the figure of christ received more emphasis, until it became the vehicle for exhibiting those painful aspects of death from which no divine message of resurrection could be inferred. the big crucifix ascribed to michelozzo shows how far exaggeration could be carried.[ ] the opened mouth, the piteous expression, the clots of blood falling from the wounds, combine to make a figure which is repellent, and which lost all justification, from the fact that this tortured dying man shows no conviction of divine life to come. donatello's bronze crucifix at padua, made years afterwards, showed that he never forgot that a dying christ must retain to the last the impress of power and superhuman origin. in the conflict of drama and beauty, donatello allowed drama to gain the upper hand. but the annunciation would suggest a different answer, for here we find what is clearly a sustained effort to secure beauty. the annunciation is a large relief, in which the angel and the virgin are placed within an elaborately carved frame, while on the cornice above there are six children holding garlands. its date has been the subject of even more discussion than that of the crucifix,[ ] and the conflict of opinion has been so keen that the intrinsic merits of this remarkable work have been sometimes overlooked. the date is, of course, important for the classification of donatello's work, but it is a pity when the attention of the critic is monopolised by minor problems. milizia, when in doubt about the date of alberti's birth, did not go too far in saying "_disgrazia grande per chi si trova la sua felicità nelle date_." the annunciation was erected by the cavalcanti family, and the old theory that it was ordered to commemorate their share in the victory over pisa in has been upheld by the presence on the lower frieze of a winged wreath, an emblem of victory. the object of the donor is conjectural: we know nothing about it; and the association of wings and a wreath is found elsewhere in donatello's work.[ ] moreover, the rich renaissance decoration is quite sufficient to demonstrate that the work must be much later than , though whether immediately before or after the second roman visit must be founded on hypothesis. the precise date of the particular decoration is too nebular to permit any exact statement on the subject. there was never any line of demarcation between one school and another. one can find gothic ideas long after the renaissance had established its principles,[ ] while the period of transition lasted so long, especially in the smaller towns, that the old and new schools often flourished concurrently. this relief is made of pietra serena, of a delicate bluish tint, very charming to work in, according to cellini, though without the durability needed for statues placed out of doors.[ ] it has been enriched with a most lavish hand and there is no part of the work without sumptuous decoration. the base, with the central wreath, is flanked by the cavalcanti arms: above them rise two rectangular shafts enclosing the relief on either side. these columns are carved with a fretwork of leaves, and their capitals are formed of strongly chiselled masks of a classical type, like those on the or san michele niche. above the shafts comes the plinth, which has a peculiar egg and dart moulding, in its way ugly, and finally the whole thing is crowned with a bow-shaped arch, upon which the six terra cotta _putti_ are placed, two at either extremity and the other pair lying along the curved space in the centre;[ ] the panelled background and the throne are covered with arabesques. but this intricate wealth of decoration does not distract attention from the main figures. the virgin has just risen from the chair, part of her dress still resting on the seat. her face and feet turn in different directions, thus giving a dualism to the movement, an impression of surprise which is in itself a _tour de force_. but there is nothing bizarre or far-fetched, and the general idea one receives is that we have a momentary vision of the scene: we intercept the message which is well rendered by the pose of the angel, while its reception is acknowledged by the startled gesture of the virgin. "_È stupendo l'artifizio._"[ ] the scheme is what one would expect from luca della robbia. nothing of the kind reappears in donatello's work, and the attainment of beauty as such is also beyond the sphere of his usual ambition. indeed, so widely does the annunciation differ from our notions about the artist, that it has been recently suggested that donatello was assisted in the work: while some people doubt the attribution altogether. the idea that michelozzo should have done some of the actual carving may be well or ill founded; in any case, no tangible argument has been advanced to support the idea. donatello's authorship is vouched for by albertini, who wrote long before vasari, and whose notice about the works of art in florence is of great value.[ ] but we have no standard of comparison, and donatello himself had to strike out a new line for his new theme. the internal evidence in favour of donatello must therefore be sought in the accessories; and in architectural details which occur elsewhere,[ ] such as the big and somewhat incontinent hands, the typical _putti_, and the rather heavy drapery. to this we may add the authority of early tradition, the originality and strength of treatment, and finally the practical impossibility of suggesting any alternative sculptor. [footnote : vasari, iii. .] [footnote : in the capella gondi, santa maria novella.] [footnote : in san giorgio maggiore, venice.] [footnote : borghini, donatello's earliest work. semper, . schmarsow, . bode, before the second journey to rome in . reymond, .] [footnote : _e.g._, on the or san michele niche, round the trinity. verrocchio also used it on his sketch model for the forteguerri tomb, victoria and albert museum, no. , .] [footnote : _e.g._, pacifico tomb about and the francesco foscari tomb about , both in the frari.] [footnote : "due trattati di benvenuto cellini," ed. carlo milanesi, . ch. on marble.] [footnote : _cf._ _putti_ on the roman tabernacle.] [footnote : bocchi, p. .] [footnote : "memoriale di molte statue e pitture della città di firenze," .] [footnote : or san michele niche, san lorenzo evangelists.] * * * * * [sidenote: martelli, david and donatello's technique.] tradition says that ruberto martelli was the earliest of donatello's patrons. so far as we know, there were two rubertos: the elder was seventy-three at the time of donatello's birth, and must therefore have been a nonagenarian before his patronage could be effectively exercised; the other was twenty-two years younger than the sculptor, whom he could not have helped as a young man. but there is no question about the interest shown by the family in donatello's work. the david and the st. john, together with a portrait-bust and the coat of arms, still show their practical appreciation of his work and donatello's gratitude to the family. vasari is the first to mention these works, and it must be remarked that albertini, who paid great attention to donatello, mentions nothing but antique sculpture in the martelli palace. the david and the st. john baptist are both in marble, and were probably made between and . the david, which was always prized by the family, is shown in the background of bronzino's portrait of ugolino martelli.[ ] it was then standing in the courtyard of the palace, but was taken indoors in _per intemperias_. the statue is not altogether a success. its _allure_ is good: but the anatomy is feminine, the type is soft and yielding; the attitude is not spontaneous; and the head of goliath, tucked uncomfortable between the feet, is poor. there is a bronze statuette in berlin which has been considered a study for this figure, though it is most unlikely that donatello himself would have taken the trouble to make bronze versions of his preparatory studies. the work, however, is in all probability by donatello, and most of the faults in the marble statue being corrected, it may be later than the martelli figure, from which it also varies in several particulars. the statuette is full of life and vigour, and the david is a sturdy shepherd-boy who might well engage a lion or a bear. in one respect the martelli figure is of great importance. it is unfinished--the only unfinished marble we have of the master, and it gives an insight into the methods he employed. it is fortunate that we have some means of understanding how donatello gained his ends, although this statue does not show him at his best; indeed it may have been abandoned because it did not reach his expectations. however, we have nothing else to judge by. the first criticism suggested by the david is that donatello betrays the great effort it cost him. like the unfinished faith by mino da fiesole,[ ] it is laboured and experimental. they set to work hoping that later stages would enable them to rectify any error or miscalculation, but both found they had gone too far. the material would permit no such thing, and with all their skill one sees that the blocks of marble did not unfold the statues which lay hidden within. as hewers of stone, donatello and mino cannot compare with michael angelo. jacopo della quercia alone had something of his genius of material. nobody left more "unfinished" work than michael angelo. the victory, the bust of brutus, the madonna and child,[ ] to mention a few out of many, show clearly what his system was. in the statue of victory we see the three stages of development or completion. the statue is _in_ the stone, grows out of it. the marble seems to be as soft as soap, and michael angelo simply peels off successive strata, apparently extracting a statue without the smallest effort. the three grades are respectively shown in the rough-hewn head of the crouching figure, then in the head of the triumphant youth above him, finally in his completed torso. but each stage is finished relatively. completion is relative to distance; the brutus is finished or unfinished according to our standpoint, physical or æsthetic. moreover, the treatment is not partial or piecemeal; the statue was in the marble from the beginning, and is an entity from its initial stage: in many ways each stage is equally fine. the paradox of michael angelo's technique is that his _abozzo_ is really a finished study. the victory also shows how the deep folds of drapery are bored preparatory to being carved, in order that the chisel might meet less resistance in the narrow spaces; this is also the case in the martelli david. as a technical adjunct boring was very useful, but only as a process. when employed as a mechanical device to represent the hair of the head, we get the roman empress disguised as a sponge or a honeycomb. these tricks reveal much more than pure technicalities of art. gainsborough's habit of using paint brushes four or five feet long throws a flood of light upon theory and practice alike. there is, however, another work, possibly by donatello himself, which gives no insight into anything but technical methods, but which is none the less important. this is the large madonna and child surrounded by angels, belonging to signor bardini of florence. it is unhappily a complete wreck, five heads, including the child's, having been broken away. it is a relief in stucco, modelled, not cast, and is closely allied with a group of madonnas to which reference is made hereafter.[ ] we can see precisely how this relief was made. the stucco adheres to a strong canvas, which in its turn is nailed on to a wooden panel. the background, also much injured, is decorated with mosaic and geometrical patterns of glass, now dim and opaque with age. the relief must have been of signal merit. complete it would have rivalled the polychrome madonna of the louvre: as a fragment it is quite sufficient to prove that the piot madonna, in the same museum, is not authentic. one more trick of the sculptor remains to be noticed. vasari and bocchi say that donatello, recognising the value of his work, grouped his figures so that the limbs and drapery should offer few protruding angles, in order to minimise the danger of fracture. it was his insurance against the fragility of the stone: when working in bronze such precautions would be less necessary. it is quite true that in the larger figures there is a marked restraint in this respect, while in his bas-reliefs, where the danger was less, the tendency to raise the arms above the head is often exaggerated. but too much stress should not be laid upon this explanation: it is hard to believe that donatello would have let so crucial a matter be governed by such a consideration. speaking generally, donatello was neither more nor less restrictive than his florentine contemporaries, and it was only at a later period that the isolated statue received perfect freedom, such as that in the cellini perseus, or the mercury by gian bologna, or bernini's work in marble. [footnote : in the berlin gallery.] [footnote : berlin museum.] [footnote : all three in bargello.] [footnote : see p. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ san giovannino palazzo martelli, florence] [illustration: _alinari_ st. john baptist, marble bargello] [sidenote: early figures of st. john.] another important statue in the martelli palace is that of st. john the baptist. besides being the earliest patron of florence, st. john was the titular saint of every baptistery in the land. this accounts for the frequency with which we find his statues and scenes from his life, particularly in tuscany. with donatello he was to some extent a speciality, and we can almost trace the sculptor's evolution in his presentment of the baptist, beginning with the chivalrous figure on the campanile and ending with the haggard ascetic of venice. we have st. john as a child in the bargello, as a boy in rome, as a stripling in the martelli palace. on the bell-tower he is grown up, in the frari he is growing older, and at siena he is shown as old as biblical history would permit. the st. john in the casa martelli, _oltra tutti singolare_,[ ] was so highly prized that it was made an heirloom, with penalties for such members of the family who disposed of it. this st. john is a link between the giovannino and the mature prophet. he is, as it were, dazed, and sets forth upon his errand with open-mouthed wonder. he has a strain of melancholy, and seems rather weakly and hesitating. but there is no attempt after emaciation. the limbs are well made, and as sturdy as one would expect, in view of the unformed lines of the model: the hands also are good. as regards the face, one notices that the nose and mouth are rather crooked, and that the eyes diverge: not, indeed, that these defects are really displeasing, since they are what one sometimes finds in living youth. another baptist which has hitherto escaped attention is the small marble figure, about four feet high, which stands in a niche over the sacristy door of san giovanni fiorentino in rome. it was placed there a few years ago, when, owing to the prevalent mania of rebuilding, it became necessary to demolish the little oratory on the corso which belonged to the mother church close by. the statue was scarcely seen in its old home: how it got there is unknown. the church itself was not founded by the florentines until after donatello's death, and this statue looks as if it had been made before donatello's visit to rome in . but its authenticity cannot be questioned. we have the same type as in the martelli baptist, with something of the franco-gothic sentiment. this st. john is rather younger, a giovannino, his thin lithe figure draped with the camel-hair tunic which ends above the knees. hanging over the left shoulder is a long piece of drapery, falling to the ground behind him, and giving support to the marble, just as in the other baptist. we have the open mouth, the curly hair and the broad nostrils: in every way it is a typical work of the sculptor. there are two other early baptists, both in the bargello. the little relief in pietra serena[ ] is a delightful rendering of gentle boyhood. the modelling shows donatello's masterful treatment of the soft flesh and the tender muscles beneath it. everything is subordinated to his object of showing real boyhood with all the charm of its imperfections. the head is shown in profile, thus enabling us to judge the precise nature of all the features, each one of which bears the imprint of callow _morbidezza_. even the hair has the dainty qualities of childhood: it has the texture of silk. it is a striking contrast to the life-sized baptist who has just reached manhood. we see a st. john walking out into the desert. he looks downward to the scroll in his hand, trudging forward with a hesitating gait,--but only hesitating because he is not sure of his foothold, so deeply is he absorbed in reading. it is a triumph of concentration. donatello has enlisted every agency that could intensify the oblivion of the world around him. it is from this aloofness that the figure leaves a detached and inhospitable impression. one feels instinctively that this st. john would be friendless, for he has nothing to offer, and asks no sympathy. there is no room for anybody else in his career, and nobody can share his labours or mitigate his privations. in short, there is no link between him and the spectator. unless we interpret the statue in this manner, it loses all interest--it never had any beauty--and the st. john becomes a tiresome person with a pedantic and ill-balanced mind. but donatello can only have meant to teach the lesson of concentrated unity of purpose, which is the chief if not the only characteristic of this st. john. technically the work is admirable. the singular care with which the limbs are modelled, especially the feet and hands, is noteworthy: while the muscular system, the prominent spinal cord, and the pectoral bones are rendered with an exactitude which leads one to suppose donatello reproduced all the peculiarities of his model. it has been said that michelozzo helped donatello on the ground that certain details reappear on the aragazzi monument. the argument is speculative, and would perhaps gain by being inverted,--by pointing out that when making the aragazzi figures, michelozzo, the lesser man, was influenced by donatello, the greater. [footnote : bocchi, . like the david, it used to live out of doors, until in nicolaus martelli "in aedes suas transtulit." its base dates from .] [footnote : it was acquired for nine zechins in . madame andré has a version in stucco, on rather a larger scale. a marble version from the strawberry hill collection now belongs to sir charles dilke, m.p.] * * * * * [illustration: clay sketch of crucifixion and flagellation london] [sidenote: donatello as architect and painter.] fully as donatello realised the unity of the arts, we cannot claim him as a universal genius, like leonardo or michael angelo, who combined the art of literature with plastic, pictorial and architectural distinction. but at the same time donatello did not confine himself to sculpture. he was a member of the guild of st. luke: he designed a stained-glass window for the cathedral: his opinion on building the cupola was constantly invited, and he made a number of marble works, such as niches, fountains, galleries and tombs, into which the pursuit of architecture and construction was bound to enter. moreover, his backgrounds were usually suggested by architectural motives. donatello joined the painters' guild of st. luke in , and in a document of this year he is called _pictor_.[ ] there is a great variety in the names and qualifications given to artists during the fifteenth century. in the first edition of the lives, vasari calls ghiberti a painter. pisano, the medallist, signed himself pictor. _lastrajuolo_, or stone-fitter, is applied to nanni di banco.[ ] giovanni nani was called _tagliapietra_,[ ] donatello is also called _marmoraio_, _picchiapietre_,[ ] and woodcarver.[ ] in the commission from the orvieto cathedral for a bronze baptist he is comprehensively described as "_intagliatorem figurarum, magistrum lapidum atque intagliatorem figurarum in ligno et eximium magistrum omnium trajectorum_."[ ] finally, like ciuffagni,[ ] he is called _aurifex_, goldsmith.[ ] cellini mentions donatello's success in painting,[ ] and gauricus, who wrote early in the sixteenth century, says that the favourite maxim inculcated by donatello to his pupils was "_designate_"--"draw: that is the whole foundation of sculpture."[ ] the only pictorial work that has survived is the great stained-glass coronation of the virgin in the duomo. ghiberti submitted a competitive cartoon and the domopera had to settle which was "_pulchrius et honorabilius pro ecclesia_." donatello's design was accepted,[ ] and the actual glazing was carried out by bernardo francesco in eighteen months.[ ] the background is a plain blue sky, and the two great figures are the centre of a warm and harmonious composition. the window stands well among its fellows as regards colour and design, but does not help us to solve difficult problems connected with donatello's drawings. numbers have been attributed to him on insufficient foundation.[ ] the fact is that, notwithstanding the explicit statements of borghini and vasari that donatello and michael angelo were comparable in draughtsmanship, we have no authenticated work through which to make our inductions. a large and important scene of the flagellation in the uffizzi,[ ] placed within a complicated architectural framework, and painted in green wash, has some later renaissance features, but recalls donatello's compositions. in the same collection are two extremely curious pen-and-ink drawings which give variants of donatello's tomb of john xxiii. in the baptistery. the first of them (no. ) shows the pope in his tiara, whereas on the tomb this symbol of the papacy occupies a subordinate place. the charity below carries children, another variant from the tomb itself. the second study (no. ) gives the effigy of a bareheaded knight in full armour lying to the left, and the basal figures also differ from those on the actual tomb. these drawings are certainly of the fifteenth century, and even if not directly traceable to donatello himself, are important from their relation to the great tomb of the pope, for which donatello was responsible. but we have no right to say that even these are donatello's own work. in fact, drawings on paper by donatello would seem inherently improbable. although he almost drew in marble when working in _stiacciato_, the lowest kind of relief, he was essentially a modeller, rather than a draughtsman. leonardo was just the reverse; michael angelo was both, but with him sculpture was _the_ art. donatello had small sense of surface or silhouette, and we would not expect him to commit his ideas to paper, just as nollekens,[ ] who drew so badly that he finally gave up drawing, and limited himself to modelling instead--turning the clay round and round and observing it from different aspects, thus employing a tactile in place of a pictorial medium. canova also trusted chiefly to the plastic sense to create the form. but donatello must nevertheless have used pen and ink to sketch the tombs, the galleries, the roman tabernacle, and similar works. it is unfortunate that none of his studies can be identified. there is, however, one genuine sketch by donatello, but it is a sketch in clay. the london panel[ ] was made late in life, when donatello left a considerable share to his assistants. it is therefore a valuable document, showing donatello's system as regards his own preliminary studies and the amount of finishing he would leave to pupils. we see his astonishing plastic facility, and the ease with which he could improvise by a few curves, depressions and prominences so complex a theme as the flagellation, or christ on the cross. it is a marvel of dexterity. [footnote : domopera archives, , viii., .] [footnote : _ibid._, , xii., .] [footnote : padua, , iv., .] [footnote : when working at pisa in . see centofanti, p. .] [footnote : commission for bronze baptist for ancona, .] [footnote : contract in orvieto archives, , ii., .] [footnote : domopera, , ix., .] [footnote : _ibid._ , iii., .] [footnote : "due trattati," ch. xii.] [footnote : pomponius gauricus, "de sculptura," , p. b, iii.] [footnote : april .] [footnote : see _american journal of arch._, june .] [footnote : the so-called st. george in the royal library at windsor has been determined by mr. r. holmes to be perugino's study for the st. michael in the national gallery triptych. in the uffizzi several pen-and-ink drawings are attributed to donatello. the four eagles, the group of three peasants, the two figures seen from behind (frame , no. ), and the candlestick (frame , no. s.), are nondescript studies in which no specific sign of donatello appears. the five winged _putti_ (frame , no. f.) and the two studies of the madonna (frame , no. f.) are more donatellesque, but they show the niggling touch of some draughtsman who tried to make a sketch by mere indications with his pen. there is also a study in brown wash of the baptistery magdalen: probably made from, and not for, the statue. the louvre has an ink sketch (no. , reynolds and his de la salle collections) of the three maries at the tomb, or perhaps a fragment of a crucifixion, with a fourth figure, cowled like a monk. it is a gaunt composition, made with very strong lines. it may be noted that the eyes are roughly suggested by circles, a mannerism which recurs in several drawings ascribed to donatello. this was also a trick of baldassare peruzzi (sketch-book, siena library, p. , &c.). in the british museum there is an apostle holding a book (no. , . . ), with a donatellesque hand and forearm; also a lamentation over the dead christ (no. , . . ). both are interesting drawings, but the positive evidence of donatello's authorship is _nil_. mr. gathorne hardy's drawing, which has been ascribed to donatello, is really by mantegna, a capital study for one of the frescoes in the eremitani.] [footnote : uffizzi, frame , no. f.] [footnote : see life by j.t. smith, .] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , . this sketch, which appears to have been made for the forzori family, has been mistaken for a study for the san lorenzo pulpit.] [illustration: _alinari_ niche of or san michele the group by verrocchio] sculpture relies upon the contour, architecture upon the line. the distinction is vital, and were it not for the number and importance of the exceptions, from michael angelo down to alfred stevens, one would think that the sculptor-architect would be an anomaly. in describing the pursuits of donatello and brunellesco during their first visit to rome, manetti says that the former was engrossed by his plastic researches, "_senza mai aprire gli occhi alla architettura_." it is difficult to believe that donatello had no eyes for architecture. there are several reasons to show that later on he gave some attention to its study. like the roman tabernacle, the niche on or san michele[ ] is without any gothic details. albertini mentions donatello as its sole author, but it is probable that michelozzo, who helped on the statue of st. louis, was also associated with its niche. it is a notable work, designed without much regard to harmony between various orders of architecture, but making a very rich and pleasing whole. it is decorated with some admirable reliefs. on the base are winged _putti_ carrying a wreath; in the spandrils above the arch are two more. the upper frieze has also winged cherubs' heads, six of them with swags of fruit and foliage, all of exceptional charm and vivacity. the motive of wings recurs in the large triangular space at the top; flanking the magnificent trinity, three grave and majestic heads, which though united are kept distinct, and though similar in type are full of individual character. this little relief, placed rather high, and discountenanced by the bronze group below, is a memorable achievement of the early fifteenth century and heralds the advent of the power and solemnity, the _terribilità_ of michael angelo. donatello's aptitude for architectural setting is also illustrated by the choristers' galleries in the cathedral and san lorenzo. the former must be dealt with in detail when considering donatello's treatment of childhood. as an architectural work it shows how the sculptor employed decorative adjuncts such as mosaic and majolica[ ] to set off the white marble; he also added deep maroon slabs of porphyry and bronze heads, thus combining various arts and materials. having no sculpture, the cantoria of san lorenzo is perhaps more important in this connection, as it is purely constructive, while its condition is intact: the cathedral gallery having been rebuilt on rather conjectural lines. in san lorenzo we find the same ideas and peculiarities, such as the odd egg and dart moulding which reappears on the annunciation. the colour effects are obtained by porphyry and inlaid marbles. but we see how much donatello trusted to sculpture, and how indifferently he fared without it. this gallery does not retain one's attention. there is a stiffness about it, almost a monotony, and it looks more like the fragment of a balcony than a _cantoria_, for there is no marked terminal motive to complete and enclose it at either end. two gateways have been ascribed to donatello, but there is nothing either in their architecture or the treatment of their heraldic decoration, which is distinctive of the sculptor.[ ] there can be no doubt that donatello was employed as architect by the chapter of sant' antonio at padua,[ ] and his love of buildings is constantly shown in the background of his reliefs. but the strongest testimony to his architectural skill is derived from the fact that he was commissioned in to make a model for the then unfinished cupola of the cathedral at florence. brunellesco and nanni di banco also received similar orders. brunellesco alone understood the immense difficulty of the task, and in the next year he announced his return to rome for further research. in the sum of two hundred gold florins was offered for the best model, and in ghiberti, nanni di banco, donatello and brunellesco all received payments for models. donatello's was made of brick. ultimately the work was entrusted to brunellesco, who overcame the ignorance and intrigues which he encountered from all sides, his two staunch friends being donatello and luca della robbia. as to the nature of donatello's models we know nothing; it is, however, clear that his opinion was at one time considered among the best available on a problem which required knowledge of engineering. as a military engineer donatello was a failure. he was sent in with other artists to construct a huge dam outside the besieged town of lucca, in order to flood or isolate the city. the amateur and _dilettante_ of the renaissance found a rare opportunity in warfare; and this passion for war and its preparations occurs frequently among these early artists. leonardo designed scores of military engines. francesco di giorgio has left a whole bookful of such sketches, in one of which he anticipates the torpedo-boat.[ ] so, too, michael angelo took his share in erecting fortifications, though he did not fritter away so much time on experiments as some of his contemporaries. donatello and his colleagues did not even leave us plans to compensate for their ignominious failure. one is struck by the confidence of these renaissance people, not only in art but in every walk of life. they were so sure of success, that failure came to be regarded as surprising, and very unprofessional. michael angelo had no conception of possible failure. he embarked upon the colossal statue of the pope when quite inexperienced in casting; he was the first to taunt leonardo on his failure to make the equestrian statue. when somebody failed, the work was handed over to another man, who was expected to succeed. thus ciuffagni had to abandon an unpromising statue, _quod male et inepte ipsam laboravit_,[ ] and the david of michael angelo was made from a block of marble upon which agostino di duccio had already made fruitless attempts. [footnote : the niche was completed about - . there is a drawing of it in vettorio ghiberti's note-book, p. . landucci, in his "diario fiorentino," says that verrocchio's group was placed in it on june , .] [footnote : _cf._ payments to andrea moscatello, for painted and glazed terra-cotta for the paduan altar. may .] [footnote : from the residenza dell' arte degli albergatori, and that of the rigattieri of florence, figured on plates xii. and xv. of carocci's "ricordi del mercato vecchio," .] [footnote : _cf._ payments for work on "_archi de la balconà de lo lavoriero de la +_," _i.e._, the crociera of the church, march and april , .] [footnote : siena library.] [footnote : domopera, , vii. .] [illustration: _alinari_ the marzocco bargello] [illustration: _alinari_ the martelli shield] two fountains are ascribed to donatello, made respectively for the pazzi and medici families. the former now belongs to signor bardini. it is a fine bold thing, but the figure and centrepiece are unfortunately missing. the marble is coated with the delicate patina of water: its decoration is rather nondescript, but there is no reason to suppose that rossellino's _fonte_ mentioned by albertini was the only one possessed by the great house of the pazzi. the medici fountain, now in the pitti palace, is rather larger, being nearly eight feet high. the decoration is opulent, and one could not date these florid ideas before donatello's later years. the boy at the top dragging along a swan is donatellesque, but with mannerisms to which we are unaccustomed. the work is not convincing as regards his authorship. the marble lavabo in the sacristy of san lorenzo is also a doubtful piece of sculpture. it has been attributed to verrocchio, donatello and rossellino. it has least affinity to donatello. the detailed attention paid by the sculptor to the floral decoration, and the fussy manner in which the whole thing is overcrowded, as if the artist were afraid of simplicity, suggest the hand of rossellino, to whom albertini, the first writer on the subject, has ascribed it. donatello made the marzocco, the emblematic lion of the florentines, and it has therefore been assumed that he also made its marble pedestal. this is held to be contemporary with the niche of or san michele. so far as the architectural and decorative lines are concerned this is not impossible, though the early renaissance motives long retained their popularity. there is, however, one detail showing that the base must be at least twenty-five years older than the niche. the arms of the various quarters of florence are carved upon the frieze of the base. among these shields we notice one bearing "on a field semée of fleurs-de-lys, a label, above all a bendlet dexter." these are not italian arms. they were granted in to jean, comte de dunois, an illegitimate son of the duc d'orléans. his coat had previously borne the bendlet sinister, but this was officially turned into a bendlet dexter, to show that the king had been pleased to legitimise him in recognition of his services to joan of arc. jean was a contemporary of donatello, and the coat may have been placed among the other shields as a compliment to france. certainly no quarter of a town could use a mark of cadency below a bendlet, and florence was more careful than most italian towns to be precise in her heraldry. numbers of stone shields bearing the arms of florentine families were placed upon the palace walls. when high up and protected by the broad eaves they have survived; but, as a rule, those which were exposed to the weather, carved as they usually were in soft stone, have perished.[ ] bocchi mentions that donatello made coats-of-arms for the becchi, the boni and the pazzi. others have been ascribed to him, namely, the stemma of the arte della seta, from the via di capaccio, that on the gianfigliazzi palace, the shield inside the courtyard of the palazzo davanzati, and that on the palazzo quaratesi, all in florence. these have been much repaired, and in some cases almost entirely renewed. the shield on the eastern side of the old martelli palace (in the via de' martelli, no. ) is, perhaps, coeval with donatello, but it is insignificant beside the shield preserved inside the present palace. this coat-of-arms, which is coloured according to the correct metals and tinctures, is one of the finest extant specimens of decorative heraldry. it is a winged griffin rampant, with the tail and hindlegs of a lion. the shield is supported by the stone figure of a retainer, cut in very deep relief, as the achievement was to be seen from the street below. but the shield itself rivets one's attention. this griffin can be classed with the stryge, or the etruscan chimæra as a classic example of the fantastic monsters which were used for conventional purposes, but which were widely believed to exist. it possesses all the traditional attributes of the griffin. it is fearless and heartless: its horrible claws strike out to wound in every direction, and the whole body vibrates with feline elasticity, as well as the agile movement of a bird. regarding it purely as a composition, we see how admirably donatello used the space at his command: his economy of the shield is masterly. it is occupied at every angle, but nowhere crowded. the spaces which are left vacant are deliberately contrived to enhance the effect of the figure. it is the antithesis of the marzocco.[ ] the sculptor must have seen lions, but the marzocco is not treated in a heraldic spirit, although it holds the heraldic emblem of florence, the _fleur de lys florencée_. physically it is unsuccessful, for it has no spring, there is very little muscle in the thick legs which look like pillars, and the back is far too broad. but donatello is saved by his tact; he was ostensibly making the portrait of a lion; though he gives none of its features, he gives us all the chief leonine characteristics. he excelled in imaginary animals, like the chinese artists who make admirable dragons, but indifferent tigers. [footnote : _cf._ those high up on the loggia de' lanzi, or in other tuscan towns where the climate was not more severe, but where there was less cash or inclination to replace the shields which were worn away.] [footnote : the marble original is now in the bargello, and has been replaced by a bronze _replica_, which occupies the old site on the ringhiera of the palazzo pubblico. lions were popular in florence. albertini mentions an antique porphyry lion in the casa capponi, much admired by lorenzo de' medici. paolo ucello painted a lion fight for cosimo. the curious rhymed chronicle of describes the lion fights in the great piazza ("rer. it. script.," ii. ). other cases could be quoted. donatello also made a stone lion for the courtyard of the house used by martin v. during his visit to florence in - .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ salome relief, siena. statuette of faith (to left)] [sidenote: the siena font.] siena had planned her cathedral on so ambitious a scale, that had not the plague reduced her to penury the duomo of florence would have been completely outrivalled. the sienese, however, ordered various works of importance for their cathedral, and among these the font takes a high place. it was entrusted to jacopo della quercia, who had the active assistance of donatello and ghiberti, as well as that of the turini and neroccio, townsmen of his own. donatello was thus brought under new influences. he made a relief, a _sportello_ or little door, two statuettes, and some children, all in bronze, being helped in the casting by michelozzo. jacopo, who was about ten years older than donatello, had been a competitor for the baptistery gates. he was a man of immense power, in some ways greater than donatello; never failing to treat his work on broad and massive lines, and one of the few sculptors whose work can survive mutilation. the fragments of the fonte gaya need no reconstruction or repair to tell their meaning; their statuesque virtues, though sadly mangled, proclaim the unmistakable touch of genius. but donatello's personality was not affected by the sienese artists. jacopo, it is true, was constantly absent, being busily engaged at bologna, to the acute annoyance of the sienese, who ordered him to return forthwith. jacopo said he would die rather than disobey, "_potius eligeret mori quam non obedire patriæ suæ_"; but the political troubles at the northern town prevented his prompt return. however, after being fined he got home, was reconciled to the chapter, and ultimately received high honours from the city. his font is an interesting example of transition; the base is much more gothic than the upper part. the base or font proper is a large hexagonal bason decorated with six bronze reliefs and a bronze statuette between each--faith, hope, charity, justice, prudence, and strength. the reliefs are scenes from the life of the baptist. from the centre of the font rises the tall renaissance tabernacle with five niches, in which jacopo placed marble statues of david and the four major prophets, one of which suggested the san petronio of michael angelo. a statue of the baptist surmounts the entire font. in spite of the number of people who co-operated with jacopo, the whole composition is harmonious. donatello made the gilded statuettes of faith and hope. the former, looking downwards, has something of sienese severity. hope is with upturned countenance, joining her hands in prayer; charming alike in her gesture and pose. two instalments for these figures are recorded in . the authorities had been lax in paying for the work, and we have a letter[ ] asking the domopera for payment, donatello and michelozzo being rather surprised--"_assai maravigliati_"--that the florins had not arrived. the last of these bronze virtues, by goro di neroccio, was not placed on the font till . donatello also had the commission for the _sportello_, the bronze door of the tabernacle. but the authorities were dissatisfied with the work and returned it to the sculptor, though indemnifying him for the loss.[ ] this was in , the children for the upper cornice having been made from onwards. the relief, which was ordered in , was finished some time in . it is donatello's first relief in bronze, and his earliest definitive effort to use a complicated architectural background. the incident is the head of st. john being presented on the charger by the kneeling executioner. herod starts back dismayed at the sight, suddenly realising the purport of his action. two children playing beside him hurriedly get up; one sees that in a moment they, too, will be terror-stricken. salome watches the scene; it is very simple and very dramatic. the bas-relief of st. george releasing princess sabra, the cleodolinda of spencer's faerie queen, is treated as an epic, the works having a connecting bond in the figures of the girls, who closely resemble each other. much as one admires the _élan_ of st. george slaying the dragon, this bronze relief of siena is the finer of the two; it is more perfect in its way, and donatello shows more apt appreciation of the spaces at his disposal. the siena plaque, like the marble relief of the dance of salome at lille, to which it is analogous, has a series of arches vanishing into perspective. they are not fortuitous buildings, but are used by the sculptor to subdivide and multiply the incidents. they give depth to the scene, adding a sense of the beyond. the lille relief has a wonderful background, full of hidden things, reminding one of the mysterious etchings of piranesi. [footnote : . v. . milanesi, ii. .] [footnote : lusini, .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ tomb of coscia, pope john xxiii. baptistery, florence] [illustration: _alinari_ effigy of pope john xxiii. baptistery, florence] [sidenote: michelozzo and the coscia tomb.] for ten years donatello was associated with michelozzo,[ ] who began as assistant and finally entered into a partnership which lasted until . the whole subject is obscure, and until we have a critical biography of michelozzo his relation with various men and monuments of the fifteenth century must remain problematical. michelozzo has not hitherto received his due meed of appreciation. as a sculptor and architect he frequently held a subordinate position, and it has been assumed that he therefore lacked independence and originality. but the man who was court architect of the medici, and director of the cathedral building staff, was no mere hack; while his sculpture at milan, naples, and montepulciano show that his plastic abilities were far from mean. he was a great man with interludes of smallness. when donatello required technical help in casting, michelozzo was called in. though donatello had worked for ghiberti on the bronze gates, he was never quite at home in the science of casting. gauricus says he always employed professional help--"_nunquam fudit ipse, campanariorum usus opera semper_."[ ] caldieri cast for him at padua. michelozzo also helped luca della robbia in casting the sacristy gates which donatello should have made; the commissions which donatello threw over were those for work in bronze. the partnership extended over some of the best years of donatello's life, and three tombs, the st. louis, and the prato pulpit are among their joint products. the tombs of pope john xxiii. in the baptistery, that of aragazzi the papal secretary at montepulciano, and that of cardinal brancacci at naples, are noteworthy landmarks in the evolution of sepulchral monuments, which attained their highest perfection in italy. in discussing them it will be seen how fully michelozzo shared the responsibilities of donatello. baldassare coscia, on his election to the papacy, took the title of john xxiii. he was deposed by a council and retired to florence, where he died in . he was befriended by the medici, who erected the monument, the last papal tomb outside rome, to his memory. "_johannes quondam papa xxiii._" is inscribed on it, and it is said that coscia's successful rival objected to this appellation of his predecessor, but the protest went unheeded. the tomb is remarkable in many ways. its construction is most skilful, as it was governed by the two upright pillars between which the monument had to be fitted. we have a series of horizontal lines; a frieze at the base, then three virtues; above this the effigy, and finally a madonna beneath a baldachino. each tier is separated by lines which intersect the columns at right angles. the task of making a monument which would not be dwarfed by these huge plain pillars was not easy. but the tomb, which is decorated with prudent reserve, holds its own. the effigy is bronze: all the rest is marble. it was probably coloured, and a drawing in ghiberti's note-book gives a background of cherry red, with the figures gilded.[ ] coscia lies in his mitre and episcopal robes, his head turned outwards towards the spectator. the features are admirably modelled with the firmness and consistency of living flesh: indeed it is the portrait of a sleeping man, troubled, perhaps, in his dream. the tomb was made some years after coscia's death, and donatello has not treated him as a dead man. the effigy is a contrast to that of cardinal brancacci, where we have the unmistakable lineaments and fallen features of a corpse. the dusky hue of coscia's face should be noticed; the bronze appears to have been rubbed with some kind of dark composition, similar in tone to that employed by torrigiano. below the recumbent pope is the sarcophagus; two delightful winged boys hold the cartel on which the epitaph is boldly engraved. the three marble figures in niches at the base, faith, hope and charity, belong to a different category. albertini says that the bronze is by donatello, and "_li ornamenti marmorei di suoi discipuli_." half a century later, vasari says that donatello made two of them, and that michelozzo made the faith, which is the least successful of the three. modern criticism tends to revert to albertini, assigning all to michelozzo, with the presumption that hope, which is derived from the siena statuette, was executed from donatello's design. certainly the basal figures are without the _brio_ of donatello's chisel; likewise the madonna above the effigy, which is vacillating, and may have been the earliest work of pagno di lapo, a man about whom we have slender authenticated knowledge, but whom we know to have been well employed in and around florence. in any case, we cannot reconcile this madonna with michelozzo's sculpture. as will be seen later on, michelozzo had many faults, but he was seldom insipid. the madonna and saints on the façade of sant' agostino at montepulciano show that michelozzo was a vigorous man. this latter work is certainly by him, the local tradition connecting it with one pasquino da montepulciano being unfounded. the coscia tomb is among the earliest of that composite type which soon pervaded italy. at least one other monument was directly copied from it, that of raffaello fulgosio at padua. this was made by giovanni da pisa, and the sculptor's conflict between respect for the old model, and his desires after the new ideas, is apparent in the whole composition. [footnote : see "arch. storico dell' arte," , p. .] [footnote : "de sculptura," , folio e. . on the other hand, the sculptor verrocchio cast a bell for the vallombrosans in , and artillery for the venetian republic.] [footnote : _op. cit._ p. . in this drawing two _putti_ are also shown holding a shield, above the monument; this has now disappeared.] * * * * * [sidenote: the aragazzi tomb.] in the _denunzia de' beni_ of donatello states that he was working with michelozzo on the tomb of bartolommeo aragazzi, and the monument has therefore been ascribed to them both. but recent research has established that, though preparatory orders were given in that year, a fresh contract was made two years later, and that donatello's share in the work was nil. michelozzo alone got payment up to or thereabouts, when the tomb was completed. donatello's influence would, perhaps, have been visible in the design, but unhappily we can no longer even judge of this, for the tomb is a wreck, having been broken up to make room for structural alterations.[ ] important fragments are preserved, scattered about the church; but the sketch of the tomb, said to be preserved in the local library, has never yet been discovered. the monument had ill-fortune from the very beginning. an amusing letter has come down to us, pathetic too, for it records the first incident in the tragedy. leonardo aretino writes to poggio, that when going home one day he came across a party of men trying to extricate a wagon which had stuck in the deep ruts. the oxen were out of breath and the teamsmen out of temper. leonardo went up to them and made inquiries. one of the carters, wiping the sweat from his brow, muttered an imprecation upon poets, past, present and future (_dii perdant poetas omnes, et qui fuerunt unquam et qui futuri sunt_.) leonardo, a poet himself, asked what harm they had done him: and the man simply replied that it was because this poet, aragazzi, who was lately dead, ordered his marble tomb to be taken all the way to montepulciano from rome, where he died; hence the trouble. "_hæc est imago ejus quam cernis_," said the man, pointing to the effigy, having incidentally remarked that aragazzi was "_stultus nempe homo ac ventosus_."[ ] certainly aragazzi was not a successful man, and he was addicted to vanity. in the marble we see a wan melancholy face, seemingly of one who failed to secure due measure of public recognition. the monument need not be further described, except to say that two of the surviving figures are very remarkable. they probably acted as caryatides, of which there must have been three, replacing ordinary columns as supporters of the sarcophagus. they can hardly be virtues, for they are obviously muscular men with curly hair and brawny arms. they are not quite free from mannerisms: the attitudes, granting that the bent position were required by their support of the tomb, are not quite easy or natural. but, in spite of this, they are really magnificent things, placing their author high among sculptors of his day. [footnote : the effigy is placed in a niche close to the great door of the cathedral, put there "lest the memory of so distinguished a man should perish"--"_simulacrum ejus diu neglectum, ne tanti viri memoria penitus deleretur, politiana pietas hic collocandum curavit anno mdcccxv_." the remainder consists of a frieze now incorporated in the high altar, on either side of which stand two caryatides. the christ blessing is close by. two bas-reliefs are inserted into pillars opposite the effigy.] [footnote : "letters," florence ed. , vol. ii. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ tomb of cardinal brancacci naples] [sidenote: the brancacci tomb.] the church of sant' angelo a nilo at naples contains the monument of cardinal brancacci, one of the most impressive tombs of this period. the scheme is a modification of the coscia tomb. instead of the three virtues in niches at the base, there are three larger allegorical figures, which are free standing caryatides below the sarcophagus. they are allegorical figures, perhaps fates, and correspond with the two somewhat similar statues at montepulciano. the cardinal's effigy lies upon the stone coffin, the face of which has a bas-relief between heraldic shields. two angels stand above the recumbent figure, holding back the curtain which extends upwards to the next storey, surrounding a deep lunette in which there is a madonna between two saints. here the monument should have ended, but it is surmounted by an ogival arch, flanked by two trumpeting children and with a central medallion of god the father. this topmost tier may have been a subsequent addition. it overweights the whole monument, introduces a discordant architectural motive, and is decorated by inferior sculpture. the madonna in the lunette is also poor, and the curtain looks as if it were made of lead. but the lower portion of the tomb compensates for the faults above. the caryatides, the bas-relief of the assumption, the cardinal himself and the mourning angels above him, are all superb in their different ways. michelozzo may have been responsible for the architecture, and pagno di lapo for the upper reliefs. donatello himself made the priceless relief of the assumption, also the effigy, and the two attendants standing above it. the entire tomb is marble: it was made at pisa,[ ] close to the inexhaustible quarries which, being near to the sea, made transport easy and cheap. from the time of strabo, the _marmor lunense_ had been carried thence to every port of the peninsula.[ ] michelozzo took the tomb to naples, and perhaps added the final touches: not, indeed, that the carving is quite complete, the cardinal's ear, for instance, being rough-hewn. brancacci lies to the left, wearing a mitre on his head, which is raised on a pillow. the chiselling of the face is masterly. the features are shown in painful restless repose. the eyes are sunken and half closed: the lips are drawn, the brow contracted, and the throat shows all the tendons and veins which one notices in the habbakuk, but which are here relaxed and uncontrolled. it is a death-mask: a grim and instantaneous likeness of the supreme moment, when the agony may have passed away, but not without leaving indelible traces of the crisis. the two angels look down on the dead prelate. they hold back the curtain which would conceal the effigy, thus inviting the spectator into the privacy of the tomb. in some ways these two angels are among the noblest creations of the master. they are comparatively small, their position is subordinate, and they have been repaired by a clumsy journeyman. yet they have a majestic solemnity. they are calm impersonal mourners--not shrouded like the bowed figures which bear the effigy of the sénéchal of burgundy.[ ] they stand upright, simply posed and simply clad guardian angels, absorbed by watching the dead. the three large figures which support the sarcophagus are by michelozzo, and are intimately related to the aragazzi caryatides. that on the right has a burgundian look. they form a striking group, and their merits are not appreciated as they should be owing to the excellence of the sculpture immediately above them. [footnote : donatello worked there for eighteen months. see documents in centofanti, p. , &c.] [footnote : "_... lapides albi et discolores ad coeruleum vergente specie._" strabo, "geog.," ed., i. v. p. .] [footnote : louvre, no. . tomb of philippe pot, circa .] * * * * * [sidenote: stiacciato.] the assumption of the virgin occupies the central position of the tomb. it is a small panel. the virgin is seated in a folding-chair which is familiar in fifteenth-century art. surrounding her are angels supporting the clouds which make an oval halo round her, a _mandorla_. the cloud, curiously enough, is very heavy, yielding to the touch, and upheld by the flying angels, whose hands press their way into it, and bear their burden with manifest effort. there is none of the limpid atmosphere which perugino secured in painting, and ghiberti in sculpture. but, on the other hand, the air is full of drama, presaging an event for which donatello thought a placid sky unsuitable. there are seven angels in all; the lowest, upon whose head the virgin rests her foot, is half blake and half michael angelo. but there are many other busy little cherubs swimming, climbing, and flying amidst the interstices of cloudland. the virgin herself, draped in easy-flowing material, has folded her hands, and awaits her entry to paradise. her face is the picture of anxiety and apprehension. the assumption is carved in the lowest possible relief, called _stiacciato_. the word means depressed or flattened. it is the word with which condivi describes the appearance of michael angelo's nose after it had been broken--it was "_un poco stiacciato; non per natura_," but by the blow of a certain torrigiano, "_huomo bestiale e superbo_."[ ] donatello was fond of this method of work. we have a fine example in london,[ ] and his most successful use of _stiacciato_ is on the roman tabernacle made a few years after the brancacci relief. donatello did not invent this style. it had been used in classical times, though scarcely to the extent of donatello, who drew in the marble. the assyrians also used this low-relief; we find the system fully understood in what are perhaps the most spirited hunting scenes in the world.[ ] in these we also notice the square and rectangular undercutting similar to that in many of donatello's reliefs. another specimen of this very low-relief is found in mr. quincy shaw's marble panel of the virgin and child seated among clouds and surrounded by _putti_. this has been attributed to donatello on good authority,[ ] though it must be remarked that the cherubs' faces show poverty of invention which might suggest the hand of a weaker man. moreover, the cherubs have halos, which is a later development, and quite contrary to donatello's early practice. but the relief is an interesting composition, and if by donatello, may be regarded as the parent of a group which attained popularity. m. gustave dreyfus has a smaller marble variant of great charm, made by desiderio. a stucco panel treated in much the same manner is preserved at berlin. the earl of wemyss has an early version in _repoussé_ silver of high technical merit. from this point of view nothing is more instructive than a madonna and child at milan.[ ] it is probably the work of pierino da vinci, and is a thin oval slab of marble carved on either side. one side is unfinished, and is most valuable as showing the facility with which the sharp graving tools were employed to incise the marble. the composition bears a resemblance to the reliefs just mentioned, and the pose of the two heads is donatellesque, but the child is elongated and ill-drawn. again, from a technical point of view, a medallion portrait of the late lord lytton shows that artists of our own day have used _stiacciato_ with perfect confidence and success.[ ] donatello was not always quite consistent in its employment. in the entombment at padua it is combined with high-relief. he, no doubt, acted deliberately; that is to say, he did not sketch a hand in _stiacciato_, because he had forgotten to provide for it in deeper relief. but the result is that the quality of the different planes is lost, and there are discrepancies in the relative values of distance. the final outcome of _stiacciato_ is the art of the medallist. it is said that donatello made a medal, but nobody has determined which it is. michelozzo certainly made one of bentivoglio, about .[ ] this admirable art, which reached its perfection during donatello's lifetime, owes something of its progress to the pioneer of _stiacciato_. [footnote : "vita di michael angelo," rome, , p. .] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, charge to peter. see p. .] [footnote : british museum, assyrian saloon, nos. - .] [footnote : bode, "florentiner bildhauer," p. .] [footnote : in the museo archeologico in the castello, unnumbered.] [footnote : by alfred gilbert, r.a., belonging to the present earl of lytton.] [footnote : see armand, "les médailleurs italiens," , iii. p. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ tomb plate of bishop pecci siena cathedral] [sidenote: tombs of pecci, crivelli, and others.] the tomb of giovanni de' medici in san lorenzo is interesting, and has been ascribed to donatello. there is no documentary authority for this attribution, and on stylistic grounds it is untenable.[ ] it is a detached tomb, so common elsewhere, but of singular rarity in italy. the isolated tomb like this one, like that of ilaria del carretto, or that of pope sixtus iv. in st. peter's, has great advantages over the tall upright monument _appliqué_ to a church wall. the latter is, however, the ordinary type of the renaissance. the free-standing tomb can be seen from all aspects and lights. although it must be smaller--some of the later wall-tombs are fifty feet high--the sculptor was obliged to keep his entire work well within the range of vision, and had to rely on plastic art alone for success. much admirable sculpture, especially the effigies, has been lost by being placed too high on some pretentious catafalque in relief against a wall. the tomb of giovanni, it is true, though standing in the centre of the sacristy, is covered by a large marble slab, which is the priest's table. it throws the tomb into dark shadow and makes it difficult to see the carving. there are few tombs of important people upon which so much trouble has been expended with so little result. donatello is also said to have made a tomb for the albizzi, but it has perished.[ ] the tomb of chellini in san miniato, which tradition ascribed to donatello, is probably the work of pagno di lapo. the prim and priggish cardinal accaiuoli in the certosa of florence does not suggest donatello's hand. though conscientious and painstaking, the work is without a spark of energy or conviction. these latter are slab-tombs, flat plates fastened into the church pavements. we have two authentic tombs of this character, on both of which donatello has signed his name. had he not done so, we could never have established his authorship of the marble slab-tomb of archdeacon crivelli in the church of ara coeli at rome. it has been trampled by the feet of so many generations, that all the features have been worn away; the legend is wholly effaced in certain parts, and one corner has had to be restored (though at some early date). but at best it cannot have compared with donatello's similar tomb of bishop pecci at siena, and one could quote numerous instances of equally good work by nameless men. there is one close to the crivelli marble itself, another in the pisa baptistery, two in santa croce, and so forth. this kind of tomb had to undergo rough usage. everybody walked upon it: the deep relief made it a receptacle for mud and rubbish. the effigy of the deceased, as was probably intended by him, was humbled in the dust: _adhesit pavimento_. the slabs got injured, and were often protected by low tables with squat legs. later on the slabs were raised enough to prevent people standing on them, and thus became like free-standing tombs; but it only made them more suitable for the sitting requirements of the congregation. these sunken tombs, in fact, became a nuisance. although they were not carved in the very deep relief like those one sees in bavaria, they collected the dirt, and a papal brief was issued to forbid them--_ut in ecclesiis nihil indecens relinquatur_,[ ] and the existing slabs were ordered to be removed. irretrievable damage must have resulted from this edict, but fortunately it was disobeyed in rome and ignored elsewhere. nowadays it has become the custom to place these slabs upright against the walls, thus preventing further detrition. to cavaliere d. gnoli we owe the preservation of the crivelli tomb, which was in danger of complete demolition.[ ] by being embedded in a wall instead of lying in a pavement this kind of monument, while losing its primitive position, often gains in appearance. crivelli, for instance, lies within an architectural niche. his head rests on a pillow, the tassels of which fall downwards towards his feet. when placed against a wall the need for a pillow may vanish, but the meaning and use of the niche becomes apparent, while the tassels no longer defy the laws of gravitation. he becomes a standing figure at once, and the flying _putti_ above his head assume a rational pose. it has been suggested that this and similar tomb-plates were always intended to be placed upright, and that the delicate ornamentation, of which some traces survive, would never have been lavished on marble doomed to gradual destruction. no general rule can be laid down, but undoubtedly most of these slabs were meant to be recumbent. there are few cases where some contradiction of _emplacement_ with pose cannot be detected. but two examples may be noted where the slabs were clearly intended to be placed in walls. an unnamed bishop at bologna lies down, while at either end of the slab an angel _stands_, at right angles to the recumbent figure, holding a pall or curtain over the dead man.[ ] signor bardini also has an analogous marble effigy of a mitred bishop, about - , who lies down while a friar stands behind his head. these slabs were, therefore, obviously made for insertion in a wall, and they are quite exceptional. the tomb-plate of bishop pecci in siena cathedral is less open to objection on the ground of incongruity between its position and the bishop's pose. it is made of bronze, and is set in the tessellated pavement of green, white and mauve marble. technically it is a triumph. although the surface is considerably worn, we have the sense of absolute calm and repose--in striking contrast to the wearied look of brancacci. the bishop died on march , ; a few days previously he wrote his will, while he lay dying--"_sanus mente licet corpore languens_"--and left careful instructions as to his burial in an honourable part of the cathedral and how the exact cost of his funeral was to be met.[ ] in a way the figure resembles st. louis, and donatello probably had the help of michelozzo in the casting. the work itself is extremely good, and the bronze has the rich colour which one finds most frequently in the smaller provincial towns where time is allowed to create its own _patina_. donatello was a bold innovator, and the tomb of coscia, though not the parent of the renaissance theory of funeral monuments, had marked influence upon its evolution. from the simple outdoor tombs placed upon pillars, such as one principally finds north of the apennines, there issued a grander idea which culminated in the monuments of the scaligers at verona. but donatello reverted to the earlier type of indoor tomb, and from his day the tendency to treat them as an integral feature of mural and structural decoration steadily increased. a host of sculptors filled the tuscan churches with those memorials which constitute one of their chief attractions. these men imbued death with its most gentle aspect, concealing the tragedy and sombre meaning of their work with gay arabesques and the most living and lovable creations of their fancy. the _putti_, the bright heraldry, the play of colour, and the opulence of decoration, often distract one's eye from the effigy of the dead: and he, too, is often smiling. he may represent the past: the rest of the tomb is born of the present, and seldom--exception being made for a group of tombs to which reference will be made later on[ ]--seldom is there much regard for the future. the dead at least are not asked to bury their dead. they lie in state, surrounded by all that is most young and blithe in life: it is a death which shows no indifference to the life which is left behind. with them death is in the midst of life, not life in the midst of death. donatello was too severe for the later renaissance, and the brilliant sculptors who succeeded him lost influence in their turn. with the development of sculpture, which during michael angelo's lifetime acquired a technical skill to which donatello never aspired, the tomb became a vehicle for ostentation and display; and there was a reaction towards the harsher symbols of death. instead of the quiet mourner who really mourns, we have the strident and professional weeper--a parody of sorrow. tier upon tier these prodigious monuments rise, covering great spaces of wall, decorated with skulls and skeletons, with time carrying his scythe, with negro caryatides, and with apathetic or showy models masquerading as the cardinal virtues. the effigy itself is often perched up so high as to be invisible, or sitting in a ridiculous posture. "princes' images on their tombs," says bosola in webster's play, "do not lie as they were wont, seeming to pray up to heaven; but with their hands under their cheeks, as if they had died of toothache."[ ] venice excelled in this rotund and sweltering sculpture. yet it cannot be wholly condemned. though artificial, theatrical and mundane, its technical supremacy cannot be denied. the amazing ease with which these huge monuments are contrived, and the absolute sense of mastery shown by the sculptor over the material are qualities too rare to be lightly overlooked. whatever we may think of the artist, our admiration is commanded by the craftsman. [footnote : wreaths and _putti_ form its decoration, and though donatellesque, they are not by donatello. this was pointed out as early as . see "monumenti sepolcrali della toscana," p. .] [footnote : bocchi, .] [footnote : bull., "cum primum," § , "_et ut in ecclesiis nihil indecens relinquatur, iidem provideant, ut capsæ omnes, et deposita, seu alia cadaverum, conditoria super terram existentia omnino amoveantur, pro ut alias statutum fuit, et defunctorum corpora in tumbis profundis, infra terram collocentur_." bullarium, , vol. iv., part ii., p. . for the whole question of the evolution of these tombs, see dr. von lichtenberg's valuable book, "das porträt an grabdenkmalen," strassburg, .] [footnote : see "archivio storico dell' arte," , p. , &c.] [footnote : in santo stefano, cortile di pilato.] [footnote : "misc. storica senese," , p. .] [footnote : see p. .] [footnote : from the duchess of malfi, quoted in symonds' "fine arts," p. .] * * * * * [sidenote: the second visit to rome.] during the year , when florence enjoyed the luxury of driving cosimo de' medici into exile, donatello went to rome in order to advise simone ghini about the tomb of pope martin v.--_temporum suorum filicitas_, as the epitaph says.[ ] this visit to rome, which is not contested, like the visit thirty years earlier, did not last long, and certainly did not divert donatello from the line he had struck out. at this moment the native art of rome was colourless. a generation later it became classical, and then lapsed into decadence. the number of influences at work was far smaller than would at first be imagined. it is generally assumed that rome was the home of classical sculpture. but early in the fifteenth century rome must have presented a scene of desolation. the city had long been a quarry. under vespasian the senate had to pass a decree against the demolition of buildings for the purpose of getting the stone.[ ] rome was plundered by her emperors. she was looted by alaric, genseric, wittig and totila in days when much of her art remained _in situ_. she was plundered by her popes. statues were used as missiles; her marble was exported all over the world--to the cathedrals of orvieto and pisa, even to the abbey church of westminster. suger, trying to get marble columns for his church, looked longingly at those in the baths of diocletian, a natural and obvious source, though happily he stole them elsewhere.[ ] the vandalism proceeded at an incredible pace. pius ii. issued a bull in to check it; in sixtus iv. issued another. pius, however, quarried largely between the capitol and the colosseum. the forum was treated as an ordinary quarry which was let out on contract, subject to a rental equivalent to one-third of the output. but in , and still more during the first visit, there was comparatively little sculpture which would lead donatello to classical ideas. poggio, writing just before donatello's second visit, says he sees almost nothing to remind him of the ancient city.[ ] he speaks of a statue with a complete head as if that were very remarkable--almost the only statue he mentions at all. ghiberti describes two or three antique statues with such enthusiasm that one concludes he was familiar with very few. in fact, before the great digging movement which enthralled the renaissance, antique sculpture was rare. but little of poggio's collection came from rome: even lorenzo de' medici got most of his from the provinces. a century later sabba del castiglione complains of having to buy a donatello owing to the difficulty of getting good antiques.[ ] rome had been devastated by cupidity and neglect as much as by fire and sword. "ruinarum urbis romæ descriptio" is the title of one of poggio's books. alberti says that in his time he had seen ruined churches in the city.[ ] bramantino made drawings of some of them.[ ] pirro ligorio, an architect of some note, gives his recipe for making lime from antique statues--so numerous had they become. but much remained buried before that time, _sotterrate nelle rovine d'italia_,[ ] and vasari explains that brunellesco was delighted with a classical urn at cortona, about which donatello had told him, because such a thing was rare in those times, antique objects not having been dug up in such quantities as during his own day.[ ] but the passion for classical learning developed quickly, and was followed by the desire for classical art. dante had scarcely realised the art of antiquity, though more was extant in than in . petrarch, who was more sympathetic towards it, could scarcely translate an elementary inscription. from the growing desire for knowledge came the search for tangible relics: but love of classical art was founded on sentiment and tradition. as regards the sculptors themselves, their art was less influenced by antiquity than were the arts of poetry, oratory and prose. while rossellino, desiderio, verrocchio and benedetto da maiano maintained their individuality, the indigenous literature of tuscany waned. sculpture retained its freedom longer than the literary arts, and when the latter recovered their national character sculpture relapsed in their place into classicism. from early times sculptors had, of course, learned what they could from classical exemplars. niccola pisano copied at least four classical motives. there was no plagiarism; it was a warm tribute on his part, and at that time a notable achievement to have copied at all. but the imitation of antiquity was carried to absurd lengths. ghiberti, who was a literary man, says that andrea pisano lived in the th olympiad.[ ] but ghiberti remained a renaissance sculptor, and his classical affectation is less noticeable in his statues than in his prose. filippo strozzi went so far as to emancipate his favourite slave, a "_grande nero_," in his will.[ ] but gothic art died hard. the earlier creeds of art lingered on in the byways, and the renaissance was flourishing long before gothic ideas had completely perished--that is to say, renaissance in its widest meaning, that of reincarnated love of art and letters: if interpreted narrowly the word loses its deep significance, for the renaissance engendered forms which had never existed before. but it must be remembered that in sculpture classical ideas preceded classical forms. averlino, or filarete, as a classical whim led him to be called, began the bronze doors of st. peter's just before donatello's visit. they are replete with classical ideas, ignoble and fantastic, but the art is still renaissance. comparatively little classical art was then visible, and its infallibility was not accepted until many years later, when rome was being ransacked for her hidden store of antiquities. statues were exhumed from every heap of ruins, generally in fragments: not a dozen free-standing marble statues have come down to us in their pristine condition. the quarrymen were beset by students and collectors anxious to obtain inscriptions. traders in forgeries supplied what the diggers could not produce. classical art became a fetish.[ ] the noble qualities of antiquity were blighted by the imitators, whose inventive powers were atrophied, while their skill and knowledge left nothing to be desired. excluding the cosmati, rome was the mother of no period or movement of art excepting the rococo. as for donatello himself, he was but slightly influenced by classical motives. his sojourn in rome was short, his time fully occupied; he was forty-seven years old and had long passed the most impressionable years of his life. he was a noted connoisseur, and on more than one occasion his opinion on a question of classical art was eagerly sought. but, so far as his own art was concerned, classical influences count for little. his architectural ideas were only classical through a renaissance medium. when a patron gave him a commission to copy antique gems, he did his task faithfully enough, but without zest and with no ultimate progress in a similar direction. when making a portrait he would decorate the sitter's helmet or breastplate with the cameo which actually adorned it. with one exception, classical art must be sought in his detail, and only in the detail of work upon which the patron's advice could be suitably offered and accepted. donatello may be compared with the great sculptors of antiquity, but not to the extent of calling him their descendant. raffaelle mengs was entitled to regret that the other raffaelle did not live in the days of phidias.[ ] flaxman was justified in expressing his opinion that some of donatello's work could be placed beside the best productions of ancient greece without discredit.[ ] these _obiter dicta_ do not trespass on the domain of artistic genealogy. but it is inaccurate to say, for instance, that the st. george is animated by greek nobility,[ ] since in this statue that quality (whether derived from gothic or renaissance ideals) cannot possibly have come from a classical source. baldinucci is on dangerous ground in speaking of donatello as "_emulando mirabilmente la perfezione degli antichissimi scultori greci_"[ ]--the writer's acquaintance with archaic greek sculpture may well have been small! we need not quarrel with gori for calling donatello the florentine praxiteles; but he is grossly misleading in his statement that donatello took the greatest pains to copy the art of the ancients.[ ] donatello may be the mediæval complement of phidias, but he is not his artistic offspring. [footnote : it is a bronze slab, admirably wrought and preserved, in s. giovanni laterano. were it not for an exuberance of decoration, one might say that donatello was responsible for it; the main lines certainly harmonise with his work. simone ghini was mistaken by vasari for donatello's somewhat problematical brother simone.] [footnote : see codex. just. leg. . cod. de ædif. privatis. a similar law at herculaneum had forbidden people to make more money by breaking up a house than they paid for the house itself, under penalty of being fined double the original outlay. this shows the extent of speculative destruction. reinesius, "synt. inscript. antiq.," , no. .] [footnote : see his libellus in "rer. gall. script.," xiv. .] [footnote : _nihil fere recognoscat quod priorem urbem repræsentet_, in "de varietate fortunæ urbis romæ." nov. thes. antiq. rom., i. .] [footnote : "ricordi," . no. , p. .] [footnote : written about . "de re ædificatoria." paris ed. , p. .] [footnote : _cf._ plate in "le rovine di roma." "tempio circolare." written beside it is "_questo sie uno tempio lo quale e atiuero_ (i.e., _che è presso al tevere_) _dove se chauaue li prede antigha mente_ (i.e., _si cavavano le pietre anticamente_)."] [footnote : vasari, "proemio," i. .] [footnote : _cosa allora rara, non essendosi dissotterata quella abbondanza che si è fatta ne' tempi nostri_, i. .] [footnote : " nd commentary," in vasari, i. xxviii.] [footnote : gaye, i. .] [footnote : _cf._ the action of the directory in year vi. of the french republic. they ordered the statues looted in italy to be paraded in paris--hoping to find the clue to ancient supremacy. louis david pointedly observed, "_la vue ... formera peut-être des savans, des winckelmann: mais des artistes, non_."] [footnote : "works," , i. .] [footnote : "lectures," , p. .] [footnote : semper, p. .] [footnote : ed. , p. .] [footnote : "donatellus, qui primum omnium vetustis monumentis mirifice delectatus est, eaque imitari ac probe exprimere in suis operibus adsidue studuit."--"dactyliotheca smithiana," , ii. p. cxxvi.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ tabernacle st. peter's, rome] [illustration: the charge to peter london] [sidenote: work at rome.] up till a few years ago the most important work donatello made in rome was unknown. we were aware that he had made a tabernacle, but all record of it was lost, until herr schmarsow identified it in .[ ] it was probably made for the church of santa maria della febbre,[ ] and was transported to st. peter's when santa maria was converted into a sacristy. the tabernacle is now in the sacristy of the canons, surrounded by sham flowers and tawdry decoration, which reduce its charms to a minimum. moreover, the miraculous painting of the madonna and child which fills the centrepiece--having, perhaps, replaced a metal grille or marble relief, has been so frequently restored that a discordant element is introduced. the tabernacle is about six feet high; it is made of rather coarse travestine marble, and in several parts shows indications of the hand of an assistant. it has suffered in removal; there are two places where the work has been repaired, and the medallion in the lower frieze has been filled with modern mosaic; otherwise it is in good order. it is essentially an architectural work, but the number of figures introduced has softened the hard lines of the construction, giving it plenty of life. four little angels, rather stumpy and ill-drawn, are sitting on the lower plinth. above them rise the main outer columns which support the upper portion of the tabernacle, and enclose the central opening, where the picture is now fixed. at the base of these columns there are two groups of winged children, three on either side, looking inwards towards the central feature of the composition. they bend forward reverently with their hands joined in prayer and adoration--admirable children, full of shyness and deference. the upper part of the tabernacle, supported on very plain corbels, is occupied by a broad relief, at either end of which stand other winged angels, more boyish and confident than those below. this relief is, perhaps, donatello's masterpiece in _stiacciato_. it is the entombment, his first presentment of those intensely vivid scenes which were so often reproduced during his later years. christ is just being laid in the tomb by two solemn old men with flowing beards, st. joseph and st. peter. the virgin kneels as the body is lowered into the tomb. behind her is st. mary magdalene, her arms extended, her hair dishevelled; scared by the frenzy of her grief. to the right st. john turns away with his face buried in his hands. the whole composition--striking in contrast to the quiet and peaceful figures below--is treated with caution and reserve. but we detect the germ of the pulpits of san lorenzo, where the rough sketch in clay could transmit all its fire and energy to the finished bronze. in this case donatello not only felt the limitations of the marble, but he was not yet inclined to take the portrayal of tragedy beyond a certain point. the moderation of this relief entitles it to higher praise than we can give to some of his later work. the other panel in _stiacciato_ made about this time belonged to the salviati family.[ ] technically the carving is inferior to that in st. peter's, and it may be that in certain parts, especially, for instance, round the heads of christ and one of the apostles, the work is unfinished. christ is seated on the clouds, treated like those on the brancacci panel, and hands the keys to st. peter. the apostles stand by, the virgin kneels in the foreground, and on the left there are two angels like those on the tabernacle. trees are lightly sketched in, and no halos are employed. the work is disappointing, for it is carved in such extraordinarily low-relief that parts of it are scarcely recognisable on first inspection; the marble is also rather defective. as a composition--and this can best be judged in the photograph--the charge to peter is admirable. the balance is preserved with skill, while the figures are grouped in a natural and easy fashion. the row of apostles to the left shows a rendering of human perspective which mantegna, who liked to make his figures contribute to the perspective of the architecture around them, never surpassed. this panel, in spite of bocchi's praise, shares one obvious demerit with the relief in st. peter's. the virgin, who kneels with outstretched hands as she gazes upwards to the christ, is almost identical with a figure on the entombment. she is ugly, with no redeeming feature. the pose is awkward, the drapery graceless, the contour thick, and her face, peering out of the thick veil, is altogether displeasing. one has no right to look for beauty in donatello's statues of adults: character is what he gives. but neither does one expect this kind of vagary. there is great merit in the plaintive and wistful ugliness of the zuccone: here the ugliness is wanton, and therefore inexcusable. the crivelli tomb and the baptist in san giovanni fiorentino have been already described. there were other products of donatello's visit to rome, but they are now lost. tradition still maintains that the wooden baptist in s. giovanni laterano is his work. but it cannot possibly be by him, though it may be a later copy of a fifteenth-century original. curiously enough, there is another baptist in the same church which is donatellesque in character and analogous in some respects to the st. john at siena, namely, the large bronze statue signed by valadier and dated . valadier was a professional copyist, some of his work being in the louvre. where he got the design for this baptist we do not know; but it is certainly not typical of the late eighteenth century. titi mentions a head in santa maria sopra minerva, and a medallion portrait of canon morosini in santa maria maggiore.[ ] neither of them can be found. [footnote : see schmarsow, p. .] [footnote : see "arch. storico dell' arte," , p. .] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , . bocchi says: "_un quadro di marmo di mano di donatello di basso relievo: dove è effigiato quando da le chiavi cristo a s. pietro. estimata molto da gli artefici questa opera: la quale per invenzione è rara, e per disegno maravigliosa. molto è commendata la figura di cristo, e la prontezza che si scorge nel s. pietro. e parimente la madonna posta in ginocchione, la quale in atto affetuoso ha sembiante mirabile e divoto_," p. .] [footnote : "ammaestramento utile," , p. . "_una testa nel deposito a mano destra della porta maggiore, è scoltura di donatello fiorentino._" in chapel of paul v., sta. m. maggiore: "_in terra in una lapide vi è di profilo la figura del canonico morosini, opera di donatello famoso scultore e architetto._" _ibid._ p. .] * * * * * [sidenote: the medici medallions.] the medici did not remain in exile long, and their return to florence marks an epoch in the artistic as well as the political history of tuscany. from this moment the sway of the private collector and patron began. gradually the great churches and corporations ceased giving orders on the grand scale, for much of the needful decoration was by then completed. by the middle of the century patronage was almost wholly vested in the magnates of commerce and politics: if a chapel were painted or a memorial statue set up, in most cases the artist worked for the donor, and not for the church authorities. the monumental type of sculpture became more rare, _bric à brac_ more common. well-known men like donatello received the old kind of commission to the end of their lives, while younger men, though fully occupied, were seldom entrusted with comprehensive orders. even michael angelo was more dependent on the pope than upon the church. among the earliest commissions given by the medici after their return was an order for marble copies of eight antique gems. these were placed in the courtyard of their florentine house, now called the palazzo riccardi. they are colossal in size, and represent much labour and no profit to art. nothing is more suitably reproduced on a cameo than a good piece of sculpture; but the engraved gem is the last source to which sculpture should turn for inspiration. donatello had to enlarge what had already been reduced; it was like copying a corrupt text. the size of these medallions accentuates faults which were unnoticed in the dainty gem. the intaglio of diomede and the palladium (now in naples) is too small to show the fault which is so glaring in the marble relief, where diomede is in a position which it is impossible for a human being to maintain. but the relief is admirably carved: nothing could be better than the straining sinews of the thigh; and it is of interest as being the only one which is related to any other work of the sculptor. the head of one of the angels in the brancacci assumption is taken from this diomede or from some other version of it. a similar treatment is found in madame andré's relief of a young warrior. it has been pointed out that some of the gems from which these medallions were made did not come into the medici collections until many years later.[ ] cosimo may have owned casts of the originals, or donatello may have copied them in rome, for they belonged at this time to the papal glyptothek, from which they were subsequently bought. the subjects of these roundels are ulysses and athena, a faun carrying bacchus, two incidents of bacchus and ariadne, a centaur, dædalus and icarus, a prisoner before his victor, and the diomede. gems became very popular and expensive: a school of engravers grew up who copied, invented, and forged. carpaccio introduced them into his pictures,[ ] and botticelli used them so freely that they almost became the ruling element of decoration in the "calumny." gems are incidentally introduced in donatello's bust of the so-called young gattamelata, and on goliath's helmet below the bronze david. the medusa head occurs on the base of the judith, on the turin sword hilt, and on the armour of general gattamelata. so much of donatello's work has perished that it is almost annoying to see how well these medici medallions are preserved--the work in which his individuality was allowed little play, and in which he can have taken no pride. [footnote : molinier, "les plaquettes," , p. xxvi.] [footnote : _cf._ st. ursula, accademia, venice, no. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ the bronze david bargello, florence] [sidenote: the bronze david.] according to vasari, the bronze david was made for cosimo before the exile of the medici, and consequently previous to donatello's second journey to rome. it was removed from the courtyard of the palace to the palazzo pubblico, where it remained for many years. doni mentions it as being there in ,[ ] and soon afterwards it was replaced by verrocchio's fountain of the boy squeezing the dolphin. it is now in the bargello. the base has been lost. albertini says it was made of variegated marbles.[ ] vasari says it was a simple column.[ ] it has been suggested that the marble pillar now supporting the judith belonged to the david, but the david is even less fitted to this ill-conceived and pedantic shaft than judith herself. the david soon acquired popularity; the french envoy, pierre de rohan, wanted a copy of it. it was certainly a remarkable innovation, being probably the first free-standing nude statue made in italy for a thousand years. there had been countless nude figures in relief, but the david was intended to be seen from every side of cosimo's _cortile_. there was no experimental stage with donatello; his success was immediate and indeed conclusive. david is a stripling. he stands over the head of goliath, a sword in one hand and a stone in the other, wearing his helmet, a sort of sun-hat in bronze which is decorated with a chaplet of leaves; below his feet is a wreath of bay. it is a consistent study in anatomy. the david is perhaps sixteen years old, agile and supple, with a hand which is big relative to the forearm, as nature ordains. the back is bony and rather angular; the torso is brilliantly wrought, with a purity of outline and a _morbidezza_ which made the artists in vasari's time believe the figure had been moulded from life. one might break the statue into half a dozen pieces, and every fragment would retain its vitality and significance. the limbs are alert and full of young strength, with plenty more held in reserve: it is heroic in all respects except dimension. the face is clear cut, and each feature is rendered with precision. the expression is one of dreamy contemplation as he looks downwards on the spoils and proof of conquest. david hath slain his tens of thousands! finally the quality of the statue is enhanced by the care with which the bronze has been chiselled. goliath's helmet, and david's greaves, on which the _fleur de lys florencée_ has been damascened, are decorated with unfailing tact. the embellishment is in itself a pleasure to the eye, but it is prudently contained within its legitimate sphere; for donatello would not allow the accessory to invade the statue itself, which is the chief fault of the rival david by verrocchio. donatello's statue marks an epoch in the study of anatomy. it is a genuine interpretation of a very perfect piece of humanity; but his knowledge compared with that of his successors was empiric. leonardo's subtle skill was based upon dissection. michael angelo likewise studied from the human corpse, distasteful as he found the process. donatello had no such scientific training: he had no help from the surgeon or the hospital, hence mistakes; his doubt, for instance, about the connection between ribs and pectoral bones was never resolved. but, notwithstanding this lack of technical data, the bronze david has a distinction which is absent in statues made by far more learned men. donatello's intuition supplied what one would not willingly exchange for the most exact science of the specialist. the david was an innovation, but the phrase must be guarded. it was only an innovation so far as it was a free-standing study from the nude. nothing is more misleading than the commonplace that christianity was opposed to the representation of the nude in its proper place. the early church, no doubt, underwent a prolonged reaction against all that it might be assumed to connote; one might collect many quotations from patristic literature to this effect. but the very articles of the christian creed militated against the ultimate scorn of the human body: the doctrine of the resurrection alone was enough to give it more sanctity than could be derived from all the polytheism of antiquity. the baptism of christ, the descent into limbo, and the crucifixion itself, were scenes from which the use of drapery had to be less or more discarded. the porches and frontals of gothic churches abounded in nude statuary, from scenes in the garden of eden down to the last judgment. abuses crept in, of course, and the faith protested against them. the advancing standard of comfort and, no doubt, a steadily deteriorating climate, diminished the everyday familiarity with undraped limbs. clothes became numerous and more normal; the artist came to be regarded as the purveyor of what had ceased to be of natural occurrence. he was encouraged by the connoisseur, lay and cleric, who found his literature in antiquity, and then demanded classical forms in his art. the nude was arbitrarily employed: there was no biblical authority for a naked david, and donatello was therefore among the first to err in this respect. the taste for this kind of thing sprang from humanism, and throve with hellenism, till a counter-reaction came suddenly in the sixteenth century. michael angelo was hotly attacked for his excessive study from the nude as prejudicial to morals.[ ] ammanati wrote an abject apology to the accademia del disegno for the very frank nudity of his statues.[ ] some of the work of bandinelli and bronzino had to be removed. what was a rational and healthy protest has survived in grotesque and ill-fitting drapery made of tin--very negation of propriety. although needed for biblical imagery, the nude in italy was always exotic; in greece it was indigenous. from the time of homer there had been a worship of physical perfection. the palæstra, the cultivation of athletics in a nation of soldiers, the religions of the country, with its favourable atmosphere, climate, and stone, all combined to make the nude a normal aspect of human life. but it was not the sole inspiration of their art: in sparta, where there was most nude there was least art; in italy, when there was worst art there was most nude. [footnote : "_... una colonna nel mezzo dove è un davitte di donatello dignissimo._" letter to alberto lollio, . viii. , bottari, iii. .] [footnote : _giù abasso è davit di bronzo sopra la colonna fine di marmo variegato._ "memoriale."] [footnote : "life of bandinelli," x. .] [footnote : "due dialogi di giovanni andrea gilio da fabriano," ; a tiresome and discursive tirade.] [footnote : . viii. . reprinted in bottari, ii. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ cantoria in opera del duomo, florence] [sidenote: donatello and childhood.] michael angelo strove to attain the universal form. his world was peopled with titans, and he realised his ambition of portraying generic humanity: not, indeed, by making conventional, but by eliminating everything that was not typical. the earliest plastic art took clay and moulded the human form; the next achievement was to make specific man--the portrait; lastly, to achieve what was universal--the type. the progress was from man, to man in particular, and ultimately to man in general. there was a final stage when the typical lost its type without reverting to the specific, to the portrait. the successors of michael angelo were among the most skilful craftsmen who ever existed; but their knowledge only bore the fruit of unreality. donatello did not achieve the typical except in his children: it was only in children that michael angelo failed. he missed this supreme opportunity; those on the roof of the sistine chapel are solemn and grown old with care: children without childhood. with donatello all is different. his greatness and title to fame largely rest upon his typical childhood: his sculpture bears eloquent witness to the closest observation of all its varying and changeful moods. others have excelled in this or that interpretation of child-life: greuze with his sentimentalism, the dutch painters with their stolidity. in velasquez every child is the scion of some royal house, in murillo they are all beggars. they are too often stupid in michelozzo: in andrea della robbia they are always sweet and winsome; pigalle's children know too much. donatello alone grasped the whole psychology. he watched the coming generation, and foresaw all that it might portend: tragedy and comedy, labour and sorrow, work and play--plenty of play; and every problem of life is reflected and made younger by his chisel. how far the sculptors of the fifteenth century employed classical ideas is not easily determined. there was, however, one classical form which was widely used, namely, the flying _putti_ holding a wreath or coat-of-arms between them: we find it on the frieze of the st. louis niche, and it is repeated on judith's dress. the wreath or garland, of which the greeks were so fond, became a favourite motive for the renaissance mantelpiece. the classical _amoretti_, of which many versions in bronze existed, were also frequently copied. but there was one radical difference between the children of antiquity and those of the renaissance. though children were introduced on to classical sarcophagi and so forth, it is impossible to say that it was for the sake of their youth. there are genii in plenty; and in the imps which swarm over the emblematic figure of the nile in the vatican the sculptor shows no love or respect for childhood. there is no child on the parthenon frieze, excepting a cupid, who has really no claim to be reckoned as such. donatello could not have made a relief yards long without introducing children, whether their presence were justified or not. he would probably have overcrowded the composition with their young forms. whether right or wrong, he uses them arbitrarily, as simple specimens of pure joyous childhood. antique sculpture, too, had its arbitrary and conventional adjuncts--the satyr and the bacchic attendants; but how dreary that the vacant spaces in a relief should have to rely upon what is half-human or offensive--the avowedly inhuman gargoyles of the thirteenth century are infinitely to be preferred. donatello was possessed by the sheer love of childhood: with him they are boys, _fanciulli ignudi_,[ ] very human boys, which, though winged and stationed on a font, were boys first and angels afterwards. and he overcame the immense technical difficulties which childhood presents. the model is restive and the form is immature, the softness of nature has to be rendered in the hardest material. the lines are inconsequent, and the limbs do not yet show the muscles on which plastic art can usually depend. nothing requires more deftness than to give elasticity to a form which has no external sign of vigour. so many sculptors failed to master this initial difficulty--verrocchio, for instance. he made the bronze fountain in the palazzo pubblico, and an equally fine statue of similar dimensions now belonging to m. gustave dreyfus. both have vivacity and movement, but both have also a fat stubby appearance; the flesh has the consistency of pudding, and though soft and velvety in surface is without the inner meaning of the children on the cantoria. in this work, where donatello has carved some three dozen children, we have a series of instantaneous photographs. nobody else had enough knowledge or courage to make rigid bars of children's legs: here they swing on pivots from the hip-joint. it is the true picture of life, rendered with superlative skill and _bravura_. but donatello's children serve a purpose, if only that of decoration. at padua they form a little orchestra to accompany the duets. the singing angels there are among the most charming of the company; and whether intentionally or not, they give the impression of having forgotten the time, or of being a little puzzled by the music-book! but donatello fails to express the exquisite modulation by which luca della robbia almost gives actual sound to his cantoria: where one sees the swelling throat, the inflated lungs, the effort of the higher notes, and the voice falling to reach those which are deep. luca's children, it is true, are bigger and older; but in this respect he was unsurpassed, even by painters whose medium should have placed them beyond rivalry in such a respect. the choir of piero della francesca's nativity is so well contrived that one can distinguish the alto from the tenor; but luca was able to do even more. he gives cadence, rhythm and expression where others did no more than represent the voice. donatello's dancing children are more important than his musicians. he was able to give free vein to his fancy. we have flights of uncontrollable children, romping and rioting, dashing to and fro, playing and laughing as they pass about garlands among them. and their self-reliance is worth noticing; they are absorbed in their dance--children dance rather heavily--and only a few of them look outwards. there is no self-consciousness, no appeal to the spectator: they are immensely busy, and enjoy life to the full. then we have a more demure type of childhood: they are shield-bearers on the gattamelata monument, or occupy an analogous position on the lower part of the cantoria. others hold the cartel or epitaph as on the coscia tomb. and again donatello introduces children as pure decoration. the triangular base of the judith, for instance, and the bronze capital which supports the prato pulpit, have childhood for their sole motive. he smuggles children on to the croziers of st. louis and bishop pecci: they are the supporters of gattamelata's saddle: they decorate the vestments of san daniele. they share the tragedy of the pietà, and we have them in his reliefs. the entire frieze of the pulpits of san lorenzo is simply one long row of children--some two hundred in all. [footnote : contract with domopera of siena. payment for wax, for making the bronze figures for the baptistery. , iv. . lusini, .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ cantoria (detail) florence] [sidenote: the cantoria.] the cantoria, or organ-loft, of the florentine cathedral was ordered soon after donatello's return from rome, and was erected about . it was placed over one of the sacristy doors, corresponding in position with luca della robbia's cantoria on the opposite side of the choir. the ill-fortune which dispersed the paduan altar and donatello's work for the façade likewise caused the removal of this gallery. late in the seventeenth century a royal marriage was solemnised, for which an orchestra of unusual numbers was required, and the two _cantorie_ were removed as inadequate. the large brackets remained _in situ_ for some time, but were afterwards taken away also. the two galleries have now been re-erected at either end of the chief room of the opera del duomo. but the size of the galleries is considerable, and they occupy so much of the end walls to which they are fixed, that it is impossible to see the sides or outer panels of either cantoria. in the case of luca's gallery, the side panels have been replaced by facsimiles, and the originals can be minutely examined, being only four or five feet from the ground, and very suggestive they are. as the side panels of donatello's gallery are equally invisible in their present position they might also be brought down to the eye level. comparison with luca's work would then be still more simplified. but though in a trying light, and too low down, the sculpture shows that it was donatello who gave the more careful attention to the conditions under which the work would be seen. the delicacy and grace of luca's choir make donatello's boys look coarse and rough-hewn. but in the dim cathedral, where donatello's children would appear bold and vivacious, the others would look insipid and weak. moreover, the lower tier of luca's panels beneath the projection and enclosed by the broad brackets, would have been in such a subdued light that some of the heads in low-relief would have been scarcely emphasised at all. in reconstructing donatello's gallery an error has been made by which a long band of mosaic runs along the whole length of the relief, above the children's heads. m. reymond has pointed out that the ground level should have been raised in order to prevent what donatello would undoubtedly have avoided, namely, a blank and meaningless stretch of mosaic.[ ] m. reymond's brilliant suggestion about a similar point in regard to the other cantoria, a criticism which has been verified in a remarkable manner, entitles his suggestion to great weight. the angles of the cantoria where the side panels join the main relief lack finish: something like the pilasters which cover the angles of the judith base are required. as for the design, the gallery made by luca della robbia has an advantage over donatello's in that the figures are not placed behind a row of columns. there is something tantalising in the fact that the most boisterous and roguish of all the troop is concealed by a pillar of spangled white and gold. these pillars were perhaps needed to break the long line of the relief: but they have no such significance, as, for instance, the row of pillars on the saltarello tomb,[ ] behind which the bishop's effigy lies--a barrier between the living and the dead, across which the attendant angels can drop the curtain. donatello's gallery is, perhaps, over-decorated. there is less gilding now than formerly, and the complex ornament does not materially interfere with the broad features of the design: but a little more reserve would not have been amiss. [footnote : reymond, i., p. .] [footnote : by nino pisano, in sta. caterina, pisa.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ the prato pulpit] [sidenote: the prato pulpit.] the second work in which donatello took his inspiration exclusively from childhood is at prato. it is an external pulpit, fixed at the southern angle of the cathedral façade, and employed to display the most famous relic possessed by the town, namely, the girdle of the virgin. the first contract was made as early as with donatello and michelozzo, _industriosi maestri_, to whom careful measurements were given.[ ] the sculptors promised to finish the work by september , . five years later, there was still no pulpit, and having vainly invoked the aid of cosimo, they finally sent to rome, where donatello had by then gone, and a revised contract was made with the industrious sculptors, though michelozzo is not mentioned by name.[ ] the work was finished in about four years, and within three weeks of signing the new contract one of the reliefs was completed; it may, of course, have been already begun. its success was immediate. "all say with one accord that never has such a work of art been seen before;" and the writer of the entertaining letter from which this eulogy is quoted goes on to say that donatello is of good disposition; that such men are not found every day, and that he had better be encouraged by a little money.[ ] the prato pulpit has seven marble reliefs on mosaic grounds, separated by twin pilasters: there are thirty-two children in all.[ ] it is a most attractive work, cleverly placed against the decorous little cathedral and not surrounded by sculpture of the first order with which to make invidious comparisons. but beside the cantoria it is almost insignificant. the prato children dance too, but without the perennial spring; they have plenty of movement, but seem apt to stumble. they do not scamper along with the feverish enthusiasm of the other children: they must get very tired. moreover, several of the panels are confused. they are, of course, crowded, for donatello liked crowds, especially for his children; but his crowds were well marshalled and the individual figures which composed them were not allowed to suffer by their surroundings anatomically. the prato children belong to a chubby and robust type. they have a tendency to short necks and unduly big heads which sink on to the torso. michelozzo never grasped the spirit of childhood; those at montepulciano were not a success, and he was largely responsible for the prato pulpit; it has been suggested that simone ferrucci also assisted. certainly it would be michelozzo's idea to divide the frieze into compartments, which interrupt the continuity of the relief and necessitate fourteen terminal points instead of four on the cantoria. we can also detect michelozzo's hand in the rather stiff and professional details of the architecture. but he seems to have also executed some of the reliefs, even if the general idea from which he worked should have been donatello's. thus the panel most remote from the cathedral façade is involved in design and faulty in execution; and the children's expression is aimless and dull. but it must not be inferred that the prato pulpit is in any sense a failure, or even displeasing. its popularity is thoroughly well deserved. the test of comparison with the cantoria is most searching, too severe indeed, for such a high standard could not be maintained. but if the _capo d'opera_ of sculptured child-life be excluded, the prato pulpit will always retain a well-deserved popularity. two further points should be noted. below the pulpit is a bronze relief, shaped like the capital of a large column. there should be two of them, and it used to be believed that the second was destroyed in when the spanish troops sacked the town. but the story is apocryphal, for the documents show that payment was only made for one relief, and that michelozzo was entirely responsible for the casting. it is a most decorative panel, the motive being ribands and wreaths, among which there are eleven winged _putti_ of different sizes. at the top of the capital is a big baby in high-relief peeping over the edge; an exquisite fancy reminding us of the two inquisitive children clambering over the heraldic shields on the pecci monument. on the base of the capital are two other _putti_ of equal charm, winged like the rest, and sedately looking outwards in either direction. the volutes of the bronze are decorated with other figures, less boyish and almost suggesting the touch of ghiberti, who, it may be remarked, was appointed assessor of the contract by the wardens of the girdle. finally, one may inquire what donatello's motive can have been in designing the frieze: what may be the relation of the sculpture to the precious girdle. no conclusive answer can be given. in the organ-loft of luca della robbia the object was to show praise of the lord "with all kinds of instruments"[ ]: donatello's was to "let them praise his name in the dance."[ ] at prato we have dance and music for no apparent reason, except perhaps as a display of joyfulness appropriate to the great festival of exhibiting the _cingolo_. it is possible that the curious little reliquary in which the girdle is actually preserved may supply the clue to some legend or tradition connected with the relic. this _cofanetto_ was remodelled about this time, and the primitive motive and design may have been impaired. but we have a series of winged _putti_ made of ivory, who dance and play about much as those on the pulpit, but amongst whom one can see scraps of rope, signifying the girdle, from which they derive their incentive to joy and vivacity. [footnote : , vii. .] [footnote : , v. .] [footnote : letter from matteo degli orghani, printed with the other documents in c. guasti, opere, iv. - .] [footnote : a pair of terra-cotta variants of these panels are preserved in the wallace collection at hertford house.] [footnote : psalm cl.] [footnote : psalm cxlix.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ bronze amorino bargello] [sidenote: other children by donatello.] there are six _putti_ above the annunciation in santa croce. they are made of terra-cotta, while the rest of the work is in stone, and designed in such a way that the children are superfluous. they are, however, undoubtedly by donatello, and may have been added as an afterthought. two stand on either side of the curved tympanum, clinging to each other as they look downwards, and afraid of falling over the steep precipice. their attitude is shy and timid, as leonardo said was advisable when making little children standing still.[ ] though unnecessary, their presence on the relief is justified by donatello's skill and humour. in the great reliefs at padua, siena and lille he introduces them without any specific object, though he contrives that they shall show fear or surprise in response to the incident portrayed. it is puzzling to know what the bronze boy in the bargello should be called. perseus, mercury, cupid, allegory and amorino have been suggested: he combines attributes of them all together with the budding tail of a faun, and the _gambali_, the buskin-trouser of the tuscan peasant[ ]--"_vestito in un certo modo bizzarro_" as vasari says. cinelli thought it classical, and it resembles an undoubted antique in the louvre. donatello has clearly taken classical motives; the winged feet and the serpents twining between them are not renaissance in form or idea. but the statue itself is closely akin to the cantoria children, but being in bronze shows a higher polish, and, moreover, is treated in a less summary fashion. it is a brilliant piece of bronze: colour, cast and chiselling are alike admirable, and there is a vibration in the movement as the saucy little fellow looks up laughing, having presumably just shot off an arrow; or possibly he has been twanging a wire drawn tightly between the fingers. it throws much light on the bronze boys at padua made ten or fifteen years later. this florentine boy shows how completely donatello, perhaps with the assistance of a caster, could render his meaning in bronze. in two or three cases at padua the work is clumsy and slipshod, showing how he allowed his assistants to take liberties which he would never have countenanced in work finished by his own hands. the bargello has another amorino of bronze, a nude winged boy standing on a cockleshell, and just about to fly away; quite a pleasing statuette, and executed with skill except as regards the extremities of the fingers, where the bronze has failed. it resembles donatello's _putti_ who play and dance on the corners of the tabernacle of quercia's font at siena; but the base of this figure differs from that of the other four. a fifth of the sienese _putti_ was recently bought in london for the berlin gallery, an invaluable acquisition to that growing collection.[ ] this group, however, is less important than the wonderful pair of bronze _putti_ belonging to madame andré.[ ] these are much larger: they carry candle-sockets and are lightly draped with a few ribands and garlands: judging from the way they are huddled up, it is possible that they formed part of a larger work. they appear to be a good deal later than the cantoria, though they do not show any technical superiority to the large bargello amorino; but they have not quite got that freshness which cannot be dissociated from work made between and . madame andré has another superb donatello--a marble boy: his attitude is unbecoming, but the modelling of this admirable statue--the urchin is nearly life-sized--is almost unequalled. there is a similar figure in the louvre made by some imitator. it need hardly be said that donatello's children, especially the free-standing bronze statuettes, were widely copied. according to vasari, donatello designed the wooden _putti_ carrying garlands in the new sacristy of the duomo. there are fourteen of these boys, and they overstep the cornice like michelozzo's angels in the capella portinari at milan. donatello may have given the sketch for one or two, but there is a lack of intelligence about them, besides a certain monotony. moreover, it is improbable that donatello would have designed garlands so bulky that they threaten to push the little boys who carry them off the cornice. in spite of its faults, this frieze is charming. the _naïveté_ of the quattrocento often invests its errors with attraction. it would be wearisome to catalogue the scores of bronze children which show undoubted imitation of donatello. they exist in every great collection, one of exceptional merit being in london.[ ] a large school sprang into existence, chiefly in padua and venice, whence it spread all over northern italy, and produced any number of bronze works which recall one or other feature of donatello's children. but they never approached donatello. their work was a sort of _minuteria_--table ornaments, plaquettes, inkstands, and the ordinary decoration of a sitting-room. monumental childhood almost ceased to exist in italian plastic art, and, after michael angelo, degenerated into stout and prosperous children lolling in clouds and diving among the draperies which adorned the later altars and tombs. their didactic value was soon lost to italian sculpture, and with it went their inherent grace and significance. donatello was among the first as he was among the last seriously to apply to sculpture the words _ex ore infantium perfecisti laudem_. [footnote : "trattato della pintura," richter, i. .] [footnote : this open form of trouser, of which one sees a variant on the martelli david, was also classical. the athis or phrygian shepherd usually wears something of the kind.] [footnote : very similar classical types are in the british museum, no. ; and the eros springing forward in the forman collection (dispersed in ) is almost identical.] [footnote : from the piot collection. figured in "gaz. des beaux arts," , iii. .] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , . a winged boy carrying a dolphin.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ san giovannino faenza museum] [sidenote: boys' busts.] it is inexplicable that modern criticism should withdraw from donatello all the free-standing or portrait-busts of boys, while going to the opposite extreme in ascribing to him an enormous number of madonnas. we know that donatello was passionately fond of carving children on his reliefs: we also know that only two versions of the madonna can be really authenticated as his work. why should donatello have made no busts of boys when it is not denied that he was responsible for something like one hundred boys in full-length; and how does it come about that scores of madonnas should be attributed to him when we only have the record of a few? there can be no doubt that donatello would not have rested content with children in relief or in miniature. the very preparation of his numerous works in this category must have led him to make busts as well, quite apart from his own inclinations. the stylistic method of argument should not be abused: if driven to a strict and logical conclusion it becomes misleading. it ignores the human element in the artist. it pays no attention to his desire to vary the nature of his work or to make experiments. it eliminates the likelihood of forms which differ from the customary type, and it makes no allowance for possibilities or probabilities, least of all for mistakes. it is purely on stylistic grounds that each bust connected with donatello's name has been withdrawn from the list of his works. a fashion had grown up to ascribe to donatello all that delightful group of marble busts now scattered over europe. numbers were obviously the work of competent but later men: rossellino, desiderio, mino da fiesole, and so forth. there remain others which are more doubtful, but which in one detail or another are alleged to be un-donatellesque, and have therefore been fearlessly attributed to other sculptors from whose authenticated work they often dissent. that, however, was immaterial, the primary object being to disinherit donatello without much thought as to his lawful successor in title. a critical discrimination between these busts was an admitted need; everything of the kind had been conventionally ascribed to donatello just as luca della robbia was held responsible for every bit of glazed terra-cotta. these ascriptions to the most fashionable and lucrative names had become conventional, and had to be destroyed. invaluable service has been rendered by reducing the number given to donatello and adding to the number properly ascribed to others. but the process has gone too far. the difficulties are, of course, great, and stylistic data offer the only starting-point; but as these data are readily found by comparison with donatello's accepted work, it ought to be possible, on the fair and natural assumption that donatello may well have made such busts, to determine the authenticity of a certain proportion. in any case, it would be less difficult to prove that donatello did, than that he did not make statues of this description. among the busts of very young boys which cannot be assigned to donatello are those belonging to herr benda in vienna, and to m.g. dreyfus in paris. nothing can exceed their softness and delicacy of modelling, and they are among the most winning statuettes in the world. they were frequently copied by desiderio and his _entourage_. one of the little heads in the vanchettoni chapel at florence is likewise animated by a similar exemplar. there is something girlish about them, a pursuit of prettiness which is no doubt the source of their singular attraction, and which invests them with an irresistible charm. the san giovannino, also in the vanchettoni, is a more concrete version of childhood, but is by the same hand as its fellow. these four busts fail to characterise the child's head; not indeed that characterisation was needed to make an enchanting work, but that donatello's children elsewhere show more of the individual touches of the master and personal notes of the child. the duke of westminster possesses a life-sized head of a boy,[ ] which is palpably by donatello, though no document exists to prove it. we have all the essentials of donatello's modelling; the handling is uncompromising and firm; the child is treated more like a portrait. indeed, many of these children's busts, even when symbolised by st. john's rough tunic, were avowed portraits--the martelli san giovannino, for instance, which from vasari's time has been ascribed, and probably with justice, to donatello. this little head enjoys a reputation which it scarcely deserves. the expression is dull, the hair grows so low that scarcely any forehead is visible; the cheeks bulge out, and the mouth is too small. we have, in fact, a lifelike presentment of some boy, perhaps of the martelli family, showing him at his least prepossessing moment, when the bloom of childhood has passed away, and before the lines have been fined down and merged into the stronger contours of youth. desiderio would have improved nature by modifying the boy's features, and we should have had a work comparable to those previously mentioned. but donatello (and perhaps his patrons) preferred a less idealised version. the martelli figure, and a most important boy's bust belonging to frau hainauer in berlin, are now usually ascribed to rossellino. but his st. john in the bargello, where all the features are softened down, and his authenticated work in san miniato and elsewhere, make the attribution open to question. the st. john at faenza is also denied to be by donatello; one of the critics who is quite certain on the point believes the bust to be made of wood! these problems cannot be settled by spending ten _lire_ on photographs. the bust at faenza,[ ] though a faithful portrait, is one of the most romantic specimens of childhood depicted by donatello. admirably modelled, and with a surface like ivory, it gives the intimate characteristics of the model. nothing has been embellished or suppressed, if we may judge from the absolute sequence and correspondence of all the features. the flat head, the projecting mouth, and the much-curved nose, are sure signs of accurate and painstaking observation; they combine to give it a personal note which adds much to its abstract merits. the st. john in the louvre[ ] is also a portrait, but of an older boy, in whom the first signs of maturity are faintly indicated: lines on the forehead, a stronger neck, and a harder accentuation of nose and mouth. but he is still a boy, though he will soon go forth into the wilderness. by the side of the faenza giovannino he would appear rough; beside the vienna and dreyfus statuettes he would be harsh and unsympathetic. he has no smiling countenance, no fascinating twinkle of the eye: the type has not been generalised as in desiderio's work, and it therefore lacks those qualities, the very absence of which makes it most donatellesque. the fundamental distinction between donatello and the later masters can be emphasised by comparing this bust with another group of terra-cotta heads, which are analogous, although the boy in them is older. one in the berlin gallery[ ] has been painted, and no final judgment can be passed until the more recent accretions of oil-colour have been removed. but the whole conception is weakly and vapid. the brown eyes, the nicely rouged cheeks, the mincing look, and the affectation of the pose make a genteel page-boy of him, and all suggest a later imitation--about perhaps--and contemporary with the somewhat analogous though better rendering in the louvre.[ ] the version belonging to m. dreyfus differs in certain details from the berlin bust, and it has been fortunate in escaping careless painting; it has more vigour and virility. one remark may be made about the faenza, grosvenor house, martelli, hainauer and louvre busts: they all show a peculiarity in the treatment of the hair. it is bunched together and drawn back from behind the ears, and is gathered on the nape of the neck, down which it seems to curl. this is precisely the treatment observed in the mandorla relief, the martelli david, the young gattamelata, and the amorino in the bargello: in a lesser degree it is observable in the isaac and the siena virtues. the point is not one upon which stress could properly be laid, but it is a further point of contact between donatello's accepted work and some few out of the numerous boys' busts which he must inevitably have made. [footnote : in grosvenor house. bronze; generally known as "the laughing boy."] [footnote : its proportion is impaired by the basal drapery, which was grafted to the statue at a later date. this bust belonged to sabba da castiglione, who was very proud of it. he was born within twenty years of donatello's death.] [footnote : no. . marble. goupil bequest.] [footnote : stucco, no. a. _cf._ also one belonging to herr richard von kaufmann, berlin.] [footnote : no. , st. john, florentine school, a painting.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ niccolÒ da uzzano bargello, florence] [sidenote: niccolò da uzzano and polychromacy.] the bust of niccolò da uzzano has gained its widespread popularity from its least genuine feature--namely, the paint with which it is disfigured. the daubs of colour give it a fictitious importance, an actual realism which invests it with the illusion of living flesh and blood. this is all the more unfortunate, as the bust is a remarkable work, and does not gain by being made into a "speaking likeness." its merits can best be appreciated in a cast, where the form is reproduced without the dubious embellishments of later times. niccolò was a high-minded patrician, an implacable opponent of the medici, and a warm friend of higher education: it is also of interest that he should have been an executor of the will of john xxiii. he was born in , and died in . the bust is made of terra-cotta, and shows a man of sixty-five or so, and would therefore be coeval with the later campanile prophets (but nothing beyond old tradition can be accepted as authority for the nomenclature). the modelling of the head is quite masterly. niccolò is looking rather to the left; his keen and hawklike countenance, and his piercing eyes, deep set and quivering within pendulous eyelids, give a sense of invincible logic and penetration. the laconic, matter-of-fact mouth, and the resolute jaw add strength and courage to the physiognomy: the nose and its disdainful nostrils are those of the haughty optimate. the head is, however, less fine than the face: a skull of rather common proportions, and a sloping though broad forehead are its marked features. donatello has given him an ugly ear; niccolò's ear was, therefore, ugly, and the throat is swollen. the shoulders are covered with a thick piece of drapery, leaving the throat and upper part of the breast bare. such is the impression conveyed by niccolò in the cast. in the bargello the colouring modifies what the form itself was meant to suggest. the smallest error of a paint-brush, the slightest deepening of a pigment, are quite sufficient to make radical alterations in the sentiment of a statue. when applied to plastic art, colour is potent enough to change the essential purpose of the sculptor. the chief reason why the terra-cotta bust of st. john at berlin looks flippant and fastidious is, that the painter was indiscreet in drawing the eyebrows and lips: owing to his carelessness, they do not coincide with the features indicated by the modeller, and the entire character of the boy is consequently changed. the question of polychromacy in donatello's sculpture is of great importance, and requires some notice. it is no longer denied that classical statues were frequently coloured. the parthenon frieze and many celebrated monuments of antiquity were picked out with colour. others received some kind of polish, _circumlitio_,--like the dark varnish which is on the face of the coscia effigy. again, the use of ivory, precious stones, and metal was common. the lips and eyeballs were frequently overlaid by thin slabs of silver.[ ] the origin of polychromacy, doubtless, dates back to the most remote ages. it was first needed to conceal imperfections, and to supply what the carver felt his inability to render. it connotes insufficiency in the form. the sculptor, of all people, ought to be able to see colour in the uncoloured stone: he ought to realise its warmth, texture and shades. nobody has any right to complain that a statue is uncoloured: the substance and quality of the marble is in itself pleasing, but relative truth is all that is required in a portrait-bust. if one wants to know the colour of a man's eye, or the precise tint of his complexion, the painter's art should be invoked, but only where its gradations and subtleties can be fully rendered--on the canvas. polychromacy is a mixture of two arts: it is one art trying to steal a march upon another art by producing illusion. that is why the pantaloon paints his face, and why the audience laughs: the spirit which tolerates painted statues ends by adorning them with necklaces. donatello, whose sense of light and shade was acutely developed, least required the adventitious aid of colour. polychromacy was to a certain extent justified on terra-cotta, to soften the toneless colour of the clay, and on wood it served a purpose in hiding the cracks of a brittle substance. nowadays it is happily no more than a _refugium peccatorum_. there is, however, no doubt that in donatello's day it was widely used, and used by donatello himself. it began in actual need, then became a convention, and long survived: _il n'y a rien de plus respectable qu'un ancien abus_. during the fifteenth century statues were coloured during the highest proficiency of sculpture: buildings were painted,[ ] and bronze was habitually gilded. donatello's coscia, and his work at siena and padua, still show signs of it. the st. mark was coloured, and the cantoria was much more brilliant with gold than it is now. the st. luke, which was removed from or san michele,[ ] has long been protected from the weather, and still shows traces of a rich brocade decorated with coloured lines. the christ of piero tedesco on the façade of the cathedral had glass eyes. roland and oliver, two wonderful creations on the façade of the cathedral at verona, had blue enamel eyes. the apostles in the church of san zeno, in the same city, are exceptionally interesting, being one of the rare cases where the genuine colouring is visible, although it has been much worn. the early colourists used tempera;[ ] as this perished, oil paint was substituted, and there are very few painted statues extant on which restoration has never taken place, and consequently where the original colour of the sculptor is intact. with repainting, the original artist disappears: even if the work is cast, the delicate tints of the first colouring must be impaired, and repainting follows. thus the niccolò da uzzano is covered with inferior oil colour, and only in a few details can the primitive tempera be detected. the later addition creates the fictitious interest, and immensely reduces the real importance of this masterly production. [footnote : _cf._ naples museum, no. .] [footnote : _cf._ drawings of façades in vettorio ghiberti's note-book.] [footnote : bargello cortile, no. , by niccolo di piero.] [footnote : borghini, in , gave a curious recipe for colouring marble according to antique rules. florentine ed. , p. .] * * * * * [sidenote: portrait-busts.] it is a singular fact admitting of no ready explanation that portrait-busts, so common in tuscany, should scarcely have existed in venice. florence was their native home. from the time of donatello every sculptor of note was responsible for one or more, while certain artists made it a regular occupation. luca della robbia, however, one of the most consummate sculptors of his day, made no portrait except the effigy of bishop federighi. there are one or two small heads in the bargello, but they scarcely come within the category of studied portraits, while the heads on the bronze doors of the duomo, though modelled from living people, are small and purely decorative in purpose. glazed terra-cotta was a material so admirably adapted to showing the refinements of feature and character, as we can see in both luca's and andrea's work, that this absence is all the more surprising. at the same time, numerous as portrait-statues were in tuscany, they do not compare in numbers with those executed in classical times. in the fifteenth century the statue was a work of art, and its actual carving was an integral part of the art: so the replica in sculpture was rare. but under the roman empire statues of the same man were erected in scores and hundreds in the same city; their multiplication became a profession in itself, and a large class of artisans must have grown up, eternally copying and recopying portrait-busts and giving them the haunting dulness of mechanical reproductions. the artist himself was more interested in the torso than the head; some artists came to be regarded as specialists in their own lines; calcosthenes for instance, who made athletes, and apollodorus, who made philosophers. donatello made several portrait-busts, and two or three others, such as the head of st. laurence, and the so-called st. cecilia in london, which are portraits in all essentials. these two are idealised heads, both made late in life, judging from a certain sketchiness, in no way detracting from their sterling qualities, but indicative of donatello's fluency as an oldish man. both are in terra-cotta. the st. laurence is placed on the top of one of the great chests in the sacristy of san lorenzo, too high above the eye-level.[ ] it has no connection with the decorative work carried out there by the master, and it is difficult to see how it could have been meant to fit in with the altar. however, the authorship of donatello is beyond question. st. laurence is almost a boy, wearing his deacon's vestments. his head is raised up as if he had just heard something and were about to reply. the eager and inquiring look is most happily shown. the sentiment of this bust is quite out of the common; it has an engaging expression which is rare in the sculpture of all ages, differing from what is called animation or vivacity. these also may be found in the st. laurence, where the exact but indescribable movement of the face as he is about to speak is rendered with immense skill. the bust, though modelled with a free hand, is not carelessly executed; everything is in concord, and the treatment of the clay shows exceptional dexterity, more so, at any rate, than is the case in the st. cecilia.[ ] the name given to this bust is traditional, there being no symbol to connect it with her; but it suggests at least that the work was not meant purely as a portrait. in technique and conception it is not quite equal to the st. laurence, but it is none the less a work of rare merit, and being donatello's only clay portrait in this country has a special value to us. the saint looks downwards, pensive, quiet and modest, the embodiment of tranquillity and calm. there is no movement or effort about her, neither does the work show any effort on the part of the sculptor. it is equable in a very marked degree; the smooth regular features are simple and well defined, and the hair, brushed back from the forehead, has a softness which could scarcely be obtained in marble. the bust known as louis iii. of gonzaga is interesting in another way: it is bronze and has been left in an unfinished state. two versions of it exist--one in berlin, the other in paris, belonging to madame andré, the latter being perhaps the less ugly of the two. it used to be known as alfonso of naples, on the assumption that donatello must surely have made a bust of that prince. this theory, however, had to be abandoned, and it is now held to be a portrait of the gonzaga as being a closer resemblance to him than to alfonso, or giovanni tornabuoni. mantegna's portrait of gonzaga, though made later, shows a rather different type, less displeasing than the bronze. in the bust we have what is probably the portrait of a coarse and clumsy person; he is petulant in the mouth, weak in the chin, gross in the thick and heavy jaw. the bronze is extremely rough, and shows no signs of the nervous and individual touches which we find in donatello's terra-cotta. both the busts are unfinished; in the absence of chasing and hammering they are covered with bubbles and splotches of metal. they have, therefore, not passed through the hands of assistants, except so far as the actual casting of the bronze was concerned. during the process of casting the refinements of a clay model would often be impaired, but this shows no sign of having been made from an original of merit. the man is ugly, it is true; but the broad expanse of his lifeless cheek and the bulbous forehead would in real life have been explained and justified by bone and muscle, which the sculptor would have rendered in his clay study. the ugliness of the man, however, is unrelated to the qualities of the bust. nobody could make the likeness of an ugly man better than donatello; and since the faults of this portrait lie more in the modelling than in the sitter, one is driven to conclude that the bust must be entirely the work of an assistant, or else a failure of the master. [footnote : it used to be over one of the doors, preserved _in una custodia_ which richa thought ought to have been made of crystal, so precious was the bust.--"ch. fiorentine," , v. .] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , .] an effective counterpart to this bust exists in berlin. it is also a life-sized bronze of an older man, and in many ways the likeness to the gonzaga bust is notable. but wherever gonzaga's features lack distinction this portrait shows fine qualities and good breeding. nothing could better illustrate how minute are the plastic details which will revolutionise a countenance; how easily noble and handsome features can degenerate into what is sordid and vulgar. in this bust the chin, though receding, is far from weak; the lips are full but not sensual; the nose has the faint aquiline curve of distinction. there is benevolence in the eyes, meditation in the brow, dignity and reserve throughout the physiognomy: it is the portrait of a man who may be great, but who must be good. when a bronze _abozzo_ has to be finished the detail is added by hammering the metal, or incising it with gravers. thus the bronze has to be reduced, it being seldom possible to enlarge it at any point. but the gonzaga bust would require to be enlarged in several places to make it a lifelike head. in the case of the portrait just described, the metal was cast from a rough sketch which, in the first place, had the qualities of a living and consistent head, and which, in the second place, was modelled with sufficient amplitude to permit the entire head to be hammered, and the exquisite details to be added. technically this head is almost unequalled among donatello's bronze portraits; it is quite superb. comparison with the gattamelata at padua is fair to neither. but it can be suitably compared with the bronze portrait in the bargello generally known as the young gattamelata. the tomb of giovanni antonio, son of the famous condottiere, is in the santo at padua. the effigy resembles this bust. giovanni died young in , and on the whole there is sufficient reason for considering it to be his portrait. on this assumption the bust can be dated about . it is a happy combination of youth and maturity. on the one side we have the smooth features, still unmarked by frowns and furrows, the soft youthful texture of the skin, and something young in the thick curly hair. on the other hand, the character of the face shows perfect self-confidence in its best sense, as well as self-control and determination. a scrap of drapery covers the outer edge of either shoulder, and round his neck is a riband, at the end of which hangs a large oval gem, cupid in a chariot making his horses gallop. thus the throat and breast are bare, and show exceptionally good rendering of those thin bones and thick tendons which must always be a severe test to the modeller. as for the bronze itself, the surface is wrought with much care and finish, though the berlin bust is unapproached in this respect. a few other portrait-busts remain to be noticed, which at one time or another have been attributed to donatello. the vecchio barbuto, a thoroughly poor piece of work, and the imperatore romano[ ] with its sadly disjointed and inconsequential appearance, are works which scarcely recall the touch of donatello. the bust of a veiled lady is more interesting.[ ] in the old medici catalogue it used to be called _donna velata incognita_, or _sacerdotessa velata_: and it was also called annalena malatesta: a suggestion has been recently made that it represents the contessina de' bardi, who married cosimo de' medici. vasari certainly mentions a bronze bust of the contessina by donatello; but the family records would scarcely have called so important a person a nun or an _incognita_: moreover, she did not die till , and as this bust is obviously made from a death-mask, it is clear that donatello could not be its author. the custom of making death-masks is described by polybius: in donatello's time it became very popular, and verrocchio became one of the foremost men in this branch of trade, which combined expedition and accuracy with cheapness. the wax models were coloured and used as chimney-piece decorations, _in ogni casa di firenze_. the bronze bust of san rossore in the church of santo stefano at pisa has been attributed to donatello. from the _denunzia_ of we know that donatello was occupied on a bust of the saint, and certain payments are recorded.[ ] but beyond this fact there is no reason for assigning the pisa bust to him. no explanation is offered of its removal from florence to pisa, and had we not known that donatello made such a bust, this uncouth and slovenly thing would never have been ascribed to him. it is a reliquary, the crown of the head being detachable, and the head can also be separated from the bust. it is heavily gilded and minutely chased with the trivial work of some meagre craftsman; the eyes seem to have been enamelled. it is merely interesting as a school-piece. speaking generally, donatello's portraits are less important as busts than when they are portions of complete statues. excluding niccolò da uzzano and the old man at berlin, the heads he made cannot compare with the portraits of john xxiii., brancacci, habbakuk and st. francis at padua. donatello helped to lay the foundations of the tremendous school of portraiture which flourished after his death, both in sculpture and painting; based, in certain parts of italy, on the principles he had laid down, though thriving elsewhere upon independent lines; such, for instance, as the remarkable group of portraits ascribed to laurana or gagini. but at his best donatello rarely approached the comprehensive powers of michael angelo. with the latter we see the whole corpus or entity made the vehicle of portraiture; everything is forced to combine, and to concentrate the [greek: êthos] of the conception; everything is driven into harmony. michael angelo gives a portrait which is also typical, while preserving the real. donatello seldom got beyond the real; but he went far towards realising the highest forms of portraiture, and two or three of his works, though differing in standard from the brutus or the penseroso, surpass anything achieved by his contemporaries. [footnote : bargello, no. , and no. , life-sized bronze.] [footnote : bargello, .] [footnote : gaye, i. .] * * * * * [sidenote: relief-portraits.] a few portraits in relief require a word of notice. as a rule they are later in date, though they are often given to donatello. it became fashionable to have one's portrait made as a roman celebrity: an antonine for instance; a galba or a faustina; or as some statesman, like scipio or cæsar. donatello was not responsible for these portraits, though several have been attributed to him. but he made one or two such reliefs, such as the little st. john in the bargello which has already been described. the oval-topped portrait in the same collection, made of pietra serena--a clean-shaved man with longish hair and an aquiline nose, is wrongly ascribed to donatello. there is a much more interesting portrait, two copies of which exist; one is in london, the other in milan.[ ] it is a relief-portrait of a woman in profile to the right; her neck and breast are bare, treated similarly to the magnificent bust in the bargello ( ). the two reliefs, of which the milan copy is oval, while ours is rectangular with a circular top, are modelled with brilliant and exquisite _morbidezza_: the undercutting is square, so that the shadows assert themselves; the wavy hair is brushed back and retained by a fillet, leaving the neck and temples quite free. in many ways it is the marble version of those portraits attributed to piero della francesca in the national gallery[ ] and elsewhere, but treated so that while the painting is curious the marble is beautiful. these reliefs cannot be traced to donatello, though they show his style and influence in several particulars. madame andré has a marble relief of an open-mouthed boy crowned with laurels, and with ribands waving behind. it is very close to the piot st. john in the louvre, and analogous in some respects to two other reliefs of great interest, both in paris, belonging respectively to la marquise arconati-visconti and to m. gustave dreyfus. these are marble reliefs of st. john and christ facing each other, exquisite in their childhood. the former is round, the latter square. it is usual to ascribe them to desiderio, and there are details which lead one to agree on the point. they show, however, that donatello's influence was strong enough to survive his death in particulars which later men might well have ignored. and the two reliefs combine the strength of donatello with the sweetness of desiderio. [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , , and museo archeologico, no. , both marble.] [footnote : nos. and .] * * * * * [sidenote: san lorenzo.] donatello must have completed the most important decorative work in the sacristy of san lorenzo by . brunellesco was the architect, and there were differences between them as to their respective spheres of work. donatello made the bronze doors, a pair of large reliefs, four large circular medallions of the evangelists, as well as four others of scenes from the life of st. john the evangelist. excluding the doors, everything is made of terra-cotta. the reliefs over the inner doors of the sacristy represent st. stephen and st. laurence on one side, and st. cosmo and st. damian on the other. they are nearly life size, modelled in rather low-relief upon panels with circular tops, and of exceptional size for works in terra-cotta. the reliefs are enclosed in donatello's framework of latish renaissance design, but the figures themselves are very simple. there is a minimum of ornament, and they harmonise with the remarkable scheme of the bronze doors below them, with which they have so many points in common. the ceiling of the chapel has been repeatedly whitewashed, and the eight medallions are consequently blurred in surface and outline. it is a real misfortune, for, so far as one can judge, they contain compositions and designs of great interest, by which a new light would probably be thrown upon several doubtful problems were it possible to study them with precision. criticism must therefore be guarded, and their position is such as to make examination difficult. the roundels of the evangelists are modelled with boldness and severity, qualities which one is not surprised to find in donatello, but which are here emphasised, for they stand out in spite of the coats of whitewash. in some ways they resemble the evangelists of the capella pazzi. here one notices a delicacy of decoration on the seats, desks, &c., contrasting with the rugged grandeur of the figures themselves, and with the absence of ornament, which is so marked a feature of the other reliefs in the sacristy. the four scenes from the life of st. john (vasari says from the lives of the evangelists) are even more interesting than the panels just mentioned. it appears from the few words vasari devotes to the sacristy that donatello also painted views upon the ceiling, but no trace remains. the incidents depicted in the roundels are st. john's apotheosis, martyrdom, and sojourn on patmos, and the raising of drusiana. there are landscapes and architectural backgrounds; many figures are introduced, and there is a good deal of nude study. we also notice a feature of frequent occurrence--a trick of giving depth to the scene and vividness to the foreground, by letting figures be cut off short by the frames. men seem to be standing on the spectator's side of the relief, and only appear at the point where they can be partly included in the composition. the field becomes one that would be included within the range of vision as seen through a round window or telescope. mantegna made great use of this idea. the more one looks at these eight medallions the more one regrets their present condition: washing is all that is required. if they could be carefully cleaned we would certainly find details of interest, and in all probability facts of importance. the frieze of angels' heads which surrounds the sacristy is of secondary interest, as there are only two different cherubs, which are reproduced by moulds all along its entire length. signs of gilding and colour are still visible. pretty as they are, these angels cannot challenge comparison with the pazzi frieze or with donatello's similar work elsewhere--for instance, on the base of the cantoria or upon the or san michele niche. the marble balustrade of the altar may have been designed by donatello. the sacristy shows how well adapted terra-cotta was for decoration on a large scale. but donatello was too wise to cover the walls with his reliefs, as is the case in the capella pellegrini at verona. here the sculpture is used to decorate the chapel walls, there the walls are merely used to uphold the sculpture. * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ bronze doors san lorenzo, florence] [sidenote: the bronze doors.] there is no more instructive study than the bronze doors of italian churches. they are the earliest specimens of bronze casting to be found in italy of christian times; they show the gradual transition from eastern to western forms of art, and they were usually made by the most prominent sculptor of the day. their size is considerable, they are frequently dated, and their condition is often extraordinarily good. donatello's are relatively small, but they adhere to the best traditions. excluding the great doors made by luca della robbia for the sacristy of the duomo, these in san lorenzo are among the latest which were produced according to the ancient model and the correct idea. thenceforward the doors ceased to be doors; the reliefs ceased to show the qualities of bronze, and disregarded the principles of sculpture. donatello made two pairs of doors, one on either side of the altar. the doors open in the middle; there are thus four long-hinged panels of bronze, and each panel has five reliefs upon it. it is doubtful if the most archaic doors in italy show such uniformity of design, for all the twenty bronze reliefs illustrate one single theme, namely, the conversation of two standing men. the panels simply consist of two saints, roughly sketched in somewhat low-relief upon an absolutely flat background: there is great variety in the drapery, and some of the figures might come out of thirteenth-century illuminations. never was a monotonous motive invested with such variety of treatment: never was simplicity better attained by scrupulous elimination. donatello's symmetrical idea had been previously employed, and torrigiano put his figures in couples on what bacon called one of the "stateliest and daintiest monuments of europe."[ ] luca della robbia put his figures in threes on the cathedral gates, a seated figure in the centre, with a standing figure on either side. but donatello had to make twice as many panels as luca. martyrs, apostles and confessors are talking on the san lorenzo doors. thus st. stephen shows the stone of his martyrdom to st. laurence. elsewhere st. peter's movement suggests that he is upbraiding his fellow, for the argument excites these saints. they gesticulate freely; martyrs seem to fence with their palm-leaves. one will turn away abruptly, another will pay sudden attention to his book, while his companion continues to talk. one man slaps his book to clinch the discussion, another jots down a note; two others are ending their controversy and prepare to leave--in opposite directions. but, though these are literal descriptions of the scenes, there is no levity; everything is ordained according to donatello's strict formula. he was none the less determined to adhere to the old conventional and non-pictorial treatment of the gates, and at the same time to give animation to every panel. in this he has succeeded, but the symmetrical arrangement in pairs preserves a decorum in spite of the vigorous movement pictured on the doors. these doors open and shut: they were meant to do so, especially to shut. ghiberti's second pair of doors for the baptistery do not _shut_: they are closed, but they do not give the sense of shutting anything in or keeping anything out. they are more like windows than doors. they give no impression of defence or resistance: they are doors in nothing but name, and the chance that they hang on hinges. were it merely a contest between ghiberti and donatello as to which sculptor were the more skilled constructor of doors, further comment would be unprofitable; but it raises the wider question of the laws and limitations of bas-relief--the application to sculpture of the principles of painting; in short, the broad line of demarcation between two different arts. michael angelo probably realised the unity of the arts better than donatello, but donatello knew enough to treat sculpture with due respect: he valued it too highly to confuse the issue by pictorial embellishments. it is no question of a convention, still less of a canon. but there are inherent boundaries between the two arts; and where the boundaries are overstepped, one or the other art must lose some of its essential quality and charm. donatello's reliefs at padua are crowded: ghiberti's (on the second gates) are overcrowded. the difference in degree produces a difference in principle. if ghiberti had made pictures instead of reliefs, the atmosphere would keep the objects in their right places, while differences of colour would give distinction to certain parts and the chief figures would still predominate. in other reliefs ghiberti lavished so much care on landscape and architecture that the figures become of secondary importance: on one relief a tree casts its shadow on a cloud.[ ] ghiberti, in fact, with all his plastic elegance, with a grace, suavity and sense of beauty which donatello never approached, was a painter at heart. "_l'animo mio alla pittura era in grande parte volto_," he says in his commentary,[ ] and the faults of his sculpture are due to this versatility. donatello only used his pictorial knowledge to perfect form and feature; and, complex as his architectural backgrounds often are, they never suggest experiments in perspective, and they never detract from the primacy of the people and the incident. michael angelo was under no illusion on this point: he never confused painting and sculpture. yet he said ghiberti's gates would be worthy portals of paradise. "_ce n'est pas la seul sottise qu'on lui fasse dire_," drily remarked the chevalier des brosses;[ ] and, curiously enough, about the time that michael angelo made his famous judgment, an amateur of the day made a much shrewder criticism, long since forgotten, that the doors would be adequate to stand at the gates of purgatory:--"_sarebbon bastanti a stare alle porte del purgatorio._"[ ] the ambiguity is not without humour. sculpture, indeed, had no reason to ape or imitate painting. sculpture, in fact, was in advance of painting during the first half of the fifteenth century. donatello, luca della robbia, jacopo della quercia, and ghiberti were greater men in sculpture than their contemporaries in painting. the arts were in rivalry; the claim for precedence was zealously canvassed. the sculptors claimed superiority because their art was older, because statuary has more points of view than one. you can walk round it, while a picture has only one light and one view. moreover, the argument of utility applies most to sculpture, which can be used for tombs, columns, fountains, caryatides, &c. sculpture has finality, for, though it takes longer to make, it cannot be constantly altered like a picture. while all arts try to imitate nature, sculpture gives the actual form, but painting only its semblance. a man born blind has a sense of touch which gives him pleasure from sculpture, which is better suited to theology, which has greater durability, and so forth. the painter replied that, if a statue has more than one point of view, a picture containing many figures can give even greater variety. then the argument of utility denies the essence of art, which is to imitate nature, not to adorn brackets and pilasters; but even if decoration be an end in itself, painting can be used where sculpture would be too heavy. the painter continues that his art requires higher training in such things as atmosphere and perspective. as to the greater durability of sculpture, the material and not the art is responsible; but, in any case, painting lasts long enough to be worth achieving. finally, sculpture cannot always imitate nature: the sense of colour can make a sunset, a storm at sea, moonlight, landscape and human emotions, which are best translated by varying colour and light. the controversy is unsettled to this day.[ ] the wise man, like donatello, selected his art and never overstepped the boundary. [footnote : "life of henry vii.," ed. , iii. .] [footnote : see westmacott's lectures on sculpture, ii. iii., _athenæum_, .] [footnote : nd comm. vasari, i. xxx.] [footnote : letter of , p. .] [footnote : , viii. , antonio doni, printed in bottari, iii. .] [footnote : these dialogues will be found at great length in borghini, vasari, leonardo da vinci, alberti, &c. castiglione also devotes a canto of the "cortegiano" to the subject.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ judith loggia dei lanzi, florence] [sidenote: the judith.] the bronze statue of judith was probably made shortly before donatello's journey to padua. it is his only large bronze group, and its faults are accentuated by the most unfortunate position it occupies in the lofty loggia de' lanzi. it was meant to be the centrepiece of some large fountain. the triangular base, and the extremities of the mattress on which holofernes sits, have spouts from which the water would issue, though the bronze is not worn away by the action of water. as we see the statue now, it looks small and dwarfed. in a courtyard it would look far more imposing, and when it came from donatello's workshop, placed upon a pedestal designed for it, its present incongruities would have been absent. for instance, the feet of holofernes would have been upheld by something from below, as the marks in the bronze indicate. with all its disadvantages, the statue is extremely interesting. judith stands over holofernes. with her left hand she holds him up by clutching his hair: her right arm is uplifted, in which she holds the sword. the action seems arrested during a moment of suspense: one doubts if the sword will ever fall. judith, who was the ideal of courage and beauty, seems to hesitate; there is nothing to show that her arm is meant to descend, except her inexorable face--and even that is full of sadness and regrets. it is more dramatic that this should be so. cellini's perseus close by has already committed his murder. the crisis has passed, the blood spurts from the severed head and trunk of the medusa; so we have squalid details instead of the overpowering sense of impending tragedy. with cellini there was no room for mystery: no imagination could be left to the spectator. "_celui qui nous dict tout nous saousle et nous dégouste._" holofernes is an amazing example of donatello's power. he is a really drunken man: we see it in the comatose fall of the limbs, in the drooping features, the languid inanition of the arms. the veins throb in his hands and feet: the spine has ceased to be rigid, and were it not for the support of judith's hands buried in his hair, he would topple over inanimate. the treatment of the bronze is successful and its patina is admirable. judith's drapery, it is true, has a restless crackling appearance. it is furrowed into small and rather fussy folds, almost suggesting, like the figures of the parthenon pediment, the pleats of wetted linen on a lay figure. judith's arm is overweighted by the heavy sleeve. there are, however, pleasing details, especially the band of embroidery over her breast decorated with the flying _putti_; and her veil, michael angelesque in its way, is treated with skill and distinction. the base consists of three bronze reliefs joined into a triangle, separated at each angle by a narrow bronze plaque, beyond which is a curved pilaster giving extra support to the figures above. these reliefs are bacchic in idea and renaissance in execution. children dance, play and sleep around the mask from which the jet of water would issue. these reliefs, much inferior to the bronze capital at prato, have been over-rated. as a group the judith is not really successful. it is a pile of figures, less telling in some ways than the abraham and isaac, though, having no niche, it has to undergo the severer test of criticism from every aspect. but before michael angelo the italian free-standing group was tentative. even in michael angelo's sculpture, when we consider its massive scale, the extent and number of his commissions, and the ease with which he worked his material, it is astonishing how few free-standing groups were made. his grouping was applied to the relief. the free group is, of course, the most comprehensive vehicle of intensified emotion or action; it gives an opportunity of doubling or trebling the effect on the spectator. sculpture has never realised to the full the chances offered by grouped plastic art of heroic proportions. classical groups cannot be fairly judged by the laocoon, the farnese bull, or even the niobe reliefs. their theatrical character is so patent, that it is obvious how far inferior they must be to the work of greater men whose genuine productions have perished. but, even so, the group being the medium through which emotions could be intensified to the uttermost, it is not necessary to assume that they were common in classical times; partly owing to the technical difficulties and expense, and partly owing to their disinclination to make sculpture interpret profound impressions, mental or intellectual. there are only four life-sized statues of women by donatello: this judith, the magdalen, the st. justina, and the madonna at padua. the dovizia is lost, and she was treated as an emblematic personage. these figures and the statuettes at siena show that, although not accustomed to make female statues, donatello was perfectly competent to do so. the little eve, on the back of the madonna's throne at padua--the only nude figure of a woman he ever made, and here only in relief--is exquisite in sentiment and form. the statue of judith had an adventurous life. after the revolution in , the group was removed from the medici palace to the ringhiera of the palazzo pubblico, and the words of warning against tyranny were engraved on its new base: "_exemplum salutis publicæ cives posuere_, ." judith was the type of nationalism, the heroine of a war of independence: and this mark of the florentine love of liberty has lasted to our own day. no medici dared to obliterate the ominous words. donatello was not much in politics: his father had taken too violent a share in the feuds of his day, and narrowly escaped execution. nor was donatello's art coloured by politics: the florentines did not give commissions like the sienese for allegorical representations of the life and duties of citizenship. differing from michael angelo, donatello made no brutus; he did not concentrate the political tragedies of his day into a penseroso and a group of statues full of grave symbolical protests against the statecraft of his time; and, except for the accidental loss of judith's pedestal, donatello's art never suffered from the curse of politics. michael angelo was always surrounded by the pitfalls of intrigue and politics: some of his work was sacrificed in consequence. the colossal statue of pope julio was hurled from its place on the façade of san petronio, maestro arduino the engineer, having covered the ground where it was to fall with straw and fascines, in order that no damage should be done--to the pavement! and the broken statue was sent away to ferrara, where it was converted into a big cannon, which they felicitously christened juliana![ ] [footnote : gotti, "vita," i. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ st. mary magdalen baptistery, florence] [sidenote: the magdalen and similar statues.] we have now to consider a group of rugged statues differing in date but animated by the same motive, the magdalen in florence and three statues of st. john the baptist in siena, venice, and berlin. of these, the magdalen in the baptistery at florence is the most typical and the most uncompromising. she stands upright, a mass of tattered rags, haggard, emaciated, almost toothless. her matted hair falls down in thick knots; all feminine softness has gone from the limbs, and nothing but the drawn muscles remain. it is a thin wasted form, piteous in expression, painful in all its ascetic excess. the magdalen has, of course, been the subject of hostile criticism. it gives a shock, it inspires horror: it is an outrage on every well-clothed and prosperous sinner.[ ] in point of fact, donatello's summary method of carving the wood has given a harshness and asperity to features which in themselves are not displeasing. in a dimmed light, or looking with unfocused eyes on the reproduction, it is clear that the structural lines of the face were once well favoured. but from the beginning the magdalen was a work which made a profound impression, and its popularity is measured by the number of statues of a like nature. charles viii. wanted to buy it in , but the florentines thought it priceless and hid it away. two years later they had the bronze diadem added by jacopo sogliani.[ ] finally, at a period when this type of sculpture with all its appeal to the traditions of the thebaid, was least likely to have been acceptable in art or exemplar, the statue was placed in a niche above an altar erected on purpose for its reception, where an inscription testifies to the regard in which it was then held.[ ] this magdalen is didactic in purpose. donatello seems to have given less attention to the modelling, subtle as it is, than to the concentration of the one absorbing lesson which was to be conveyed to the spectator. his object was to show repentance, abject unqualified remorse; purified by suffering, refined by bodily hardship, and sustained by the "sun of discipline and virtue." there is no luxury in this magdalen, but she may have contributed to the reaction when pompeo battoni and the like transformed her into an opulent personage, dressed in purple, who reclines in some luscious glade while simpering over a bible. by then art had ceased to know how penitence could be decently portrayed, and the penitent was not long a genuine subject of art. the greeks, of course, had no penitent or ascetic in their theocracy: even the cynic scarcely found a place in their art. in italy the thebaids of lorenzetti are among the earliest versions; the sculpture of the following century brought it still more home to the public, and then the true mediæval sentiment upon which this and similar works were founded vanished and has never reappeared. the date of the magdalen has provoked a good deal of controversy: whether it was made immediately before or after the visit to padua cannot be determined. but the statue has so many features in common with the siena baptist of that one can most safely ascribe it to some date after donatello's return to florence. it is certainly more easy to justify the magdalen from the pulpits of san lorenzo than from anything made before his journey to northern italy. one misapprehension may be removed. it is argued that the magdalen cannot be posterior to padua on the ground that by donatello had ceased to work in any material but soft and ductile clay, which was converted into bronze by his assistants. the argument is that of one who probably thinks that the entombment at padua is made of terra-cotta, and who forgets that donatello executed a number of works in stone for the marchese gonzaga about .[ ] [footnote : rumour was very severe. "_elle m'a pour toujours dégoûte de la pénitence_," sighed des brosses. this inimitable person was the critic who, after visiting the arena chapel at padua, observed that nowadays one would scarcely employ giotto to paint a tennis-court.] [footnote : richa, iii., xxxiii.] [footnote : the inscription is: "votis publicis s. mariæ magdalenæ simulacrum ejus insigne donati opus pristino loco elegantiario repositum anno ."] [footnote : see p. . moreover, in donatello accepted a commission at siena for a marble san bernardino. and the anonimo morelliano mentions four other marble reliefs at padua.] [illustration: _alinari_ st. john the baptist frari church, venice] the statues of st. john at siena, berlin, and venice[ ] are closely analogous to the magdalen. st. john is the ascetic prophet who spent years in seclusion, returning from the desert to preach repentance. these three figures have one curious feature in common--a flavour of the orient. the st. john is some fakir, some buddhist saint. asiatic as the baptist was, it is seldom that italian art gave him so eastern a type; but the explanation is simply that donatello evolved his own idea of what a self-centred and fasting mystic would resemble, and his conception happens to coincide with the outcome of similar conditions actually put into practice elsewhere. the berlin bronze is st. john as baptist, the others show him with the scroll as precursor. he always wears the camel's-hair tunic, which ends just below the knee; at siena it is thick, like some woolly fleece; it conceals and broadens the frame, thus suggesting a stoutness which is not warranted by the size of the leg. the modelling of legs and arms in these statues is noteworthy. they are thin, according to donatello's idea of his subject; and though the thinness takes the natural form of slender circumference, one sees that the limb with its angular modelling and its flat surfaces has _become_ thin: the thinness is explained by the character. the feet of the siena bronze are exceptionally good; the wrist and forearm of the venice figure are admirable. the siena baptist is nearly life-sized, and was made in . he is the least introspective of the three, a mature strong man, and the oldest of the many baptists donatello made. the berlin figure is the flushed eccentric, holding up the cup he used in baptizing. the figure is half the size of life, and was doubtless one of the numerous statuettes which crowned fonts. it has been suggested that this bronze, which is defective in several places, was commissioned for the cathedral of orvieto in .[ ] but the type would appear more advanced than the busts on the mandorla doorway or the siena work made about this time. moreover, the contract specifies a st. john _cum signo crucis et demonstratione ecce agnus dei_. a baptist was made at the same time for ancona, and is now lost. on first seeing the st. john in venice one's impression is to laugh. but he is not really a wild man of the woods--he is simply covered with and made grotesque by thick masses of oil paint. a close examination of the figure shows that in some places the paint is over a quarter of an inch thick, and the last coating it has received is glutinous in quality, and has been laid on with such freedom that the position and shape of certain features are altered. but if seen close at hand, the statue (which it is understood will shortly be cleaned) shows distinct merits. the modelling of the extremities is good, and though it is clear that donatello was never quite willing to treat st. john as on a par with the other saints, we have a systematic and generic rendering of his idea. in some measure painting was needed as a preservative for wood statues, otherwise it is difficult to justify the covering of a fine material by paint which cannot do justice to itself, while it must hide the refinements of the carving. donatello worked but little in wood. crucifixes were commonly made of it, but the material was one which could never receive _quella carnosità_ and _morbidezza_[ ] of marble or metal. the greeks limited their use of it to garden and woodland themes: the egyptians used it but little, because they had so few trees. in donatello's time it was popular, and came to be regarded as a distinct art. thus the sienese wood-carvers were forbidden to work in stone,[ ] but the great masters like donatello did not strictly adhere to the rules, and did not refrain from invading the art of the woodcarver. there is a large class of statues derived from the four just described. one of these, attributed to donatello, is the st. jerome at faenza, also made of wood.[ ] chocolate-coloured paint has been ladled all over the body. the beard is faint lavender, and the canvas loin-cloth is blue. the pose and expression are mannered. it is usual to dismiss it in an offhanded way as a bad and later work; but the modelling shows signs of skill, and until the paint is removed it is useless to make guesses. two bronze statuettes of the baptist[ ] are distinctly donatellesque, and made about , though it is impossible to assign them with certainty to the master himself. michelozzo's versions of st. john at montepulciano, on the cathedral altar in florence, and in the annunziata, show the influence of donatello; but the baptist is a milder prophet, and no longer the hermit. in the scalzi at florence there is a baptist which is typical of many others of the same character. the magdalen was less copied than the st. john. the version nearest donatello himself is in london, a large grim bust;[ ] in the same collection is a relief of her apotheosis, and the louvre possesses a similar work.[ ] neither of the latter is by donatello himself, but they recall his influence.[ ] the large magdalen in santa trinità at florence is a good example of the _bottega_. [footnote : siena cathedral, bronze; berlin museum, bronze; frari church, venice, wood.] [footnote : , ii. . on , iv. , donatello received lbs. oz. of wax for modelling the figure. luzi, "duomo di orvieto," , p. .] [footnote : vasari, i. .] [footnote : _che niuno maestro di legname possa fare di pietra._ rules of sculptors of sienna, , ch. . milanesi, i. .] [footnote : in museum. from the capella manfredi in san girolamo degli osservanza outside the town, suppressed in . _cf._ two similar statuettes in terra-cotta, bargello, nos. and .] [footnote : louvre, about inches high, unnumbered. museo archeologico, venice, no. . frau hainauer's bronze baptist, signed by francesco di san gallo, is interesting in this connection.] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , .] [footnote : _ibid._ no. , , terra-cotta. louvre, no. , ditto.] [footnote : _cf._ herr von beckerath's in berlin, and the verrocchio-school magdalen in the berlin gallery, no. .] * * * * * [sidenote: the altar at padua.] donatello was fifty-seven when he left florence in to spend ten eventful years at padua. there he carried out his masterpieces of bronze for the cathedral and the equestrian statue of gattamelata on the piazza opposite donatello's little house, which to this day is occupied, appropriately enough, by a carver--bortolo slaviero, _tagliapietra_. it is now established that donatello was invited to padua for the church and that the gattamelata was not commissioned until later.[ ] at this time padua was a centre of humanistic learning and intellectual activity. there was a hive of antiquarians and collectors, and, according to its lights, a thriving school of painters.[ ] the florentine palla strozzi was living there in retirement, and he may have been partly responsible for the invitation to donatello. but the indigenous art of padua was dependent on venice, and needed some fertilising element. squarcione with his pupils founded his art upon traditional and conventional data: had it not been for donatello and the radical changes which resulted from his sojourn at padua, a fossilised school would have become firmly rooted, and would probably have influenced the whole of the veneto. mantegna was still young when donatello arrived, and though there is no reason to suppose that he received work from donatello as squarcione did, it is clear that, without this influx of southern ideas, he would have had some difficulty in shaking off the conventionalisms of his home. but though donatello's immediate influence on paduan art was decisive (and its ramifications soon extended to venice), he was himself influenced by his fresh surroundings, and his native bent towards complexity was increased. he assimilated many of the local likes and dislikes. if gattamelata had been erected in some florentine square there would have been less ornament; if colleone had been commissioned for siena there would have been less _braggadocio_. leonardo never recovered his tuscan frame of mind after his sojourn in milan. donatello himself realised these novelties to the full, and their results upon his art. while he was making the intricate bas-reliefs, the selective genius of luca della robbia was composing the florence lunettes,[ ] monumental in their simplicity. and though vasari records the enthusiasm with which donatello's productions were greeted in the north, the sculptor recognised the dangers of unqualified praise, and said he must return home to florence to receive criticism and censure, the stimulus to better work and greater glory. but the _maggiore gloria_ was not to be attained. he was old when he left padua, and on his departure he had completed the greatest undertaking of his career--the high altar of the santo, with all its marble setting and the bronze figures. a crucifix, the madonna and child, six saints, a pietà, twelve panels of angels, four reliefs of st anthony's miracles, the symbols of the evangelists, and a large marble entombment. donatello's altar was unfortunately dismantled in the seventeenth century, and the statues were dispersed throughout the church. the altar was reconstructed a few years ago, and the bronzes have suffered during their exile, but they are still in good preservation. the new marble altar is a thoughtful and painstaking construction; its details are derived from donatellesque motives, and the bronzes are fitted in with skill. it cannot, however, be in any sense a reproduction of the old altar, of which no drawing is preserved. and the earliest description, which has been carefully followed as far as circumstances allow, shows that the existing sculpture is incomplete: at least four marble reliefs have been lost.[ ] one may further remark that the twelve angels in high relief, now forming the face of the altar frontal, are so designed, especially as regards their aureoled heads, that one concludes it must have been donatello's intention for them to have been looked up to rather than looked down upon. the present arrangement of the altar is simple and effective. the frontal itself is composed of children singing and playing music. in the centre is the pietà, and on either side is an evangelist's symbol flanked by two saints on the level of the top of the altar. the retable has two miracle reliefs, and between them a small bronze christ, which has been put there in error. above the retable is the madonna with two saints on either side: the crucifix surmounts the whole composition. the back of the altar has the remaining miracle reliefs and evangelist symbols, together with the entombment. [footnote : michael angelo gloria; donatello fiorentino e le sue opere ... a padova, , from which the dates are all quoted.] [footnote : see kristeller's mantegna, translated by s.a. strong, , p. .] [footnote : over the sacristy doors in the cathedral.] [footnote : anonimo morelliano ( - ). ed. of bassano, , p. . _e da dietro l'altar sotto il scabello il cristo morto, con le altre figure a circo, e le due figure da man destra con le altre due da man sinistra, pur de basso rilevo, ma de marmo, furono de mano de donatello._] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ saint francis, the madonna, and saint anthony sant' antonio, padua] [sidenote: the large statues.] of the seven large free-standing statues, that of the madonna and child worthily occupies the central position. nobody was more modern than donatello, nobody less afraid of innovation. but in this madonna he went back to archaic ideas, and we have a conception analogous to the versions of the two previous centuries:[ ] indeed, his idea is still older, for there is something byzantine in this liturgical madonna, who gazes straight in front of her, and far down the nave of the santo--a church with mosque-like domes, like those of the early eastern architects. the child is seated in her lap, as in the earliest representation of the subject: here, however, the christ is a child, with an element of helplessness almost indicated, whereas the primitive idea had been to show the vigour and often the features of a biggish boy. donatello's version is much more pathetic, as the little christ raises a tiny hand in benediction. the virgin herself is of unequalled solemnity, while her young and gracious face, exquisite in expression and contour, is full of queenly beauty. but there is still this atmosphere of mystery, an enigmatic aloofness in spite of the warm human sentiment. the sphinx's faces, with all their traditions of secrecy, contribute their share to the cryptic environment. donatello uses them as the supports of the throne on which the madonna is seated; behind it are adam and eve in relief: in front she herself shows the new adam to the multitude, on whom he confers his blessing. st. francis of padua [transcriber's note: should be "assisi."] stands on the right of the madonna, as founder of the order, and taking precedence of st. anthony, to whom the church is dedicated. he holds the crucifix and the book of rules. he is draped in the ordinary franciscan habit, which falls round his feet, giving a stiffness to the figure as seen in profile, and making him appear rather short when seen from the front. the workmanship is good, the hands, with lightly shown stigmata, being excellent; but the lack of distinction in the figure makes one look more closely at the head, which is modelled with great power and freedom, showing that donatello still possessed the vigour and penetration for which the campanile prophets are notable. the head is full of character; not perhaps what one would expect from the apostle of self-abnegation: but it is determined, strong in the mouth and broad chin. it was, of course, only meant to be seen a few feet from the ground, and the lines do not compare in depth with the habbakuk or the zuccone; but there is none the less an analogy in the manner by which donatello calls in the assistance of light and shade to add tone and finish to the modelling. st. anthony was a deservedly popular saint in padua, where he preached and denounced the local tyrant; and he may be accounted the greatest man of portuguese birth. but donatello does not seem to have found the subject very inspiring. he has taken his idea from rather an ordinary friar such as he or we might see any day. it is a good homely face, neither worldly nor spiritual, and only redeemed from the commonplace by technical ability. st. daniel is more interesting; the young deacon is extremely well posed, the plain and massive features being drawn with a firm and confident touch; and the deacon's vestments, which always take an easy and becoming fall, are decorated in a typical way with winged children arbitrarily introduced, and looking more like the detail of some bas-relief than a piece of embroidered ornament. st. justina wears the coronet as princess, and bears the palm-leaf as martyr. she has no pronounced characteristic, the face being rather unemotional; but the gesture of her outstretched hand is not without an appealing dignity. the hair, like that of the madonna, is parted in the centre, and stands off from the forehead, and then falls in rich tresses about her shoulders. it has not the soft and silken texture of the madonna's hair, which is rendered with as great a skill as one sees in the virgin of the annunciation. in both these latter cases donatello succeeds in giving to the hair an indescribable suggestion of something full of elasticity and lustre. but st. justina's hair at least grows: so many sculptors of ability failed to indicate that needful quality. st. procdocimus and st. louis are of subordinate merit, and show the work of assistants in several particulars. the former was first bishop of padua and converted the father of st. justina to christianity. at first sight the statue is pleasing, but on closer examination the weaknesses, especially in the face, become marked. there is indecision, not in the pose or general idea, but in the details which give character to the whole conception. the features are chiselled by a small _mesquin_ personality, and what might have been a fine statue if carried out by donatello has been ruined by his assistants. the ewer which the bishop carries is a later addition, from the design of which one might almost argue that the statue itself is later than the others.[ ] the st. louis, wearing his episcopal robes above the franciscan habit, his mitre decorated with a fleur-de-lys of royal france, is also hammered all over, giving the bronze the appearance of being dotted with little pin-holes. the head is, however, marked by the grave austerity for which the st. louis in santa croce is so remarkable, and which became the typical rendering of the saint in fifteenth-century plastic art. however much donatello may have allowed a free hand to his assistants in this statue, the fine qualities of the head are attributable to a strict adherence to his own sketch. the last of the great bronze figures is the crucifix above the high altar. it is magnificent, apart from the technical qualities which rival donatello's most brilliant achievements. all the lines droop together in a wonderful _cadenza_; the face is transfigured by human pain, but all the superhuman power remains. donatello combines the literal and symbolical meaning of the cross; the godhead is still there. donatello did not forget that the crucified christ, when represented by the sculptor, had to preserve all the immortality of the son of god. his _contadino_ christ in florence has its interest in art; this christ marks the summit of his plastic ability; but it shows that, without any appeal to terror or emotionalism, without, indeed, suppressing the signs of physical pain, donatello was able to give an overwhelming portrait of christ's agony. the celestial and the terrestrial are unified and fused into one tremendous concentration of human suffering, tempered by divine power. [footnote : _cf._, for instance, the madonna over the door of the pisa baptistery.] [footnote : _cf._ drawings of ewers in uffizzi by giacomone da faenza, sixteenth century.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ miracle of the speaking babe sant' antonio, padua] [illustration: _alinari_ miracle of the miser's heart sant' antonio, padua] [illustration: _alinari_ miracle of the mule sant' antonio, padua] [sidenote: the bronze reliefs.] the four panels of miracles take the highest rank among donatello's bas-reliefs. their size is considerable, being about four feet long. they have one theme in common, namely, the supernatural gifts of st. anthony and the veneration of the populace. donatello's crowds are admirable; they are deep crowds. the people are rather hot and jostling each other: they stand on benches or stairs in order to get a better view of what is proceeding. the edges of the crowds, where the people are too far off to be active spectators, lose interest in the central incident; they gossip as bystanders or sit down: often they are shown actually leaving the place. it is singular how ill-designed many of the classical crowds are, especially the battle-scenes: they are constructed without regard for the human necessity of standing on something; and we have grotesque topsy-turvy compositions, the individual parts of which are unrivalled in technique.[ ] michael angelo's first and last representation of a crowd in sculpture shows the same fault, which, indeed, was far from uncommon.[ ] it arose from a desire to show more of the crowd than could be naturally seen from the eye level, and the whole relief was consequently covered with figures, the background proper being suppressed. in these paduan reliefs donatello manages to give ample density and variety, and there is never any doubt as to the ownership of legs or arms. his early relief at siena, on the other hand, has a group where there is confusion, which is not justified in a quiet gathering of people. another feature which the four reliefs have in common is donatello's treatment of narrative. ghiberti's plan was to put several incidents into one relief, forming a sequence of events leading up to the critical episode, to which he usually gave the best place in the foreground. he consistently followed up his formula in the second gates, and brought the practice to its perfection. whether suitable or not for gates, it would have been an intelligible treatment of purely decorative reliefs, like those at padua. donatello, however, confines his plaques to single incidents: in one case only does he add a second detail, and there only as a corroborative fact. the narrative is shown in the crowd itself. attitudes and expression are made to reflect the spirit of what has gone before, while the actual occurrence suffices to show the final issue of the story. thus we have all the ideas of which others would have made a series of subordinate scenes: incredulity, fear, surprise, mockery, apathy and worship. the crowd shows everything which has already passed, and the composition of the bas-reliefs thus secures a striking homogeneity. it is difficult to say which of them is best. the variety in dress, scene and physiognomy is so remarkable; varying, no doubt, according to the tastes of the _garzone_ responsible for finishing it. probably the miracle of the speaking babe is the best known. a nobleman of ferrara doubted the honour of his wife; st. anthony conferred the power of speech on her infant child, which proclaimed its mother's innocence. donatello has put an exquisite little madonna and child just above the central figures of the legend. the composition of this group, as in the others, is broken by the architecture, otherwise the length of the bronzes might have tended to a monotonous row of figures. but the projecting background does not make the episode less coherent. the mother is just receiving back her baby from the saint; behind her are women, friends and others; whereas the opposite side of the relief is entirely occupied by men, who are around her husband; and the suggested conflict of the sexes is averted by the miracle. the husband, who wears an odd sort of _bonnet tricolore_, and several of his comrades are simply dressed in short cloaks open at the sides and ending just below the hip. the legs and arms, and especially the hands, are very well modelled. in this relief the actors are quiet and decorous, and where not motionless are moving slowly. the miracle of the miser's heart is more emotional: "where thy heart is there shall thy treasure be also." the miser having died, st. anthony said that his heart would be found in his strong box: this was proved to be the case, and then when the body was opened it was found that his heart was absent. the scene is nominally inside a church: in the background is a procession of clergy and choristers with their cross and candles. in the centre is the bier with the corpse lying on it. the body is opened and the crowd looks on in feverish though suppressed excitement. st. anthony is pointing towards the dead man: and the crowd realises that the heart is absent--_ubi thesaurus ibi cor_. numbers of people have dropped on to their knees, others kiss the ground where the saint stands. there are signs of distress and apprehension on all sides. some children scuttle back to their parents; one of the mothers bends down to catch her child just as it is going to fall. two boys have climbed on to an altar or pedestal to get a better view: one of them wears the peaked cap still worn by the undergraduates of _padova la dotta_. the whole scene is immensely dramatic and grim, without any frenzy or excess; and its solemn effect is enhanced by the reserve of the people in spite of their excitement. the background is full of detail, largely obtained by the chisel: one part of it, with the stairs, ladders and upper storey, resembles the lille relief. there are two important inscriptions, cut into the metal, to which reference will be made later. the subject of the third relief (now placed on the retable and already getting dimmed by candle-grease) is the healing of the youth leonardo, who kicked his mother and confessed to st. anthony, who properly observed that so sinful a foot should be cut off. the injunction was taken too literally, and the saint's miraculous power replaced the severed limb. strictly speaking, this miracle takes place in the open air, for donatello has introduced a rudimentary sun with most symmetrical rays, and half a dozen clouds which look like faults in the casting. but the whole relief is framed by an architectural structure, some amphitheatre with the seats ranged like steps. a balustrade runs all round the huge building, and a number of idlers standing about at the far end are reduced to insignificant proportions, thus giving distance and depth to the scene. leonardo lies on the ground in sad pain, and anthony has just restored the foot. the central group is not much animated, but two or three of the men's heads are telling character-studies. donatello has concentrated his crowd into the centre: at the sides the miracle passes unheeded. a fat man is soliloquising with his hand reposing on an ample stomach: a boy with a long stick and something like a knapsack on his back is attracting the attention of a young woman, who seems absorbed in watching the miracle: her child tries to pull her along to go closer. in the corner are some strange recumbent figures, almost classical in idea; and a tall woman completely veiled, with her face buried in her hands. the last of the reliefs illustrates st. anthony's power over animals. one bovidilla, a sceptic, possessed a mule; the saint offered the consecrated wafer to the animal when starving, and bovidilla was converted by the refusal of the animal to eat it. the scene takes place within a church, which, so far as we see the apse and choir, is composed of three symmetrical chapels with vaulted and coffered roofs. there is plenty of classical detail, but still more of the renaissance; there is no occasion to assume the design to have been copied from the tempio di pace or the caracalla baths. st. anthony occupies the centre, and the kneeling mule is on the right, his master close at hand. the church is crowded with people, who, on the whole, show more curiosity than reverence. several garrulous boys by the door are amused; an old beggar hobbles in; a mother tries to keep a child quiet. others take any post they can secure, and a good many are crouching on the ground in all sorts of postures, making a variety which amounts to unevenness. in all these panels the head of st. anthony is of a finer type than that shown in the other version on the altar. the features are clear cut, and there is an air of earnest distinction which is not observed on the large statue. speaking generally, one notices that while ample scope is allowed to the fancies of picturesque architecture in all these reliefs, donatello always keeps it within proper bounds. donatello was not tempted into the interacting problems of perspective and _intarsia_, which caused so many paduan artists to lose grasp of the wider aspects of their calling. then we notice how the crowd _qua_ crowd plays its proper part: out of some two hundred faces in these panels not more than two or three look out to the spectator--a quality inherited by mantegna. the reliefs are essentially local pictures of local significance; not only the costume, but the types are paduan, such as we find in the local school of painting: but we find nothing of the kind in donatello before the journey to the north, and the types scarcely reappear on the altar of san lorenzo. but, in spite of this, the reliefs have a catholicity which extends their influence far beyond the limits within which donatello confined his work. finally, the wealth of local colouring and animation makes these reliefs among the earliest in which "genre" or "conversation" has prominence. they offer a most striking contrast to the sedate florentine crowds painted in the brancacci chapel by masaccio. [footnote : _cf._ battle of romans and barbarians, no. . museo nazionale, rome.] [footnote : battle, casa buonarroti, florence.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ symbol of st. matthew sant' antonio, padua] [sidenote: the symbols of the evangelists.] there are four other bronze reliefs, the symbols of the evangelists. donatello has contrived to invest these somewhat awkward themes with alternate drama and poetry. the emblems of ezekiel's vision were too intricate for western art, and long before the fifteenth century they had been reduced to the simple forms of the lion, ox, eagle and angel, with no attribute except wings. all four reliefs are rectangular, about eighteen inches square. the ox is, of course, the least inspiring, and here as elsewhere is treated in a dry perfunctory manner. the oxen on the façade of laon cathedral offered some scope to the sculptor, being life-sized; but in a small relief the subject was not attractive. the lion is more vigorously treated. as a work of natural history he is better than the marzocco, and he has a certain heraldic extravagance as well. the limbs have tension, the muscles are made of steel, and there is strength and watchfulness, attributes which led the early architects to rest the pilasters of the pulpit and portal upon lions' backs. but the eagle of st. john is superb, even grander than the famous classical marble of the same subject.[ ] it has the broad expanse of wings, vibrating as though the bird were about to take flight: the long lithe body with its soft pectoral feathers, the striking claws, and the flattened head with cruel gleaming eye, all combine to give a _terribilità_ which is, perhaps, unsurpassed in all the countless versions of the symbol. but the drama of the eagle is eclipsed by the quiet unostentatious poetry of the angel of st. matthew. we see a girl of intense grace and refinement, winged as an angel and looking modestly downwards to the open gospel in her hands. delicacy is the keynote pervading every detail of the relief: in her hands, arms and throat, in the soft curves of the young frame, and in the drapery itself, which suggests all that is dainty and pure--everywhere, in fact, we find charm and tenderness, rare even in a man like ghiberti, almost unique in donatello. [footnote : the walpole eagle from the tiber, belonging to the earl of wemyss.] * * * * * [sidenote: the choir of angels.] in the original contract with donatello, ten angels were commissioned, and were exhibited on the provisional wooden altar ( , vi. ' ). it appears, however, that they were insufficient, and two more panels were ordered. these may possibly be the reliefs in each of which a couple of angels are represented singing, certainly the most successful of all. there is a palpable inequality in the remainder. they not only show differences of treatment in the details of drapery, chiselling and general decoration, but there is a substantial lack of harmony in their broad conception. it is impossible to believe that the two angels leaning inwards against the edge of the relief (the fourth respectively from either end of the altar) could have been modelled by donatello. not only are they vulgar and commonplace, but they are malformed: well might donatello long for criticism and censure if these two stupid little urchins were standards of his production. next to one of these pipers is a child playing the lute, delicious in every respect: he is made by the genius, the other by the hack. they contrast in every particular--drapery, anatomy, face and technique. the lutist is admirable as he looks down at his instrument to catch the note; capital also is the boy playing the double pipe, with the close drapery swirling about his plump limbs, as one sees in san francesco of rimini, that temple dedicated to isotta and to childhood. the head of the boy playing the harp shows the best characteristics of this group. the hair is relatively short, and falls in thick glossy ringlets over his ears; it is bound by a heavy chaplet of leaves and rosettes; above this wreath the hair is smooth and orderly. there was no occasion to exclude the pleasing little touches, as in the case of the cantoria children, where deep holes penetrate the children's hair, so that the "distance should not consume the diligence." at padua, where the choristers were to be seen a few feet only from the ground, the sculptor's efforts to show the warm shades and recesses of the hair were amply repaid. the boys singing the duets differ from the remainder: they are busily occupied with their music, carefully following the score. the disposition of two children in a panel only large enough for one has not been so successfully met as when abraham and isaac were fitted into the narrow niche on the campanile; but the affectionate attitude of these boys and their sincerity make one overlook a slight technical shortcoming. the two heads in close proximity give a certain sense of atmosphere between them, not easily rendered when one of them had to be modelled in comparatively high-relief. * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ choristers sant' antonio, padua] [illustration: _alinari_ choristers sant' antonio, padua] [illustration: christ mourned by angels london] [sidenote: the pietà and the entombment.] the remaining work for the high altar consists of a marble entombment and a bronze relief of christ mourned by angels, treated as a pietà. the tabernacle door, which occupies the centre of the high altar, differs in shape, quality and design from everything else, and is wholly unworthy of its prominent position. the lower relief is, however, a work of exceptional interest. it is placed in the centre of the frontal with the reliefs of choristers on either side of it, a tragic culmination to all the happy children around it. the christ is resting upright in the tomb, half of the figure only being visible. the head is bowed and the hands crossed: the face is wan and haggard. the body is modelled to emphasise the pronounced lines of the big curve formed by the ribs from which the lower part of the body is fast sinking: donatello did the same thing with the crucifix. an angel stands at each side of the christ, holding up a curtain or pall behind the figure. each of these boys has a hand pressed against his cheek, the picture of tragedy: they weep over the dead saviour, their anguish is indescribable. in the marble version of the same subject in london,[ ] the angels are actually supporting the christ, who, without their maintenance, would fall down. his head is resting against one of the children's hands: one of the arms has slipped down inanimate, while the other hangs over the shoulder of the second angel, a consummate rendering of what is dead: the veins are tumified, the skin is shrinking, and the muscles are uncontrolled. this christ is in some ways the more remarkable plastic achievement, though it is not so characteristic as the paduan version. the two reliefs are probably coeval, though that in london, with its attendant angels, has indications of being rather earlier in date, and almost shows the hand of michelozzo in one or two details. but the head of christ, with its short thin beard, and the hair held back by a corded fillet, is similar to much that is exclusively paduan. the entombment, a very large marble relief, consists of eight life-sized figures, four of whom are lowering the body into the sepulchre. here for the first time we have that frenzied and impassioned scene which became so common in northern italy. the entombment on the st. peter's tabernacle is insipid by the side of this, where grief leads the magdalen to tear out thick handfuls of her hair; others throw up their hands as they abandon themselves, as they scream in ungovernable sorrow. it is a riot of woe, and the more solemn figures who are engaged with the dead body have grown grey with care. this relief dates a new departure: the entombment and other episodes of the passion henceforward lose their calm emblematic character, and are fraught with tragedy and gloom. donatello's relief became the prototype for the bellini, for mantegna, and a host of artists who, without, perhaps, having seen the original, drew their inspiration from what it had already inspired. for a while this intensification of the last scenes of christ's life bore good fruit for art, especially in the northern provinces: but after a certain point nervous exhaustion ensued and produced a kind of hysteria, where the magdalen's tears must end in convulsive laughter, and where the tragedy is so demonstrative that the solemn element is utterly lost.[ ] the profound pathos and teaching of the earlier scenes were exchanged for what was theatrical. but tragedy always held a place in italian, or rather in christian art: it was out of place in antiquity. the smiling and perennial youth of the gods, their happinesses, loves, and adventures, gave relatively small scope for the personal aspects of tragedy. there was no need for vicarious or redemptive suffering: what pain existed, and they rarely expressed it in marble, was human in its origin and punitive in effect: icarus, niobe, laocoon, prometheus; and even here the proprieties of good taste imposed strict limits, beyond which the portrayal of tragedy could not go without violating unwritten laws. it had to occupy a secondary place in their art: the dying gladiator was merely a broken toy tossed aside. their tragedies were largely limited to nemesis, the moirai, the erinnydes, and lower forms, such as harpies. but occasionally one gets a breath of mediævalism and its haunting mysteries. the sleeping fury at rome, for instance,[ ] where sleep steals in during a moment of respite from torture, is superb, and, moreover, stands almost alone in its presentment of a certain impelling tragedy, which, with the advent of christianity, became an integral and dominating feature of its art. [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , . m.g. dreyfus has a fine plaquette analogous to these large reliefs.] [footnote : _cf._, for instance, madame andré's pietà lunette, or the stone "lamentation" in victoria and albert museum, no. , , almost german in its harsh realism. this came from the palazzo lazzara at padua.] [footnote : in ludovisi buoncompagni collection, museo nazionale, marble. _cf._ also the bust of minatia polla, so called, which might be by verrocchio.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ super altar by giovanni da pisa eremitani church, padua] [sidenote: donatello's assistants.] the variety of workmanship at padua would be an infallible proof that donatello had the assistance of a number of disciples, even if we had no documentary evidence on the point. bandinelli refers to their numbers: when needing help he wrote to the grand duke saying that donatello always had eighteen or twenty assistants, without whose aid it would have been impossible for him to have made the paduan altar.[ ] but we also possess bills, contracts, and schedules, in which we can find the names of donatello's _garzoni_. the work, it must be remembered, was not wholly confined to sculpture: among the earliest recorded payment to donatello is that for structural work on the loggia ( , iii. ). giovanni nani of florence was already engaged there ( , iii. ) as a sort of master mason on donatello's arrival: he made the marble pedestal for the crucifix ( , vi. ), and several others are mentioned in a subordinate capacity, such as niccolo cocaro ( , iv. ), meo and pipo of florence ( , iv. ), antonio of lugano, _taia pria_ ( , v. ); bartolomeo of ferrara went to valstagna to open up the quarry--_una montagna de lo alabastro_ ( , viii. ). employment was also given to jacomo, a goldsmith ( , v. ), to squarcione the painter ( , xi. ), to moscatelo, the maker of majolica (v. ), and to giovanni da becato, who made a metal grille behind the altar. francesco del mayo and andrea delle caldiere were the chief bronze casters; a dozen or fifteen other names are recorded. none of these can have had much influence on the sculpture itself; but there were men of greater calibre, giovanni da pisa, urbano da cortona, antonio celino of pisa, and francesco valente of florence. though called _garzoni_ and _disipoli_ of donatello (june and sept. ), they soon became men of trained capacity, and were specifically mentioned in some of the contracts. thus it appears that each was entrusted with one of the evangelist's symbols; they were also largely responsible for the bronze choristers ( , iv. ). their whims and idiosyncrasies are visible in many particulars: in the halos for instance. the gospel emblems all have halos, likewise most of the singing children, whereas there are none on the madonna and the great statues of canonised saints on the altar. but it is impossible here to enter upon the most interesting problem of their respective shares on the altar sculpture, and how far they were independent of donatello beyond the chiselling and polishing of the bronze; the subject would need discussion at too great length. it is, however, worth while to refer to some of their work, for which they were exclusively responsible. thus the fulgosio tomb in the santo, and the superaltar in the eremitani at padua (though much disfigured by paint), show that giovanni da pisa was influenced by donatello to a remarkable degree. the composition of the altar consists of a broad relief of the madonna with three saints on either side of her: below it is a _predella_ divided into three panels; above, a frieze of dancing children similar to those on the pulpits of san lorenzo. the composition is crowned by a tympanum and _putti_ suggested by donatello's annunciation. several of the larger figures might almost be the work of donatello, though the personality of giovanni makes itself felt throughout. urbano of cortona was another interesting man. he received a commission to decorate the chapel of the madonna delle grazie in the sienese cathedral,[ ] and he had to make the symbols of the evangelists: _nel fregio ... si debi fare iiii. evangelisti in forma d'animali_. donatello himself, _excellentissimus sculptor, seu magister sculture_,[ ] was commissioned later on to work in this chapel; but there can be no doubt that the angel of st. matthew, now preserved in the opera del duomo,[ ] is the work of urbano. it is the identical design of the emblem on the paduan altar, pleasant in its way, but differing in all the material elements of charm; but it is an important document in that it shows a further stage in the evolution of donatello through the hand of a painstaking pupil. of celino and valente our knowledge is less--perhaps because there was never any friction between the master and his assistants, which gives so unenviable a record to the relation of michael angelo with his pupils.[ ] the two inscriptions on the background of the miracle of the miser's heart, read as follows: "s. ant. di giov de se e suor[=u]": and "[=s] di piero e bartolomeo e su[=o]." they have been variously interpreted. some have suggested that they indicate the names of donors, or that the letter s means _sepulchrum_, and that they are in the nature of epitaphs. it would seem more probable that they are signatures of those who were occupied in giving final touches to the chiselling of the background. [footnote : , xii. . printed in bottari, ii. .] [footnote : , x. . milanesi, ii. .] [footnote : . x. ; _ibid._ .] [footnote : marble, no. .] [footnote : the rules of the sienese guild of painters provided against strife within their own circles by imposing a fine upon whoever _dicesse vilania o parole ingiuriose al retore_: art. . milanesi, i. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ tomb of giovanni, son of general gattamelata padua] [illustration: _alinari_ tomb of general gattamelata sant' antonio, padua] [illustration: shrine of st. justina london] [sidenote: bellano and the gattamelata tombs.] one other sculptor, bellano, is said by vasari to have been so much affected by donatello's influence that the work of the two men was often indistinguishable. this places bellano too high. scardeone, it is true, says he was _mirus coelatura_;[ ] but gauricus is more accurate in calling him _ineptus artifex_.[ ] he was really a lugubrious person, though on rare occasions he made a good thing, such, for instance, as the statuette of st. jerome, belonging to m. gustave dreyfus. but his large bas-relief of st. anthony and the mule[ ] is stiff and laboured. the tomb of roycelli, the _monarcha sapientie_ in the santo, with its wealth of poverty-stricken decoration, shows that bellano was a man who could work on a large scale, but whose sense of fitness and harmony was weak. so also the roccabonella fragments, in spite of a rugged, rough-hewn appearance, show an absence of ethical and intellectual qualities; while the fussy and breathless reliefs round the choir of the santo are farcical in several respects. there was another man influenced by donatello, who must be nameless pending further investigation: his style cannot be identified with anything on the great altar, but he was a sculptor of immense power. he made the so-called shrine of santa giustina in london,[ ] and the two gattamelata monuments in the santo. these tombs are very simple, consisting of the effigies of the two condottieri, fully armed, but with bared heads. below is a broad stone relief of children holding the scroll between them, as on the coscia tomb in florence. above is a lunette containing painting, the whole composition being framed by a severe moulding, and surmounted by the family crest and badge. they are most remarkable. the two recumbent figures lie calm and peaceful: they show the ennobling aspect of death, the belief in a further existence. this sculptor with his sensitive touch makes us realise the migration. to "make the good end" was, indeed, a product of christianity: antiquity was content if a man parted from life "handsomely." greek art can, of course, show no sign of the christian virtues of death. like the egyptians, their object was to present the dead as still alive, even where the aid of fiction had to be invoked. to them sleep and death are often indistinguishable; often again one is left in doubt as to which of the figures on a funeral relief represents the departed. with death the human body, having ceased to be the home of life, ceased also to be a welcome theme of art. these two gattamelatas, father and son, have fought the good fight, and in the carved effigy acquire a statuesque repose which is full of dignity and pathos. the famous warrior of ravenna, guido guidarelli as he is called, though of a later date, is fashioned in the same spirit; showing, moreover, certain peculiarities in the armour which one notices in the tombs at padua. the d'alagni monument in s. domenico at naples, and a tomb in the carmine of pisa, are similar in respect of sentiment. so, too, is the shrine of santa giustina in london, of which the details as well as the organic treatment leave no doubt as to its authorship, so closely does it resemble the tomb of giovanni gattamelata. it is a work of singular refinement and beauty. we see the recumbent figure of the saint on the façade of a sarcophagus, at either side of which are little angels made by the same hand and at the same date as those on giovanni's tomb. santa giustina is modelled in low-relief; the sculptor seems to draw in the stone, and the drapery is like linen: not a blanket or counterpane, but some thin clinging material which is moulded to the form below. in some ways this precious work is analogous to the more famous bas-relief belonging to the earl of wemyss, the st. cecilia which has been ascribed to donatello. this wonderful thing is not well known: it has been seldom exhibited, and the photograph by which it is usually judged is taken from a reproduction moulded a generation ago. the original, of rather slaty lavagna stone, has never been photographed, and the cast, many thousands of which exist, entirely fails to show the intangible and diaphanous qualities of the original. the widespread popularity of the st. cecilia would (if possible) be enhanced were we more familiar with the genuine work itself. it is certainly one of the most accomplished examples of italian plastic art; not, indeed, by donatello himself, for there is a softness and glamour which cannot be associated with his chisel. but it has the unequalled tenderness and grace for which the gattamelata tomb is so notable, placing its nameless author in the highest ranks of italian sculpture. [footnote : "de antiq. urbis patavii," , p. .] [footnote : "de sculptura," , gathering f.] [footnote : marble, in sacristy of s. antonio.] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ general gattamelata padua] [sidenote: gattamelata.] erasmo narni, general gattamelata, died in , and the venetians, whom he had honourably served, granted the privilege of a site in the tributary town of padua for the monument, the cost of which was borne by the family of the dead condottiere. donatello had to reconstruct the anatomy of a horse on a colossal scale. he was faced by the formidable task of making the first equestrian bronze statue erected in italy during the renaissance, and no model existed except the antique statue of marcus aurelius at rome. donatello was, however, familiar with the four horses on the façade of san marco at venice. he undertook to complete the gattamelata monument by september , but the bulk of the casting was finished as early as , though the chiselling and chasing of the bronze required further work for two or three years. the statue was placed on the pedestal before the agreed date, and a conference was held at venice to settle the price.[ ] there were four assessors on either side, and it was finally agreed that the total payment should be a sum equivalent to about two thousand guineas in our own day. donatello does not seem to have been hampered by his lack of experience. the work is adroitly handled, the technical difficulty of welding the large pieces of bronze is successfully overcome, and the metal is firm and self-supporting. there are faults, of course, though the fact that the horse ambles need not be considered an error. but the relative proportions of the horse and rider are not quite accurately preserved, gattamelata being, if anything, rather below the right scale. the monument is, however, so massive and grandiose that criticism seems out of place; indeed, in the presence of the statue one feels that everything is subordinated to the power and mastery of gattamelata himself. the general is bareheaded, and the strong courageous face is modelled with directness and energy. the gesture is commanding, and he rides easily in the saddle. colleone's statue at venice is superior in many ways: yet the radical distinction between them is that whereas gattamelata is the faithful portrait of a modest though successful warrior, it must be confessed that verrocchio makes an idealised soldier of fortune, full of bravado and swagger, a _malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre_ of the quattrocento. but, striking as the contrast of sentiment is, noticeable alike in the artist and his model, these two statues remain the finest equestrian monuments in the world, their one possible rival being can grande at verona. donatello has decorated gattamelata's saddle and armour with a mass of delicate and vivacious detail, which modifies the severity without distracting the eye. the _putti_ which act as pommels to the saddle are delightful little figures, and the damascened and chased fringes of the armour are excellent. moreover, the armour does not overweight the figure. the horse, of rather a thick and "punchy" breed, is well suited to carry a heavy load; he is full of spirit, and is neighing and chafing, as the old critics pointed out. an enormous wooden horse, some twenty-four feet long, is preserved in the sala della raggione at padua. it used to belong to the capodalista family, and has been considered donatello's model for the gattamelata charger. this is unlikely, and it was more probably used in some procession, being ridden by a huge emblematic figure. it is improbable that donatello should have done more than sketch the design; but the head of the horse is admirable, with the feathery ears and bushy topknot which one finds in the venice quadriga, on gattamelata's steed, and on the colossal bronze head of a horse now preserved in the naples museum. this used to be considered an antique, but it is now established beyond all question that donatello made it; and it was presented in to count mataloni by lorenzo de' medici. it is an interesting work, defective in some places, and treated similarly to classical examples; indeed, donatello was obviously influenced in all his equine statuary by the most obvious classical horses at his command, namely, those at venice. he does not seem to have taken ideas from the marcus aurelius, which he had not seen for upwards of ten years when commissioned to make the gattamelata. the base of the statue is simple, but scarcely worthy of the monument it supports. the pedestal made by leopardi for the colleone monument is both more decorative and dignified. on donatello's pedestal there are two marble reliefs of winged boys holding the general's helmet, badge and cuirass. the reliefs on the monument are copies of the maimed originals now preserved in a dark passage of the santo cloister. there must be many statues elsewhere, now taken for originals, which are nothing more than replicas of what had gradually perished. if one closely examines the sculpture on some of the church façades--siena cathedral, for instance--one finds that most of the statues are only held together by numberless metal ties and clamps; and one may safely assume that many of those in really good condition have been placed there at later dates. [footnote : , vi. . donatello is still described as _abitante in padova_.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ colleone venice] [sidenote: smaller reliefs and plaquettes.] the gattamelata reliefs seem to be sixteenth-century work. they show a detail of which donatello and his scholars were fond, namely, the medusa's head. it reappears on the martelli patera[ ] and on the sword-hilt in the royal armoury at turin. the former has been ascribed to donatello, but the attribution is untenable. it is a bronze medallion of a satyr and bacchante, executed with much skill, but not recalling the spirit or handling of donatello. it is an admirable example of the bronze-work which became popular in northern italy, to which donatello gave the initial impetus, and which soon became ultra-classical in style. the sword-hilt is more interesting, and it is signed "opus donatelli flo." some of the detail has a richness which might suggest rather a later date; but the general outline, especially the small crouching _putti_, was, no doubt, designed by the master. the history of this curious and unusual specimen is unknown, and it is outside donatello's sphere of activity. michael angelo, it may be remembered, also had the caprice of making a sword for the aldobrandini family. the manufacture of plaquettes, small bronze plates which were widely used for decorating caskets, inkstands, candlesticks, &c., became a specialised art; and some of these dainty reliefs are possibly made from donatello's own designs. there are, however, a few larger bronzes of greater importance in which his personality was able to assert itself more freely than in the reduced plaquettes. but the work of scholars and imitators has been frequently mistaken for donatello's own productions. thus the ambras (vienna) relief of the entombment, with its exaggerated ideas of classical profile, must be the work of a scholar. the sportello at venice[ ] also shows later renaissance decoration in its rich arabesques, though two hands seem to have been employed--the four central _putti_ and the two angels being more donatellesque than the remainder. the relief of the flagellation in paris[ ] is more important, as we have a rugged and severe treatment both in the subject and its execution: but the summary treatment of such details as the hair makes one doubtful if donatello can have been wholly responsible. a somewhat analogous flagellation in berlin[ ] is the work of a clever but halting plagiarist. he has inserted a donatellesque background of arches showing the lines of stonework, and a pleasant detached girl who reminds us of the figure on the siena and st. george reliefs. but the imitator's weak hand is betrayed by the anatomy of the three principal figures. the positions are those of force and energy, but there is no tension or muscular effort, and there is no vestige of vigour in the rounded backs and soft limbs. even if donatello furnished the original sketch, it is quite impossible that he should have executed or approved the carving. madame andré's martyrdom of st. sebastian is work in which the finishing-touches were probably added by a pupil, but this striking composition shows dramatic qualities which one must associate with donatello himself. so also the tondo madonna belonging to m. gustave dreyfus, in which the figures are ranged behind a balustrade, making the "garden enclosed"--a popular symbolical treatment of the virgin and child--is doubtless from one of donatello's designs.[ ] though imperfect, the london deposition or lamentation[ ] is an important work, and has a value as showing the methods of fastening figures in relief on to the foundation of the background, though in this case the bulk of the background is missing. three other reliefs should be mentioned, all representing christ on the cross. of these, the berlin example,[ ] though sadly injured since its acquisition for the museum, is notable; being, in fact, a genuine sketch by donatello himself, and in a degree comparable to the clay study of the same subject in london.[ ] the bronze relief, belonging to comte isaac de camondo in paris, is a most remarkable work of the paduan period. donatello has succeeded in conveying the sense of desolating tragedy without any adventitious aid of violence or movement. the whole thing is massive, and treated with a studied simplicity which concentrates the silence and loneliness of the scene. it is superb, and superior to a varied treatment of the same subject in the bargello. in this well-known relief the crowded scene is full of turmoil and confusion. in the foreground are the relatives and disciples of christ. many soldiers are introduced, some of whom closely resemble the tall men-at-arms in mantegna's frescoes at padua. donatello's hand is obvious in the angels and in the three crucified figures, which are modelled with masterly conviction. the rest of the composition has been ruthlessly gilded and chased until the statuesque lines are lost in a mass of tiresome detail; which is regrettable, for the conception is fine. [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , .] [footnote : museo archeologico, doge's palace.] [footnote : louvre, "his de la salle collection," no. .] [footnote : marble, no. b.] [footnote : _cf._ a donatellesque stucco madonna beneath a _baldachino_ belonging to signor bardini, who also possesses a stucco entombment similar to the london bronze.] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , . bronze.] [footnote : stucco no. .] [footnote : see p. .] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ madonna and child siena cathedral] [illustration: _w.a. mansell_ "pazzi" madonna berlin] [sidenote: the madonnas.] a whole treatise would be required to describe all the madonnas which have been attributed to donatello. within the limits of this volume the discussion must be confined to certain groups which are directly related to him, ignoring a much larger number of subordinate interest. the tendency is to ascribe to donatello many more than he can possibly have made--varying inversely from the attitude of modern criticism, which has asserted that not twenty paintings by giorgione have survived. hundreds of artists must have made these madonnas, of which only a small minority are in bronze or marble. many names of sculptors are recorded to whom we can only attribute one or two works; the remainder being generically ascribed to the school of some great man, and often enough to the great man himself. the bulk of these reliefs of the madonna and child are in stucco, terra-cotta, carta pesta and gesso--cheap malleable materials which were easily and rapidly worked: the reliefs were manufactured in great numbers for the market. then again, well-known works were cast, and small differences in colour and finish often gave them the semblance of original work. vasari says that almost every artist in florence possessed a cast of pollaiuolo's battle-piece.[ ] such facsimiles are eagerly sought after nowadays, and are treated as genuine works of the sculptor. it must also be remembered that during the last decades there has been a systematic multiplication of these reliefs, and that forgeries can be found in most of the great collections of europe. the first difficulty encountered in trying to discept between donatello and his school, is that authenticated examples from which to make our inductions are very rare. donatello certainly made madonnas in relief: vasari mentions half a dozen; neroccio, the sienese sculptor, possessed _una madonna di gesso di donatello_.[ ] there are madonnas on the tombs of pope john and cardinal brancacci. the latter shows no trace of donatello's craft, and the former is of indifferent merit, and was certainly not made by donatello alone. there are two madonnas at padua, one the large altar statue, the other a tiny relief three inches in diameter on one of the bronze miracle panels. the sources of stylistic data are therefore most scanty. one may say generally that in the authenticated virgins as well as in the other heads of women, donatello makes a marked nasal indenture, thus separating him from those later men who drew their heads with the classical profile, showing a straight and continuous line from the forehead down the nose. but even this cannot be pressed too far. as regards the christ, donatello seems to preserve the essence and immaturity of childhood. his treatment of the child is never hieratic, and it is always full of warm human sentiment. the paduan relief, for instance, is almost a _genre_ representation of a mother and child, domestic and intimate, with nothing but the halos to indicate the higher meaning of the theme. having said so much, we come to the other madonnas which are assigned on various grounds to donatello: those known as the madonnas pazzi, orlandini, siena cathedral, pietra piana; the london oval, the madonna of the rose, the capella medici group, and the piot and courajod madonnas in the louvre. all of these have one or more features which conflict with our ideas of donatello. it is impossible to say that any one of them must inevitably be by donatello himself; none of them carry their own sign-manual of authenticity. the pazzi madonna in berlin[ ] is now generally ascribed to donatello himself, and certainly no more grandiose version of the subject exists. the virgin is holding up the child close to her beautiful face; she broods over him, and the countenance is full of foreboding. the solemnity of the large paduan madonna is visible here, and it is only made to apply to the virgin, for the child is a typical _bambino_. so, too, in the relief outside the transept door of siena cathedral we find this grim careworn expression and the sense of impending drama: the massacre of the innocents is still to come. this relief, a marble _tondo_, is in such abnormally perfect condition that one wonders if it may not be a later _replica_ of some original which the atmosphere disintegrated. donatello must have provided the design; at any rate, it is difficult to suggest an alternative name. the four winged cherubs are, however, lifeless and ill-drawn, while the christ is more like some of the _putti_ on the aragazzi reliefs than donatello's typical boy. the share of michelozzo in the reliefs ascribed to donatello is larger than has been hitherto acknowledged. the orlandini madonna[ ] yearns like a tigress as she holds up her child and gazes into its face; here again we have a composition for which donatello must have been primarily responsible, though the full profile is attributable to inefficient handling of the marble rather than to deliberate intention. signor bardini's version of this relief has a delicacy lacking in the original; one touch of colour removes a certain awkwardness of the profile. the madonna in the via pietra piana at florence belongs to a different category. here again the design is donatellesque, but the face of the madonna has a dull and vacant look; not only is it without the powerful modelling of the pazzi or siena reliefs, but it shows none of the sentiment for which those two madonnas are so remarkable. there are several reproductions in berlin and london,[ ] all differing from the florentine version in the drapery of the head-dress. closely related to this madonna is another composition which only exists in soft materials.[ ] the virgin, with long wavy hair, looks downwards towards her child, who is looking outwards to the spectator. this is a work of merit, with something attractive in the anxious and clinging attitude of the madonna. the large clay madonna and child in london,[ ] the christ sitting in a chair and the virgin with hands joined in worship, has been the subject of much controversy. there are good grounds for doubting its authenticity. the angular treatment of the head and a dainty roundness of the wrist often indicate that bastianini had a share in this class of work.[ ] this relief has all the merits and demerits of the circular piot madonna in the louvre.[ ] here, too, the handling of bastianini has been detected, though there is a clumsiness which is seldom seen in the productions of that distinguished artist. the frame and the background, which are integral features of the composition, can leave no doubt as to the origin of this work. but the piot relief has an interest which the london terra-cotta cannot boast, for a fifteenth-century original from which the copyist worked is in existence, now belonging to signor bardini. this is a tondo madonna of uncoloured stucco, of no particular value in itself; but it is the model from which the piot sophistication was contrived; or else it is a cast from the lost original of marble. it reveals all the whims of the copyist: the treatment of the hands, the lissome tissue of the drapery, and the angular structure of the skull. a less interesting forgery is the marble madonna in london.[ ] three reproductions of the lost donatellesque original exist, the berlin copy[ ] being in stucco, that at bergamo terra-cotta. signor bardini has an effaced and poor copy of the same relief, in which the hand of the madonna is obviously meant to be holding something; but the stucco has been much rubbed away and one cannot tell the original intention of the sculptor. but the two other genuine versions are in better condition and supply the answer, showing that the virgin held a large rose between her fingers. the man who made the london relief copied from the incomplete version, and carved an empty meaningless hand with the fingers grasping something which does not exist. [footnote : v. .] [footnote : mentioned in his will. he died in . milanesi, iii. p. .] [footnote : marble, no. . versions in soft materials exist in the louvre, in the andré and bardini collections, and a variant in the victoria and albert museum, no. , .] [footnote : marble, berlin museum.] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , ; berlin museum; collections of herr von beckerath and herr richard von kaufmann.] [footnote : louvre, berlin museum; verona, in the viccolo fogge; _cf._ also the relief under the archway in the via de' termini, siena.] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , .] [footnote : giovanni bastianini, - , though the _doyen_ of forgers, did not profit by his dexterity, and died almost penniless.] [footnote : terra-cotta.] [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , .] [footnote : no. e. bergamo, morelli collection, no. .] [illustration: _alinari_ madonna and child louvre (no. ), paris] the little oval madonna in london[ ] is a work of much interest. it is coloured stucco, and dr. bode, who has dated it as early as - , believes it to be the first example of the _santa conversazione_ in italian plastic art. a variant belonging to dr. weisbach in berlin is of equal importance, and both are probably original works and not casts. the berlin relief is not so thickly painted as the london medallion, and shows signs of the actual modelling. there are contradictions in these valuable works. the music-making angels are like a figure on the salome relief at siena: but they are also related to luca della robbia's reliefs on the campanile, and to a terra-cotta madonna in london[ ] (which reminds one of the pellegrini chapel); matteo civitale uses a similar type on the tomb of st. regulus at lucca; while the crowned saint of the london version was copied at a later date on a well-known plaquette forming the lid of a box of which several examples exist.[ ] the figure of the madonna and child also suggests another hand; and with the exception of the stone relief in the louvre, and another derived from it at padua,[ ] it is the only case in which the virgin is not shown in profile. these latter works are bold and vigorous, and must be ultimately referred to donatello, the head of the madonna being rendered by fluent and precise strokes of the chisel. a bronze relief in the louvre (no. ), which came from fontainebleau, has donatellesque motives; but the spiral coils of hair, and still more the fact that the virgin's breasts are hammered into the likeness of _putti_'s faces--wholly alien to donatello's serious ideas--sufficiently prove it to belong to the later italian school which flourished at the french court. the courajod madonna (louvre, ) is modestly called a schoolpiece; but it is a work of first-class importance, for which donatello is to be credited. this is a very large relief in painted terra, the madonna being in profile to the left, with a wan and saddened expression. the arm is stiff and wooden, while the undercutting of the profile, like that of the siena tondo, is so pronounced that, when standing close to the wall on which the relief is fixed, one can see the virgin's second eye--unduly prominent and much too near to the nose. this is a needless and distracting mannerism, though, of course, the blemish is only noticeable from one point of view, being quite invisible as one sees the relief from the front, or in a photograph. the berlin museum has another large madonna comparable for its scale and rich colouring to the courajod relief. this came from the convent of santa maria maddalena de' pazzi at florence.[ ] the child, draped in swaddling-clothes, stands up leaning against the virgin, who looks downwards. above them are four cherubs, full of character and vivacity, the whole composition being typical of donatello, though naturally enough much of the primitive colouring has disappeared during the last four centuries. one other group remains to be noticed, founded upon the large marble relief in the capella medici of santa croce.[ ] we detect donatello's ideas, but no sign of his handiwork: neither was he responsible for the composition, of which the governing feature is a total absence of his masterly occupation of space. there are also florescent details in the halos, drapery, and so forth, which are closer to agostino di duccio than to donatello. though not all by the same sculptor, these reliefs are most interesting and suggestive, showing the growth and activity of a small school which drew some inspiration from donatello while preserving its own individuality. we find an intricate treatment of a very simple idea. as compositions, donatello's madonnas were always simple. but our knowledge of the subject is still empirical, and until the problem has been further sifted by the most severe tests of research and criticism, our opinions as to donatello's personal share in the array of madonnas must remain subject to revision. [footnote : victoria and albert museum, no. , .] [footnote : _ibid._ no. , .] [footnote : one was in the spitzer collection, another belongs to m. gustave dreyfus.] [footnote : no. , davillier bequest; and in the entrance hall to the sacristy of the eremitani at padua.] [footnote : terra-cotta no. a.] [footnote : the others are victoria and albert museum, no. , , marble. berlin museum, stucco. madame andré, marble, finer than the london version. marquise arconati-visconti, paris, marble, and a rough uncoloured stucco in the casa bardini.] * * * * * [illustration: _w.a. mansell_ madonna (berlin) from santa maria maddalena dei pazzi, florence] [illustration: _alinari_ side panel of pulpit san lorenzo, florence] [sidenote: the pulpits of san lorenzo.] donatello was sixty-seven when he returned from padua. he seems to have been unsettled during his later years, undertaking ambitious schemes which he did not execute, and hesitating whether florence or siena should be the home of his old age. the bronze pulpits of san lorenzo[ ] are the most important works of this period, and they were left unfinished at his death. donatello was an old man, and the work bears witness to his advancing years. bandinelli says that the roughness of the modelling was caused by failing eyesight,[ ] and it is obvious that, notwithstanding the signs of feverish activity, and an apparent desire to get the work finished, much was left uncompleted at his death. the pulpits were not even erected until a later date; some of the panels were subsequently added in wood, and others do not correctly fit into the structural design. but the genius of donatello shines through the finishing-touches of his assistants. drama is replaced by tragedy; and in these panels the concluding incidents of the passion are pictured with intense earnestness and pathos. but donatello would not allow gloom to monopolise his composition. the paradox of the pulpits consists in the frieze of _putti_ above the reliefs: _putti_ who dance, play, romp, and run about. some of them are busily engaged in moving a heavy statue: others are pressing grapes into big cauldrons. the boy dragging along a violoncello as big as himself is delightful. the contrast afforded by this happy and buoyant throng to the unrelieved tragedy below is strikingly unconventional; and the spirit of both portions is so well maintained that there is neither conflict of emotion nor sense of incongruity. the scenes (including those added at a later date) are sixteen in number. except the later reliefs of st. john, st. luke, the flagellation, and the ecce homo, all are of bronze, upon which more care seems to have been expended than on the clay models from which they were cast. on the southern pulpit the scene on the mount of olives shows the foreshortened apostles sleeping soundly as in mantegna's pictures. christ before pilate and christ before caiaphas are treated as different episodes, in two similar compartments of one great hall, separated by a large pier. the crucifix and the deposition are, perhaps, the most remarkable of all these reliefs: corresponding in many ways to works already described; but not having been over-decorated like the bargello relief, show greater dignity and less confusion. the background of the deposition is flat, but broken here and there by faintly-indicated horsemen; naked boys riding on shadowy steeds like those vague figures which seem to thread their way through some panel of gothic tapestry. there is an element of _stiacciato_ in the entombment, giving it the air of a mystery rather than of an historical fact. the draperies are thin and graceful, suited to the softer modelling of the limbs: some of the faces are almost dainty. passing to the northern pulpit, we come to three scenes divided by heavy buttresses, but unified by figures leaning against them, and overstepping the lateral boundaries of the reliefs. the subjects are the descent into limbo, the resurrection and the ascension. the link between the two former is a haggard emaciated baptist. the christ is old and tired. the people who welcome him in limbo are old and tired, feebly pressing towards the saviour. the roman guards lie sleeping, self abandoned in their fatigue, while christ, wearied and suffering, steps from the tomb with manifest effort. one feels that the physical infirmities of the artist are reflected in these two works, so vivid in their presentment of the heavy burden of advanced years. but in the resurrection a fresh note is struck. the bystanders are gathered round the christ, who gives the benediction. his robe is held back by little angels, and the scene is pervaded by an atmosphere of staid and decorous calm. donatello has treated this relief in a more archaic spirit. the absence of paroxysms of acute grief, giving a certain violence to other parts of the pulpits, makes the contrast of this relief more effective; but, even so, this scene of the ascension is fraught with dramatic emphasis. the descent of the holy ghost is less interesting. there is a monotony in the upraised hands, while the feeling of devotional rhapsody is perhaps unduly enforced. the relief of the maries at the tomb, which occupies the western end of this pulpit, is almost pisanesque in the relative size of the people to the architecture. there is a combination of trees and pilasters seeming to support the long low roof beneath which the incident is portrayed. a curious feeling of intimacy is conveyed to the spectator. the pulpits are full of classical details--far more so than in anything we find at padua. it is very noticeable in the armour of the soldiers, in their shields bearing the letters s.p.q.r. and the scorpion, and in the antique vases which decorate the frieze. the centaurs holding the cartel on which donatello has signed his name are, of course, classical in idea, while the boys with horses are suggested by the great monte cavallo statues.[ ] then, again, the architecture is replete with classical forms; in one relief donatello introduces the column of trajan. but here, as elsewhere, the classicisms are held in check, and never invade or embarrass the dominant spirit of the quattrocento. how far donatello was helped by assistants must remain problematical in the absence of documentary evidence. bellano and bertoldo were in all probability responsible for a good deal. in the relief of st. laurence it is possible that donatello's share was relatively small. moreover, one part of the frieze of children is so closely allied to the work of giovanni da pisa at padua, that one is justified, on stylistic grounds, in suggesting that he may also have been employed. but it is certain that the share of bellano must have been limited to the more technical portion of the work, for there is happily nothing to suggest the poverty of his inventive powers. these pulpits are very remarkable works; they have an inexhaustible wealth of detail in which donatello can be studied with endless pleasure. the backgrounds are full of his architectural fancy, and the sustained effort put forth by donatello is really astonishing. but he was an octogenarian, and there are signs of decay. michael angelo and beethoven decayed. dante and shakespeare were too wise to decay; shelley and giorgione died too young. but the sculptor's intellect must be reinforced by keen eyes and a steady hand: of all artists, nature finds him most vulnerable. donatello's last work shows the fatigue of hand and eye, though the intellect never lost its ardent and strenuous activity. there was no petulance or meanness in his old age, no decadence; he merely grew old, and his personality was great until the end. [footnote : properly speaking, they are ambones. they stand in the west end of the nave of the church close to the junction of the transepts.] [footnote : , xii. . "_... donato non fece mai la più brutta opera_," &c. letter printed in bottari, i. .] [footnote : it is probable that these famous horses were mere wrecks in the fifteenth century. at any rate, lafreri's engraving of shows one of them without breast or forelegs, the remainder of the horse being nothing but a large pillar of brick. herr von kaufmann has an admirable statuette of donatello's latter period modelled from the horses on the san lorenzo frieze. _cf._ also mantegna in the madonna di san zeno, verona.] * * * * * [illustration: _alinari_ end panel of pulpit san lorenzo, florence] [sidenote: donatello's influence on sculpture.] the influence of donatello on his three greatest contemporaries was small. jacopo della quercia always retained his own massive style. luca della robbia and ghiberti--the euphuist of italian sculpture--were scarcely affected by the sterner principles of donatello. all four men were, in fact, exponents of distinct and independent ideas, and handed on their traditions to separate groups of successors. nanni di banco and il rosso were, however, impressed by donatello's monumental work, while other sculptors, such as simone fiorentino, vecchietta, michelozzo, andrea del aquila and buggiano (besides much anonymous talent) were largely influenced by him. it is owing to the fact that donatello was the most influential man of his day that so many "schoolpieces" exist.[ ] the influence on his successors is less easily determined, except so far as concerns the men who worked for him at padua, together with riccio, the most skilful bronze caster of his day, who indirectly owed a good deal to donatello. but urbano da cortona and his colleagues produced little original work after their return from padua: their training seems to have merged their individuality into the dominant style of donatello; and much of their subsequent work is now ascribed to donatello or his _bottega_. verrocchio, whom gauricus calls donatello's rival, owes little or nothing to the elder man, and the versatile sculptors who outlived donatello, such as rossellino, benedetto da maiano, mino da fiesole and desiderio, show relatively small traces of his influence. but donatello's sculpture acted as a restraining influence, a tonic: it was a living protest against flippancy and carelessness, and his influence was of service even where it was of a purely negative character. through bertoldo donatello's influence extended to michael angelo, affecting his ideas of form: but jacopo della quercia, who was almost as great a man as donatello, is the prototype of michael angelo's spirit. jacopo ought to have founded a powerful, indeed an overwhelming school of sculpture at siena. cozzarelli, neroccio, and the turini just fail to attain distinction; but their force and virility should have fructified jacopo's ideas and developed a supreme school of monumental sculpture. as regards michael angelo, there can be no question of his having been influenced by donatello's st. john the evangelist and the campanile abraham. the _madonna delle treppe_[ ] in a lesser degree is suggested by donatello. the trinity on the niche of st. louis again reminds one of michael angelo's conception of the eternal father. his bacchus in berlin[ ] was held to be the work of donatello himself, and the pietà in st. peter's has also a reminiscence of the older master. but in all these cases the resemblance is physical. the intellectual genius of michael angelo owed nothing to donatello. condivi records one of michael angelo's rare _obiter dicta_ about his predecessors[ ] to the effect that donatello's work, much as he admired it, was inadequately polished owing to lack of patience. the criticism was not very sagacious, and one would least expect it from michael angelo, of whose work so much was left unfinished. but, at any rate, donatello commanded his approval, and contributed something to one of the greatest artists of the world. but the ideals of michael angelo were too comprehensive to be derived from one source or another, too stupendous to spring from individuals. he sought out the universal form: he took mankind for his model; and while he typified humanity he effectively denationalised italian sculpture. [footnote : _e.g._, work wrongly attributed to donatello: the figure of plenty in the courtyard of the canigiani palace, florence; the lavabo in san lorenzo; the two figures on the famous silver altar at pistoja; the bronze busts in the bargello; the font at pietra santa; chimney-pieces, gateways, _stemme_, and numberless madonnas and small bronzes.] [footnote : casa buonarroti, florence.] [footnote : from the gualandi collection. it is attributed by some to a neapolitan sculptor.] [footnote : "vita," , p. .] * * * * * [sidenote: early criticism of donatello.] donatello's activity is the best testimonial to the appreciation of his work during his lifetime. sabba del castiglione was proud to possess a specimen of donatello's sculpture.[ ] commissions were showered on him in great numbers, and gauricus says that he produced more than all his contemporaries.[ ] flavius blondius of forli compares him favourably with the ancients.[ ] bartolomeo fazio warmly praised donatello, his junior.[ ] francesco d'olanda[ ] and benvenuto cellini[ ] also admired him. lasca credited donatello with having done for sculpture what brunellesco did for architecture: "_e donatello messe la scultura nel dritto suo sentier ch' era smarrita cosi l'architettura storpiata, e guasta alle man' de' tedeschi...._" and so forth.[ ] another early poem, the _rappresentazione_ of king nebuchadnezzar, shows the great popularity of donatello in the humbler walks of life.[ ] vasari's rhetoric led him to say that donatello was sent by nature, indignant at seeing herself caricatured.[ ] bocchi claims that, having equalled the ancients and surpassed the sculptors of his own day, donatello's name will live in the perpetual memory of mankind.[ ] [footnote : "ricordi," , p. .] [footnote : "de sculptura," , gathering f. "donatellus ... _aere ligno, marmore laudatissimus, plura hujus unius manu extant opera, quam semel ab eo ad nos cæterorum omnium_."] [footnote : "italia illustrata," bâle, , p. . "_decorat etiam urbem florentiam ingenio veterum laudibus respondente, donatello heracleotae zeusi aequiparandus, ut vivos, juxta virgilii verba, ducat de marmore vultus._"] [footnote : "de viris illustribus," florence ed. , p. . "_donatellus ... excellet non aere tantum, sed etiam marmore notissimus, ut vivos vultus ducere, et ad antiquorum gloriam proxime accedere videatur._"] [footnote : "dialogues," raczynski ed. paris, , p. .] [footnote : "due trattati," ed. milanesi, , passim.] [footnote : "due vite di brunellesco," p. .] [footnote : semper, .] [footnote : "lem.," iii. , in first edition.] [footnote : edition.] * * * * * [sidenote: character and personality of donatello.] donatello must be judged by his work alone. his intellect is only reflected in his handicraft. we know little about him, but all we know bears tribute to his high character. the very name by which he was called--donatello--is a diminutive, a term of endearment. his generosity, his modesty, and a pardonable pride, are recorded in stories which have been generically applied to others, but which were specific to himself. he shared his purse with his friends:[ ] he preferred plain clothing to the fine raiment offered by cosimo de' medici;[ ] and he indignantly broke the statue for which a genoese merchant was unwilling to pay a fair price.[ ] he was recognised as a man of honourable judgment, and he was called upon to act as assessor several times. the friend of the medici, of cyriac of ancona, of niccolo niccoli, the greatest antiquarian of the day, and of andrea della robbia, one of the pall-bearers at his funeral, must have been a man of winning personality and considerable learning. but he was always simple and naïve: _benigno e cortese_, according to vasari,[ ] but as summonte added with deeper insight, his work was far from simple.[ ] he is one of the rare men of genius against whom no contemporary attack is recorded. he was content with little;[ ] his life was even-tenored; his work, though not faultless, shows a steady and unbroken progress towards the noblest achievements of plastic art. [footnote : gauricus, b. .] [footnote : vespasiano de' bisticci, vite.] [footnote : "vasari," iii. .] [footnote : _ibid._ iii. .] [footnote : "_fo in fiorenza ad tempo de' nostri padri donatello huomo raro, semplicissimo in ogni altra cosa excepto che in la scultura_."] [footnote : matteo degli orghani, writing in , says: "_impero che è huomo ch' ogni picholo pasto è allui assai, e sta contento a ogni cosa_." guasti, iv. . donatello died in , probably on december . he was buried in san lorenzo at the expense of the medici. masaccio painted his portrait in the carmine, but it is lost. the louvre panel no. , ascribed to paolo ucello, shows the painter, manetti, brunellesco, and donatello. monuments have been recently erected to the sculptor in his native city. for donatello's homes in florence, see "misc. fiorentina," vol. i. no. , , p. , and "miscellanea d'arte," no. , , p. .] appendices appendix i work lost or not executed _padua._--for the santo altar, a figure of god the father, stone; a deposition and the remaining bas-reliefs mentioned in the "anonimo morelliano;" a st. sebastian, wood; a madonna in the church of the servi. _ferrara._--donatello probably worked there; in he visited the town as an assessor. gualandi, iv. . _modena._--donatello also visited this town in , and received a first instalment towards the equestrian statue of borso d'este. campori, "gli artisti italiani." modena, , p. . for _mantua_ he made a large number of works, including columns, capitals, images of the madonna in stone and terra-cotta, a st. andrew in tufo, &c.; also the design for a shrine of st. anselm. see documents in archivio storico lombardo, , p. . at _rome_ a st. john baptist, "una testa" in the minerva church, and the portrait of canon morosini in santa maria maggiore. at _siena_ a goliath, a silver crucifix, gates for the cathedral, and a marble statue of san bernardino. at _ancona_ and _orvieto_ statues of st. john the baptist. at _florence_ the following works are lost: the dovizia, a figure of plenty, which stood in the mercato vecchio; two bronze heads for the cantoria; the colossi for the cathedral; four large stucco saints in san lorenzo; a statue with drapery of gilded lead made with brunellesco. san rossore for ogni santi; a reliquary of santa verdiana (richa, ii. ); albizzi tombs. the cathedral gates were never made. bocchi, cinelli, vasari, and borghini mention a large number of smaller works now unidentified; plaquettes, madonnas, crucifixes, heraldic shields, busts and reliefs. appendix ii documents these are printed as specimens of the original authorities upon which our authentic knowledge of donatello is based. a. denunzia de' beni of , stating donatello's home, his substance, his partnership with michelozzo; referring also to the bronze relief for the siena font and the figure of san rossore. also a list of the sculptor's family. (gaye, i. .) donato di nicholo di betto, intagliatore, prestanziato nel quartiere di sco. spirito, gonfalone nichio, in fior. . s. den. . sanza niuna sustanza, eccietto un pocho di maserizie per mio uso edella mia famiglia. e più esercito la detta arte insieme e a conpagnia con michelozzo di bartolomeo, sanza niuna chorpo, salvo flor. in più ferramenti et masserizie per detta arte. e di detta conpagnia e bottegha tralgho quella sustanza et in quello modo, che per la scritta della sustanza di michelozzo sopradetto appare nel quartiere di sco. giovanni g. dragho, che dice in lionardo di bartolomeo di gherardo e frategli. eppiù ò avere dall' operaio di duomo di siena fior. per chagione duna storia dottone, gli feci più tempo fa. eppiù dal convento e frati dogni santi ò avere per chagione duna meza fighura di bronzo di sco. rossore della quale non sà fatto merchato niuno. chredo restare avere più che fior . truovomi con questa famiglia in chasa: donato danni . m^a orsa mia madre . m^a tita mia sirochia, vedova, sanza dote . giuliano figliuolo di detta m^a tita atratto . sto a pigione in una chasa di ghuglielmo adimari, posta ne chorso degli adimari e nel popolo sco. cristofano,--paghone fior. l'anno. b. the contract for the payment of florins to donatello in respect of the bronze gates for the sacristy doors of the cathedral, a work which was subsequently entrusted to luca della robbia. (semper, p. .) . ii. . item commiserunt nicolao johannotii de biliottis et salito jacobi de risalitis duobus ex eorum officio locandi donato n.b.b. civi florentino magistro intagli faciendo duas portas de bronzo duabus novis sacristiis cathedralis ecclesie florentine pro pretio in totum flor. pro eo tempore et cum illis pactis et storiis et modis pro ut eis videbitur fore utilius et honorabilius pro dicta opera et quidquid fecerint circa predictum intelligatur et sit ac si factum foret per totum eorum officium. c. payment for casting the bronze statue of st. louis for the paduan altar; also for two of the miracle reliefs and two symbols of the evangelists. (gloria.) . vi. . e a dì dicto avà m^o andrea dal mayo per far getare duy de i miracholli de s. antonio e dui guagnelista e un s. luixe. i quali va in lanchona de laltaro grande--lire soldi . d. payment to donatello and some of his assistants (gloria.) . ii. . e a dì ii dicto avè donatello da fiorenza per so nome de luy e de urbano e de zuan da pixa e de antonio celino e de francesco del vallente su garzon e de nicolo depentor so desipollo over garzon per parte over sora la anchona over palla el dicto e i dicti de (_i.e._, devono) fare al altaro grande del curo (_i.e._, coro) del santo,--lire cento e soldi dexe. appendix iii books of reference albertini, "memoriale di molte statues," ( st ed., florence, ). anonimo morelliano, "notizie d'opere di disegno," written about , ( st ed. ). bocchi, f., "eccellenza della statua di san giorgio," florence, ; edited by cinelli, "bellezze della città di firenze," ( st ed. ). bode, w., "donatello à padoue," paris, ; "florentiner bildhauer der renaissance," berlin, . boïto, camillo, "l'altare di donatello," milan, . borghini, "riposo," florence, ( st ed. ). bottari, g., "lettere pittoriche," vols. ( st ed.). cellini, b., "due trattati," edited by carlo milanesi, . cicognara, "storia della scultura," venice, , vols. gauricus, p., "de sculptura," florence, . gaye, "carteggio inedito d'artisti," florence, , vols. ghiberti, l., "commentaries" in vasari, vol. i. gloria, michael angelo, "donatello fiorentino e le sue opere, ... in padova," padua, . gnoli, article on "donatello in rome"; "arch. storico dell' arte," . gonzati, "la chiesa di s. antonio di padova," , vols. gualandi, "memorie," bologna, . lindsay, lord, "christian art," , vols. "l'osservatore fiorentino," , vols. ( st ed. ). lusini, v., "il san giovanni di siena," florence, . milanesi, c., "documenti dell' arte senese," siena, , vols. milanesi, g., "catalogo delle opere di donatello," florence, . molinier, e., "les plaquettes," paris, , vols. müntz e., "les précurseurs de la renaissance," paris, ; "donatello," paris, . perkins, c., "tuscan sculptors," , vols. reymond, m., "la sculpture florentine," florence, . richa, "notizie istoriche," florence, , vols. schmarsow, a., "donatello," breslau, . semper, h., "donatellos leben und werke," innsbruck, ; "donatello, seine zeit und schule," vienna, . semrau, m., "donatello's kanzeln in san lorenzo," breslau, . tanfani-centofanti, "notizie di artisti ... pisani," pisa, . titi, "ammaestramento utile," rome, . vasari, "vite dei pittori," florence, lemonnier, ed. , vols. ( st ed. ). von tschudi, "donatello e la critica moderna," turin, . index abraham: statue, , alberti, l.b.: on art, ambras: entombment, ammanati: sculptor, amorino: bronze, bargello, , ancona: baptist for, andré (madame) collection: prophet, ; st. john, ; profile warrior, ; bronze children, ; marble boy, ; gonzaga bust, ; st. sebastian, andrew, st.: statue (lost), annunciation: sta. croce, , , anselm, st.: projected shrine, antonio, st.: at padua, bronze, aquila, andrea del: sculptor, aragazzi: _see_ tombs architect: donatello as, , arduino: engineer, aretino: letter from, _assistants_, donatello's: moscatello, , ; giovanni da pisa, , , , ; nani, g., ; cocaro, n., ; meo of florence, ; pipo of florence, ; antonio of lugano, ; bartolommeo of ferrara, ; jacomo, goldsmith, ; squarcione, ; giovanni da becato, ; francesco del mayo, ; andrea delle caldiere, ; urbano da cortona, , ; francesco valente, , ; antonio of pisa, ; bellano, , ; bertoldo, , assumption: brancacci tomb, assyrian low relief, athos, mount: conventionalised art, aurelius, m.: equestrian statue, banco, nanni di: sculptor, , bandinelli, , , baptist, st. john: _see_ st. john baptistery gates, ; competition, ; magdalen, ; coscia tomb, bardini collection: madonna, , ; fountain, ; tomb slab, ; crucifixion, bas-relief: its limitations, bastianini, battoni, p.: painter, becchi: shield, beckerath: madonna, bellano, , , benda collection: bust, benedetto da maiano, bentivoglio: medal of, bergamo: madonna, berlin museum: bust, terra cotta, ; gonzaga, bronze, ; bronze head of old man, ; st. john, bronze, ; putto, bronze, from siena, ; flagellation, marble, ; david, bronze, ; madonnas, bernardino, st.: projected statue, , bertoldo, , blondius, f., bocchi: passim bologna: sculpture at, , , boni: shield, boniface viii.: statues of, borso d'este: projected statue, botticelli, bramantino: drawings, brancacci: _see_ tombs bronzino, , brosses, des: criticisms, , brunellesco: model for gates, ; co-operation with donatello, , buggiano, busts: benda collection, ; dreyfus collection, ; duke of westminster's collection, ; hainauer collection, ; faenza st. john, ; martelli st. john, ; san lorenzo, florence, ; st. cecilia, london, ; gonzaga bronze, ; old man's head, bronze, ; gattamelata, , ; vanchettoni, ; vecchio barbuto, florence, ; roman emperor, florence, ; old woman, bronze, ; san rossore, , ; niccolò da uzzano, caldiere, andrea, donatello's bronze caster, camondo, comte de: crucifixion, canigiani: palazzo, sculpture, canon of art, cantoria: san lorenzo, ; cathedral, , , ; luca della robbia's, - capodalista: horse, castiglione: sabba del, , cecilia, st. (london), ; ditto, lord wemyss, cellini, b., , charge to peter (london), chartres cathedral: statuary, cherichini, supposed portrait of, childhood, donatello's representation of, chimæra: etruscan, choristers of bronze, padua, cinelli: passim ciuffagni: sculptor, , civitali, m., sculptor, classical influences, , , , ; architecture, cocaro, donatello's assistant, colle, simone da: sculptor, colleone: equestrian statue, colossi, coronation window, coscia: _see_ tombs cozzarelli: sculptor, criticism on donatello, early, ; later, croce, santa, sculpture in, , , crowds: donatello's treatment of, crucifix: santa croce, , crucifixion: bargello bronze, ; camondo, bronze, ; berlin, cyriac of ancona, daniel: statue, st., at padua, bronze, dante, , davanzati: shield, david: marble statue, ; martelli's statue, ; bronze, ; berlin, dello: his epitaph, denunzia, , , desiderio, , doni, a.: criticism of ghiberti, dovizia: statue, , drapery: donatello's treatment of, drawings by donatello, dreyfus collection: marble bust, ; christ and st. john, relief, ; st. jerome, bronze, ; madonna bronze, ; verrocchio, putto, eagle: the walpole, entombment: vienna, padua: marble, eremitani altar, evangelist symbols at padua, siena, eve: bas-relief, faenza: bust of st. john, ; st. jerome, faith: statuette at siena, fazio, b., filarete, flagellation: london, ; paris, ; berlin, flaxman's criticism, florence: cathedral façade, , , ; cupola, ; cantoria, ; sacristy carving, ; window, ; colossi, ; gates, , font: siena, , , ; at pietra santa, fontainebleau: madonna, fountains, , francis, st.: at padua, fulgosio: monument, padua, gagini: sculptors, gattamelata: bust, , ; tombs, ; equestrian statue, gauricus, , , gems: employment of, - , george, st.: statue, ; relief, , ghiberti: bronze gates, , ; relation with donatello, ; classical ideas, , ghiberti, vettorio: drawings, , ghini: simone, giacomone da faenza: drawings, gianfigliazzi: shield, gilbert, alfred, r.a., giovanni da pisa, , , , giuliano: donatello's nephew, , goliath: statue (lost), gonzaga, louis of: bust, gori: criticisms, gothic art: donatello's relations with, , ; survivals of, gozzoli, benozzo, grouping: donatello's ideas of, , , , guidarelli: monument, habakkuk: statue, hands: donatello's treatment of, henry vii.: tomb of, heraldic sculpture, hertford house: reliefs, hope: statuettes, , horse of colleone, ; gattamelata, ; capodalista, horse's head: naples, horses of st. mark's, venice, ; of monte cavallo, icarus in greek art, ilaria del caretto: tomb, intarsia, isotta da rimini, jeremiah: statue, jerome, st.: faenza, john xxiii.: _see_ tombs, coscia st. john bapt.: campanile statue, ; martelli statue, ; bargello statue, , ; dilke collection, ; orvieto, , ; ancona, ; rome, , ; faenza, ; louvre, ; berlin, bronze, ; berlin, terra-cotta, ; siena, ; venice, ; hainauer collection, st. john ev.: statue, ; reliefs, judith, justina, st.: at padua, kaufmann: madonna, ; statuette, lafreri: engraver, lasca, lavabo, san lorenzo, laurana, f.: sculptor, leopardi, ligorio: architect, lille relief, , , lions in florence, - london collection: flagellation, ; charge to peter, ; st. cecilia, ; marble relief of woman, ; magdalen, ; lamentation over dead christ, ; shrine of st. justina, ; martelli patera, ; deposition, bronze, ; oval madonna, ; bronze boy, lorenzo, san: pulpits, , ; sacristy, , ; bronze doors, ; lavabo, ; statues perished, lorenzetti; early paintings, louis, st.: bronze santa croce, ; bronze at padua, , louvre collection: pot tomb, ; bronze by valadier, ; marble baptist, ; drawings, ; madonnas, - ; painting of st. john, ; portrait of donatello, ; flagellation, lucca, siege of, luke, st.: statue, lytton, earl of, medallion portrait, madonnas: bardini, , , ; beckerath, ; berlin, pazzi, marble, ; orlandini, marble, ; s.m.m. dei pazzi, ; brancacci, ; capella medici, group, ; courajod, ; dreyfus desiderio, , ; delle treppe, ; eremitani, paris, ; fontainebleau, ; kaufmann, ; london-weisbach, oval, ; milan, pierino da vinci, ; madonna of the rose, london, ; padua, large bronze, ; small relief, ; pietra piana, ; piot, louvre, , ; quincy shaw, ; siena cathedral, ; verona, ; wemyss, earl of, magdalen: florence baptistery, ; london, ; berlin, malatesta annalena: bust, mandorla door: prophets, profile heads, manetti: biographer, , ; supposed portrait, mantegna: relation to donatello, , , , mark, st.: statue, martelli, david, , ; patera, ; shield, ; st. john, martin v.: tomb of, marzocco, masaccio: paintings by, , , mataloni: horse's head, medallions in medici palace, medallists, , medici: fountain, ; exile, , ; medallions, ; lorenzo de', medici, capella, mengs, r.: criticism by, , meo: donatello's assistant, michael angelo: moses, ; technique, , ; san petronio, ; relation to donatello's art, ; bacchus, michelozzo, , , ; partnership with donatello, , ; brancacci tomb, ; aragazzi tomb, ; prato pulpit, ; work at milan, ; statues of st. john, mino da fiesole, , miracle reliefs at padua, mocenigo: tomb, , montepulciano, pasquino da, montorsoli, morosini: medallion, , moses: statue, nani: donatello's assistant, nanni di banco, , naples: brancacci tomb, ; bronze horse's head, narni: _see_ gattamelata neroccio: sculptor, , , niccolò da uzzano: bust, niccolo niccoli, nollekens, nude: studies from, obadiah: statue, d'olanda, francesco, orcagna, orlandini, madonna, berlin, orsa: donatello's mother, , or san michele: niche, , orvieto: baptist for, padua in , ; work for altar, - , pagno di lapo, , painter: donatello as, parthenon, , , pasquino da montepulciano, patera martelli, pazzi, madonna, berlin, pazzi: fountain, ; shield, ; frieze, pellegrini: chapel, , perseus, by cellini, perugino: drawing by, peruzzi: drawings by, peter, st.: statue, petrarch, piero, niccolo di; sculptor, pietà at padua, bronze, piot: madonna, pisa: donatello at, , pisano niccolo, pistoja: silver altar, plaquettes, pocetti, b.: drawing of façade of duomo, poggio: statue, ; on rome, politics, influence of, pollaiuolo: his battle-piece, polychromacy, portrait of donatello, pot tomb, louvre, prato pulpit, procdocimus, st.: at padua, bronze, pulpit prato, san lorenzo, quaratesi: shield, quercia: jacopo della, , , ; his school, ; siena font, realism, reymond, marcel: criticism, reynolds, sir j.: on drapery, ; on gothic art, riccio, robbia: andrea della, ; donatello's pall bearer, robbia: luca della, ; cantoria, , ; portraits by, ; bronze doors, , ; lunettes, rome: donatello's first journey to, ; statue of st. john at, ; crivelli tomb, ; donatello's second journey to, ; rome in , ; tabernacle in st. peter's, rossellino, , , , rosso: sculptor, , rossore, san: bust, , savonarola, sebastian, st.: bronze, m. andré, wood (now lost), sense of distance, light and shade, proportion, nature, sermoneta: duca di, shields: heraldic, ; martelli, siena: cathedral font, , ; figures from font, , ; pecci tomb, ; marble madonna, ; st. john baptist, ; statues on façade, simone: sculptor, , , soderini: supposed portrait of, sogliani, t.: work on magdalen, sportello venice, siena, squarcione, stiacciato, strabo: on marble, strozzi filippo, strozzi palla, summonte, sword hilt at turin, symbols of evangelists: padua, tabernacle in rome, technique: donatello's, tita: donatello's sister, , tombs: coscia, drawings for, ; history of, ; brancacci, , ; assumption, ; martin v., ; aragazzi, , ; medici giovanni de', ; caretto, ; sixtus iv., ; albizzi, ; chellini, ; accaiuoli, ; crivelli, ; pecci, ; scaligers, ; rococo style, ; saltarello, ; fulgosio, ; gattamelata, ; roycelli, torrigiano, , turin sword hilt, turini, , ucello, paolo: painter, , uffizzi gallery: drawings, urbano da cortona, uzzano, niccolò da: bust, valadier: sculptor, valente: donatello's assistant, , vandalism, in rome, vasari: passim vecchietta: sculptor, venice: horses of st. mark's, statue of st. john, sportello, verdiana, st.: reliquary, verona: madonna, ; sculpture on cathedral, ; sculpture on san zeno, verrocchio, , , , , vienna: entombment, vinci: leonardo da, , , visconti, marquise a.: collection, , wallace collection: reliefs, warfare: donatello and, weisbach: madonna, wemyss, earl of, collection: madonna, ; st. cecilia, ; walpole eagle, wood: employment in sculpture, zeno, san: verona, zuccone: statue, , printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. london & edinburgh * * * * * uniform with this volume michael angelo buonarroti by charles holroyd curator of the national gallery of british art with fifty-two illustrations "mr. holroyd has done excellent service. this story of a marvellous career is full of human charm.... valuable book."--_standard._ "a serviceable and competent biography which many will be glad to see.... numerous and excellent illustrations."--_literary world._ "a book that both the student and the general reader will find full of interest. extremely interesting and vividly recorded."--_westminster gazette._ "mr. holroyd's comprehensive study will be found useful and interesting. the illustrations are numerous and good."--_manchester guardian._ "a really admirable picture of one who is perhaps the greatest personality in the history of art; and a sympathetic, yet critical account of his works. mr. holroyd writes with knowledge and enthusiasm.... numerous and well-executed illustrations."--_yorkshire post._ "this excellent work ... is as suited to the general reader as to the artist. we do not find those deserts of literary speculation so common to the lives of artists."--_spectator._ "the volume gives in a convenient form almost everything that the student for whom it is intended will need to know about michael angelo, and will prove a safe guide to his works. the illustrations are well chosen.... we are especially grateful for the engravings of those frescoes in the pauline chapel which every one writes about and no one publishes."--_new york evening post._ * * * * * the publishers have arranged to issue a library of art in style similar to this volume _all schools and periods will be represented, but only the greatest masters will emerge as biographies. the rest will be treated in relation to their fellows and forerunners as incidents of a development._ _the series will, it is hoped, reflect the subject in its true proportions more closely than has been attempted hitherto. at the same time, the scope of the series will admit of occasional monographs on little-known artists, when some specialist has been able to throw light by new researches on an obscure period. the æsthetic side will not be neglected, but the aim will be to make the series a store-house of that positive knowledge which must form the basis of all opinion._ * * * * * _the following is a list of the volumes now arranged for_ the criticism of art by a.j. finberg six greek sculptors myron, pheidias polykleitos, skopas, praxiteles, and lysippos by ernest gardner professor of greek archæology at university college, london roman art, from augustus to constantine by mrs. arthur strong (eugÈnie sellers), ll.d. mediÆval art, to giotto by w.r. lethaby duccio, and the beginnings of italian painting by professor langton douglas giotto by b. de selincourt ghirlandajo and the earlier florentines by beckwith spencer assistant professor at the south kensington school of art donatello by lord balcarres [_ready._ pisanello by g.f. hill of the department of coins and medals in the british museum the three bellini and the earlier venetians by g. mcneil rushforth late director of the british school at rome michael angelo buonarroti by charles holroyd [_ready._ raphael and his school in rome by c. ricketts titian by dr. georg gronau dÜrer by t. sturge moore correggio by t. sturge moore french painting in the sixteenth century by l. dimier [_immediately._ http://www.archive.org/details/tuscansculptureo hurliala transcriber's note: in the text a carat character (^) indicates that the following character is superscripted. with the exception of the following two typographical corrections, the text of this file is that which is contained in the original printed volume. typographical errors corrected: page , paragraph : missing "a" added page , paragraph : missing "." added tuscan sculpture of the fifteenth century a collection of sixteen pictures reproducing works by donatello, the della robbia, mino da fiesole, and others, with introduction and interpretation * * * * * * riverside art series . raphael . rembrandt . michelangelo . millet . reynolds . murillo . greek sculpture . titian . landseer . correggio . tuscan sculpture . van dyck representative pictures by famous artists, with interpretative text and portrait of the painter. edited by estelle m. hurll. each volume, crown vo, cents, net; _school edition_, linen, cents, net; paper, cents, net. houghton, mifflin & co. boston and new york * * * * * * [illustration: il marzocco (donatello) national museum, florence] the riverside art series tuscan sculpture of the fifteenth century a collection of sixteen pictures reproducing works by donatello, the della robbia, mino da fiesole, and others, with introduction and interpretation by estelle m. hurll boston and new york houghton, mifflin and company the riverside press, cambridge copyright, , by houghton, mifflin & co. published march, . preface this little collection is intended as a companion volume to "greek sculpture," a previous issue of the riverside art series. the two sets of pictures, studied side by side, illustrate clearly the difference in the spirit animating the two art periods represented. the tuscan sculpture of the renaissance was developed under a variety of forms, of which as many as possible are included in the limits of our book: the equestrian statue, the sepulchral monument, the ideal statue of saint and hero, as well as various forms of decorative art applied to the beautifying of churches and public buildings both without and within. estelle m. hurll. new bedford, mass. february, . contents and list of pictures page il marzocco (the heraldic lion of florence) . by donatello frontispiece introduction i. on some characteristics of tuscan sculpture of the fifteenth century vii ii. on books of reference xi iii. historical directory of the works in this collection xiii iv. table of biographical data xvi i. musical angels. by donatello ii. st. philip. by nanni di banco iii. st. john the baptist. by donatello iv. the infant jesus and st. john. by mino da fiesole v. boys with cymbals. by luca della robbia vi. tomb of ilaria del carretto (detail). by jacopo della quercia vii. madonna and child (detail of lunette). by luca della robbia viii. the meeting of st. francis and st. dominick. by andrea della robbia ix. st. george. by donatello x. bambino. by andrea della robbia xi. the annunciation. by andrea della robbia xii. the ascension. by luca della robbia xiii. tomb of the cardinal of portugal. by antonio rossellino xiv. equestrian statue of gattamelata. by donatello xv. shrine. by mino da fiesole xvi. il marzocco (the heraldic lion of florence) by donatello (see frontispiece) pronouncing vocabulary of proper names and foreign words note: with one exception the pictures were made from photographs by alinari; the "musical angels" was made from a photograph by naya. introduction i. on some characteristics of tuscan sculpture in the fifteenth century. "the italian sculptors of the earlier half of the fifteenth century are more than mere forerunners of the great masters of its close, and often reach perfection within the narrow limits which they chose to impose on their work. their sculpture shares with the paintings of botticelli and the churches of brunelleschi that profound expressiveness, that intimate impress of an indwelling soul, which is the peculiar fascination of the art of italy in that century." these words of walter pater define admirably the quality which, in varying degree, runs through the work of men of such differing methods as donatello, the della robbia, mino da fiesole, and rossellino. it is the quality of expressiveness as distinguished from that abstract or generalized character which belongs to greek sculpture. greek sculpture, it is true, taught some of these artists how to study nature, but it did not satisfy christian ideals. the subjects demanded of the tuscans were entirely foreign to greek experience. the saints and martyrs of the christian era were at the opposite pole from the gods and heroes of antiquity. hence the aim of the new sculpture was the manifestation of the soul, as that of the classic art had been the glorification of the body. jacopo della quercia was one of the oldest of the sculptors whose work extended into the fifteenth century, being already twenty-five years of age when that century began. standing thus in the period of transition between the old and the new, his work unites the influence of mediæval tradition with a distinctly new element. his bas-reliefs on the portal of s. petronio at bologna are probably his most characteristic work. the tomb of ilaria del carretto is in a class by itself: "in composition, the gravest and most tranquil of his works, and in conception, full ofbeauty and feeling."[ ] donatello is undoubtedly the greatest name in italian sculpture previous to michelangelo. the kinship between these two men was felicitously expressed in vasari's quotation from "the most learned and very reverend" don vicenzo borghini: "either the spirit of donato worked in buonarroti, or that of buonarroti first acted in donato." vitality, force, action, suggestiveness, character, such are the words which spring to the lips in the presence of both masters. the range of donatello's art was phenomenal, from works of such magnitude as the equestrian statue of gattamelata, to the decorative panels for the altar of s. antonio at padua. at times he was an uncompromising realist, as in his statue of the bald old man, the zuccone, who figured as king david. again he showed himself capable of lofty idealism, as in the beautiful and heroic st. george. which way his own tastes leaned we may judge from his favorite asseveration, "by my zuccone." the point is that it mattered nothing to him whether his model was beautiful or ugly, whether he wrought out an ideal of his imagination or studied the character of an actual individual; his first care was to make the figure live. in consequence his art has what a critic has called "a robustness and a sanity" which have made it "a wellspring of inspiration to lesser men." the only subject practically left out of donatello's work was woman. children afforded him all the material he needed for the more decorative forms of his art. for the rest the problems which interested him most were perhaps best worked out in the study of the male figure. a recent biographer of donatello, hope rea, points out some interesting characteristics of his technical workmanship. in every work subsequent to his st. mark, "the hair," she says, "is conspicuous by its appearance of living growth." and again, explaining the excellence of his drapery, she shows how he went beyond the ordinary consideration of the general flow and line of the stuffs, to a study of the sections of the folds. hence drapery with him "is not only an arrangement of lines for decorative effect, or a covering for the figure, but it is a beauty in itself, filled with the living air." nanni di banco is a name naturally associated with that of donatello, not only on account of the friendship between the two, but from the fact that both worked on the church of or san michele. nanni was one of the smaller men whose work is overshadowed by the fame of a great contemporary. his art has not sufficient distinction to give it a prominent place; yet it is not without good qualities. marcel reymond insists that the public has not yet appreciated the just merits of this neglected sculptor. in his opinion the st. philip was the inspiration of donatello's st. mark, while nanni's st. eloi had an influence upon st. george. with luca della robbia began the "reign of the bas-relief," as marcel reymond characterizes the period of fifty years between donatello and michelangelo. women and children were the special subjects of this sculptor's art, and it is perhaps in the madonna and child that we see his most characteristic touch. how well he could represent spirited action, we see in some of the panels of the organ gallery. how dignified was his sense of repose, is seen in the lunette of the ascension. much as he cared for expression,--"expression carried to its highest intensity of degree," as walter pater put it,--he never found it necessary to secure this expression at the cost of beauty. that he studied nature at first hand his works are clear evidence, but that did not preclude the choice of attractive subjects. his style is "so sober and contained," writes a recent critic, "so delicate and yet so healthy, so lovely and yet so free from prettiness, so full of sentiment, and devoid of sentimentality, that it is hard to find words for any critical characterization."[ ] "simplicity and nobility," the words of cavalucci and molinier, is perhaps the best phrase in which to sum up the art of luca della robbia. in his nephew, andrea della robbia, the founder of the school had a successor whose best work is worthy of the master's teaching. if he lacked the simplicity and severity of the older man, he surpassed him in depth of christian sentiment. sometimes, it is true, his tenderness verges on weakness, his devoutness on pietism. if we are tempted to charge him with monotony we must remember what pressure was brought upon a man whose works attained such immense popularity. the bambini of the foundling hospital and the meeting of st. francis and st. dominick show the high level to which his art could rise. antonio rossellino and mino da fiesole may be classed together as sculptors to whom decorative effect was of first importance; they loved line and form for their intrinsic beauty. they delighted in elaborate and well ordered compositions. elegance of design, delicacy and refinement in handling, are invariable qualities of their work. such qualities were especially to be desired in the making of those sepulchral monuments which were so numerous in their period. of the many fine works of this class in tuscany each of these two sculptors contributed at least one of the best examples. it is superfluous to point out that the sweetness of these sculptors is perilously near the insipid, their grace too often formal. we are brought to realize the true greatness of the men when we behold the grave and tranquil beauty of the effigy of the cardinal of portugal, or the vigorous characterization of the bust of bishop salutati. it is john addington symonds who says the final word when he declares that the charm of the works of such men as mino and rossellino "can scarcely be defined except by similes." and these are the images which this master of similes calls up to our mind as we contemplate their works: "the innocence of childhood, the melody of a lute or a song bird as distinguished from the music of an orchestra, the rathe tints of early dawn, cheerful light on shallow streams, the serenity of a simple and untainted nature that has never known the world." [footnote : sidney colvin.] [footnote : notes on _vasari's lives_, edited by e. h. and e. w. blashfield and a. a. hopkins.] ii. on books of reference. there are but few works devoted exclusively to the subject of italian renaissance sculpture. for many years american students seeking information in this direction have relied chiefly upon the works of c. c. perkins: "tuscan sculptors" ( vols.), london, ; "italian sculptors" (in northern, southern and eastern italy), london, ; and finally the volume which unites and revises the material of both earlier works, "historical handbook of italian sculpture," new york, . the recent work of marcel reymond, "la sculpture florentine," florence, , has been heartily welcomed by students of all nationalities. it consists of four volumes, all well illustrated, devoted respectively to: ( ) les prédécesseurs de l'ecole florentineet la sculpture florentine au xiv^e siècle [the precursors of the florentine school and florentine sculpture of the th century]. ( ) première moitié du xv^e siècle [first half of the th century]. ( ) seconde moitié du xv^e siècle [second half of the th century]. ( ) le xvi^e siècle et les successeurs de l'ecole florentine [the th century and the successors of the florentine school]. as it has not been translated into english this work is not so widely read by the general public as it should be, but it is probably to be found in most large libraries. a newly published book, "italian sculpture of the renaissance," by l. j. freeman, m. a., appears just as this volume goes to press. it is a brief survey, critical and interpretative, of the principal works of the most prominent florentine sculptors of the period, with some account of the characteristics of the early and later renaissance work. some forty fine illustrations elucidate the study. of the general works on the history of art from which material on our subject may be drawn, the most important is of course vasari's "lives." in the recently revised english version, edited by e. h. and e. w. blashfield and a. a. hopkins (new york, ), are some valuable footnotes summing up the characteristics of the individual sculptors. of inestimable value for purposes of serious study are the volumes by eugène müntz, "histoire de l'art pendant la renaissance." the material bearing on the sculptors illustrated in this present collection is found in his volume devoted to "les primitifs" (paris, ). those to whom the french text presents no difficulty will derive much benefit from the study of this book, which may be consulted in the large public libraries. a book available to all, and of a delightfully popular nature, is the volume on "the fine arts" in john addington symonds's series of the renaissance in italy. this writer had a remarkable gift for putting much suggestive comment into a compact and readable form. general histories of sculpture allotting a proportionate space to the consideration of the italian sculptors of the renaissance are, by lucy baxter, "sculpture, renaissance and modern" (new york, ); lübke, "history of sculpture," translated from the german by f. e. bunnett (london, ); allan marquand and a. l. frothingham, "textbook of the history of sculpture" (new york, ). a special study of the work of donatello is made by hope rea in a volume of the series of handbooks of the great masters in painting and sculpture. a complete list of the sculptor's works is given. luca della robbia is the subject of two important french works: by cavalucci and molinier, "les della robbia" (paris, ); by marcel reymond, "les della robbia" (florence, ). there is a chapter on luca della robbia in walter pater's "studies in the history of the renaissance" ( ), and another in mrs. van rensselaer's "six portraits" (boston, ). mrs. oliphant has written pleasantly both of donatello and of luca della robbia in "the makers of florence." iii. historical directory of the works in this collection. frontispiece. _il marzocco_ (the heraldic lion of florence). (donatello.) made of pietra serena and originally placed on the _ringhiera_ of the palazzo vecchio, florence. now in the national museum (bargello) of that city, while a bronze copy occupies its place in front of the palace. . _musical angels._ (donatello.) bronze bas-reliefs from the high altar of s. antonio, padua. ordered in . completed in . marcel reymond holds that the execution of these reliefs was committed to assistants. in a new altar was ordered, and donatello's bronzes were dispersed. in a reconstruction of donatello's altar was made, setting the parts in place according to what is supposed to have been the original design. . _st. philip._ (nanni di banco.) marble statue in niche on outside of or san michele, florence. the date is uncertain; marcel reymond considers it one of nanni's oldest works, placing it before . . _st. john the baptist._ (donatello.) bas-relief in pietra serena in the national museum (bargello), florence. no date is assigned. . _the infant jesus and st. john._ (mino da fiesole.) detail of marble altarpiece in alto relievo in cathedral of fiesole, being a part of the monument of bishop salutati. ordered in . . _boys with cymbals._ (lucca della robbia.) one of the marble bas-reliefs ornamenting the organ gallery for the florence cathedral. organ gallery begun in , finished . removed from cathedral in . reliefs put in uffizi gallery , and then in the bargello. thence taken to the museum of the duomo, where they are now to be seen, set up in place on the reconstructed gallery. . _tomb of ilaria del carretto (detail)._ (jacopo della quercia.) marble tomb in the cathedral of lucca. milanese dates it , but ridolfi's description of the lucca cathedral places jacopo's work there in or , and müntz thinks this date conclusive. . _madonna and child (detail)._ (luca della robbia.) glazed terra cotta lunette over the door of a building (now a shop) in the via dell' agnolo, florence. considered by marcel reymond the most difficult of luca's work to date. according to dr. bode, executed before ; according to allan marquand, between and ; according to marcel reymond, towards . . _meeting of st. francis and st. dominick._ (andrea della robbia.) glazed terra cotta lunette in the loggia of san paolo, florence. classified by marcel reymond under andrea's third manner, because distinguished by perfect knowledge of artistic principles. . _st. george._ (donatello.) marble statue originally designed for a niche on the church of or san michele, florence. executed in at the order of the guild of armorers. in it was removed to the national museum, florence, to preserve it from injury by exposure to the weather. a bronze copy was substituted for it on the church. . _bambino._ (andrea della robbia.) one of a series of glazed terra cotta medallions on the façade of the foundling hospital, florence. judged by its relation to the art of luca della robbia, this is among the early works of andrea. from certain data in the history of the hospital, cavalucci reckons that it was executed about the year . . _the annunciation._ (andrea della robbia.) altarpiece at la verna. marcel reymond says that from the beauty of style and the advanced knowledge of technique exhibited here, this work must belong to andrea's maturity, that is, in the neighborhood of his fortieth year. it is classified by reymond in andrea's "first manner." . _the ascension._ (luca della robbia.) enamelled terra cotta lunette, decorating tympanum of door of sacristy in the cathedral at florence. the first work in this material by luca of which we have the date, . . _tomb of the cardinal of portugal (detail)._ (antonio rossellino.) tomb in colored marble in the church of san miniato, florence. ordered in . . _equestrian statue of gattamelata._ (donatello.) in the piazza del santo, padua. commission given . work begun . statue set up, . erected at the expense of gattamelata's son, gio. antonio. . _shrine._ (mino da fiesole.) a marble tabernacle, decorated in mezzo-relievo and originally made for the nuns of the convent of the murate. removed in to s. croce, florence. no date is assigned to it. iv. table of biographical data. _jacopo di pietro d'angelo_, of la quercia gossa, a castello once near siena and since destroyed. born ; died . variously stated to have been a scholar of maestro goro and of luca di giovanni. milanese believes that these claims are groundless, and that jacopo was a pupil of his own father, who was a goldsmith. best known for his marble reliefs ornamenting the portal of s. petronio, bologna. _nanni di banco._ son of antonio di banco, who was at work in the florence cathedral in . he is known to have been considerably older than donatello, and marcel reymond suggests the date as the probable year of his birth. died . _donatello._ the familiar name applied to donato di niccolò di betti bardi. born in florence, ; died in florence, . his visit to rome in company with brunelleschi has been called the most important of the initial steps in the revival of antiquity in art. the friendship and patronage of cosmo de' medici brought the artist many commissions. _luca di simone di marco della robbia._ born in florence, or ; died . _andrea della robbia_, nephew of luca. born ; died . _antonio rossellino._ one of the five sons of matteo di domenico gambarelli, all being artists. born in settignano in ; died about . _mino di giovanni di mino_, usually called _mino da fiesole_. born in in poppi, in the casentino, a district between the sources of the arno and tiber, north of arezzo. died in . he was a friend of desiderio da settignano, but probably not one of his pupils. i musical angels by donatello in the western part of italy, lying a little north of the centre, is the district known as tuscany. here, in the valley of the arno, is the city of florence, glorious with her storied palaces and churches. around her are clustered pistoja and lucca, pisa and leghorn, siena and arezzo, all notable towns in italian history. here, too, is carrara, with its stores of beautiful marble. it was from this little district of tuscany that the sculptors came forth who have helped to make italy famous as the birthplace of modern art. the development of tuscan sculpture covered a period of some three centuries, beginning with the pisan niccolò, who worked between the years and , and culminating with the great florentine michelangelo, who died in . we shall study in this little collection a few works of the fifteenth century. it was the time called by historians the renaissance, which means literally "the new birth." the world was awakening from the long sleep of the middle ages, and italy was the first to be aroused. certain adventurous spirits began to ponder the possibility of a new continent beyond the sea. there was a great revival of learning, accompanied by a passionate love of the beautiful. schools of art were established throughout the length of italy. in other volumes of this series we have learned how the churches, palaces, and public buildings were filled with paintings.[ ] we shall now see that sculpture also contributed much to the adornment of the cities. statues, busts, and bas-reliefs, in marble, bronze, and terra-cotta, ornamented many buildings both without and within. our illustration shows two panels from the series of twelve bronze reliefs on the front of a church altar. two little boy angels are making music with their pipes. the companion panels are also filled with musical angels, some singing and others playing on various instruments. the new testament begins and ends with the music of angels. the birth of jesus is heralded by a multitude of the heavenly host singing "glory to god in the highest." the golden city of st. john's vision is filled with "the voice of harpers, harping with their harps," in the new song before the throne of god. thence has arisen the beautiful custom of artists to represent angels as musicians. the child angels of our picture have tiny pointed wings as a sign of their heavenly origin. certainly we cannot imagine such buoyant little creatures treading the earth like mortals. one stands on tip-toe like a bird poised for flight. the other skips through the air with joyous motion. the head of one is encircled by a halo, the emblem of purity. the other wears a fillet of flowers over his curls. each carries two little pipes, the simplest of musical instruments. [illustration: musical angels (donatello) church of san antonio, padua] it was long ago in the childhood of the race that some shepherd, plucking a reed from the bank of a stream, first found that the hollow stem had a voice of its own. the pipe thereafter became a favorite instrument among primitive people. we read in the old testament scriptures that the ancient hebrews used it in the celebration of their festivities. at the greek festivals also the pipers had a place in the procession of musicians. our angel pipers are blowing lustily with puffing cheeks-- "such sweet soft notes as yet musician's cunning never gave the enraptured air." they are genuine musicians, not children playing with the pipes as with toys. they move to the rhythm of their piping, their lifted faces expressing their delight. their thin garments cling to their figures, and the loose ends flutter about them. every line of the modelling is beautiful, the poise of the figures full of rhythmic grace. the angel at the left stands in profile, with face slightly turned away from the spectator. the right hand figure skips directly out of his panel, swinging lithely about towards the left, as he moves. the outlines of both figures describe long fine curves, with which the edges of the drapery run parallel. in the drawing of the right hand angel we may trace delicate patterns of interlacing ovals. some portions of the work seem to be modelled in very high relief. the limbs, we are told, are in low relief, supported on a metal back, an inch or so thick, by which they are thrown out to a proper distance from the background. the altar to which our panels belong is in the church of s. antonio, padua, and was executed by the florentine sculptor, donatello, in . the entire scheme of decoration is very elaborate. on the front is a row of musical angels, in which the panels here reproduced occupy opposite ends. above these are five reliefs of larger size; and still higher are seven life-size statues of saints. the whole is surmounted by a crucifix. even the back of the altar is ornamented with reliefs, and the work is an example of the spirit of the age, which thought nothing too rich or beautiful for the purposes of worship. [footnote : see _raphael_, _michelangelo_, _titian_, and _correggio_.] ii st. philip by nanni di banco st. philip was one of the first group of disciples whom jesus called to his service. he was a native of bethsaida in galilee, but we do not know what occupation he pursued there. there is a tradition that he was a chariot driver, and in any case he was certainly a laboring man like all of the twelve. having attached himself to jesus he began at once to work in his cause. he persuaded nathanael to come and see the master, and thereby won a new adherent.[ ] philip was not spiritually minded, like john, nor impetuous, like peter, but in his own way he wanted to know the truth. perhaps he was a little slower than others to grasp religious teaching. it may be that he was franker than many in confessing that he did not understand. he and thomas were somewhat alike in this respect, and once, when jesus was talking of departing to the heavenly father, both interrupted him with questions. philip said, "lord, show us the father and it sufficeth us." "have i been so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me?" replied jesus. "he that hath seen me hath seen the father."[ ] apparently philip learned his lesson well, for we read in traditional history of his faithful missionary services in later life. he was twenty years in scythia preaching the gospel. then he went to hieropolis in phrygia, where the people worshipped a serpent. the apostle drove the serpent away, but the pagan priests sought his life in revenge. he was bound to a cross and stoned to death, praying even in his agony for his enemies.[ ] the statue of st. philip in our illustration shows him as a somewhat commonplace-looking man with heavy features. it accords with the usual account of him that his face should not be particularly intellectual. his attitude is full of dignity, and denotes a well-balanced character. the large well-knit hands are those of an artisan. he is of about middle age, as the artists usually represent him. a plain man of good common sense and sterling worth--this was philip both in fact and in the statue. in pictures and statues the apostles nearly always carry the symbols of their identity. st. philip's emblem is the cross, but it is here dispensed with, and we have only the latin inscription to show us who he is. [illustration: st. philip (nanni di banco) _church of or san michele, florence_] the statue stands in a niche, and is one of a series ornamenting the outside of the church of or san michele in florence. in building this church all the merchants and artisans of the city contributed to support the work. each trade was at that time represented by a guild or association whose members united to advance their common business interests.[ ] these various guilds furnished the statues for the niches, each supplying the figure of its own patron saint. st. philip was the gift of the guild of hosiers, and was executed by the sculptor nanni di banco. donatello had at first been approached by the guild, but considering his price exorbitant they gave the order to nanni, who promised to accept any terms they decided upon. when the statue was done, however, the sculptor demanded a sum larger than the price of donatello. the latter was now called upon to act as referee, and he set a still higher price upon the work. the hosiers were indignant. "why," they asked, "had donatello rated nanni's work at a higher price than his own, which would have undoubtedly been better?" "because," replied the great sculptor, laughing, "being less skilful than i, he has worked harder, and therefore deserves more pay." a compromise was effected, and the statue set in place. that donatello could indeed have made a better statue we shall presently see when we study his st. george, designed for the same church. st. philip lacks distinction, and it has not the animation which the greater sculptor knew how to impart to his work. nevertheless it has certain artistic qualities which make it worthy of donatello's championship. the lines of the drapery are well studied. apparently nanni had learned something in this respect from the greek sculpture. where draperies are simple and hang in long unbroken lines, the effect is impressive and dignified. when they are voluminous and broken, they lose in dignity. good art is always simple and has no meaningless lines. we are interested in examining the niche in which the statue is set. it is gothic in design, and with its pointed top and side pinnacles recalls the cathedral windows in northern europe. an architectural frame of this sort is often called a tabernacle, being in fact a miniature church in form. in the triangular space at the top is a bas-relief figure in half length which seems to represent christ. the base is ornamented with an arabesque or scroll design, flanked at each end by the arms of the hosiers' guild. the side pillars have rich corinthian capitals. just inside are twisted pillars of curious workmanship. our illustration also shows a portion of the wall against which the niche is placed. we see that the church is built of stone, set in square blocks. on each side of the niche is a metal ring through which torches were thrust. [footnote : st. john, chapter i., verses - .] [footnote : st. john, chapter xiv., verses - .] [footnote : mrs. jameson's _sacred and legendary art_, p. .] [footnote : the florentine guilds of this period may be compared with those of the seventeenth century in holland. see the chapter on the "syndics of the cloth guild" in the volume on rembrandt in the riverside art series.] iii st. john the baptist by donatello in the hill country of judæa lived the priest zacharias and his wife, elisabeth, who were the parents of st. john the baptist. they were pious people, "walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the lord, blameless." one day, as zacharias was ministering in his office in the temple, an angel brought him the glad tidings that he was to have a son. "thou shalt call his name john," said the vision, "and thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth." a great career was promised for the coming child. he was to be a preacher filled with spiritual power. like the old prophet elias, he was to turn the hearts of the people to god, and to prepare the way for the christ. as a sign that the angel's words were true, zacharias was stricken dumb until his son was born. then "his tongue was loosed, and he spake and praised god." the neighbors marvelled at the mystery of john's birth, and they saw that "the hand of the lord was with him." "and the child grew and waxed strong in spirit," until he came to manhood.[ ] then was fulfilled the angel's prophecy concerning him. he became a great preacher, and multitudes flocked to hear him. john's manner of life was like that of a hermit. he dwelt in the wilderness about the river jordan, wearing a garment of camel's hair bound about his loins with a leathern girdle. his food was locusts and wild honey. he gathered his audiences in the open air and baptised his disciples in the river. though stern in his teachings he became for a time very popular. yet he always spoke of his own work with great humility. "there cometh one mightier than i after me," he said.[ ] this was jesus, who, on presenting himself for baptism, was greeted by john as the "lamb of god." the prophet's mission was now accomplished. he was soon after thrown into prison and beheaded, at the order of king herod, whose sins he had openly rebuked. the story of the baptist's life brings readily before the imagination the strange figure of the man.[ ] it is not so easy to fancy how he might have looked as a boy. the bas-relief of our illustration shows us what form the idea took in the mind of the sculptor donatello. [illustration: st. john the baptist (donatello) _national museum, florence_] the little fellow seems tall and slender for his years, as if he had stretched his limbs by running much in the open air. the face is somewhat serious, but perfectly childish. the lips are parted in a half smile. he has a good forehead, and is an independent thinker. he impresses us as a straightforward character, a boy to like and trust. it would be too much to say that he shows the making of a great man. it is enough that he is an honest, healthy boy with a mind of his own. he is hardly pretty, but he is very interesting. the hair is his most charming feature, waving in little tendrils over the head. he is not plump enough for his figure to show fine curves. on the contrary, the modelling is on rather severe lines, as if in keeping with the character. certain well understood signs show who he is. the circle about his head is the halo, the symbol of a sacred character. the skin garment fastened at the shoulder reminds us of the strange clothing john wore in the desert. the tall cross is the emblem of the prophet, as a forerunner of the crucified one. donatello's art covered a wide range of subjects, but in none was he more at home than in representing children. he has been called "the poet of child-life." there are interesting points of comparison between the example before us and the musical angels of the altar at padua. st. john the baptist is evidently a real little boy, transferred to the stone just as he was. the piping angels, on the other hand, are child ideals, without counterpart in real life. st. john's large ear, with its irregularly bent rim, and his straight upper lip, are features such as an artist must certainly have copied, not invented. the angel faces, on the other hand, are moulded in the perfect curves which originate in the imagination of the artist. donatello was, above all things else, a close student of human nature. sometimes, indeed, he chose very unattractive models, and reproduced them so faithfully that the realism is almost painful. his artistic eye was always open to new impressions. perhaps, one day as he walked through the streets of florence, he noticed among the children playing there this little fellow of the long neck and pensive face. "ecco," said he, to himself, "il giovannino."[ ] the child's face and bearing had a quaint seriousness precisely suited to the character. it is wonderful how the sculptor's art has made the little boy seem actually alive in the bas-relief. the hair is executed with the skill peculiar to donatello, and seems to grow from the head. such studies from real life--_genre_ studies, as they are called--were lessons which prepared the artist for higher works of idealism. the little st. john may have been the original material for some of the angel figures. [footnote : the circumstances of john's birth are related in the first chapter of st. luke, from which the quotations are drawn.] [footnote : st. mark, chapter i., verse .] [footnote : see the pictures of st. john the baptist in the volumes on _titian_ and _correggio_ in the riverside art series.] [footnote : "there is the little john."] iv the infant jesus and st. john by mino da fiesole jesus and st. john the baptist were of nearly the same age, and there was a peculiar tie between them. their mothers, mary and elizabeth, were cousins, and before the boys were born the two women had confided in each other their hopes for the future of their children. angelic messengers had predicted a remarkable destiny for both boys. jesus was to rule over an everlasting kingdom, and john was to be his prophet preparing the way for him. these were secrets which the outside world could not have understood, and mary paid a visit to her kinswoman that they might talk of them together. as john's home was in the hill country and jesus was born in the town of bethlehem, we do not know how soon the boys met. it might be supposed that mary and elizabeth would be eager to bring them together. while the mothers took council on the training of their sons, the children would be at play. the little ones were, we believe, brought up quite simply, with no sense that they were different from other children. jesus was a natural leader. we remember how he surprised his mother at the age of twelve by asserting his own judgment.[ ] among his playfellows he must have shown much earlier that he was the one to take the first place. john was doubtless taught by his mother to defer to his little cousin. he was not lacking in spirit himself, but he could sometimes be very humble. in his manhood he spoke of jesus as one whose shoe's latchet he was not worthy to unloose.[ ] it is pleasant to picture the two children together in our fancy, and we do not wonder that artists have liked the subject.[ ] our illustration shows us the theme wrought in marble. the child jesus sits on the steps, and the little st. john approaching kneels in adoration. we see at once the religious meaning of the artist: the relation between the two in after life is foreshadowed in this imaginary incident. each child carries the symbol of his character. a halo behind the head of jesus signifies his divine origin. he holds on his knee a globe surmounted by a cross, in token that he who was crucified shall be the ruler of the world. in the symbol of the globe the old artists anticipated the later discoveries of science as to the form of the earth. some of the ancient philosophers had taught that the earth is a sphere, and through the writings of aristotle the belief was spread among the scholars of the middle ages.[ ] that the idea made its way into art is perhaps because the sphere is the most perfect and beautiful form, and hence the fitting symbol of god's created work.[ ] [illustration: the infant jesus and st. john (mino da fiesole) _cathedral, fiesole_] st. john carries the cross, which is his usual emblem as a prophet of christ. it is tall and slender because it was supposed to be made of reeds. the reference is to jesus's words concerning john when asking the people if they had sought the prophet merely as "a reed shaken by the wind." the infant jesus is a vigorous child, straight and perfectly formed. the little st. john is an older and taller boy, wearing a tunic. the younger child is delighted to have a playfellow. there is an eager smile on his face, and he puts out his right hand as if he longed to take the curious plaything st. john carries. both children are plump, with well-shaped heads, but there is nothing precocious-looking about either. they are indeed uncommonly pretty, but for the rest are like other children, eying each other somewhat shyly in the early stages of acquaintance. it will not be long before they are the best of friends. the figures in our illustration form a part of a marble altar-piece by mino da fiesole. the whole composition consists of three niches approached by steps. in the central compartment kneels the mother mary, adoring with folded hands the child, who sits below her. we see in our picture only the lower part of her dress behind the christ child. in the side niches are figures of saints, the little st. john kneeling in front of the one on the madonna's right. mino da fiesole has been called "the raphael of sculpture," and his work in this altar-piece illustrates the fitness of comparing him with the great painter. especially do the figures of the two children here remind us of the child ideals of raphael. at the time when this work was executed ( ) painters and sculptors had just begun to represent the christ child undraped. the earlier artists had always shown the little figure clad in a tunic. we shall presently see how this old custom was still followed in bas-reliefs of the madonna and child by luca della robbia and rossellino. the more progressive artists were unwilling to conceal the beauty of the child's figure by any sort of dress. by the beginning of the sixteenth century the old way had entirely given place to the new.[ ] in our picture we see that a latin inscription on the base of the lowest step contains the name of leonardo salutati, bishop of fiesole. [ ] it was by the order of this bishop that the altar was executed, as was also the tomb opposite it in the cathedral of fiesole. [footnote : st. luke, chapter ii., verse .] [footnote : st. luke, chapter iii., verse .] [footnote : see chapter ix., on the "children of the shell," in the volume on _murillo_ in the riverside art series.] [footnote : this is on the authority of a french writer, a. jourdain, quoted by william h. tillinghast in an essay on the "geographical knowledge of the ancients," in the _narrative and critical history of america_. in the same essay an anonymous poem of the thirteenth century is quoted to show the prevalent belief in the sphericity of the earth.] [footnote : in didron's _christian iconography_, several interesting illustrations from old miniatures, etc., show the globe in the hand of the creator. it is curious that this supposedly exhaustive authority on church symbolism gives no account of the origin and history of this emblem.] [footnote : see madonna pictures by raphael, titian, correggio, and michelangelo in other volumes of the riverside art series.] [footnote : _eps_, with the curious mark above, stands for _episcopus_.] v boys with cymbals by luca della robbia the bas-relief of our illustration is one of a series of marble panels designed to ornament the singing-gallery of a church. the children moving forward with song and cymbal remind us of the bands of singers and musicians who took part in religious processions of ancient times. we read of such processions among both the greeks[ ] and the hebrews. [ ] the custom of singing was adopted by the christian church from its foundation,[ ] and gradually the musical part of the service was developed into a fine art. there was a famous system of choral chanting under pope gregory i.,[ ] and in the eleventh century part singing was introduced. at length the organ came into use, and by the fifteenth century it had become an important part of the church furnishings. it was early in this century when the wardens of the cathedral at florence had an organ constructed on what the old writer vasari called "a very grand scale." in connection with this an organ loft, such as the italians call a _cantoria_, was needed to accommodate the singers. the florentine sculptor, luca della robbia, received the order for this work, and was occupied with it some nine years ( - ). the cantoria is entirely of marble, built like a balcony, with the upper part or balustrade supported on five consoles or brackets. four square bas-reliefs, separated by pilasters, ornament the front of the balustrade, and four more fill the corresponding spaces below, separated by the consoles. the artist took as the motive of his decorative scheme the one hundred and fiftieth psalm. this hymn of praise furnished his imagination with a series of pictures illustrating many kinds of music. the entire psalm is quoted in the latin version on the gallery, the inscriptions running in narrow bands across the top and bottom and between the two rows of panels. these are the verses in the familiar english version of king james, grouped in the three sections into which they are divided:-- "praise god in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power. praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness. praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp. praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals. let everything that hath breath praise the lord." [illustration: boys with cymbals (luca della robbia) _the duomo, florence_] the eight illustrations of the gallery omit nothing mentioned by the psalmist. here are the trumpets, the harp, the psaltery, and the timbrel. here is the choric dance, followed by players on organs and stringed instruments; after these come the loud cymbals or tambourines, and finally the "high sounding cymbals" of our illustration. the players are a half dozen children, some dressed in tunics, and others wearing scarf-like garments which leave their limbs free. two are crowned with flowers in the greek fashion, and others have a fillet or band bound about the hair. the leader walks with his head thrown back, his mouth wide open, singing with all his might, oblivious of everything but his music. he holds the cymbals high, striking them together in the rhythm of his song. his companion is a jolly little fellow, not at all concerned in the music, but laughing at something which attracts his attention in the distance. there is another rogue just behind the leader. without losing step he throws his weight forward on bending knee, putting his ear to the upper cymbal. he is evidently amusing himself with the lingering vibrations of the metal. the flower-crowned boy bringing up the rear smiles at us cheerily, as he steps along, clashing his cymbals with right good-will. the children in the background seem to take their task more seriously, as if sharing the spirit of the leader. it is clear that our artist found the models for his figures in the streets of florence. these round-faced children with their large mouths are not pretty enough for imaginary types. they are perfectly natural, and that is why we like them. the grouping is skilfully planned to give unity to the composition without any stiffness. there are no awkward gaps between the figures, but the lines flow from one to another, binding them together. the half kneeling posture of the child in the middle makes diagonal lines to unite the leader with the boy in the rear. we notice in the drawing the same sweep of line which we have admired in donatello's bronze reliefs of angels. the three figures in front are modelled in high relief, and in beautiful curves; the children in the rear are in low relief. the work of luca della robbia was not confined to marble. soon after completing the organ gallery he made a bronze door for the interior of the cathedral. he is best known for his work in enamelled terra-cotta, of which we shall hear more in later chapters. [footnote : see chapter iii. in the volume on _greek sculpture_ in the riverside art series.] [footnote : psalm lxviii., verse , and chronicles, chapter xiii., verse .] [footnote : st. matthew, chapter xxvi., verse .] [footnote : the pontificate of gregory i. was from to .] vi tomb of ilaria del carretto (_detail_) by jacopo della quercia a certain marquis of carretto, living in lucca at the close of the fourteenth century, had a daughter named ilaria. ilaria was like helen of troy, "a daughter of the gods, divinely tall and most divinely fair."[ ] her face was delicately cut in a patrician mould, and she carried her head with the air of a princess. the marquis must have been proud of his beautiful daughter, and as she grew into womanhood he looked about for a suitable match for her. there was little romance about marriages in those days, and when a rich widower sought ilaria's hand, she was doubtless thought by all a very fortunate maiden. her husband, paolo guinigi, was the signor or lord of the city of lucca, and though somewhat despotic in temper was at least without vices. he was besides the richest man in italy. in his treasury, says the historian, "diamonds and rubies, emeralds and pearls, were counted by hundreds." the palace awaiting the bride was magnificently furnished. there was linen from paris and other french cities, exquisite in quality and in stores so abundant as to delight the heart of a housewife. the walls were hung with tapestries of many colors woven in arras. priceless vessels of gold and silver adorned the table. nor were signs of learning lacking. there was a library, well stocked with the works of classical authors, written in manuscript in the manner of the times. so far as surroundings make for happiness ilaria may well have been a happy woman. we like to fancy her queenly figure moving through the stately apartments of the palace or on the green terraces of the garden. but she did not long enjoy the splendors of her surroundings, for two years after her marriage she died. her husband then ordered of the sculptor jacopo della quercia a marble tomb to be placed in the cathedral. on the sarcophagus lay the portrait figure of the lady herself; the sides were richly carved with cherubs holding festoons of flowers, and above was a canopy. ilaria lies with hands crossed just where they would naturally fall in her sleep.[ ] her feet rest against a little dog, which, according to the old writer, vasari, was an emblem of conjugal fidelity. it is surely no harm to fancy that the little creature was the lady's pet. the gown is girdled high, and falling in long, straight folds, is wrapped about the feet. over this is worn a mantle made with large, loose sleeves, and a high flaring collar, which comes well up under the chin.[ ] [illustration: detail of tomb of ilaria del carretto (jacopo della quercia) _cathedral, lucca_] our illustration shows only the head and shoulders of the figure. the head rests on a pillow in a hollow shaped to receive it, and the shoulders are supported by a second and larger cushion underneath. ilaria's waving hair is parted over the high brow, and brought down on each side the face, completely concealing the ears. a few short tendrils have escaped, and curl daintily over the forehead. she wears a large flower-wound wreath or crown, set aslant over the shapely head. it may be that this is a sort of head-dress worn in her time. no one can look at the face without thinking of a flower, and most of all of the lily. the mouth is moulded in exquisite curves; ilaria was, indeed, a bewitching woman. had the fair marchioness lived to middle age her fortunes would have been sadly altered. in there was a political upheaval in lucca, and guinigi was driven from the city.[ ] his palace was pillaged, and the mob even laid desecrating hands upon ilaria's tomb. an attempt to remove it seems to have been frustrated, and it was dropped on the floor of the transept, where it now stands. it lost, however, the canopy and one ornamented side of the base. as a work of art, ilaria's tomb has been greatly admired by critics. even in our little picture we can, with no great training, see how well the sculptor has rendered the texture of the hair and the softness of the plump chin. even the tassels on the cushion are carved with clever imitative skill. we must be careful to look at the face just as the sculptor intended it to be seen, not upright, but lying horizontally. it is only thus that we get the significance of the beautiful continuous line across forehead and nose. the line of the head-dress exactly follows that of the hair, and is drawn at the same angle as the edge of the collar, which it meets. in the triangular space thus formed is fitted the lovely profile of the face. ruskin has written with much enthusiasm of the merits of ilaria's tomb. from it, he declared, one may receive "unerring canon of what is evermore lovely and right in the dealing of the art of man with his fate and his passions." still more helpful is his interpretation of the feeling which the sculptor has conveyed. after first explaining that "every work of the great christian schools expresses primarily conquest over death," he shows that this particular tomb has "all the peace of the christian eternity." we may see, he says, "that the damsel is not dead but sleepeth; yet as visibly a sleep that shall know no ending until the last day break and the last shadows flee away."[ ] [footnote : tennyson's "a dream of fair women."] [footnote : not "folded below her bosom," nor "laid on her breast," as in two familiar descriptions.] [footnote : that this mantle was a prevailing style of the period among the aristocracy, we judge from an old spanish painting, in which king ferdinand of aragon and his queen both wear it. the picture is reproduced in carderara's _iconografia española_, and copied in planché's _cyclopedia of costumes_.] [footnote : the exact date is here given because of the vagueness of some writers who refer to the event as "not many years" and "within twenty years" after ilaria's death in .] [footnote : quoted by sydney colvin in an article on jacopo della quercia, in the _portfolio_, . see also _modern painters_, part iii.] vii madonna and child (_detail of lunette_) by luca della robbia in reading the gospel narrative of the life of jesus we are glad to learn something of his mother mary. her life had some peculiar hardships to test the strength of her character. it was a strange lot for a mother to have to tend her babe in the manger of an inn, but such was mary's experience. at the time of jesus's birth she and joseph were in bethlehem, whither they had come to pay their taxes. there were many other people there on the same errand, and the inn was so crowded that the young mother had to find quarters in the stable. while the child was still very young a terrible danger threatened his life. an order went forth from king herod to slay all the young children of bethlehem. still the mother's courage did not fail. she arose by night, and, taking her babe, fled with her husband into egypt. returning at length to their home in nazareth, she watched her boy's growth, and kept all his sayings in her heart. when jesus entered upon his ministry mary was the first to show perfect confidence in her son.[ ] she seems to have followed him whenever she could.[ ] her courage sustained her even in the hour of his agony, and we read how she stood with his disciples at the foot of the cross.[ ] it is this woman of quiet fortitude whom we see in luca della robbia's bas-relief of the madonna and child. we are impressed at once with a sense of her strength and poise of character. it is precisely such as fits the story of her life. steadying her little boy with both hands, she turns her face in the direction in which he is looking. the child seems to stand on a sort of balustrade in front of his mother. with feet wide apart he holds himself erect in a firm posture. his right hand is raised in a gesture of benediction. with his left he grasps firmly a long scroll bearing the latin inscription, "ego sum lux mundi" (i am the light of the world). both mother and child seem to belong to the happy, every-day working world. mary has the straight figure, full throat, and square shoulders of a tuscan peasant girl. her only aristocratic feature is the shapely hand. she holds her chin level, like a country maiden used to carrying burdens on the head. it may be that the artist had seen her like in some market-place in florence. the boy too has the square shoulders and sturdy frame of a child of the people. [illustration: madonna and child (luca della robbia) _shop in the via dell' agnolo, florence_] some artists have tried to give a supernatural and ethereal beauty to the mother and child. others have represented them enthroned in splendor like a queen and prince receiving their court. luca della robbia went to no such extremes. there is nothing morbid or sentimental in his art: nor does he care for any worldly pomp and ceremonial. his religious ideals were very simple, suited to the needs of common life. the christ child here is a dear little human baby, and the madonna is the poet's ideal of "a creature not too bright or good for human nature's daily food."[ ] the bas-relief is one of the famous works in enamelled terra-cotta, known as "della robbia ware." the idea of overlaying clay with a glazing was not original with luca della robbia, but he seems to have been the first to apply it to sculpture. in his own day he was looked upon as a great inventor, and his works were very popular. the material was inexpensive, and lent itself readily to all sorts of decorative purposes. its beauty, moreover, was of a lasting quality. while paintings fade, the della robbia ware, "gem like, shall as very gems endure."[ ] the only injury to which it is liable is the breaking off of some projecting portions. in our picture we see that a fragment is broken out of the child's wrist. fortunately, however, there are no defects in the important parts of the work. the figures are in the centre of a lunette or semi-circular composition, with an adoring angel on each side holding a jar of lilies. the piece is set up over a doorway on the outside of a building in a narrow street in florence. the location explains the attitude of the mother and child. if they looked directly out of the picture as in an altar-piece, there would be but one place, on the opposite side of the street, where the passer-by could meet their eyes. as it is, they turn their faces toward the vista of the street as if to welcome the approaching wayfarer. while still a long way off one feels the cheerful influence of their gaze. even when coming from the opposite direction it is pleasant, after passing the door, to know that the friendly eyes follow us on our way. the workmanship of luca is seen in the artistic qualities of the sculpture. there was a severe simplicity in his drawing of the outline and draperies which contrasted with the more elaborate work of his followers. luca was also a close student of nature, and drew his materials from the world about him. [footnote : at the marriage of cana, st. john, chapter ii., verses - .] [footnote : st. john ii., verse , and st. matthew, chapter xii., verse .] [footnote : st. john, chapter xix., verse .] [footnote : wordsworth's "she was a phantom of delight."] [footnote : from some verses by edith m. thomas, "a della robbia garland," printed in _the critic_, december, .] viii the meeting of st. francis and st. dominick by andrea della robbia in the beginning of the thirteenth century two men living in different countries of europe were struck simultaneously with the same idea. they were st. dominick, the spaniard, and st. francis, the italian, and each determined to found a new religious order.[ ] hitherto the members of religious orders had shut themselves up in the solitude of monasteries and convents. in the new plan they were to mingle freely with the people, calling themselves brothers, or friars. the first object of the dominicans was to be preachers, and they were called frati predicatori. the franciscans took the humbler name of the frati minori, or lesser brothers. the members of both orders were bound by a vow of poverty to possess nothing of their own. like the disciples whom jesus sent out, they were to carry neither purse nor scrip, but beg their food and raiment on their way. it is for this that they are called mendicant orders. the affairs of their orders brought both st. dominick and st. francis to rome at the same time. the two men met and embraced, each seeing in the other a kindred spirit. it was proposed to unite the two bodies in one, and st. dominick favored this plan. he had won but a few followers, and st. francis already had many. the brother minor however was sure that such union would be impossible. the two men were indeed of widely contrasting characters. st. dominick was a scholar, a man of fiery and energetic temperament. st. francis was unlettered, but his mind was poetic and imaginative, his nature gentle and humble. st. dominick was known as the "hammer of the heretics," st. francis as the "father of the poor." a bas-relief by andrea della robbia represents the meeting of st. dominick with st. francis.[ ] it is apparently the artist's intention to emphasize the kinship rather than the contrast between the two men. both have the thin faces and sharp features of the ascetic. their shaven faces and tonsured heads heighten the resemblance between them. both have the same type of hand, with the long fingers which are characteristic of a sensitive nature.[ ] a disc over the head of each symbolizes his saintliness. [illustration: meeting of st. francis and st. dominick (andrea della robbia) _loggia of san paolo, florence_] naturally the characters of the founders were impressed upon their respective orders. the dominicans were more aggressive in their methods and zealous in persecuting all forms of heresy. the franciscans, on the other hand, strove for the higher life of sanctity. the members of each order wore a distinctive dress, such as we see in our picture. the franciscan habit was at first gray, and afterwards dark brown; it is gray in the bas-relief. it consisted of a plain tunic with long loose sleeves and a scanty cape to which a hood was attached. a knotted cord fastened the garment around the waist, to remind the wearer that the body is a beast which should be subdued by a halter. the dominican habit was a white woollen gown fastened about the waist with a girdle. a white scapular was worn over this, and over all, a black cloak with a hood. we see at once in our picture that st. dominick is the elder of the two men. there was really a difference of twenty years in their ages, but the artist has made it less. it is as if each, upon seeing the other approach, had hastened forward with outstretched hands. they stand now face to face with interlocked arms in mutual contemplation. it is a moment of perfect understanding. with widely different ideas of ways and means, they have at heart a single common aim. both are called to the same great work, and each feels strengthened by the contact. the profile of st. francis shows the sensitive lines of his face. tradition tells us that he was a man of more than average height, with black eyes, and soft sonorous voice. his expression here is serene, as one would expect of the gentle friar who called all the beasts his brethren, and talked with the birds as familiar companions. st. dominick has a more strenuous countenance, and is perhaps more deeply moved than the other. he leans forward and peers into st. francis's face with an expression of great tenderness. one is reminded of a beautiful verse in one of the hebrew psalms (the eighty-fifth), "mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." the artistic qualities of this relief place it among the best works by andrea della robbia. only a skilful artist could have rendered the draperies with such grace and simplicity. they have been compared with the draperies of the painters raphael and bartolommeo. it is said that the faces were left unglazed in order that all the lines of the modelling might be preserved. [footnote : the lives of both saints are related in _the golden legend_. in caxton's translation (temple classics) see volume iv., p. , for st. dominick, and volume v., p. , for st. francis. mrs. jameson's _legends of the monastic orders_ contains an admirable account of the character and work of the two men. _the little flowers of st. francis_ is a series of legends collected about two hundred years after his death. there is an english translation by abby langdon alger. sabatier's _life of st. francis_ is an exhaustive biography.] [footnote : a tradition that st. francis and st. dominick met in florence, on the site of the present loggia of s. paolo, accounts for the placing of this bas-relief there. see the misses horner's _walks in florence_, vol. i., p. .] [footnote : the reader who is familiar with the typical figure of st. francis in sacred art may miss the sign of the wound print (the stigmata) in his hand. here andrea is historically accurate, as the vision of st. francis occurred four years after the confirmation of the order.] ix st. george by donatello in the third century of the present era lived the christian knight george of cappadocia. going forth after the usual knightly fashion in search of adventures, he came to the province of libya. the country was at that time ravaged by a dragon whose lair was a great pond near the royal city of silene. when the monster came forth the air was filled with the poisonous vapor of his breath. to insure the safety of the city two sheep were daily given to feed him. at length the supply failed, and now the people had to give their own children. the victims were chosen by lot, and after many had perished the lot fell upon the beautiful princess cleodolinda. the king besought the people to spare his daughter, offering gold and silver for her ransom. they would have none of it, but declared that the princess must meet her fate. arrayed as for her bridal, she was led out to the place where the dragon was wont to come for his prey. while she stood here weeping, st. george chanced to ride by and inquired the cause of her distress. hearing her pitiable story he assured her she had nothing to fear. just then the dragon came in sight, and the knight, charging full upon him, wounded him with his sword. then taking the girdle of theprincess, he tied it about the neck of the beast and led him into the city. the people all came out to see the wonder, and in the presence of a great company st. george smote off the dragon's head. the further adventures of the knight were in behalf of the christians, who were persecuted by the emperor diocletian. selling all that he had, he gave it to the poor and boldly denounced the pagans. all sorts of tortures were devised to force him to renounce his faith, but in every persecution he was miraculously preserved from harm. at length the provost caused him to be beheaded, and offering his last prayers st. george went to his death. in our statue st. george is represented as a warrior standing at rest while he surveys the enemy. his young figure is as straight as an arrow. the litheness of his body is apparent even through his armor. he holds his head erect in conscious power, yet with no arrogance. evidently he measures the difficulty carefully, for he seems to knit his brows as he looks abroad. he has a gentle face, but it is thoroughly masculine. [illustration: st. george (donatello) _national museum, florence_] the hands are beautiful, and full of character, large and flexible. the left one rests on a shield which bears the sign of the cross. the armor, we see, has a more than literal significance. this is the "shield of faith" wherewith the christian shall be able "to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked." st. george is the impersonation of the soldier who wars "not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."[ ] the figure naturally suggests comparison with antique sculpture. we are reminded of apollo or hermes as the greeks loved to represent them.[ ] the beautiful head with its curling hair is indeed that of a god. in the graceful attitude also, the sculptor, donatello, has perfectly expressed the sense of repose which was characteristic of greek sculpture. we note, however, that while a greek statue would have been nude st. george is clad in armor. the expression of the countenance is, moreover, quite foreign to the greek temper. those knitted brows show a strenuousness of character incompatible with the serenity of the gods. the statue of st. george, like that of st. philip, was originally made to fill one of the niches on the outside of or san michele. below it was a bas-relief representing the slaying of the dragon. the work was the gift of the guild of sword makers and armorers, whose patron saint was the knight of cappadocia. in an exposed position on the church the precious marble was injured by the weather. accordingly it was removed to a museum, and a bronze copy was set up in its place. the popularity of st. george is by no means confined to italy. in england too his memory is held in great respect. "for england and st. george" was an old battle-cry which linked the name of the patron saint with that of the native land. his character is our ideal of the christian hero, chivalrous towards the weak, courageous in danger, and devoted above all things to the service of god. donatello's statue embodies this ideal, and is his highest imaginative work. being chiefly interested in the study of expression, he often seemed to care very little whether his subjects were beautiful or not. here beauty and expressiveness are united. there is an old tradition that michelangelo, passing one day the church of or san michele, paused before the st. george and exclaimed "cammina!" that is, "forward, march!" the story is doubtless purely fictitious, but it shows how lifelike the statue appears. as an old writer (vasari) put it, "life seems to move within that stone." [footnote : ephesians, chapter vi., verses and .] [footnote : see chapters vi. and xi. in the volume on _greek sculpture_, in the riverside art series.] x bambino by andrea della robbia the visitor in florence threading his way through the narrow streets comes out with delight into the spacious squares scattered over the city. one such is the piazza of ss. annunziata, in front of the church of that name. two sides of the square are ornamented with arcaded buildings in the style characteristic of italian architecture. that at the left attracts us at once by its unique decorations. in the spandrils, or triangular spaces between the arches, are medallion bas-reliefs of glazed terra cotta showing white figures relieved against a background of bright blue. it is one of these which is reproduced in our illustration. seen against the sombre wall they are like "fragments of the milky sky itself fallen into the cool street," as a poetic critic has described them.[ ] from each medallion a baby looks down upon us, stretching out both little arms as if appealing to our pity. the delicate beauty of these little ones is so like that of the flowers that a traveller asks, "really, are they lilies, or children, or the embodied strophes of a psalter?"[ ] when we inquire what it all means we learn that this arcade is the entrance to a foundling hospital. passing through the central door we are in a _cortile_ or courtyard, around which are more baby figures. the design is a sort of key to the character of the institution: the babies represent the little waifs received into its care. we may fancy that the orphan inmates are peeping out of the medallions as from windows. the hospital of the innocents (spedale degli innocenti, in italian) is one of the oldest establishments of its kind. it was founded in the fifteenth century, and still carries on its good work. several thousand children are annually supported by its resources.[ ] to multiply the figures by four hundred and fifty makes a magnificent showing for the total number of beneficiaries in four and a half centuries. it was probably on the occasion of some improvements in the original building ( ) that andrea della robbia furnished the famous medallions of the _bambini_, or baby boys. among so many babies we yet find no two alike. each visitor chooses for himself some special favorite. the medallion of our illustration is one of the most attractive of the number. unfortunately the fingers of the right hand are broken off, but otherwise the figure is quite perfect. [illustration: bambino (andrea della robbia) _foundling hospital, florence_] the child is a healthy-looking little fellow, and the creases in neck and wrists show how plump he is. yet there is a pathetic expression on the face which touches the heart. it is as if orphanage had laid its sorrowful impress upon him. a lonely look has crept into the eyes, and the mouth droops in a sad little curve. the boy is certainly no common child. his finely formed head promises a superior character. we are reminded of the christ child, as many of the old masters have represented him. the body and legs are completely encased in swaddling bands, from which the head and arms emerge, like a blossom from its calyx. the custom of swathing babies with bandages is very ancient. we read in the gospel of st. luke how the mother of jesus wrapped her son in swaddling clothes as she laid him in the manger. the object was to prevent every possible injury or deformity to the growing limbs, and keep them straight. a child in swaddling clothes is naturally much more easily carried by the mother, and can more safely be left alone. this is doubtless the reason why the custom still prevails in many countries, and especially among the poorer people. there are still many nations which the progressive ideas of physical culture have not reached. the method of swaddling as now practised in italy begins by folding the babe in a large square linen cloth. a second piece of linen is rolled around the body, which is then ready for the bandage. this bandage is about ten inches wide and over three yards long, and is rolled about the entire length of the child's figure, pinning the arms to the sides. the lower part of the linen cloth is turned up over the feet and tied with the ends of the bandage.[ ] judging from our picture, the process seems to have been about the same in the fifteenth century, except that the arms of our bambino are free. certainly this fact makes the figure much more attractive as well as more decorative. the cloth about the child's body is brown and the bandage white. the sculptor of the bambini, andrea della robbia, was the nephew of luca della robbia, of whom we have learned something in previous chapters. he was trained in the workshop of his uncle, and in turn passed on his art to his three sons. while luca's work is considered superior to that of any of his pupils, the nephew andrea had some fine artistic qualities. the decorations of the foundling hospital illustrate both the delicacy and the fertility of his imagination. only a genuine artist could invent so many variations upon the simple theme of a single baby figure. the entire series is like a musical composition based upon some simple but exquisite melody. [footnote : walter pater.] [footnote : maurice hewlett in _earthwork out of tuscany_.] [footnote : between and , according to the misses horner's _walks in florence_, published in .] [footnote : described in a little book called _italian child-life_, by marietta ambrosi.] xi the annunciation by andrea della robbia the life of mary the mother of jesus was full of strange experiences. she had many sorrows to bear, but withal a joy beyond any ever given to woman. in the purity of her character she was set apart for a high and holy service. the turning-point in her life was on a great day when the angel gabriel was sent by god to visit her. it was in her quiet home in nazareth that the celestial messenger "came in unto her." "hail, thou that art highly favoured," he said, "the lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women." "and when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be." the angel spoke again, and his words reassured her: "fear not, mary: for thou hast found favour with god." then he told her that she was to be the mother of a wonderful son. "thou shalt call his name jesus," he said. "he shall be great, and shall be called the son of the highest: and the lord god shall give unto him the throne of his father david: and he shall reign over the house of jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end."[ ] when at last mary understood the meaning of the angel's message she humbly accepted her great destiny. "behold the handmaid of the lord," she replied; "be it unto me according to thy word." from this day until the birth of jesus her thoughts were full of her coming motherhood. once she broke forth into a song of praise:-- "my soul doth magnify the lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my saviour, for he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden, for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. for he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his name."[ ] the bas-relief by andrea della robbia tells the story of the angel's visit to mary, the subject usually called the annunciation. at one side sits the virgin with an open book on her lap, as if she had been reading. she has a girl's slender figure, and her head is modestly draped with a mantle. the angel kneels opposite, with folded hands. he has long pointed wings covered with feathers as "a bird of god," in dante's phrase. from above a fatherly face looks down upon them out of a surrounding circle of winged cherub heads. beside the virgin stands a jar of lilies, the flowers which symbolize the purity of her maidenhood. over these soars a white dove, the same symbol of the divine spirit which descended upon jesus at his baptism.[ ] [illustration: the annunciation (andrea della robbia) _altar piece at la verna_] already the angel has delivered his message, and now awaits the answer. his face is round and innocent like a child's, and his long hair is carefully curled. the virgin has listened with drooping head, and with her hand pressed to her breast as if to still the beating of her heart. she seems too timid to lift her eyes to meet her radiant guest. yet her whole attitude expresses submission to the divine will. the artist has expressed with rare delicacy of imagination the religious sentiment of the incident. the interpretation is in a similar vein to that of the poet painter rossetti in the lines on the annunciation in the poem "ave:"-- "then suddenly the awe grew deep as of a day to which all days were footsteps in god's secret ways; until a folding sense, like prayer, which is, as god is, everywhere, gathered about thee; and a voice spake to thee without any noise, being of the silence:--'hail,' it said, 'thou that art highly favouréd; the lord is with thee, here and now; blessed among all women thou.'" rossetti, it will be remembered, belonged to that circle of english artists who some fifty years ago attempted to revive the simple reverence of the italian art previous to raphael. thus the "pre-raphaelite" poet and the sculptor, though separated by so many centuries, had the common aim of expressing "the sense of prayer" which gathered about the virgin in this moment. rossetti also treated the annunciation in a picture which has interesting points of comparison with our illustration. the relief is made in the della robbia enamelled terra cotta ware. the sculptor has here followed his uncle's example in the simplicity of the draperies. the modelling of the hands also recalls the touch of luca. in choice of types, however, andrea shows his individual taste. the fragile figure of the virgin is as different as possible from the robust beauty of luca's madonna which we have studied. the angel too is of a softer and less vigorous character than the older artist would have designed. the relief is surrounded by an elaborate frame of the same material. at the sides decorated pillars with ionic capitals support an entablature, every section of which has its own distinctive design. the patterns ornamenting frieze and pillars seem to be variations on the lotus motive, and are very graceful. on the dado, or piece running across the bottom of the frame, is printed the latin inscription: "ecce ancilla domini. fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum" (behold the handmaid of the lord; be it done unto me according to thy word). it is interesting to notice that at this period the letters _n_ and _m_ were written above the line or united with the vowels which they followed. [footnote : st. luke, chapter i., verses - .] [footnote : from the magnificat in the prayer book version.] [footnote : st. matthew, chapter iii., verse .] xii the ascension by luca della robbia for forty days after the resurrection of jesus the disciples enjoyed the companionship of their master. they were now ready to understand many things that before had been obscure to them, and jesus spoke to them much of the things pertaining to the kingdom of god.[ ] sometimes, as they sat together, he suddenly appeared among them.[ ] once when a few of them had been out fishing over night they found him standing on the shore in the morning.[ ] still later he appointed a meeting on a mountain in galilee at which over five hundred of the faithful were gathered. it was then that he commanded them to go forth to teach all nations, and he gave them the promise, "lo, i am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."[ ] finally he led the chosen band to the mount of olives at bethany, "and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. and it came to pass while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven." "and a cloud received him out of their sight. and while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, ye men of galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven."[ ] in luca della robbia's bas-relief of the ascension the moment has come when, in the very act of blessing his disciples, jesus is parted from them. he had already, in some measure, prepared them for this event. on the day of his resurrection he told them that he was about to ascend to his father.[ ] to-day his words and manner may have shown them that the time was at hand. certainly there are no startled or grief-stricken faces among them; no gestures of surprise. it is as if in response to some sign from the master, they had all knelt to receive his benediction, and while they were still on their knees, he rose from their midst. already his feet have left the solid earth, as he vanishes out of their sight. the company form a circle just as they had clustered about him. so orderly is their arrangement, so quietly is the great act accomplished, that they seem to be taking part in some religious service. all eyes are fixed upon the saviour, with love, joy, and adoration expressed in every countenance. [illustration: the ascension (luca della robbia) _cathedral, florence_] the treachery of judas had reduced the number of disciples to eleven, and the vacant place was not filled until later. we see, however, twelve figures in this circle, and notice that one is a woman. this is mary, the mother of jesus, who had lived with john since the day of the crucifixion. it was the express wish of jesus that the beloved disciple should regard her as a mother. thus it is not unnatural to suppose that the two would come together to bethany at this time, and kneel side by side, as we see them here. mary looks as young as when she held her babe in her arms, and she has the same happy expression. it is not possible to make out who the others are. we fancy that the two beardless young men at the right are thomas and philip, because they are thought to have been younger than the other disciples. the figure of the saviour is noble and dignified, the attitude full of buoyancy. the face is such as from long association we have come to identify with the person of christ, benignant and refined. he looks not up into the glory towards which he is ascending, but his glance still lingers upon the disciples with an expression of tender solicitude. an oval frame of radiating lines surrounds his entire figure. it is the _mandorla_, or almond-shaped nimbus, which was the old artistic symbol of divine glory. we have already noticed some of the characteristics of luca della robbia's art, which are again illustrated in this work. the draperies are arranged with a simplicity of line which is almost severe. the folds are scanty, clinging to the figure and following the fine outlines of the pose. the figures are white, set off against the blue of the sky, and green, brown, and yellow are introduced in the landscape surroundings. the bas-relief is one of two lunettes placed over opposite doors in the cathedral of florence. the companion subject is the resurrection, and in both pieces the sculptor went beyond his usual limit in the number of figures making up the composition. the leading quality of his work is decorative, and he seldom applied his art to the illustration of story. we are the more interested in his remarkable success in these instances. a painter would naturally have brought out the more dramatic features of the ascension, showing the excitement and confusion of the moment. luca knew well that sculpture was unsuited for violent action, and he sought rather to convey a sense of repose in his work. moreover he infused a devotional spirit into the scene which he seldom attained. marcel-reymond says that only in fra angelico's work can one find figures expressing such an ecstasy of love and devotion. [footnote : acts, chapter i., verse .] [footnote : st. mark, chapter xvi., verse ; st. john, chapter xx., verse .] [footnote : st. john, chapter xxi., verse .] [footnote : st. matthew, chapter xxviii., verses , .] [footnote : st. luke, chapter xxiv., verses , ; acts, chapter i., verses - .] [footnote : st. john, chapter xx., verse .] xiii tomb of the cardinal of portugal by antonio rossellino in the church of san miniato, on a hill overlooking florence, is a memorial chapel built in honor of a portuguese cardinal who is buried here. architecture, painting, and sculpture are here united to make a perfect artistic whole. the room was designed by the architect antonio manetti; the altar and walls are adorned with paintings by pollaiuolo and baldovinetti, the roof is decorated with medallions of delia robbia ware, and at one side is the cardinal's tomb. this prelate, jacopo di portogallo, died in florence while visiting the city on a diplomatic mission. he was a young man under thirty years of age, a cousin of the reigning king of portugal, and was besides the cardinal archbishop of lisbon. naturally he was received as a guest of unusual distinction, and his amiable qualities won him warm friends among the florentines. though dying in a foreign land, he was buried with such honors as his own countrymen could hardly have surpassed. this was in , at a time when antonio rossellino was a prominent sculptor of tuscany. he was the artist chosen by the bishop of florence to construct the portuguese cardinal's tomb. on a richly carved base stands the sarcophagus or marble coffin in an arched niche. just over this, on a bier, lies the portrait figure of the cardinal in his ecclesiastical robes. all this is surrounded by a square framework, not unlike a mantelpiece in style, on the two upper corners of which are kneeling angels. the wall space above is ornamented by angels holding over a simulated window a medallion containing a madonna and child. our illustration shows this portion of the wall, and includes a part of the angel figures kneeling at the upper corners of the tomb. the angel on the left side holds the crown, which is the reward of a faithful life. it is the "crown of righteousness," the "crown of life," or the "crown of glory which fadeth not away."[ ] his companion must once have carried a palm branch, according to an old description, but this has disappeared. the angels bearing the medallion fly forward as if swimming through the air, alternately bending the knee and thrusting out the leg. their draperies flutter about them in the swiftness of their motion. such vigorous action is an unusual motive in decorative art, and perhaps not altogether appropriate. all four of the angels have delicate features and sweet expressions. [illustration: tomb of the cardinal of portugal (antonio rossellino) _church of san miniato, florence_] the medallion is, artistically considered, the loveliest portion of the whole work. the face of the madonna is of that perfect oval which artists choose for their ideal of beauty. we admire too the delicately cut features, the waving hair, and the shapely hands. both she and the child look down from their high frame, smiling upon those who may stand on the pavement below. the child raises his hand in a gesture of benediction, the three fingers extended as a sign of the trinity. it is not an easy problem to fit the compositional lines of a group into a circular frame. rossellino solved it very prettily by outlining the figures in a diamond-shaped diagram. you may easily trace the four sides, drawing one line from the madonna's head along her right shoulder, another from her elbow to the finger tip, a third from the child's toes to his left elbow, a fourth from his elbow to the top of the mother's veil. it will be noticed that in the whole decorative scheme of the monument there is nothing to suggest the idea of mourning. there is here no sense of gloom in the presence of death. the rejoicing of the angels, the smile of the mother and child, and the peaceful sleep of the cardinal, all express the christian hope of immortality beyond the grave. the sentiment is particularly appropriate to the character of the man whose memory is honored here. the florentine writer vespasiano bisticci described him as being "of a most amiable nature, a pattern of humanity, and an abundant fountain of good, through god, to the poor.... he lived in the flesh as if he were free from it, rather the life of an angel than a man, and his death was holy as his life."[ ] allowing something for the extravagance of speech which was the fashion of that time, we may still believe that the cardinal of portugal was a man whose character was singularly pure in an age when good men were none too common. of the sculptor rossellino also fair words are spoken. vasari declared that he "was venerated almost as a saint for the admirable virtues which he added to his knowledge of art." the custom of erecting elaborate marble tombs was an interesting feature of the renaissance art in italy. such monuments formed an important part of the interior decoration of churches. church dignitaries took great pride in the thought that their names would be immortalized in these works of art. some had their tombs made while still living, that they might make sure of a satisfactory design.[ ] others gave directions on the subject with their dying breath, as in browning's poem, "the bishop orders his tomb at st. praxed's." of the many fine tombs in the churches of tuscany, this monument of the cardinal of portugal is counted one of the three best.[ ] [footnote : timothy, chapter iv., verse ; st. james, chapter i., verse ; peter, chapter v., verse . the symbolism of the crown is explained in mrs. jameson's _sacred and legendary art_, page .] [footnote : in _vite di uomini illustri del secolo xv_.] [footnote : as bishop salutati, whose tomb is mentioned in chapter iv.] [footnote : by c. c. perkins in _tuscan sculptors_.] xiv equestrian statue of gattamelata by donatello in the fifteenth century italy was divided into numerous independent states, among which there was more or less rivalry. the two great powers of the north were venice and milan, both striving for the possession of lombardy. to the venetian republic already belonged an extensive territory on the mainland, and she was determined on conquest at any cost. to this end condottieri were employed to carry on the several campaigns. these condottieri were military leaders who made war a business. it mattered nothing to them on what side they fought or against what enemy, so long as they were well paid for their services. as a rule they were men of unscrupulous character, many of whom betrayed the cause entrusted to them. to this rule a notable exception was gattamelata,[ ] the subject of the equestrian statue in our illustration. the man's real name was erasmo da narni. it was as first lieutenant in the venetian army that he came into notice, serving under gonzaga. when later this gonzaga went over to the cause of the milanese enemy, the lieutenant was promoted to the command. he threw into the work before him, says the historian, "an honest heart and splendid faculties." the milanese army was much larger than the venetian, and was commanded by the famous strategist niccolò piccinino. gattamelata could make little headway against such odds, but all that was possible to do he accomplished "with equal courage, fidelity, and zeal." at length, in attempting to bring relief to the besieged city of brescia, he found himself shut in between the lake of garda and the alps. it was in the month of september, . snow already lay on the mountains, and the rivers were swollen with the autumn rains. the roads were out of repair, bridges were washed away, and even the fords were impassable. to make matters worse, the army was short of provisions. such conditions would have forced any other general to lay down his arms, but not gattamelata. with admirable coolness, he led his men in a retreat across the mountains and around the lake. three thousand horsemen and two thousand infantry made up their number, and all were devoted to their leader. torrents were bridged, old roads repaired, new ones opened, and at the end of a month the army emerged upon the lombard plain. [illustration: equestrian statue of gattamelata (donatello) _piazza del santo, padua_] thus were the venetian arms saved, and at the same time the milanese were baffled in a design to come between venice and her army. gattamelata's retreat was a victory of peace, less showy, perhaps, than a victory of war, but requiring the finest qualities of generalship. in recognition of his services the venetian signory conferred the title of nobility upon him, with a palace and a pension. in the following year, the venetian cause was strengthened by alliance with florence, and gattamelata yielded the first place in command to sforza, the general of the florentine forces. in the united armies succeeded in relieving brescia, but in the same year a calamity befell gattamelata. exposure to cold brought on paralysis, and after a lingering illness of two years he died. the honor of a great funeral was accorded him at the public expense, and he was buried in the church of s. antonio at padua. the next year the sculptor, donatello, was commissioned to make an equestrian statue of the great condottiere to be set up in the square in front of the church.[ ] with quiet dignity gattamelata rides forward on his horse as if reviewing his army. there is nothing pompous in his attitude or manner. he seems a plain man intent upon his task, with no thought of display. he has the strong face of one born for leadership, and we can believe the stories of his troops' devotion to him. with his right hand he lifts his wand in a gesture of command, letting it rest across the horse's neck. he is dressed in the picturesque war costume of the period, and wears metal plates upon his arms. a long sword swings at his side, and spurs are attached to his heels. yet apparently he is not actually equipped for the battle, for his head is uncovered. he has a high receding forehead and thick curls. the peculiar shape of the head, looking almost conical from some points of view, indicates a forcible character. it is evident that this is a man of action rather than of words. his appearance fits admirably the facts of his life as one whose energy and courage could overcome any obstacle. gattamelata was not a patriot, as we understand patriotism, being but a mercenary captain. but he showed a rare loyalty to the cause he espoused. it is not as a fighting man that we admire him to-day, but as a man of remarkable resources. obedient to the master's hand, the horse ambles at a moderate pace. except the bridle, he has no trappings, and we thus see to the best advantage the fine proportions of his figure. before undertaking this work donatello had had no experience in modelling the horse, and his success is the more remarkable. it is, however, the man rather than the horse which shows the full power of the sculptor's art. the subject was one exactly suited to his taste, which preferred vigorous masculine qualities to all others. in ancient sculpture equestrian subjects were very important. on the parthenon at athens a frieze of bas-relief contained rows of horsemen riding in the panathenaic procession.[ ] in a public square in rome was a famous statue of the emperor marcus aurelius on horseback. donatello was the first sculptor of the christian era to revive this noble form of art. the statue of gattamelata is therefore the parent of the long line of modern equestrian statues. [footnote : the literal meaning of this sobriquet is _honeyed cat_.] [footnote : w. c. hazlitt's _venetian republic_ furnishes the quotations and information for this account of gattamelata. other sources of material on the subject are fabretti, _biog. dei capitani dell' umbria_, hoefer's _biog. universelle_, and michaud's _biog. générale_. symonds gives a general account of the condottieri in the _age of despots_.] [footnote : see chapter iii. of the volume on _greek sculpture_, in the riverside art series.] xv shrine by mino da fiesole we have seen from the examples in our collection that the art of sculpture may be applied in many forms to the decoration of churches, without and within. statues like those in the niches on the church of or san michele, sculptured altars like that by donatello in the church at padua, organ galleries like that by luca della robbia in the florence cathedral, monumental tombs like those of ilaria del carretto and the cardinal of portugal, medallions and lunettes on walls and ceilings, are among the treasures enriching the churches of italy. sculpture may also be used to ornament almost every article of church furnishing: pulpits, fonts, and basins for holy water, wardrobes and cabinets, chests and chairs, as well as a multitude of those smaller objects wrought in metal which belong to the goldsmith's art. upon all such things as these the italian artists of the fifteenth century spent much careful and loving labor. [illustration: shrine (mino da fiesole) _church of santa croce, florence_] our illustration shows a kind of church furniture common in this period. it is a sculptured cabinet to contain articles used in the altar services, such as the sacramental wafers or the holy oil. a receptacle for objects so sacred is called a shrine. the architectural framework is in the form styled a tabernacle, such as we have seen in the niches on the outside of or san michele.[ ] the artist was mino da fiesole, whose decorative works were very popular, both for the delicacy of their finish and the quality of sentiment they expressed. his idea here was to make the design suggest a sacred story, the story of christ's resurrection. the opening into the cabinet is the entrance of the tomb, and without, the angels await the coming of the risen lord. our thoughts turn to the sunday morning in the garden of joseph of arimathea, when the faithful women came to the rock-hewn tomb. the stone had been rolled away, and angels greeted them with the glad tidings, "he is risen."[ ] the angels of our picture press forward eagerly to peer into the shadowy depths of the interior. there are two who are close to the door, while two more, with long torches, stand on the step below. above the door hovers a dove, the emblem of the holy spirit. various features of the tabernacle illustrate characteristic qualities of the italian art of this period. the arched top is to be noticed as much more common in italy than the gothic or pointed roof. the winged cherub heads were a favorite decorative design. we have seen one example of their use in the frame of the medallion on the portuguese cardinal's tomb. the decorated side pillars with ionic capitals we have seen in the altarpiece of the annunciation by andrea della robbia. the shrine of our illustration was originally made for the nuns of the convent of the murate. it is mentioned by vasari as a work which the artist "conducted to perfection with all the diligence of which he was capable." that its first purpose was to hold the sacramental wafers we may be sure from the latin inscription, "this is the living bread which came down from heaven." the words are those used by our lord himself in one of the discourses recorded by st. john.[ ] in the shrine was removed to its present place in the church of s. croce, florence, where it is in the chapel of the medici, also called the chapel of the novitiate. [footnote : chapter ii.] [footnote : st. mark, chapter xvi., verses - .] [footnote : st. john, chapter vi., verse .] xvi il marzocco (the heraldic lion of florence) by donatello in the history of the several cities of italy every town has chosen some design to be inscribed upon a shield as a coat of arms. florence has the lily, as a reminder of the far-away days when the valley of the arno was filled with the red blossoms of the amaryllis. it was for this that the name _firenze_ was given to the city, the "city of flowers." the lily is drawn in three petals somewhat like those of the fleur-de-lis of france; but the florentine flower is broader than its french counterpart, and has besides two slender flower-stalks separating the larger petals. when represented in color it is always red. the tutelary genius of florence is the lion. he stands for the noble and heroic qualities in the florentine citizen. courage and patriotism have many a time been magnificently illustrated in the history of the city's struggles against tyranny. like the king of beasts, the loyal florentine prefers death to the loss of liberty. the choice of the lion as a civic emblem explains the fact that a preserve of lions was once kept in florence at the public expense. this was given up centuries ago, but the via de' leoni, or street of the lions, remains to remind us of the old custom. there was still another way in which florence kept the emblem continually before the minds of her people. this was in the stone lion called the _marzocco_, set up in the piazza, or square, of the signoria. for many years the civic life of florence centred in the piazza della signoria, where stands the old gray stone palace called the palazzo vecchio. of some of the important events which took place here in the fifteenth century we may read in george eliot's "romola." it was here the florentines gathered on all occasions of public interest, whether connected with the political or the religious affairs of their city. in front of the palazzo vecchio is a stone platform called the _ringhiera_, and it was on this that the marzocco was set up as a stimulus to patriotism. the lion sits on his haunches in an attitude of grave dignity. in this position he is much more alert than a crouching lion, and less aggressive than the rampant lion. his duty is to guard the honor of the city, and his pose is much like that of the watchdog. with his right paw he supports a shield on which the florentine lily is engraved. we are reminded of our own national eagle holding the shield of the stars and stripes. in such a figure we do not look for a close resemblance to nature. the subjects of heraldic art are treated in a decorative way with a certain stiffness of form. the device of the lily is not an actual picture of the flower, but a kind of floral diagram, or what we call a conventionalized form. so, too, the lion is of a formal or emblematic type. yet there is a certain expressiveness in the face of the old fellow which makes us like him. like the winged lion of st. mark's in venice, he has made many friends. il marzocco is carved out of soft gray stone which the italians call _pietra serena_. it is believed to have been made by donatello, and it stands on a beautiful carved pedestal. like the same sculptor's statue of st. george it was deemed too precious to leave exposed in the open air, and was therefore removed to a museum. a bronze copy now stands in its place on the platform of the old palace. pronouncing vocabulary of proper names and foreign words the diacritical marks given are those found in the latest edition of webster's international dictionary. explanation of diacritical marks. a dash ([=]) above the vowel denotes the long sound, as in f[=a]te, [=e]ve, t[=i]me, n[=o]te, [=u]se. a dash and a dot ([.=]) above the vowel denote the same sound, less prolonged. a curve ([)]) above the vowel denotes the short sound, as in [)a]dd, [)e]nd, [)i]ll, [)o]dd, [)u]p. a dot ([.]) above the vowel a denotes the obscure sound of a in p[.a]st, [.a]b[=a]te, am[)e]ric[.a]. a double dot ([:])above the vowel a denotes the broad sound of a in fäther, älms. a double dot ([:]) below the vowel a denotes the sound of a in b[a:]ll. a wave ([~]) above the vowel e denotes the sound of e in h[~e]r. a circumflex accent ([^]) above the vowel o denotes the sound of o in bôrn. a dot (.) below the vowel u denotes the sound of u in the french language. =n= indicates that the preceding vowel has the french nasal tone. =g= and =k= denote the guttural sound of ch in the german language. _th_ denotes the sound of th in the, this. ç sounds like s. [-c] sounds like k. _[s+]_ sounds like _z_. _[=g]_ is hard as in [=g]et. _[.g]_ is soft as in [.g]em. alger ([)a]l´j[~e]r). ambrosi, marietta (mä-r[=e]-[)e]t´tä äm-br[=o]´z[=e]). andrea (än-dr[=a]´ä). angelico, fra (frä än-j[)e]l´[=e]-k[=o]). annunziata (än-n[=oo]n-ts[=e]-ä´tä). antonio (än-t[=o]´n[=e]-[=o]). apollo ([.a]-p[)o]l´l[=o]). arezzo (ä-r[)e]t´s[=o]). arimathea ([)a]r-[)i]-m[.a]-th[=e]´[.a]). aristotle ([)a]r´[)i]s-t[)o]tl). arras (är-räs´). baldovinetti (bäl-d[=o]-v[=e]-n[)e]t´t[=e]). bambino (bäm-b[=e]´n[=o]). bartolommeo (bär-t[=o]-l[)o]m-m[=a]´[=o]). b[)e]th´[.a]ny. b[)e]th´l[=e]h[)e]m. bethsaida (b[)e]th-s[=a]´[)i]-d[.a]). bisticci, vespasiano (v[)e]s-pä-z[=e]-ä´n[=o] b[=e]s-t[=e]t´ ch[=e]). bologna (b[=o]-l[=o]n´y[.a]). borghini, vicenzo (v[=e]-ch[)e]nd´s[=o] bôr-g[=e]´n[=e]). botticelli (b[)o]t-t[=e]-ch[)e]l´l[=e]). brescia (br[=a]´sh[=e]-ä). brunelleschi (br[=oo]-n[)e]l-l[)e]s´k[=e]). buonarroti (b[=oo]-[=o]-när-r[=o]´t[=e]). cammina (käm´m[=e]-nä). _cantoria_ (kän-t[=o]-r[=e]´ä). cappadocia (k[)a]p-[.a]-d[=o]´sh[)i]-ä). carderara (kär-d[=a]-rä´rä). carrara (kär-rä´rä). carretto (kär-r[)e]t´t[=o]). cavalucci (kä-vä-l[=oo]t´ch[=e]). cleodolinda (kl[=e]-[)o]d-[=o]-l[)i]n´d[.a]). colvin, sidney (s[)i]d´n[)i] k[)o]l´v[)i]n). correggio (kôr-r[)e]d´j[=o]). _cortile_ (k[=o]r-t[=e]´l[.=a]). croce (kr[=o]´ch[=a]). della robbia (d[)e]l´lä r[)o]b´b[=e]-ä). didron (d[=e]-drôn´). diocletian (d[=i]-[=o]-kl[=e]´sh[)i]-[.a]n). d[=o]m[)i]n´[)i]c[.a]n. d[)o]m´[)i]n[)i]ck. d[=o]nät[)e]l´l[=o]. d[=o]nä´t[=o]. ecce ancilla domini fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum ([)e]k´k[)e] änk[=e]l´lä d[=o]´m[=e]-n[=e] f[=e]´ät m[.=e]´h[.=e] s[=a]k[=oo]n´d[=oo]m w[=a]r´b[=oo]m t[=oo]´[=oo]m). ecco il giovannino ([)e]k´k[=o] [=e]l j[=o]-vän-n[=e]´n[=o]). ego sum lux mundi ([)e]g´[=o] s[)oo]m l[=oo]x m[=oo]n´d[=e]). elias ([=e]-l[=i]´[.a]s). elisabeth ([=e]-l[)i]z´[.a]-b[)e]th). eloi ([=a]-lwä´). _episcopus_ ([=a]-p[=e]´sk[=o]-p[)oo]s). erasmo da narni ([=a]-räs´m[=o] dä när´n[=e]). fabretti (fä-br[)e]t´t[=e]). firenze (f[=e]-r[)e]nd´s[.=a]). florentine (flôr´[)e]n-t[=e]n). franciscan (fr[)a]n-s[)i]s´k[.a]n). frati minori (frä´t[=e] m[=e]-n[=o]´r[=e]). frati predicatori (frä´t[=e] pr[=a]-d[=e]-kä-t[=o]´r[=e]). galilee (g[)a]l´[)i]-l[=e]). garda (gär´dä). gattamelata (gät-tä-m[=a]-lä´tä). _genre_ (zhänr). gonzaga (g[)o]nd-sä´gä). gr[)e]g´[=o]r[)y]. guinigi, paolo (pä´[=o]-l[=o] gw[=e]-n[=e]´g[=e]). h[)a]z´l[)i]tt. h[~e]r´m[=e][s+]. h[)e]r´[)o]d. hewlett, maurice (m[a:]´r[)i]s h[=u]´l[)e]t). hieropolis (h[=i]-[=e]-r[)o]p´[=o]-l[)i]s). hoefer (h[~e]´f[~e]r). iconografia española ([=e]-k[=o]-n[=o]-grä-f[=e]´ä [)e]s-pän-y[=o]´lä). iconography ([=i]-k[=o]-n[)o]g´r[.a]-f[)i]). ilaria ([=e]-lä´r[=e]-ä). jacopo della quercia (yä´k[=o]-p[=o] d[)e]l´lä kw[)e]r´chä). jôr´d[.a]n. jourdain (zh[=oo]r-d[)a]n´). judæa (j[=u]-d[=e]´[.a]). l[)e]g´hôrn. l[)i]b´[)y][.a]. lisbon (l[)i]z´b[)u]n). loggia (l[)o]d´jä). l[)o]m´b[.a]rd[)y]. luca della robbia (l[)oo]´kä d[)e]l´lä r[)o]b´b[=e]-ä). lucca (l[=oo]k´kä). magnificat (m[)a]g-n[)i]f´[)i]-k[)a]t). _mandorla_ (män´dôr-lä). manetti, antonio (än-t[=o]´n[=e]-[=o] mä-n[)e]t´t[=e]). marcel-reymond (mär-s[)e]l´ r[=a]-môn´). marzocco, il ([=e]l märd-s[)o]k´k[=o]). medici (m[=a]´d[=e]-ch[=e]). michaud (m[=e]-sh[=o]´). michelangelo (m[=e]-k[)e]l-än´j[.=a]-l[=o]). milan (m[)i]l´[.a]n or m[)i]-l[)a]n´). mino da fiesole (m[=e]´n[=o] dä f[=e]-[=a]´s[=o]-l[.=a]). molinier (m[=o]-l[=e]-n[=e]-[=a]´). murate (m[=oo]-rä´t[.=a]). murillo (m[=oo]-r[=e]l´y[=o]). nanni di banco (nän´n[=e] d[=e] bän´k[=o]). n[=a]th[)a]n´[.=a][)e]l. n[)a]z´[.a]r[)e]th. niccolò (n[=e]-k[=o]-l[=o]´). or san michele (ôr sän m[=e]-k[)a]´l[.=a]). p[)a]d´[=u][.a]. palazzo vecchio (pä-lät´s[=o] v[)e]k´k[=e]-[=o]). p[=a]´t[~e]r. petronio (p[=a]-tr[=o]´n[=e]-[=o]). phrygia (fr[)i]j´[)i][.a]). piazza (p[=e]-ät´sä). piccinino, niccolò (n[=e]-k[=o]-l[=o]´ p[=e]t-ch[=e]-n[=e]´n[=o]). _pietra serena_ (p[=e]-[=a]´trä s[=a]-r[=a]´nä). pisa (p[=e]´zä). pistoja (p[=e]s-t[=o]´yä). planché (plän-sh[=a]´). pollaiuolo (p[=o]l-lä-y[=oo]-[=o]´l[=o]). portogallo, jacopo di (yä´k[=o]-p[=o] d[=e] p[=o]r-t[=o]-gäl´l[=o]). p[=o]rt´[=u]g[.a]l. pr[)a]x´[)e]d. pre-raphaelite (pr[=e]-rä´f[=a]-[)e]l-[=i]t). raphael (rä´f[=a]-[)e]l). rea (r[=a]). rembrandt (r[)e]m´br[)a]nt). renaissance (r[~e]-n[=a]s-säns´). _ringhiera_ (r[=e]n-g[=e]-[=a]´rä). romola (r[)o]m´[=o]-l[.a]). rossellino (r[)o]s-s[)e]l-l[=e]´n[=o]). rossetti (r[)o]s-s[)e]t´t[=e]). sabatier (sä-bä-t[=e]-[=a]´). salutati, leonardo (l[=a]-[=o]-när´d[=o] sä-l[=oo]-tä´t[=e]). san miniato (sän m[=e]-n[=e]-ä´t[=o]). scythia (s[)i]th´[)i]-[.a]). sforza (sf[=o]rd´sä). siena (s[=e]-[=a]´nä). signor (s[=e]n´y[=o]r). signory (s[=e]n´y[=o]-r[)i]). s[=i]l[=e]´n[=e]. spedale degli innocenti (sp[)a]-dä´l[=a] d[=a]´ly[=e] [=e]n-n[=o]-ch[=a]n´t[=e]). st[)i]g´m[.a]tä. symonds (s[)i]m´[)u]ndz). syndics (s[)i]n´d[)i]x). t[)i]l´l[)i]ng-h[)a]st. titian (t[)i]sh´[.a]n). t[)u]s´c[.a]n[)y]. vasari (vä-sä´r[=e]). via de' leoni (v[=e]´ä d[=a] l[=a]-[=o]´n[=e]). zacharias (z[)a]k-[.a]-r[=i]´[.a]s). zuccone (ds[=oo]k-k[=o]´n). note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the many original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). text following a carat character is superscripted (example: xv^e). there are some differences in context between chapter or section headings and corresponding entries in the table of contents. in every case the original has been retained. a catalogue of sculpture in the department of greek and roman antiquities, british museum. by a. h. smith, m.a., assistant in the department of greek and roman antiquities, in the british museum. vol. i. london: printed by order of the trustees. . london: printed by william clowes and sons, limited stamford street and charing cross. preface. the present volume by mr. arthur smith, assistant in the department of greek and roman antiquities, includes the sculptures of the archaic period: those of the parthenon and other athenian buildings; the remains of the temple at phigaleia; the greek reliefs, and some other sculptures which, though produced in roman times, yet represent greek originals of the great age. in the section which deals with the sculptures of athens much has been retained from sir charles newton's _guide to the elgin room_, pts. i.-ii. while adding the results of more recent research, mr. smith has contributed on his part interesting material. the sculptures of the archaic period have of late years been the subject of much discussion; the results of these discussions, as they apply to the collection of the british museum, have now been brought together and summarized. the greek reliefs, which form an important section of the present volume, belong to a class of sculptures which have produced much difference of opinion as to the subjects represented by them. mr. smith has stated briefly the principal views, by way of introduction to the several classes of reliefs. a. s. murray _ rd december, ._ contents of vol. i. page editor's preface iii table of contents v table of abbreviations vii introduction part i.--the archaic period. mycenae, - branchidae, - lydia, , ephesus, - caria, - rhodes, - xanthos, - naucratis, - delos, selinus (casts), - athens and attica, - aegina (casts), - olympia (casts), - statues of apollo (?), - miscellaneous archaic sculptures, - part ii.--myron and pheidias. myron, pheidias and the parthenon athenè parthenos, - east pediment of parthenon, west pediment of parthenon, metopes of parthenon, - frieze of the parthenon east side, north side, west side, south side, fragments of the parthenon sculptures, - architectural fragments of the parthenon, - part iii.--the successors of pheidias. the temple called the theseion sculpture (casts) and architecture, - the erechtheion sculpture and architecture, - temple of nikÈ apteros frieze and reliefs of balustrade (casts), - monument of lysicrates frieze (casts), monument of thrasyllos, the propylaea, - miscellaneous architectural fragments from athens and attica, - agoracritos of paros, polycleitos of argos, - temple of apollo at phigaleia architectural fragments, - metopes, - frieze, - acrolithic statue, , miscellaneous sculptures of the fifth century, - greek reliefs sepulchral reliefs: decorative stelae, - domestic scenes, &c., - sepulchral vases, - figures clasping hands, - the sepulchral banquet, &c., - rider and horse, heroified, - lycian sepulchral reliefs (casts), - votive reliefs, - plates i.-xii. table of abbreviations. the following is a list of the works which are most frequently referred to, in this catalogue, under abbreviated forms:-- _annali dell' inst._ annali dell' instituto di corrispondenza archeologica. rome: - . [superseded by the "roemische mittheilungen."] _antike denkmaeler._ antike denkmaeler herausgegeben vom k. deutschen archaeologischen institut. berlin: from . in progress. _arch. anzeiger._ archaeologischer anzeiger. [a supplement to the archeologische zeitung, and to the jahrbuch des archaeologischen instituts.] _arch. zeit._ archaeologische zeitung. berlin: - . [superseded by the jahrbuch des archaeologischen instituts.] _athenische mittheilungen._ mittheilungen des k. deutschen archaeologischen instituts, athenische abtheilung. athens: from . in progress. _brunn, denkmaeler._ h. v. brunn, denkmaeler griechischer und römischer sculptur. munich: from . in progress. _bull, de corr. hellénique._ École française d'athènes. bulletin de correspondance hellénique. athens: from . in progress. _bull. dell' inst._ bullettino dell' instituto di corrispondenza archeologica. rome: - . _c. i. a._ corpus inscriptionum atticarum. berlin: from . in progress. _c. i. g._ corpus inscriptionum graecarum. berlin: - . _gaz. arch._ gazette archéologique. paris: - . _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._ the collection of ancient greek inscriptions in the british museum, by c. t. newton, and e. l. hicks. - . _guide to elgin room i._ synopsis of the contents of the british museum. department of greek and roman antiquities. the sculptures of the parthenon. elgin room, part i. (third ed.). . _guide to elgin room ii._ synopsis, etc.... the sculptures in the elgin room. part ii. . _guide to first vase room._ synopsis, etc.... first vase room. (last ed.) . _guide to graeco-roman sculptures i._ synopsis, etc.... graeco-roman sculptures. (second ed.) . _guide to graeco-roman sculptures ii._ synopsis, etc.... graeco-roman sculptures. part ii. . _jahrbuch des arch. inst._ jahrbuch des k. deutschen archaeologischen instituts. berlin: from . in progress. _journ. of hellen. studies._ the journal of hellenic studies. london: from . in progress. _mansell._ photographs of objects in the british museum, published by w. a. mansell, oxford street, w. _michaelis._ a. michaelis, der parthenon. leipsic: . _michaelis, anc. marbles._ a. michaelis, ancient marbles in great britain. . _mitchell._ lucy m. mitchell, a history of ancient sculpture. . _mitchell, selections._ selections from ancient sculpture.... a supplement to a history of ancient sculpture. by lucy m. mitchell. . _mon. dell' inst._ monumenti inediti, pubblicati dall' instituto di corrispondenza archaeologica. rome, - , and berlin, . _murray._ a. s. murray, a history of greek sculpture. - . [second ed., . the first ed. is quoted, unless otherwise stated.] _mus. marbles._ a description of the collection of ancient marbles in the british museum. - . _perrot & chipiez._ g. perrot and c. chipiez, histoire de l'art dans l'antiquité. paris: from . in progress. _prachov._ a. prachov, antiquissima monumenta xanthiaca. st. petersburg, . _rev. arch._ revue archéologique. paris: from . in progress. _roehl, i. g. a._ h. roehl, inscriptiones graecae antiquissimae, praeter atticas in attica repertas. berlin: . _roemische mittheilungen._ mittheilungen des k. deutschen archaeologischen instituts, roemische abtheilung. rome: from . in progress. _specimens._ specimens of ancient sculpture ... selected from different collections in great britain, by the society of dilettanti. london: . _stereoscopic._ photographs of objects in the british museum, published by the london stereoscopic company, regent street, w. _stuart._ james stuart and nicolas revett, the antiquities of athens. london: - . [second ed., - . the first ed. is quoted unless otherwise stated.] _synopsis._ synopsis of the contents of the british museum. (numerous editions.) - . [where a double reference is given, as ( ), the number in the parenthesis was used in editions of the synopsis earlier than .] _wolters._ die gipsabgüsse antiker bildwerke in historischer folge erklärt. bausteine ... von carl friederichs neu bearbeitet von paul wolters. berlin: . british and metric systems compared. inch = . metre. foot = . metre. feet = . metre. metre = . inches. introduction. the collection of ancient sculpture in marble, included in the department of greek and roman antiquities in the british museum, may be said to represent the efforts of more than two centuries, though the foundation of the museum itself is of a considerably more recent date.[ ] the british museum was established by parliament in . in that year, by the statute geo. ii. cap. , a trust was created to unite and maintain as one collection the museum of sir hans sloane, the cottonian library, and the harleian collection of manuscripts. sir hans sloane ( - ),[ ] physician, botanist, and president of the royal society in succession to newton, had formed in his lifetime a very extensive museum, consisting mainly of books, natural history collections, and ethnographical objects. at the same time classical antiquities were represented by bronzes, gems, vases, terracottas, and a few sculptures in marble. the examples, however, of greek sculpture were few and unimportant, and in most instances they cannot now be recognized with certainty from the brief entries in sir hans sloane's catalogue. such as they were, they were chiefly derived from the collection of john kemp, an antiquary and collector early in the eighteenth century (died ). the sloane collection included the sepulchral vase, no. in the present volume; a small relief with two dogs and a wild boar; a figure of asclepios, a few heads, busts, urns of marble or alabaster, and a few greek and latin inscriptions. three of the pieces of sculpture in the museum are said by sloane[ ] to have been derived from the arundel collection, which was the first great collection of classical antiques formed in this country. thomas howard, earl of arundel ( - ), was the first englishman who employed agents to collect for him in greece and the greek islands, as well as in italy. the collection thus formed was broken up in the reign of charles ii. the inscriptions were given by henry howard, afterwards sixth duke of norfolk, to the university of oxford in . the sculptures were scattered. a part passed through the hands of the earls of pomfret to the university of oxford, while others were lost, or dispersed among private collectors.[ ] the few examples named above thus found their way into the original collection of the british museum. a more important fragment, however, from the arundel collection was added to the museum at an early date, namely the bronze head, formerly known as homer,[ ] which was presented by the ninth earl of exeter in . this head had previously been in the collection of dr. richard mead,[ ] physician and antiquary ( - ), and was sold with his collection in .[ ] between the foundation of the british museum in and the accession of the townley collection in , the collection of sculpture made but slow progress. the first donor of sculpture was thomas hollis ( - ), of corscombe, in dorsetshire, a collector, and benefactor to several branches of the museum. in hollis gave a collection of antiquities, including several marbles, chiefly small busts and inscriptions.[ ] in he gave a greek relief, which cannot be identified, and in a marble head of a faun. in matthew duane (lawyer and antiquary, - ) joined in a gift of sculptures with thomas tyrwhitt ( - ), a scholar, who also bequeathed his library of classical authors to the british museum. the sculptures in question[ ] were purchased by the donors at an auction in london,[ ] in order that they might be put in a place of safety. the year is also noteworthy as the date of the first parliamentary grant for the augmentation of the museum collection. the house of commons in that year voted a sum of £ for the purchase of the valuable museum of antiquities which had been formed by sir william hamilton ( - ), british ambassador at naples, - . the vases formed the most important section, but the collection also contained several sculptures in the round and in relief.[ ] on the other hand a square altar with reliefs[ ] was presented by sir w. hamilton in , and perhaps also a head of heracles.[ ] a colossal foot of apollo[ ] was given in . in an interesting relief, no. , was presented by sir joseph banks, and col. the hon. a. c. fraser, of lovat ( - ). sir joseph banks ( - ), traveller, botanist, and president of the royal society, was a great benefactor to the library and botanical collections, but his gifts of sculpture were limited to this relief, and to a relief representing jupiter and ceres, presented in . charles townley gave two marble fountains[ ] in , but his main collections were not added to the museum till after his death. a valuable gift was received from the society of dilettanti, about , consisting of the sculptures and inscriptions collected by the expedition to ionia which had been sent out by that society in , under the direction of dr. richard chandler. the collection included several attic reliefs,[ ] and some important inscriptions, among them the well-known report on the progress of the erechtheion.[ ] in the same society presented the fruits of its excavations at prienè, conducted by mr. r. p. pullan. two roman portrait statues, of inferior merit, which had passed into the hands of the british at the capitulation of alexandria, in , were placed in the department of antiquities, in . the collection of sculpture which had thus slowly come into existence during the first fifty years of the museum's history, received its most brilliant accessions during the first quarter of the present century. the great collection that had been formed by charles townley[ ] was purchased in by act of parliament, geo. iii. cap. , for £ , , a sum greatly below the value of the sculptures. charles townley ( - ), of townley, in lancashire, acquired a large part of his marbles, during a residence in italy, between and , but continued collecting, after his return to england. the chief sources from which he formed his museum were the following: ( ) the older roman collections, from which townley made numerous purchases; ( ) the excavations carried on by gavin hamilton, a scotch painter living in rome (died ), and by thomas jenkins, an english banker; ( ) occasional purchases from older english collections. thus the relief of exakestes[ ] was derived from the collection of dr. richard mead (see above). the relief of xanthippos[ ] had been brought to england by dr. anthony askew, a physician, who visited athens and the east, about , and compiled a manuscript volume of inscriptions, now in the british museum (burney mss., no. ). several pieces[ ] were also obtained from the collection formed at wimbledon by lyde browne, a virtuoso and director of the bank of england, who died in . the accession of the townley collection in made necessary the erection of a special building in the garden of the then existing montague house, and also caused the creation of a separate department under taylor combe, for the custody of the antiquities, which had been previously attached to the library. in , the phigaleian sculptures were purchased of the explorers[ ] in a public auction at zante, and the museum thereby acquired its first series of sculptures from a greek building. a fragment, which had been lost during the transportation of the marbles,[ ] was presented by mr. j. spencer stanhope in . thomas bruce, seventh earl of elgin ( - ), whose collection was the next and greatest addition to the british museum, had been appointed british ambassador to the porte in . on his appointment, he resolved to make his time of office of service to the cause of art, and accordingly engaged a body of five architects, draughtsmen and formatori, under lusieri, a neapolitan portrait painter, to make casts, plans and drawings from the remains in greece, and more particularly at athens. while the work was in progress, lord elgin became aware of the rapid destruction that was taking place of the sculptures in athens. the success of the british arms in egypt having made the disposition of the porte favourable to the british ambassador, a firman was obtained which sanctioned the removal of the sculptures. the whole collection, formed by lord elgin's agents, was, after long negotiations, and an enquiry by a select committee of the house of commons, purchased of lord elgin for £ , in . it consists of sculptures and architectural fragments from the parthenon, the erechtheion, and other athenian buildings; casts, which have now become of great value, from the parthenon, the theseion, and the monument of lysicrates; a considerable number of greek reliefs, principally from athens; fragments from mycenae and elsewhere; drawings and plans. the marbles and casts of the parthenon acquired in the elgin collection, have since been supplemented, not only by casts of sculptures newly discovered at athens, but also by the additions of fragments, removed from athens by occasional travellers, and acquired for the museum by donation or purchase. the gifts include a head of a lapith,[ ] from the duke of devonshire, and pieces of the frieze from mr. c. r. cockerell,[ ] and mr. j. h. smith-barry;[ ] also from the society of dilettanti[ ] and the royal academy.[ ] lord elgin was actively assisted in the east by his secretary, william richard hamilton ( - ), who afterwards became under-secretary of state for foreign affairs ( - ). from mr. hamilton the museum received a few sculptures, including a sepulchral relief from tarentum.[ ] in the british museum obtained by bequest the collections of richard payne knight ( - ), a learned but fanciful antiquarian, and a leading member of the society of dilettanti. payne knight's collection was especially rich in bronzes, gems, and coins, but it also contained a series of marble portrait busts. the next addition of importance was the collection of sculptures and casts brought at the public expense in from xanthos and other sites in lycia, discovered by sir charles fellows ( - ), in the course of his journeys of and .[ ] in , permission was given by the porte to the then british ambassador, sir stratford canning, afterwards viscount stratford de redcliffe ( - ), to remove twelve slabs of the frieze of the mausoleum from halicarnassos. these sculptures, long known to travellers,[ ] were taken from the walls of the castle of budrum, and presented by the ambassador to the british museum. ten years later the influence of lord stratford de redcliffe was exerted to support sir charles newton in his explorations in asia minor. sir charles newton exchanged his position at the british museum, in , for the post of british vice-consul at mitylene, which he held till , and in that capacity he was able, on behalf of the trustees, to excavate the sites of the mausoleum at halicarnassos, and of the temple of demeter at cnidos. he also removed the archaic statues of branchidae, and collected several minor pieces of sculpture. the excavations on the site of the mausoleum added four slabs to the series presented by lord stratford de redcliffe in . one additional slab was purchased in of the marchese serra, of genoa. while the excavations of the mausoleum were in progress, the crimean campaign afforded an opportunity to col. westmacott to form a collection of sculptures from kertch and the neighbourhood, illustrating the later stages of greek art on the euxine. in the years - , captain, now general sir r. murdoch smith, r.e., and commander e. a. porcher, r.n., carried out a series of excavations on the site of cyrenè, and discovered a considerable number of sculptures in marble, and an admirable bronze portrait head, among the ruins of the temples of apollo, dionysos and aphroditè, and elsewhere. the excavations which were carried on at ephesus by the late mr. john turtle wood,[ ] for the british museum, began in , and were continued till , the site of the great temple of artemis not having been determined before the spring of . besides excavating the site of the temple, mr. wood obtained inscriptions and sculptures from the odeum, the great theatre, and the road to the temple of artemis. the site of naucratis in the egyptian delta was discovered by mr. w. m. flinders petrie, and was excavated, partly by the discoverer, and partly by mr. e. a. gardner, at the cost of the egypt exploration fund in the years - .[ ] the most important objects found were fragments of pottery, but there were also some architectural remains, and archaic statuettes of interest. in and , various sculptures, including a head of eros from paphos, and a large capital with projecting bulls' heads from the cyprian salamis, have been presented by the cyprus exploration fund. besides the proceeds of the systematic researches enumerated above, the collection of sculpture has been frequently increased during the present century with the specimens collected by private travellers in the east. thus in , h. gally knight ( - ), an antiquarian and writer on the history of architecture, with n. fazakerly, presented a statue from athens.[ ] in , j. p. gandy deering ( - ), an architect who had taken part in the dilettanti expedition to ionia of , presented sculptures that he had discovered at rhamnus in attica.[ ] in , colonel w. m. leake, an eminent traveller and topographer ( - ), presented several greek sculptures.[ ] a small collection of reliefs, and of architectural fragments from athens and elsewhere, was purchased from h. w. inwood, the author of a treatise on the erechtheion. in , the fifth earl of aberdeen presented a collection which had been formed in greece in by george, fourth earl of aberdeen, a connoisseur, known to his contemporaries as "athenian aberdeen."[ ] in a collection of sculptures was purchased which had been formed by percy clinton sydney smythe, sixth viscount strangford ( - ), formerly ambassador to the porte, and which included the "strangford apollo."[ ] amongst purchases that have taken place from time to time we may also mention that of the apollo[ ] from the collection of the comte de choiseul-gouffier in . in several græco-roman sculptures[ ] were purchased from the farnese collection at rome. the museum of the duc de blacas, purchased in , contained the head of asclepios from melos, and the relief discovered at the same time.[ ] for the numerous cases not here mentioned in which sculptures have been acquired by donation or bequest, the reader is referred to the pages of the catalogue. finally, it may be observed that not a few sculptures in the british museum have been found under peculiar circumstances in this country. such specimens have been brought to england by travellers, whose collections have afterwards been broken up, lost or neglected, and have been rescued by chance from warehouses, gardens, or masons' yards.[ ] : for the history of the collections in the british museum, see edwards, _lives of the founders of the british museum_; michaelis, _ancient marbles in great britain_, introduction. : there is a portrait of sloane in the mediæval room, and a bust by roubiliac in the ceramic gallery. : the entries in the sloane catalogue are:--" . a vase of red and grey marble with green veins, with a cover from the earl of arundel's collections. . a busto of tully (?) when young.--arundel. . a small venus (?).--arundel." : michaelis, _ancient marbles_, p. . : _mus. marbles_, ii., pl. . : there is a bust of mead by roubiliac in the ceramic gallery. : _mus. meadianum_, pars altera, p. . : cf. _mus. marbles_, v., pl. , fig. ; pl. , fig. ; pl. , fig. ; pl. , fig. . : nos. , , . : _archæologia_, iii., p. . : nos. , ; _græco-roman guide_, i., no. b. : _græco-roman guide_, ii., no. . : _mus. marbles_, i., pl. . : _græco-roman guide_, ii., no. . : _græco-roman guide_, ii., nos. , . : nos. , , . : _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, no. xxxv. : there is a bust of townley in the department of antiquities. : no. . : no. . : _mus. marbles_, iii., pl. ; x., pls. , ; xi., pl. . : see p. . : part of no. . : , _ _. : , _ _. : , _ _. : , _ _. : , _ _. : nos. , . : see p. , for a further account of the travels of fellows. : _antiquities of ionia_, ii. ( ), suppl., pl. . : see p. . : see p. . : no. . : nos. , ; cf. also no. . : including nos. , . : including nos. , , , , , , , . : no. . see also nos. , , , , , , . : no. . : no. ; _græco-roman guide_, i., nos. , , , , ; ii., no. . : nos. , . : see nos. , , , , , , , , . part i. _archaic period._ sculptures from mycenae. the sculptures contained in the first section of this catalogue are derived from the site of mycenae, the first four being fragments of important works of architecture. there is great uncertainty as to the date and origin of the mycenaean monuments. a theory frequently advanced supposes that they are remains of an old civilization whose centre was argolis, and which was swept away by dorian invaders. if this view is accepted, nos. - are separated by a long interval of years, and by a time of great political change, from the remaining sculptures in this volume. from no. onwards we have works produced during the historical period; but the remains of mycenae acquire interest from the consideration that they may be authentic memorials of a dynasty only dimly remembered in the homeric poems. [sidenote: = - .=] fragments of architecture from the building, commonly known as the 'treasury of atreus' at mycenae. this building is a dome-covered tomb (_tholos_) of beehive shape, approached by a long passage (_dromos_). it is cut out from the side of a hill, and built of heavy masonry, covered with earth, so as to form a tumulus. it was partially excavated by lord elgin, and more completely in by the greek archæological society. the fragments nos. - are parts of an elaborately decorated doorway to the tomb. they have been incorporated in a somewhat fanciful restoration which was made by donaldson, and which has been much modified by later investigators. for plans and views, see stuart, nd ed., iv. pls. - (with donaldson's restoration). dodwell, _pelasgic remains_, pls. , . _athenische mittheilungen_, iv., p. , pls. - (thiersch); mitchell, p. . donaldson's restoration is based on an earlier attempt by lord elgin's artists, which is now among the elgin drawings in the british museum. [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the 'treasury of atreus' at mycenae. the decoration consists of three bands of the wave pattern, separated by mouldings. two of these bands are in low relief; the third is in high relief, with a hole bored in the centre of each spiral for the insertion of glass or metal ornaments. among the tools employed by the artist, the chisel, saw, and the tubular drill, were plainly included. from the fact that the end of the fragment is cut at an acute angle, it is inferred that this fragment was placed above the doorway of the building, in contact with a relief of triangular form. it is also possible that it may have formed part of a triangular slab above the door. a piece of red marble, similarly decorated, which is now at athens, exactly fits the apex of the triangular opening (_athenische mittheilungen_, iv., pl. , fig. , a.).--_elgin coll._ red marble. height, foot - / inches; width, feet - / inches. stuart, nd ed., iv., pl. , fig. ; p. ; cf. pl. ; dodwell, _tour_, ii., p. ; murray, i., p. ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the 'treasury of atreus' at mycenae. the decoration consists of a band of the wave pattern, and a band of lozenges in low relief, the bands being separated by mouldings of similar character to those of no. . the saw and chisel were used by the artist. this slab, according to donaldson, formed a part of the architrave, over the entrance to the building. according to dodwell, it was 'found by the excavators of the earl of elgin, near the treasury of atreus.'--_elgin coll._ hard green limestone; height, foot inches; width, feet inches. stuart, nd ed., iv., pl. , fig. ; cf. pl. ; dodwell, _tour_, ii., p. ; murray, i., p. ; wolters, no. . [illustration: fig. .--restored capital from the 'treasury of atreus' (after puchstein).] [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the 'treasury of atreus' at mycenae. this fragment, which is decorated with a portion of a wave pattern enclosed by two mouldings meeting at an acute angle, is a part of one of the columns that flanked the entrance to the building. these columns were decorated with an elaborate system of ornament, composed of zigzag bands of the wave pattern, best understood on reference to drawings of the complete column (_cf._ fig. ). the tubular drill has been used as in no. .--_presented by the institute of british architects_, . hard green limestone; height, inches; width, inches. for drawings of the restored column, with its capital (formerly taken for the base) compare stuart, nd ed., iv., pl. , figs. - , pl. . dodwell, _tour_, ii., pl. facing p. ; murray, i., p. ; puchstein, _das ionische capitell_, p. . for fragments of the capital, see gell, _itinerary_, pl. ; mitchell, p. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the 'treasury of atreus' at mycenae. this is a part of the lower member of the capital of a pilaster flanking the great doorway (_cf._ fig. ).--_presented by the institute of british architects_, . hard green limestone; height, - / inches; width, inches. puchstein, _das ionische capitell_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief. head and shoulder of rampant lion. from the shape of the fragment it appears to have been a part of a triangular relief filling the space above a doorway. (compare no. and the gate of lions at mycenae.) the lion's paw is extended as if towards another lion confronting him. a pattern is drawn in fine lines on the shoulder. behind the lion is a branch of laurel. [illustration: fig. .--relief from mycenae (?), no. .] a part of this relief has been exposed to a corroding influence, which has acted uniformly on the surface, so that the design is sunk, but not obliterated.--_mycenae (?)_ _elgin coll._ limestone; height, foot - / inches; width, feet inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). murray ( nd ed.), i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief. forelegs and part of body of bull standing to left. a joint is worked in the stone, in front of the bull.--_mycenae (?)_ _elgin coll._ green limestone, closely resembling that of no. , but not identical with it. both are composed principally of flakes of mica, which are, however, larger and more abundant in no. than in no. . height, foot - / inches; width, feet inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [illustration: fig. .--relief from mycenae, no. .] sculptures from branchidae. the temple and oracle of apollo at didyma, near miletus, in asia minor, were from time immemorial in the hands of the priestly clan of the branchidae, whose name came to denote the place itself. this temple was destroyed by the persians--probably by darius on the suppression of the ionian revolt--about b.c. (herod. vi., . see, however, strabo, xiv., p. ; xi., p. .) after its destruction, the temple was not rebuilt till the time of alexander. the temple was connected with the harbour panormos by the sacred way. along this the sculptures stood at intervals. they are dedicatory offerings made to apollo, probably by the persons represented. the following are the materials for fixing the period to which the sculptures of branchidae must be assigned. it is certain that none of them are later than the destruction of the temple by the persians, and the latest of them (no. ) appears a generation earlier than the works associated with that period. on the other hand, there is no reason to place the oldest before the early part of the sixth century b.c. thus these sculptures cover the period of (say) - b.c. on epigraphic grounds, the date may be more closely defined. it is believed that the older form for [greek: ê Ê (tn: drawn as vertical boxes)] was changed to h (tn: Ê =eta) shortly before b.c. by this criterion, nos. , , belong to an older group, and no. to a later group. an inscribed base now in the british museum with the name of an artist, terpsicles, also belongs to the older group (roehl, _i.g.a._, ). it has been suggested that chares of teichioussa (no. ) was one of the local tyrants who were established after the destruction of the kingdom of croesus ( b.c.), and this agrees well with the epigraphical evidence. the statues of branchidae are of interest because they exhibit the process by which the grotesque coarseness of primitive work tends towards the stiff and formal refinement that marks the later stage of archaic art. the series in the british museum breaks off before the second stage has been completely attained, but it can be well supplemented by a seated female figure from miletus, now in the louvre (rayet et thomas, _milet et le golfe latmique_, pl. ). the sculptures of the sacred way were discovered by chandler in (_antiqs. of ionia_, st ed., i. p. ; chandler, _travels in asia minor_, , p. ). they were more accurately examined by gell, and the second _dilettanti_ expedition in (_antiqs. of ionia_, nd ed., , part i., p. , vignette, and ch. iii., pl. ; müller, _denkmaeler_, i., pl. , fig. ). a more accurate sketch was made by ross (_arch. zeit._, , pl. ). such of the sculptures as could be found in were removed by sir c. newton; newton, ii., p. . on the inscriptions see kirchhoff, _studien_, th ed., pp. , . [sidenote: = .=] female figure, seated on a chair, with her hand resting on her knees. the head is wanting, and the upper part of the body is much mutilated. the figure wears a long chiton, with sleeves, and a diploïdion. the feet of this figure (as of all the other figures) are bare. the drapery falls down in front of the legs in stiff conventional folds. the sleeve, however, of the chiton is worked in a more natural manner. there are remains of a key-pattern on the sides of the cushion of the chair.--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet inches. mansell, no. . [sidenote: = .=] male figure, seated on a chair, with his hands resting on his knees. the head, shoulders, left forearm, and hand are wanting. the figure wears a long chiton with sleeves and a mantle. the lower part of the chiton is entirely conventional, but parts of the mantle, and the outlines of the arms are worked after nature. on the ends of the cushion there is a pattern of zigzag lines.--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet - / inches. newton, ii., p. ; mansell, no. (left). [sidenote: = .=] female figure, seated on a chair with hands resting on her knees. the right hand is wanting, and also the toes and front of the base, which seem to have been attached separately. the figure wears a long chiton and a mantle, which passes over the back of the shoulders, under the right arm, and in both directions across the left shoulder. neither garment has indications of fold, and the edges are conventionally treated. the face, as far as can be seen, was full and thick. the hair falls in pointed tresses, the undulations of which are indicated in a conventional manner. the right ear is finished with care. this chair has no cushion, the drapery of the figure being seen under the arms.--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet inches. newton, i., pl. ( nd from right); rayet et thomas, _milet et le golfe latmique_, pl. (right); overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. c; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] male figure, seated on a chair, with the right hand resting on the right knee, and the left hand beside the left thigh. the head, and the fingers of the left hand are wanting. the figure wears a chiton with sleeves, and a mantle, which passes round the body, under the right arm, and passes in both directions over the left shoulder, so as to hang down in folds over the knees. the ends of the cushion, the sleeves of the chiton, and a part of the chiton seen on the left knee, are decorated with the key pattern. on the left arm of the chair is the inscription: [greek: eudêmos me epoie(i)n]--"eudemos made me."--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet inch. newton, i., pl. (right); pl. , no. ; ii., p. ; p. ; kirchhoff, _studien_, th ed., p. ; roehl, _i.g.a._, ; roberts, _greek epigraphy_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] male figure, seated on a chair, with left hand on left knee, and right hand, with palm turned upwards, on right thigh. the head, right shoulder, and right hand are wanting. the figure wears a chiton with sleeves, and a mantle. the folds of the lower parts are entirely conventional, but those of the upper part of the chiton are indicated by delicate wavy grooves. the hair falls behind in tresses which are cut off square on the shoulders.--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet inches; newton, i., pl. (right); mansell, nos. (left), (right). [sidenote: = .=] male figure, seated on a chair, with left hand resting on left knee, and right hand, with palm turned upwards, by right knee. the head, shoulders, and breast, and the right hand are wanting. the figure wears a chiton with sleeves, and a mantle, which passes under the right arm, while the ends cross the left shoulder in contrary directions. the artist has attempted to render the fine folds of the upper part of the chiton. the four legs of the chair are decorated with a design which appears to be developed from the lotus bud, and is seen on assyrian reliefs. on the back of the top rail of the chair is the late inscription: [greek: nikê glaukou], which is either "nikè, daughter of glaukos," or, perhaps, a formula of the christian period, "victory of glaukos!"--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet. newton, i., pl. , no. ; ii., p. , fig. ; p. ; kirchhoff, _studien_, th ed., p. . [sidenote: = .=] male figure seated on a chair, with left hand resting on left knee, and right hand, with palm turned upwards, by the right thigh. the head and the right hand are wanting. the figure wears a chiton, and a mantle which passes round the body under the right arm, and passes in both directions over the left shoulder, so as to hang down in folds before the knees. the artist has attempted to render the fine folds of the upper part of the chiton, and has decorated the front legs of the chair as in no. . the statue has been broken and repaired in ancient times with lead cramps.--_sacred way, branchidae._ marble; height, feet inches. newton, pl. (second from left); ii., p. , fig. ; mansell, no. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. b. [sidenote: = .=] statue of chares, a male figure, seated on a chair, with left hand resting on left knee, and right hand, with palm turned upwards, by the right thigh. the head and hands are wanting. the figure wears a chiton with sleeves and a mantle which passes under the right arm, while the ends pass in contrary directions over the left shoulder. the sleeves of the chiton are bordered with a key pattern, which is doubled along the seam. on the right leg of the chair is the inscription: [illustration: [greek: charês eimi ho kle(i)sios teichio(u)s(s)ês archos . agalma to(u) apollônos.]] "i am chares, son of kleisis, ruler of teichioussa. the statue is the property of apollo."--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet inches. newton, pl. (left); pl. , no. ; ii., pp. , ; mansell, no. ; rayet et thomas, _milet et le golfe latmique_, pl. ; dieulafoy, _l'art antique de la perse_, part iii., pl. ; wolters, no. ; kirchhoff, _studien_, th ed., p. ; roehl, _i.g.a._, ; roberts, _greek epigraphy_, p. ; _palaeographical society, facsimiles_, i., no. . [sidenote: = .=] male figure, seated on a chair, with left hand on left knee, and right hand by right thigh. the head and right hand are wanting. the figure wears a chiton with sleeves and a mantle which passes under the right arm, while the ends cross the left shoulder in contrary directions. the fine folds of the upper part of the chiton are indicated.--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet inches. [sidenote: = .=] female figure, seated on a chair, with hands on her knees. the head and feet are wanting. the figure wears a sleeved chiton with a diploïdion and a veil. the sleeves terminate with long folds. the veil falls down over the shoulders, in numerous folds. in attempting to indicate the legs with greater detail than his predecessors, the artist has rendered them as if they were nude; but in naturalness and freedom this statue is conspicuously the most advanced of the series.--_sacred way, branchidae._ parian marble; height, feet. newton, pl. (left); mansell, no. (right); rayet et thomas, _milet et le golfe latmique_, pl. (left); overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. a; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] lion, recumbent, with right fore-paw passing in front of the body, and with left paw laid over it. the hind quarters are half turned over, the animal lying on the right haunch. the head is wanting. the mane is rendered by stiff pointed locks of hair of conventional form. the pose, however, of the animal shows careful study of nature. on the flank is the inscription: [illustration] . [greek: ta agalmata tade anethesan hoi Ôr- iônos paides to(u) archêgo(u), thalês kai pasiklês kai hêgêsandros k[a]i eu- bios kai anaxileôs, de[ka]tên tô a- . pol(l)ôni.] "the sons of orion, the governor, thales, pasicles, hegesander, eubios and anaxileos dedicated these statues as a tithe to apollo."--_sacred way, branchidae._ marble; height, feet - / inches; length, feet. newton, i., pl. , no. ; ii., p. ; kirchhoff, _studien_, th ed., p. ; roehl, _i.g.a._, ; roberts, _greek epigraphy_, p. ; mansell, no. . [sidenote: = .=] sphinx or lion, recumbent. this figure has been called a sphinx or a lion-sphinx. the distinguishing marks of a greek sphinx are wanting, as the head is lost, and the figure is wingless.--_sacred way, branchidae._ marble; height, feet inches; length, feet - / inches. _antiqs. of ionia_, nd ed., i., p. ; ross, _arch. zeit._, , p. ; müller, _denkmaeler_, i., pl. , no. ; newton, ii., p. ; milchhoefer, _athenische mittheilungen_, iv., p. . [sidenote: = .=] beardless male head, from an archaic statue. the left shoulder is preserved. the hair falls in tresses, as in the case of no. .--_branchidae._ marble; height, foot inches; rayet et thomas, _milet et le golfe latmique_, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] female head (unfinished (?)) from an archaic statue. the figure wears a veil which covers the whole of the head, except the face. the ears are indicated beneath the veil.--_branchidae._ marble; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] relief, with figures moving to the right, in a dance. it is incomplete at both ends, and appears to have been part of a frieze formed of several slabs. on the left are a woman and a man joining hands. on the right is a woman between two men; of the man on the right only the right leg is preserved. the right hand of the woman is seen behind, while her left hand is held by the man before her. the man on the left of this group has some object, perhaps a cup, in his right hand which is stretched out behind him. between the two groups, and in the background, a woman rushes to the right, holding branches (?) in her raised hands. the men are considerably larger than the women. the women wear a plain chiton, the men a chiton and mantle. all have bracelets, and long hair, which falls in a peculiar manner over the forehead; one wears a taenia, the remainder have stephanae. all the limbs are indicated under the draperies, even those of the figures in the background, which are seen through their own draperies and those of their companions.--_presented by j. scott tucker, esq., r.n. karakewi (teichioussa), near branchidae._ marble; height, foot inches; width, feet inches. rayet et thomas, _milet et le golfe latmique_, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. b. sculptures from lydia. the following sculptures were found in by mr. george dennis, c.b., in one of the tumuli at bin tepè, near sardes. perrot (v., p. ) suggests that they may have been part of a series of reliefs of a hunting scene, decorating the sepulchral chamber. the date is uncertain, but the reliefs may well be earlier than the fall of croesus. [sidenote: = .=] relief. three horsemen moving to the right. they wear large helmets and cuirasses, with shoulder plates, and carry spears. the figures are cut in a narrow panel, and appear to have served an architectural purpose.--_bin tepè, sardes._ marble; height, - / inches; width, foot inches. perrot and chipiez, v., p. , fig. ; murray, _gr. sculpt._, nd ed., i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] relief. three deer, moving to the right, grazing. from a panel nearly similar to the preceding.--_bin tepè, sardes._ marble; height, - / inches; width, foot inches. perrot and chipiez, v., p. , fig. ; murray, _gr. sculpt._, nd ed., i., p. . sculptures from ephesus. the great temple of artemis (or diana), at ephesus, which ranked among the seven wonders of the ancient world, was built in the middle of the th century b.c. it was, according to tradition, the latest of a long series of buildings. not fewer than eight successive temples have been enumerated by falkener (_ephesus_, p. ; cf. pliny, _h. n._, xvi., ). the excavations, however, have only produced the remains of two temples. the earlier of the two, which is here described, is probably that which was begun early in the sixth century b.c., by the architects theodoros, chersiphron and metagenes, was in course of construction during the reign of croesus (brunn, _gr. künstler_, ii., p. ), and was burnt by herostratos on the night of alexander's birth ( b.c.). the later temple, the remains of which are exhibited in the ephesus room, was then built to replace that which had been burnt; and the excavations have proved the interesting fact that the most remarkable features of the later temple were borrowed from its predecessor. the extant fragments of the early temple were found by the late mr. j. t. wood, in excavations which he carried on at ephesus for the trustees of the british museum. these fragments had, for the most part, been used as building materials, and were extracted from certain massive piers which rested against the foundations of the walls of the temple cella. mr. wood assigned the piers to the byzantine period, but only adduced evidence to show that they were later than the walls of the temple. it is therefore possible that they may have been added at an early period, to strengthen the foundations. wood, _ephesus_, pp. , . for the reconstruction of the archaic temple, see _journ. of hellen. studies_, x. ( ), p. (a. s. murray). the material is a finely-grained marble, with occasional strongly marked blue veins. architectural fragments. [sidenote: = .=] part of a wall-stone from the archaic temple. length, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] capital of ionic column. several fragments have been discovered, from which it is possible to reconstruct with tolerable certainty the capitals and necking of the columns of the archaic temple. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of volute from cap of column. the groove between two mouldings is filled with two strips of lead to which gold leaf is attached. length, inches. wood, _ephesus_, p. ; _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fluted fragment of column. the drum to which this fragment belonged was feet inches in diameter, and had flutings. height, foot inches; width, feet inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the base of an unfinished column, with torus moulding and horizontal flutings only partially carried out. height, foot inches; width, feet. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., p. , part of fig. _b_. [sidenote: = .=] base of sculptured column. the column has necessarily been reconstructed from various fragments, which cannot be proved to have belonged originally to the same column, but the combined fragments serve to give a general idea of the appearance of the column. (plate i.) [sidenote: .] the sculpture is surmounted by an egg and tongue moulding - / inches high, which is not shown in the plate, _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. . there are considerable remains of red paint. [sidenote: .] immediately below the sculptures is a moulding, which contains fragments inscribed as follows: [greek: ba kr an en], which have been restored as [greek: ba[sileus] kr[oisos] an[ethêk]en.] 'king croesus dedicated (the column).' it is known from a statement of herodotus that croesus gave most of the columns of the temple at ephesus [herod. i. , [greek: kroisô de esti kai alla anathêmata en tê helladi polla ... en de ephesô hai te boes hai chryseai kai tôn kionôn hai pollai]]. it is probable that the columns were inscribed with dedicatory inscriptions, of which we here have fragments. the later temple had a similar series of inscriptions. the columns offered by croesus must be earlier than the date of his fall, b.c. the inscriptions are no doubt of the same age as the columns, and they may have been seen by herodotus (hicks, _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, dxviii.). [sidenote: .] below the moulding is the restoration of an early ionic base. (_journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. , and p. ). the following fragments are inserted in the restoration of the sculptured base:-- [sidenote: .] upper part of male figure in high relief standing to the right, wearing a close-fitting tunic, with sleeves to the elbows, and having a lion's skin about the body and with long hair. the upper part of the face is broken away. the right arm was bent at the elbow, and crossed the body. height, feet. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. . [sidenote: .] lower part of male figure in high relief standing to the right, wearing what appears to be a himation, falling to the knees. height, feet inches. murray, i., p. ; _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. . [sidenote: .] female head, to the right, in high relief. the hair is enclosed by a diadem, and falls down on the shoulders. a large circular earring in the right ear. there are considerable remains of dark red paint in the hair. the chin is broken away. height, foot / inch. murray, i., p. . [sidenote: .] middle part of a female figure, to the right, in high relief. the figure wears a tunic, tied with a narrow girdle, and a diploïdion which fell in long folds at the sides. a key-pattern was painted on the central fold of the dress. height, foot inches. the following fragments from the bases of the columns, are not inserted in the restoration:-- [sidenote: = .=] fragment, in high relief, of the head and shoulders of a figure, from the drum of a column. the front surface is broken away, but the figure appears to have looked to the front, with long hair falling on the shoulders, which are draped. height, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment, in high relief, of the right thigh of a draped figure, standing to the right. height, foot - / inches. worked above with a bed for another drum. [sidenote: = .=] middle part of a draped figure to the left in high relief. the figure wears a tunic with sleeves and himation. the left hand is pressed close to the thigh. this fragment is similar in style to the sculptures on the columns, but must have come from a rectangular base, corresponding to the rectangular bases in the later temple. height, foot inches. murray, i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a head containing the middle of the face. a straight edge is worked along the left cheek. height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the left side of a female head, wearing a band across the forehead, a veil, and a circular earring. some red on the lips. height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the upper part of a head, wearing a close-fitting veil, with curls between the veil and the forehead. height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the right side of a head, containing the cheek, ear, and a part of a veil which falls behind the ear. height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a head, containing the left ear, and wearing a veil; hair falls down at the back of the head. height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a head, similar to the last. height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the left side of a head, turned to the left, and wearing a veil. it contains a part of the ear and eye. height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the top of a head, with hair. height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the right side of a head, with part of the neck, and hair falling down. the hair is coloured red. height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment, from the right side of a head, containing the top of the ear and hair falling over it. height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of drapery, terminating in zigzag folds. height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of drapery, with the bottom of several folds. it has an incised maeander, as in no. , , and a palmette ornament painted in red. height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the lower moulding of a sculptured base, with a left great toe to the right, and the remains of a rectangular object rising from the moulding. height, - / inches; width, foot - / inches. the cornice of the archaic temple. the restoration of the sculptured cornice, which has been built up from the small fragments excavated by mr. wood, is certainly accurate in its general outlines, although the result is quite unique in form. in place of the small cornice with floral decorations, common in later temples (compare the cornice from phigaleia, no. ), the archaic temple of artemis was surmounted by a lofty cornice, ft. - / in. high. lions' heads projected at intervals, and drained off the rain water. the intervals between the lions' heads were occupied by metope-like compositions, carved in a delicate early style. the original frieze probably extended along the two long sides of the temple. the existing remains are small portions of at least thirty figures. it is therefore impossible to reconstruct the separate groups with much certainty, although the subjects can, to a certain extent, be conjectured. an attempted restoration of a combat between a lapith and a centaur is exhibited. the frieze also included chariots and horses; warriors in chariots, and on foot; and perhaps scenes with harpies. the central group on the cornice with the combat of a centaur and lapith is composed of the following fragments. see _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., p. , for sketches of no. , - . [sidenote: = .=] [sidenote: .] fragment with the forelegs, which are human, and the hind hoof of a kneeling centaur. in front the greaved left leg of a lapith. height, inches; width, foot inches. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] hand with branch, from top of cornice, presumed to be the hand of a centaur. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] part of branch, from top of cornice. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] back of head of lapith, to left, with part of top moulding of cornice. short curling hair. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] lower part of cuirass of lapith worn over a short tunic. height, inches; width, - / inches. two female figures are placed as spectators on each side of the combat. on the left the remains are:-- [sidenote: .] part of a female head, turned to the right, and wearing a taenia. height, - / inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] part of drapery of standing female figure. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] feet of standing female figure, wearing shoes, with slightly turned-up toes, and three bands across each shoe. height, inches; width, - / inches. the remains of the figure on the right of the group are:-- [sidenote: .] upper part of female head to the left, wearing a diadem. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] part of middle of female figure, standing to the left, wearing chiton and himation. the left hand by the side. height, - / inches; width, - / inches. the following fragments have also been inserted in the restored cornice:-- [sidenote: .] head of youth, to the left, with short hair. height, inches; width, inches. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] upper part of female head, to the left. the chief mass of the hair is confined by a peaked cap, the ends passing out through the top. a part of the hair terminates in short curls round the forehead, and part falls down in front of the ears. a laurel wreath surrounds the cap. height, inches; width, inches. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] right foot and part of skirt of female figure walking, to the right. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] right foot of a figure standing, to the left. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] part of the back of the head and the shoulders of a figure standing with his back turned to the front. he wears a chiton, and the hair falls in curls on his shoulders. height, inches; width, inches. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] fragment containing the legs of a figure standing with back turned to the front, perhaps a part of the figure described in the last number. the right leg wears a greave. this fragment also contains the right thigh of a figure kneeling to the front. height, inches; width, foot inches. the restored part of the cornice also contains:-- [sidenote: .] lion's head. the front and lower parts of the face are wanting. height, inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: .] lion's head. the front of the upper jaw is wanting. red paint in the ears and the mouth. height, foot inches; width, foot inches. the following are the principal fragments, from the cornice, not inserted in the restoration:-- _male figures, turned to the right._ [sidenote: = .=] [sidenote: .] parts of head and breast of figure, with helmet, tunic, and cuirass (?). long hair falls over the shoulder. height, inches; width, inches. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] part of helmet, and top edge of cornice; also the fingers of the right hand of the figure, throwing a spear (?). height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] right shoulder, covered with shoulder plates. height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] left thigh, bent at knee; a corner of drapery falls on the thigh; wears greave. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] right knee of figure advancing to right; behind, the leg, wearing a greave, of a fallen warrior (?). height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] knees of a prostrate warrior, wearing greaves, trodden down by a horse's hoof. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] knee wearing greave, slightly bent. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] left knee, partly covered with drapery. height, inches; width, - / inches. _male figures to the left._ [sidenote: .] upper part of helmeted head with vizor raised. height, - / inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] upper part of helmet, with projecting horn. height, - / inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] back of neck and lower part of helmet. height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] hips of a draped male (?) figure. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] right forearm of a figure lying prostrate, with head to the right and with the arm bent at the elbow. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] right leg, wearing greave, of a figure striding to the left. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] right arm, extended, wearing a shield. height, inches; width, inches. _figures with the back turned to the front._ [sidenote: .] shoulders and upper part of back of a figure wearing a chiton. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] shoulders and upper part of back of a figure wearing a chiton across the right shoulder only. height, inches; width, - / inches. _female figures to the right._ [sidenote: .] lower moulding of cornice, with the right foot and lower edge of the drapery of a figure moving to the right. height, inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: .] lower moulding of cornice with the left foot and part of the drapery of a figure moving to the right. height, inches; width, - / inches. _female figure to the front._ [sidenote: .] part of the right arm, extended, and wearing a shield (?). a short sleeve reaches to the elbow, coming from beneath a shoulder plate. height, inches; width, inches. _female figures to the left._ [sidenote: .] fragment of a figure turned to the left, with fine delicate drapery (?). height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] left hand, beside the thigh, holding a fold of drapery. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of a draped figure, containing the legs between the knees and the ankles. height, inches; width, inches. _fragments of chariot groups, and horses._ [sidenote: .] left knee and part of the left thigh of a figure stepping to the right into a chariot. the figure wore a short chiton, probably under a cuirass, and greaves. part of the inside of the chariot is painted red. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] fragment containing the hips of a male figure, stepping to the left into a chariot. the figure wears a chiton beneath a cuirass, and perhaps holds a spear. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] right hand closed and holding a rein (?). height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] right arm of a youthful nude figure holding the reins of a horse standing to the left, whose head is half turned to the front. height, inches; width, foot inch. _journ. of hellen. studies_, x., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] part of a horse's head to the left, with ear and mane. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] back of a horse to the left, with a narrow thong tied about it. height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] part of the hind legs of a horse to the left. height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] two hoofs, side by side, as of the horses in a biga. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] part of lower moulding of cornice, and of chariot wheel. the moulding and the wheel are painted red, and the ground of the relief bright blue. height, inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: .] part of a chariot wheel, and of the body of a chariot, painted red. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] left hand grasping the leg of a horse, or of a centaur (?). the ground is blue and red. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of a horse's tail, and part of the body of a chariot (?). height, inches; width, - / inches. _figures of harpies (?)._ certain fragments, which are not easily deciphered, appear to belong to groups of winged draped beings, perhaps harpies, carrying off diminutive figures. the snakes in nos. - suggest the aegis of athenè; but if no. is correctly interpreted, some gorgon-like figure must be imagined. [sidenote: .] neck and chin of a figure to the left, having a large circular earring, and a fringe of snakes round the neck. height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment with snakes. height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] left hand of the figure no. holding a draped figure under the knees. the right arm must be supposed to have supported the smaller figure, near the shoulders. to the right is part of a pendent wing. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment with extremities of hair, and the beginning of a large wing, curving upwards. height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment, apparently of the same wing as no. . height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of draped thighs of a figure half kneeling to the left with the right leg foremost. if the figure above described was half kneeling in the usual early scheme for the gorgon, this fragment may well have belonged to it. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment, perhaps from the same figure as the last. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of a winged, long-haired figure (?). the hair falls in a mass on the tip of the wing. height, - / inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of a harpy, with a large bird's leg protruding from fine drapery; behind, a part of a wing. compare the harpies on the harpy tomb, no. . height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment, with the leg of a harpy, to the right (?). height, inches; width, foot - / inches. _miscellaneous fragments._ [sidenote: .] fragment of the lower moulding, and two legs of a pig or ox to the right. height, inches; width, foot inch. [sidenote: .] part of the leg of a chair. traces of blue paint. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] part of the same leg of a chair as no. , and nearly joining it. traces of blue paint. height, - / inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: .] part of the leg and seat of a chair. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] part of the front leg of the chair to which no. belongs. height, - / inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] unintelligible fragment, perhaps derived from the cornice. length, foot; height, inches; width, inches. _fragments of lions' heads, from the cornice._ [sidenote: .] left side of lion's mane, with remains showing the attachment to the cornice. height, foot inches. [sidenote: .] lion's head from the cornice(?). the mouth is closed. the lower part is wanting. height, foot inches. [sidenote: .] upper part of lion's head from the cornice. red paint on the mane. height, inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: .] right side of lion's head, from the cornice, with eye, ear, and part of mane. height, - / inches. other fragments from ephesus. [sidenote: = .=] [sidenote: .] fragment of the head of an ox, apparently projecting from a background, in high relief. the head is seen in three-quarter face to the left. height, foot; width, foot inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of the head of an ox, including the forehead and eyes. apparently the head is seen in three-quarter face to the left, as in the preceding. height, - / inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: .] fragment with part of the flank of an ox (?), springing from a square base. two horns intertwined (?) in relief on the side of the fragment. if the explanation offered is correct, the animal must have been part of an architectural member, such as occurs in the temple of hera at samos (stuart, nd ed., vol. iv., kinnard on delos, pl. v.), or in the recently discovered bull's-head capital from salamis, in cyprus (_journ. of hellen. studies_, xii., p. ). height, foot - / inches. sculptures from caria. [sidenote: = .=] a series of rude figures in stone and marble which are found in primitive graves in the islands of the aegean, and in caria, have been conjectured by archæologists to be works of the early carians. the figures in question are for the most part utterly conventional and gross representations of the female form. male figures have also been occasionally found, and more elaborate subjects, such as a seated figure playing on the harp. the specimens in the british museum are exhibited in the first vase room with the pottery found in the same deposits. they are described in the _guide to the first vase room_ ( ), p. , and in the _journ. of hellen. studies_, v., p. . compare perrot and chipiez, v., pp. , ; _journ. of hellen. studies_, ix., p. ; _athenische mittheilungen_, xvi., p. . [sidenote: = .=] torso of female figure holding a dove between her breasts with the left hand, and holding with the right hand a fold of drapery by her right side. she wears a long dress, girt at the waist, with a diploïdion and sleeves. the head, and the legs from above the knees are wanting.--_theangela, in caria._ marble; height, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] beardless male head, having a considerable resemblance to no. .--_from the temple of apollo, calymna._ marble; height, inches. assigned by collignon (_gaz. arch._, , p. ) to the same school as no. . sculptures from rhodes. [sidenote: = .=] female head. the hair is parted over the middle of the head, and is brought in waving ripples to the ears. at the back of the head it is sketched in conventional lines. the head is bound with a taenia.--_rhodes._ marble; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] female head broken off at the top of the neck. the hair is brought forward over each temple in a plait; a piece of linen is wound round the head, passing under a band or diadem which encircles the head behind the ear. the head-dress is arranged so as to leave on the top of the head an aperture, through which the parting of the hair and a top-knot are shown. over the upper part of the ear hang what appear to be three pendants; the lobe below is covered with an earring in the form of a circular flower of seven leaves. on the fractured edge of the neck are remains of drapery.--_rhodes._ limestone; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] female figure seated in a chair, with footstool.--_camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] naked male figure; the legs broken off above the knees. the palms of the hands are placed against the thighs; the left leg has been advanced; parts of the arms are wanting. the hair is drawn back from the forehead in a smooth mass, and falls behind the ears over the nape of the neck, where it is cut off square. there are traces of red above the waist.--_camiros._ limestone; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] naked male figure standing with the left foot advanced, and holding with his right hand the right hind leg of a lion, whose tail he grasps with his left hand. the head of this figure, the right arm and both feet are wanting. from the waist to the hips the body has been painted red all round. the lion has his tongue out; there are traces of red colour about his mouth.--_acropolis of camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a male figure from above the hips nearly to the knees. the arms have been placed along the sides, with a hand on each hip.--_camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] upper part of a naked male figure broken off at the waist. the hair is gathered into a thick mass behind the ears, and cut off square at the nape of the neck; on the top of the head is a snake coiled. the arms are broken away below the shoulders.--_camiros._ limestone; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] upper part of female figure broken off above the waist. she wears a wreath of upright leaves set between two plain horizontal bands; the hair falls in a thick mass on each side of the neck. the arms are broken away.--_camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] draped male figure broken off below the knees. he wears chiton with girdle and upper garment. with both hands this figure holds the young of some quadruped, probably a kid, in front of his breast. his hair is parted over his forehead, and falls behind the ears in a thick mass to the nape of the neck.--_camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] upper part of male figure from the base of the neck to the waist. in the right hand this figure holds a small ibex against his breast. his left arm is broken.--_acropolis of camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] lower part of a draped figure broken off at the waist. the left hand holds by the forelegs a fawn, on the body of which the right hand presses. both arms are broken off below the elbow.--_acropolis of camiros._ limestone; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] lower part of a draped figure broken off at the waist, and wearing a chiton, which is bound with a girdle.--_camiros._ limestone; height, foot. [sidenote: = .=] lower half of draped figure wearing chiton. at the bottom of the skirt are traces of a red border; the fingers of the left hand are placed against the left hip.--_camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] lower half of draped figure broken off above the knees. the left hand has held against the side some object too indistinct to be made out.--_camiros._ limestone; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] lower half of draped figure broken off above the knees. in bad condition. limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] draped male figure playing on the double flute, which he holds with either hand. the band for strengthening the muscles used in blowing the flute, _phorbeia_, is indicated by a red stripe; the chiton is ornamented with a narrow red stripe on the shoulder down each side, and round the hem.--_camiros._ limestone; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] similar draped male figure playing on the double flute. the _phorbeia_ is indicated by a red stripe across the mouth; the headdress, probably a wig, comes very low on the forehead, and falls in a thick mass on the back of the neck. on the head-dress, eyebrows, and flutes, are traces of black colour.--_camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] upper part of draped male figure. in his right hand he holds a lotos sceptre (?); his left arm hangs down by his left side. a thick mass of hair falls on each side of the neck.--_camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] androsphinx seated on a plinth. on the head are the combined crowns of upper and lower egypt; in front is a collar, or pectoral; on the crown are traces of red colour. this sphinx is a pseudo-egyptian work.--_acropolis of camiros._ limestone; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] androsphinx seated on a plinth. on the head are the crowns of upper and lower egypt.--_acropolis of camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] androsphinx seated on a plinth. from the head falls a mass of long hair over the back and shoulders; the front of the body is covered with a collar or pectoral; the upper part of the wings is broken off.--_acropolis of camiros._ limestone; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] lion seated on a plinth. the mouth is open; the teeth are shown; about the lips and edge of the mane are traces of red colour.--_camiros._ limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] bird standing on a plinth with wings closed. head broken off; tail long and spreading. height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] the egyptian ram-headed deity, knef, seated in a chair. he wears a long chiton bound with a girdle, on each side of which a lappet falls as far as the knees; a thick mass of hair falls from behind each horn on to the breast.--_lindos, in rhodes._ limestone; height, inches. sculptures from xanthos. the following sculptures, nos. - , are the archaic portion of the collection of sculptures from xanthos, a town some ten miles from the sea, in the south-west of lycia. the people of lycia were a non-hellenic race, but the sculptures of xanthos are distinctly greek, though not without traces of oriental influence (cf. no. ). in the most important remains, especially in the harpy tomb (no. ) we find the characteristics of the ionian school of asia minor. the sculptures of xanthos were discovered by mr. (afterwards sir) charles fellows in april, . (fellows, _a journal written during an excursion in asia minor_, .) the discoverer revisited xanthos in , made a more minute examination of the remains, and published a further account. (_an account of discoveries in lycia, being a journal kept during a second excursion in asia minor_, - , quoted as "_lycia_.") in consequence of this work, a naval expedition, assisted by fellows, was employed in jan., feb., , to ship the marbles of xanthos for transport to england. (fellows, _the xanthian marbles; their acquisition, and transmission to england_, . this was reprinted by fellows in _travels and researches in asia minor, more particularly in the province of lycia_, , pp. - .) additional sculptures and casts from lycia were obtained by a second expedition in . (_athenæum_, , pp. , , , .) besides the published material, valuable information may be obtained from the plans and drawings by mr. george scharf, who accompanied fellows as draughtsman in . the originals are preserved in the british museum, and referred to in this catalogue as scharf's drawings. see also solly, _memoirs of w. j. müller_, ; beecheno, _e. t. daniell, a memoir_, , p. ; and the publication of the austrian expedition to lycia, _reisen in lykien_, vol. i. ed. by benndorf and niemann, ; vol. ii. by petersen and von luschan, . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral chest (soros), adorned with reliefs on the four sides. this tomb was made of a single block of hard coarse limestone. it was found by fellows in its original position, on a stelè, which appears to have been about feet high. on the top of the chest there is a rebate to receive the lid, which formed a separate block and has not been found. the lower part of the block was sawn off by fellows, to facilitate transport. (_xanthian marbles_, p. .) perrot (vol. v., p. ) is perhaps right in thinking that this is the oldest of the xanthian monuments, and represents lycian sculpture before the ionian influence had begun to make itself felt. the appearance of the monument as found is shown in scharf's drawing, here reproduced (pl. ii.), and also in a water-colour drawing by w. j. müller, now in the print room of the british museum. solly, _memoir of w. j. müller_, pl. facing p. ; fellows, _asia minor_, p. . [sidenote: .] _south side._--lion to the left, recumbent, in high relief. between the paws of the lion is seen the head of a bull, which has been thrown over by the lion, and is seized by the throat. below the forepaws of the lion is a tablet, which seems to have traces of an inscription. height, feet - / inches; length, feet; height of relief, inches. fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. (very poor); prachov, pl. , fig. ; perrot and chipiez, v., p. , fig. ; p. , fig. ; dieulafoy, _l'art. ant. de la perse_, iii., pl. . [sidenote: .] _east side._--frieze in low relief, with its right end broken away. a horseman wearing helmet and cloak rides to the right. he is followed by an attendant, wearing a short chiton, and carrying a spear on his right shoulder. behind, a warrior moves to the left, wearing a helmet with a large crest, a shield, and spear. on the left, a shield, supposed to be fastened on a wall. this relief, with its flat surface, devoid of detail, was probably painted. height, foot - / inches; length, feet inches; height of relief, / inch. fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. (very inaccurate); perrot and chipiez, v., p. , fig. . [sidenote: .] _north side._--lioness, in high relief, recumbent to right, playing with cubs. a cub is seen, with its forepaws across the paws of the lioness, and with its hind quarters to the right; a second cub lies on its back, over the first. the lower part of the relief is broken away. height, feet inches; length, feet inches; height of relief, inches. perrot and chipiez, v., p. , fig. . [sidenote: .] _west side._--this side seems to have contained two separate entrances to the tomb. on right and left were two groups in low relief. (a.) on the right, a man, nude, with long hair, and armed with sword, contending with a lion. height, foot inches; length, foot inches; height of relief, / inch. (b.) on the left a draped figure seated in a chair; left side alone remains. height, foot inches; height of relief, / inch. fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. ; prachov, pl. , fig. ; perrot and chipiez, v., p. , fig. ; p. , fig. ; dieulafoy, _l'art ant. de la perse_, iii., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] frieze of satyrs and animals, found by fellows, built into the walls of the acropolis at xanthos. beginning from the left, the slabs of the frieze contain: [sidenote: , .] bearded satyr in combat with a wild boar. the satyr, who has pointed ears and tail, makes a thrust at the boar with a branch torn off a tree. the strange attitude of the satyr is due to the artist's difficulty in dealing with the shape of the slab. slab has been much injured by dripping water. the two slabs are proved to be connected by the bough which is seen on both. prachov, pl. vi. a, a; vi. b, c; wolters, nos. , ; fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: .] lioness, couching for a spring, but with right paw raised. prachov, pl. vi. a, e. [sidenote: .] lion devouring deer. this group is of an established conventional form. fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. ; wolters, no. ; prachov, pl. vi. b, d.; dieulafoy, _l'art ant. de la perse_, iii., pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: .] lynx to left, with right paw raised. prachov, pl. vi. a, b.; wolters, no. . [sidenote: , .] bull contending with satyr, who appears to be in a position similar to satyr on slab ; but a joint cuts off the right leg, and the left arm is wanting. prachov, pl. vi. a, f; vi. b, g. coarse limestone. the height of the frieze is feet - / inches; the lengths of the slabs are: ( ) feet inches; ( ) feet; ( ) feet inches; ( ) feet - / inches; ( ) feet inches; ( ) feet - / inches; ( ) feet inch. [sidenote: = .= - .] frieze of cocks and hens. six cocks and five hens represented as standing still, picking up food, or fighting. the work is carefully studied from nature.--_built into the walls of the acropolis at xanthos._ coarse limestone; height, foot - / inches; combined length of eight slabs, feet inches; fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. (two slabs); wolters, nos. - ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] part of a tomb (?). from each of two opposite sides, the head and forepaws of a lioness project. the heads are slightly turned towards the front.--_found at the foot of the inscribed monument, xanthos._ limestone; height, foot inches; length, feet - / inches. fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. . [sidenote: = .=] head and neck of a lion, from a tomb (?). several pieces of the mane were separately worked and attached.--_xanthos._ limestone; height, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of unfinished relief, with two legs of a seat or couch (?).--_xanthos._ limestone; height, feet inches. compare perrot and chipiez, v., p. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] a frieze representing a procession moving from left to right. the figures beginning from the right are:-- [sidenote: .] an old man, seated in a car, driving two horses. behind him stood an attendant, of whose figure a piece of drapery on the next slab alone remains. [sidenote: .] a youth, leading a horse, saddled and bridled. he wears a short chiton, and carries a whip. details of the hair were probably indicated with paint. [sidenote: , .] a venerable old man, seated in a chair, placed in a war chariot drawn by two horses. he has long hair, bound with a taenia, and a long pointed beard. he wears a chiton with sleeves, and a mantle. he holds a pomegranate flower in his left hand, and a cup (?) in his right hand. beside him is a charioteer treated like the youth of the preceding group. the reins, now lost, were made of bronze. youth riding a spirited horse, equipped like the horse of the second group. the rider wears a chiton with short sleeves, and a himation. he has long hair falling on the shoulders. [sidenote: .] a group of draped persons moving to right, and composed of the following figures:-- man (much mutilated) standing to right and turning to front. he holds a whisk in the right hand, and a spear in the left hand. man, carrying a spear over the left shoulder, supporting it with both hands clasped. man moving to right but looking back. he carries a spear on the left shoulder; right hand holds a fold of the drapery. man with spear on left shoulder and whisk in right hand. man with spear on right shoulder; left hand holds an edge of the himation. man with spear on left shoulder. the front part only of this figure is preserved. the standing figures all wear a long chiton, with long sleeves, and a himation which is wrapped closely about the body, passing under the right arm and over the left shoulder. the size and treatment of the horses on the frieze, and the use of whisks by the standing figures, show oriental influences, although the artistic style is distinctly greek. the upright crest on the head of the horse in the fourth group is seen on the horses of persepolitan sculpture. compare the persepolitan casts in the british museum, assigned to b.c., and fellows, _lycia_, p. . the ends of the horses' tails are also tied with ribbon in the same way as here. saddle-cloths occur on early vases from daphnae (petrie, _nebesheh and defenneh_, pl. , fig. ), and on painted sarcophagi from clazomenae (_journ. of hellen. studies_, iv., p. , fig. ). the traces of persian fashion make it probable that this relief is later than the persian conquest of xanthos by harpagos (about b.c.). the architectural disposition of the frieze has not been ascertained. the slabs were found by fellows, inserted in a wall of late date on the acropolis of xanthos (benndorf, _reisen in lykien_, i., p. ), but it is clear from the square holes that occur at intervals of ft. in., that stone beams, imitating wood construction, must once have projected, and from the raised border round the holes it is seen that this was the intention of the artist. it is probable that the frieze belonged to a tomb, and perhaps represented a funeral procession. it is not possible to say whether it was on the outside or on the inside of the building. (compare nos. , , and the tomb of giöl-baschi. compare also the casts of reliefs from pinara, nos. - , for the projecting beam ends.)--_acropolis of xanthos._ a similar procession occurs on a sarcophagus from amathus. (cesnola, _cyprus_, pl. .) height, feet - / inches; combined length of five slabs, feet inches; height of relief, feet inches; but in parts, upper margin is cut into. fellows, _lycia_, pls. facing pp. , ; prachov, pl. ; cesnola, _cyprus_, pls. , ; murray, i., pls. - ; wolters, nos. - ; wolters in _jahrbuch des arch. inst._, i., p. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] slab from the left end of a frieze. a woman stands near the foot of a couch upon which a dead man is laid out. only the end of the couch and the left foot of the corpse remain. the woman wears a long chiton, himation, cap with tassel, and earrings. behind her stands a male attendant, wearing a short chiton, drawn up, beneath a girdle. he holds a small piece of drapery in his left hand. a groove to the left of the group seems to show that this slab was at an interior angle of a building. the different dimensions make it unlikely that it was a part of the same frieze as no. .--_xanthos._ limestone; height, feet - / inches; length, feet inches. prachov, pl. , fig. ; murray, i., pl. ; wolters, ; wolters in _jahrbuch des arch. inst._, i. p. . [sidenote: = .=] slab from the left end of a frieze. a woman wearing a long chiton with sleeves and a himation stands to right with right hand raised, and holding a flower(?). she holds a piece of drapery in left hand. before her, the remains of another figure. at the left of this figure is a groove, suggesting that this was an interior angle stone.--_xanthos._ limestone; height, feet inches; length, feet inches. prachov, pl. b. _h_; wolters, _jahrbuch des arch. inst._, i., p. . [sidenote: = , .=] gable end of a tomb. on each side of a doorway is a seated sphinx, and above the lintel are two lions.--_xanthos._ [sidenote: = .=] the sphinx on the left wears a cap enclosing most of the hair, a pendant earring, and a narrow taenia. there are traces of red paint on the cap, and of the markings of feathers on the wings. the head and fore-quarters of the lion are wanting. limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet inch. about inches appear to be wanting on the right of the slab. prachov, pl. , fig. (the head only of the sphinx); dieulafoy, _l'art ant. de la perse_, ii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. a. [sidenote: = .=] the sphinx on the right of the doorway has her hair confined by a broad band, and has a pendant earring. the markings of the feathers may be seen on the wings. when first discovered in , this relief was brilliantly coloured, as is recorded in a drawing by scharf. the ground of the relief was bright blue; the feathers were red, black, blue, and white. the hair was yellow, and the taenia was painted with a white pattern on a red ground. the head and fore-quarters of the lion are wanting. limestone; height, feet - / inches; width, feet inches. about inches appear to be wanting on the left of the slab. prachov, pl. , fig. ; _museum of class. antiq._, i., p. ; dieulafoy, _l'art ant. de la perse_, ii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. a. [sidenote: = , .=] gable end of a tomb. on each side of a doorway is a seated sphinx. above the lintel of the door is a space which may have held a relief, now wanting.--_xanthos._ [sidenote: = .=] the sphinx on the left wears a stephanè; a tress of hair falls on the shoulder. there are faint traces of paint on the wing. the hind-quarters are missing. limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet inches. the joint of the stone is at the left side of the door. prachov, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] the sphinx on the right has her hair bound with a narrow taenia. there are traces of paint on the wing. the hind-quarters are wanting. limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet inch. about inches are lost from the left of this slab. prachov, pl. , fig. (the head only). [sidenote: = .=] gable end of a tomb. in the centre of the relief is a low column, with an ionic capital, of peculiar form. a siren stands to the front, on the column. she wears a short chiton, girt at the waist and with loose sleeves. she has spreading wings and tail, and bird's legs, but human arms which are extended in front of the wings. the head is wanting. on each side of the column is a seated male figure. on the left is a beardless elderly man, wearing himation and chiton, with staff in left hand and right hand extended. on the right is a bearded old man, wearing chiton and himation, with staff in right hand and left hand extended. the back of the head is in part broken away; part was never represented. the lower part of the relief is wanting. a drawing by scharf shows the colouring of the relief when discovered. the background was blue; the hair, the under side of the siren's wings, the drapery of the man on the left, the shaft and part of the capital of the column were yellow; the drapery of the siren and of the man on the right, the seats and part of the capital of the column were red.--_xanthos._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet inches. _annali dell' inst._, , p. . the harpy tomb. [sidenote: = .=] the monument known as the harpy tomb was discovered by fellows among the ruins of xanthos on april , . it was more carefully examined and published by him in (_lycia_, p. , and plate), and was brought to england in the spring of . the tomb was described by fellows in the following terms:--"the harpy tomb consisted of a square shaft in one block, weighing about eighty tons, its height seventeen feet, placed upon a base rising on one side six feet from the ground, on the other but little above the present level of the earth. around the sides of the top of the shaft were ranged the bas-reliefs in white marble about three feet three inches high; upon these rested a capstone, apparently a series of stones, one projecting over the other; but these are cut in one block, probably fifteen to twenty tons in weight. within the top of the shaft was hollowed out a chamber, which, with the bas-relief sides was seven feet six inches high, and seven feet square." (fellows, _xanthian marbles_, p. ; _asia minor_, p. .) for views of this tomb see the drawing by scharf here reproduced (pl. iii.); also _mon. dell' inst._, iv., pl. ; benndorf, _reisen in lykien_, i., pl. . in christian times, the tomb was made the cell of some _stylites_, or dweller on a column. traces of painting and monograms were found on the interior of the chamber. (fellows, _xanthian marbles_, p. ; birch, _archæologia_, xxx., p. .) [sidenote: .] _west side._--this relief is divided into two unequal parts by a small doorway which formed the entrance to the tomb. this doorway may have been filled up with a slab of stone, resembling a funeral stelè, and the idea thus suggested was further carried out by the sculpture above of a cow giving suck to a calf. (compare the tomb on the second frieze of the xanthian nereid monument, _mon. dell' inst._, x., pl. , fig. .) on the left of the entrance is an enthroned female figure. she is large and dignified, and is heavily draped. the left hand is raised, the right hand is extended and holds a bowl; she is adorned with stephanè and bracelets. the arm of the chair terminates in a ram's head, and is supported by a seated sphinx. on the right is a second enthroned female figure of equal dignity. she is adorned with a stephanè and bracelets. with a graceful, if affected gesture of the right hand she holds up a pomegranate flower, and in the left hand she holds a pomegranate fruit. the back of the throne terminates in a swan's head, and the arm terminates in the head of a ram. three maidens, who are nearly alike, except in the attitudes of the hands, approach this figure. the first raises her mantle and chiton with the left and right hands respectively. the second has a pomegranate flower in her left hand, and a pomegranate fruit in her right hand. the third holds up an egg with her right hand, and holds the drapery in her left hand. [sidenote: .] _north side._--an old man, draped and bearded, is seated on a chair to left; with the left hand he holds a spear, with the right hand he receives a crested helmet which is offered to him by a young warrior, who stands before him. the warrior has a short chiton, and leather cuirass, sheathed sword, greaves, and a large shield, which he supports with the left hand. beneath the chair is a small bear. at each side of this group, but disconnected from it, are figures commonly known as harpies. they are represented as beings with the head, breasts and arms of maidens, while the lower part of the body is that of a bird conventionally rendered. it terminates in oval form with a spreading tail and bird's talons attached. long wings spring from behind the shoulders and under the arms. each creature wears a stephanè and chiton (see below). in their arms and talons each gently carries a diminutive draped female figure, that makes a gesture, as of affection. at the right corner of the relief a draped figure crouches on the ground in an attitude of deep grief, and looks up to the flying figure above. [sidenote: .] _east side._--a venerable bearded man is seated on a throne, to the right. he has a sceptre in the left hand, and holds up a flower in the right hand. the arm of the throne is supported by a triton. before him is a diminutive figure of a boy offering a cock. behind the enthroned figure are two draped male figures, standing to right. the first holds a pomegranate fruit in the left hand, and a doubtful object in the right hand. the second, who is bearded, holds a portion of his drapery with the left hand; with his right hand he holds his beard. on the right of the relief is a youth, accompanied by a dog. he holds a stick with curved handle in his left hand, and has an uncertain object in his right hand. part of it was made of metal, attached by a rivet. it may perhaps have been a kylix with a tall stem. [sidenote: .] _south side._--a male figure, not bearded, is seated on a throne to right. he has a sceptre resting on his right shoulder. in the left hand he holds a pomegranate fruit, and in the right hand an apple. before him stands a male (?) figure, holding a dove in the left hand by the wings, and having the right hand raised in a gesture of adoration. on each side of the main group, but disconnected from it, are the winged figures with their burdens as already described. with certain differences of detail, chiefly in the positions of the arms of the figures carried, these groups are nearly similar to those of the north side. _drapery, &c._--all the figures on this tomb, except the "harpies," the diminutive figures connected with them, and the warrior, are draped in chiton, and himation or peplos. the figures borne by the "harpies" and the figure crouching in grief wear long chitons only. the "harpies" wear chitons, of which the sleeves alone are indicated. all the principal figures wear shoes or sandals, so far as the feet are preserved, with the exception of the second figure behind the throne on the east side. the women on the west side, and the seated figure on the south side wear shoes with pointed toes. the remaining figures wear sandals only. all the figures on the east side had metal taeniae or stephanae, the holes for the attachment of the metal being still visible. the youth on the east side, as already stated, held a metal object in his hand. _colouring._--the following indications of colour can be traced. the ground of the reliefs was bright blue. part of the colour remains round the profile of the youth on the east side, and under the right wrist of the first figure behind the throne on this side. birch (_archæologia_, xxx., p. ) states that he has seen scarlet on the crest of the helmet, and scharf (_mus. of class. antiq._, i., p. ) that there were "traces of red in the hollow of the shields and upon sandals." elsewhere the colour must be inferred from the inequalities of the surface of the marble, due to the unequal protecting powers of the different colours. there was an egg and tongue pattern on the lower moulding, and a maeander pattern on parts of the upper moulding. on the west side the chair of the figure on the right was painted with palmette ornament. on the east side there was also a palmette pattern on the side of the throne. _interpretations._--the interpretations of this monument, that have been proposed, may be divided into three groups-- ( .) according to the first commentators, the subject represented was the rape of the daughters of pandareos, king of lycia, by the harpies (homer, _od._ xx., l. . gibson, in fellows, _lycia_, p. ; birch, _archæologia_, xxx., p. .) the objections to this view are that the subject is an improbable one for representation on a tomb, that the "harpies" evidently stand in a kindly relation towards the persons whom they carry, and that the reliefs do not agree well with the literary form of the myth. it is also doubtful whether the "harpies" were imagined with bird-bodies at the period of these sculptures. (furtwaengler, _arch. zeit._, , p. .) ( .) in the second group of theories, the enthroned figures are deities of the lower world to whom the souls of the dead pay reverence. on the west side are demeter (left), and persephonè (right), and three worshippers who carry symbols of life and birth, as the egg and the pomegranate. the door of the tomb signifies death, while the cow and calf, immediately above, suggest the renewal of life. the three seated figures remaining, are, according to this system, either zeus (south), poseidon (east), and hades (north), (braun, _annali dell' inst._, , p. ), or zeus viewed under a triple aspect (curtius, _arch. zeit._, , p. ). the symbolic system has been most elaborately worked out by curtius (_loc. cit._, and _arch. zeit._, , p. ). thus he regards the "harpies'" bodies as intended for eggs, and so symbolical of life. this view is untenable, as the bodies are of the form usually given to birds in early art (conze, _arch. zeit._, , p. ). ( .) in the third and most recent group of theories, the seated figures are not deities, but heroified personages, buried in the tomb, to whom offerings are made by members of their family. (milchhoefer, _arch. zeit._, , p. ; wolters, p. .) this view is supported by analogies found elsewhere (cf. p. ), while it avoids the difficulty of supposing deities to be represented on a tomb. but no parallel has been adduced for such a scene as a young warrior giving his arms to the figure of an heroified ancestor; moreover the dignity and adornments of the enthroned figures seem most appropriate to deities. on the whole it seems best to suppose that we have on this tomb scenes connected with death, though we cannot attempt, for want of knowledge of lycian mythology, to assign names to the personages represented. maidens make offerings to female deities, and men to male deities. on the east side a boy makes an offering, on the north side a young warrior gives up his armour, and on the south side a man offers a bird. kindly winged beings bear away the souls of the dead, and the crouching figure on the north side suggests the grief of the survivors. (cf. brunn, _sitzungsber. d. k. bayer. akad. phil. hist. cl._, , p. , who points out the succession of ages among the figures, but does not consider the idea of death to be implied in the central groups of the north, east, and south sides.) _style and period._--in the harpy tomb we have a fine example of the work by the ionian school of asia minor, whose chief characteristic is a certain voluptuous fulness of form, and languor of expression, contrasted with the muscular vigour of the doric sculpture, and the delicate refinement characteristic of a part of the early attic work (cf. brunn, _loc. cit._, p. , and rayet, _monuments_, no. ). it is uncertain whether the tomb is later than the persian conquest of xanthos ( b.c.). it has a remarkable resemblance to the tomb of cyrus at pasargadae as described by arrian (vi., ) and strabo (xv., , ), although the force of the parallel is rather diminished if fergusson (_nineveh and persepolis_, p. ) has correctly identified the tomb. the harpy reliefs are usually assigned to the close of the sixth century; but a comparison with the sculptures of ephesus points to a date nearer b.c. the harpy tomb is of marble. the reliefs measure feet - / inches in height; feet inches in length on the east and west sides; feet inches on the north and south sides. fellows, _lycia_, p. , and pl.; birch, _archæologia_, xxx., p. ; braun, _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; _mon. dell' inst._, iv., pl. ; _rhein. mus._, n.f., iii., , p. ; curtius, _arch. zeit._, , p. , pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd edit., i., p. ; murray, i., p. , pl. , and figs. - ; rayet, _monuments_, nos. - ; mitchell, p. , fig. (west and south sides); wolters, nos. - . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, with parts of two female figures, draped and having sandals, moving to the right in a dance. the relief appears to have been on the face of a lintel, panelled on its lower side.--_xanthos._ limestone; height, foot - / inches. prachov, pl. b, fig. _i._; murray ( nd ed.), i., p. . [sidenote: = - .=] the following sculptures illustrate the way in which the simplicity of an archaic statue is sometimes preserved in later sculptures serving an architectonic purpose:-- [sidenote: = .=] torso of female figure, wearing a long dress with diploïdion, falling in flat surfaces with few folds. the left leg is advanced, the right hand gathered up a part of the drapery. the head and arms are wanting.--_xanthos._ marble; height, feet / inch. prachov, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] torso of female figure, nearly similar to preceding, but with surface much mutilated.--_xanthos._ marble; height, feet - / inches. prachov, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] torso of female figure treated like no. , but holding the fold of drapery with the left hand.--_xanthos._ marble; height, feet - / inches. prachov, pl. , fig. . sculptures from naucratis. the remains here described were obtained for the most part from the site of the temple of apollo at naucratis, in the nile delta. the site of naucratis was discovered by mr. w. m. flinders petrie, and the remains of the temple were found in the course of excavations which he carried on, in - . a few sculptures also were found by mr. e. a. gardner in the excavations of - . the whole of the collections from naucratis in the british museum were presented by the egypt exploration fund, which conducted the excavations. naucratis was a colony of greeks, settled in egypt for purposes of trade. it is situated to the west of the most westerly or canopic mouth of the nile, and is nearly midway between cairo and alexandria. the date of the foundation of naucratis has been a subject of controversy. it is known that the colony owed much to amasis, king of egypt ( - b.c.). according to the statement of herodotus (ii. ), amasis showed his friendship to the greeks by giving, to those who came to egypt, the city of naucratis to live in ([greek: philellên de genomenos ho amasis alla te es hellênôn metexeterous apedeixato, kai dê kai toisi apikneumenoisi es aigypton edôke naukratin polin enoikêsai, k. t. l.]). the question has been discussed whether the words of herodotus prove that amasis was the first to allow the greeks to live at naucratis, or whether the account of strabo (xvii., , ) can be accepted, according to which naucratis was already occupied by greeks, especially by greeks of miletus. if amasis introduced the greeks to naucratis, no hellenic remains on the site can be older than b.c. if an earlier settlement is assumed, it may have dated from the middle of the seventh century. in either case the temple of the milesian apollo would have been among the earliest buildings erected. herodotus states that by permission of amasis, the milesians independently founded a temenos of apollo ([greek: chôris de ... ep' heôutôn hidrysanto temenos ... milêsioi apollônos]). messrs. petrie and gardner, arguing for the older date, put the foundation shortly after the middle of the seventh century. the architectural remains are very scanty. probably much of the first temple was built of mud bricks. the stone portions may have been used again in the building of the second temple, whose ornaments were of marble. moreover, all marble and stone is eagerly sought for and removed by the modern arab diggers. _naukratis_, part i., - , by w. m. flinders petrie and others; _naukratis_, part ii., - , by e. a. gardner; g. hirschfeld in _rhein. mus._, n.f., xlii. ( ), p. , and xliv. ( ), p. ; kirchhoff, _studien_, th edit. p. ; roberts, _greek epigraphy_, p. . the first temple of apollo. [sidenote: = .=] _columns._--the architectural members of the first temple were of limestone. they are insufficient to fix the dimensions of the temple, which was, however, small. mr. petrie supposes it to have been not more than twenty-five feet broad. a volute and a complete base of an ionic column were discovered, but were immediately destroyed by arabs. the following fragments are preserved:-- [sidenote: , .] two members of an ionic capital, consisting of two courses of an egg and dart moulding. the upper course is considerably the larger. the lower course is worked with a rebate to fit the upper course. below the mouldings are the tops of the flutings. upper course--height, inches; diameter, foot - / inches; lower course--height, - / inches; diameter, foot - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. . [sidenote: .] fragment of necking of a column, of a different design from the preceding, and surrounded by a pattern of lotus buds and lotus flowers. height, inches; diameter, foot inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. . [sidenote: .] fragment of necking of a column, somewhat similar to the preceding. height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: .] drum of a limestone column with flutings. height, - / inches; diameter, foot inches. [sidenote: .] lower part of the base of an ionic column. height, inches; diameter, foot inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. . miscellaneous fragments from first temple. [sidenote: = .= .] upper part of an acroterion, worked below with a rebate. height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. a. [sidenote: .] angle piece, with half of a palmette. height, inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. a. [sidenote: .] fragment of a plane surface of limestone, with a series of circles painted in blue, white, and red. height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: , .] fragments of two sculptured rosettes, perhaps intended for the decoration of mud surfaces, and probably derived from the earlier temple. diameters, - / inches and inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , figs. , . the second temple of apollo. [sidenote: = .=] the remains assigned to the second temple are of marble, instead of limestone. they are too fragmentary for restoration, but include bead and reel mouldings, egg and dart patterns, portions of palmette and lotus patterns of elaborate design. several of the fragments are brilliantly painted with red and blue. the second temple probably belongs to the second half of the fifth century. compare _naukratis_, i., pls. , a. miscellaneous sculptures from naucratis. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the lower part of a draped standing figure. in the middle of the legs the drapery falls in conventional vertical folds. the figure is painted white with a red stripe down each side.--_from the temenos of apollo._ limestone; height, foot inches. _naukratis_, i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] upper part of an incense burner or small altar with rosettes and uraei. limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] part of a model of an egyptian building. limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] model of a shrine. limestone; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] portions of a group of two figures leading a bull to sacrifice. of the first figure no part remains except the hands which held a rope round the bull's neck. the second figure stands beside the bull, and places his right hand on its back. the head is wanting. an amphora stands on the ground on each side of the figure. red colour on the drapery and on the tops of the vases.--_temple of apollo._ limestone; height, inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] part of a figure kneading dough in a trough. of the figure only the hands and feet remain. traces of red colour.--_temple of apollo._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] figure seated on a chair with a box on its lap. before it a table on which lie four fish. the head of the figure is wanting.--_temple of apollo._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] torso of a male statuette, from the neck to the knees, holding a lion by the tail and hind legs. alabaster; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] upper part of a statuette of a warrior(?). the figure wears a peaked helmet, a close-fitting tunic with sleeves, and armlets. alabaster; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] vessel for holding ointment (_alabastron_). the upper part is in the form of a female bust. the right hand holds a necklace on the breast. the left hand is by the side. alabaster; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] upper part of an _alabastron_ similar to the preceding. alabaster; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] head, wearing a band across the forehead, and having a headdress with a veil which is gathered back in folds from the front. red on the lips and headdress. limestone; height, inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] head, wearing a band across the forehead, from which lappets hang down before the ears. delicately executed archaic work. alabaster; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the rim of a basin, supported by a harpy-like being, carrying a diminutive figure at her breast. the figure is female, with spreading wings. on its left side, the body ends in the egg-like form of the figures on the harpy tomb. on the opposite side, the form of the body is uncertain. the head is wanting. alabaster; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] nude female statuette, from the neck to the knees. she has necklaces, armlets, bracelets, and rings, which are partly in relief, and partly painted red. she wears also a red girdle, from which symbolic eyes are suspended, one on the abdomen, and one on the small of the back. the ends of this girdle fall one in front of each thigh, and finish in lotus flowers. limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] statuette of a hunter, standing, with two hares and two young boars slung over his shoulders. he holds his bow in the left hand, his hunting knife in the right hand. he wears a close-fitting cap, and tunic girt at the waist. inscribed [greek: kalli[as aneth]ê[ke]].--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, foot - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] female statuette, wearing long, close-fitting drapery and head-dress; she wears a necklace and plays on a tympanum.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] upper half of female statuette wearing close-fitting drapery, and headdress. she wears a necklace, and holds a flower in the right hand between her breasts.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] female figure, standing, wearing a close-fitting dress, necklace and shoes. she holds a part of the drapery in her right hand, before her body, and a bird in her left hand between her breasts. necklace, armlets, bracelets, shoes, and stripes down her dress are painted red. the head is wanting.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] male figure, standing, playing on a lyre. he wears a chiton falling to the feet, a closely-fitting upper tunic, and boots. parts of the tunic, lyre and boots are painted red. the head is wanting.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] upper part of a female figure, standing. she wears a closely-fitting dress with long sleeves, and two necklaces. the right hand holds an ankh (?) near the thigh; on the left hand sits a goat, before her body. red paint at the borders of the drapery, and on ankh.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] undraped male figure, standing, holding a lion by the hind legs and tail. the left arm of the figure and the lion's tail are wanting.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] part of a bearded figure, closely draped, holding a goat before his body by the legs. the head and body from the waist of the figure are wanting.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] female figure, enthroned. the left arm is wrapped in the mantle.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] isis and osiris (?). female figure, enthroned, wearing close-fitting dress, necklace, and large mantle passing over the back of her head. she holds a nude figure of a boy at her breast. red paint on the veil.--_temenos of aphroditè._ limestone; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . fragment from delos. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a foot of a colossal statue of apollo, together with a part of the plinth in the same block. the fragment consists of parts of the four greater toes of the left foot. the plinth has dowel holes at each side. naxian marble (?). length of great toe, foot inches; height of plinth, feet inch. this fragment was found by w. kennard at delos, in . stuart, nd edit., iii., p. ; iv., section on delos, pl. , fig. . it is no doubt a part of a colossal statue which was dedicated by the naxians to apollo at delos, and of which the base and other parts still remain _in situ_. the base is inscribed on one side, [greek: naxioi apollôni], and on another side in archaic letters, [greek: tawytou lithou eim' andrias kai to sphelas]: "i am of the same stone both statue and base." it is supposed that this is "the great statue of the naxians" at delos, which, it is said, was overturned by the fall of a brazen palm-tree dedicated by nicias (plutarch, _nicias_, ). the first modern traveller who saw the statue was bondelmonte (a.d. ), who found it prostrate, and says that he made an unsuccessful attempt to set it up (_liber insularum archipelagi_, sinner's edit., p. ). in cyriac of ancona sketched the base with one foot still in position (_bull. dell' inst._, , p. ). when visited by spon and wheler in , the head, hands and feet were lost, but the torso appears to have been nearly complete (wheler, _journey_, p. ). in tournefort only found the lower part of the body, and the thighs (eng. ed. of , vol. i., pl. facing p. ). the parts seen by tournefort remain at delos, and have been described by several travellers. welcker, _alte denkmaeler_, i., p. ; michaelis, _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; furtwaengler, _arch. zeit._, , p. . for the base and inscription, see blouet, _exp. de morée_, iii., pl. , figs. , _bull. de corr. hellénique_, iii., p. . casts from selinus. the following sculptures, nos. - , were excavated at selinus in by the architects william harris and samuel angell. they are divided into two series, derived from different temples. selinus, a colony of megara, in the south-west of sicily, was founded about b.c. the temple (commonly known as c), from which the sculptures, nos. - , were obtained, is the oldest temple on the acropolis, and it is therefore probable that its construction was begun not long after the foundation of the city. the earlier sculptures are therefore assigned to the beginning of the sixth century b.c. the second series, nos. - , were obtained from the temple commonly known as f. this is the third or youngest temple in the group shown by architectural evidence to be the oldest. an exact date cannot be assigned, but the sculptures probably belong to the close of the sixth century. the originals, which are made of a coarse limestone, are preserved in the museum at palermo. the metopes were drawn on their discovery by william harris. harris died of malarial fever contracted at selinus, and the work was published by angell and evans, _sculptured metopes ... of selinus_, . for further literature, see benndorf, _die metopen von selinunt_. [sidenote: = .=] cast of a metope, from the oldest temple at selinus. perseus slaying medusa in the presence of athenè. perseus holds the hair of the gorgon in his left hand, and cuts off her head with his sword. athenè stands on the left. the gorgon is represented as embracing the winged horse, pegasos, who sprang from her spilt blood.--_presented by s. angell, esq._ angell and evans, pl. ; benndorf, p. , pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed. i., p. , fig. ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a metope from the oldest temple at selinus. heracles carrying the robbers named kerkopes, with their legs tied to the ends of his bow, or of a yoke.--_presented by s. angell, esq._ angell and evans, pl. ; benndorf, p. , pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd edit., i., p. , fig. ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a metope from the oldest temple at selinus. a figure drives a quadriga to the front; two figures are standing to the front, one at each side of the chariot.--_presented by s. angell, esq._ angell and evans, pl. ; benndorf, p. , pl. ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a fragment of a metope from the third temple at selinus, in which a goddess, probably athenè, moves to the right, treading down a prostrate giant. this metope was formed of two slabs, of which the upper is wanting.--_presented by s. angell, esq._ angell and evans, pl. (incomplete); benndorf, p. , pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. _b_. [sidenote: = .=] cast of a metope from the third temple at selinus. a draped male figure, apparently dionysos, is engaged in combat with an armed giant, who has sunk on his right knee.--_presented by s. angell, esq._ angell and evans, pl. ; benndorf, p. , pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. _a_; wolters, no. . sculptures and casts from athens and attica. [sidenote: = .=] female (?) head. the hair, which is bound by a narrow band, falls in large waves on each side of the forehead to the ears, and thence to the shoulders. at the back, the hair is rendered by conventional undulations, parallel to the band.--_athens (?)._ _elgin coll._ marble; height, - / inches, _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _cf._ welcker, _alte denkmaeler_, i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a torso of a standing female figure, wearing a chiton of fine texture, and a mantle. the chiton is drawn over the girdle, and has a short diploïdion. the mantle is worn over the shoulders. the hair falls in three tresses in front of each shoulder, and in overlapping layers, down the back. the head, forearms and legs from the knees are wanting. the original, of marble, is at _athens_. height, foot inches. le bas, _monuments figurés_, pl. , fig. ; sybel, no. ; wolters, no. . further literature is cited by wolters. [sidenote: = .=] torso of a standing female figure wearing an under-chiton of fine texture, and an over-chiton with diploïdion which is worn so as to leave the left shoulder bare. the figure appears to have held a vessel in her lap, with both hands. the hair falls down the back, the locks terminating below the shoulders. the head and arms are wanting.--_athens (?)._ _elgin coll_. marble; height, feet inches. clarac, v., pl. a, fig. b, c. [sidenote: = .=] torso of a standing female figure, wearing an under-chiton of fine texture, and an over-chiton with diploïdion which is worn so as to leave the left shoulder bare. the figure held a bowl in the right hand, and a fold of the skirt in the left hand. broken off below the knees. the head, left arm and left hand are wanting. this figure appears to be of _archaistic_ rather than of archaic workmanship, that is, the artist has consciously imitated the archaic style.--_athens._ _presented by h. gally knight and n. fazakerly, esqs., ._ marble; height, foot inches. clarac, v., pl. a, fig. a. [sidenote: = .=] torso of a standing female figure, wearing under-chiton of fine texture and over-chiton with a diploïdion which is worn so as to leave the left shoulder bare; the figure also has sandals. the hair falls in locks on the shoulders, and in a mass at the back. the head, arms and left shoulder are wanting.--_from the smaller temple at rhamnus._ _presented by j. p. gandy deering, esq._ marble; height, feet. leake, _athens and demi of attica_, ii. p. ; _synopsis_, no. * ( *); _athenische mittheilungen_, xv., p. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a relief, representing a female figure stepping into a chariot, holding the reins in her extended hands. the figure is probably that of a goddess. it has been conjectured, but without evidence, that the relief belonged to the pre-persian parthenon. the original, which is of parian marble, is at _athens_. le bas, _mon. fig._, pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, i., rd ed., p. , fig. ; murray, i., p. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . for further literature, see wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a sepulchral relief, representing a woman enthroned. she holds a child in her arms. before her are three figures, probably members of her family, with offerings. the original, which is of marble, is in the _villa albani at rome_. it was erroneously named by winckelmann "leucothea nursing the infant bacchus."--_from athens (?)._ winckelmann, _monumenti inediti_, no. ; zoega, _bassirelievi ant._, i., pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. . for further literature, see wolters, no. . casts of sculptures from aegina. the temple of athenè at aegina stands on a commanding plateau in the north-east of the island. it is of the kind known as doric peripteral hexastyle; that is to say, it is of the doric order, surrounded by a colonnade, which has six columns at the ends and thirteen columns at the sides. the site was excavated in by a party of english and german explorers, and the sculptures discovered were purchased in by the crown prince of bavaria. the principal figures were restored at rome by thorwaldsen and j. m. wagner. in the collection was placed in the glyptothek at munich. with the exception of an ivory eye (cockerell, pl. ) attributed by the discoverers to the image inside the temple, the only sculptures found were those which originally were contained in or surmounted the pediments of the temple. the aeginetan sculptures belong to the latest stage of archaic greek art, and are the most important extant works of that period. for determining the date of the sculptures, political history is only so far of use that we may assume that they are not later than b.c., in which year aegina was subdued by athens. from their style they appear to be considerably older than that date. a minute analysis of the sculptures (brunn, _das alter der aegin. bildw._ p. ) shows that the east pediment is distinctly more advanced than the west in the expression of emotion, in the rendering of drapery, of the features, the beards, the veins; and in the general proportions. brunn assigns the groups to the period immediately following the battle of salamis ( b.c.) and suggests that the sculptor of the east pediment belonged to a younger generation than his colleague. the statues are made of parian marble. they are attached to plinths which were let into the upper surface of the cornice, and are cut out of single blocks, a few small pieces of marble being separately attached. they showed clear traces of colour throughout, when first discovered. one shield from the east pediment was painted with a female figure. there were numerous adjuncts of bronze, such as arms and ornaments, which have been minutely enumerated by brunn (_beschreibung_, &c., p. ). the restored pediments in the british museum have been partially decorated in accordance with the scheme of cockerell, who says: "the members of the entablature and pediment were discovered often in all their original vividness, which quickly disappeared on exposure to the atmosphere." (cockerell, p. , pl. ). c. r. cockerell, _the temple of jupiter panhellenius at aegina_, &c., ; blouet, _expédition de morée_, iii., p. ; brunn, _ueber das alter der aeginetischen bildwerke_ in the _sitzungsber. der k. bayer. akad._, , i., p. , and _ueber die composition der aeginetischen giebelgruppen_, _ibidem_, , ii., p. ; brunn, _beschreibung der glyptothek könig ludwig's i._, th ed., ; wolters, nos. - . the west pediment of the temple at aegina. the subject of the west pediment is a battle, in the presence of athenè, over the body of a wounded warrior. from the oriental dress of the archer on the right, it is inferred that the battle is being fought between greeks and trojans, and that the archer in question is paris. the scene represented does not correspond exactly with any combat described by homer. archaeologists have accordingly been divided in opinion as to the subject. some hold that the battle is that waged for the body of patroclos, which was rescued principally by menelaos, and ajax, son of telamon of aegina. (homer, _iliad_, xvii.; wolters, p. ). others have argued that the presence of paris points to the fight over the body of achilles as described in the aethiopis of arctinos. see especially brunn, _beschreibung_, p. . on account of the discrepancies between the sculptures and the literary tradition it is impossible to decide the question. the arrangement adopted in the british museum is that of cockerell (pl. ). to complete the group cockerell supposed that nude figures similar to no. of the east pediment advanced to the fallen hero from each side; and that a spearman knelt between the paris (no. ) and the wounded trojan. fragments remain of the two youths; but recent writers have put the spearman (no. ) next the paris. the positions of the spearmen and the archers on each side have also been reversed. the archers are on this view placed furthest from the combat, and may perhaps be supposed to be protected by the spearmen. further changes have been proposed which are based on fragments not represented by casts, and which therefore need not here be discussed. restorations of the west pediment. ( ) with figures, the bowmen in front of the spearmen. cockerell, supplementary plate; blouet, _exp. de morée_, iii., pl. , fig. ; müller, _denkmaeler_, i., pls. , ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. _a_; murray, i., pl. . ( ) with figures, the bowmen behind the spearmen. cockerell, plate; brunn, _sitzungsber. der k. bayer. akad._, , ii., plate; lange, _ber. der k. sächs. ges. d. wissenschaften_, , pl. , fig. . ( ) with figures. cockerell, pl. . ( ) with figures. lange, _loc. cit._, pl. , fig. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. _b_. the figures beginning from the left of the west pediment are:-- [sidenote: = .=] wounded greek, recumbent, disarmed, drawing an arrow from his right breast. restored:--nose, right forearm, left leg from knee to ankle and toes. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] greek advancing with spear. brunn proposes the name of ajax, son of oileus. restored:--crest, right hand, left forearm and part of feet. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] greek archer, armed, kneeling and drawing his bow. this may well be the aeginetan hero, teucer, brother of telamonian ajax. restored:--head, arms, several flaps of the cuirass, and left leg from the knee. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] bearded greek warrior advancing, with shield extended and right hand raised to hurl spear. perhaps telamonian ajax. restored:--nose, crest, half right forearm, part of shield, both legs. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] wounded hero, leaning on his right hand, which held a sword; the shield is held out to cover the body. this is either achilles or patroclos according to the chief schemes of interpretation. restored:--neck, right shoulder, fingers and toes. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] figure of athenè presiding over the battle. she stands erect in the centre of the pediment, fully armed and wearing her aegis. there is an archaic formality in her pose and in the composition of the drapery, which shows that the artist has adopted a traditional type of temple-image. the earrings, locks of hair, a gorgoneion, and snakes bordering the aegis were made of metal, and attached. restored:--nose, right hand, part of left hand. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_ no. . [sidenote: = .=] kneeling trojan, with right hand raised to hurl spear. restored:--head, right armpit and shoulder-blade, three fingers of right hand; left arm from middle of biceps; right leg from the knee; left knee with part of thigh, and part of left foot. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] warrior advancing with shield extended, and right hand raised to hurl spear, closely corresponding to no. . perhaps aeneas. restored:--head (which should probably be bearded), right armpit and breast, fingers, parts of shield and legs. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] archer kneeling and drawing his bow. he wears a phrygian cap, which has holes in the front for a metal wreath. (compare the wreath on the ephesian fragment no. , _ _); also closely-fitting breeches and coat of leather. this figure, which is always known as paris, closely corresponds with the 'teucer,' no. . restored:--tips of cap, nose and chin; some fingers, and the forepart of the left foot. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] wounded trojan, leaning on the right arm. an arrow may have been fixed in the left knee between the thumb and forefinger. restored:--head, left arm, part of right forearm and hand; both legs from the knees. cockerell, pl. , no. ; pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] the pediment is surmounted by an acroterion, consisting of a palmette between two large volutes, which are for the most part restorations. (cockerell, pls. , .) on each side of the acroterion is an architectonic female figure, treated in the same designedly archaic style as the figure of athenè. [sidenote: = .=] female figure (on the left). restored:--head, right hand and part of sleeve; left forearm with part of sleeve and drapery. cockerell, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] female figure (on the right). restored:--head; lower edge of right sleeve; right hand and forearm; parts of drapery. cockerell, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] at each angle are casts of lions' heads, which in the absence of casts from the originals have been taken from the cornice of the archaic temple at ephesus. the lion's head engraved by cockerell (pl. , fig. ), appears to be his restoration. [sidenote: = .=] the angles are surmounted by gryphons, which have been cast from a single original. the original has been considerably restored, especially the head. cockerell, pl. , fig, . the hind parts of one gryphon were discovered by chandler in , but they were immediately broken and stolen. chandler, _travels in greece_, p. . the east pediment of the temple at aegina. of the east pediment only five figures were found, sufficiently complete to be restored. the fragments leave no doubt that the composition was as a whole analogous to that of the west pediment, and that the subject was a battle for the body of a fallen warrior, fought in the presence of athenè. the clue to the subject represented is given by the figure of heracles, and archaeologists are almost unanimous in thinking that the scene is a battle in the war which telamon of aegina, aided by heracles, waged against laomedon, king of troy (cf. apollodorus, ii., , , ). the arrangement is nearly that of cockerell. the heracles, however, has been placed on the right side of the pediment, because the left side of the statue is the most carefully finished, and was therefore intended to be seen. restorations of the east pediment. ( ) with figures; wounded warrior as restored. prachov, _mon. dell' inst._, ix., pl. . ( ) with parts of figures; wounded warrior not as restored. cockerell, supplementary plate; müller, _denkmaeler_, i., pl. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. ; murray, i., pl. . for two heads from this pediment, see brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . the figures beginning with the left end of the pediment are the following:-- [sidenote: = .=] warrior lying down, supported by his arm, within the handles of his shield. he is wounded below the right breast. restored:--crest, part of visor, four fingers of left hand, four toes of left foot; right leg from the middle of the thigh. cockerell, p. , pl. , no. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] warrior advancing, with a shield on the left arm, and a lance (?) in the right hand. restored:--head, hands, right hip; most of shield, cockerell, p. , pl. , no. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] wounded warrior fallen backwards on his shield. restored:--head, arms, shield, right leg, left leg from the knee. the correctness of the restoration has been doubted. the left side is most corroded by the atmosphere, and would therefore seem to have been uppermost. in that case the figure must have resembled that of the fallen warrior in the centre of the west pediment. it is thus drawn by cockerell, in a supplementary plate. engraved as restored, cockerell, pl. , no. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] figure of a youth leaning forward, to draw away the fallen warrior. restored:--nose, arms, pubis, most of right foot, and left foot; cockerell, pl. , no. ; blouet, iii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] heracles kneeling, and drawing his bow. he wears the lion's skin on his head, and had a quiver on the left side. restored:--nose, some flaps of the cuirass, left hand, right forearm, right foot, part of left thigh and knee. cockerell, pl. , no. ; blouet, iii., pl. ; rayet, _monuments_, no. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. ; mitchell, _selections_, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] the acroterion; ( ) the figures beside it; ( ) the lions, and ( ) the gryphons here exhibited, are repetitions of those of the west pediment. the acroterion, which originally surmounted the east pediment, was larger and more important than that of the west. (cockerell, pl. .) the figures which stood on each side of the east acroterion, are shown by the surviving fragments to have been similar to those of the western end, but were on a rather larger scale. casts of sculptures from olympia. the temple of zeus at olympia was being built from about - b.c. (cf. boetticher, _olympia_, p. ). it is certain that the metopes must have been placed in position during the process of construction. they should therefore probably be dated about b.c. (boetticher, p. ). [sidenote: = .=] cast of a metope, from the temple of zeus at olympia. heracles binding the cretan bull. the original is of marble. the greater part of this metope was discovered by the french expedition to the morea, in , and is now in the louvre. the face and hind legs of the bull were discovered in the german excavations, and are now at olympia. the parts first discovered are published in overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. . for the completed metope, see _ausgrabungen zu olympia_, v., pl. ; boetticher, _olympia_, p. ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a metope from the temple of zeus at olympia. heracles supports on his shoulders the vault of heaven, while the titan atlas brings him the golden apples of the hesperides. heracles has a folded cushion on his shoulders to make the burden easier; atlas stands before him with six apples in his outstretched hands. a hesperid or nymph stands behind and raises one hand as if to share the weight. the original is of marble, and is at olympia, where it was discovered by the german excavators. _ausgrabungen zu olympia_, i., ; _athenische mittheilungen_, i., pl. ; murray, ii., pl. ; wolters, no. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. ; boetticher, _olympia_, p. . (boetticher's illustration is most nearly complete. that of overbeck gives both hands of atlas.) for the female head, see _journ. of hellen. studies_, v., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a statue of victory, by paionios of mendè, victory is supposed to be moving forward through mid-air. one foot rests lightly on the back of an eagle, beneath which is a rock. the wings and draperies that were originally spread out behind the figure are now wanting. the statue stood on a triangular pedestal, about feet high. on the pedestal was an inscription recording that the victory was offered as a tithe of spoil to olympian zeus by the messenians and naupactians; and that the author was paionios of mendè, who made the acroteria of the temple:--[greek: messanioi kai naupaktioi anethen dii | olympiô dekatan apo tôm polemiôn. paiônios epoiêse mendaios | kai takrôtêria poiôn epi ton naon enika.] mr. murray (_gr. sculpt._, ii. p. ) suggests as an explanation of the last clause of the inscription that the victory was a replica of the acroteria (or figures above the pediments) of the temple of zeus. these are known to have been gilded figures of victory (paus., v. , ). pausanias was inclined to think that the inscription referred to a war of the messenians against the acarnanians ( b.c.); but the messenians of his time supposed that the statue was erected soon after the defeat of the spartans at sphacteria in b.c. discovered by the german excavators at olympia, and now in the museum at olympia. marble. _ausgrabungen zu olympia_, i., pls. - ; inscr. _ibidem_, pl. ; pedestal, _ibidem_, ii., pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., figs. , ; murray, ii., pl. ; wolters, nos. , . statues of apollo (?). of the following sculptures, nos. - are examples of a somewhat numerous class of nude male figures, standing constrainedly with the heads directed straight to the front, having the hands either close by the sides, or slightly raised, by a bending of the arms at the elbows. the name of apollo has been commonly given to sculptures of the type here described, but doubts have often been raised as to the accuracy of the title. it seems clear that at the stage of art represented by these figures one type of nude male figure was made to serve various purposes. it cannot be doubted that the type was often used to represent apollo, for such figures have been found in or near shrines of apollo at naucratis (petrie, _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. ), delos (_arch. zeit._, , p. ), actium (_gaz. arch._, , p. ), and at the temple of apollo ptoös in boeotia (_bull. de corr. hellénique_, x., p. , brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. ). the same type of apollo occurs, _e.g._ on a vase in the brit. mus. (no. e, ; _gaz. arch._, , p. ), on a vase published in _annali dell' inst._, , pl. d (cf. _hamilton vases_, ii., pl. ), and on a pompeian fresco (_arch. zeit._, , p. ). compare a relief in the _palazzo corsini_ (dütschke, ii., p. ). at the same time, similar figures served to represent athletes (paus., viii., ) and, perhaps, were placed on tombs, to represent a deceased person. the series of figures which have the hands by the thighs is older than that in which the hands are raised, and the invention of the type has been assigned to the cretan daedalid school of dipoinos and skyllis (furtwaengler, _arch. zeit._, , p. ). for an enumeration and discussion of the known examples of this series see overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , note ; _bull. de corr. hellénique_, x., p. ; xi., p. ; _gaz. arch._, , p. ; roscher, _lexicon_, i, p. ; wolters, no. . the second series, here represented by nos. , , in which the hands are raised, is developed from the first, but shows a great advance in all respects. perhaps it gives the cretan type as developed by artists of the school of aegina. [sidenote: = .=] figure of apollo (?) standing with the right leg drawn back, and with the hands pressed against the hips. he has a diadem across the forehead, and the hair falls on the shoulders and down the back.--_naucratis._ alabaster; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] apollo (?) standing. torso from the neck to the knees. the right leg is drawn back, and the hands are pressed against the thighs. the hair falls down on the shoulders and on the back.--_naucratis._ alabaster; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] apollo. torso from the neck to the middle of the thighs. the hands are pressed against the thighs. the hair falls on the shoulders and on the back. a belt crosses the body under the right arm, and over the left shoulder.--_temenos of apollo, naucratis._ marble (?); height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . the following figures, nos. , , belong to the same series, though the type is slightly varied, and no. , having been found in the temenos of aphroditè, probably does not represent apollo:-- [sidenote: = .=] male torso from the neck to the knees. the right hand lies across the breast; the left leg is to the front. the hair is cut square at the back, and in the front falls down on the shoulders.--_temenos of aphroditè, naucratis._ alabaster; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, ii., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] apollo. male torso, similar to the preceding, but having no hair on the shoulders.--_temenos of apollo, naucratis._ alabaster; height, - / inches. _naukratis_, i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] figure of apollo (?) standing, with the right leg drawn back, and with the hands pressed against the hips. the hair falls on the shoulders, terminating in a straight line, and intersected with conventional grooves running at right angles to each other.--_from greece, probably from boeotia._ marble; height, feet - / inches. murray, i., pl. , p. ; _arch. zeit._, , pl. , p. ; mitchell, p. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] figure of apollo (?) standing, with the right leg drawn back. the hair is dressed, with the headdress known as the _krobylos_. round the taenia are five drilled holes, indicating that a wreath of bronze was attached. the arms, and the legs from the knees are wanting. this figure, commonly known as the strangford apollo, is referred by brunn to the school of callon of aegina. from the collection of _viscount strangford_. stated in to be from _lemnos_, but said also to have been found in _anaphè_ (newton, _essays_, p. ). marble; height, feet inches. _mon. dell' inst._, ix., pl. ; _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; brunn, _ber. d. k. bayer. akad. phil.-hist. classe_, , p. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. ; murray, i., pl. ; rayet et thomas, _milet et le golfe latmique_, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. ; wolters, no. ; _arch. zeit._, , p. *. [sidenote: = .=] torso of apollo (?) standing, with the right leg drawn back. the head, arms, and legs from the knees are wanting; two points of attachment near the front of the hips, show that the arms were considerably bent at the elbows. this figure was found in the _dromos of a tomb at marion (cyprus)_. marble; height, feet inches. herrmann, _gräberfeld von marion_, p. . the tomb contained a coin of idalium, of about b.c., a gold cup with acorns _repoussé_, several black figured vases, one at least of an early character, and no red figured vases. [sidenote: = .=] head of apollo. the hair is bound with a taenia and falls in short corkscrew curls over the forehead, and in a flowing mass down the shoulders. the sharply cut outlines of the features, and the wiry character of the hair suggest that this head is a copy of an archaic work in bronze. it has been conjectured that the head is copied from the apollo of canachos at branchidae, but there is no evidence in favour of the theory, which has been given up as untenable. (cf. overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. ). a bronze statuette from the payne knight collection, which has a better claim to be considered a copy of apollo of canachos, may be seen in the bronze room. _brought from rome by lord cawdor, and purchased by townley.--townley coll._ parian marble; height, foot - / inches. _specimens_, i., pls. , ; _mus. marbles_, iii., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, i., p. ; müller, _denkmaeler_, i., pl. , fig. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. ; wolters, no. ; _cf._ rayet et thomas, _milet et le golfe latmique_, pl. ; michaelis, _anc. marbles_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] statue of apollo, standing. the chief weight of the body is thrown on the right leg, while the left knee is bent, and the left foot rests lightly on the ground. the head is slightly turned to the right. the hair is dressed with the headdress known as the _krobylos_. the left hand and right forearm, which appear to have been separate pieces, are wanting. the left hand held some attribute, perhaps a branch, for which there is a mark of attachment by the left knee. the right hand, which rested on the stump beside the right leg, seems to have held a strap.--_from the choiseul-gouffier collection, ._ marble; height, feet - / inches. restored: tip of nose. _specimens_, ii., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, i. p. ; clarac, iii., pl. b, no. a; _mus. marbles_, xi., pl. ; _journ. of hellen. studies_, i., pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; murray, i., pl. ; wolters, no. . this statue, commonly known as the choiseul-gouffier apollo, together with other examples of the same type, has given rise to much discussion. the chief replica is a statue at athens, commonly called the 'apollo on the omphalos,' having been associated with a marble _omphalos_, or sacred cone of apollo, which was discovered at the same time. grave doubts, however, exist as to the connection of the figure and of the omphalos. (_journ. of hellen. studies_, i., p. ; _athenische mittheilungen_, ix., p. .) the athenian statue is published, conze, _beiträge_, pls. , ; _journ. of hellen. studies_, i., pl. ; murray, i., pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . for a list of other replicas of the type, see _athenische mittheilungen_, ix., p. . the statue is generally taken to be an apollo. it has, indeed, been argued that it is a pugilist, and not apollo (waldstein, _journ. of hellen. studies_, i., p. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., ii., p. ); and if the figure is apollo, it must be admitted that 'the proportions are rather suited to the patron of pugilism (_il._ [greek: psi.] ) than to the leader of a celestial orchestra' (_specimens_, ii., pl. ; _athenische mittheilungen_, ix., p. ). but the title is established by a quiver attached to the stump of a replica in rome (matz-duhn, _bildw. in rom_, i., no. ), and of a somewhat similar figure at cassel (_athenische mittheilungen_, i., pl. ), and by the fact that a copy (no. ) has been found in the temple of apollo at cyrenè. moreover, the head of a similar figure, undoubtedly an apollo, occurs on a relief in the capitoline museum (braun, _vorschule der kunstmythologie_, pl. ). compare also the figure of apollo on a vase at bologna, _mon. dell' inst._, x., pl. . there has also been much discussion as to the school of art to which the type must be assigned, and as to the character of the original statue. the statue has been assigned by different writers to calamis ("apollo alexikakos"; conze, _beiträge_, p. ; murray, i., p. ; furtwaengler, in roscher's _lexicon_, i., p. ); to pasiteles (kekulé, _menelaos_, p. ); to alcamenes (furtwaengler, _athenische mittheilungen_, v., p. ; _cf. journ. of hellen. studies_, viii., p. ); to pythagoras of rhegium ("euthymos"; waldstein, _loc. cit._); and to callimachos ("apollo daphnephoros"; schreiber, _athenische mittheilungen_, ix., p. ). it has been variously held that the original statue was of bronze, and is therefore lost (_mus. marbles_, xi., pl. ; _cf._ murray, i., p. ), or that the athenian statue is the original, whence other copies are derived (_athenische mittheilungen_, ix., p. ). the _krobylos_ seems to indicate some attic sculptor of the first half of the th cent. b.c. (schreiber, _athenische mittheilungen_, viii., p. ). the existence of numerous copies proves that the original was famous, and it is generally supposed that the figure is an apollo. it is impossible to make a more definite statement with confidence, in the present state of our knowledge as to the attic sculptors who preceded pheidias. [sidenote: = .=] head of apollo, a replica of no. . the head is broken off in the middle of the neck. the chin, the tip of the nose, and parts of the hair are wanting. the author of this copy has misunderstood the arrangement of the headdress.--found by smith and porcher in the _temple of apollo at cyrenè_. marble; height, inches; smith and porcher, p. no. murray, i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] head of apollo, a replica of no. . the head is broken off below the chin. the nose and the tip of the chin are wanting. this copy shows better than either or , the arrangement of the hair in the _krobylos_, the origin of the plaits being clearly indicated. it chiefly differs from them in the amount of hair falling down at the back of the ears; in this head there are the remains of thick tresses, while in the other instances there are only a few short curls. there is a rectangular hole at the back of the head.--_presented by the hon. e. a. pelham._ marble; height, - / inches. this head was found in at a cottage at ventnor, built by sir richard worsley. it was, doubtless, brought by him from greece. miscellaneous sculptures. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of lacunar, from a ceiling, with two panels in low relief. ( ) horse galloping to the right. ( ) gryphon seizing a stag. below is a band of rosettes in squares. the whole is surrounded by remains of a large bead ornament.--_presented by algernon, fourth duke of northumberland._ green limestone (?); height, foot - / inches; width, foot inch. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of lacunar nearly similar to preceding. the upper panel is wanting. below is a gryphon seizing a stag. below is a band of rosettes; between the two panels is a band of maeander pattern.--_presented by algernon, fourth duke of northumberland._ green limestone (?); height, - / inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief. on a pedestal is a lion, walking to the left. before the lion are three balls. above were two figures standing to the front, of which only the feet remain. the figure on the left stood with feet side by side; that on the right stood with the legs crossed (fig. ). this relief, though undoubtedly archaic, appears not to belong to the prehistoric period of mycenae (_cf._ nos. - ).--_mycenae._ _inwood coll._ green limestone; height, foot - / inches; width, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; loeschcke, _athenische mittheilungen_, iv., p. ; wolters, no. . [illustration: fig. .--relief from mycenae, no. .] part ii. _myron and pheidias._ three great names represent the early prime of greek sculpture, namely, myron, pheidias, and polycleitos of argos. these three are thought to have been fellow pupils of the argive sculptor ageladas. the present part of the catalogue deals with myron and pheidias. the third part deals first with their immediate successors in attica, and then turns to polycleitos of argos and the sculptures of the peloponnese; and next to the special class of greek reliefs. myron. myron of eleutherae in attica worked at athens in the first half of the fifth century b.c. although he had not entirely abandoned the archaic style (notably, in his rendering of hair, pliny, _h. n._ xxxiv., ), he was distinguished for his skill in representing life. his power lay partly in the rendering of vigorous movement in sculpture, as in his athletic statues, and partly in a realistic imitation of nature, as in his famous cow. no original works of myron are extant. his best known work, the discobolos, is preserved in copies, one of which is described below. the bronze statuette of marsyas in the bronze room may be studied after a group of athenè and marsyas by myron. [sidenote: = .=] graeco-roman copy of the bronze discobolos of myron. a young athlete is represented in the act of hurling the disk. he has swung it back, and is about to throw it to the furthest possible distance before him. the head, as here attached, looks straight to the ground, but in the original it looked more backwards as in a copy formerly in the massimi palace at rome. (cf. lucian, _philopseud._ .) compare a gem in the british museum (fig. ; _cat. of gems_, no. , pl. g), which is inscribed [greek: hyakinthos]. according to a judgment of quintilian, the laboured complexity of the statue is extreme, but any one who should blame it on this ground would do so under a misapprehension of its purpose, inasmuch as the merit of the work lies in its novelty and difficulty. "quid tam distortum et elaboratum, quam est ille discobolos myronis? si quis tamen, ut parum rectum, improbet opus, nonne ab intellectu artis abfuerit, in qua vel praecipue laudabilis est ipsa illa novitas ac difficultas?"--quint. _inst. orat._, ii., . .--_found in in hadrian's villa at tivoli._ _townley coll._ [illustration: fig. . [greek: hyakinthos](=hyacinth)] marble; height, feet inches. restorations:--nose, lips, chin, piece in neck, part of disk and r. hand; l. hand; piece under r. arm; pubis; r. knee; a small piece in r. leg, and parts of the toes. _specimens_, i., pl. ; _mus. marbles_, xi., pl. ; clarac, v., pl. , no. b; ellis, _townley gallery_, i., p. ; _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, i., no. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; wolters, no. . pheidias and the sculptures of the parthenon. the sculptures of the parthenon illustrate the style of pheidias, the greatest of greek sculptors. pheidias, son of charmides, the athenian, was born about b.c. he was a pupil of the sculptor ageladas, of argos, or, according to others, of hegias or hegesias, of athens. his youth was passed during the period of the persian wars, and his maturity was principally devoted to the adornment of athens, from the funds contributed by the allied greek states during the administration of pericles. among the chief of the works of this period was the parthenon, or temple of the virgin goddess athenè. the architect was ictinos, but the sculptural decorations, and probably the design of the temple, were planned and executed under the superintendence of pheidias. the building was probably begun about b.c. (according to michaelis, b.c. ). it was sufficiently advanced to receive the statue of the parthenos in b.c. , and was probably completed either in that year or a little later. it stood on the acropolis of athens, on a site which had been already occupied by a more ancient temple, commonly supposed to have been an ancient parthenon, which was burnt on the sacking of athens by the persians, b.c. . recently, however, the foundations of an early temple have been discovered between the parthenon and the erechtheion. it has been thought that this is the pre-persian parthenon, and that the traces of an older foundation below the existing parthenon only date from the time immediately following the persian wars. a building is supposed to have then been begun, on a plan somewhat different from that which was carried out by ictinos and pericles. the parthenon was of the doric order of architecture, and was of the form termed _peripteral octastyle_; that is to say, it was surrounded by a colonnade, which had eight columns at each end. the architectural arrangements can be best learnt from the model, which is exhibited in the elgin room. see also the plan (fig. .) and elevation (pl. iv.). the principal chamber (cella) within the colonnade contained the colossal statue of athenè parthenos (see below, nos. - ). externally the cella was decorated with a frieze in low relief (see below, p. ). the two pediments, or gables at each end of the building (see below, nos. , ) were filled with figures sculptured in the round. above the architrave, or beam resting on the columns, were metopes, or square panels, adorned with groups in very high relief, which served to fill up the spaces between the triglyphs, or groups of three vertical parallel bands, representing beam ends. all these sculptured decorations were executed, like the architecture, in pentelic marble. [illustration: fig. .--plan of the parthenon. (from michaelis.)] the statue of the parthenos is known to have been in existence about a.d.; but not long after this date the figure was removed, and the parthenon was converted into a christian church, dedicated at first to santa sophia (or the divine wisdom), and afterwards to the panagia (or virgin mary). for the purposes of the church, an apse was built at the east end of the cella, and the entrance was moved to the west end. the building was also given a vaulted roof, which covered the cella alone. in consequence the frieze was exposed to the weather, and the east pediment was much destroyed. from to , during the period of the frankish dukes of athens, the parthenon was a latin church. athens was taken by the turks in , and the parthenon was again an orthodox greek church for two years. in , however, it was converted into a turkish mosque. from this date it probably suffered little until , when athens was taken by the venetian general, morosini. in the course of a bombardment of the acropolis, the besiegers succeeded in throwing a shell into a powder magazine in the parthenon, and caused an explosion that destroyed the roof and much of the long sides of the building. further injury was done by morosini, who made an attempt to take down the central group of the west pediment, which was still nearly complete. fortunately, many of the sculptures had been drawn by a skilful artist before the explosion. in jacques carrey, a painter in the suite of the marquis de nointel, french ambassador at the porte, made sketches of large portions of the frieze and metopes, and of the then extant portions of the pedimental compositions. these drawings are preserved in the french bibliothèque nationale, and are constantly referred to in discussions of the parthenon sculptures. in athens was restored to the turks, and from this date to the end of the last century the sculptures of the parthenon were exposed to constant injury. some of them were made into lime, or built into walls by the turkish garrison; others were mutilated by the travellers who from time to time obtained admission to the acropolis, and broke off portable fragments of the sculptures. in , when the west pediment was drawn by dalton, many figures still remained in position which had disappeared before the time of lord elgin. several portions also of the frieze, which were seen by stuart, had disappeared at the beginning of the present century. on the other hand, the east pediment, being inaccessible, suffered no important change between and . in the years - many of the sculptures of the parthenon were removed to england by the earl of elgin, then british ambassador at constantinople, by means of a firman obtained from the porte (see p. ). the elgin collection, which includes other marbles obtained from athens and elsewhere, together with casts and drawings, was purchased from lord elgin by the british government in for £ , . several portions of the sculptures of the parthenon have been discovered since the time of lord elgin on the acropolis and its slopes, or in various parts of europe, to which they had been taken by travellers. these are represented as far as possible in the british museum by plaster casts. the following aids to the study of the parthenon will be found in the elgin room:-- model of the athenian acropolis, showing its condition in the year . presented by prof. adolf michaelis. model of the parthenon. the model was made by r. c. lucas, on a scale of a foot to feet, and represents the state of the temple in , after the explosion, but before morosini had attacked the west pediment. carrey's drawings of the pediments. photographic reproductions of the originals are exhibited. a restored view of the athenian acropolis. by richard bohn. _bibliography of the parthenon._ the work of michaelis, _der parthenon_ (leipzig, ), collects the material for the study of the parthenon, and contains an excellent digest of all that had been written on the subject up to the year . for later writers, see below _passim_, and wolters. for the chronology of pheidias, see loeschcke, in _untersuchungen a. schaefer gewidmet_, p. ; for the question as to his master, see klein, _arch.-epigr. mittheilungen aus oesterreich_, vii., p. ; murray, _greek sculpture_, nd ed., p. . for the older temple on the site of the parthenon, see doerpfeld, in _athenische mittheilungen_, xii., p. ; harrison, _mythology of anc. athens_, p. . the plan given above is taken from michaelis. important modifications have been proposed by doerpfeld, _athenische mittheilungen_, vi., pl. , p. ; harrison, _loc. cit._, p. . for the mediæval history of the parthenon, see laborde; _athènes aux xv^e, xvi^e, et xvii^e siècles_ (paris, ); gregorovius, _athen im mittelalter_ ( ). facsimiles of carrey's drawings are in the british museum, and have been partially published in the works of laborde, _le parthénon_ (paris, ). for photographic copies of the drawings of the pediments, see _antike denkmäler_, i., pls. , a. dalton's views of the acropolis were published in , but the remains of athens were little known till the appearance of _the antiquities of athens_, by james stuart and nicolas revett. (london: vol. i., ; vol. ii., ; vol. iii., ; vol. iv., ; vol. v., ). a second edition, with additional matter, but having inferior illustrations, was issued in - . the original drawings, made for this work by pars, were presented to the british museum by the society of dilettanti. the official inquiry into the proceedings of lord elgin is contained in the _report from the select committee of the house of commons on the earl of elgin's collection of sculptured marbles; &c._ (london, ). statue of athenÈ parthenos. the colossal statue of athenè parthenos by pheidias was placed within the central chamber of the parthenon. the figure was made of gold and ivory, and was, with its base, about feet high. athenè stood, draped in chiton and aegis. in her left hand she held her spear and shield. between her and her shield was the serpent erichthonios. on her outstretched right hand was a winged victory, six feet high, holding a wreath. the helmet of the goddess was adorned, according to pausanias, with a sphinx and gryphons. from detailed copies of the head (_athenische mittheilungen_, viii., pl. ; _cat. of gems in b. m._ , ) we learn that the gryphons were on the cheek-pieces, and that there was a figure of pegasos on each side of the sphinx. there was also a row of small horses at the front of the helmet. all available space was covered with reliefs. a battle between greeks and amazons (see below, nos. , ) was seen on the exterior of the shield, and one between gods and giants on its interior. on the base was a representation of the birth of pandora (see no. ) and on the edges of the sandals was a battle between centaurs and lapiths. the statue disappeared from view with the fall of paganism. nos. - afford some of the materials for its reconstruction. rough reproductions of the figure also occur on attic reliefs, such as nos. - . the statuette, no. , is of service for the details of the composition, although it is artistically a poor copy. the lenormant statuette, no. , though rough and incomplete, is of more value for its rendering of the features. the column beneath the hand of athenè (in no. ) presents some difficulty, as it is not mentioned in descriptions of the statue and seldom occurs in reproductions of it. it is seen in an attic relief (_michaelis_, pl. , fig. ) on a lead ticket (_zeitschr. für numismatik_, x., p. ) and, in the form of an olive tree, on a lycian coin of the time of alexander (_zeitschr. für num._, _loc. cit._; murray, ii., pl. ). it is more probable that an existing support should be omitted in reliefs, than that it should be inserted if non-existent. it is possible, however, that the support was not a part of the design of pheidias, but was an addition, found to be necessary before the time of alexander. [sidenote: = .=] cast of a statuette, copied from the athenè parthenos. the goddess wears a helmet, ægis, chiton with diploïdion girt round the waist, bracelets and sandals; her left hand rests on her shield, which stands on its edge at her side. in the centre of the outside of the shield is a mask of medusa, and inside a serpent; the right hand of athenè is extended in front and rests on a column with the palm open upwards, holding a figure of victory, in whose hands are remains of what is thought to be a garland. the head of the victory is wanting. on the centre of the helmet of athenè is a sphinx, and at each side has been a pegasos. the statuette was found in a shrine in a private house. compare the vision of proclos, who was bidden to prepare his house for athenè, when her statue was being removed by the christians from the parthenon, about a.d. (marinus, _proclos_, ; michaelis, p. .) the original, which is of pentelic marble, is in the national museum at athens. height, with plinth, feet inches. found in , _near the varvakion in athens. athenische mittheilungen_, vi., pls. , , p. ; _journ. of hellen. studies_, ii., p. ; schreiber, _athena parthenos des phidias_, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, nos. , ; waldstein, pl. ; harrison, _mythology and monuments of anc. athens_, p. . for literature see waldstein, _essays_, p. ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a statuette, copied from the statue of athenè parthenos. athenè wears a helmet, ægis, and chiton with diploïdion girt round the waist; her right hand is extended in front with the palm open upwards as if to hold out the figure of victory. in this part the statuette is unfinished, the marble underneath the right arm not having been hewn away. the left hand of the goddess rests on her shield, which stands on its edge at her side; inside the shield is a serpent; outside are reliefs representing the battle between greeks and amazons, which is seen in more detail in no. . among the figures, we recognise several which occur on no. . the figure of pheidias (_a_, see no. ) is near the top of the relief, and holds a stone, as described by plutarch. next him perhaps is pericles (_b_) separated from the fallen amazon (_c_), which is at the bottom of the shield, as in no. . the group of the greek seizing an amazon (_d_) is seen on the right as in no. . the fallen amazon (_e_) with hands above her head is high up, on the left of the relief. in place of the group of an amazon supporting her companion (_f_) which is in no. , we have here the same subject, but differently treated. the gorgon's head is roughly indicated near the middle of the shield. from the manner in which the rest of the figure corresponds to the chryselephantine statue, it has been assumed that the rude outlines of figures in relief on the base of the statuette represent the composition of pheidias, of which the subject was the birth of pandora (paus., i., xxiv., .) the original of this statue, which is of marble, is in the national museum at athens. height foot - / inches. found in _near the pnyx, at athens_. lenormant, _gazette des beaux arts_, , viii., p. ; jahn, _pop. aufsätze_, p. , pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. , p. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. ; wolters, no. ; harrison, _mythology and monuments of anc. athens_, p. . for the pandora relief, see puchstein, in _jahrbuch des arch. inst._, v., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of shield supposed to be a rough copy from the shield of the statue of athenè parthenos. pliny (_h. n._, xxxvi., ) and pausanias (i., , ) state that the outside of the shield was ornamented with the representation of a battle between greeks and amazons. plutarch adds (_pericles_, ) that one of the figures represented pheidias himself as an old bald-headed man raising a stone with both hands, while in another figure, who was represented fighting against an amazon, with one hand holding out a spear in such a way as to conceal the face, the sculptor introduced the likeness of pericles. this story is probably of late origin, and invented to account for two characteristic figures on the shield. a head of medusa, or gorgoneion, encircled by two serpents, forms the centre of the composition on the fragment. below the gorgoneion is a greek warrior (_a_, cf. no. ), bald-headed, who raises both hands above his head to strike with a battle-axe. this figure has been thought to correspond with that of pheidias in the original design. next to him on the right is a greek (_b_) who plants his left foot on the body of a fallen amazon (_c_) and is in the act of dealing a blow with his right hand; his right arm is raised across his face and conceals the greater part of it. the action of this figure again presents a partial correspondence with that of pericles as described by plutarch. to the right of the supposed pericles are two greeks: the one advances to the right; the other (_d_) seizes by the hair an amazon falling on the right. above this group is an amazon running to the right and a greek striding to the left. his shield has the device of a hare. above him are three armed greeks, and the remains of another figure. on the left of the figure described as pheidias is a greek who has fallen on his knees. further to the left is a fallen amazon (_e_) who lies with her head towards the lower edge of the shield. near her is a wounded amazon (_f_) supported by a companion of whom but little remains. the lower part of a third figure, probably that of a greek, is also seen. all the amazons wear high boots and a short chiton, leaving the right breast exposed; their weapon is a double-headed axe. red colour remains on the two serpents which encircle the gorgon's head, on the shield of one of the greeks and in several places on the draperies.--_obtained by viscount strangford from athens._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; width, foot inches. conze, _arch. zeit._, , pls. , ; jahn, _pop. aufsätze_, p. , pl. , ; michaelis, pl. , fig. . overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. ; mitchell, p. ; mansell, no. ; wolters, no. ; harrison, _mythology and monuments of anc. athens_, p. . there is a fragment of a similar shield in the vatican, michaelis, pl. , fig. . eastern pediment of the parthenon. [sidenote: = .=] we know from pausanias (i., , ) that the subject of the composition in the eastern pediment had relation to the birth of athenè, who, according to the legend, sprang forth, fully armed, from the brain of zeus. as all the central part of this composition was already destroyed when carrey made his drawing of the pediment, we have no means of ascertaining how the subject was treated; and whether the moment immediately after the birth was represented, as has been generally supposed, or, as has been also suggested, the moment immediately before the birth. a relief surrounding a _puteal_ or well-head, now at madrid, has been thought to throw light on this question. there zeus is enthroned, looking to the right; athenè is before him, armed, and advances to the right. a victory flies towards her with a wreath. behind the throne of zeus is hephaestos, who has cleft the skull of zeus with his axe, and starts back in astonishment. on the extreme right of the composition are the three fates (schneider, _geburt der athena_, pl. ; mitchell, p. , fig. ). unfortunately the subordinate figures have not a sufficient resemblance to those which are still extant of the parthenon pediment, to allow us to assume a direct connection between the pediment and the relief. some such composition, however, seems more consonant with the dignity of athenè than the scheme which occurs on vases and etruscan mirrors (_e.g._ on a vase in the british museum, no. b. ; _mon. dell' inst._, iii., pl. ) where the goddess is represented as a diminutive figure, above the head of zeus. this conclusion is confirmed by sauer's recent examination of the ground of the pediment. it is now proved that the middle of the east pediment was occupied by two figures of equal importance, and not by a single central figure of zeus, such as is required, if we suppose that the subject was treated according to the tradition of the vase painters. it is further shown to be probable that zeus was seated on the left of the centre, seen in profile and turned to the right, and that athenè stood on the right of the centre, holding a spear in her outstretched right hand. the whole group between the figures g and k is thought, from the indications on the pediment, to have consisted of the following figures, in order from the left:--standing figure, stepping inwards (cf. hermes of the west pediment); standing figure; seated figure in profile to the right; figure standing immediately behind zeus; zeus and athenè; hephaestos (h); seated figure in profile to the left; standing figure; standing figure turned to the left (j); standing figure turned outward (compare g). if we confine our attention to the extant pedimental figures, we find wide differences of opinion as to their interpretation. the figures in the angles are the only ones as to which there can be no doubt. on the left the sun-god, helios, rises from the ocean, driving his car, and on the right the moon-goddess selenè sets beneath the horizon. these two figures may be interpreted as marking the boundaries either of olympos or of the universe. it has also been suggested that they indicate the hour at which the birth took place. this, according to attic tradition, was at sunrise. thus far the interpretation rests upon sure grounds. of the remaining figures in the pediment, j has been generally recognised as victory greeting the newly born goddess, and g has been generally taken for iris, announcing the news to the world (but see below, g). none of the remaining figures have been conclusively identified. most of the numerous schemes of interpretation that have been proposed are exhibited in a table by michaelis, _der parthenon_, p. , cf. _guide to the elgin room, i._, table a. as regards the general principles of interpretation it is to be observed that the schemes may be divided into two classes. we may either suppose with the earlier critics that the space bounded by helios and selenè represents olympos, and that all the figures contained within this space are definite mythological personages, probably deities, who may be supposed to have been present at the birth; or we may assume that all the deities present were comprised in the central part of the pediment, and that the figures towards the angles belong to the world outside olympos, to whom the news is brought. these may be definite mythological persons, or they may be figures personifying parts of the natural world. compare the homeric hymn to athenè, and pindar, _olymp._, vii., . the best views of this pediment are ( ) the drawing of carrey in the bibliothèque nationale (pl. v., fig. ). a facsimile in the british museum; in laborde, _le parthénon_, and _antike denkmaeler_, i., pl. (exhibited in elgin room); ( ) sketch by pars, engraved in stuart, vol. ii., chap. i., pl. . the original drawing is in the print room of the british museum. for a list of proposed restorations, see schneider, _geburt der athena_, p. , pls. - ; waldstein, _essays_, p. . for sauer's examination of the pediment, see _athenische mittheilungen_, xvi., pl. , p. ; _antike denkmaeler_, i., pl. . the ends of the pediment are reproduced in figs. , . [illustration: fig. .--the south end of the east pediment of the parthenon (according to sauer).] [illustration: fig. --the north end of the east pediment of the parthenon (according to sauer).] [sidenote: = a.=] helios, in his chariot emerging from the waves. the head is wanting, the neck has a forward inclination corresponding with the action of the arms, which are stretched out in front of the body, holding the reins by which the upspringing horses of the sun-god were guided and controlled. the head of helios had been already broken away in carrey's time; the wrist and hand of the right arm, now wanting, are shown in his drawing. the surface of the marble on the neck having been protected from weather by the cornice retains its original polish. at the back and between the arms are sculptured small rippling waves to represent a calm sea at sunrise. these waves are treated in the conventional manner usual in representations of water in greek art; their profile shown on the edge of the plinth approximates very nearly to the well-known wave pattern. the metal reins have been attached to the upper surface of the plinth under the right forearm, and also under the right hand, now lost; three dowel holes in this part of the plinth served for their attachment. the waves were probably distinguished by colour. it has been noted by michaelis that the angle in which this figure was placed is the darkest spot in the eastern pediment, and that it is only fully illumined by the early morning sun. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; overbeck, i., p. , fig. (with b, c). [sidenote: = b, c.=] two horses of helios. the team of helios was represented by four horses' heads, two of which still remain in position on the temple, at the back of the pediment. the two which are here are sculptured in the round out of one block of marble. they are represented emerging from the waves, the profile of which is sculptured in relief on the neck of the nearest horse. the head of the horse nearest the eye (b) looks outwards, and has projected beyond the plane of the pedimental cornice, so that it must have caught the light. the action of this horse's head is most spirited, though its effect is greatly impaired by the loss of the lower jaw, and the injury which the surface of the marble has received from exposure to the weather. the reins were of metal, and the points of attachment of reins and bridle are marked by three dowel holes in the plinth, a fourth behind the right ear, and a fifth inside the mouth. the head of the other horse on this block (c), which was advanced beyond the outside head, so as to be visible, is nearly destroyed; only the neck and back of the head remain. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . for the two heads still on the pediment, see _athenische mittheilungen_, xvi., p. . [sidenote: = d.=] this figure, which is commonly known as theseus, reclines on a rock and faces the horses of helios. he leans on his left arm in an easy attitude. the right arm is bent, but, as the hand is wanting, we can only form conjectures as to what its action may have been. it probably held a spear, or some other long object, the end of which may have been attached to the left ankle at the place where a dowel hole is still visible. according to some writers, the hole served for the attachment of the laced work of a sandal in bronze. (_ber. d. k. sächs. ges. d. wissenschaften_, , p. .) the legs are bent, the left leg drawn back under the right. the headdress is in the form of the krobylos (cf. no. ). the body is entirely nude: over the rock on which the figure rests is thrown a mantle under which is strewn a skin, the claws of which are certainly those of some feline animal. the type and position of this figure present so much resemblance to the heracles on the silver coins of croton in lower italy (_mus. marbles_, vi., title-page), that it has been identified with that hero by visconti, who supposed the skin on which he reclines to be that of a lion. this skin, however, seems more like that of a panther, on which ground the figure has been thought to be dionysos, who appears in a very similar reclining attitude on another athenian work, the choragic monument of lysicrates (no. , _ _); compare the statue in the louvre, müller-wieseler, _denkmaeler_, ii., pl. , no. . compare also the figure of dionysos reclining, on a relief on an _askos_ in the british museum, no. g. (see fig. ). the figure, however, differs greatly in character, not only from the figure on the monument of lysicrates, but also from the figure sometimes supposed to be dionysos on the frieze of the parthenon. (east side, no. .) more recently brunn has interpreted this figure as the mountain of olympos illumined by the first rays of the rising sun, and it must be acknowledged that the attitude and type of the so-called theseus is very suitable for the personification of a mountain. compare the figures of mountains from reliefs, collected by waldstein (_essays_, pp. , ). [illustration: fig. .] _mus. marbles_, vi., pls. , ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. ; murray, ii., pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; waldstein, _essays_, pl. ; brunn, _ber. der k. bayer. akad., phil. hist. cl._, , ii., p. . the correct position of the figure in the pediment has been ascertained by sauer (_cf._ fig. ). [sidenote: = e, f.=] two female figures, seated on square seats. they both wear a sleeveless chiton, girt at the waist, and a diploïdion. over it is a mantle thrown over their lower limbs in a rich composition of folds. on the right wrist of the figure nearest the angle (e) is a dowel hole, probably for the attachment of a bracelet. her companion (f), who wore metal fibulæ on each shoulder, extends her left arm towards the figure, which is advancing towards her. her head has been broken off at the base of the neck, but it has probably been turned towards her companion, who rests her left arm affectionately on her shoulder, and who probably looked towards her, perhaps as if listening to the news brought by iris. the seats, on which are laid folded carpets, are carved out of the marble with great care and delicacy of finish, the regular geometrical lines being valuable in opposition to the varied undulations of the drapery. in the sides and backs of both seats are oblong sunk panels, in one of which several archaeologists have tried unsuccessfully to read the name of an artist (see michaelis, p. ; brunn, _griech. künstler_, i., p. ). most of the writers on the parthenon, from visconti downwards, have named this group demeter and persephonè, two deities, whose cult in attica ranked second only to that of athenè herself. this attribution would be strengthened if the reclining male figure could be identified with dionysos, a deity whose worship in attica was closely connected with that of the eleusinian goddesses. the composition of the group has suggested to other archaeologists a sisterly rather than a filial relation between the figures. bröndsted (_voyages et recherches_, ii., p. xi.) suggested that these two figures, with g, were the three horae or seasons, worshipped in attica under the names thallo, auxo and karpo. brunn (followed by waldstein) supposes that the two figures are horae, but that they must be viewed as the warders of the gates of olympos (hom. _il._, v., ) rather than as attic deities. on this theory the position of figure g, if it represents iris, would indicate that she is on the point of reaching the boundary of olympos and passing to the outer world. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; murray, ii., pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; rayet, _monuments_, no. ; waldstein, _essays_, pl. ; mitchell, _selections_, pl. ; brunn, _ber. der k. bayer. akad., phil. hist. cl._, , ii., p. . [sidenote: = g.=] iris (?).--this figure is moving rapidly to our left, the right knee bent. the left arm was probably extended; the right was bent nearly at a right angle. both hands probably held parts of the mantle, of which a remnant floats behind, bellied out by the resistance of the air to the rapid movement of the figure. the feet are wanting from the instep. the figure was let into a socket about two inches deep, on the floor of the pediment. it seems to be exactly in the same condition as when carrey saw it, except that in his drawing rather more of the neck appears than now remains. the dress is a doric chiton, _schistos_, open down the left side, except for the girdle. over this falls a diploïdion. the arms of this figure are small in proportion to the strength of the lower limbs, and the breasts undeveloped like those of a young girl. this would be consistent with the type of iris as the messenger of zeus and hera, trained to swift movement. the head may have been half turned back towards the central group, but too little remains of the neck to make this certain. from the rapid movement of the figure in a direction turned away from the centre of the composition, archæologists have been nearly unanimous in thinking that the figure is iris on her way to announce the event of the birth to the world outside olympos. but the action is not that of a steady flight through the air, for which the nikè of paionios (no. ) should be compared. it is rather that of a person starting aside in alarm. moreover, the figure has not the wings of iris, and on these grounds she has been called eileithyia (murray, ii., p. ), hebè (brunn, _ber. d. k. bayer. akad. phil. hist. cl._, , ii., p. ), or simply a terrified maiden (wolters, p. ). _mus. marbles_, vi., pls. , ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; michaelis, pl. , figs. , _a_; murray, ii., pl. ; mitchell, _selections_, pl. . [sidenote: = h.=] cast of a torso of hephaestos or prometheus. powerful male torso, from the neck to the groin. the action of the shoulders, and of the muscles of the ribs and back shows that the arms were raised. perhaps both hands held an axe above the head, as if about to strike. this is the only fragment besides no. j. which has any claim to be assigned to the central group of the eastern pediment. though we have little knowledge of how the central group of this pediment was composed, we may suppose that the personage would not have been omitted through whose act of cleaving the head of zeus with an axe the birth of athenè was accomplished. in the most generally diffused version of the myth this was done by hephaestos, but attic tradition preferred to attribute the deed to prometheus. the original, which was discovered on the east side of the parthenon in , is at _athens_. michaelis, pl. , figs. , _a_. [sidenote: = j.=] nikè, or victory. torso of a female figure, moving rapidly to the front, and to our left, with the right arm extended in the same direction. the figure wears a short sleeveless chiton with a diploïdion which is confined under the girdle, to facilitate rapid motion. a piece of bronze, which is fixed in the marble about the middle of the left thigh, may have served for the attachment of a metallic object, perhaps a taenia held in the left hand. at the back the drapery is tied together, so as to leave the shoulder-blades bare. on each shoulder-blade is a deep oblong sinking, which can only have served for the insertion of the wings, which must have been attached by dowels in the holes pierced round the sinkings. it may be inferred from the size of these sinkings that the wings were of marble, not metal. it has generally been taken for granted, that this figure belongs to the eastern pediment, and it has been inferred from its height that it was not placed much nearer the centre than its present position. this depends, however, on the original position of the wings. if they were raised above the head, the figure must have occupied a place nearer to the centre than it does at present. but it should be observed, that in carrey's drawing of the eastern pediment this figure is not given, and, though visconti states that it was found lying on the ground below the front of the temple, it has been contended that he may have been misinformed on this point, and that the figure so closely resembles one in the western pediment as drawn by carrey and dalton that it is probably the same. (see plate v., fig. , n, michaelis, p. , pl. , fig. n, and _hilfstafel_, fig. n.) this resemblance may be admitted; but if, on this ground, we identify the torso of nikè with the figure in the western pediment (n), which stands by the car of amphitritè, we have a victory associated with the side of poseidon, which seems inconsistent with the entire conception of the western pediment. moreover, the figure in carrey's drawing has a scarf hanging from the left arm, which seems not in character with the type of victory; and, further, carrey gives no indication of wings. on the other hand, the composition in the eastern pediment would be incomplete if nikè were not present to welcome the new-born athenè. on the whole, therefore, there is strong reason for leaving this torso in the pediment to which it was originally assigned by visconti. in recent years two valuable additions have been made to this figure. the right thigh was identified and added in , and the left knee in . the figure is placed by sauer in profile to the left. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , figs. , _a_; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. . [sidenote: = k, l, m.=] group of three female figures (or, perhaps, a group of two, with a third figure less closely associated, the figure k being made of a different block from l and m). the figures are seated on rocks, levelled on the top, and in the case of l, m, cut in step form to suit the composition. the rocks are covered with draperies. these three figures are considerably more complete in carrey's drawings than now, and the motives can best be understood with the aid of the drawings. the figure k half turned her head towards the central scene. the right arm was bent at the elbow towards the front of the body. the figure l was headless in carrey's time. the right arm, according to carrey's drawing, was bent towards the right shoulder, as if the action had been that of drawing up the edge of the mantle with the right hand. the body of this figure is bent forward and the feet drawn far back, as would be the case with a person wishing to spring up. this motive forms a contrast to that of the reclining figure (m), whose right arm rests in her companion's lap, and whose tranquil attitude and averted gaze, shown by carrey's drawing to have been directed towards the angle of the pediment, seem to indicate that the news of the birth has not yet reached her. k wears sandals, a chiton with diploïdion, and a mantle of thick substance which passes across the knees, and over the left shoulder, above which it may have been held with the left hand. l wears a fine chiton, confined with a cord beneath the arms, and a mantle covering the back and passing across the knees. m wears a fine chiton, confined at the waist by a girdle, and has a mantle wrapped about her legs. she appears to have worn a bracelet on the right arm. on comparing the composition of this triad with that of the triad placed next to helios in the opposite half of the pediment a curious analogy of treatment may be observed. the so-called theseus (d), like the reclining figure (m), seems to be quite unconscious of the great event which is being announced, and they are turned as by law of attraction to the groups of day and night which bound the scene on either side. the central figure on either triad seems only half aroused, while on either side the figure nearest the central action appears to have heard the news of the birth. if the triad near selenè are the three fates, as visconti and many of his successors have supposed, their place would more naturally be in the central part of the composition, or at least they might be supposed to be more on the alert with respect to what was passing. by others it has been argued that the place of this triad in immediate succession to selenè, and the direction in which the figure nearest to the angle (m) is turned, would point to some mythic connection between these three figures and the goddess of the moon. such a connection is suggested by the names given to the group by welcker, who saw in them the three daughters of cecrops, aglauros, hersè, and pandrosos, mythic impersonations of the dew, who have a conspicuous place in attic legend, though pandrosos alone of the three seems to have been honoured with worship at athens. the same desire to connect this triad with selenè has led brunn (_ber. d. k. bayer. akad. phil. hist. cl._, , ii., p. ) to see in them personifications of clouds. among the writers who have regarded k as separate from l and m, the most common opinion has been that k is hestia; l and m have been called aphroditè in the lap of thalassa (ronchaud), or of peitho (petersen), or thalassa, the sea, in the lap of gaia, the earth (waldstein). k. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; murray, ii., pl. ; mitchell, _selections_, pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . l. m. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. ; murray, ii., pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; waldstein, _essays_, pl. ; mitchell, _selections_, pl. . [sidenote: = n.=] selenè.--it has been already stated that the horse's head in the right-hand angle of the pediment belongs to the goddess of the moon, who is represented by the torso cast in plaster (n) which stands next to it. the original of this torso, now at athens, was discovered in on the east side of the parthenon. the arms and head are wanting, the body is cut off below the waist, as only the upper part of the figure was shown on the pediment. the dress is a sleeveless chiton girt at the waist and fastened on each shoulder. the bosom is crossed diagonally by two bands which pass round to the back. two large dowel holes in the girdle and two others on the shoulders mark where metallic ornaments have been attached. on the back is a remnant of drapery extending from shoulder to shoulder; this is probably part of a peplos, the ends of which may have fallen over the arms. it has usually been assumed that selenè was driving a chariot, and this has been conclusively proved by sauer, who found the heads of two horses still in position on the pediment, and indications of a fourth head now lost. a theory recently suggested that selenè rides a single horse is thereby rendered untenable. michaelis, pl. , figs. , a; _cf._ wolters, pp. , ; c. smith, _journ. of hellen. studies_, ix., p. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; sauer, _athenische mittheilungen_, xvi., pl. , p. . [sidenote: = o.=] horse's head.--the head was so placed in the pediment that the muzzle projected over the cornice; in order to adjust it securely in this position, a portion of the lower jaw was cut away. the inner side of the top of the head has also been cut away, in order to give room for the upper member of the pediment. this head presents, as might have been expected, a marked contrast in motive to the pair in the opposite angle. the heads of the horses of helios are thrown up with fiery impatience as they spring from the waves; the downward inclination of the head here described indicates that the car of selenè is about to vanish below the horizon. in the whole range of ancient art there is, perhaps, no work in marble in which the sculptor has shown such complete mastery over his material. the nostrils "drink the air"; the fiery expression of the eye, the bold, sharply defined outlines of the bony structure so skilfully opposed to the sensitive flexibility of the nose, and the brawny tenseness of the arched neck, are so combined in this noble work that the praise bestowed on it by goethe is not extravagant. "this work," he says, "whether created by the imagination of the artist or seen by him in nature, seems the revelation of a prototype; it combines real truth with the highest poetical conception." behind the ears is a dowel hole; another is on the nose between the eyes and the mouth, and a third on the inner corner of the mouth. these show where a metal bridle was attached. on the crest of the hogged mane are eleven smaller holes, in which some metallic ornament must have been inserted. two horses' heads still remain in the angle of the pediment. see above, n. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , figs. , _a_; murray, ii., pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . western pediment of the parthenon. [sidenote: = .=] the subject of the western pediment of the parthenon according to pausanias (i., , ) was the strife of poseidon with athenè for the soil of attica. this contest, according to tradition, took place on the acropolis itself. athenè, on this occasion, showed her power by making the soil produce the olive-tree; poseidon, striking the ground with his trident, produced a salt spring, or, according to another and later version, a horse. the victory in the contest was adjudged to athenè. the spot where this double miracle took place was marked in subsequent times by the joint temple of erechtheus and athenè polias; within the precincts of which were the sacred olive-tree produced by athenè, and the salt spring of poseidon. in the time of carrey, the composition in this pediment was nearly perfect, and to understand the torsos which remain, reference should be made to carrey's drawing (plate v., fig. ), or to the large model of the parthenon. a few of the early writers on the parthenon (spon, woods, leake, weber) mistook the western pediment for that which contained the representation of the birth of athenè. if we omit the archaeologists who were under this misapprehension, we find that, while there is much difference of opinion as to the identification of the single figures in the western pediment as drawn by carrey, it is generally admitted that the space bounded by the reclining figures in the angles represents the acropolis between the two rivers of athens, and that the figures to the left of athenè are attic deities or heroes, who would sympathise actively with her in the contest which is the subject of the pediment, while those to the right of poseidon are the subordinate marine deities who would naturally be present as the supporters of the ruler of the sea. the most interesting dissentient theory is that of brunn (_ber. d. k. bayer. akad. phil. hist. cl._, , ii., p. ). by an ingenious but inconclusive series of arguments he has endeavoured to show that the west pediment contains a personified representation of the whole coast of attica, from the borders of megaris to cape sunium. the great destruction of the western pediment since it was seen by carrey may have been partly due to the explosion during the siege, but was chiefly the work of the venetian general morosini. after taking the acropolis he tried to lower the horses of the car of athenè, but the tackle he used broke, and this matchless group fell to the ground. if the fragments had been then collected and put together, much of this beautiful design might have been saved, but they remained on the spot where they fell till after the establishment of the greek kingdom at athens ( ), when such of them as were extant were gathered up and placed in a magazine on the acropolis. they were subsequently moulded, and casts of them are now exhibited in the elgin room. between the time of morosini and the middle of the last century, when dalton drew the western pediment, the work of destruction had been carried much further. in the right wing of the composition the figures n, o, q, s, t, and in the left wing only four figures, a, b, c, and f(?) are shown in position on the pediment in dalton's plate. in the intervening middle space, two torsos are lying on the floor of the pediment. one of these is probably the poseidon; the other may be the figure marked h. on the ground below the pediment lies the body of a draped figure, perhaps athenè, and a fragment which may belong to the poseidon. all that remained in position in the western pediment when lord elgin's agents came to athens were the figures b and c in the north angle, and in the south angle the lower part of the reclining female figure w. the figures are still in position, and the west end of the parthenon was therefore not touched by lord elgin. the river-god a and the torsos h, l, m, o were found under the north-west angle of the pediment, after taking down a turkish house built against the columns. the lower part of a female figure q may also have been found on this spot. after the acropolis passed into the possession of the greek government, the ground round the parthenon was partly cleared of its ruins, and this led to the discovery, in , of the crouching male figure v and of many fragments, among which are remains of the horses lowered by morosini. the sculptures removed by lord elgin are exhibited in combination with casts of the remains now at athens. the description that follows begins from the left or northern angle of the pediment. [sidenote: = a.=] ilissos or kephissos.--this figure, reclining in the angle of the pediment, is universally admitted to be a river-god, (cf. the description by pausanias (v., , ) of the pediment of the temple of zeus at olympia). the figure is popularly known as the ilissos, but it may represent the athenian kephissos. according to brunn's topographical scheme, it is a less familiar kephissos, near eleusis. this figure appears not to have suffered much since carrey drew it. it was still in the pediment in stuart's time, but had been thrown down at the date of lord elgin's mission. the body, half reclined, rests on the left arm, over which is the end of an himation, which falls behind the back in undulating lines, and is drawn up to the right knee. as the head and most of the right arm are wanting, their action must be a matter of conjecture; the general motion of the figure seems to indicate the moment of sudden transition from repose to action, and would be consistent with the supposition that the head was turned towards the central group, watching the momentous issue of the contest, and that the river-god was in the act of rising. in that case his right hand may have been drawing forward the end of his himation over his right knee. this figure has been long and deservedly celebrated for the perfection of its anatomy. in the front of the body, the flexibility of the abdominal muscles is finely contrasted with the strong framework of the ribs. the supple elastic character of the skin is here rendered with the same mastery as in the horse's head of the eastern pediment. at the back some of the surface has retained its original polish. in the undulating lines of the drapery, the sculptor has succeeded in suggesting the idea of flowing water without having recourse to direct or conventional imitation. the ground on which the figure reclines is a rock. the left hand rested on the bed of the pediment. a drawing by pars taken during his visit to athens in - (engraved stuart, ii., chap. i., pl. ), shows part of the right forearm not shown in carrey's drawing, and the outline of the four fingers of the left hand overlapping the edge of the pediment. a small attribute, probably of marble, was attached to the floor of the pediment in front of the figure. _mus. marbles_, vi., pls. , ; mansell, ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. ; murray, ii., pl. ; mitchell, _selections_, pl. ; waldstein, _essays_, pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; sauer, _athenische mittheilungen_, xvi., p. . [sidenote: = a*.=] between a and the two next figures (b, c) a space is shown in dalton's drawing sufficient for a crouching figure, though no vestige of such a figure is indicated by carrey. traces also remain on the floor of the pediment (sauer, _athenische mittheilungen_, xvi., p. ). this gap may have been filled by a crouching water nymph, associated with the river-god. brunn suggests a tributary of the eleusinian kephissos. [sidenote: = b, c.=] cecrops and pandrosos (cast).--this group still remains in the pediment at athens, though much injured by exposure to the weather. it consists of a male figure, whose left thigh receives the main weight of his body, which leans a little to the right, resting on his left hand. with him is grouped a female figure, who has thrown herself in haste on both knees, with one arm round the neck of her companion. her action expresses surprise at the event occurring in the centre of the pediment, towards which she has looked back. she wears a long chiton, and over it a diploïdion which falls below the girdle, and which has slipped from the left shoulder, leaving the left breast and side exposed. her left arm, now entirely wanting, was broken off a little below the shoulder at the date of carrey's drawing. the male figure has a mantle cast over his lower limbs. his right arm, which was broken off below the elbow in the time of stuart, is now reduced to a stump. the right leg and knee and part of the right thigh have also been lost since the time of stuart. it appears from the statements of travellers (cf. michaelis, p. ) that these figures lost their heads in the years and . the careful drawing of the group made by pars, and preserved in the british museum (stuart, ii., chap. i., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ), shows that the heads of both figures were turned towards the central group, the head of the female figure being, moreover, slightly inclined over the left shoulder. in this drawing the right arm of the male figure is bent at a right angle, the upper part being nearly horizontal. on the ground between the pair is a convex mass, which has been recognised to be part of the coil of a large serpent. the remainder of this serpent may be seen at the back of the group, passing under the left hand of the male figure. in front of this hand the body of the serpent terminates in a joint with a rectangular sinking, into which a fragment from the elgin collection has been fitted. (_mus. marbles_, vi., pl. , fig. .) this group has received various names. spon and wheler took it to represent hadrian and sabina, and their opinion was repeated by payne knight. the group has also been called heracles and hebè; hephaestos and aphroditè. the association of the serpent with the male figure has led michaelis (p. ) to recognise in him asclepios, in which case the female figure would naturally be hygieia, who is constantly associated with the father of the healing art, and who was worshipped, conjointly with asclepios, in a shrine at the southern foot of the athenian acropolis. the bearded head, too, of the male figure, as drawn by pars, would well accord with the type of asclepios. on the other hand, the serpent in connection with that deity is usually coiled round his staff, not winding along the ground, as on the pediment. the whole composition of this serpent in relation to the kneeling male figure rather suggests the type of the earth-born cecrops, as has been maintained by a considerable number of archæologists. if we adopt this attribution, then the female figure so intimately associated with the bearded figure in this group would be one of the daughters of cecrops, perhaps pandrosos. for the topographical interpretations of boetticher (marathon and salamis) and of brunn (kithaeron and parnes) there is no evidence. michaelis, pl. , fig. ; murray, ii., pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . a remarkably accurate copy of this group was recently discovered at eleusis, and is now in the national museum at athens. in the copy the coils of the serpent are omitted ([greek: ephêmeris], , pl. ). [sidenote: = d, e, f.=] if b and c are cecrops and one of his daughters, the two female figures (d, f), who in carrey's drawing follow next, might be his other two daughters. the boy (e) between them would be, in that case, not the infant iakchos between demeter (d) and korè (f), as several writers have supposed, but the young erysichthon, son of cecrops. according to brunn's scheme these three figures personify lycabettos, between pentelicon and hymettos. of the three figures d, e, f, only one fragment, now at athens, has been identified, representing the left knee of a seated figure, with the right hand of a boy resting on it, and thus corresponding with carrey's drawing of the seated figure on whose knee the boy erysichthon rests his right hand. a cast of this fragment is exhibited in a wall-case (no. , _ _). a fragment, now at athens with the drapery on the right side of a figure seated on a rock, has been conjecturally assigned by michaelis (pl. , fig. ) to figure d or u. a cast is exhibited, no. , _ _. in dalton's drawing a draped female torso, broken off at the knees, is placed next to c, which michaelis (p. ), conjectures to be the remains of f. dalton has represented this figure with the chiton slipped down from the right shoulder so as to show the right breast and side. but the drawing by pars shows next to c a part of a figure which accords more with d as drawn by carrey. this fragment consists of a right arm bent at a right angle and advanced, and a line of drapery falling down the right side below the armpit. there is no reason to doubt that the figure to which the arm belonged was in position on the pediment when pars drew it, and, if so, dalton's drawing must be wholly inaccurate in respect to this figure. (see michaelis, pl. , fig. .) [sidenote: = g.=] next in order in carrey's drawing is the seated female figure (g), who acts as charioteer to athenè, and who has been generally recognised as nikè. the only fragment which can be attributed with any probability to this figure is the head, obtained from venice by count de laborde (no. , _ _). a cast is exhibited in the elgin room. [sidenote: = h.=] hermes (?).--in the background, between the figure g and the horses, carrey gives a male figure (h), who looks back at the charioteer, while he moves forward in the same direction as the horses. the figure drawn by carrey has been generally recognised in the torso in the museum which has lost the head and lower limbs since carrey's time, and is probably the same torso which dalton represents lying on the bed of the pediment. this figure has been called erechtheus, erichthonios, ares, cecrops, theseus, pan, or hermes. he is evidently aiding the charioteer in the management of the horses; an office very appropriate to hermes, whose general character as a guide is expressed by such epithets as [greek: pompaios], and who on other monuments is represented conducting a chariot. the drapery which hangs at the back of the torso evidently represents a chlamys, which must have been fastened in front just above the left clavicle, where a hole is pierced to receive a metallic fastening. there is another hole between the collar-bones. the right arm was probably advanced nearly in a horizontal direction; the left arm may have had the elbow a little drawn back; and a portion of the chlamys evidently passed round this arm, and was probably twisted round it, a fashion of drapery characteristic of hermes. among the fragments of the parthenon at athens is a small piece of the left shoulder of this figure, a cast of which has been adjusted to the marble in the museum. the remains of the left thigh show that the left leg was advanced as in carrey's drawing. the fragments described below, nos. , _ _, and , _ _, may belong to this figure. a fragment of plinth, with two feet, sometimes assigned to it, is described below, no. . _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = l, m.=] athenè and poseidon.--the athenè of which l is the remnant is drawn by carrey moving rapidly to the left; her right arm, broken off above the elbow, is advanced horizontally in the same direction. her left arm is broken off below the shoulder; she wears a long chiton, over which is a diploïdion, reaching to the hips, and falling in a fold over the girdle. the ægis, folded like a narrow band, passes obliquely across the bosom between the breasts, and has extended from the right shoulder round the left side, and probably across the back. it is scalloped on its lower edge, and at the points holes are pierced for the attachment of serpents of metal. in the centre of the ægis is another hole, in which a circular object six inches in diameter, doubtless a gorgoneion, has been fixed. carrey's drawing shows the base of the neck, which was broken off before the time of lord elgin. it has been recognised among the fragments on the acropolis, and a cast of it is now adjusted to the marble. it is evident from this that the head of the goddess was turned towards her antagonist. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = m.=] the torso of poseidon is made up of three parts. the fragment with the shoulders and upper part of the chest was removed by lord elgin; the fragment containing the remainder of the breast and the abdomen nearly to the navel has been since discovered, and the original is at athens. since this torso was engraved in the work of michaelis (pl. , fig. ), a small piece has been added to the lower part of the abdomen. it appears from carrey's drawing that poseidon was starting back in a direction contrary to that of athenè, with the weight of his body thrown on the left knee, which is bent. carrey's drawing shows the same portion of the right upper arm, which is preserved. it is raised with the shoulder and may have been extended in a nearly horizontal direction. the head in carrey's drawing is slightly inclined over the right shoulder. at the back the upper part of the shoulders is roughly cut away; the chiselling does not appear to be ancient, but may have been done after the figure had fallen from the pediment. the upper part of this torso is remarkable for the grandeur of the lines. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; lower part, michaelis, pl. , fig. ; laborde, _le parthénon_. the two parts are combined, overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. , fig. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . though we know from pausanias that the strife between athenè and poseidon for the soil of attica was the subject of the western pediment, the exact action represented by the central group cannot be determined. most writers suppose that the combatants have produced their respective tokens, and that the strife is just decided. among the fragments found on the acropolis were three which are certainly parts of an olive-tree (michaelis, pl. , fig. ). the scale of these fragments, casts of which are exhibited (see below, nos. , _ - _), would be suitable for a tree placed in the centre of the pediment between the two contending deities. if these fragments belong to the parthenon (of which there is no positive proof), it seems natural to suppose that athenè is represented as having produced her olive, which stood in the centre of the pediment, and was fixed in a rectangular socket, well adapted to support it (sauer, _athenische mittheilungen_, xvi., pl. , p. ). in this case the two gods are seen starting asunder, but looking inwards, after the decisive moment. the salt spring produced by the trident of poseidon may also have had a place in the composition, though no trace of it is to be found either among the fragments or in carrey's drawing. the chief divergent theory is that of stephani, who published a vase-painting representing the contest (_compte rendu_, , pl. , p. ; _journ. of hellenic studies_, iii., p. ). in that design poseidon and athenè form an antagonistic group, which in composition presents some resemblance with the central group in the pediment. the olive-tree is placed between them, and poseidon controls, with his left hand, the upspringing horse. stephani argues from the vase-painting that pheidias made poseidon produce the horse--a variant tradition, of which there are traces in late literature--that poseidon was represented striking the ground with his trident and athenè striking it with her lance to produce the tokens, which are shown, by anticipation, in the pediment itself. it is more likely that on the vase the tokens have been produced and poseidon attacks, while athenè defends the olive. but neither in the protagonists nor in the rest of the design on the vase is there that close correspondence in type and action which would justify the conclusion that the vase-painter copied directly any portion of the pedimental composition. on the other hand, considerable portions of the bodies of three horses in addition to those represented by casts in the british museum (no. ) have been discovered in the excavations on the acropolis (sauer, _athenische mittheilungen_, xvi., pl. , p. ), and there can be little doubt that the figure known as amphitritè (o) acted as the charioteer of poseidon, and drove a pair of horses which corresponded closely to the team of athenè, and completed the symmetry of the composition. inasmuch therefore as each deity has a similar pair of horses, it is impossible to regard those of poseidon as his distinctive token in the combat. if we assume that this second pair of horses was attached to the chariot of poseidon, room may be found for a representation of the salt spring either between the left leg of the sea-god and the forelegs of his chariot horses, or beneath the horses. for the vase picture already referred to, see also de witte, in the _monuments grecs de l'association pour l'encouragement des études grecques_, no. , ; brunn, _sitzungsber. d. k. bayer. akad. phil.-hist. cl._, , p. ; and petersen, _arch. zeit._, , p. . for more recent discussions on the subject of the dispute between athenè and poseidon, see robert in _hermes_, xvi., p. , and in _athenische mittheilungen_, vii., p. ; petersen in _hermes_, xvii., p. ; e. a. gardner, in _journ. of hellen. studies_, iii., p. ; wolters, p. . [sidenote: = n.=] this figure, which may have been a nereid, has been entirely lost since the time of dalton, unless we identify it with the supposed victory of the east pediment. (see no. j.) [sidenote: = o.=] amphitritè.--in carrey's drawing this torso appears as a seated figure, the right foot on a higher level than the left, the left arm drawn back as if holding the reins; between the feet appears the head either of a dolphin or a marine monster. the head, left hand, and apparently the right arm of amphitritè are wanting. according to dalton's imperfect drawing, the figure had in his time lost the left forearm and left leg. the torso at present wants the head, right arm from the shoulder, left arm from below the shoulder, and all the lower limbs except the upper part of the left thigh. the body is clad in a long chiton without sleeves; an upper fold falls over the bosom as low as the waist, passing under a broad girdle such as would be suitable for charioteers. a small mantle passes obliquely across the back, one end passing over the left shoulder and under the left arm; the other had passed over the right shoulder. the places where metallic ornaments were attached on this figure are marked by five holes pierced in the marble, one of which is on the base of the neck, one on the right shoulder at the fastening of the chiton, and three on the left shoulder. on the inside of the left thigh are folds of fine drapery; the surface of the outside still shows that the chiton had been open at the side, _schistos_, as in carrey's drawing. it should be noted that this figure was not seated, as carrey has drawn it, but must have been standing with the body thrown back and the arms extended in front, like the charioteer (no. ) in the north frieze. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis. pl. , figs. , _a_. [sidenote: = p, q.=] leucothea, with boy (?).--lower limbs of a seated female figure, which in carrey's drawing appears on the right of the amphitritè, and which then had its head. the head of the female figure looks out of the pediment; the feet are placed very close together. in dalton's drawing this figure is still in position, but headless. in its present state, nothing remains of this figure but the lap and legs to the ankles. on the right of the figure, the body of a youth (p) appears in carrey's drawing. the beginning of the right thigh, with the lower part of the buttock, is still preserved; of the left thigh, the outline as far as the knee is preserved on the marble. three fingers of his right hand may still be traced on the right knee of the female figure (q), where they rest on an end of drapery, probably his himation, which reappears, wound round his left thigh. these remains show that the body of this boy faced the right side of the female figure, pressing against her. if we assume that she is a marine goddess, the name leucothea seems the best attribution, and the youth at her side would then be palaemon. a mantle is thrown over the thighs, falling down between the knees over the chiton. the folds are deeply undercut, as if to express the gentle agitation of the drapery by the movement of a light breeze. in brunn's topographical scheme, p q are the coast of attica from munychia to the piraeus. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = r.=] a figure of a child appears in carrey's drawing on the right of the figure q. it is doubtful whether it should be associated most nearly with q or with the figure next on the right (s). on the former supposition, the figure called above leucothea has been interpreted as leto with apollo and artemis; as leda with the dioscuri; or as fostering earth, [greek: gê kourotrophos], with children. on the latter supposition r has generally been called eros associated with aphroditè (s). [sidenote: = s, t.=] next in carrey's drawing comes a draped female figure (t), seated, in whose lap is a naked figure (s), supposed by carrey to be female. this is generally supposed to be thalassa, the sea; the almost entire nudity of the figure in her lap (s) makes it probable that aphroditè is here represented; her position in the lap of thalassa would be a way of expressing her sea-born origin. according to brunn, t is a personification of cape colias, and the figure of aphroditè indicates a shrine of that goddess which stood on the cape. if, as seems probable, the naked female figure is aphroditè, the boy (r) is probably eros. both the female figures were still in the pediment when dalton drew it. the marble fragment (t), representing the right thigh of a draped female figure seated on a rock, is probably the only extant remnant of thalassa. a mantle has been brought round the lower limbs of this figure, so that one edge of it falls on the rock on which she is seated. this disposition of the drapery is indicated in carrey's drawing. (michaelis, pl. , fig. .) [sidenote: = u.=] next in carrey's drawing comes a female figure (u), seated and draped. this had fallen out of the pediment when dalton drew it, and no fragment of it can now be identified. it had lost the head and arms in carrey's time. the figure presents no distinctive characteristic by which she may be identified. she is probably a marine deity. brunn interprets her as a personification of cape zoster. [sidenote: = v, w.=] ilissos or kephissos and callirrhoè (?).--(casts) the draped female figure (w) reclining in the extreme angle of the pediment appears in carrey's drawing leaning on her right elbow, and with her head turned towards the male figure (v) who kneels on both knees, inclining his body towards his companion, and leaning on his left arm. the manner in which these figures are here associated suggests an intimate relation between the two; the female figure has all the characteristics of a local nymph, and the flow of her drapery would well accord with an aquatic type. it seems probable, therefore, that the celebrated athenian fountain callirrhoè may be personified by this figure, and in that case the male figure next to her (v), though not in the reclining attitude usually characteristic of river-gods, may be the ilissos, out of whose bed the fountain callirrhoè rises. brunn holds that v is a personification of the attic coast, paralia. this, however, appears, from a recently-discovered inscription, to be represented as female (_athenische mittheilungen_, xiii., p. ); w according to the same archæologist is a personification of the myrtoan sea. dalton's drawing shows no indication of either of these figures, though the lower half of the callirrhoè is to this day in position on the pediment. the torso of the male figure had been broken, and was found in two places in the excavations on the acropolis in . the head, arms, and left leg have disappeared since carrey's time. the right leg is doubled up under the figure; the left knee must have been somewhat higher. this figure is nude with the exception of a chlamys which falls down the back and passes in front over the right ankle. for a fragment which may belong to the left hand, see no. , _ _. this agrees with the statement of sauer (_athenische mittheilungen_, , p. ), that the figure leant with open hand on the ground. the female figure (w) is reclining on her right side; the right knee has been more bent than the left. the upper part of the body seems, from the direction of the folds of the drapery, to have been slightly raised, and to have rested on the right elbow, as represented in carrey's drawing. the dress is a long chiton, over which falls a diploïdion nearly to the waist. all that remains of the figure are the right side from below the arm to a little below the right hip, and parts of both legs wanting the knees. according to carrey the left arm of this figure was raised so that the hand projected beyond the cornice. between the figures v and w a hole is pierced in the bed of the pediment, in which some bronze object was inserted. figure v., laborde, _le parthénon_; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; figure w., michaelis, pl. , fig. . metopes of the parthenon. the metopes of the parthenon are sculptured blocks which were inserted in the spaces, _met[)o]pæ_, left between the ends of the beams of the roof. these ends were represented by slabs, called _triglyphs_, from the three parallel vertical bands cut in them. reference to the model of the parthenon will show the relative position of the metopes and triglyphs. the parthenon had originally ninety-two metopes, thirty-two of which were on each of the long sides, and fourteen at each end. many of these are now only preserved in the drawings by carrey, having been destroyed in the great explosion. unfortunately, however, carrey was only able to sketch the metopes of the south side. forty-one metopes still remain on the temple, but are for the most part so decayed through time and weather that there is great difficulty in making out their subject. the british museum possesses fifteen original metopes brought from athens by lord elgin. his contemporary, choiseul-gouffier, while ambassador at constantinople, obtained one more (no. ), which is now in the louvre. these sixteen metopes are all from the south side of the parthenon, and their subjects were taken from the contest between the centaurs and lapiths at the marriage-feast of peirithoös. the first metope on the south side of the parthenon, reckoning from the south-west angle, is still in position on the temple (michaelis, pl. , ); the second on the temple is the first of the series of fifteen in the museum. the sculpture of the metopes is in the highest relief attainable in marble, large portions of some of the figures being carved in the round so as to stand out quite free of the background. there is a remarkable inequality of style in the sculpture. thus, for example, nos. , show traces of archaic feeling, and while no. appears to be the work of an indifferent artist, nos. , , are admirable. [sidenote: = .=] the lapith kneels on the back of the centaur, clasping his head with his left arm, and pressing the fingers of his left hand against his windpipe. the centaur has been thrown on his right knee; his head is forced back, his mouth wide open as if uttering a cry of agony. his left hand vainly endeavours to dislodge the grasp on his throat, the right hand appears behind the right shoulder of the lapith. when drawn by carrey, the head and right foot of the lapith and the right foreleg of the centaur still remained. the head of lapith may be no. , _ _. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. ; michaelis, pl. , ii.; _stereoscopic_, no. , a. [sidenote: = .=] the lapith attacks the centaur from behind, resting his right knee on his crupper, and extending forward his right arm to seize the neck of his foe. the centaur, standing to the left, turns his human body half round to meet his adversary. a skin is wound about his left arm by way of shield. an ample chlamys hangs from the shoulders of the lapith, and he wears boots. his left arm was drawn back to strike. a hole near the pit between the collar-bones and another on the lowest left rib show where a sword-belt has been attached. two similar holes are to be seen on the body of the centaur. these may have served for the attachment of a bronze weapon held in the right hand. the head of the centaur still existed when carrey drew this metope, but had disappeared before the time of stuart. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , iii.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] the centaur is victorious; with both hands raised above his head, he is about to hurl on his prostrate foe a large hydria. his equine body is rearing against the lapith, who vainly endeavours to defend himself with his uplifted buckler, while the centaur strikes at him with his fore feet. the right forearm of the lapith, now wanting, has rested on the ground. a fragment of his right foot still remaining on the base of the metope below the left hind leg of the centaur shows that this leg was extended nearly at full length, as it is drawn by carrey. the heads of both these figures and the right arm of the centaur are cast from the originals in the museum at copenhagen, which were sent from athens in by a captain hartmand, who probably served under count königsmark in morosini's army. round the head of the lapith is a sinking into which a metallic band or wreath has been fitted. on the ground under the body of the lapith are some folds of his chlamys, a fragment of which may be traced on his left arm. michaelis adds to the centaur's left hind-leg a hoof and lower part of leg, the original of which is in the museum at copenhagen; but he expresses a doubt whether this fragment does not belong to the right hind-leg. when carrey drew the metope, it was nearly perfect. on the upper margin of the marble still remains the bead and reel moulding which once ornamented all the metopes, but of which there are few traces elsewhere. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . for the two heads, see bröndsted, _voyages et recherches_, p. ; _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , iv. [sidenote: = .=] [illustration: fig. .--metopes , , from carrey.] when carrey saw this metope, the figure of the lapith, now wanting, was still extant, and we must therefore supply the motive of the group by reference to his drawing (fig. ). in the original composition, the centaur, rearing up against his antagonist, grasps the lapith's right thigh between his forelegs, extending his left arm towards him, probably to seize the hair of his head. the lapith with extended right arm is trying to keep the centaur at arm's length, while he struggles to escape; his left arm must have been raised. the right arm of the centaur must have been drawn back to strike. all that now remains of the lapith is a portion of the right wrist attached to the centaur near his throat. a skin, fastened round the centaur's neck, flies behind his back, falling over his left upper arm. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , v.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] in this metope, as drawn by carrey (fig. ), the right arm of the lapith is raised with the forearm bent; the right hand, which probably held a sword, was already broken off in carrey's time. his drawing gives the head and part of the right upper arm of the centaur, and the left leg and half the right leg of the lapith, but not his head. the centaur, while pressing his left hand on the left shoulder of the lapith, draws back a little from the blow with which he is menaced. the action of both figures is rather tame, and the victory undecided. an ample chlamys is shown falling at the back of the lapith. part of the right hind leg of the centaur has been added in plaster from the marble fragment now at athens. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , vi.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] the lapith presses forward, advancing his left hand to seize the rearing centaur by the throat, and forcing him on his haunches; the right arm of the lapith is drawn back, as if about to strike; his right hand, now wanting, probably held a sword: a mantle fastened on the right shoulder falls over the left arm like a shield, and flies back behind. the centaur, rearing up against his antagonist, tries in vain to pull away the left hand of the lapith, which, in carrey's drawing, he grasps. the head of the centaur is a cast from the original at athens. from the shoulders of the centaur hangs a small chlamys; the folds fly behind, and show the violence and swiftness of the action. the head of the lapith is a cast from the original, which is now in the louvre. carrey's drawing gives the missing parts of the legs of this group. this is, perhaps, the finest of all the metopes in the museum. the action is most spirited, and the modelling very thorough and masterly. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , vii.; _stereoscopic_, no. ; waldstein, in _journ. of hellen. studies_, iii., pl. , p. ; _essays_, pls. , , p. . [sidenote: = .=] the lapith is kneeling on his right knee. the centaur, the human portion of whose body is broken away, presses down his antagonist. from carrey's drawing, taken when this metope was nearly complete, we learn what the action was. he represents the centaur bending over the kneeling lapith, and raising his right hand to strike a deadly blow at his antagonist, who looks up with his head thrown back, and stretches out his left arm towards the breast of the centaur. a chlamys hangs down from the left arm of the lapith. his right arm, which was lost in the time of carrey, must have been raised. the right hind foot of the centaur rests on a rock. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , viii.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] the centaur has again the advantage. the lapith is thrown down over a large wine vessel, _pithos_; the centaur has grasped his left leg with his left hand, rolling him back on the jar. the lapith seizes his antagonist by the beard with his left hand, while his right arm, now broken off, has been vainly extended behind him, seeking some support. the right thigh of this figure, the head and part of the right arm of the centaur are casts from three fragments at athens. carrey's drawing gives the left arm and side of the centaur, as well as his head. the head and right arm and hand of the lapith are also shown in his drawing, but not the portion of right thigh which has recently been added. the wine vessel in this metope, and the hydria in no. , indicate the wedding feast of peirithoös as the scene of the contest. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , ix.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] this metope is a cast from the one removed by choiseul-gouffier when french ambassador at the porte, about the year , and now in the louvre. the group represents a centaur carrying off a lapith wife or maiden. the centaur is rearing up; he grasps the woman between his forelegs. his left hand presses against her left side, and it appears from carrey's drawing of this metope that his right hand grasped her right wrist. with her left hand she is vainly endeavouring to loosen his grasp round her waist, and to readjust her disordered drapery. she wears a chiton with diploïdion fastened on the right shoulder with a brooch. in the struggle the chiton has fallen from the left shoulder. on her right foot is a sandal with a thick sole; her left foot is broken off above the ankle. carrey's drawing gives this foot resting on a rock, also other parts of the group which are now wanting. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , x.; _stereoscopic_, no. . the next metope in order on the parthenon is now only preserved in carrey's drawing, which represents a lapith armed with a shield, who seems to be stabbing the centaur in the belly. the centaur grasps the edge of the shield with his left hand. a fragment of this shield with the left arm of the lapith inside and the fingers of the centaur on the rim exists at athens; cf. no. , _ _. michaelis, pl. , xi. [sidenote: = .=] this metope is cast from the original in the acropolis museum at athens. it represents a centaur seizing a lapith wife or maiden. carrey's drawing gives the head, left foreleg from the knee, and left hindleg of the centaur, and the right arm of the female figure, all which parts are now wanting. the group presents a somewhat involved and complicated composition. the centaur grasps the female figure's left arm with his left hand; his right arm, not shown, we must suppose to be passing round the back of her waist. while the left foreleg of the centaur is firmly planted on the ground, his right foreleg clasps the left leg of the female figure, pressing at the back of her knee, so as to throw her off her balance. her dress, a chiton with a diploïdion, is disordered in the struggle. the action of her right hand, as drawn by carrey, indicates that she is attempting to readjust the upper part of her chiton. her right leg from the knee to the ankle is supplied by a cast from a fragment at athens; the foot is cast from another fragment, of which the original, no. , _ _, exhibited in a wall case, probably belonged to the elgin collection. the action of this leg is awkward and ungainly. michaelis, pl. , xii.; _stereoscopic_, no. a. next follow in carrey's drawings thirteen metopes (michaelis, xiii.-xxv.) of which we have only a few fragments. of these the first eight (xiii.-xx.) represent subjects of which the import is unknown, and in which draped female figures predominate. nos. xxii.-xxv. represent combats between centaurs and lapiths or lapith women. if we suppose that no. xxi., which represents two women standing by an archaic statue as if for sanctuary, belongs to the centaur series, then twelve metopes at each end of the south side, namely, i.-xii., xxi.-xxxiii. are devoted to this subject, while the eight central metopes are an independent series. fragments have been recognised as belonging to the thirteen metopes which have been destroyed since the time of carrey. they are more fully described below. metope xiii (?). breast. see no. , _ _. " xiv. male torso. see no. , _ _. " xv (?). arm. see no. , _ _. " xvi. male head and torso. see no. , _ _. " xvii. male torso. see no. , _ _. fragment of lyre(?) see no. , _ _. " xix. arm and drapery. see no. , _ _. " xx. hand with roll. see no. , _ _. draped thigh. see no. , _ _. " xxiv. torso of lapith. see no. , _ _. [sidenote: = .=] this metope, the th in the original series, is from the eastern half of the south side of the temple. it represents a contest between a centaur and lapith. the centaur, rearing, has raised his arms above his head, in order to strike his antagonist with some weapon, perhaps a branch of a tree. his antagonist thrusts the toes of his left foot against the equine chest of the centaur between his forelegs, and, pressing his left hand against his adversary's right elbow, is trying to force him back on his haunches. his right arm, now wanting, has been drawn back to deal a blow; its position is marked by a projection on the ground of the relief. a chlamys hangs down at his back. from the want of apparent support for the right foot of the lapith, the action of this figure appears weak and undecided. on the left upper arm are two holes for the attachment of some object, perhaps an end of drapery hanging free in front of the arm. another hole on the flank of the equine portion of the centaur, between the ribs and haunch, shows where the end of a skin, hanging down from the back, may have been attached. parts of the right hind leg appear to have been attached by metal rivets. carrey's drawing shows that this metope has suffered little since his time. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , xxvi.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] in this metope, the th in the original series, the centaur, wounded in the back, attempts to fly, but is checked by the lapith, whose left hand grasps him round the left side of the head, while his left leg presses against his hind-quarters. the right arm of the lapith is drawn back to deal a blow, perhaps with a lance. the centaur, rearing up in agony, presses his right hand against the wound in his back; his left arm, now wanting, must have been raised, as appears from carrey's drawing, in which a small piece of the upper arm is given. the left foot of the lapith presses firmly against a rock. a mantle falls over both arms, hanging in festoons behind his back. carrey's drawing gives both the head, and right leg, and part of the right forearm of the lapith. in composition and execution this is one of the finest of the extant metopes. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. ; michaelis, pl. , xxvii.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] in this metope, the th in the original series, the centaur is victorious; the lapith lies dead under his feet. brandishing the lion's skin on his extended left arm with a triumphant gesture, and lashing his tail, the centaur rushes forward to meet a new foe, with the ends of the lion's skin flying behind him. his right arm, now wanting, must have wielded the weapon with which he has slain the lapith. the lapith lies on his chlamys, his head thrown back, his right leg bent up, his right hand lying over his right flank, his whole form relaxed by death. carrey's drawing gives the head, left foreleg, and greater part of the right arm of the centaur, but wholly misinterprets the figure of the lapith. for dramatic power in the conception and truth in the modelling of the forms, this metope is unrivalled. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. ; michaelis, pl. , xxviii.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] in this metope, the th of the original series, the centaur is carrying off a lapith woman. clasping her firmly round the waist with his left hand, he has raised her from the ground. we see from carrey's drawing that his right hand, now wanting, grasped her right arm above the elbow, so as to make her efforts to escape of no avail; with her left hand she vainly endeavours to loosen his hold round her waist. the disorder of her drapery shows the violence of the struggle. her chiton has slipped from its attachment on the left shoulder, leaving her left breast exposed. over her left arm is the end of a mantle, which, passing round her back, and twisted over her right arm, floats unconfined behind the centaur. his head has the pointed ears which are characteristic of the semi-bestial type, but which do not occur on the other heads of centaurs in these metopes. carrey's drawing gives the head of the female figure, and the right arm and tail of the centaur. there are traces of the bead and reel moulding on the margin of this metope. the drapery is beautifully wrought, but the design in its present condition seems rather tame. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , xxix.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] this metope, the th in the series, much resembles no. , both in composition and in style. the lapith has fallen with his left leg bent under him; his left arm rests on a stone, which he grasps in his left hand. his right hand, which is disarmed, presses feebly against the left side of the centaur, who with his left hand seizes the hair of his antagonist, and presses his left forefoot on his right thigh, drawing back his right arm to deal a blow. the countenance of the lapith expresses bodily pain, as if he had just been half stunned by a blow on the head. his bent knee does not yet touch the ground, but the action of the centaur deprives him of all chance of recovering his erect position. a lion's skin floats in the air at the back of the centaur. a chlamys hangs from the right arm of the lapith, and passes behind his back. the treatment of both the heads is a little austere, but the bodies are well modelled, and the composition is finely conceived. there are on this metope some remains of the bead and reel moulding on the upper margin. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , xxx.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] in this metope, the st of the original series, the centaur seems to have the advantage. the lapith has, with his right hand, seized him by the hair, pressing his right knee on the centaur's breast; his left arm is drawn back, and has been slightly bent at the elbow. the centaur, rearing up, grasps his antagonist by the throat, twisting his forelegs round the lapith's right leg, so as to paralyse its action. the position of the centaur is obviously much the stronger, and the bent left knee of the lapith indicates that he is tottering. we do not know what weapon he held in his hand. the composition in this metope is very good. in the faces there is the same austere character as in no. . this metope seems in the same state as when drawn by carrey. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. ; michaelis, pl. , xxxi.; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] in this metope, the nd of the original series, the centaur has seized the lapith by the back of his head with his left hand, of which a fragment is still visible. his right arm has been drawn back to deal a blow, probably with a spear. the left foreleg passes round the loins of the lapith, while the other foreleg has been locked round his right thigh. his adversary, firmly planted on the ground with his right leg advanced, has drawn back his left arm to prepare a blow, probably with a sword. the action of his right shoulder shows that he has seized the centaur by the hair with his right hand. a drawing by feodor, one of the artists employed by lord elgin at athens, shows that the left arm and left leg of the lapith, now wanting, were then perfect, and that he may have worn a bronze helmet up to the date when the drawing was made. the direction of the missing portions of the left arm and leg is indicated by projections on the ground of the relief. the right arm was wanting from the elbow. in carrey's drawing, all the right arm of the centaur is given; but his legs were mutilated. _mus. marbles_, vii., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , xxxii.; _stereoscopic_, no. . of the thirty-two metopes which originally adorned the north side of the parthenon, only twelve (i.-iii. and xxiv.-xxxii. of michaelis, pl. ) remain in their original position, and three of these (ii., xxvi., xxx.) are so defaced that their subjects cannot be made out. in the explosion of , twenty metopes (iv.-xxiii.) were destroyed, all but a few fragments. the subjects of the metopes which have perished may have been the combats of centaurs and lapiths. michaelis supposes xxiv., xxv. to represent a scene from the taking of troy. [sidenote: = .=] the only metope from the north side, of which a cast is exhibited in the british museum, is the last of the series, at the north-west angle of the temple. it represents a draped female figure seated on a rock, towards whom advances from the left another draped female figure, extending forward her left hand muffled in drapery. both figures wear talaric chitons, over which fall diploïdia and mantles. the figure advancing wears sandals. the folds of the drapery are very rich and abundant. there is a careful drawing of this metope by feodor in the british museum, taken when it was in a considerably better state. michaelis, pl. , xxxii.; _stereoscopic_, no. . on the western front of the parthenon all the fourteen metopes, except vi. and vii., remain in position on the temple, but their surface has been so much injured, that their subjects cannot be made out. the best preserved of these metopes appear to represent a battle of greeks against amazons. [sidenote: = .=] this is a cast from the first of the metopes of the west side, and represents a figure mounted on a horse, moving to the right, with the right hand drawn back as if aiming a spear, and having a chlamys flying behind. if the metopes on this front represented an amazonomachia, this figure may be an amazon. the surface is much damaged. a drawing by pars in the british museum makes this a male figure. michaelis, pl. , west side, i.; _stereoscopic_, no. . the corresponding metopes on the east side of the parthenon remain on the building, but have all suffered great injury. they appear to have represented scenes from the war of the gods and giants. michaelis, pl. , east side, i.-xiv. the frieze of the parthenon. the frieze of the parthenon is a continuous band of sculpture in low relief, which encircled and crowned the central chamber or cella of the temple, together with the smaller porticoes that immediately adjoined each end of it. the frieze is nearly ft. in. high. the height of the relief is somewhat greater at the top than at the bottom. at the top the height of the relief may be as much as - / inches, with an average height of about - / inch. at the bottom it varies between low relief and about - / inch. the whole surface of the relief is thus slightly tilted over towards the spectator, in order to compensate as far as possible for the disadvantageous conditions under which the frieze had to be viewed. the length of each end of the parthenon frieze was ft. in.; the length of each long side was ft. in. the length of the entire frieze was therefore ft. in. the frieze, which was nearly complete in the time of carrey, suffered greatly in the explosion, particularly about the middle of the two long sides. unfortunately, however, carrey only made drawings of the west end; the east end, except its central slab which had been taken down; about feet in the middle of the south side; and about ft. in. at the east end of the north side. stuart and pars drew a considerable amount of the frieze, but not much of what has since been entirely lost. the following table shows approximately the state of the whole frieze. -------------------------+--------+----------+-------+-------+---------- | east. | south. | west.| north.| total. | ft. in.| ft. in. |ft. in.|ft. in.|ft. in. -------------------------+--------+----------+-------+-------+---------- originals in the british}| | | | | museum }| | - / | | | - / | | | | | casts in the british }| | | | | museum }| | - / | | | - / | | | | | preserved only in the }| | | | | drawings of carrey }| | | | | | | | | | preserved only in the }| | | | | drawings of stuart }| | | | | | | | | | drawn by carrey and }| | | | | stuart but not otherwise}| | | | | preserved }| | | | | +--------+----------+-------+-------+---------- total existing or }| | | | | recorded }| | | | | | | | | | lost without a record | | | | | +--------+----------+-------+-------+---------- grand total | | | | | -------------------------+--------+----------+-------+-------+---------- the subject of the frieze of the parthenon has been considered, by most of the writers who have discussed it, to be connected with the panathenaic procession at athens. those who have held a different view have been the early travellers, such as cyriac of ancona, who described the subject of the frieze as 'athenian victories in the time of pericles,' and a few recent authors. davidson (_the parthenon frieze_) sees in the frieze a representation of a panhellenic assembly, which pericles tried to collect at athens without success. weber and boetticher held that the scene represented is the preparation and rehearsal, rather than the procession itself. c. petersen thought that different festivals are represented on different sides[*] (cf. michaelis, p. ). *: the frieze of the parthenon records in sculpture the passionate delight with which greeks, and more particularly athenians (cf. hel. _aeth._, iii. ), regarded festal processions. a vivid commentary on the parthenon frieze is to be found in the third book (chaps, i.-iii.) of the _aethiopica_ of the novelist heliodorus. the passage adds the sound, colour, and movement needed for a complete conception of the scene. the writer, however, is describing the procession of a thessalian embassy at delphi, and some of the details only partially agree with those of the frieze. "the hecatomb led the procession, escorted by men initiated in the mysteries. these were somewhat rustic in dress and manner, and had their white tunics closely girded. the right shoulder and breast were bare, and they carried an axe in the right hand. the bulls were followed by a crowd of other victims, each kind being led separately and in order. meanwhile flute and pipe were playing a melody which was, as it were, an introduction to the sacrifice. the cattle and their escort were followed by maidens with flowing hair. they were in two troops; the first carried baskets of fruits and flowers, the second troop carried flat baskets ([greek: kana kanêphorousai]) with sweetmeats and incense, and filled the place with sweet smells. they bore their burdens on their heads leaving their hands free, and kept their ranks true both from front to rear and from side to side, that they might march and dance while the first troop gave the time, singing a hymn in honour of thetis. the troops were so harmonious and the sound of marching was so accurately timed to the song, that hearing seemed better than seeing, and the spectators followed the maidens as they passed as if they were drawn by the melody. but at length the appearance of the youthful cavalry and of its leader proved that a noble sight was better than any music. there were fifty ephebi, in two troops of five-and-twenty, acting as body-guard of the leader of the embassy. their boots were laced with purple thongs, and tied above the ankle. their cloaks were white with dark blue borders, and were fastened on their breasts with golden brooches. the horses were all thessalian, and breathed the freedom of their native plains. they tried to spue out their bits and covered them with foam, as if rebellious, yet submitted to the will of the riders. it seemed as if there had been a rivalry among the masters in adorning their horses with frontlets and phalerae, silver or gilded. but, as a flash of lightning makes all else seem dark, so, when the captain, theagenes (the hero of the novel), appeared, all eyes were turned to him. he also was mounted, and wore armour, and brandished an ashen spear, tipped with bronze. he had not put on his helmet, but rode bareheaded. he wore a purple cloak, embroidered in gold with a fight of centaurs and lapiths; on his brooch was an amber figure of athenè, wearing the gorgon's head on her breastplate. a gentle breeze gave him further grace, spreading his hair about his neck, and parting the locks on his forehead, and blowing the ends of his cloak about the back and flanks of his horse. and the horse itself seemed conscious of the exceeding beauty of its master, as it arched its neck, and pricked up its ears, and frowned its brows, and advanced proudly, giving ready obedience to the rein, balancing on alternate shoulders, lightly striking the tips of its hoofs on the ground, and attuning its pace to a gentle motion." interesting passages of xenophon describe horses that prance as they ought in processions, and also lay down the duty of the leaders of a procession of horsemen (xen. _hipp._ and _hipparch._ ). before examining how far the frieze represents the panathenaic procession in detail, it may be well to state what facts respecting the festival have been handed down to us by ancient authors. its origin was ascribed in antiquity to pre-historic times. its mythic founder was erichthonios, the son of hephaestos and foster-son of athenè herself; and the festival is said to have been renewed by theseus when he united all the attic demes into one city. the goddess in whose honour it was celebrated was athenè polias, the tutelary deity of the athenian acropolis, where she was supposed to dwell in the "old temple," and where her worship was associated with that of erechtheus, who dwelt under the same roof. a solemn sacrifice, equestrian and gymnastic contests, and the pyrrhic dance, were all included in the ceremonial; but its principal feature was the offering of a new robe, _peplos_, to the goddess on her birthday. the peplos of athenè was a woven mantle renewed every four years. on the ground, which is described as dark violet and also as saffron-coloured, was interwoven the battle of the gods and the giants, in which zeus and athenè were represented. it was used to drape the rude wooden image of athenè. the festival was originally an annual one, but after a time it was celebrated once every four years with more splendour and solemnity. the institution of this greater panathenaia is attributed to peisistratos. from his time (b.c. - ) dates the distinction between the greater and the lesser panathenaia. the sons of peisistratos added a contest of rhapsodes reciting the homeric poems. the festival was further amplified by pericles, who introduced a musical contest and himself acted as _athlothetes_ or judge. on the birthday of the goddess the procession which conveyed the peplos to her temple assembled in the outer cerameicos, and passed through the lower city round the acropolis, which it ascended through the propylæa. during its passage through the city the peplos was displayed on the mast and yard of a ship, which was drawn on rollers. in the procession of rosalia at palermo, a ship is employed for a similar purpose (brydone, _tour_, letter xxx.). in this solemn ceremony, the whole body of athenian citizens were represented. among those who are particularly mentioned as taking part in the procession were the noble athenian maidens, canephori, who bore baskets, _kanea_, with implements and offerings for the sacrifice; the diphrophori, who attended the canephori with stools (_diphroi_); the metoik or alien scaphephori, whose function it was to carry certain trays, _skaphæ_, containing cakes and other offerings; the aged athenian citizens who bore olive branches, and were hence called thallophori. it has also recently been ascertained that the selected maidens who prepared the peplos (the ergastinae, and perhaps the arrhephori) also took part in the panathenaic procession. an attic decree of b.c. records that these maidens had performed all their duties, and had walked in the procession in the manner ordained with the utmost beauty and grace ([greek: pepompeu[kenai ka]ta ta prostetagmena hôs hoti k[allis]ta kai euschêmone[stata]]), and had subscribed for a silver cup which they wished to dedicate to athenè. after this preamble the decree doubtless awarded certain public honours such as are enumerated in an inscription found by mr. murray at petworth. (_bull. de corr. hellénique_, xiii., p. ; _athenische mittheilungen_, viii., p. .) at the greater panathenaia each town in which land had been assigned to athenian settlers contributed animals to the sacrifice, perhaps a cow and two sheep. the colonies also appear to have sent envoys who had charge of the victims. chariots and horsemen took an important part in the procession. on this occasion appeared certain quadrigæ, which were only used in procession, and were hence called pompic chariots; and an escort of athenian cavalry and heavy infantry completed the show. the arrangements for the sacrifice were under the direction of the hieropoioi, and the multitudinous procession was marshalled and kept in order by the demarchs, the hipparchs, and by the heralds of a particular gens, the euneidæ. when, with a knowledge of these facts, we examine the composition of the frieze, we may recognise in its design the main features of the actual procession. in our description we begin with no. , on the left of the east side. we first observe canephori and others leading the procession of which the main part is seen on the south side. next are persons, perhaps hieropoioi or magistrates receiving this procession. in the centre of this side a solemn act (commonly supposed to be the delivery of the peplos) is being performed in the presence of an assembly of deities, separated into two groups interjected among the heads of the procession who have arrived and stand waiting. these deities are supposed to be invisible, and doubtless in a picture they would have been placed in the background, seated in a semicircle and looking inwards. in the narrow space of a frieze a combined arrangement was necessary, such as we see here. next we see the persons receiving the procession on the north side, and then at the head of that procession are canephori, victims with their attendants, scaphephori, spondophori, musicians, pompic chariots and cavalry. after going down the north side, meeting the procession, we pass along the west side, where it is still in a state of preparation for departure. we then pursue the other main stream along the south side of the temple passing the cavalry, chariots and victims. all through the frieze are magistrates and heralds marshalling the order of the procession. it has been objected that many features which we know to have formed a part of the original ceremony, as, for instance, the ship on which the peplos was borne, are not found on the frieze; but pheidias would only select for his composition such details from the actual procession as he considered suitable for representation in sculpture, working, as he here did, under certain architectonic conditions. note. the numbers of the slabs, painted in roman figures on the lower moulding, and placed in the right-hand margin of this catalogue, agree throughout with the numbers of michaelis. the numbers of the separate figures assigned to them here and painted in arabic numerals above the frieze, do not agree with those of michaelis, except in the case of the west side. east frieze of the parthenon. [sidenote: = .=] [rightnote: i.] [sidenote: .] a man standing on the return face of slab xliv. (south frieze), looks back as if to make a signal to the procession approaching along the south side, and thus makes a connection between the south and east sides of the frieze. [rightnote: ii.] [sidenote: - .] with slab ii. the band of maidens leading the southern half of the procession begins. when complete the slab contained five maidens, each probably carrying a circular bowl, with a boss in the centre ([greek: phialê omphalôtê]); portions now remain of four alone; compare however no. , _ _. they are draped in long chiton and mantle. [two casts of the slab are exhibited, side by side, in order to represent the missing portion.] [rightnote: iii.] [sidenote: - .] five maidens carry each a wine jug, supposed to be of gold or silver. several such vessels occur in the treasure lists of the parthenon. no. wears a chiton with diploïdion; nos. - have a chiton and mantle. [sidenote: - .] in front of these are four maidens, walking in pairs. nos. and each carry in the right hand an object not unlike the stand of an ancient candelabrum, which tapers upwards from its base. this object is more distinctly shown on the marble between nos. and , than between nos. and . it is encircled by a double torus moulding at the top, and above this moulding a hole is pierced in the marble, as if there was here a ring for suspension or to serve as a handle. it is probable that these are metallic objects of some kind, which, like the censer carried by no. on the opposite side of the eastern frieze, were part of the sacred furniture used in the festival and usually kept in the treasury of athenè. michaelis suggests that they may be the stands, _krateutae_, in which turned the ends of the spits used in roasting the sacrifice. this would explain the ring at the top. [sidenote: , .] a pair of maidens with empty hands leads the procession. nos. - are all dressed alike, in long chiton, with diploïdion, together with a small mantle. they also appear to have the hair similarly dressed. it falls in a mass on the shoulders, as in the caryatid of the erechtheion (no. ). [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] in front of the procession is a man, probably one of the marshals, who seems to approach a group of five persons, and to hold out his hand as if with a gesture of greeting to the nearest of the group. this figure is turned towards the marshal, and leans heavily on his staff which is seen below his knees. the marble fragment with parts of the feet of nos. and was acquired from the collection of m. steinhäuser. the lower part of no. is cast from a fragment at athens. [rightnote: iv.] [sidenote: - .] on the left of the next slab are four men of the same character as no. . they all wear himation and boots. they converse in pairs and stand in easy attitudes, leaning on their staffs. there is a corresponding group of four male figures (nos. - ) on slab vi., and michaelis supposes that the group of five figures (nos. - ) and the opposite group (nos. - ) of four figures represent the nine archons. that they are functionaries of high rank can hardly be doubted, when we consider their privileged place between the head of the procession on each side and the seated divinities, but they might well be athlothetae, who controlled all the arrangements (aristotle, [greek: ath. pol.] ed. kenyon, ). [sidenote: - .] the central portion of the eastern frieze now to be described has been the subject of much controversy. nearly all the authorities who have written on this question agree in recognising the two groups of seated figures as deities. this is indicated not only by the dignity of their appearance but also by their scale. while the figures of the mortals are about ft. in. high, those of the deities are about ft. in. high. though by the principle known as isokephalism the heads in a relief are usually nearly on a level, this marked difference of scale can hardly fail to indicate divine rank; compare the frieze of the theseion (no. ). there is, however, a wide divergence of opinion as to the particular divinities here represented. from the destruction of most of the faces and the absence of attributes or other indications by which the figures can be severally identified, it is very difficult to judge between the rival schemes of interpretation which have been proposed. in michaelis' _parthenon_, pp. , , a tabular view is given of these schemes (cf. _guide to the elgin room_, i., table c). the attributions proposed by michaelis himself are for the most part adopted here, with certain changes suggested by flasch in his memoir: _zum parthenonfries_ (würzburg, ). the interpretations proposed by those who hold that the seated figures are deities, are of two kinds. most writers have tried to identify some at least of the figures with personages who were worshipped near the acropolis, or connected with the mythological history of athens. by this system, deities of lower rank such as the dioscuri, or heroes like triptolemos are admitted, on the frieze, to the company of the olympian gods. petersen and flasch, on the other hand, argue that the twelve olympian deities are represented in the two groups, without regard to local considerations. hestia alone is omitted, who always stays in olympos to keep the hearth. (plato, _phaedr._, _a_). petersen substitutes peitho for hestia; he also introduces dionysos ( ), making no. apollo. artemis is thus excluded from his scheme. the arrangement of flasch is happier, as hestia alone is excluded of the olympian divinities. the attributions proposed by michaelis, petersen, and flasch are as follow, where they differ between themselves:-- no. michaelis. petersen. flasch. . dionysos. dionysos. apollo. . demeter. demeter. artemis. . triptolemos. ares. ares. . nikè. nikè? iris. . apollo patroös. apollo. dionysos. . peitho. peitho. demeter. [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] the earlier writers saw the dioscuri, castor and pollux in the two figures, nos. , . it is now generally agreed that the youthful elastic figure to the left is hermes, of whom the high boots, and the petasos spread on his knees are specially characteristic. his right hand is pierced and has held a metallic object, probably the herald's staff, caduceus. the drapery is a small chlamys fastened by a brooch, but at present worn about the loins. the more robust figure leaning on his shoulder (no. ), has his body turned in a direction contrary to that of hermes, and the singular manner in which his lower limbs are so arranged as to clasp between them the knees of the seated goddess (no. ) seems to indicate some intimate and special relation between them. the goddess holds a torch, the usual attribute of demeter, and michaelis sees in the group (nos. - ) the triad of dionysos, demeter, and triptolemos. flasch recognises apollo and artemis in nos. , , on the ground of their intimate relationship. if we adopt this interpretation of this group, it follows that the youthful figure (no. ) cannot be triptolemos. we must rather look for an olympian deity in this figure, and the suggestion that it represents ares, which has found favour with several interpreters of this frieze, seems liable only to one objection, that the form appears too slight and youthful. the somewhat negligent attitude is that of a person tired of sitting on a seat without a back, and clasping his knee with his hands, to relieve the spine of the weight of the head and shoulders. flasch absurdly describes the attitude as that of a passionate character, forcibly restraining himself. [rightnote: v.] [sidenote: - .] the bearded figure (no. ) on the left of the central group is distinguished from the rest by the form, and ornaments of his chair, which has a back and a side rail which is supported by a sphinx, while all the other figures are seated on stools. it has been generally admitted that this deity is zeus. it is therefore reasonable to suppose that the goddess seated next to him (no. ) is his consort, hera. the type and action of this figure who raises her veil, and looks towards zeus, are very suitable to her. the winged maidenly figure (no. ) standing behind hera must be either nikè or iris, and is probably iris, whose station is close to hera, while nikè is usually more closely associated with zeus (murray, _class. rev._ iii., p. ). the head of iris which was discovered in in the excavations on the acropolis is admirably perfect. the left hand raises a mass of the hair as if to coil it on the head (plate vi., fig. ). the slab to which the head belongs was removed from its original position at some early time, probably at the conversion of the parthenon into a church, when an apse was built at the eastern end. in it stood on the ground (cf. michaelis, pp. , ), and the faces seem to have suffered deliberate mutilation. the exquisite preservation of the head of iris is explained if, as is suggested, it was broken off in the sixth century, and immediately built into a byzantine wall (waldstein, _american journ. of archæology_, v. pl. , p. ). [sidenote: - .] between the group of gods just described and the corresponding group on the right side of the centre, we have a group of five figures. we must suppose that these figures are in front of the two groups of gods who sit in a continuous semicircle. (murray, ii. pl. .) [illustration: fig. .--slave with seat.] no. is a maiden holding an uncertain object, perhaps a casket in her left hand, and supporting on her head a seat ([greek: diphros]) covered with a cushion, not unlike the seats on which the gods are, but smaller. she has a small pad ([greek: tylê]) on her head to make the weight easier to bear. the legs of the seat are now wanting, but a rivet hole near the maiden's right elbow shows where one leg was attached. the other may have been painted on the ground of the frieze. the cut (fig. ), showing one of the slaves of cepheus carrying a stool with a cushion, is taken from a vase in the british museum, no. e. . no. is another maiden, advancing slowly to the right, bearing on her head a seat similar to that carried by no. . the foremost leg of the seat still exists, being of marble. the position of the hinder leg is marked by a rivet hole. on each of these stools is a circular object, probably a thick cushion. these two figures have been called arrhephori, or ersephori, on the assumption that they are carrying those mystic objects, the nature of which it was forbidden to divulge; but it is doubtful whether the arrhephori took part in the panathenaic festival. there is evidence that the priestess of athenè had two attendants, of whom one was called [greek: kosmô] (adorner), and the other [greek: trapezophoros] (table-bearer, harpocration), or [greek: trapezô] (hesychius emended), and it has been suggested that nos. , may have these titles, and a corresponding ritual significance. neither figure, however, carries a table. (miss harrison, _class. rev._ iii., p. ; cf. _ibid._, p. ; and waldstein, _journ. of hellen. studies_, xi., p. ). the same names were proposed by c. o. müller in , but merely on the supposition that two of the ersephori were thus styled. (müller, _minervae poliadis sacra_, p. .) on the other hand, diphrophori are mentioned by several ancient authors as being in attendance on the noble athenian maidens. they were the daughters of aliens, and perhaps inferior rank as well as youth is indicated by the scale on which they are represented. no. is confronted by a large and matronly woman (no. ), who raises her right hand to the under side of the chair. archæologists have been uncertain whether the woman (no. ) has just placed the chairs on the heads of the maidens, or is just about to remove them. there can be little doubt, however, that no. , if we consider the position of her feet, has hardly ceased approaching to no. , who is just raising her hands to lift down the chair (cf. flasch, _zum parthenonfries_, p. ). the left hand instinctively prevents the himation being displaced by the raising of the right arm. an elderly bearded man (no. ), wearing a long chiton with short sleeves and shoes, stands next to no. . on his head are traces of metallic rust. he therefore may have worn a metallic wreath, for which the marble at the back of his head appears to have been hollowed. he turns his back to no. , and is engaged with a boy. the two figures between them support a large piece of cloth, folded once lengthwise, and twice breadthwise. in this case also archæologists have been doubtful which is the giver and which is the receiver of the cloth; but the action represented is not one either of giving or receiving. from the peculiar way in which the boy grips an angle of the folded cloth between his elbow and his side, while his hands are otherwise occupied, the act of folding the cloth square seems to be represented. the portion nearest to the spectator is being dropped down till its edges are parallel with those of the lower part, so that the two parts should be exactly doubled. the group of figures just described ( - ) contains the centre of the composition, and the interpretation of the frieze as a whole depends on the meaning we attach to this group. leaving on one side the writers referred to on p. , who hold that the frieze does not represent the panathenaic festival, we find that a majority of writers describes no. as a priestess of athenè, giving the sacred vessels to the arrhephori or ersephori, and no. as a priest or archon basileus receiving or giving the sacred peplos of athenè. this view of nos. - was necessarily abandoned, when it had been perceived that the objects held by the maidens are chairs, not baskets. as regards nos. , , the main arguments for interpreting the cloth as the peplos are, that the accounts of the procession preserved in ancient authors show that the conveyance of the peplos of athenè was the principal feature in it. if we look to the place assigned to this group in the eastern frieze, we find that these two figures (nos. , ) stand in the centre of the eastern front, under the apex of the pediment, and over the eastern door of the cella. they therefore occupy the most conspicuous place in the frieze, from the points of view alike of the sculptured gods and of the human spectator, and accordingly may well be supposed to be busy with the chief ceremony of the festival. this view is opposed by flasch. he argues that if the delivery of the peplos is represented, there is a violation of the unity of time, as the act which was the main motive of the procession is being completed, while the procession is still in progress, and in part has not yet started. flasch therefore holds that we have here the priest and priestess preparing for the sacrifice that is to take place on the arrival of the procession. the priestess is receiving chairs for herself and for the priest from the diphrophori. meanwhile the priest, who now only wears a long chiton, with short sleeves, has taken off his himation, and, after folding it several times, is seen giving it to an attendant to hold. if, however, the action represented is merely that of folding, and is not yet completed, it is impossible to determine which is the giver and which the receiver. nor would the difficulty be solved if this could be ascertained, as we do not know what ceremonies were performed when the peplos arrived. the surface of the cloth on the frieze is left quite plain; but, if it is the peplos, some indication of the embroidered design may have been given in colour. [sidenote: .] we now reach the second group of deities, seated to the right of the central scene. the first figure is clearly that of athenè. she sits in a position corresponding to that of zeus, and the goddess of athens is thus put in the same rank as the supreme god. athenè is dressed in a chiton with diploïdion and has short hair. an indistinct object about her left wrist has been supposed to be a snake from the fringe of the aegis of athenè, or by some writers to be the snake of hygieia. but the object seems merely to be a bracelet in the form of a snake, which is not uncommon, and there is therefore no indication of an aegis. four rivet holes in a straight line show that athenè held some attribute, probably a spear in her right hand. [sidenote: .] next to athenè is an elderly bearded figure, who turns his head towards her. he has a knotted staff under his right arm, and leans upon it heavily. this figure is usually known as hephaestos. it is supposed that his lameness may be indicated by the awkward pose of his right foot, and by the staff on which he leans. [rightnote: vi.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] this slab, containing figures nos. - , now in a very fragmentary condition, was complete when drawn by carrey, in . a bearded male figure (no. ) with his left hand raised is probably poseidon. the left hand, according to flasch, once held a trident. the next figure (no. ), beardless and youthful, and seated in an easy attitude, has of late years gone by the names of apollo patroös or dionysos. the latter title seems best suited to the somewhat effeminate figure, more fully draped than any other of the gods. a series of holes round the head shows the position of a bronze wreath, and one at the elbow shows that the left hand may have been supported by a thyrsos or sceptre. [sidenote: .] a matronly figure (no. ) is seated next to dionysos, wearing a chiton, which is slipping off from the left shoulder, himation, cap and sandals. this figure is called peitho by michaelis and peterson, on the ground that the worship of peitho was associated with that of aphroditè pandemos (no. ) on the south side of the acropolis. flasch with more probability makes this goddess demeter, arguing that peitho was not entitled to a place among the great gods of olympos, while demeter is appropriately placed between dionysos and aphroditè. flasch suggests that the right hand may have held an ear of corn. a hole shows that the object in question was made of bronze. [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] the next figure (no. ) most of which is only preserved in carrey's drawing (fig. ), is unmistakably shown to be aphroditè, by the winged boy eros who stands at her knee. aphroditè wears a chiton, himation, a cap, and to judge from carrey's drawing a veil. she rests her left hand on the shoulder of eros, extending her forefinger, as if pointing out some object in the procession to the boy. eros (no. ) carries a parasol which conveniently fills the space above his head and his wings. [illustration: fig. .--east frieze of the parthenon, nos. - .] [sidenote: - .] on the right of the gods is a group of four figures corresponding to the five (nos. - ) on the left. one of these (no. ) is young and beardless; the rest are elderly, and all have staffs and himatia. no. wears sandals. these four figures are leaning on their staffs, and three of them are looking towards the advancing procession, while the fourth (no. ) turns his back to it and appears to be conversing with his companions. [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] the next figure (no. ) is an officer, more immediately concerned with the procession. it is evident from the way in which his head is thrown back and his arm raised that he is not addressing the group beside him, but is making a signal to some person at a considerable distance. he may be supposed to be making a signal to the southern half of the procession, and thus helps the spectator to keep the two parts connected together in his mind. the next figure (no. ), a similar officer, stands facing the advancing maidens. slab vi., which was complete in carrey's time, has since suffered greatly, and the parts now exhibited have been combined from several sources. at some unknown period the slab was broken through no. , much of no. being destroyed. the original fragment, with the figures nos. - , is now at athens, where it was dug up in . since the cast in the museum was made, parts of the right hand and right foot of poseidon have been injured (_trans. of r. soc. of lit._, v. ( ) p. ; baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. . fig. ). about fauvel took a mould from the slab as he found it, which is now in the louvre. the slab then existed from the middle of no. to the joint after no. . between and nos. , were lost, and the slab was divided through no. , probably for convenience of transport. to facilitate the division, no. , and the arm of no. , were chiselled away. the main part of the figures nos. - is the original marble. the additions to the marble are the right foot of no. , the main part of nos. , , the lower part and the head of no. , the heads and breasts of nos. , , the whole of no. , and part of the head of no. , together with his legs. these parts are principally derived from the mould of fauvel in the louvre. certain fragments, however, are cast from originals at athens, namely, the chair-leg and some drapery of no. , the knees of no. , and the head and left foot of no. . [rightnote: vii.] [sidenote: .] the next magistrate, or officer (no. ), seems to hold in his hand a _kanoun_, or dish, such as those in which the corn, sashes, or sacrificial implements were usually brought to the altar. the position of the left hand seems to show that the thumb is inserted in a boss, as in a phialè omphalotè. holes in the marble may indicate sashes of bronze, hanging from the dish. [sidenote: , .] two maidens (nos. , ) are seen standing with empty hands. perhaps one has given up the dish which is held by the officer (no. .) in that case these would be canephori, maidens of noble birth, whose privilege it was to carry in the procession the dishes just described. they are draped in long chitons, with diploïdia, and wear small mantles over the shoulders. [sidenote: .] [sidenote: , .] another officer (no. ) stands looking towards the procession. he has held in the right hand some object in metal, perhaps a herald's staff. two holes for the attachment of it are visible in the marble. the gesture of the left hand shows that the officer is giving some order to the two maidens before him (nos. , ), who stand with empty hands, like nos. and . [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] the next maiden (no. ) walks alone, carrying a bowl (phialè), used for sacrificial libations. no. looks back at the figure on the next slab (no. ), and helps her to carry her burden. slab vii. is a cast from the original, which was removed from the acropolis by choiseul-gouffier in , and is now in the louvre. the right foot of the magistrate (no. ) is cast from a fragment which is still at athens. [rightnote: viii.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: , ] [sidenote: , ] the next maiden (no. ), assisted by no. , holds a thymiaterion with a conical cover, used for burning incense. censers of this form are not uncommon on greek vases. (cf. vases in the b. m., c. , e. , e. , e. , e. .) next follow two figures (nos. , ), each carrying in the right hand a jug, oinochoè, then two more (nos. , ), carrying phialae. in this slab the heads of nos. , , , which have been adjusted to their places since the publication of the work of michaelis, are cast from the originals at athens. the slab in its present condition is shown in mitchell, _selections_, pl. . [rightnote: ix.] the east side of the frieze was completed by the short return of a slab which was still in existence in the time of stuart. on this slab were two maidens, belonging to the procession. the second of these carried a phialè. north frieze of the parthenon. [sidenote: = .=] at the head of the procession on the north side we meet a troop of cows and sheep, led by an escort. each cow is led by cords held by two youths, one on each side; each sheep is led by one boy. there are some grounds for the conjecture that the athenian colonists contributed each a cow and two sheep to the festival, while the athenians are not known to have sacrificed anything except cows. it is therefore presumed that the victims on this side of the frieze, on which alone sheep are represented, are some of the colonial offerings; and in that case the men by whom the victims are conducted would be the theori sent by the colonies. [rightnote: i.] slab i. (see plate vii.) was complete in the time of carrey, and partly extant in the time of stuart. it contains the first cow, led by two youths, who are standing still, and the head and shoulders of the second cow. [rightnote: ii.] [sidenote: , .] [sidenote: , .] nos. and walk on each side of the second cow, which is going quietly, as is shown by the way in which the youths are closely wrapped up in their himatia. the rope by which the beast is led was probably painted on the marble. the third cow is restive, and only restrained with difficulty by nos. and . here also the rope was probably painted. this slab was discovered in , beneath its original position on the parthenon. [rightnote: iii.] [sidenote: , .] of slab iii. only fragments remain. as drawn by carrey, it contains the figure of no. (cf. plate vii., and no. , _ _), vigorously holding back his cow, and a fourth cow, quietly led by two youths (nos. , ). for economy of space this slab is compressed in the british museum to about two-thirds of its proper length. a cast from a head, which, perhaps, is that of no. , is placed at the corner of the slab (michaelis, plate , xxvii. c.). the drapery seen on a fragment with the fore-legs of a cow belongs to no. , who leads the third cow. no. is made up of six pieces, of which michaelis had identified the feet of the figure, and part of the fore-legs of the cow. for its hind-legs, see his plate , xxvii. d. the originals of all these fragments are at athens. [rightnote: iv.] [sidenote: - .] [sidenote: .] slab iv. contains parts of three figures, nos. - , who conduct three horned sheep. of the first figure (no. ) a part of the mantle is now left, and perhaps also the head (cf. plate vii., and no. , _ _). in carrey's time the head and shoulders were still extant. at the joint between this slab and the next there is a marshal (no. ), who turns to the division of the procession approaching. slab iv. was discovered in . [rightnote: v.] [sidenote: .] when drawn by carrey and stuart, the next group in the procession consisted of three figures, of which one only (no. ) is now extant. these figures carry on their shoulders oblong rectangular trays, not unlike a butcher's tray in form. these trays have been identified with the skaphae, or boat-shaped dishes which were carried in the panathenaic procession, and which contained offerings of cakes. if we may trust stuart's engraving, the tray of one of the two figures which have now disappeared contained fruits or cakes. these trays were made of silver or bronze. skaphae of bronze are mentioned in one of the inventories of the treasures, deposited in the parthenon. the metoiks, whose duty it was to carry these trays, were hence called scaphephori. their place in the procession would naturally be immediately after the victims led for sacrifice. [rightnote: vi.] [sidenote: - .] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] slab vi. contains five male figures. three (nos. - ) carry vases on their shoulders; a fourth (no. ) stoops to raise from the ground a similar vase, which is singularly misinterpreted in carrey's drawing as a lamb. the vase resembles in form the three-handled water-pitcher, hydria or calpis, which was in use in the period of pheidias, but two handles only are shown in the sculpture; the third handle, which was attached to the neck midway between the other two, is not seen, except, perhaps, on the vase of no. . michaelis supposes that the vases here represented on the frieze contained the wine used in the panathenaic sacrifice, and that these figures may be the spondophori, who are mentioned by pollux (i. ). on the right of this slab are the arms, flute, and drapery of the first of the four flute-players drawn by carrey. this slab was found in , inside the peristyle of the parthenon. [rightnote: vii.] the persons bringing objects connected with the sacrifice are immediately followed by a band of musicians, consisting of four flute-players and four lyre-players, or citharists, all playing on their instruments. the musicians, as is usual, wear long chitons and ample mantles. of slab vii. only two small fragments remain. see plates vii., viii., and nos. , _ _ and _ _. [rightnote: viii.] [sidenote: , .] [sidenote: .] the next slab contains parts of the second pair of citharists and the foremost of a group of male figures, principally on the two slabs immediately following. [rightnote: ix., x.] [sidenote: - .] the figures on these two slabs are bearded men (nos. - ), all clad in the himation, and moving forward at a leisurely pace; nos. and wear a band on their heads; no. draws it over his hair; nos. and wear long hair, plaited in the manner of the _krobylos_. the attire, elderly type, and general deportment of these figures corresponds with that of the thallophori, by which name ancient authors designate elderly citizens who carried olive branches in the panathenaic procession. the right hands of three of these figures are closed, as if they were holding a wand or branch. slab ix. was discovered in , and is a fragment of the slab drawn by carrey, which, when he saw it, contained nine figures similar to those on x. a recently-discovered fragment, from the left of slab ix., has not been inserted for want of space (cf. plate viii., and no. , _ _). slab x. was found at the north-west angle of the parthenon in . a fragment which belongs to the left-hand lower corner of the slab, and completes nos. , , has been adjusted since the publication of the work of michaelis. this slab was not drawn by carrey, who indicates a lacuna at this point. it is therefore probable that the slab had already fallen from its place. the last two complete figures on this slab are looking back, as if their attention is directed to the advancing chariots. michaelis has not observed that between these figures and the marshal (no. ) there has been another draped figure (no. *), of whom nothing remains but the shoulders and a little drapery, shown immediately in front of the marshal (no. ), and his right foot on slab x., seen next to the right foot of no. , the left foot of no. being lost. this figure must have been the hindermost in the procession of thallophori, and the entire number of these persons is therefore seventeen, not sixteen, as michaelis makes it. [rightnote: xi.] [sidenote: .] with slab xi. the chariot groups begin. this part of the frieze has greatly suffered from mutilation. the remains of the chariot groups still extant show that there were at least nine of these. according to the calculation of michaelis, that was the original number of chariots on this frieze. all these chariots are drawn by four horses, _harmata tethrippa_, or quadrigæ; the charioteer stands in the chariot, and is accompanied by the apobates, who is armed with a helmet and argolic buckler, and is represented in the act of stepping down from the chariot or standing behind it. each quadriga is accompanied by a marshal, _pompeus_. the vigour and animation of the chariot groups form a marked contrast with the groups that immediately precede them. the transition from the rapid motion of the chariots to the quietude of the thallophori is skilfully effected by a chariot seen in rapid motion but in the act of being suddenly checked by the marshal (no. ), who is represented eagerly pressing back the plunging horses of the chariot which follows on the next slab. in the haste of his movement he has nearly thrown off his mantle, holding it from slipping further with his right hand on his right thigh. the original of this slab was found at athens probably about . [rightnote: xii.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] on the slab next on the right (xii.) is the hind quarter of one of the horses, cut off at the joint. at the side of the chariot is a marshal (no. ), his face turned, and his right arm extended towards the procession following on the right. the charioteer (no. ), who was mistaken for a victory by visconti and others, but whose figure is certainly not female, differs in costume from the others in this frieze. he wears a long chiton, over which is a diploïdion reaching to the hips. the breast is crossed diagonally by two bands. as a part of the hair is on a fragment known to have been missing before the time of stuart, his drawing of the figure is proved to be untrustworthy. [sidenote: .] the warrior (no. ) attached to the chariot was complete in the time of carrey. the upper half was lost before the time of stuart, and was only re-discovered in the latest excavations on the acropolis in . he is represented standing on the ground, and looking back to the next chariot. his shield is raised as if to stop its course. the wheel of this chariot, as of some that succeed it, must have been, in part, wholly detached from the ground. the foot of the marshal is complete, but it is easy to trace where the wheel prevented the convenient working of the ground beneath it. (see plate viii., and _stereoscopic_, no. .) [rightnote: xiii.] of slab xiii., which carrey places next, nothing has been identified with certainty, but michaelis is probably right in assigning to this group the fragment of four horses, of which a cast from the original at athens is here inserted (cf. plate viii., and no. , _ _). above the back of the second horse is the _hestor_ (see below), and also what appears to be a small piece of the drapery of a marshal. this, however, cannot be the case if the fragment described (no. , _ _) contains the marshal belonging to this slab. [rightnote: xiv.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] slab xiv. contains the third chariot with part of the team of horses. the marshal (no. ) stands beyond the horses, and looks towards the charioteer. the charioteer (no. ) had reins of bronze, as indicated by two rivet holes. like the driver on slab xviii. he wears a chiton with long close-fitting sleeves. the apobates (no. ) appears about to step down from the chariot. the wheel of this chariot as of that on slab xii. must have stood out entirely free from the ground. when carrey drew this slab, the head of the charioteer (no. ) and the head and body of the apobates (no. ), of which only the lower part now remains, were extant. close behind the wheel are traces of a horse's forefoot, which, as we see from carrey's drawing, belonged to the chariot on the slab which follows next on the right (xv. according to the order of michaelis). [rightnote: xv.] [sidenote: , .] of the fourth chariot group, which was also drawn by carrey, we have only the mutilated group to which the charioteer (no. ) and an apobates (no. ) belong; this is made up of four fragments, of which the originals were found at athens in . in this group the apobates (no. ) stands in the chariot, looking back to the chariot following so closely that the forelegs of the horses actually overlap this group. here also the wheel was in part completely free from the ground of the relief. [rightnote: xvii.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] from carrey's sketch we know that the chariot on slab xvii. was drawn by the horses, which occupied slab xvi., and whose hoofs are seen on slab xv., and that this was the fifth chariot group. the apobates (no. ) of this chariot leans back, supporting himself by the right hand, which grasped the chariot rail (_antyx_), and is about to step off the chariot. the marshal (no. ) steps back to the left, looking in the contrary direction; his left arm, muffled in his mantle, is raised as a signal to the advancing throng; his right arm is also raised; the hand, now wanting, was just above the level of the head. his animated action forms a strong contrast to the still, calm attitude of the marshal (no. ) of the following group. slab xvii. is cast from the original, which was drawn at athens by stuart, and, having been buried on the acropolis, was re-discovered there in . the right side of this slab is broken away, but there can be no doubt that it comes next to slab xviii. a photograph from the original is reproduced in baumeister, _denkmaeler_, p. , fig. . [rightnote: xviii.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: - .] in slab xviii. have been three figures. the marshal (no. ) stands beside the horses, in a calmer attitude than is usual in this part of the frieze; of the apobates (no. ) nothing remains but his right arm and leg; and the lower part of his drapery, which indicates rapid movement. of the charioteer (no. ), we have only the lower part of the body and hands. parts of the harness can be seen on this slab, and also on slabs xiii., xix., xxi., xxiii. the general arrangement seems uniform, though there are differences of detail. the chariot pole ([greek: rhymos]) passes from below the chariot between the horses. an upright pin ([greek: hestôr]) passes through the pole (slabs xiii., xviii., xix., xxiii). at this point the yoke ([greek: zygon]) was secured by a ring ([greek: krikos]) and by the yoke-band ([greek: zygodesmon]) (hom. _il._ xxiv.). the near end of the yoke, foreshortened and turned back, is visible on slabs xviii., xix., xxi., xxiii. on slabs xix., xxi. the yoke appears to be kept in position by a piece of metal passing from the top of the pin to the pole, which may, perhaps, serve instead of the ring. on slab xix. there appears to be a loop of a leather thong on each side of the piece described. this may be a part of the yoke-band. the reins were usually guided by two rings attached to the yoke or to the pole, but these do not appear to be shown on the frieze. it is easy to see on slabs xviii., xix., xxi., that the yoke was only fixed to the two middle horses, the outer pair being attached by traces. [illustration: fig. .--north frieze, slab xix. ( . .)] [rightnote: xix.] the next slab (xix.) is a cast from the original at athens, which is broken away on the right, so that all that remains of the charioteer (no. ) is his right hand. at the side of the horses is a marshal (no. ), who turns towards the chariot following on the right. carrey's drawing supplies the upper part of this figure, and shows that he was holding up with his left hand the end of his mantle, apparently as a signal to the advancing procession. in fig. , slab xix. has been drawn in juxtaposition with the hitherto unplaced fragment no. , _ _. this slab was discovered in . [rightnote: xx.] slab xx. is now lost, but a horse's head now at athens (no. , _ _; michaelis, pl. , xx.) may perhaps belong to it. [rightnote: xxi.] slab xxi. contains the bodies and hind quarters of the horses drawing the chariot seen on slab xxii. between the charioteer (no. ) and his horse is a fragment, showing the front of the chariot, and the tails of the horses, of which the original is at athens, and which is not figured in michaelis. [rightnote: xxii.] [sidenote: , .] on the left of slab xxii. is a chariot with the charioteer (no. ) and apobates (no. ) who is stepping into the chariot. on the right of this slab is an attendant (no. ) standing at the heads of the horses of the last chariot group. the lower fragments of this slab are at athens. the left-hand upper corner, which was wanting in the time of stuart, was brought home by lord elgin. the upper fragment next to it, was once in the possession of the society of dilettanti, and was presented by that body. it had probably been brought from athens by chandler. stuart, nd ed., ii., p. , note c. [rightnote: xxiii.] [sidenote: .] the chariot group represented on slabs xxii., xxiii. is represented as standing still, and was probably the last chariot in the procession. this slab is shorter than any of the others representing chariot groups. part of the head of the apobates (no. ) is supplied in plaster from the original fragment at athens. a fragment of an apobates, which may well belong to the figure no. , has recently been fitted to the left of slab xxiv., thus proving that no. xxiv. is the first slab of the cavalry, and making it very probable that no. xxiii. is the last slab of the chariots. this fragment, incorrectly drawn, is assigned by michaelis to slab xxviii. of the south side. [rightnote: xxiv.-xlii.] [sidenote: - .] from this point to the north-west angle of the frieze we have a continuous procession of athenian cavalry. the horsemen advance in a loose throng, in which no division into ranks or troops, nor indeed any settled order, can be made out. the groups, being very crowded, are carried on from slab to slab continuously, so that the vertical lines of the joints intersect the figures, while on the western frieze, on the contrary, the groups, being more scattered, are always completed on single slabs. the general effect of a body of horse in rapid movement is admirably rendered in the composition of the northern frieze, and is particularly fine in slabs xxx.-xlii., in which the effect has not been marred by mutilation. though the entire composition is pervaded by the same general motion, a wonderful fertility of invention is shown in the arrangement of the successive groups. in the one hundred and twenty-five mounted figures in this cavalcade we do not find one single monotonous repetition. though the horses bound along with a fiery impatience, which seems at every moment ready to break loose from all control, these irregular movements never disturb the even hand and well-assured seat of the riders. thus, as the cavalcade dashes along like a torrent, a rhythmical effect is produced by the contrast of the impetuous horses and their calm, steadfast riders. in this part of the frieze there is great variety in the costumes and accoutrements of the horsemen. crested helmets are worn by nos. , ; flexible leather caps by nos. , , ; a taenia by no. , and a petasos by no. . some figures wear high boots with flaps at the knee as nos. , , &c., while others wear boots without flaps as nos. , , ; a few have bare feet, as nos. , , . the usual dress is a sleeveless chiton and a cloak. some riders, however, wear a chiton only, as nos. , , , &c., and others wear a cloak only, as nos. , , , , . it may be mentioned that, according to theophrastus, it was a mark of the man of small ambitions, when he took part in a cavalry procession, to give all his garments to a slave to carry home except only his cloak, in which he would display himself, walking about the agora. the chiton may have either one girdle, as no. , or two girdles, as nos. , , &c. in a few instances it has long sleeves, as in nos. , , , , , , . two riders wear a cuirass, viz. nos. , . the reins and bridles were in nearly every instance of bronze, marked by rivet holes behind the horse's ear, at his mouth and in the rider's hands. marble reins are seen in the right hands of nos. , . [rightnote: xxiv.] [sidenote: .] slab xxiv. is shown, as has been already stated, to have contained the first of the cavalry, by the figure of the apobates which has been fitted to its left side. neither this fragment nor that at the upper right hand corner have been engraved by michaelis. [rightnote: xxv.] [sidenote: .] slab xxv. was complete when drawn by stuart. only a fragment, containing part of no. , now survives. this is not inserted, in its place in the frieze, but is fixed beside the south door to the elgin room. [rightnote: xxvi.] [rightnote: xxvii.-xxxi.] slab xxvi. is proved by stuart's drawing to be continuous with the fragmentary slab xxv. between slabs xxvi. and xxxi. the order is uncertain. the arrangement of plate of michaelis has been followed. it may be assumed that a slab (xxvii.) is lost between xxvi. and xxviii., which may have included the fragment no. , _ _. slab xxx. when complete may have fitted to xxix.; but, as it has the joint preserved on the right, there can be no doubt that it did not fit to no. xxxi. between these two, therefore, another slab may be supposed to be missing. the three slabs enumerated as lost, viz. xx., xxvii., and the slab between xxx., xxxi., may be supposed to have been about feet long. the missing part of xxx. may be feet. of the ft. in. of the frieze lost without record feet are thus accounted for; the remaining ft. in. may be due to the loss of two more slabs, containing a chariot group, or to miscalculated proportions in carrey's drawing. [illustration: fig. .--slab xxv. restored from stuart (from michaelis).] slab xxviii. is original; slabs xxix.-xxxi. are casts from the originals at athens; no. (on slab xxix.) is a marshal beckoning to the riders. [rightnote: xxxii.] [sidenote: .] the fragment (in slab xxxii.) containing the head of no. and the horse's head, having been discovered in in the collection of sculptures at marbury hall in cheshire, was presented to the museum in by j. h. smith barry, esq., the owner of that collection. a small fragment, cast from the original at athens, and added to slab xxxiv., is not engraved by michaelis. [rightnote: xxxv.] [sidenote: .] the fragment (in slab xxxv.) which contains the head of no. and of a horse, after having been in the possession of the society of dilettanti, passed from that body to the royal academy, by whom it was presented to the british museum in . [rightnote: xxxvii.] [sidenote: .] the fragment (in slab xxxvii.) containing the head of no. and a horse's head, of which a plaster cast is adjusted to the marble, is now at athens. [rightnote: xxxix.] [sidenote: .] the head of no. , on slab xxxix. was formerly in the pourtalès collection, at the sale of which in it was purchased for the british museum, and inserted in its place on the frieze. [rightnote: xlii.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] on the last slab of the north side, the procession is still in a state of preparation, so that this slab prepares a transition to the west side. in the foreground is a rider (no. ), standing by his rearing horse, whom he holds by the rein with his right hand. in the background beyond this group is a mounted figure (no. ), so entirely concealed by the rearing horse in the foreground that the only evidence of his presence is his right hand advanced just beyond his horse's shoulder point. [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] to the right is a rider (no. ) standing by his horse, and in the act of drawing down his chiton under his girdle in front, while a youthful attendant (no. ) assists him by pulling it down behind, or perhaps by tying the lower girdle over which the folds were drawn. the attendant carries on his shoulder a folded chlamys, probably that of his master. west frieze of the parthenon. [sidenote: = .=] the west side of the frieze contains a continuation of the procession of the north side, but here the procession is mainly in course of preparation, and the scene may be supposed to be laid in the cerameicos. in part, doubtless, on account of the character of the subject, in this part of the frieze there is less continuity of composition than elsewhere. the subjects are disconnected, and are usually on single slabs, and seldom carried over a joint. there is the same variety of dress and accoutrements here as among the riders of the north side; but there are more figures in armour (nos. , , , , , ). it may be noted, as showing that the west and north sides were produced by different hands or at different times, that on the west side the bridles were fixed to the heads of the horses by four rivet holes, not by two, as on the north. slabs i., ii. are originals brought by lord elgin. the remainder of this side (with the exception of no. ) is cast from the original slabs, which are still in position on the temple. two sets of casts of this frieze are exhibited in parallel lines. the upper series is taken from moulds made from the original marble in ; the lower series from moulds made at athens, at the time of lord elgin's mission. a comparison of these two sets of casts shows how much the frieze has suffered from exposure to weather during seventy years. as the frieze is still in position and unsheltered, it must be presumed that the decay of the originals continues. [rightnote: i.] [sidenote: .] [rightnote: ii.] [sidenote: , .] [rightnote: iii.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [rightnote: iv., v.] [sidenote: , , .] [rightnote: vi.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] the single figure (no. ) at the north-west angle is evidently a herald or marshal directing the march of the cavalry. in like manner hippias, or, according to aristotle, hipparchos, was in the outer cerameicos, "arranging how each part of the panathenaic procession ought to go forward," when he was attacked by harmodios and aristogeiton. (thuc. vi., ; aristotle, [greek: ath. pol.] ed. kenyon, .) his right hand probably held a staff of office, as the bent fingers are not closed. this figure is repeated, in a plaster cast. then follow two mounted figures (nos. , ); in the hair of no. are holes in which probably a metal wreath was inserted. no. raises both hands as if to open his horse's mouth for the insertion of the bit. behind the horse stands a youth (no. ), either the groom or attendant; his hands may have held a bridle. a bearded man (no. ), probably a marshal, turns towards the youth as if addressing him. then follow two more mounted figures (nos. , ), and a youth (no. ), standing by his horse, and turning round to his mounted companion (no. ), behind him. next comes a horseman (no. ), distinguished from all the figures in the frieze by his richly decorated armour. on his head is a crested helmet, on the crown of which is in relief an eagle with outstretched neck. a hole a little behind the temple shows where a wreath has been inserted. his body is protected by a cuirass, on the front of which is a gorgon's head in relief, intended as a charm, to avert wounds from the most vital part; on the shoulder-straps are lions' heads, also in relief. between the breast-plate and back-piece of the cuirass is an interval at the sides, which is protected by flexible scale armour ([greek: thôrax lepidôtos]). below the girdle are flaps (_pteryges_) made of leather covered with metal, which at the upper ends are united to the girdle. under the cuirass appears a chiton without sleeves. the horse of no. is one of the few on the frieze that have all four legs off the ground. (cf. north, , ; west, ; south, , .) [sidenote: .] no. is on foot, and stoops forward, looking towards the procession advancing from the right. his left foot is raised on a rock, and he appears from the action of his arms to be tying his boot. [rightnote: vii.] [sidenote: , .] [rightnote: viii.] [sidenote: .] [rightnote: ix.-xi.] [sidenote: - .] [rightnote: xii.] [sidenote: , .] [sidenote: .] [rightnote: xiii.] [sidenote: .] [rightnote: xiv.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [rightnote: xv.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [rightnote: xvi.] [sidenote: .] the next slab contains two mounted figures (nos. , ). no. wears a mantle of skin. he is the only figure, on this side of the frieze, thus decorated. no. stands at the side of a rearing horse, trying to control him. the violence of the action is shown by the muscular strain and the disordered dress of this figure, who wears a chiton, _exomis_, over which is a chlamys flying behind his back. on his head is a leathern cap. the attire of this figure is precisely similar to that of no. and no. . then follow six mounted figures (nos. - ), all moving rapidly to the left. one of these (no. ) wears the petasos, a flapping, broad-brimmed hat used by travellers. from no. onward to the south-west angle, none of the figures are mounted. the first group (nos. - ) is not unlike that already described (nos. - ). a youth (no. ) stands at the horse's head, and seems to be holding the reins. at the side of the horse stands a taller figure (no. ), holding up his right hand as if giving an order to a person at some little distance. in his left hand he holds a short wand. this figure seems to be a marshal, though his dress, a chiton girt at the waist and a chlamys, differs from that of all the other marshals on the frieze, while it frequently occurs among the riders. behind the horse is a youth (no. ) who, from his stature and attitude, is a groom or attendant; a thick garment is cast over his shoulders. next is a much mutilated figure (no. ), who seems to be pressing his right foot against the heel of his horse's right fore leg to make him extend himself so as to lower his back for mounting. behind this figure a horse springs forward, free from the control of his rider (no. ), who has let him go in order to assist a comrade (no. ). this latter figure tries to master a rearing horse, who threatens to escape from his control. in the upper portion of this figure a fragment from the original marble is adjusted to the cast. this fragment was brought from athens many years ago, and presented to the museum by m. j. j. dubois in . the next figure (no. ) stands at his horse's head, and behind him is a rider (no. ) not yet mounted, who is drawing on his left boot in an attitude very similar to that of no. ; his right boot lies at the side of the rock on which his left foot is raised. the horses of both these figures, in contrast to the preceding group, stand tranquilly waiting to be mounted. the last figure on the western frieze (no. ) on the return of the first slab of the south side stands holding up an ample mantle on his left arm, and seems to be putting it on. from the size of the mantle this figure might be that of a marshal, though his youthful appearance suggests that he is a rider. south frieze of the parthenon. [sidenote: = .=] in following the procession along the south side from west to east, we pursue one branch of the procession which corresponds in the main with that on the north side. the main difference is that on the south the victims consist of cows only, while on the north there are sheep as well as cows. it may therefore be the case that this side represents the hecatomb offered by the athenians themselves. all the victims are cows, in accordance with greek ritual, which ordained the sacrifice of male animals to a god, and female animals to a goddess. [rightnote: i.] [sidenote: - .] the left-hand side of slab i. is still on the parthenon; the right-hand portion, containing the figure, no. , was presented to the museum by the late mr. c. r. cockerell. a marshal (no. ) stands at the angle; the first horseman (no. ) advances at a walk, thus conforming to the rule that the movement is always gentle at an angle of the frieze. the horsemen of this slab all wear chiton, chlamys, boots, and a leather cap with a flap (_katablema_) hanging over the nape of the neck. [rightnote: ii.] [sidenote: - .] [rightnote: iii.] [sidenote: - .] slab ii. is cast from the original on the parthenon, which is in a very mutilated condition (cf. no. , _ _). of no. nothing now remains on this slab, but a bit of his drapery, and on slab iii. his right foot and his horse's nose and forelegs. slab iii. was complete on the left edge in the time of stuart, who gives the head and forehand of the horse of no. . the horseman (no. ) wears a chlamys only, which is cast back so as to show the entire right side of the body. this is the only figure on the south frieze who is so little clad. [rightnote: iv.] [sidenote: - .] on slab iv., the greater part of which still remains on the parthenon, are the remains of three figures (nos. , , ). on the right side are two fragments of this slab, brought away by lord elgin, one of which only is given by michaelis. the other has been since discovered in the magazines of the museum. [at this point it has been necessary to interrupt the sequence by placing slabs xiv., xv., xx. on the sides of the pilaster. these slabs are described below in their respective places.] [rightnote: v.] [sidenote: - .] [rightnote: vi.-ix.] [sidenote: - .] on slab v., no. wears a close-fitting cuirass, but is bare-headed. compare the figures - , and the description of theagenes in the passage of heliodorus, quoted on p. . slabs vi.-ix. contain unarmed athenian horsemen, riding bare-headed and for the most part wearing chiton with double girdle and boots only. the head of the rider, no. , is unfinished. the horses at this part of the frieze have manes with a large forelock turned upwards. [rightnote: x.-xiii.] [sidenote: - .] [rightnote: xiv.-xvi.] [sidenote: - .] there is a break in the composition at the beginning of slab x., and a change of subject is marked by the group not being carried across the joint. the figures (nos. - ) on slabs x.-xiii. are evidently arranged in two ranks of six horsemen each, and are distinguished from most of the riders in the southern cavalcade by wearing a cuirass under which is a short chiton. three of these figures (nos. , , ) have a cuirass consisting of a breastplate and backpiece, which are united at the sides by a strip of flexible scale armour. from the cuirass hang down the flaps, which protected the loins. these cuirasses also have shoulder straps. the riders, nos. - , wear the plain cuirass, rigid and close-fitting ([greek: thôrax stadios]). all the riders in this part of the procession wear high boots with a flap turning over below the knee. they are all bareheaded except no. , who wears a cap or helmet with a flap behind; no. , who also wears a cap; and no. , who has a diadem over which must have been a metallic wreath, as there are four holes for its attachment on the crown of the head. a chlamys hangs from the left arm of nos. , , . slab xiv., which is a cast from the original at athens, and slab xv. are now exhibited on the pilaster. slab xvi., which is also a cast from the original at athens, is in its place. slab xiv. contains the head of the horse of no. . in front of it is a space marking a division, and another body of six horsemen (nos. - ). these appear to be uniformly dressed in helmet, chiton without cuirass, and boots, and, although the positions of xv., xvi. are conjectural, the sequence proposed seems highly probable. in front of no. there is a space similar to that between nos. , . on the right side of xvi. is the outline of a horse's crupper, and floating above it in the air appears to be the long end of a mantle of skin such as is worn by no. in the west frieze; behind no. appears to be part of a garment of the same texture, the outline of which is seen above the horse's hind quarter. it is, however, doubtful whether xvi. and xvii. joined each other. perhaps between them was a slab in which the horsemen wore similar mantles of skin. from this point the military order of the procession becomes less marked, or is obscured by the defective state of the marble. there is also more variety in the costumes of the riders. [rightnote: xvii.] [sidenote: *.] slab xvii. is a cast from the original at athens. since the publication of the work of michaelis, two fragments have been adjusted on the right, which prove the connection of the slab with no. xviii. by supplying the hind quarters of a horse of which the rest has been in xviii. these two fragments, which were unknown to michaelis, also supply the forehand of another horse and the body of the rider (no. *) from the waist to below the knee (see fig. ). [illustration: fig. .--south frieze, slab xvii. ( . . *.)] [rightnote: xviii.] the original of slab xviii. is at athens, and was in its present mutilated condition when drawn by carrey. [rightnote: xix.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] the cast of the small fragment at the upper left-hand corner of slab xix., giving the mane of the horse of no. , has been added since the publication of the work of michaelis. for a fragment engraved by michaelis, as the head of no. , cf. no. , _ _. [rightnote: xx.] slab xx. (on the pilaster) is a cast from the original at athens. this slab, which now only contains parts of the legs of two horses and a rider (no. ) was nearly complete in the time of carrey and contained two riders wearing petasoi or broad-brimmed travellers' hats. [rightnote: xxi.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] in slab xxi. the head of the horse of no. and the head and shoulders of no. are supplied by casts from originals at athens. the fragment containing the head of no. , a figure wearing a petasos, does not appear in the plate of michaelis. [rightnote: xxii., xxiii] slab xxii. and slab xxiii., which, with the exception of a small fragment, is only preserved in carrey's drawings, contained the leading horsemen of the procession. those on slab xxii. are evidently pulling up their horses, while the two horsemen on slab xxiii. are going at a foot-pace. all the paces of the horse are thus displayed within a short distance, at this part of the frieze. in slab xxii. a fragment containing a horse's head and the mane of another horse, which michaelis assigns to the team on slab xxiv., has been since adjusted to its place in front of no. ; to this has been fitted the small fragment of the corner of slab xxiii. [rightnote: xxiv.] [rightnote: xxxiv.] the horsemen are immediately preceded in the procession by the chariot-groups. carrey draws eight chariots, of which four partially survive and four are totally lost. on the other hand, a part remains of two groups (slab xxix.), of which there is no trace in carrey's drawings. these, therefore, must probably be placed in a break in the sequence of slabs indicated by carrey. originally there must have been not fewer than ten chariot groups. in each the charioteer is accompanied by an armed warrior; but here the armed figure is not like the apobates of the northern frieze in the act of stepping out of the chariot in motion, but stands either in the quadriga or (if it is not in motion) by its side. therefore michaelis supposes that, while the chariots on the north frieze have reference to that contest in which armed apobatae took a part, leaping off and on to the quadriga during the race, the chariots in the south frieze suggest the chariots of war, _harmata polemisteria_, in which an armed hoplite stood in the chariot by the side of the charioteer. each chariot group, when complete, is seen to be accompanied by a marshal. [rightnote: xxiv.] [sidenote: .] of the two figures in the chariot of slab xxiv., nothing now remains but part of the shield and left arm of the hoplite (no. ), with a fold of drapery hanging from the arm. the upper part of the slab was wanting in the time of carrey, but he gives the legs of the hoplite, who, like the corresponding figure in slab xxv., was standing by the wheel of the chariot, of which a small portion remains. this position shows that both these chariots were represented at the moment before they started. in the shield of no. are two rivet holes for the attachment of a bronze handle. in the upper hole the metal still remains. similar rivet holes occur in the shields of nos. and . michaelis supplies the heads of the horses on this slab by a fragment which belongs to the cavalcade of horsemen. (see slab xxii., above.) the connection between slabs xxiv. and xxv. is proved by a fragment which has been added to the lower corner on the right of slab xxiv. since the work of michaelis was published. this fragment, of which the original is at athens, gives part of the wheel of the chariot of xxv. and the forefeet of the horses of xxiv. [rightnote: xxv.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] in slab xxv. the horses' heads now wanting are given in carrey's drawing. of the charioteer (no. ) very little is now visible but part of his drapery. the armed figure (no. ) in this chariot group, whose appearance is more youthful than that of the other hoplites in this part of the frieze, wears a chiton with a double girdle and a chlamys. near the edge of his shield are two rivet holes for a bronze handle; in the upper one the metal still remains. the marshal (no. ) standing at the side of the horses stretches out his right hand towards the charioteer with the forefinger extended, a gesture which indicates that he is giving an order. the rivet holes on the horses' crests show that the reins were of bronze. [rightnote: xxvi., xxvii.] slabs xxvi., xxvii., of michaelis, contained two chariot groups which we only know through carrey's drawings. in both the horses are springing forward; cf. no. , _ _. [rightnote: xxviii.] michaelis inserts to represent slab xxviii. a fragment which belongs to the north side, slab xxiv. [rightnote: xxix.] the lower corner on the left side of xxix. has been cast from a fragment at athens, which has been identified since the publication of the work of michaelis. this fragment supplies the missing part of the wheel and a small piece of flying drapery belonging to one of the figures in the chariot. in this group the marshal at the side of the chariot is wanting. on the right-hand edge of this slab, just above the horses' forelegs and close to the joint, is part of the outline of a shield. this shield must have belonged to one of the figures in the chariot following on the next slab; it is evident, therefore, that between xxix. and xxx. was another slab, now lost, which we cannot recognise in any of carrey's drawings. [rightnote: xxx.] [sidenote: .] the armed figure (no. ) wears the corinthian helmet, which does not occur elsewhere on the frieze. the handle of his shield was of bronze, of which a small portion still remains in the rivet hole. other rivet holes on the crests of the horses show that the reins and the _hestor_ for attaching the yoke to the pole were also of bronze. here, as in xxix., the marshal is wanting. the horses' heads, which are treated with more freedom on this slab than elsewhere on the frieze, are of extraordinary beauty. [rightnote: xxxi.] on slab xxxi., as in the preceding, the reins and the hestor were of bronze. [rightnote: xxxii.-xxxiv.] slabs xxxii.-xxxiv. are now wholly lost, except in carrey's drawings. they contained two chariots, both at a standstill, or moving slowly, and the four last persons of the crowd on foot. [rightnote: xxxv.-xxxvii.] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: .] [sidenote: *.] slabs xxxv., xxxvi., and part of slab xxxvii. contained the remainder of the persons on foot. fragments of xxxv. and of xxxvi. (original at athens) alone remain, although the slabs were complete in the time of carrey. the figures as he draws them appear to be elderly men, eighteen in number, and resembling in attire and general character the thallophori who have been already noticed on the northern frieze. all are clad in the himation. michaelis thinks that no. holds in his left hand a small object shaped like a clarionet, but he appears to have mistaken the right arm of no. hanging down for this object. between these supposed thallophori and the victims carrey inserts four figures, two of whom hold in their left hands some object like a square tablet, which may be the bottom of a lyre, as this is the place in the procession where the musicians might be expected, if the arrangement on this side corresponded with that on the north side. the fragment (no. *) representing the upper part of a scaphephoros carrying a tray must also belong to this part of the frieze, and is therefore here inserted. it is cast from the original at athens, which was not known to michaelis. it probably implies that one slab was wanting here, as well as the second half of slab xxxvii., of which carrey seems to have only drawn the first half. [rightnote: xxxviii.-xlv.] the remainder of the south frieze is occupied with the procession of victims for the sacrifice. cows only are here represented, and, as has been observed, this may indicate that we have here the native athenian part of the procession. the order in which these slabs are exhibited differs from that given by michaelis in _der parthenon_, pl. ., because slab xliii., no. (= michaelis, no. ; cf. , _ _), which is the top left corner of a slab, has been proved to join to the right side of xli. other changes have also been made, but the slab numbers of michaelis have been preserved for convenience of reference, and the order now stands:--xli., joined by xliii., no. (= michaelis, no. ); xxxix., which may join xliii.; xl., which joins xxxix.; xxxviii., which may perhaps join xl.; after an interval of one slab, xlii.; xliii., nos. , (= michaelis, , ); xliv., the corner slab. michaelis has proposed a revised arrangement in _arch. zeit._, , p. , which agrees with the foregoing, except that slabs xxxviii. and xlii. are transposed. michaelis holds that xlii. joins xl., and xxxviii. joins xlii. this arrangement suits the conditions as to space, but the suggested joinings are very doubtful. [sidenote: .] each cow is escorted by two youths, one on each side, and a third figure, perhaps a marshal, at the head. those of the escort who are on the side of the spectator are represented in vigorous action, guiding and restraining the animals by ropes, which may have been painted on the marble. all are clad in the himation, which in the figures actively engaged in controlling the cattle is worn so as to leave one or both shoulders free. compare the description of heliodorus, p. . in slab xxxix. the action is very animated. the youth, no. , leans back with his foot pressed against a rock, to restrain the cow. this motive is a favourite one in fifth century art. compare the west frieze, no. ; a metope of the theseion representing theseus and the bull of marathon; the balustrade of the temple of nikè apteros (no. ); and vase paintings as in _journ. of hellen. studies_, ii., pl. . [sidenote: .] in slab xl. the left lower corner is added in plaster, from the original fragment at athens. in slab xxxviii. the cow's right horn must have been carved in the round, only the tip being attached to the background of the relief. in slab xlii., no. has both hands raised to his head, as if adjusting a wreath. compare the north frieze, no. . what was the number of cattle in this part of the frieze cannot now be ascertained, but there is evidence that there were at least nine, and more probably ten. [sidenote: .] michaelis (_arch. zeit._, , p. ), in placing xlii. after xl., makes the right hand seen on the left of xlii. to be the hand of no. (= michaelis, no. ), and the portion of a cow's belly seen between and to be part of the cow on the left of xlii. it is to be noticed that the hind legs of this cow have been altogether omitted. there is a curious inequality in the depths of the relief in this part of the frieze. slabs xxxix., xl. are worked more in the round than the remaining groups with cattle. [sidenote: , .] [sidenote: .] the fragment with the two heads, nos. and , may be, as michaelis suggests, a part of the corner slab xliv., the two parts at present numbered as , being different parts of the same figure. the positions of the head and the foot appear to agree. on the other hand, the surfaces of the two fragments have weathered very differently. on the return face of slab xliv. is the marshal, who forms the first figure of the east frieze, and makes a connection between the two sides, by looking back, as if to the advancing procession. in the following conspectus of publications of the frieze, only the _museum marbles_ and the work of michaelis, and the photographic reproductions are referred to in detail. for a fuller list of early publications the reader is referred to the work of michaelis. deficiencies in the published illustrations, as compared with the present state of the frieze, are noted in the description. in the fourth column c. indicates that the slab was drawn by carrey; s. that it was drawn by stuart, and published in the _antiquities of athens_, ii., chap. i., or iv., chap. iv., pls. - . a diagram showing all the slabs drawn by stuart is given in _antiquities of athens_, ii., chap. i., pl. . p. indicates that a slab was drawn by pars, during the dilettanti expedition, and was published in the _antiquities of athens_, iv., chap. iv., pls. - , - . w. denotes slabs published, from drawings of pars, in the _museum worsleyanum_. parthenon frieze, east side. ------------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------- michaelis, | _museum_ | mansell's | early drawings, &c. _der_ | _marbles_, | photographs.| _parthenon_, | pt. viii. | | pl. . | | | ------------------+-----------------+-------------+-------------------- slab. | pl. | | i. | xxxix. | | c. | | | ii. | | | c. | | | iii. |xxxviii., xxxvii.| , | c.s. | | | iv. | xxxvi., i. | , |{ c.s. brunn, | | |{ _denkmaeler_, | | |{ nos. , . | | | v. | ii., iii., iv. | , |{ s.w. brunn, | | |{ _denkmaeler_, | | |{ nos. , , . | | | vi. | v., vi. | , |{ c. baumeister, | | |{ p. . | | | vii. | vii. | | c. | | | viii. | viii. | _a_ | c.s. | | | ix. | | | c.s. | | | ------------------+-----------------+-------------+---------------------- the east frieze is also published by the stereoscopic company, nos. - . parthenon frieze, north side. --------------+----------------+-------------+--------------- michaelis, | _museum_ | mansell's | early pl. , . | _marbles_, | photographs.| drawings. | pt. viii. | | --------------+----------------+-------------+--------------- slab. | pl. | | i.-v. | viii. | | c.s. vi. | | | c. vii.-xi. | | | c. (except x.) xii. | ix. a. | | c.s. xiii. | | | c. xiv. | ix. b. | | c.s. xv.-xvi. | | | c. xvii. | xi. | | s.w. xviii. | x. c. | | xix. | | | c. xx. | | | xxi. | x. d. | | xxii. | xii. | | s. xxiii. | xii. | | s. xxiv. | xiii. a. | | xxv. | | | s. xxvi. | xiv. | | s. xxvii. | | | xxviii. | xiii. b. | | xxix. | | | xxx. | | | xxxi. | | | xxxii. | xv. | | p. w. xxxiii. | xvi. | | p. w. xxxiv. | xvi. | | p. w. xxxv. | xvii. | | p. w. xxxvi. | xvii. | | p. w. xxxvii. [*] | xviii. | | p. w. xxxviii. [*] | xviii. | | p. w. xxxix. | xix. | | p.s.w. xl. | xix. | | s. w. xli. | xx. | | s. w. xlii. | xxi. | | s. w. --------------+----------------+-------------+---------- *: slab xxxvii. is given by brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. ; slab xxxviii. = _denkmaeler_, no. ; slab xlii. = _denkmaeler_, no. . the north frieze is also published by the stereoscopic company, nos. - . parthenon frieze, west side. --------------+----------------+-----------+------------ | | stereo- | michaelis, | _museum_ | scopic | early pl. | _marbles_, | company's | drawings. | pt. viii. | photo- | | | graphs. | --------------+----------------+-----------+------------ slab. | pl. | no. | i. | xxii. | | c.p.w. ii. | xxii. | | c.p.w. iii. | xxiii. | , a | c.p.w. iv. | xxiv. | | c.p.w. v. | xxv. | | c.p.w. vi. | xxvi. | | c.p.w. vii. | xvii. | | c.p.w. viii. | xxviii. | | c.p.w. ix. | xxix. | | c.p.w. x. | xxx. | | c.p.w. xi. | xxxi. | | c.p.w. xii. | xxxii. | | c.p.w. xiii. | xxxiii. | | c.p.w. xiv. | xxxiv. | | c.p.w. xv. | xxxv. | | c.p.w. xvi. | xxxv. | | c.p.w. --------------+----------------+-----------+------------ parthenon frieze, south side. --------------+----------------+-------------+------------ michaelis, | _museum_ | mansell's | early pl. , . | _marbles_, | photographs.| drawings. | pt. viii. | | --------------+----------------+-------------+------------ slab | pl. | | i. | lvi. | | s. ii. | | | s. iii. | lv. | | s. iv. | | | s. v. | lv. | | s. vi. | liv. | | s.w. vii. | liv. | | s.w. viii. | liii. | | s.w. ix. | liii. | | s.w. x. [*] | lii. | | s.w. xi.[*] | lii. | | s.w. xii. | li. | | s. xiii. | li. | | s. xiv. | | | xv. | l. | | xvi. | | | xvii. | | | xviii. | | | c. xix. | xlix. | | c. xx. | | | c. xxi. | xlix. | | c. xxii. | xlviii. | | c. xxiii. | | | c. xxiv. | xlvii. | | c. xxv. | xlvii. | | c. xxvi. | | | c. xxvii. | | | c. xxviii. | | | xxix. | xlvi. | | xxx. | xlv. | | c. xxxi. | xlv. | | c. xxxii. | | | c. xxxiii. | | | c. xxxiv. | | | c. xxxv. | xliv. | | c. xxxvi. | | | c. xxxvii. | | | c. xxxviii. | xliii. | | xxxix. | xlii. | | xl. | xli. | | s. xli. | xli. | | s. xlii. | xl. | | xliii. | | | xliv. | xxxix. | | --------------+----------------+-------------+----------- *: slab x. is given by brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. ; slab xi. = _denkmaeler_, no. . the south frieze is also published by the stereoscopic company, nos. - . fragments of the parthenon sculptures. numerous small fragments of the parthenon sculptures were taken from athens either by lord elgin, or by travellers who visited athens. others have been more recently discovered in excavations on the acropolis, or on its south slope, and are still at athens. casts of all such fragments, so far as they could be obtained, are now in the british museum. as far as possible the fragments have been adjusted in their correct positions on the sculptures, and have been described in their respective places in this catalogue. of the remainder all the original marble fragments, and the most interesting of the casts, are exhibited in the elgin room, and are described below. marble fragments attributed to the pedimental sculptures. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of colossal head. according to hamilton's memorandum, this fragment was discovered built into a turkish house at the west front of the temple. it contains the upper part of a face and head. the sockets of the eyes are hollow, and must have once contained eyes composed of ivory, precious stones, or enamel. (an ivory eye, which must have belonged to a colossal statue, was found in the temple of athenè, at Ægina, and is engraved in cockerell, _temples at Ægina, and bassæ_, pl. , fig. . cf. also _arch. anzeiger_, , p. ). the surface of the marble is highly polished, and traces of red colour have been remarked in the hair. the back of the head is worked in a peculiar way, to a plane surface, such as might be required if this was a head from a pediment, on account of the cornice above. the hard, conventional style, however, is not in accordance with that of the pedimental sculptures. this fragment was formerly thought to belong to the athenè of the western pediment, to which its scale would correspond, but there are no other grounds for the attribution. height, inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] two feet, shod with leather, attached to a plinth. the feet belonged to a figure striding to the (spectator's) right. the left foot was advanced, and bore the weight of the body. between the feet a stump of a tree is attached to the plinth. the feet appear to be those of a female figure, which in that case must have worn a short chiton. the fragment has been assigned by different writers to the athenè of the west pediment, which is impossible, on account of the attitude; to the poseidon, which is impossible, on account of the scale; and to the athenè of the east pediment, about whom we have no information. it has also, with more plausibility, been assigned to the figure of hermes (h; see carrey's drawing), who accompanies the chariot of athenè on the west pediment. it is, however, unlikely that that figure was shod with leather shoes; and the stump also has to be accounted for. it is very probable that the plinth does not belong to the pedimental sculptures at all, and sauer's plan of the floor of the pediment seems to leave no room for it. it has been suggested that it is part of an independent group of athenè and poseidon, which pausanias saw on the acropolis. but as to this there is no evidence either way. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, vi., pl. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); michaelis, pl. , fig. , p. ; _journ. of hellen. studies_, iii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] part of colossal right arm of female figure, bent at a right angle at the elbow. it comprises the upper arm, from the shoulder, and the upper part of the forearm. this fragment may, perhaps, have belonged to figure g of the west pediment. (see carrey's drawing.) height (to elbow), foot inches. plate vi., fig. . in part given by michaelis, pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] left arm of female figure, bent, from near the shoulder, to a little above the elbow. drapery, thrown over the arm at the elbow joint, falls partly on the upper and partly on the fore arm. in the drapery of the upper arm is a hole for the attachment of an object in metal. this fragment seems best suited to the figure n. (see carrey's drawing.) length, armpit to elbow, foot - / inches. michaelis, pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( *). [sidenote: = .=] right arm of female figure, slightly bent, formed of two fragments united at the elbow. this may, perhaps, belong to figure f. length, feet - / inches. michaelis (pl. , fig. ) gives the upper arm; _synopsis_ no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] left forearm of female figure, broken off above the elbow (michaelis, pl. , fig. ). to this is united a cast of a fragment at athens with the wrist, which is bent a little inwards. the arm must have been bent at the elbow. length, elbow to wrist, foot inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] forearm of female figure. michaelis (pl. , fig. ) thinks that it may have belonged either to figure o or w of the west pediment. length, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] fragment of left thigh, above life size. michaelis (pl. , fig. ) calls this a female fragment, and suggests the nude seated female figure s of the west pediment. but he seems to be in error as to the sex, and the fragment seems more appropriate to the figure of the boy, e, in the same pediment. length, foot. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] fore part of right foot of female figure, resting on a thick sole. the foot belonged to a colossal figure, which, can hardly have been other than the athenè of the west pediment. length, foot - / inches (length of second toe, - / inches). michaelis. pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] piece of drapery, which must have hung free, apparently from the shoulder and outstretched right arm of a colossal figure. at the upper extremity is part of a dowel hole, showing that the marble had been attached here by a joint. height, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] fragment of right shoulder and arm as low as the deltoid. the upper arm presses against the side. this fragment may belong to the boy p on the left of q in the west pediment. height, inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). casts from fragments of the pedimental sculptures. [sidenote: = .= .] colossal female head, slightly turned to its right. the hair was confined in a plait round the head, and also by a wreath or band, which was of metal, as is shown by the holes for its attachment. the nose and mouth have been restored; but the grand style of the antique parts of the head agrees with that of the parthenon pediments. it is impossible, however, to determine to which figure the head belongs. it has been assigned by laborde and others to the victory (g) who is driving the chariot of athenè in the west pediment. but it may have belonged to one of the figures n, q, s, of the same pediment. the probability that the head is derived from the parthenon is increased by what is known of its history. it was found in a house of the san gallo family at venice. a member of this family, felice san gallo, was secretary of morosini, and may well have taken the head as a trophy from athens, in . the head passed in into the possession of david weber, and afterwards into that of laborde. height, foot - / inches. laborde, _athènes_, ii., pls. facing pp. , ; michaelis, p. ; pl. , fig. ; wolters, no. , p. . [sidenote: .] colossal female head, much defaced. the hair is gathered in a cloth, which passes over the back of the head. compare the figure in the east frieze, slab vi., no. (michaelis, pl. , no. ). height, - / inches. michaelis, pl. , fig. ; laborde, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] right side of colossal female head. the hair is gathered into a plait from the brow and bound round the head. this fine fragment agrees well in style with the unrestored parts of the head, no. , above. height, - / inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of a wing, with a joint for attachment, and a heavy support below. the figure of victory (j) in the east pediment probably had large wings; but it is difficult to attach this cast to the statue. greatest length, feet inches. michaelis, pl. , fig. ; laborde, pl. , fig. ; overbeck, _ber. d. k. sächs. ges. d. wissenschaften_, , pl. . [sidenote: .] three smaller fragments of similar wings. one is engraved, michaelis, pl. , fig. ; laborde, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] portion of chiton, the flowing lines of which greatly resemble the treatment of the iris? (g) of the east pediment. length, foot - / inches. [sidenote: .] portion of the right side of a draped figure wearing chiton and mantle, and sitting on a rock. attributed by michaelis to the west pediment (fig. d or fig. u). height, feet inches. michaelis, pl. , fig. . see above, no. d. [sidenote: .] left knee of seated draped figure, with the fingers of a small hand on it. (west pediment, figs. d, e.) see no. , d, e. height, foot. [sidenote: .] left leg of colossal male figure, bent nearly at a right angle at the knee. it is made up from two pieces, a fragment reaching from half-way up the thigh to below the knee, and the fragment of a leg (michaelis, pl. , fig. ), reaching to the bottom of the calf. the scale and the attitude seem to agree well with the figure of hermes (h) of the west pediment. greatest circumference of the thigh, feet - / inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of the right leg and thigh of a colossal male figure, made up of two pieces, the leg from below the knee nearly to the ankle (michaelis, pl. , fig. ), and the knee with the beginning of the thigh. this leg is slightly bent at the knee. it is on the same scale as the preceding no. , and appears to be in the required position for the right knee of the figure of hermes (h) in the west pediment. height, foot inches. [sidenote: .] a colossal right foot, broken off at the ankle, and also half-way between the instep and the toes. less than half of the sole is roughly cut with a drill as if this part of the foot had been slightly raised from the ground. the heel and part of the sole under the instep have been broken away. the scale is rather larger than that of the preceding nos. , , and it may therefore be one of the feet of the athenè in the west pediment. length of fragment, - / inches. michaelis, pl. , fig. ; laborde, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] fragment of tail of some serpentine creature having on the back a ridge of projections. this fragment has been thought to be part of the tail of a hippocamp attached to the chariot of amphitritè. length, foot inches. michaelis, pl. , fig. ; laborde, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] fragment of left thigh, near the knee, of colossal figure; on it falls a corner of drapery to which is attached a gland. sauer proposes to assign this fragment to the figure s of the west pediment. length, - / inches. _athenische mittheilungen_, , p. . [sidenote: .] right thigh and knee of a male figure, rather larger than life. it is very doubtful whether this belongs to the parthenon. length, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of right leg of small figure, broken off above ankle and below knee. it has been attached at the back. length, inches. [sidenote: .] left hand of colossal female figure clasped round an uncertain object. the hand is broken off at the wrist; the forefinger and middle finger are wanting. there is no evidence that this hand belongs to the parthenon. the scale, however, is suitable to one of the central figures of the west pediment. if the hand is derived thence, it is possible that the hand is a hand of athenè, and that the object it holds is not the base of a torch, as has been suggested, but part of the olive-tree. in that case athenè would be placing her left hand on a projecting bough of her tree. length of third finger, - / inches. overbeck, _ber. d. k. sächs. ges. d. wissenschaften_, , pl. . [sidenote: .] fragment of an olive-tree with foliage. height, - / inches. [sidenote: .] similar fragment of olive-tree, larger than last. height, foot inches. michaelis, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] fragment of ankle and part of calf of right leg wearing high boot and attached on the right side to the trunk of a tree. it is highly improbable that this fragment belonged to the parthenon. height, foot inches. [sidenote: .] left hand and wrist of male figure; the palm is grooved for the reception of some object like a staff; the thumb, forefinger, and upper joints of the other fingers are wanting. the scale is rather larger than that of the so-called theseus (d) of the east pediment, to which the fragment has been attributed by overbeck. the wrist is slightly bent inwards. this hand is finely modelled. length, - / inches. overbeck, _ber. d. k. sächs. ges. d. wissenschaften_, , p. . [sidenote: .] fragment of left hand and wrist of male figure, the hand much bent back as if the figure had rested on the open palm; broken across the middle of the metacarpal bones; possibly the left hand of the river-god v in the west pediment. see no. v. breadth, - / inches. [sidenote: .] right hand of female figure, small; the thumb and fingers broken off. breadth of palm, - / inches. [sidenote: .] right hand; the thumb and fingers broken off. breadth of palm, - / inches. [sidenote: .] right arm of female figure, slightly bent; the upper arm broken about the bottom of the biceps; the under side is worked rough. length, foot inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of left upper arm of female figure with sleeve of chiton fastened with studs (michaelis, pl. , fig. ). length, - / inches. [sidenote: .] fragment of right shoulder and upper part of back of arm of female figure; over the shoulder is drapery. height, foot / inch. [sidenote: .] fragment of right hip and right side of body nearly to the navel, of a boy, possibly from the west pediment. greatest height, inches. [sidenote: .] left breast of female figure, draped; the drapery has been fastened on the left shoulder. this may be part of the figure of callirrhoè (w) in the west pediment. height, foot. [sidenote: .] left breast of female figure, the drapery strained over it; the scale is similar to that of the figure c in the west pediment. height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] cast of a marble head in the bibliothèque nationale at paris, wrongly assigned by c. lenormant to the pediments of the parthenon. height, foot inches. _gaz. arch._, , pl. ; wolters, no. ; laborde, _athènes_, i., p. ; michaelis, p. , b*; babelon, _cabinet des antiques à la bibl. nat._, pl. . casts from fragments of chariot-horses of west pediment. [sidenote: = .=] a large number of small fragments of horses from the west pediment has been discovered. several of these fragments have been proved to have belonged to the horses of poseidon, which were lost before the visit of cyriac of ancona, in . others belonged to the group of horses, which was let fall by morosini's workmen. casts of these are preserved in the british museum, but only the most remarkable are exhibited in the elgin room. [sidenote: .] horse's head broken off at the setting off of the neck. the nose wanting. the mane, which has been hogged, and the surface of this head in several places are broken away. this fragment and the two following are assigned by sauer to the chariot of poseidon. michaelis, pl. , j. k. _a_; laborde, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] horse's head, lower half broken away. the mane hogged, with a loose lock in front. behind the ears a groove and two perforations are worked in the mane, and above the ears two other perforations for the attachment of trappings of metal. overbeck, _ber. d. k. sächs. ges. d. wissenschaften_, , pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] a right hindleg from the stifle joint to the pastern, bent, so as to indicate a rearing action. from below the hough to the hoof the leg is carved out of a block resting on the bed of the pediment. the greater part was sculptured on another block also set in the bed, which is now wanting, and was fitted to the first block at a joint roughly tooled. the outside of the haunch and hough have been cut away, evidently to gain room for the left hindleg of another horse, or, according to sauer, for the chariot-pole. this limb is composed of three separate fragments. michaelis, pl. , j. k. _f_; laborde, pl. , fig. ; overbeck, _ber. d. k. sächs. gesell. d. wissenschaften_, , p. , pl. ; and , p. . [sidenote: .] left hindleg from stifle to below hough, bent, made up of two fragments; the upper one may be michaelis, pl. , j. k. _g_; laborde, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] left thigh from below stifle; the outer side split off, broken off in the hough joint. [sidenote: .] right forefoot; made up of two fragments of which one is michaelis, pl. , j. k. _p_; broken off below the knee; the hoof free from the ground. [sidenote: .] hoof of forefoot, free from the ground; cut away on one side with rough surface; under the foot are holes round the edge as if for nails. [sidenote: .] hindhoof attached to fragment of base. michaelis, pl. , j. k. _m_; laborde, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] left foreleg, bent, from above knee to below knee. michaelis, pl. , j. k. _s_; laborde, pl. , fig. bis. marble fragments of metopes. [sidenote: = .=] the following fragments can be assigned with confidence to their respective places on the south side. [sidenote: .] metope xii. (no. ). foot of female figure. see _ante_, no. . [sidenote: .] metope xiv. the body of a male figure from the neck to the navel. this fragment is engraved in the vignette to _museum marbles_, part vii., and was drawn by carrey, who gives the whole metope as a youth raising his hands in astonishment, and a woman with a casket. michaelis, pl. , xiv.; _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: .] metope xvi. the head and trunk of a figure who has fallen in a combat between two men. the trunk was one of the elgin fragments, and is also engraved in the vignette to _museum marbles_, part vii. the head was formerly at chatsworth, and was presented to the museum by _the duke of devonshire_ in . carrey gives the position of the head of the fallen figure very accurately. _synopsis_, no. ( ); michaelis, pl. , xvi. [sidenote: .] metope xx. left thigh of female figure with clinging drapery, standing turned to the left. the following fragments are either of doubtful or unknown origins. probably they are all derived from metopes on the south side. [sidenote: .] left breast of draped female figure. south side, metope no. xiii.? _synopsis_, no. ( ); michaelis, pl. , fig. k. [sidenote: .] fragment of right arm from the wrist to above the elbow, which is bent; above the wrist is attached a corner of drapery. _presented by m. dubois, ._ south side, metope no. xv.? [sidenote: .] fragment of right arm from the wrist to the elbow, placed across the breast and left shoulder, with folds of drapery hanging as if from the hand. south side, metope no. xix.? _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: .] fragment of left arm from the wrist to near the elbow. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: .] fragment of calf of leg. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: .] fragment of calf of leg covered with drapery. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: .] fragment of left arm from the wrist to near the elbow. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: .] part of the arm (?) of a draped figure, made up of two pieces. _synopsis_, nos. ( ) and ( ). [sidenote: .] fragment of the right upper arm of a draped female figure with sleeve fastened with two studs. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: .] right shoulder and part of breast of draped female figure; the chiton fastened down the shoulder with four studs. michaelis, pl. , fig. o; _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: .] left hind leg of centaur up to above the hough. _presented by m. dubois, ._ casts from fragments of metopes. [sidenote: = .=] a large number of fragments have been discovered in the course of excavations at athens. casts of these have been attached, as far as possible to the metopes. of the fragments which could not be so attached, the following are the most important. [sidenote: .] south side, metope xi. fragment of shield, held by left hands of both centaur and lapith; cf. michaelis, pl. , no. xi. see p. . [sidenote: .] metope xvii. torso of male figure, extending from the left shoulder to half-way down the right thigh; drapery hangs from the left shoulder and falls down the back to the waist. this figure has stood on the right foot; the left leg appears to have been bent. this metope, as drawn by carrey, appears to have contained a nearly nude male figure, standing, and a draped figure of a woman, or citharist, holding a lyre. michaelis, pl. , xvii. [sidenote: .] metope xvii. fragment, possibly part of a lyre; apparently this is the object held in the hands of the draped figure of this metope. there are traces of fingers at the back. [sidenote: .] metope xx. fragment of right hand holding the end of a scroll. this metope, as drawn by carrey, contained two draped figures, holding scrolls. michaelis, pl. , xx. [sidenote: .] metope xxiv. torso of lapith. in the complete metope, as drawn by carrey, the lapith holds the fallen centaur by the hair, and places his left foot on his body. michaelis, pl. , xxiv. [sidenote: .] head of lapith, perhaps from metope no. . _found in the excavations on the acropolis, of ._ height, - / inches. marble fragment of frieze. [sidenote: = .=] head of a youth, looking to the left, in low relief. this fragment probably belongs to one of the horsemen in the north frieze. it is placed by michaelis (pl. ) in the space between slabs xxvi. and xxviii. this head was formerly in the possession of mr. steinhaüser, at karlsruhe. height, - / inches. casts from fragments of the frieze. [sidenote: = .=] the fragments are here arranged, as far as possible, in the order followed in the description of the frieze. east frieze. [sidenote: .] fragment from left-hand lower corner of slab, with drapery falling in vertical folds from below the knee of a figure; and with a right foot turned to the right, and wearing a shoe with a thick sole. the figure to which this fragment belongs must have been a maiden in the procession; probably the figure on the left of slab ii. now entirely lost, but preserved in carrey's drawing. height, foot. compare michaelis, pl. , slab ii., no. . [sidenote: .] female head, looking to the left. the hair is gathered up under a net. this must have belonged to one of the figures in the procession on the east side, slabs vii.-ix., and probably to no. . height, - / inches. north frieze. [sidenote: .] fragment of arm and drapery of male figure moving to the left. from the left edge of a slab. this seems to be a part of the figure, no. , partly seen on slab ii., and has been thus drawn on plate vii. height, foot inch. [sidenote: .] left-hand upper corner of slab, on which is a youthful male head, bound with a diadem, looking to the left; the face shown in three quarters. this seems to agree best with carrey's drawing of the figure with the sheep, slab iv., no. (= michaelis, no. ). see plate vii. height, - / inches. [sidenote: .] fragment containing the back of the head of one of the lyre-players (michaelis, no. ) and part of the lyre of the other (michaelis, no. ). height, - / inches. (see plate viii.) michaelis, pl. , vii. [sidenote: .] fragment from lower part of draped figure from knee to right (?) foot, the direction being to the left. on the right side of the fragment is a joint. the drapery reaches to the ankle, with an upper fold falling half-way down the calf. this fragment seems to have belonged to the musician on slab vii., whose lyre is preserved on the preceding fragment, and is thus drawn on plate viii. michaelis is in error in marking a joint on the left of his no. (= museum, no. ). height, foot - / inches. [sidenote: .] fragment with left foot wearing a shoe, from a draped figure moving to the left. the skirt falls just above the ankle. this may be a part of the figure on slab i., only preserved in carrey's drawing (cf. plate vii.); or it may have belonged to one of the figures on slabs vii.--ix., notwithstanding that carrey represents them with bare feet. height, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment from the left of slab ix., giving parts of the three figures shown in carrey's drawing (see plate viii.). this fragment agrees fairly well with carrey, except that he does not indicate the hand of the middle figure. it was discovered in the excavations on the acropolis in . height, feet. [sidenote: .] fragment from the right joint of a slab, containing part of a male figure from the hip to the right shoulder. the right arm was held horizontally, and bent at the elbow, so that the hand is seen before the breast. a mantle passes round the body from under the right arm to the left shoulder. this, as robert points out (_arch. zeit._, , p. , _l_), seems to be the marshal beside the chariot group in michaelis, pl. , xiii., fig. . (see plate viii., slab xiii.) in that case the raised mass on the left of the hip of this figure would be part of the rump of the third horse. height, foot inches. [sidenote: .] fragment with edge of hind quarter of horse, rearing to the left, with part of the tail. above the tail are folds of drapery. this fragment is perhaps a part of slab xiii., with the hinder chariot horse; but this is very doubtful. height, foot inches; michaelis, pl. , slab xiii., fig. . [sidenote: .] part of a charioteer, between the waist and the knees; he stands in a chariot, of which the antyx is visible. the left forearm crosses the body as if holding the reins. this fragment, which is not noticed by michaelis, must belong to the north frieze. robert (_arch. zeit._, , p. , _n_) proposed to assign it to slab no. xiii. of the north frieze. this seems the most probable position, though the fragment does not agree very well with carrey's drawing. height, foot. [sidenote: .] fragment of chariot group; an apobates standing in a quadriga, leaning forward. the head and neck, right arm from below elbow and legs from below the knee are wanting. on his left arm is his oval buckler. he wears a chiton which leaves the right arm and side bare. his right hand must have grasped the antyx. on the left a portion of the drapery of the charioteer is visible. there is a joint on the left of this fragment. it must belong to the northern frieze, and on p. , fig. , it has been drawn in combination with slab xix. it is not given by michaelis, or in robert's list (_arch. zeit._, , pp. - ). height, foot inches. [sidenote: .] horse's head, reined back; a joint on the left side. the scale and direction show that this head belonged to a chariot group on the north side. height, - / inches; michaelis, pl. , slab xx. (cf. p. ). [sidenote: .] fragment containing a part of the neck and lower part of the mane of one of the horses of a chariot group, together with a part of the neck of a second horse. this fragment, which was discovered in the excavations on the acropolis of , must belong to a chariot group of the north frieze, perhaps to slab xi., xv., or xvi. height, foot inches. [sidenote: .] the upper part of two horsemen, and part of the head or neck of a succeeding horse. the second rider, whose hand is preserved, held metal reins. the horse had a metal bridle. this fragment was formerly in the cataio villa, and afterwards the property of archduke karl of austria. it must have belonged to the fragmentary portion of the north frieze, between slabs xxvi. and xxviii. height, foot inches; laborde, _athènes_, ii., p. ; michaelis, pl. , xxvii. south frieze. [sidenote: .] helmeted head looking to the right. the lower part of the face is broken away. the helmet has a cheekpiece turned up at the side. this head probably belongs to the horseman, no. , in the south frieze. height, - / inches. [sidenote: .] foreleg of a horse from below the knee to the hoof. the direction is to the right. length, - / inches. [sidenote: .] youthful beardless head wearing a petasos and looking to the right. the right side of the head is broken away. michaelis engraved this head, pl. , slab xix., no. . it no doubt belongs either to that horseman, or to one of the two on the slab following (xx.), for which see carrey's drawing. height, inches. [sidenote: .] upper part of youthful male figure looking to the right; behind, horse's head. the figure wore a chiton with girdle, and, apparently, a close-fitting helmet or leather cap. part of the shoulder of a second figure seems to be visible on the right edge of the fragment. it is not easy to find a place for this fragment among the horsemen of the south side. it seems more probable that the head is that of the charioteer of slab xxvi.; it agrees well with carrey's drawing. height, foot inches; michaelis, pl. , slab, xxvi.; no. . [sidenote: .] fragment of male figure, turned to the right, extending from the neck to the hip. the drapery consists only of a mantle which is seen passing over the right shoulder and round the body. the figure appears to be that of a youth and to correspond best with one of the charioteers of the south frieze, only preserved in carrey's drawing, michaelis, pl. , slab xxvii. height, foot / inch; michaelis, pl. , slab xxiv., a. [sidenote: .] fragment of elderly male figure, moving to the right; from the hips to the beginning of the shoulder blades. he wears a mantle closely wrapped about him, and leaving the right arm bare. on the right of this fragment is a joint. it probably belongs to a figure in the group of old men and musicians, slabs xxxiv.-xxxvii. michaelis inserts it in slab xxxv. (no. in his pl. ), but his drawing is incorrect and the fragment cannot be adjusted there. the only possible place seems to be on the right of slab xxxiv. height, inches. [sidenote: .] fragment with left foot and part of drapery of figure moving to the right, and having the left foot hindmost. from the left-hand lower corner of a slab. the lowness of the relief shows that this foot belongs to one of the figures on the far side of the victims. michaelis combines it with his pl. ., slab xliii., . this figure, which is according to the museum numbering, has now been joined to slab xli. although the fragment does not seem to join satisfactorily to the angle of slab xli., yet this seems its probable position. height, inches. south or north frieze. [sidenote: .] fragment of helmeted head looking to the right. the head is entirely destroyed except the back of the helmet and its crest. this head perhaps belongs to one of the warriors that accompany the chariots in the north frieze. height, - / inches. architectural fragments from the parthenon. [sidenote: = .=] the capital and uppermost drum of one of the doric columns of the north side. width of abacus, feet - / inches; penrose, _athenian architecture_, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] part of a marble tile-front. the roof of the parthenon, like that of many other greek temples, was formed of marble tiles, _solenes_, carefully adjusted. in the case of the parthenon the tiles were placed side by side. ridge tiles covered the joints, and the lower end of each ridge terminated in an anthemion. hence the tile-front was called by the greeks _kalypter anthemotos_. see the model of the parthenon, and michaelis, pl. , fig. .--_inwood coll._ height, foot / inch. [sidenote: = .=] cast of a similar but more perfect tile-front, from the original at athens. height, foot - / inches; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of lion's head from one of the angles of the pediment. this head, is worked from a block which forms the springing stone of both the cymatium and the corona of the pediment. in the modelling of the lion's head, and especially in the treatment of the mane, there is a noticeable austerity and conventionalism, such as is appropriate to a purely decorative piece of sculpture. height, foot - / inches. see the model of the parthenon; penrose, _athenian architecture_, pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. b. [sidenote: = , .=] casts from two fragments of acroteria, probably from the western pediment. the acroteria were ornaments placed above the centre of the pediments. for an example of a complete acroterion, see that from eleusis, no. . lengths, feet inches and foot inches; michaelis, pl. , fig. , i, l. [sidenote: = .=] marble fragment of a similar acroterion.--_inwood coll._ height, inches; inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. , p. . [sidenote: = .=] marble fragment of moulding with painted mæander pattern.--_inwood coll._ length, inches; inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. , p. . [sidenote: = .=] marble fragment of moulding with painted mæander pattern. both these fragments ( , ) appear to belong to the moulding which surmounted the frieze and passed round the interior of the peristyle.--_elgin coll._ length, foot inches; penrose, _athenian architecture_, pl. , fig. _a_; pl. ; michaelis, pl. , fig. . part iii. _the successors of pheidias._ sculptures of the temple called the theseion. the building which is commonly known as the temple of theseus, or theseion, stands about a quarter of a mile to the north-west of the acropolis of athens. [illustration: fig. .--plan of the theseion. (from baumeister.)] the temple is of the kind called _peripteral hexastyle_. round the _cella_, or central chamber, is a single row of columns, thirty-four in number, of which there are six at each end. the order is doric, with a frieze peculiarly arranged. on the eastern front are ten sculptured metopes, and there are four on each of the adjacent sides, making a total of eighteen sculptured metopes. the remaining metopes of the temple, fifty in number, are plain slabs, which may possibly have had painted on them figures or ornaments. of the pedimental groups, which appear to have once existed at each end of the temple, nothing now remains except the marks of the attachment of sculptures. within the colonnade the two ends of the _cella_ are adorned with a frieze of parian marble, which is still in position. at the west, the length of the frieze is only equal to the width of the _cella_; at the east, the frieze is continued as far as the epistyle, or beams surmounting the colonnade. the west frieze is about feet long; casts of feet inches are in the british museum. the east frieze is about feet long, and casts of feet are in the museum. from the middle ages till recent times this building has been called the temple of theseus, and was supposed to have been dedicated to theseus by the athenians in the time of kimon. that statesman had transferred the bones of theseus to athens from the island of skyros in b.c. the chief arguments for this attribution are:--( ) that labours of theseus are represented on the metopes, and perhaps on the friezes; ( ) that the building is not far from the place where, according to leake and others, it might be expected from the description of pausanias (i. , ); ( ) that the temple was dedicated as a christian church to st. george, who corresponds in many ways to theseus. ross, however (_das theseion_), tried to prove that this was not the theseion. he argued that no connection could be traced between the external sculptures and the function of the building. he also argued that the real theseion cannot have been a complete temple, and that it cannot have stood in the position of the temple now in question. he proposed to call the building a temple of ares. it has since been suggested that ares and theseus may have been joint occupants of the temple, as athenè and erechtheus held the erechtheion in common (murray, i. p. ). curtius (_sieben carten_, text, p. ) suggested that the temple may have been that of heracles in melitè. in this view he has been followed by wachsmuth (_stadt athen_, i. p. ). other patron deities have also been proposed, as apollo patroös, or heracles and theseus together, or hephaestos. doerpfeld, followed by miss harrison (_mythology and monuments of anc. athens_, p. ), is strongly in favour of the last-mentioned attribution, identifying the building with the temple of hephaestos mentioned by pausanias (i., , ). it is clear, from a comparison of other temples, that no conclusive argument can be drawn from the subjects of the sculptures, especially of the metopes, which may have little connection with the special purpose of the temple. at the same time we know that the theseion was decorated with paintings relating to the story of theseus, and, so far as any weight can be attached to the subjects of the sculptures, they favour the attribution of the building to theseus. it has been suggested that the temple may have belonged to heracles and theseus in common--not on the ground that we hear of such a temple, but because the ten metopes on the east front relate to heracles. but this fact is inconclusive. the athenians would be content to point out the parallelism of heracles and theseus, even if theseus was made to occupy a subordinate position. the newly-discovered [greek: athênaiôn politeia] of aristotle furnishes some new evidence. the disarming of the athenians by peisistratos is said to have been effected in the following manner. he caused the citizens to put down their arms in the theseion, presumably in the temenos of theseus, that he might address them, and then drew them off to the propylaea on the pretext that they would be better able to hear him. meanwhile his agents shut up the arms in "the adjacent buildings of the theseion" ([greek: exoplisian en tô thêseiô] [_sic_ ms.] [greek: poiêsamenos ... ekeleusen autous prosanabênai pros to propylon tês ackropoleôs ... anelontes hoi epi toutôn tetagmenoi ta hopla autôn kai synklêisantes eis ta plêsion oikêmata tou thêseiou k.t.l.] aristot. [greek: ath. pol.] ed. kenyon, ). from this it may be inferred that the theseion was at no great distance from the propylaea, though sufficiently removed for the success of the stratagem. polyaenus (_strat._ i., ) tells the story, but states that the disarming took place in the anakeion, and that the arms were shut up in the sanctuary of aglauros. these are known sites below the north and north-west sides of the acropolis. the account of aristotle thus shows that there was a temenos and shrine of theseus in existence long before the time of kimon. the date of the temple is necessarily uncertain. it cannot be older than the persian invasion ( b.c.), but most writers are of opinion that each part is rather older than the corresponding part of the parthenon, both in the architecture (julius, _annali dell' inst._ , p. ) and in the sculpture. there are many parallels between the metopes of the parthenon and the sculptures, both metopes and friezes, of the theseion. there is also a close analogy between the east friezes of the parthenon and the theseion in point of composition; moreover certain figures occur in both works (murray, i. p. ). but there is no trace in the theseion of the low relief of the parthenon frieze. the whole of the theseion sculptures are metope-like in the treatment of the high relief. overbeck states the order in point of time as follows:--metopes of theseion; metopes of parthenon; west frieze of theseion; east frieze of theseion; frieze of parthenon (_gr. plast._ rd ed. i., p. ). doerpfeld, however, followed by miss harrison, holds the temple to be later than the parthenon. it has been held by brunn, julius (_annali dell' inst._ , p. ), and murray (i. p. ), that the differences between the sculptures of the two temples are due to the fact that the sculptures of the theseion were produced by the school of myron. stuart, _antiqs. of athens_, vol. iii., chap. i.; _mus. marbles_, ix., pls. - ; müller, _denkmaeler_, pl. ; _kunstarch. werke_, iv., p. ; ross, _das theseion_ ( st ed. ; nd ed., ); ulrichs, _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; leake, _topography of athens_ ( nd ed.), p. ; gurlitt, _das alter der bildwerke des sog. theseion_; brunn, _sitzungsber. der k. bayer. akad. phil.-hist. cl._ , ii., p. ; wachsmuth, _die stadt athen_, i., p. ; julius, in _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; , p. ; and _mon. dell' inst._, x., pls. , , , ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. ; murray, i., p. ; wolters, no. ; baumeister, s. v. _theseion; elgin room guide_, ii., b., - . the british museum possesses an excellent series of drawings of the theseion by lord elgin's artists. casts of the metopes of the theseion. the ten metopes on the eastern front contain nine labours of heracles, one labour being represented in two groups. the eight metopes at the east ends of the south and north sides represent the following exploits of theseus:--on the south side--( ) the victory over the minotaur. ( ) the capture of the bull of marathon. ( ) the punishment of sinis pityocamptes. ( ) the punishment of procrustes (?). on the north side are--( ) the victory of theseus over the robber periphetes, also called corynetes. ( ) his contest with the arcadian wrestler, kerkyon. ( ) the punishment of skiron. ( ) the capture of the sow of crommyon. of these eighteen metopes the museum possesses casts of only three, nos. , , and on the north side. [sidenote: = .=] theseus and the robber, periphetes. theseus stands over his adversary, who has been thrown down on the ground, and aims a blow at him. both arms of periphetes are stretched out as if to avert a spear-thrust, and it seems probable that the weapon of theseus was a spear, which he directed with both hands. the left hand of theseus still remains in front of his breast. height, feet - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] theseus and kerkyon, an arcadian wrestler, who challenged all travellers to wrestle, and slew the vanquished. theseus has lifted his adversary from the ground, and, clasping his hands together, grips him tightly round the body. kerkyon is nearly helpless. his right arm passes behind the shoulder of theseus, but with his left hand he seizes theseus' right heel. kerkyon is bearded, but the hair is hardly indicated in detail. height, feet - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] theseus and the sow of crommyon. the sow stands on her hindlegs, resting her forefeet on the thigh and the drapery of theseus. theseus advances to the attack. the action of the right hand cannot be ascertained, but the right arm must have been raised above the head, and perhaps brandished a club. the left arm is concealed in the chlamys, which theseus wears in this metope. height, feet - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . casts of the west frieze of the theseion. the subject of the west frieze of the theseion admits of no doubt. here we have represented the battle of the centaurs and lapiths at the marriage feast of peirithoös. it has been pointed out that this frieze appears to consist of metope-like groups, with a few figures added to give continuity between the different groups, such as is appropriate to a frieze. thus, compare no. , _ _ with the parthenon metope, no. . in the parts of the frieze, not represented by casts, compare the group engraved overbeck, _gr. plast._ rd ed. i., p. , no. , with michaelis, pl. , xxiv.; overbeck, no. , with parthenon metope, no. ; overbeck no. with michaelis, pl. , xi. [illustration: fig. .--the disposition of the west frieze of the theseion. (from baumeister).] [sidenote: = .= .] combat of centaur and lapith. the lapith is defeated and has fallen to the ground. he supports his body with the right arm, of which the hand alone remains. the left hand, which is wrapped in the chlamys, is raised imploringly to the centaur, to whom also the head is turned. the victorious centaur rears up above the lapith, and is about to hurl a great stone, or perhaps a hydria, with both hands. height of this and the following slabs, feet - / inches; length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . between nos. and is a group, of which the museum does not possess a cast, representing two lapiths and a fallen centaur. [sidenote: .] on the left is a group of a lapith and a centaur. the combatants have for the moment drawn a little apart. the lapith has recoiled for a blow; the attention of the centaur seems more directed to the group on his left. the symmetry of the grouping, which is apparent in the frieze as a whole, requires us to regard these two figures as connected, though they may appear somewhat separated. the centaur brandishes a branch of a tree, to which his hands are still attached, though the arms are lost. the lapith had both arms raised, and perhaps held a battle-axe. his dress is a chlamys. we next have a group of two centaurs, rearing up, and heaving together a rock wherewith to crush the invulnerable lapith, kaineus, who is half buried in the ground between them, and who endeavours to defend himself with his shield uplifted on his left arm. his head is turned towards the centaur on the right. his right arm, now wanting, may have rested on the ground. but it is possible, to judge from indications on the ground of the relief, that it was bent at the elbow, and pierced with a sword the abdomen of the centaur. the lapith wears a helmet. on the right of this group is a lapith hastening to give succour to kaineus. his right arm, which was bent back at the elbow, had been raised to strike. his left arm has been muffled in a chlamys. he also wore a petasos, part of which is seen behind the shoulders. on the right of this figure is a group of a lapith attacking a centaur. the lapith wears a crested helmet; on his left arm is a shield, within which his chlamys hangs from his arm. he also wears sandals. he places his left foot on a rock. the centaur opposed to him is rearing, with his back turned to the spectator; his right arm, drawn back, has held some weapon, probably the branch of a tree; on his left arm and shoulder is the skin of a lion or panther which hangs down his back. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pls. , . the next group on the frieze, which is not represented by a cast, contains a centaur struggling with a lapith who has fallen on his knees. [sidenote: .] on the left is a lapith, armed with shield and helmet, and wearing a chiton and sandals. he seems about to attack a centaur, who rears to the right over the body of a lapith, who has sunk down in a sitting position. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . most of the figure of the seated lapith, and the whole of the succeeding group of a lapith and centaur are not represented by casts in the museum. casts of the east frieze of the theseion. on the east frieze is represented a battle in the presence of six seated deities arranged in two groups. in one part of the frieze the combatants are hurling vast rocks. colonel leake (_topography of athens_, nd ed. p. ), supposed that heracles and some of the gods are engaged in a battle with giants, while other deities, among them some who usually take a leading part in the fray, merely sit and watch. this, however, is a scheme of gigantomachia to which no parallel can be adduced. [illustration: fig. .--the disposition of the east frieze. (from baumeister).] brunn (_sitzungsber. der k. bayer. akad. phil.-hist. cl._, , ii., p. ), supposes the battle here represented to be that fought by the athenians under theseus against eurystheus in defence of the heracleidae. the scene on the left would thus represent the first rout of the troops of eurystheus; then would come the storming of the skironian pass by theseus, where we might expect masses of rocks to be hurled on the assailants. the kneeling figure on the left of the central group ( , _ _), who is being bound would, according to brunn, be eurystheus, who was taken prisoner and put to death. the figure on the extreme right ( , _ _), who is stooping forward, brunn supposes to be one of the victors erecting the boundary stone, which, according to the attic legend, was set up by theseus to mark the limits of the peloponnese on the side of attica. the theory is highly ingenious; but it demands a forced interpretation of the rocks to suppose them to be lining the two sides of a pass; and it overlooks the close parallelism with the east frieze of the parthenon, where the two groups of gods must be supposed to form a single background to the scene. also, the skironian pass was a road between rocks and the sea. moreover, the vast size of the rocks indicates a giant race, rather than a group of warriors who are reduced to using stones in an extremity. if the subject has any connection with theseus, the theory of k. o. müller seems the best that has been proposed. according to müller (_kunstarch. werke_, iv. p. ) it represents the athenians under theseus attacking the pallantidae, or sons of pallas, who was a son of pandion, king of attica. these in attic legend (plut. _theseus_, ) formed a league against theseus. müller supposes them to have been a race akin to the giants. compare soph. _Ægeus, fr._ , ed. dindorf, [greek: ho sklêros houtos kai gigantas ektrephôn pallas]. see also müller (p. ) on the close connection between pallas, son of pandion, and the attic pallenè, with pallas the giant and the thracian pallenè, the field of the great war of the gods and giants. [sidenote: = .= .] on the left of the slab, two armed warriors carrying large shields on the left arm, and wearing, one a chlamys and one a chiton over the left shoulder only (_heteromaschalos_), advance to the right. before them is a conquered adversary, who has been forced down on his knees by the victor, who appears to tread down his buttock, while his hands are engaged binding the hands of the prisoner. the victor wears a chlamys, but the prisoner is nude. the head of the prisoner was probably turned towards the victor. on the extreme right of the slab there remains the right foot of a figure. the original is extant (cf. stuart, vol. iii. ch. i. pl. ), and is a nude armed figure, moving to the right. the head is lost. height of this and the following slabs, feet - / inches; length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] on the next slab is a group of three deities seated on rocks, of whom the figure on the right is male and the other two female. the two female deities wear long chitons, in the one case with a diploïdion, and in the other case with sleeves. the figure on the left has the right hand, which is still preserved, by her side. it evidently held a spear. in stuart's engraving this figure wears a helmet, but the drawing published by le roy (_les ruines des plus beaux monuments de la grèce_, ), though in most respects worthless, seems to show conclusively that the heads are conjecturally restored in stuart, vol. iii. ch. i. pls. , , while in pls. to no restoration is attempted. the remains of the figure make it probable that the goddess here represented is athenè. the central figure turns towards athenè, to whom her right arm was probably extended. passing over the back of her head is a large mantle, which is also wrapped about the legs, and falls over the left arm. the male figure in the group probably looked to the right at the pair of combatants which follows next in order. he has a mantle twisted round his lower limbs and passing behind his back. his left hand rested on a sceptre held vertically, which has now been broken away. all these three figures wear sandals. the second goddess may well be hera, and in that case her male companion would probably be zeus. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] combat of two warriors. the nude warrior on the left, armed with shield and helmet, presses forward to the attack; he probably held a sword in the right hand. his adversary, whose back is turned towards us, appears to be in retreat, but to be stopping to deliver a thrust, probably with a spear held in the right hand. his left arm must have held out a shield, of the rim of which a fragment remains, attached to the left thigh. his dress is a chiton _heteromaschalos_. on the right of the slab is seen the right foot of a warrior, belonging to the succeeding group, of which the british museum possesses no cast. the warrior stretches out his shield to protect a wounded figure lying on the ground. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . for the missing group, see stuart, iii., ch. i., pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd. ed., i., p. . [sidenote: .] part of the legs of the wounded warrior just referred to remains on the ground, on the left. next on the right are two warriors moving to the right. both these figures are nude, but very seriously mutilated. it is doubtful whether the figure on the left was armed with a shield, like his companion. his right foot is advanced and he is hurrying forward. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] a battle scene, in which the combatants, four in number, are hurling rocks; a fifth, overcome in the fray, lies prostrate on the ground. in this combat one warrior appears to be fighting against three. on the left an heroic figure, which may well be theseus, is seen advancing. in the confusion his mantle has fallen off, and only hangs over the left arm. with outstretched left hand he repels a huge stone hurled against him by his adversary; the right hand appears to have been stretched out behind the body, and may have held a sword. there appear to be no means of warding off the stone which the adversary throws with his left hand. confronting the hero, supposed to be theseus, is first the warrior just mentioned, who hurls a stone with each hand. behind him is a second figure, who appears to be looking in the same direction. his right hand was probably holding a stone behind his head, while the left hand is stretched back to pick up another stone from the ground. the third warrior hurls a great stone with his right hand, while with his left hand he propels the large stone seen behind the shoulders of the central figure. the fallen figure lies on rocky ground in the middle of the group of combatants, his head is much below the level of his body; his right arm, now wanting, has been resting on a lower level, his left arm is folded helplessly across his body. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] group of two warriors advancing rapidly to the right, each with a shield on the left arm. one is nude, the other wears a chiton _heteromaschalos_. next on the right is a group of one female and two male deities seated on rocks, and observing the combat. the goddess occupies the centre of the group, her head slightly inclined forward, and looking to the left. she wears a long chiton, sandals, and a mantle wrapped about her lower limbs. both male figures have similar mantles. it may be conjectured that the three figures in order from the left are poseidon, demeter, and dionysos; but it is impossible to attribute names to them with any confidence. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] torso of a warrior armed with a large shield, who moves to the left front. the head, now wanting, was probably turned to the group next on the right, which consists of two male figures. the one on the left is evidently a victor holding a prisoner, who has his hands tied behind his back. the victor wears a chiton _heteromaschalos_, while the prisoner wears a chlamys. between this group and the next figure is a space, in which should be a male figure standing, turned a little to the right, and wearing a chlamys. he appears to be giving an order to the figure on the right. length, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . for missing figure, see stuart, iii., ch. i., pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed. i., p. . [sidenote: .] male figure turned to the left, and bending forward. both arms have been extended in front of the body. the figure wears a helmet and a chiton girt at the waist. the left foot, which is advanced, rested on a higher level than the right foot. there is some uncertainty as to the motive of this figure. stuart restores it as engaged in the erection of a trophy, and this is accepted by schultz, _de theseo_, p. ; cf. overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. . for this however there is very little room. leake suggested that the figure was engaged adjusting his greave (_topogr. of athens_, nd ed., p. ). length, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . architectural fragments. [sidenote: = .=] part of the ceiling, _lacunaria_, of the theseion with six squares for soffits cut through the marble. see fig. .--_elgin coll._ length, feet - / inches; breadth, feet - / inches. stuart, iii., ch. i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .= .] cover from panel of _lacunar_ of the theseion.--_elgin coll._ height, - / inches; breadth, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); stuart, iii., ch. i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: .] similar to last. height, - / inches; breadth, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); stuart, iii., ch. i., pl. , fig. . the erechtheion. the erechtheion is an ionic temple of a peculiar form, which stands near the north side of the acropolis of athens. it embodies in a structure of the end of the fifth century the shrines about which the athenian religion had centred from time immemorial, and to this fact the anomalous character of the plan must be ascribed. the building consisted of a central cella divided into three portions, and having a portico of six columns at the east end; a porch of six columns at the north-west corner; and a porch of caryatids at the south-west. it was built of pentelic marble, with the exception of the frieze, which had a ground of dark eleusinian marble. the temple is known to have been incomplete in b.c. at this time a minute survey of the building was made, by order of the assembly, and the result was recorded in an inscription which is now in the british museum. (_c. i. g._ ; newton & hicks, _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, xxxv.). [illustration: fig. .--ground plan of the erechtheion.] the east half of the building was devoted to athenè polias, whose archaic statue was placed in it. the remainder of the building was associated with the cults of poseidon, erechtheus, pandrosos, and others. the arrangement has been a subject of much controversy. the passage at the west of the cella probably contained altars of poseidon (with erechtheus), of boutes, and of hephaestos; the tokens of poseidon, namely the salt spring, and the marks of the trident, were either in the west central chamber or below the north portico. the south porch served as an additional entrance, but it also contained the tomb of cecrops. the pandroseion, which contained the sacred olive-tree of athenè, and a small shrine of pandrosos, was annexed to the outside of the west end of the building. the elgin collection contains several specimens of the architectural decorations of the erechtheion. in the above plan (fig. ), those parts of the building are indicated by letters from which fragments have been obtained. in some instances the exact position is uncertain. for a discussion of the erechtheion, see harrison, _mythology and monuments of anc. athens_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] so-called caryatid, or canephoros, [greek: kanêphoros] (fig. ). one of the six female figures which served as columns in the southern portico of the erechtheion. in the survey of the building these figures are called _korae_, "maidens." they have been called canephori (see p. ) by visconti (_memoirs on the sculptures of the earl of elgin_, p. ), and others. it is true that the maidens here represented are such as those represented on the parthenon frieze. but there is nothing that specially connects them with the canephori, or persons who bore the sacred vessels on their heads. by some writers they have been called caryatids, on account of a statement of vitruvius (i., chap. ) that women of carya, a town of arcadia, were represented as architectural supports--a punishment which they incurred for betraying the greeks to the persians. [illustration: fig. .--caryatid of the erechtheion.] the figure here described wears a long chiton, which is drawn up under the girdle, falling in rich folds, and is fastened on each shoulder by a circular brooch. attached to this is the diploïdion, which falls down before and behind. in front it falls to the waist; behind it would trail on the ground, if a part were not looped up to the shoulders, so as to make a deep fold, falling as low as the hips. the hair from the back of the head falls in a thick mass between the shoulders, tied together with a band. the hair gathered from the forehead is woven into tresses. two fall on each shoulder; the others are twisted round the head in the form of the _krobylos_ (cf. p. ). the arms are wanting from above the elbows. the right hand probably hung by the side, where the surface of the drapery is seen to have been protected from corrosion. the left hand has drawn from behind one corner of the diploïdion. the head supports a capital, consisting first of a pad or cushion [greek: tylê], such as was, and still is, used to support weights. (compare the east frieze of the parthenon, nos. , .) from this the transition to the square abacus is effected by an egg and tongue and a bead and reel moulding. this statue is admirably designed, both in composition and drapery, to fulfil its office as a part of an architectural design. while the massiveness of the draped figure suggests the idea that the support for the superimposed architecture is not structurally inadequate, the lightness and grace of the pose suggest that the maiden bears her burden with ease. the original position of the figure is marked a on the plan. four figures and part of a fifth still remain on the acropolis. they are uniform in their general design, but differ slightly in pose and arrangement of drapery. pentelic marble; height, feet inches. stuart, ii., ch. ii., pl. . _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . rayet, _monuments_, no. ; mitchell, _selections_, pl. ; murray, ii., pl. ; wolters, no. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . architecture of the erechtheion. [sidenote: = .=] ionic column from the north end of the eastern portico of the erechtheion (b on plan). this being a column from an angle of the building, the volutes occur on two adjacent sides, so as to present themselves both to the east and north view. height, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, nos. - , ; stuart, ii, ch. ii., pls. , , . [sidenote: = .=] capital of one of the pilasters (_antae_) and part of necking or wall-band from the east wall of the erechtheion (c, c, c on plan). it is to be observed that the frieze on the pilaster, though analogous to that on the walls, differs from it in details which heighten the richness of the effect, and which assimilate the pilaster to the columns of the east portico, while the walls resemble the capitals of the north portico. moreover, on the pilaster the carving of the frieze is raised above the surface of the courses, while on the wall it is set back from the wall face. the slab on the right must be from the north-east angle of the erechtheion. the three slabs next to it might belong to the east, north, or south sides, as regards the form and design. but the excellent preservation of the surface, as compared with that of the unprotected north-east angle, seems to show that these slabs are derived from the east wall, where they were protected by the portico. it is interesting to note the numerous repairs in the series of slabs. they probably date from the time of the construction of the building, and were meant to make good what was broken by accident in the course of construction. on the north side of the pilaster, seven inches of the bead and reel moulding immediately surmounting the anthemia have been skilfully inserted in a groove and fastened with lead. on the east side of the pilaster one of the beads of the lower bead and reel moulding was attached by a plug, of which the hole remains. on the next slab on the left one bead of the upper bead and reel moulding was similarly added. on the second slab from the left, one tongue of the egg and tongue moulding, one piece of spiral connecting the anthemia and one bead were let into the marble. traces of red colour remain in the upper part of the frieze on this slab.--_elgin coll._ height, foot - / inches. the slab containing the capital of the pilaster is feet in length. of the other slabs, two are each feet inches in length. the fourth is broken on the right-hand joint, and measures feet - / inches. _synopsis_ nos. - ( - ). _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, i., p. , _e_, pl. , fig. . stuart, ii., ch. ii., pl. . inwood, _erechtheion_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of frieze similar to last. joint on left. found on the north side of the erechtheion.--_inwood coll._ height, inches; breadth, inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of leaf, bead and reel, and egg mouldings from the capital of a pilaster at the west side of the south portico of the erechtheion (d on plan).--_inwood coll._ length, foot - / inches; height, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] cymatium moulding from inner architrave of the south portico of the erechtheion (e on plan). height, - / inches; length, - / inches. _synopsis_ no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. . see also stuart, ii., ch. ii., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] piece of architrave, probably part of the beam from the north angle of the east portico of the erechtheion (f, f on plan). there is a joint on the left of this slab.--_elgin coll._ height, feet inch; length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). wilkins, _prolusiones_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] piece of the architrave from the south wall of the erechtheion, broken at each end (g on plan). it is connected with the preceding by a piece of moulding cast in plaster.--_elgin coll._ height, feet inch; length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). wilkins, _prolusiones_, p. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._ i., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] piece of corona of cornice, from the north portico of the erechtheion (h on plan). although not derived from the same part of the temple, this fragment has been placed in connection with the slabs of the architrave, nos. , , in order to show the original effect. the space of two feet between the corona and the architrave was occupied by the sculptured frieze. this consisted of marble figures in relief attached by metal clamps on a ground of black eleusinian marble. a few fragments are extant at athens. length, feet inches; height, - / inches; breadth, foot - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). stuart, ii., ch. ii., pls. , . for the frieze, see brunn, _denkmaeler_, nos. - ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] coffer from the _lacunaria_ of the north portico of the erechtheion (j on plan).--_elgin coll._ height, feet inches; breadth, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). see stuart, nd ed., ii., p. , note. [sidenote: = .=] part of coffer of east portico of the erechtheion. found near the eastern portico (k on plan).--_inwood coll._ height, foot inches; breadth, foot - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] part of door jamb, perhaps from the eastern doorway of the erechtheion (l on plan).--_inwood coll._ height, foot - / inches; breadth, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of console, _parotis_, from the doorway in the north portico of the erechtheion (m on plan). height, feet inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, i., p. , § , _b_. wilkins, _prolusiones_, pls. , . _journ. of hellen. studies_, xii., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] necking of ionic column, copied from the columns of the east portico of the erechtheion.--_elgin coll._ height, - / inches; diameter, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( *); _elgin room guide_, ii., no. a. . temple of nikÈ apteros. the temple of nikè apteros (victory without wings), or more correctly of athenè nikè, stood on the projecting eminence to the south of the approach to the propylaea at athens (paus., i. , ). the building had remained uninjured till the close of the seventeenth century, and was seen in by the travellers spon and wheler. but not long after, probably about the year , the temple was demolished by the turks, and the materials were used to build a bastion on the spot where the temple had stood. in ludwig ross, and the architects schaubert and hansen took down the bastion and reconstructed the temple as it now stands. a sufficient amount of the lower part had remained undisturbed to enable them to proceed with certainty. the temple consists only of a single cella, opening to the east, but has four columns at each end (_tetrastyle amphiprostyle_). it stood on a podium of three steps. the exterior was surrounded by a small frieze, ft. - / in. high, and measuring ft. on its long sides, and ft. in. at the ends. the annexed cut (fig. ) shows the plan of the temple. the arrangement of the slabs of the frieze has been most fully discussed by ross, but is still uncertain in parts. the west frieze, according to ross, consisted of the two slabs, nos. , , in the elgin collection, and the return faces of two slabs of the north and south sides. each return measures ft. in. the slabs, nos. , , measure respectively ft. - / in., and ft. - / in. the total length, ft. - / in., is thus nearly equal to the estimated length of the side. the distribution of the slabs belonging to the long sides is doubtful. no. , cast from a corner stone, certainly belongs to the south side. ross assigns no. to the south side, no. to the north side, on the hypothesis that the mounted horsemen on the same side proceed in the same direction. kekulé (_die balustrade_, ed. , p. ) places them both on the south side, in an order more probable than that suggested by hawkins (_mus. marbles_, ix., p. ). the east side consisted of two slabs and two returns arranged similarly to those of the west. [illustration: fig. .--plan of the propylaea and temple of wingless victory.] the subject of the east side appears to be a council of gods. the long sides each contained a battle between greeks and a series of warriors, mounted and on foot, wearing asiatic costumes and probably intended to represent persians. the west side is generally taken to represent a battle of greeks with greeks. several attempts have been made to show that historical battles are represented on the frieze. overbeck suggests that the three sides on which there are combatants belong to one battle, and he conjectures the battle of platæa ( b.c.), when greeks defeated the persians and their greek adherents. other writers, perhaps with more probability, deny that any definite battle is intended, and hold that we see merely a generalised representation of athenians, victorious alike over greeks and barbarians. it has been shown by bohn (_die propyläen_, p. ) and doerpfeld on technical architectural grounds that the temple of victory was not contemplated in the first plans for the propylaea, but that the form of the propylaea was modified during the course of construction on account of it. the earliest date thus obtained for the beginning of the present building is about b.c. there is nothing to show what time the temple took to build. in point of style there is a great resemblance between the sculptures of the frieze, and those of the frieze of the erechtheion, of which a part was being worked, as we know from the inscription, in b.c. the frieze of nikè apteros may perhaps be placed between and b.c. spon, _voyage_ (ed. ), ii., p. ; wheler, _journey into greece_, p. ; stuart, ii., ch. v., pls. , (from drawings by pars, now in the british museum); ross, schaubert and hansen, _die akropolis von athen; abth. i. der tempel der nike apteros_, ; _mus. marbles_, ix., pls. - ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. ; bohn, _die propyläen der akropolis zu athen_, ; murray, ii., p. ; kekulé (and bohn) _die reliefs an der balustrade der athena nike_; wolters, nos. - . for doerpfeld's views, see harrison, _mythology and monuments of anc. athens_, p. . for further references see wolters, p. . a photographic view of the temple is given by baumeister, fig. ; and of nos. to in _stereoscopic_, no. . the west frieze. [sidenote: = .=] the return of a slab of the north side, now at athens, formed the left end of the frieze, and contains two figures advancing to the right to join the fray (ross, pl. . h.). this is followed by slab no. , containing a battle of greeks. in the first group on the left two warriors are engaged in vehement combat. the warrior on the left supports with his right knee the shoulder of a wounded comrade who has fallen at his feet and leans on his right arm. in the next group are two antagonists fighting over the body of a dead combatant, then a warrior who has overthrown his adversary and treads him down with his left foot. he raises his right hand to inflict the mortal wound, and may perhaps have grasped the victim's right wrist with his left hand. in the background is a trophy which appears to consist of a trunk of a tree, to which a helmet, shield, and cuirass have been attached. on the right of the slab is a warrior pursuing a foe flying to the right.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); ross, pl. , i.; _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. ; baumeister, fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] the first figure on the left of the slab appears to be hastening to the assistance of the flying warrior on the right of the slab just described. next is a complicated group of five warriors fighting for the body of a wounded man. the latter has sunk helplessly on the ground. he is half raised and clasped under the arms by a friend who attempts to draw him away; a foe tries to seize an ankle, and covers himself meanwhile with his outstretched shield. more in the background two adversaries are engaged in hot combat. the warrior on the left probably had a sword, and that on the right a spear. a friend of the fallen man hastens up from the left. the right thigh of this figure, which is now wanting, is preserved in a drawing by pars. on the right are two pairs of combatants. in one of these groups a warrior, who has fallen on his right knee, tries to defend himself with his shield, while with the right hand he seizes a stone. the antagonist has his right arm raised to strike, perhaps with a battleaxe, and seizes with his left hand the shield of the kneeling figure. on the right of the slab one of the warriors flies before the assault of his antagonist, whose arms are both raised to strike him.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); ross, pl. , k.; _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd. ed., i., fig. , p. q.; baumeister, fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . on the right of the slab described was the return of the corner slab of the south side, with a combat of two warriors. ross, pl. , .; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. , r. there is a considerable variety of costumes on the west side of the frieze. some of the figures are nude; others wear the chlamys only, the chiton only, or the two garments together. the chiton is sometimes worn on both shoulders, and some times only on one shoulder. the warriors are for the most part armed with helmets and large bucklers. in two instances a cap of a flexible material is worn instead of a helmet. none, however, of the costumes are non-hellenic; and further the attempt made by overbeck (i. p. ), to show that the helmet of the figure on the extreme right of the frieze is distinctively b[oe]otian, is untenable (wolters, p. ). the north and south friezes. [sidenote: = .=] slab containing a part of the battle between greeks and persians. in the first group on the left, a persian has fallen on his right knee, raising his right arm to defend his head. the antagonist presses his left foot on the right thigh of the persian, raising his right arm for a spear thrust, and probably seizing the hair of the persian with his left hand. next is a group of two persians and a greek. one of the persians lies dead on the ground; his mounted comrade urges his horse against the greek, who draws back, and raises his arm to strike with a battle-axe. the next group is composed of two persians on foot and a greek. in the centre is a wounded persian, who has been forced down on his left knee and extends his arms forward in entreaty to the greek, who drags him along, grasping the head of the persian with his left hand. the right hand of the greek must have held either a spear or a sword. on the right the other persian turns back to defend his fallen comrade against the greek. both arms are raised to strike, and probably wielded a battle-axe. at his left side hangs a quiver. on the extreme right is a greek moving to the right in pursuit of a flying persian of whom only the leg and part of the drapery round the loins remain. the ground on which this scene takes place is rocky.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; length, feet inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); ross, pl. , o; _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. , i-l; baumeister, fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] the first pair of combatants on the left are a persian, who has fallen on his right knee, and who holds up a shield in the form of a crescent, on his left arm to defend himself, and his antagonist, who advances from the right. next is a combat between a greek on foot and a mounted persian. the latter draws back his right hand, which must have been armed with a spear aimed at the greek advancing from the left. the horse of the persian rears as if to strike down with his forefeet the left arm of the greek, which is thrust forward, protected by his shield. a dead persian lies on the ground. behind the mounted persian is a comrade, hastening to the left, and pursued by a greek of whom nothing remains except part of his shield and of the drapery round his loins. this closes the scene on the right.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); ross, pl. , fig. g; _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. , m, n; baumeister, fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . on the position of these slabs, cf. p. . [sidenote: = .=] a plaster cast from one of the slabs now in position on the temple. on the left is a mutilated group representing a greek warrior turning to assist a comrade who has fallen on his right knee. next is a greek moving forward to pursue a mounted persian who is flying to the right. on the extreme right a persian on foot flies in the same direction. a slain persian lies in the foreground. the position of this slab on the temple at the south-east angle is fixed by the relief on its return face which is part of the composition of the eastern front. this return is not given in the cast here described. height, foot - / inches; length, feet - / inches. ross, pl. , fig. a; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. , g, h; murray, ii., pl. , fig. . the dress of the persians in this frieze is the usual chiton with long sleeves, girt at the waist, and close-fitting trousers, _anaxyrides_. one of them, the kneeling figure in no. , wears a quiver and bow case, _gorytos_, from which appears the end of his bow, and two others wear quivers. the only persian whose face is preserved is bearded, and wears the persian headdress, the _kidaris_. the heads and weapons of both sets of combatants have been nearly all destroyed. some of the greeks are armed with the argolic buckler. others have a chlamys wound round the left arm or hanging loose from the body. casts from the balustrade of the temple of nikÈ apteros. the temple of nikè apteros stood on a lofty projecting bastion, as may be seen from the model of the acropolis. this bastion was surrounded for safety with a breast-high parapet, consisting of a frieze of sculpture in relief, facing outwards, surmounted by a bronze screen. several fragments of the frieze or balustrade were discovered on the site, in . (ross, pl. .) additional fragments were found by beulé in , and in more recent excavations to the east of the temple of nikè, and on the south slope of the acropolis. they are preserved in the acropolis museum at athens. the sculptures are too mutilated to be arranged in one composition. it is evident, however, that the frieze consisted of figures of victories, variously engaged. some lead bulls to sacrifice, while others are erecting or decking trophies in the presence of athenè. there is some uncertainty as to the date of the frieze. it cannot be older than the temple, and therefore not earlier than b.c. kekulé (_balustrade_, p. ), and wolters (p. ) hold that the frieze was produced immediately after that date. but a more admissible view is that which puts the balustrade at the very close of the fifth century. if the different fragments of the balustrade are examined, they seem to reveal a combination of various schools and methods. no. , severely draped in chiton and diploïdion, seems to have the somewhat stiff dignity best seen in sculptures of the temple of zeus at olympia, but occasionally suggested by the parthenon sculptures. the figures of athenè (kekulé, _balustrade_, pl. ii.), have the spirit of the parthenon frieze. in no. and no. , the artist dwells on and emphasises the nude form, displaying it through transparent drapery in a manner that may well be supposed to have been that of the transition from pheidias to praxiteles. finally, in the figure leading the bull (no. ), there is a florid wealth of drapery, which, among early works, only finds a partial analogy in the frieze of phigaleia, and which appears more akin to the nikè of samothrace than to attic work of the fifth century. this want of uniformity in style suggests a time of transition in which the traditions of the school of pheidias were still to some extent operative, while newer tendencies were beginning to make themselves felt. perhaps also they indicate that the work was spread over a space of several years, such as might be expected in the troubled close of the fifth century b.c. height of balustrade, feet inches. ross, p. , pl. (cf. ante, p. ); michaelis, _arch. zeit._, , p. . all the materials are collected by kekulé, _die reliefs an der balustrade der athena nike_ ( ), which superseded kekulé, _die balustr. d. tempels d. athena nike_ ( ). see also overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. ; murray, ii., p. ; wolters, nos. - . _stereoscopic_, nos. - . [sidenote: = .=] victory standing, half turned to the left. she holds a greave in her left hand, with which she was probably decking a trophy. she wears a leather helmet. kekulé, _balustrade_, pl. , fig. r; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. . [sidenote: = .=] winged victory turned to the left stoops forward, raising her right foot in order to adjust or unfasten her sandal. a somewhat similar incident is seen on the parthenon frieze, (west side, no. ). there, however, the figure has his foot resting on a rock, while here the victory balances herself on the left foot with the right leg high in the air, in a position of effort such as does not occur on the frieze of the parthenon. ross, pl. , figs. b, bb; kekulé, _balustrade_, pl. , fig. o; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. ; murray, ii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . the meaning of the subject is not known. in the ritual inscription of andania the initiated are ordered to have bare feet, and possibly the victory is supposed to be removing her sandals before entering a shrine. dittenberger, _syll._, , , cf. _ibidem_, , . [sidenote: = =] winged victory standing turned to the left, the right arm advanced. the right hand and all the left arm being broken away, the motive of this figure has not been ascertained, but probably the victory was decking a trophy. kekulé, _balustrade_, pl. , fig. m; _arch. zeit._, , pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] two winged victories about to sacrifice a bull, which one of them is holding back as it springs forward. the other victory leads the way, moving to the right. ross, pl. , fig. a; kekulé, _balustrade_, pl. , fig. a; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. ; murray, ii., pl. , fig. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . the choragic monument of lysicrates. the choragic monument of lysicrates is a small edifice which presents one of the earliest examples of the use of the corinthian order in greek architecture. it may be thus described. on a square basement is a cylindrical structure resting on six corinthian columns. between them are six equal panels of white marble closely joined; at each vertical joint a corinthian column has been fitted, so as to project more than half its diameter. between the capitals were figures of tripods in relief, of which only one now survives. above the colonnade is the entablature and a cupola or _tholos_; this is in the form of a tiling of laurel-leaves richly decorated round the circumference with a double row of projecting ornaments. from the apex of the roof rises a mass of foliage arranged in a triple form, on the three most projecting leaves of which was placed a bronze tripod, dedicated by a choragos, who had provided a victorious chorus. an inscription on the architrave immediately below the figure of dionysos furnishes the name and date of the dedicator. it runs,[*] "lysicrates of kikynna, son of lysitheides, was choragos. the youths of the tribe acamantis were victors, theon was the flute player, lysiades an athenian was the instructor of the chorus, euainetos was archon." the mention of this magistrate fixes the date of the monument to b.c. - . *: _c. i. g._ ; _c. i. a._, ii., . [greek: lysikratês lysitheidou kikynneus echorêgei. akamantis paidôn enika. theôn êulei. lysiadês athênaios edidaske. euainetos êrche.] [illustration: fig. .--the choragic monument of lysicrates. (after stuart.)] the building still stands in its original position at athens, below the eastern side of the acropolis and a little to the north-east of the theatre of dionysos. in antiquity it stood in a street called "the street of tripods" (paus. i. , ), because of the number of tripods which were there dedicated to dionysos. at least as early as the th century the building was popularly known as the lantern of demosthenes. in the th and th centuries it was built into the wall of the french capuchin monastery, and the interior served as the library of the superior. the monastery was burnt in , and the only trace of it is in a few tombstones of french citizens lying near. the monument now stands in an open square. lord elgin's casts are the best record of the frieze, as the sculptures, which are of pentelic marble, have suffered considerably in the last ninety years. the subject of the frieze here described is the victory of dionysos over the tyrrhenian pirates who had kidnapped him from chios with the intention of selling him as a slave. the god revenged himself by transforming the pirates into dolphins, a myth which is to be found in the homeric hymn to dionysos (no. vi.) and elsewhere (ovid, _met._ iii. ; nonnus, _dionys._ xlv. ; philostr. _im._ i. , &c. cf. _gaz. arch._ , p. ). in the frieze the moment is represented when this transformation took place. according to homer and most other writers, the event happened on board the ship, and the pirates were first terrified by a miraculous appearance of vines and wild beasts. the sculptor has preferred to represent the scene as passing on the rocky shore on which the pirates found dionysos (_hom. hymn_, vi. l. ) and has made satyrs help in the vengeance. the subject is thus made to adapt itself to the requirements of sculpture. for a vase with a representation of the literary form of the legend, see gerhard, _auserlesene vasenbilder_, i., pl. ; harrison, _mythology and monuments of anc. athens_, p. . an intaglio, with a pirate half transformed, as on the frieze, is engraved in the _gaz. arch._ , p. . it is convenient to take the architectural remains of athens consecutively, and the monument of lysicrates has therefore been inserted in this place. but the accurately ascertained date ( b.c.) is a century later than the parthenon, and it is easy to discern the change that has taken place. the form of dionysos is becoming softer and more effeminate. the satyrs on tip-toe belong to a scheme not introduced in the th century sculpture; more free play of humour is admitted. at the same time attic schemes of composition present themselves, which had already come into use in the time of pheidias. this frieze is a remarkable example of the greek power of combining variety and symmetry. on the right and left of dionysos the groups correspond with great accuracy, but the correspondent groups always differ one from another. on each side of the god we have an attendant satyr; a satyr with a crater; a satyr watching the conflict; a satyr hastening to join it; a satyr kneeling on a pirate; a satyr about to strike a pirate thrown to the ground; a satyr breaking off a branch from a tree; a pirate, half transformed, leaping into the sea. the remainder of the frieze is less exactly symmetrical. wheler, _journey_, p. ; spon, _voyage_ (ed. ), ii., p. . a view of the monument from the monastery garden is shown in stuart, i., chap. iv., pl. . the view from the street is in le roy, _ruines_, pl. . a view of the interior used as a library, dodwell, _tour_, i., pl. facing p. . a view subsequent to the destruction of the monastery is given, _exp. de morée_, iii., pl. . for the present state of the monument see harrison, _mythology and monuments of anc. athens_, p. . the original frieze is of pentelic marble; height, - / inches. stuart, i., ch. iv., pls. - . stuart's drawings which are freely restored are the basis of the inaccurate plate in stuart, nd ed., vol. i., ch. iv., pl. . the illustrations in most of the text-books are derived from the latter plate; e.g., müller, _denkmäler_, pl. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., ii., p. . these works all repeat an erroneous order of the two groups of no. , which spoils the symmetry of the frieze; cf. murray, ii., p. . an independent and more accurate publication is that in _mus. marbles_, ix., pls. - , taken from the elgin casts. see also ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., pp. - . the british museum also possesses a careful series of drawings from the sculptures, by lord elgin's artist, lusieri. _report of the elgin committee, appendix_, p. xli.; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .= .] in the centre of the composition is dionysos turned to the left, reclining on a rock over which drapery is thrown. he leans on his left elbow; with his right hand he caresses a panther which fawns on his knees. in the left hand dionysos appears to have held a cup and a thyrsos, of which traces appear behind his left shoulder. this figure is now entirely destroyed on the original. there is a considerable resemblance in the pose of dionysos to that of the so-called theseus of the east pediment of the parthenon. on either side of dionysos is a satyr, seated on lower rocks. the satyr on the right clasps his left knee with both hands. (compare the figure on the east frieze of the parthenon no. ). his head was probably turned towards dionysos. the satyr on the left of the god rests his left hand on the rock behind him; his right knee is bent and the right leg drawn up under it; in his right hand he holds a thyrsos; his body and head are turned to the right. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] next on the left is a satyr advancing over rocky ground towards a large crater; in his right hand he holds an oinochoè, with which he is about to take wine from the crater; in his left hand has been a phialè; a fawn skin, _nebris_, hangs from his left shoulder. his head appears to have been turned towards dionysos. on the opposite side of the vase stands a satyr turned to the left, resting his elbows on the stump of a tree, over which is thrown a panther's skin; the top of a thyrsos appears above his right shoulder. he appears to have been bearded. this figure looks on at the destruction of the pirates which is represented in a series of groups on the left, and which we must suppose to have taken place on a rocky shore overlooked by the higher ground on which dionysos reclines. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] a satyr advances to the left with a burning torch, with which he is about to assail the fallen pirate of the next group. this satyr is nude and bearded. his head is bound with a diadem. the head and left leg are now lost on the original. the next group on the left represents a pirate thrown on his hands and knees upon the rocks. on his back kneels a satyr whose right arm is upraised to strike his prostrate foe with some weapon which is not clearly shown in the relief, but which was probably a pedum, or perhaps a branch. the satyr has a panther's skin floating in the air, at his back. between the legs is a lump of plaster, which is due to a fault in the moulding. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] next on the left is a bearded satyr, who draws back to the right, to collect his force for a blow, with his thyrsos. meanwhile he looks back at a pirate on his left, who kneels with his hands tied behind him, and looks round towards the satyr in helpless terror. a panther's skin, hanging from the left shoulder of the satyr, floats in the air at his back. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] the next figure on the left is a bearded satyr who turns to the right kneeling on his left knee, set in the fork of a tree close to the edge of the sea; with both hands he is breaking off a branch. his panther's skin floats in the air behind his back. his right foot stands in shoal water, which is indicated by curling waves. behind him on the left is a pirate, whose body to the waist is transformed into a dolphin, and who leaps head foremost into the sea. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . between no. and no. is about a yard of frieze, wanting in the cast. this is given, freely restored, by stuart. an accurate drawing by lusieri is preserved in the museum (plate ix.). a bearded satyr holds out a torch and pursues a pirate who runs away at full speed. a hole has been cut between them for the insertion of a beam. a rock and tree separate this group from the following, no. . [sidenote: .] this group is rather better preserved in the drawing of lusieri than in the cast. a young pirate is seated on the ground leaning on his left arm. the right hand is extended in supplication to the bearded satyr, who is dragging him seawards by the foot. a hole has been cut through the figure for a beam. the satyr stands in the waves. behind him a pirate, half transformed, is in the act of leaping into the sea. this figure is now almost destroyed in the original. as it is leaping to the right, it belongs strictly to that part of the circular frieze which represents the scene on the right of dionysos. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] on the right of the central group (no. ) is a bearded satyr moving to the right towards a large crater. in his right hand he holds up an oinochoè or wine jug. his left is extended over the crater and holds a phialè. this figure appears to be bearded, though it is drawn as beardless by lusieri; the head is now wanting. next on the right are two satyrs, each wearing a panther skin. the satyr on the left turns to the right and extends his right hand towards the second satyr, as if giving him an order. the latter looks round to the left, as if to receive the order, while he is hastening to the right with both hands raised, as if pointing. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] next on the right is a prostrate pirate, on whose buttock a bearded satyr is kneeling with his left knee, while he holds the pirate's hands, as if to tie them behind his back. the pirate kneels on the rock, with his head pressed upon the ground and turned towards the spectator. the next group on the right is composed of a satyr, who has thrown a pirate backward on the rock, and is about to strike him with a pedum or club. the pirate has his left knee bent under him, and leans back on his right elbow: he advances his right foot and left arm to defend himself. he is drawn by lusieri with a negro face and pointed ear. the ear seems pointed, but it is manifest that the features are wrongly drawn. the head is now wanting on the original. the satyr has his body facing to the front and inclined to the left with the right leg advanced: his right hand is raised to the level of his head. the action shows that he is about to swing his body round to give effect to the blow which he is aiming at the pirate. on his left arm is the panther's skin, worn as a shield. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] in the next group are a satyr and a transformed pirate, separated by a tree which marks the edge of the rocky shore, as at the opposite side of the frieze. the satyr stoops forward, breaking off with both hands a branch of the tree, which he is about to use as a weapon. he is bearded. the right leg is now wanting on the original. the pirate darts head foremost into the water, pressing his feet against the trunk of the tree. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: .] on the right of the transformed pirate is a group representing a satyr about to strike with a branch of a tree a pirate seated on the ground, whose head he draws back with his left hand, brandishing in his right hand the branch held behind his neck; from the left arm of the satyr hangs his panther's skin. he is bearded. in the drawing of lusieri he has an ivy wreath and pointed ears. on the original this group is mutilated almost beyond recognition. the last group on the right is composed of a satyr darting forward with a lighted torch, which he is about to apply to a pirate seated on a rock with his hands tied behind his back. a large serpent behind the pirate has fastened its fangs on his right shoulder, and has one coil between his right arm and his back. the pirate looks round in agony towards his assailants. the serpent suggests the form of the legend usually current, in which dionysos is assisted by strange monsters. according to nonnus, _dionys._, xlv., . , the ropes of the rigging of the ship turned to serpents. [sidenote: = .=] cast from the capital of a column of the choragic monument of lysicrates. height, feet / inches. _synopsis_, no. *. see stuart, i., ch. iv. pl. , fig. . the choragic monument of thrasyllos. [sidenote: = .=] the statue of dionysos, here described, originally decorated a choragic monument, of which some scanty remains may still be seen below the southern wall of the acropolis of athens, and immediately above the dionysiac theatre. the monument was in the form of a portico, the architrave of which rested on three pilasters which masked the entrance to a cavern in the rock. until removed by lord elgin the statue stood above the façade. since the removal of the statue the portico itself has been destroyed, and at present only the base and lower portions of the pilasters stand in position, while fragments of the inscription lie close at hand. we learn from the inscription on the centre of the face of the monument that it was dedicated by thrasyllos to commemorate the victory gained by his tribe in the dramatic contest in which he was himself choragos, in the archonship of neaichmos ( b.c.); _c. i. g._, ; _c. i. a._, ii., . on the right and left were inscriptions recording the dedication of tripods by thrasycles, son of thrasyllos, who was agonothetes in the archonship of pytharatos ( b.c.); _c. i. g._, , ; _c. i. a._, ii., , . at some date intermediate between these two, probably about b.c., the state had assumed the burden of providing the chorus, and the agonothetes or director of the contest took the place of the choragos, or provider of the chorus. (hermann, _lehrb. d. griech. antiq._, müller's ed., iii., pt. ii., p. .) it has commonly been supposed that the statue belongs to the dedication of thrasyllos. stuart made the infelicitous conjecture that it held the votive tripod on its lap. the most recent writer on the subject, reisch (in the _athenische mittheilungen_, xiii., p. ), conjectures that the monument of thrasyllos was originally surmounted by a pediment on which was a tripod; and that the pediment was removed by thrasycles, who placed the statue in the centre, and bases for his tripods at the sides. it is left unexplained what became of the tripod of thrasyllos. from the style of the statue we cannot decide between the two dates. reisch well points out that in composition and spirit there is an attempt, only partially successful, to preserve the manner of pheidias as seen in the parthenon pediments. the figure is majestic, but the drapery is rather heavy. the influence of the younger attic school hardly makes itself felt. the statue is that of a colossal seated figure, the head, arms, and right foot to the instep wanting. the body is clad in a talaric chiton, over which is a panther's skin, passing like a scarf from the left shoulder to the right side, and bound round the waist by a broad girdle, under which is seen the panther's face and teeth; an ample mantle passes from the back of the figure over the lower limbs, falling in rich folds across the lap. the head and left arm of this statue were of separate pieces of marble, and were originally morticed to the body. the head was wanting as early as the visit of spon and wheler to athens in . on the left thigh is a sinking about inches deep, long, and - / wide, in which some object may have been inserted, but which may have been used when the statue was being placed in position. on the drapery of the left shoulder there is a hole for a rivet. it seems probable that the god was represented with a lyre, the base of which rested on his left thigh. this instrument was the attribute of dionysos melpomenos (see gerhard, _ant. bildwerke_, text, p. ), and the costume of the figure seems assimilated to that of a citharist.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches. the stone is roughly hewn out at the back to lighten the figure. wheler, _journey_, p. ; le roy, _ruines_, pl. ; stuart, ii., ch. iv., pls. , ; _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., ii., p. ; reisch, _athenische mittheilungen_, xiii. ( ) pl. , p. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . the propylaea. the propylaea, or gateways to the acropolis, were constructed by mnesicles under the administration of pericles, in the five years - b.c. the main portion of the building consisted of two doric portions, facing respectively inwards to the acropolis and outwards. these were connected by a series of ionic columns. the entrance was flanked on each side by wings (see the plan, fig. ). the elgin collection contains a few architectural remains from the building. a portion of the cedar dowels which connected the drums of the columns of the propylaea may be seen in the bronze room.--_presented by a. w. franks, esq._ cf. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. . [sidenote: = .=] capital of doric column from the propylaea. it is impossible to tell from the dimensions whether this capital is derived from the internal or external portico.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; width of abacus, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). stuart, ii., ch. v., pl. , fig. . penrose, _athen. architecture_, ch. x., pl. ; bohn, _die propyläen_, pls. , , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] piece of drum of ionic column from the inner order of the propylaea.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; diameter, feet / inch. _synopsis_, no. . penrose, _athen. architecture_, ch. x., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] part of band for supporting the beams of the ceiling in the central hall of the propylaea. there are considerable remains of the painted mouldings.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). stuart, ii., ch. v., pl. , fig. ; bohn, _die propyläen_, pl. , fig. . miscellaneous architectural fragments. [sidenote: = .=] capital of one of the antae from the small ionic temple near the ilissos seen by stuart, but destroyed since his time in .--_elgin coll._ height, foot / inch; breadth, feet / inch. _synopsis_, no. ( ). stuart, i., ch. ii., pl. , fig. . see also leake, _topography of athens_, nd ed., p. . [sidenote: = .=] moulding with anthemion, plait, maeander, and leaf, bead and reel patterns. found near the south-east _anta_ of the erechtheion. --_inwood coll._ height, - / inches; breadth, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. , p. . [sidenote: = .=] antefixal ornament or acroterion from the temple of demeter at eleusis. for a similar ornament see kinnard in stuart's _antiquities of athens_, nd ed., iii., pl. , p. .--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); laborde, _le parthénon_, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] ornament of roof-tile, _kalypter anthemotos_. purchased by inwood at athens.--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. , fig. , p. . [sidenote: = .=] ornament of roof-tile. probably purchased by inwood at athens.--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. , fig. , p. . [sidenote: = .=] ornament of roof-tile, found "on the gable of a small greek church, that appears to have been on the site of a temple" "in the gardens at athens, beyond mount anchesmus."--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. , p. . [sidenote: = .=] ornament of roof-tile found built into a modern house near the choragic monument of lysicrates.--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. , fig. , p. . [sidenote: = .=] capital of ionic column discovered by inwood built into the wall of a small greek chapel called agia marina on the left bank of the ilissos at athens. this is probably the site of the temple of artemis eucleia mentioned by pausanias (i., , , and compare ix., , ). roses are sculptured in the eyes of the volutes. inwood remarks (p. ) that the central enrichment over the cymatium between the volutes is unusual. from the absence of mortices by which the capital could be secured to the architrave or to the shaft, he infers (p. ) that this capital may have belonged to some sepulchral stelè or other work, where great strength of construction was not required. bötticher, who engraves this or a similar capital, is of the same opinion. the opposite face of the capital is nearly all broken away.--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; width from centre of volute to centre of volute, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, p. , pls. - . bötticher, _tektonik_, pl. , fig. , text, p. . [sidenote: = .=] volute of ionic capital. inwood (p. ) states that it was found near the site of the temple of nikè apteros, and that from its scale it probably belongs to that temple. this, however, is not the case, as may be seen by comparing this fragment with the capital of the temple of nikè apteros in ross, _akropolis von athen_, pls. vii., viii. the pulvinus of this capital is ornamented with leaves, as in the example from athens in bötticher's _tektonik_, pl. , fig. , text, p. .--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot; breadth, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. , where it is incorrectly described as a capital from the temple of nikè apteros. inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] volute of ionic capital, which, according to inwood (p. ) was found in a wall below the north side of the acropolis at athens. in the eye of this volute a rose is sculptured in relief. in the capitals of the erechtheion there was a similar rose of bronze gilt, for which a recess is carved in the marble.--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; breadth, inches. _synopsis_, no. . inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. ; bötticher, _tektonik_, text, p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the shaft of a column which was fluted with twenty-four flutes, the diameter being about two feet two inches. the dimensions differ from those of the columns of the erechtheion.--_greece._ _presented by w. r. hamilton, esq._ marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] capital of corinthian column, from one of the porches of the building at athens, commonly known as the tower of the winds, or more correctly as the horologium of andronicus cyrrhestes (built probably in the nd century b.c.).--_formerly in the elgin collection._ marble; height, foot - / inches. stuart, i., chap. iii., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] unfinished ionic base.--_formerly in the elgin collection._ marble; height, inches; diameter, foot - / inches. agoracritos of paros. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of colossal head, showing the right cheek, right eyelid and right side of the head as far as the ear. the hair is waved. on the crown of the head eleven holes are pierced in the marble, evidently for the attachment of a wreath or other ornament. the left side and back of the head have been cut or broken away. so far as can be inferred from the little original surface remaining, this head was in a fine style of the fifth century b.c. the style and material of this work, and the place of its discovery, give good grounds for thinking that it is a fragment of the famous statue of nemesis by agoracritos of paros. the exact date of agoracritos is not recorded, but he is said to have been a favourite pupil of pheidias. the statue of nemesis is described as a colossal figure of the type of aphroditè, holding in her hands an apple branch and a phialè, on which were figures of aethiopians. she had no wings, and stood on a base, sculptured with subjects relating to the birth of helen and the trojan war. the figure wore a diadem, adorned with deer and figures of victory of no great size. compare the diadem of pandora, described by hesiod, _theogony_, ; the diadem of hera of polycleitos (paus., ii., , ); the cypriote terracottas, in the terracotta room, wall cases and ; and the cypriote sculptures in the cyprus room. the numerous holes mentioned above must have served for the attachment of an ornament of some weight, and so confirm the proposed identification. according to tradition the statue was made of a block of parian marble, which was brought by the persians, before the battle of marathon, to be erected as a trophy for the capture of athens. (paus., i., . ; _anthol. pal. app. plan._, iv., , , ). found on the site of the _temple of nemesis at rhamnus_.--_presented by j. p. gandy deering, esq., ._ parian marble; height, foot - / inches. _uned. antiquities of attica_, p. ; leake, _athens and demi of attica_, ii., p. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _elgin room guide_, ii., no. e. ; six, _num. chron. rd. ser._, ii., p. ; _cf._ coin of cyprus, _ibidem_, pl. ; gardner, _journ. of hellen. studies_, viii., p. ; rossbach, _athenische mittheilungen_, xv., p. ; overbeck, _schriftquellen_, - . polycleitos of argos and the peloponnesian school. polycleitos of argos was, as has already been observed (p. ), one of the great pupils of ageladas of argos, who was also the master of myron and perhaps of pheidias. nothing is recorded as to the life of polycleitos; his age, as compared with that of pheidias, is not accurately known. it is probable that he was rather younger than pheidias, as he was working at a later date. pliny gives the th olympiad, or b.c., as the date of polycleitos. this may be the date of his great statue of hera at argos, the older temple of hera having been burnt in b.c., and it was probably near the end of the sculptor's life. no original works by the hand of polycleitos survive, but several sculptures are known which can be shown with probability to have been copied more or less directly from originals, of which the character is thus ascertained. polycleitos was famous in antiquity as the author of a methodical system of proportions for the human form. one in particular of his figures, the doryphoros, was known as the _canon_, and was adopted as the ideal type of a youthful male figure by later sculptors. this figure, and its companion the diadumenos (see below, nos. , ), are known to us from copies. they are of vigorous make and square build, but somewhat heavy when compared with the graceful youths of the parthenon frieze. but the words of quintilian, who says (_inst. orat._, xii., , ) that some critics objected to the works of polycleitos as being wanting in weight and unduly elegant, suggest that the extant copies do not convey an accurate impression of the bronze originals, and in fact some of the numerous doryphoros heads which have been found in italy present a profile which strikingly recalls the profiles of the youths on the parthenon frieze. polycleitos was also noted for his technical skill and perfect workmanship. the works that have been associated with polycleitos, in the british museum, are here described (nos. - ). a fragment, however, of a group of two boys playing with knuckle-bones (_mus. marbles_, ii., pl. ), which was ascribed by winckelmann to polycleitos (_hist. de l'art_, bk. vi., chap. ; pliny, _h. n._, xxxiv., ), is no doubt of a later period, and is therefore omitted. [sidenote: = .=] graeco-roman copy of the diadumenos of polycleitos. statue of a nude youth, tying a band (taenia) about his head. he stands principally on the right leg, resting lightly on the left leg, and has both hands raised. the left hand is lost. the band was made of bronze, and holes remain for its attachment. the left side of the face has been very much rubbed down. by the side of the figure is a tree-stump. that this figure is the diadumenos of polycleitos is indicated by its close resemblance in style to the figure at naples, believed to be a copy of the doryphoros (see no. ). it would be a remarkable coincidence if we had two companion statues representing respectively a diadumenos and a doryphoros, known from the number of replicas to be copies of important works, and agreeing in style with what would be expected of the art of polycleitos, but yet derived from independent sources. the head was found at a distance of two-thirds of a mile from the torso. the torso was found in in the _roman theatre, at vaison (vaucluse)_. marble; height, feet inch. restorations:--nose, fingers of right hand, parts of left thigh and of left shin and heel; also the upper part of the stump. the figure should perhaps be set with the ancient surface of the base horizontal, and so lean less forwards. _mon. dell' inst._, x., pl. , figs. - ; _annali dell' inst._, , p. (michaelis); rayet, _monuments_, i., no. and text; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. ; murray, i., pl. , p. ; wolters, no. . other examples more or less nearly reproducing this type are:--(_a_) a bronze from the de janzé collection in the french bibliothèque nationale. _annali dell' inst._, , pl. b, p. (michaelis); rayet, _monuments_, i., no. ; babelon, _le cabinet des ant. à la bibl. nationale_, pl. . (_b_) a terracotta statuette in an english private collection. _journ. of hellen. studies_, vi., p. , pl. . (_c_) a sepulchral relief from praeneste, in the vatican, commemorating one tiberius octavius diadumenus, and having a relief of a diadumenos, in allusion to the name. pistolesi, _vaticano_, iv. . (_d_) a gem. _journ. of hellen. studies_, ii. p. . see also no. . [sidenote: = .=] graeco-roman statue of a diadumenos. statue of a nude youth standing, tying a band (taenia) about his head. both arms were raised, but the left is lost. this figure, like the diadumenos of vaison (no. ), stands principally on the right leg, but the left leg is differently placed, and the whole pose is thereby altered. by the side of the figure is a stump of a palm. the hair falls in curls, and the figure is more youthful than the diadumenos of vaison. except in the similarity of subject these statues have little in common, and if the vaison figure represents the statue of polycleitos, this figure would appear to be either an independent rendering of the same subject, or only remotely derived from polycleitos. it was, however, for a long time regarded as a copy of the work of polycleitos, and this view has been held by several writers, after the discovery of the vaison diadumenos.--_farnese coll. ._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches. restorations:--nose, parts of band. the right leg appears to be ancient, but worked over. in the earliest publications (cavalieri, &c.) the left arm is drawn as if restored. the statue is first known in the villa madama, near rome (cavalieri, _ant. stat. urb. romae liber_, , pl. ). it was afterwards in the farnese gardens, in the farnese palace, and at naples. guattani, _mem. encicl._, v., pl. facing p. ; gerhard, _ant. bildwerke_, pl. , p. ; müller-wieseler, _denkmaeler_, i., pl. , fig. ; clarac, v., pl. c, a; _annali dell' inst._, , pl. a, p. (michaelis); murray, i., pl. , p. ; rayet, _monuments_, text to no. ; mitchell, p. ; wolters, no. ; mansell, no. . the polycleitan origin of the farnese statue is supported by winckelmann (_hist. de l'art_, bk. vi., chap. ), guattani (_loc. cit._), newton (rayet, _loc. cit._), brunn (_annali dell' inst._, , p. ), murray (_loc. cit._). [sidenote: = .=] statuette copied from the doryphoros of polycleitos (?). figure of youth having the arms broken off from the shoulders, and the legs from above the knees. the head is slightly bent forwards, and turned to the left of the figure. the left leg was advanced in front of the right leg. the figure, like a bronze statuette at athens (_mon. dell' inst._, viii., pl. ), which it nearly resembles, may perhaps be a modified rendering of the doryphoros of polycleitos. the doryphoros (spear-bearer) was a figure of a nameless athlete, which carried a spear, and which was the canon or typical model of later sculptors (see above). the type was first recognized by friederichs in a statue from pompeii, now in the museum at naples, and other copies have since been identified.--_athens._ marble; height, inches. unpublished. the principal examples of the type are:--(_a_) figure at naples (friederichs, _doryphoros des polyclet_; rayet, _monuments_, i., no. ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., fig. ). (_b_) relief from argos (_athenische mittheilungen_, iii., pl. ; mitchell, p. ). (_c_) bronze bust from herculaneum, at naples, found with a companion bust of an amazon (comparetti, _la villa ercolanese_, pl. , fig. ). (_d_) gem at berlin (overbeck, _gr. plast._, _loc. cit._). for other copies, see michaelis, _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; wolters, nos. , . [sidenote: = .=] head of amazon, slightly inclined to the left and looking down, with an expression of pain on the face. the hair is parted in the middle, and drawn back over the ears to the back of the head, where it is gathered in a bunch. the sharp parallel lines in which it is worked suggest that the head is copied from a bronze original. pliny relates (_h. n._, xxxiv., ) that four artists, polycleitos, pheidias, cresilas and phradmon, made statues of amazons which were placed in the temple of artemis at ephesus. polycleitos was accounted to have won the competition, as he obtained the second vote of each of his rivals. this account of the contest has the appearance of a late invention. there are, however, many statues and busts of wounded amazons which appear to be copies, more or less exact, of three types, different one from another, but yet so far alike that they may have been produced by artists working on one plan. the present head belongs to the type which various archaeologists (klügmann, _rhein. mus._ , p. ; michaelis, _jahrb. des arch. inst._, i., p. ) have assigned to polycleitos. the complete figure is that of a wounded amazon, leaning with the left arm on a pillar, and having the right hand resting on the top of the head. _brought to england by lyde brown. purchased by townley, ._--_townley coll._ greek marble; height of ancient portion, - / inches. restorations:--tip of nose, throat and bust. _mus. marbles_, x., pl. ; _guide to græco-roman sculptures_, i., no. ; murray, i., p. ; _jahrbuch des arch. inst._, i., , pl. , no. ; p. , _k_, (michaelis). there is a drawing by cipriani in the british museum (_add. mss._ , , no. ). the best examples of the type are:--(_a_) a statue at lansdowne house, london. _specimens of ant. sculpture_, ii., pl. . _cat. of lansdowne marbles_, no. . (_b_) a bronze head from herculaneum, now in the museum at naples. comparetti, _la villa ercolanese_, pl. , fig. . (_c_) compare the amazon on the phigaleian frieze (no. ). for further literature and examples, see michaelis, _loc. cit._ [sidenote: = .=] head of hera (?). ideal female head wearing a lofty diadem. the hair was brought to the back of the head, where it was tied in a knot, now lost. it is thought possible that this head may be derived from the argive statue of hera by polycleitos, for which the coins of argos may be compared (_journ. of hellen. studies_, vi., pl. , nos. - ).--_girgenti._ marble; height, foot inches. the lower part of the back of the head on the right side, which had been broken, has been in modern times roughly carved on the fractured surface to represent hair, and the end of the diadem. the surface of the face has also suffered from being worked over. the genuineness of the sculpture has been questioned, without reason. _mon. dell' inst._, ix., pl. ; helbig, _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; overbeck, _gr. kunstmyth._, pl. , figs. , ; ii., p. , ; murray, i., p. ; wolters, no. ; furtwaengler, _arch. zeit._, , p. , fig. a; murray, _römische mittheilungen_, i., p. . the temple of apollo at phigaleia. the temple of apollo epicurios, at phigaleia, in arcadia, stands in a slight depression on the bare and wind-swept side of mount cotylion, above the valley of the river neda. it was discovered towards the end of the eighteenth century, but on account of its remote position it was seldom visited before . in that year the party of explorers, who had previously discovered the pedimental sculptures of aegina, began excavations which were completed in . the party included cockerell and haller in the first season, and haller, stackelberg and bröndstedt in the second season. the sculptures found were removed to zante, and were purchased by the british government in . the temple was visited by pausanias, who describes it as being situated at the village of bassae on mount cotylion, about five miles from phigaleia. pausanias states that the temple and its roof were alike built of stone, and that it might be counted among the temples of the peloponnesus, second only to that of tegea, for beauty of material and fineness of proportion. he adds that the temple was dedicated to apollo epicurios (the helper), because the god had stayed a plague at phigaleia in the time of the peloponnesian war. the architect was ictinos, the builder of the parthenon (paus. viii., , ). the date of the temple is therefore about b.c., although it is doubtful whether the plague in arcadia was connected with the more celebrated pestilence at athens. the temple is built of the light grey limestone of the surrounding mountains. the sculptures, tiles, lacunaria, and capitals of the interior architecture were all of marble, which was probably obtained in the neighbourhood. the form of the building is that known as amphiprostyle peripteral hexastyle. the temple consisted of a central cella with a pronaos and opisthodomos, and was surrounded by a doric colonnade, having six columns at the ends and fifteen columns at the sides. the pronaos and opisthodomos were each bounded by two doric columns between antae, surmounted by metopes. the cella contained ten ionic columns engaged in buttresses which connected them with the side walls. towards the south end of the cella was a single corinthian column, of remarkable form, which is now lost. beyond it was the temple image, which by a peculiar arrangement is thought to have looked to the east, towards a side door, the orientation of the temple being nearly north and south. it has been thought that this arrangement may show that an ancient shrine was embodied in the later temple. (curtius, _pelop._, i., p. ; michaelis, _arch. zeit._, , p. ). the frieze was internal, and passed round the cella, with the exception of that portion which is south of the corinthian column. (compare the ground plan, fig. , and the view, plate xi.) [illustration: fig. .--plan of the temple of apollo at phigaleia.] the temple was discovered by a french architect, bocher, in november, (chandler, _travels in greece_, , p. ). for descriptions of the architecture and sculpture, see stackelberg, _der apollotempel zu bassae, in arcadien_, ; donaldson, in stuart, nd ed., vol. iv.; blouet, _expédition scientifique de morée_, ii; _museum marbles_, iv.; leake, _travels in the morea_, ii., chap. xii., p. ; ellis, _elgin and phigaleian marbles_, ii., p. ; cockerell, _the temple of jupiter panhellenius at aegina, and of apollo epicurius at bassae, near phigaleia, in arcadia_, ; overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. ; murray, ii., p. ; wolters, nos. - . for literature specially relating to the frieze, see below, p. . views and plans of the temple are exhibited in a table case. architectural fragments. [sidenote: = .=] two fragments of the cymatium cornice, with a pattern of palmettes alternating with palmettes of a plainer form, springing from acanthus leaves as on the cornice of the erechtheion. the member to which these fragments belong surmounted the pediments. marble; height, foot / inch; width, feet - / inches. the left-hand fragment is engraved in _mus. marbles_, iv., vignette. _synopsis_, nos. , ; cockerell, _phigaleia_, pl. ; ellis, _elgin and phigaleian marbles_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a doric capital, from a column of the external colonnade. limestone; height of fragment, foot inches; width. foot inches. _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ; _cf._ cockerell, _phigaleia_, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the capital of one of the doric columns of the pronaos or opisthodomos, including the lower part of the echinus, and the upper part of the flutings. limestone; height, - / inches; width, foot - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the capital of one of the ionic columns of the interior of the cella, with a part of the fluting. these capitals are of peculiar form, each column being connected at the back by a cross wall with the wall of the cella (see plan). the three exposed faces of the capital had each a pair of ionic volutes. in the centre of the volute is a stud of marble separately made. the hole for it was prepared by a series of drill holes placed so as to form a ring-like depression, the centre of which was afterwards worked out. the profile of the side pairs of volutes was somewhat different to that of the front pair, whence it can be ascertained that the fragment in the british museum contains a part of the front and right side of the cap. marble; height, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ; cockerell, _phigaleia_, pl. . [sidenote: = .= .] roof tile, with antefixal end, with a palmette in relief above two volutes springing from an acanthus. marble; height, foot - / inches; length, foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ; _exp. de morée_, ii., pl. , fig. ; cockerell, _phigaleia_, pl. . [sidenote: .] part of roof tile from the ridge of the roof of the temple. the central portion is not worked with palmettes, as shown by cockerell. marble; height of fragment, foot inches; length, foot inches. the complete length was about feet inches. _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ; cockerell, _phigaleia_, pl. , figs. , . phigaleian metopes. the following fragments belong to a series of metopes in high relief, which were placed over the entrance to the cella of the temple, in a position similar to that occupied by the metopes of the temple of zeus at olympia. in the parthenon the frieze takes the place of the internal metopes, of which however a trace remains in the _guttae_ which occur at regular intervals below the frieze, and which imply triglyphs.--cockerell, _phigaleia_, pl. . the fragmentary state of the metopes makes the subjects uncertain, in most instances. for a general view of the metopes, see _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] figure wearing a helmet with a projecting tail-piece (compare parthenon frieze, south side, no. ), a sleeveless chiton girt at the waist, and a small cloak. the figure wears a gorgoneion on the breast; and with the left hand seems to be playing on a lyre, which is partly expressed in relief, and must have been further indicated in colour. the gorgoneion suggests athenè, but it is more likely that it is merely worn as an amulet, and the figure may be that of a thracian citharist (cf. wolters, p. ). the dress is nearly the same as that of orpheus on the well-known relief in the villa albani--(zoega, _bassirel. ant._ i., pl. ). marble; height, foot inches; width. foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. , fig. ; stackelberg, pl. , fig. ; _exp. de morée_, ii., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ; cockerell, _phigaleia_, pl. ; ellis; _elgin and phigaleian marbles_, ii, p. . [sidenote: = .=] a mutilated male head, inserted in the same metope as last. it appears to have been bearded, but this is doubtful. marble; height, - / inches; width, inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] torso from the breasts to the knees of a female figure, wearing a fine clinging chiton and a mantle. the right hand holds two objects, perhaps _crotala_ or possibly flutes, and the left hand was extended. marble; height, foot inches; width, foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. , fig. ; stackelberg, pl. , fig. ; _exp. de morée_, ii., pl. , fig. ; ellis, _elgin and phigaleian marbles_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] lower part of a nude male figure from the waist to the ankle of the left leg, standing. the right leg is wanting. the figure stands to the left with drapery wrapped about the left arm. marble; height, foot inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] right knee of a draped female figure standing to the right. marble; height, inches, width, inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment with the upper moulding of a metope, and with a circular object in relief, which has a round depression in the centre. this object has been interpreted as a cymbal held up by a dancing figure. perhaps, however, it may be a ring from the top of a tripod of apollo, such as is frequently seen. cf. furtwaengler, _bronzen von olympia_, pl. . marble; height, inches; width, inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] figure of apollo kitharoedos? a male figure, wearing the dress of a citharist, with a long tunic falling to the feet, confined by a belt and by bands crossing the breast. the figure also wears a flowing mantle, and has long hair falling on the shoulders. the figure is half turned to the right, and looks back to the left. if the preceding fragment is, as suggested, a part of a tripod, apollo may be supposed to have been standing beside the delphic tripod. marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. the two main portions of the figure of apollo, which have only recently been joined, give the height of the metopes. _synopsis_, nos. , . [sidenote: = .=] [sidenote: .] this metope, though in a fragmentary state, appears to represent the rape of a woman by a nude male figure. a woman wearing a sleeveless chiton and a mantle, raises her right hand wrapped in the mantle to her head. of the ravisher we only see the fingers of the right hand grasping the neck of the woman, and a part of his arm below the woman's right elbow, and behind her drapery. [sidenote: .] on the second fragment, which may be assumed to belong to the same metope, we see a part of the feet of the woman, the toes of the man's right foot, and doubtful traces of his left foot. he was probably represented as seizing the woman by the neck and the knees. cockerell suggests that the subject is apollo pursuing daphnè, who was a daughter of the neighbouring river ladon, but he is mistaken in thinking that the man's fingers are stretched out straight, and have no grasp of the woman's neck. marble. fragment : height, foot - / inches; width, foot inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _exp. de morée_, ii. pl. , fig. ; stackelberg, pl. , fig. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. , fig. ; ellis, _elgin and phigaleian marbles_, ii., p. . fragment : height, - / inches; width, foot inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] upper part of body of draped female figure standing to the front. marble; height, inches; width, inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] torso of an obese bearded figure, from the neck to the waist. the figure appears to have been seated, leaning back, and having a staff and drapery under the left arm. cockerell restores it as a figure standing and leaning on a staff. marble; height, foot / inch; width, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; cockerell, _phigaleia_, pl. , stackelberg, pl. , fig. ; _exp. de morée_, ii., pl. , fig. . the phigaleian frieze. the frieze of the temple of apollo epicurios consists of slabs of marble, somewhat resembling pentelic. the slabs are each feet - / inches high, and they have a combined length of feet / inch. the frieze formed an internal decoration, above the colonnade within the cella, and had two long sides measuring feet inches, and two short sides measuring feet - / inches. the excess in the measured length of the slabs is explained by the fact that they overlapped at the angles. the slabs are about - / inches thick, and rested on the edge of the architrave, being fastened with bolts to the ground behind. the subjects represented are: ( ) battle of lapiths and centaurs; ( ) battle of greeks and amazons. the former subject has slabs of a combined length of feet - / inches, while the latter has slabs measuring feet inches. the centauromachia, therefore, occupied two sides, less the length of one slab, which contained a part of the amazonomachia. several attempts have been made to fix the probable order of the slabs, but except in certain cases we have no evidence. it is probable that the slabs, no. with heracles or theseus, and no. with centaurs and kaineus, were in the centres of two short sides. they are longer than any other slabs, and are well fitted to form the central groups in the compositions. slab no. was certainly a corner slab, as is proved by the rebate. slab no. was probably a corner slab. slabs nos. and evidently were next to each other, and no. was probably at a corner. beyond these fixed points, the order can only be determined by considerations of composition. in the description that follows, the slabs are taken in the present order of arrangement in the british museum, which is that proposed by mr. murray (_greek sculpt._ ii. pl. ) except as regards the position of the slabs of the north side. the style of the reliefs is somewhat peculiar. many of the types of combat are familiar in attic sculpture. compare the group of kaineus with the same subject on the frieze of the theseion, and the centaur groups with the metopes of the parthenon. at the same time the style of the work, with its high relief, somewhat florid and coarsely executed, is un-attic, and it seems probable that the actual production of the reliefs was in the hands of local workmen. there is less certainty as to the designer. among the artists suggested are alcamenes (stackelberg, p. ), cresilas (sauer, _berliner philol. wochenschr._, , p. ); an artist influenced by the paintings of polygnotos (murray, ii., p. ); an attic artist (jahn, _pop. aufsätze_, p. ), or an arcadian artist under attic influences (overbeck, _gr. plast._, rd ed., i., p. .) _literature relating to the frieze._ wagner, _bassorelievi antichi della grecia_. see also works quoted above, and on p. . for the proposed arrangements of the slabs of the frieze, see cockerell, p. ; ivanoff, _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; lange, _ber. der. k. sächs ges. d. wissenschaften_, , p. , pl. ; wolters, nos. - ; _stereoscopic_, nos. , , . phigaleian frieze, west side. [sidenote: = .=] a centaur carries away a lapith woman, who stretches out her arm in appeal for help. the woman's headdress is somewhat peculiar, consisting of a cap (_sphendonè_) and a narrow taenia, from under which the hair falls in small curls on the forehead. on the right of the slab an unarmed lapith struggles with a centaur, whose equine body is wholly unexpressed except for one leg which hardly seems to belong to him. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] on the left of this slab, a centaur, whose head and lower parts are lost, flings a stone with each hand. the figure is shown to be a centaur by the lion's skin over the left arm. on the right, a centaur, who also wears a lion's skin knotted about his neck, treads down an armed lapith, and grasps his right hand to prevent him striking with his sword. between the two centaurs is a lapith woman, who hastens to her right and holds her mantle about her. the centaur here and on certain other slabs has a horse's mane, which does not occur on the centaurs of the parthenon or of the theseion. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] on the left a centaur draws towards himself a lapith woman who tries to escape. she has a child on her left arm. the face of this figure has a strong resemblance to that of the supposed amazon of polycleitos, and the drapery of the breast is treated in the same way as that of some of the statues of amazons. (compare the fragment at wörlitz, engraved _jahrbuch des inst._ i., pl. .) on the right, a centaur, who has a shield and lion's skin, tramples down a lapith, whose hands are stretched out as if to keep the centaur away. the lapith is fully armed, having a cuirass above a chiton, a chlamys, and boots. he has no shield, but perhaps that of the centaur may be supposed to have been captured from him, as no other centaur is thus armed on the phigaleian frieze, the theseion, or the parthenon. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] apollo and artemis coming to the aid of the lapiths. artemis drives a chariot drawn by two stags; she wears the chiton, and large diploïdion crossed by bands, which is the dress of charioteers on the parthenon sculptures. her right foot is on the ground and she appears to be checking the chariot, while apollo stands at its side and draws his bow. the bow, arrow, and reins were added in bronze. the chariot is represented three-quarters to the front. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] two lapith women have taken refuge at the statue of a goddess, probably artemis, as she is coming to their aid. one of the women stretches out her arms with a gesture of despairing entreaty. the other embraces the statue, which is a stiff archaic image wearing a polos; with her left hand she clings to her mantle which has been seized by the centaur. the centaur is attacked from behind by a lapith who kneels on his back, has his left arm round the centaur's neck, and is about to strike with the sword originally held in the right hand. on the right is a tree, with a lion's skin hanging from a bough. the appearance of a deity near his own image is not infrequent. (cf. _journ. of hellen. studies_, ix., pl. ; müller, _denkmaeler_, pl. , fig. ; _arch. zeit._, , pl. .) the group of the lapith and centaur is composed like the parthenon metope, no. . length, feet inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] a lapith and a centaur in combat. the lapith draws away to the left, and is about to throw a stone, while he stretches out his shield on his left arm. the centaur rears up, and seems to be throwing a stone held in both hands. the lapith has only a helmet and small chlamys. he also wore a metal sword belt. on the right of the slab, a woman holding a boy on her right arm, moves quickly to the left. with her left hand she holds a floating piece of her veil. length, feet inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] a centaur is about to thrust with his sword at a lapith, who seizes the centaur's left foreleg and left hand. the centaur has a lion's skin; the lapith is unarmed. on the right of this slab another unarmed lapith has forced the centaur down on his knees. he kneels on the centaur's back, and holds his hair with the right hand, and his wrists with the left hand. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] the centaur of this slab bites a lapith in the neck. the lapith is about to fall with relaxed limbs, but plunges his sword in the centaur's body. at the same time the centaur kicks out with his hind legs at a lapith on the left, who holds out his shield as a defence. a dead centaur lies on the ground. both centaurs have lions' skins. the lapiths wore metal sword belts. length, feet inch. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. stackelberg, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] a centaur has been thrown down by two lapiths. the one drags forward the centaur by his hair, while the other kneels on his back, and has his hand and sword raised to strike. a centaur, however, has come from behind and arrests the lapith's blow, and tries to draw away his shield. the fallen centaur feebly puts out his right hand behind his back to meet the stroke. length, feet inch. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . phigaleian feieze, north side. [sidenote: = .=] on the left a lapith and centaur are wrestling. the lapith holds the centaur's head under his left arm, and the centaur seizes the thigh of the lapith, and tries to overthrow him, putting his right foreleg round the leg of the lapith. the centaur wears a lion's skin. on the right the lapith has seized the centaur by the hair, and is about to strike. the centaur is helpless and can only stretch out his hands behind his back as a defence. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] two centaurs heave a mighty stone to crush the invulnerable kaineus. kaineus is half-buried and holds his shield above his head. he probably held a sword in the right hand. both centaurs wear lions' skins. the same subject occurs on the frieze of the theseion. next on the right is a lapith armed with shield and helmet, who seems to be dragging the centaur by the hair. a woman moves to the right, holding her floating mantle with her right hand. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] the remaining slab on this side contains a part of the battle of greeks and amazons. as the amazon slabs are longer than the slabs of centaurs by about feet, it is clear that they must have filled two sides and a part of a third. (see above, p. .) on the left a greek and an amazon are engaged in combat. the greek has a helmet, boots, and a chiton which leaves the right shoulder bare. he advances his left arm with the mantle hanging from it, in the manner of harmodios in the group of the athenian tyrannicides (compare the panathenaic vase in the fourth vase room, which has this group on the shield of athenè). the amazon wears a similar chiton, and rushes forward against the greek, in the attitude of the aristogeiton in the group mentioned above. on the right a wounded amazon has sunk to the ground, and is supported by a companion who wears the chiton split at the side (_schistos_), like that of the iris of the east pediment of the parthenon. length, feet - / inches; _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . phigaleian frieze, east side. [sidenote: = .=] on the left of the slab a greek tries to drag an amazon along by the hair. she is now unarmed, and tries to resist with both hands and with the weight of her body. her shield is seen in the background. on the right an amazon who has sunk to the ground, but appears not to be badly wounded, is defended by a companion who stands beside her, and stretches out a large shield. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] on the left a greek makes a fierce attack on an enemy represented in the adjoining slab, which was probably the one just described. he has his sword arm raised above his head for a strong blow. in the centre is a vigorous combat between a greek and amazon. the greek covers himself with his shield and draws back for a spear thrust. the action of the amazon appears to be that of thrusting a spear. the shield on her left arm is not expressed. in the tightly stretched skirt of the chiton the sculptor has sacrificed grace for truth to nature and vivid movement. on the right, an amazon who has just received a mortal wound, is seen falling to the ground, with all her limbs relaxed. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] on the left a greek drags down an amazon from her horse, grasping her hair with the left hand. he probably held a sword in the right hand. the amazon tries feebly to loosen his grasp. she wears the split chiton, like the amazon of slab no. . on the right is an amazon, who draws back a little, extending her shield, and at the same time raising her right hand to strike. here, as in no. , the drapery is tightly stretched. the upper part of the figure of the greek had been lost when the marbles were being transported from the temple. it was afterwards found in a house near bassae, and was _presented by j. spencer stanhope, esq., ._ (cf. stackelberg, p. .) length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] an unarmed amazon has taken refuge at an altar; a greek has seized her by the hair, and tries to drag her away. the amazon resists using her weight, and both arms. the greek had a sword in his right hand. on the right a greek and amazon are engaged in hand to hand combat, extending their shields and engaged in fence with their swords. the drapery of the amazon is treated as on the two last slabs. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] a large part of the group on the left is wanting. the greek appears to be dragging the fallen amazon by the hair, and at the same time to be treading her down with his right foot. with both hands she tries to free herself from the grasp of the greek. on the right, a greek has fallen on his knees and holds up his shield as a defence against the victorious amazon, whose right hand and sword are raised to strike. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] an amazon is disarmed, and has fallen to the ground. she stretches out her right hand, as if in entreaty to a greek who treads with his left foot on her knee, and is about to thrust with his sword. a second greek approaches from the left. on the right an amazon strides quickly forward to help her companion, and is about to strike the greek. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] on the left, a greek who is bearded and heavily armed, has thrown down an amazon, whom he drags by the hair, while she tries to keep him at arm's length. on the right the greek has fallen on his knees, and holds up his shield against the attack of the amazon. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] a greek who has been killed in the battle, and perhaps stripped, is being borne off the field on a companion's back. another greek who has been badly wounded in the right leg, leaves the field, leaning with his right hand on a spear, now wanting. he puts his left arm round the neck of a companion, who supports him round the body. in the centre of the slab an amazon draws away a shield which belonged to one of the greeks. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . phigaleian frieze, south side. [sidenote: = .=] this slab has a rebate on the left side, proving that it belongs to the left end of a frieze. on the left, a wounded greek lying on the ground, is partly raised by a companion, who eagerly watches the fight, but for the moment only holds his sword in the left hand, while he uses his right hand to support the wounded man. a similar group occurs on the frieze of the temple of nikè (no. ). on the right a greek and amazon are fighting hotly. the greek presses forward, and the amazon at the same time draws back, collecting her strength for a blow. the amazon wears the split chiton. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] the middle of the central slab is occupied by a single combat between heracles and an amazon. they are represented drawing back for a blow. the amazon seems to be making a spear thrust while heracles raises his club. the amazon extends her shield; heracles carries the lion skin on his left arm. the pose of these two combatants who have the most important position in the whole frieze, is very similar to that of the poseidon and athenè of the west pediment of the parthenon. in both cases also the central group is bounded by figures of horses. the figure here called heracles has also been interpreted as theseus. on the left, a mounted amazon is victorious, and thrusts with a spear at a wounded and fallen greek. on the right, the greek is the victor; he seizes the amazon by arm and foot and throws her off her horse, which has fallen on its knees. length, feet inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. ; brunn, _denkmaeler_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] a young greek, wounded and fallen to the ground, raises his right hand, as if in defence against the blow about to be struck by the amazon standing over him. another amazon hastily approaches from the left, and stretches out her hands, as if in defence of the greek. on the right of the slab, an amazon supports a wounded comrade, who is sinking to the ground with her head drooping and all her muscles relaxed. length, feet - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ; _mus. marbles_, iv., pl. ; stackelberg, pl. . fragments of the temple statue of apollo. a few small fragments of a colossal male statue were discovered during the excavations. as the fragments found belong to the extremities of the figure, and since they are proved to have been separate pieces attached, by the dowel holes, it is inferred that the statue was _acrolithic_, _i.e._, that the extremities only were of marble, while the rest of the figure was made of wood or other inferior material. the original statue of apollo epicurios had been moved to megalopolis from bassae, before the time of pausanias (paus. viii., , ). the foundation of megalopolis took place in b.c., and if the acrolithic statue was made to take the place of that which was removed it must be later than this date. the two fragments here described are all that are in the british museum, but four other small pieces were also discovered, and are engraved stackelberg, pl. ; reproduced _exp. de morée_, ii., pl. , fig. ; cockerell, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the forepart of a right male foot, wearing a sandal. white marble; length, - / inches. stackelberg, pl. ; cockerell, pl. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment with the palm and base of the thumb of a right hand. white marble; length, - / inches. stackelberg, pl. ; cockerell, pl. . miscellaneous sculptures, of the fifth century. [sidenote: = .=] bust of pericles, wearing a helmet. inscribed [greek: periklês] (fig. ). wolters assigns the original from which this fine bust is copied to the end of the fifth century, and suggests that it may have been the work of cresilas, with reference to which pliny (_h. n._ xxxiv., ) states that he made an olympian pericles, worthy of the title, and ennobled a noble subject. plutarch explains the presence of the helmet as caused by the ugly shape of the head of pericles (plutarch, _pericles_, ). it is, however, more probable that the helmet merely denotes military rank. _found in the villa of cassius, at tivoli, ._--_townley coll._ [illustration: fig. .--bust of pericles, no. .] marble; height, foot inches. restorations:--nose, and small parts of helmet. stuart, ii., p. ; _mus. marbles_, ii., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; _arch. zeit._, , pl. , fig. ; wolters, no. ; furtwaengler, _berl. philol. wochenschr._, , p. . another copy, found at the same time as the present bust, is in the vatican (visconti, _iconogr. grecque_, pl. ). [sidenote: = .=] head of asclepios? colossal ideal bearded head. the hair falls in heavy masses over the forehead, and on each side of the head. a heavy metal wreath was fastened by numerous rivets, which still remain. the head was formed of three principal pieces of marble, the heaviest piece being so shaped that it kept its position by its own weight. the piece at the back of the head is lost. a small piece, which is now missing, was also attached behind the right ear. this head would serve as well for zeus as for asclepios, and it is possible that this may have been the original intention of the artist. it was, however, discovered in , in a _shrine of asclepios, in melos_. _blacas coll._ parian marble; height, foot inches. _exp. de morée_, iii. pl. , fig. ; müller-wieseler, _denkmaeler_, ii., pl. , fig. ; _overbeck_, _gr. kunstmyth._ pl. , figs. , ; ii., p. ; murray, _greek sculpture_, ii., pl. , p. ; mitchell, _selections_, pl. ; rayet, _monuments_, ii., no. ; _stereoscopic_, no. ; wolters, no. ; paris, _la sculpt. ant._, p. . two votive inscriptions to asclepios and hygieia were discovered with the head. one of these, with a votive relief of a leg, is now in the british museum (no. ). [sidenote: = .=] asclepios? a male draped torso broken off at the knees; the right arm is wanting from below the shoulder, where it has been fitted with a joint. the left arm, which is entirely concealed in the mantle, is placed akimbo. the back is unfinished. the composition is suitable to a figure of asclepios, an attribution which was probably originally suggested by the fact that this torso was obtained by lord elgin from _the neighbourhood of epidauros_. two small fragments of the right leg were brought away with the torso. parian marble; height, feet - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _synopsis_, no. ; _elgin room guide_, ii., no. e. . [sidenote: = .=] female torso from the neck down to the waist. the dress is a chiton with diploïdion; part of the tresses of hair which fall down on the back still remains.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _elgin room guide_, ii., no. f. . [sidenote: = .=] left breast and part of left side of female figure wearing a chiton girt at the waist.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). _elgin room guide_, ii., no. f. . [sidenote: = .=] upper part of the torso of a female figure moving quickly to the left, with the arms raised. she wears a sleeveless chiton which appears to have been unsewn (_schistos_) down the right side. the shoulders are broken, but there are remains of large dowel holes as if for the insertion of wings, and the figure is not unlike the victories on the balustrade of the temple of nikè.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] heads of pelops and hippodamia? heroic heads of colossal male and female figures, turned to the right. the female head is in low relief, and wears a diadem, and a veil falling over the back of the head. compare the heads in a terracotta relief in the british museum (_ancient terracottas in b. m._, pl. , no. ). the male head is almost worked in the round and wears a close-fitting helmet. some drapery passes over the left shoulder. these two heads have long been called pelops and hippodamia, and it is very likely that the figures belonged to a chariot group. but they may well be the somewhat idealized portraits of a sicilian despot, and his consort. _found in the sea near girgenti (agrigentum)._--_townley coll._ greek marble, perhaps parian; height, foot - / inches; width, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, x., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] head of odysseus? male head, with curling hair and short beard, wearing a peaked cap (_pileus_). the surface is much decayed, and most of the chin and mouth is broken away. this head may be from a sepulchral monument.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot / inch. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the back of a head. the hair is drawn to a knot at the back of the head, and is confined by two bands, crossing one another. pentelic marble; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] head of a maiden, wearing a closely-fitting cap. the style is characteristic of the fifth century.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] heroic head of a youth, inclined slightly to his left. the hair is very slightly indicated, and the back of the head is worked away, as if for a bronze helmet.--_obtained in greece by the fourth earl of aberdeen in , and presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen in ._ coarse-grained marble; height, inches. the head was found wearing a bronze helmet, which, however, did not fit, and has been removed. [sidenote: = .=] cast of marble owl. l. ross (_annali dell' inst._, , pl. c., p. ), supposes that this owl was a votive offering which once surmounted a column found near it, on which is inscribed the name of timotheos of the deme anaphlystos. the lower part of the body, which is broken away, has lately been found. the feathers of the wings are set in formal rows, and the treatment throughout is characterised by an archaic severity, as has been remarked by ross. the feathers have probably been painted.--_found on the athenian acropolis between the propylaea and the parthenon._ the original, of pentelic marble, is in the acropolis museum, at athens; height, feet inches. ross, _arch. aufsätze_, i., pl. , fig. , p. ; _elgin room guide_, ii., no. g. ; wolters, no. ; le bas, _mon. fig._, pl. , fig. . greek reliefs. most of the single greek reliefs in the british museum are described in the present section of the catalogue (nos. - .) those reliefs which are known to have belonged to particular buildings, and to have served an architectural function, are catalogued separately. a few reliefs also, principally of the later attic school, are reserved for a subsequent part. we deal, in this place, with a number of works of minor importance, and of various degrees of artistic merit. at the same time they are of interest both for their subjects and also as showing the instinctive grace and skill of subordinate greek craftsmen, even in hastily executed and unimportant work. the following classification has been adopted, but the classes are not perfectly distinct, as the sepulchral reliefs sometimes partake of a votive character. _sepulchral reliefs._-- - , decorative stelae. - , scenes from daily life and animals. - , plain vases. - , vases and reliefs with figures clasping hands. - , sepulchral banquets, &c. - , rider and horse, heroified. - , reliefs from lycia. _votive reliefs._-- - , figures of the god or his attributes. - , figures of the dedicator, or of the object dedicated. - , agonistic reliefs. sepulchral reliefs. the greek sepulchral reliefs are of several distinct types, each type having an independent origin and history, though occasionally the different types are blended one with another. the early attic examples which are assigned to a period before the persian wars, have recently been collected by conze (_die attischen grabreliefs_, part ), and we are thus enabled to trace the rise of the different types in attica, so far as the materials discovered allow. the earliest and simplest form of monument is the plain stone ([greek: stêlê]), set up on a mound ([greek: tymbos]) to mark the place of the grave, and such a tomb is well known to homer (_il._ xi., , etc.) such a stone would naturally bear the name of the deceased, together with the name of his father, or of the persons who erected the monument. the earliest attic examples are also surmounted by a simple ornament, especially the palmette between volutes, partly in relief, and partly in colour. the treatment of the palmette closely resembles that of the antefixal ornament of the parthenon (no. ). at an uncertain period in the fifth century the use of the acanthus-leaf ornament was introduced, and the decoration of the stelae became elaborate and beautiful. it has been thought that the acanthus was developed by the greeks of ionia, before the middle of the fifth century, and only made its way slowly in athens (furtwaengler, _coll. sabouroff_, i., p. ), but it cannot be proved to have become common before it had been made familiar by the architecture of the erechtheion, towards the close of the fifth century. the early corinthian capital of the single column of the temple at phigaleia appears to be copied from a stelè with volutes and an acanthus. the smooth surface of the stone below the crowning ornament was used, from an early time, to receive a representation of the deceased person, which was either painted or in relief, the relief being itself painted. such portraits, in the case of men--and only men's portraits are certainly known to be preserved of the archaic period--take the form either of a simple standing figure, or of a figure engaged in some occupation taken from life. see the figures of the discobolos and of the spear-thrower (conze, pls. , ), and as an example of the painted portrait see the stelè of lyseas (conze, pl. ). the male portrait is often accompanied by a small figure of a youth riding or leading a horse. on a class of monuments described below (nos. - ) it is not impossible that the figure of the horse may have some special reference to death, but in the early attic reliefs it seems more likely that the horse indicates the favourite pursuits or the knightly rank of the dead person. compare roscher, _lexicon_, p. , and aristotle, _constitution of athens_, chap. , ed. kenyon, where the horse standing beside an archaic figure of anthemion, son of diphilos (_class. rev._ , p. ), is said to prove his knighthood ([greek: hippas]). (cf. _journ. of hellen. studies_, v. p. ; conze, p. ; nos. , , , , , .) the female figures, of which only uncertain specimens survive, were simple portraits, usually seated, and sometimes accompanied by other members of the family, usually represented on a diminutive scale. (cf. conze, no. .) in one early attic example there is an actual representation of mourners as on etruscan or lycian tombs. but in general, allusions to death and mourning are but slightly indicated. (cf. conze, no. , pl. .) finally, there is a type of monument, which contains the representation of some animal more or less associated with the grave, such as the cock (conze, no. , pl. ) or the sphinx (conze, no. , pl. , fig. _b_). the foregoing are the main types of the early attic reliefs. the british museum does not contain any specimens of the early period, but the study of the early reliefs enables us to classify the later works, and to distinguish the indigenous attic types from those that are imported, or of later development. _decorative stelae._--the stelae crowned with the palmette and acanthus acroteria are described below, nos. - . they are principally derived from athens, but several specimens (nos. - ) roughly worked in coarse limestone are a part of the collection of sculptures from kertch. one of the best examples of attic work of this class in the british museum, will be found in the department of egyptian and assyrian antiquities, namely the stelè of artemidoros with a bilingual greek and phoenician inscription. (dodwell, _tour_ i., p. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cix.) _scenes from daily life and figures of animals._--the monuments with portraits and scenes from daily life are catalogued below, nos. - . the incidents chosen are taken from all parts of life, and in late times are apt to be of a _genre_ character with scenes from children's games, &c. reliefs with figures of horsemen, where the scene appears only to be an incident from daily life, and not connected with the heroification of the deceased, have also been placed here (nos. , - ). examples of the figure of an animal placed on the tomb, of a symbolic or decorative character, are best seen among the archaic sculptures (compare those from xanthos), but the bull, no. , is a specimen of a figure from an attic stelè. the types which have been described so far, are simple records of the deceased person. we turn now to various classes, which are not represented among the attic remains of the archaic period, and which are more or less of religious or ritualist significance. _vases._--the sepulchral vases, which are represented either in relief or in the round, are a common form of monument at athens, and are connected with the observances paid to the dead. these vases which are sometimes lekythi, and sometimes amphorae or hydriae, may be decorated with patterns, or with subjects in relief, such as appear on other sepulchral stelae. they probably are to be traced from the vessels of pottery in which offerings were brought, to be poured out as libations on the tomb. compare below the account of the "sepulchral banquet." there is ancient authority for the view that the vase indicates an unmarried person. eustath. on _il._ xxiii., , p. : [greek: kai tois pro gamou de teleutôsin hê loutrophoros, phasin, epetitheto kalpis eis endeixin tou hoti aloutos ta nymphika kai agonos apeisi]. demosthenes (_in leochar._ pp. and , ed. reiske) speaks also of [greek: hê loutrophoros] (sc. [greek: hydria] or [greek: kalpis]), being placed on the tomb of an unmarried person. (kumanudis, p. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, no. lxxx.) on the other hand, the tombs of a father, philoxenos, and of his sons parthenios and dion, in the cerameicos at athens were all surmounted by stone vases (_c. i. a._, ii., - ; conze, p. ). perhaps a distinction must be made between the lekythi which represent libations at the tomb, and the hydriae, which have the special meaning mentioned above. an early instance of the attic sepulchral vase, with painting and relief, is placed by köhler on epigraphic grounds between and b.c. (_athenische mittheilungen_, x., pl. , p. .) _figures clasping hands._--in attic reliefs, chiefly of the fourth and subsequent centuries, the two principal persons are often represented clasping right hands together, and such scenes are commonly known as scenes of parting. a more correct interpretation may be gathered from a fragment of an archaic sepulchral relief from aegina (_athenische mittheilungen_, viii., pl. ), in which a female figure, enthroned and holding a pomegranate (compare the spartan reliefs mentioned below), clasps the hand of a standing figure, which is shown by the scale to be that of another deceased person. in this case the scene is laid in hades, and the clasping of the hands is significant of affection, not of separation. hence it has been thought that all subjects with the clasped hands represent the meeting and union in hades after death (furtwaengler, _coll. sabouroff_, i., p. ). there is, however, no proof that the artist was always consciously placing the scene in hades, and in no. hermes seems about to conduct the deceased person to the nether world. the presence of figures in attitudes of grief, of children and servants, seems to show that these reliefs are symbolic of family affection, though the artist had no very clear and logical conception of the moment depicted. an early example of the clasping of hands on an attic monument is supplied by the sepulchral vase above mentioned, of - b.c. (_athenische mittheilungen_, x., pl. .) such subjects as the foregoing are often placed within an architectural structure, usually consisting of two pilasters and an entablature, sometimes surmounted by a pediment. various theories have been proposed on the subject. it has been suggested that the architectural ornament indicates the votive character of the relief (_journ. of hellen. studies_, v., p. ), or the home of the dead person (pervanoglu, _grabsteine der alten griechen_, p. ), but there is no evidence of any such special significance attaching to the form. (compare furtwaengler, _coll. sabouroff_, i., p. .) _the sepulchral banquet._--from the fourth century onwards, a type of relief commonly known as the sepulchral banquet becomes very common in attica and elsewhere. in a normal example of the fully developed type, the chief figure is that of a man recumbent on a couch, holding a cup. before him is a table with food. a woman, according to greek custom, is seated upright at the foot of the couch. boys or attendants are seen drawing wine. the head of a horse is often seen at the back of the relief. a snake is frequently introduced, and often drinks wine from a cup held by one of the figures. further, a group of adorant figures, usually on a small scale, may be represented about to sacrifice at an altar, near the foot of the couch. the meaning of this type has been a subject of long controversy, but it is best understood if the later reliefs are studied in connection with the oldest known specimens of the same subject. a series of archaic reliefs from the neighbourhood of sparta (_athenische mittheilungen_, ii., pls. - ; furtwaengler, _coll. sabouroff_, pl. ; _journ. of hellen. studies_, v., p. ), contains subjects somewhat of the following character: a male and female figure, represented on a heroic or divine scale, are seated enthroned, holding as attributes a large two-handled cup, or a pomegranate. figures of worshippers approach, carrying a pomegranate or a cock, and a snake is sometimes present. the sculptures of the harpy tomb (no. ), have been sometimes classed with the works here described, but this has not yet been established. the transition from the spartan type to the sepulchral banquet type is still obscure, but a connecting link is furnished by a relief from tegea (_athenische mittheilungen_, iv., pl. ), in which the woman is enthroned, while the man reclines on a couch with a table before him. (compare also the relief from mytilene no. .) it seems probable that we have in these reliefs symbolic representations of offerings made by living relations or descendants for the pleasure and sustenance of the dead. such offerings of food and drink made by the living at the tomb are common to all primitive peoples. the egyptians, in particular, made regular offerings of actual food, and at the same time surrounded the mummy with sculptural representations of offerings, which, it was thought, served to satisfy the incorporeal _double_ of the dead person. the early notion that the deceased was within the tomb, and enjoyed the food and drink offered to him in a material manner, became less distinct in later times. the periodical offerings assumed a more ritualistic and symbolic character, and were celebrated by the greeks under the name of [greek: nekysia]. the older archaeologists thought for the most part that the banquet reliefs were representations commemorative of life on earth, or descriptive of the pleasures enjoyed by the dead in hades. dumont (_rev. arch._, n.s. xx. p. ) and hollaender (_de operibus anaglyphis_), interpret them as referring to the periodical offerings made at the tomb. it will be seen that this view is not very different from that which has been adopted above, and which is the view of gardner (_journ. of hellenic studies_, v., p. ), and furtwaengler (_coll. sabouroff_, i., p. ). the reliefs, however, have more force than mere pictorial groups, if we accept the egyptian analogy, and allow that the sculpture represents, by substitution, the offerings of material food. the snake is naturally associated with the grave, from its rapid mysterious movements, and from living in caves and holes. compare the story of the snakes that were seen by polyeidos in the tomb of glaukos. (apollodor. , , ; roscher, _lexicon_, p. ). the votive character of the banquet reliefs is proved in some instances by inscriptions, (_journ. of hellen. studies_, v., p. ; roscher, _lexicon_, p. ). it is doubtful, however, whether the artist was always conscious of the meaning of his work, and in some instances, as in the tomb at cadyanda in lycia (no. ), the banquet appears to be merely a scene from daily life, and as such it closely resembles some of the vase paintings. in no. and other late examples, the relief, though of the type of the banquet, is commemorative rather than votive. in athens the type of the sepulchral banquet was also applied to another purpose, namely, for votive reliefs to asclepios. the two classes of monuments are completely assimilated in those examples in which worshippers come to sacrifice at the end of the couch. numerous specimens of reliefs have been found in the temenos of asclepios at athens, and it is possible that the sculptures from the elgin collection, nos. , , belong to this series. in the newly-discovered papyrus fragments of herodas, the sons of praxiteles are mentioned as authors of a relief dedicated to asclepios. a figure of asclepios, composed like the principal figure of the sepulchral reliefs, has also been found on a vase from the temple of the cabeiri at thebes ([greek: ephêmeris], , pl. ). for other examples of the same type on vases of different meanings, see _athenische mittheilungen_, xiii., pl. ; _arch. anzeiger_, , p. . for the most recent discussion of the whole question, see roscher, _lexicon_, p. . _hero and horse._--there is another type of sepulchral relief, somewhat akin to that above described, in which, however, the horse of the hero takes a more prominent position. the hero is seen either riding on his horse or standing near it, and receiving a libation poured out by a female figure, sometimes a victory. here also the snake is frequently introduced to mark the sepulchral character of the relief. in the earliest examples the connection between this type and the foregoing is made clearer by the presence of diminutive figures of supplicants bringing offerings, or making gestures of adoration. compare a theban relief (_athenische mittheilungen_, iv., pl. ), and a relief in the sabouroff collection, inscribed [greek: kallitelês aleximachô anethêken] (_coll. sabouroff_, i., pl. ), and a relief from cumae (roscher, _lexicon_, p. ). for a list of reliefs with figures of horsemen, see furtwaengler, _coll. sabouroff_, i., p. ; roscher, _lexicon_, p. . it has been thought that the horse is shown in these subjects on account of its association with hades, but in some instances, if not in all, it relates to the pursuits and status of the deceased, and is introduced for the use of its master, and not for any chthonian significance. _reliefs from lycia._--see below, p. . votive reliefs. a votive offering is, in its essence, a present made to a god or to a superior being, in order to secure some favour in the future, or to avert anger for a past offence, or to express gratitude for a favour received. the last purpose includes offerings made in fulfilment of a vow, the vow being a kind of contract between the individual and the god. sometimes also objects were offered, nominally as gifts to the god, but in reality in order that they might be secure. votive offerings cover the whole field of life including persons, lands, buildings, and, in particular, objects appropriate (a) to the god or his worship, or (b) to the dedicator and the cause of his dedication. a. objects appropriate to the god include temples (compare the inscription of alexander from prienè, in the hall of inscriptions); parts of a temple (compare the columns dedicated by croesus, no. ); images of the god represented in an appropriate attitude (compare the reliefs, nos. - ); objects connected with the worship of the god and temple furniture (compare the stool in the hall of inscriptions, dedicated by philis to demeter, and the vases from naucratis in the first vase room); or lastly, attributes of the god, such as the owl of athenè (no. ), and the pigs found in the shrine of demeter at knidos, now in the mausoleum room. b. objects appropriate to the dedicator or the cause of his dedication include portraits of the dedicator, such as the statue of chares (no. ), or of the priestess nicoclea, found in the temenos of demeter of knidos, or the statuette of the hunter of naucratis (no. ); spoils won in battle, as the helmet dedicated by hiero, in the etruscan room; figures of victorious horses (no. ); symbolic offerings such as the dedication of the hair or the down of the beard to poseidon (cf. no. ), or to a river god (paus. viii., , ); offerings connected with remarkable cures (compare nos. - , and, perhaps, the relief of xanthippos, no. ). where the object itself is perishable or otherwise unsuitable as an offering, the sculptured representation takes its place, by a natural process. thus we have a representation of the hair, in place of the actual hair (no. ), and the reliefs with limbs, mentioned above (nos. - ). it has been already suggested that in the sepulchral banquet reliefs, which might be classed as votive reliefs, the banquet is represented in sculpture as a substitute for the actual offerings of food. a special class of votive reliefs consists of those which are found at the head of decrees, treaties, and similar political documents. an athenian treaty, for example, is headed by a representation of athenè, and of the patron deity of the other state, which may appear in the attitude of a suppliant or adorant. (compare schöne, _griech. reliefs_, nos. - .) similarly at the head of a decree of citizenship or proxenia, the newly admitted citizen appears as worshipping the goddess (cf. schöne, no. , and p. , and below, nos. - ). +++++++++++++++++ stelae surmounted by decorative designs. for an account of these stelae, see above, p. . [sidenote: = .=] stelè with two rosettes. above, an acroterion, formed of acanthus leaves and palmette combined (fig. ). [illustration: fig. .--sepulchral stelè of smikylion, no. .] inscribed [greek: smikyliôn eualkidôu ek kerameôn]--smikylion, son of eualkides, of the deme of the cerameicos.--_athens._ _presented by a. robinson, esq., r.n._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot - / inches. _synopsis_ no. . _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxxxvi.; _c.i.a._, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] plain stelè of hippocrates and baukis; surmounted by an acroterion in low relief, of palmette form. inscribed [greek: hippokratês, baukis]. below the surface of the stelè is flat, and probably was painted.--_athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inch; width, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. . _synopsis_, no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., . _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxx. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a plain stelè, surmounted by an acroterion, in the form of a palmette in low relief, springing from acanthus leaves. inscribed [greek: assklêpiodôros thrasônos olynthios, epikydês asklêpiodôrou olynthios]--asclepiodoros, son of thrason, of olynthos; epikydes, son of asclepiodoros, of olynthos.--_probably from athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot / inch. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cvi. [sidenote: = .=] acroterion in form of palmette from a stelè.--_athens._ _inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] acroterion, from a stelè, of palmette form, springing from acanthus leaves.--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches. _synopsis_, no. ; inwood, _erechtheion_, pl. , p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of an acroterion of a stelè in form of a palmette springing from acanthus leaves.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; width, inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] stelè, surmounted by acroterion. one central palmette, and two half palmettes at the sides spring from acanthus leaves. inscribed [greek: eumachos euthymachou [a]lôpe[k]êthe[n]]--eumachos, son of euthymachos, of the deme of alopekè. _athens._--_obtained by chandler in his expedition for the society of dilettanti in , and presented by the society._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( *); _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., . _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxxix.; _stereoscopic_, no. ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: .] top of stelè, with central palmette and two half palmettes, springing from acanthus leaves. _found in the side of a mound, near maritza, rhodes._ marble; height, feet inches; width, feet - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] upper part of stelè, surmounted by a central palmette and two half palmettes, springing from acanthus leaves. similar to last, but in lower relief. _probably from athens._ _formerly in the collection of lord elgin._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot - / inches. _journ. of hellen. studies_, vi., p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] upper part of stelè, surmounted by a central palmette, and two palmettes at the sides, broken. inscribed [greek: chabrias salyprianos]. chabrias of selymbria.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cvii. [sidenote: = .=] top of stelè, in form of a capital of a pilaster with a palmette between two volutes springing from acanthus leaves, and an egg and dart moulding. late work. _probably from athens._ _formerly in the collection of lord elgin._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, inches. _journ. of hellen. studies_, vi., p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] top of stelè, in the form of the capital of a pilaster; treated in a similar way to the capitals of the tower of the winds. (compare no. .) late work. _probably from athens._ _formerly in the collection of lord elgin._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] upper part of stelè, with three rosettes; surmounted by a large acroterion.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot - / inches. the collection of sculptures from kertch was obtained by colonel westmacott during the occupation of the town by the british and french troops in . [sidenote: = .=] stelè, surmounted by acroterion.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] stelè, with two rosettes in front and one at each side; surmounted by acroterion.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] top of stelè with rosettes. originally surmounted by a large acroterion of which only the acanthus leaves at the base remain.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet inches. [sidenote: = .=] upper part of stelè. two rosettes in front and one on each side; above an acroterion, of which the top is wanting.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of palmette from the acroterion of a stelè.--_kertch._ marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] palmette from top of stelè.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] top of stelè, with acanthus leaves forming the base of the acroterion. the leaves are only sketched in outline on the front, but have been finished on the right and left.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet inches. sepulchral monuments with scenes from daily life. [sidenote: = .=] cast of the sepulchral relief of hegeso. a lady, hegeso, is seated on a chair, with a foot-stool. she appears to be taking a necklace from a box which is held by a servant standing before her. hegeso is richly dressed in a chiton with short sleeves, himation and sandals. her hair is confined by a _sphendonè_, or band, broadest in front. the servant has a close-fitting cap, and a plain chiton with long sleeves. the relief is bounded by two pilasters surmounted by a pediment, with acroteria. inscribed [greek: hêgêsô proxeno(u)]--hegeso daughter of proxenos. this relief, which is unequalled for its grace and delicacy, appears to belong to the close of the fifth century b.c. the original, of pentelic marble, is _near the dipylon at athens_, where it was discovered in . height, feet - / inches; width, feet inch. _arch. zeit._, , pl. , p. ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; mitchell, p. ; waldstein, _essays_, p. ; wolters, no. ; conze, _attische grabreliefs_, no. , pl. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of the sepulchral monument of ameinocleia. a lady is engaged with a girl who is adjusting a sandal on her left foot. she chiefly supports herself on the right foot, and helps her balance by touching with her hand the head of the maid kneeling before her. as in the monument of hegeso (no. ), there is a marked contrast between the mistress, richly draped in a chiton and himation, and the girl before her, who has a plain long-sleeved chiton and a cap. on the left is a female figure, perhaps a sister of ameinocleia. she seems to be reading a tablet. the composition is framed by two pilasters, surmounted by a pediment. inscribed [greek: ameinokleia andromeno(u)s thugatêr l...] ameinocleia, daughter of andromenes.... this relief appears to belong to the close of the th century b.c. the original, of pentelic marble, which is now at _athens_, was discovered in _at the piraeus_. height, feet - / inches; width, feet - / inches. le bas, _mon. fig._, pl. . _c.i.a._, ii., ; mitchell, p. ; wolters, no. ; _stereoscopic_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief. a female figure, richly draped, is seated on a stool, to the left. the head, right arm, and knees are wanting.--_athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. . _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief. the upper part of a female figure, richly draped, and seated, with her left hand raised, the left elbow supported by the right hand. very high relief.--_athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief. draped male figure seated, three-quarters turned to the right, on a chair with a footstool. the head is wanting. behind is part of a draped female figure standing. her right arm is bent at the elbow, and crosses her breast. marble; height, feet inches; width, feet - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a relief. torso of a male figure, wearing a mantle about his legs and over the left shoulder. head, right leg, and left foot are wanting.--_athens._ _strangford coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] a nude youth stands, half turned to the left, and takes some object, perhaps a lekythos, from a boy standing before him. the boy is nude except for a chlamys thrown over his left shoulder, which is probably that of the older youth. compare the parthenon frieze, north side, figure no. . the relief is bounded by two pilasters surmounted by a pediment. on the side of one of the pilasters is the inscription [greek: Êdd].--_delos._ _presented by a. e. impey, esq., ._ marble; height, feet inches; width, feet - / inches. _mus. marbles_, xi., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] a nude male figure, tryphon, stands, half turned to the left, having a chlamys above the left arm, and a strigil in the right hand. the attitude is similar to that of the hermes of andros. compare the copy from the farnese collection in the british museum. inscribed [greek: tryphôn eutychou]--tryphon, son of eutychos.--_athens._ _collection of rev. f. v. j. arundell._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; width, feet. restored: right hand upper corner. _mus. marbles_, xi., pl. ; _c.i.a._, iii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxix. [sidenote: = .=] figure of a youth, standing, holding a bird, within a distyle portico, of which the left side is wanting. (pl. xi., fig. .)--_athens._ _strangford coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inch; width, - / inches. _arch. anzeiger_, , p. ,* no. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral monument of xanthippos. an elderly bearded figure is seated on a chair. he holds a foot in his extended right hand. diminutive figures of a woman and a girl stand beside him. the girl is gazing at the foot, and raises her hands towards it, while the woman looks towards xanthippos. she holds a bird in her right hand. it has been supposed that the foot is a votive offering, to commemorate a remarkable cure. wolters, however, explains the object as a shoemaker's last ([greek: kalapous], cf. _monumenti dell' inst._, xi. pl. ), and interprets it as an allusion to the trade of xanthippos. this theory hardly accounts for the gestures of the attendant figures. above the relief is a pediment, inscribed [greek: xanthippos]. (pl. xi., fig. .) _brought from the monastery of asomato or petraki at athens by dr. anthony askew about ._ _townley coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. _burney mss._, no. ; _mus. marbles_, x., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxiii.; wolters, no. ; brueckner, _von den griech. grabreliefs_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral monument of jason. a physician, jason, an elderly bearded man, is seated on a stool. before him stands a boy, undergoing examination, and clearly shown to be suffering, by his swollen belly and wasted limbs. on the right is a vessel of peculiar form, resembling a cupping glass, but on a scale out of all proportion to that of the group, and not to be considered as a part of it. the inscription runs: [greek: iasôn ho kai dekmos acharneus iatros, k.t.l.], and contains the names of 'jason, called also decimus, of the acharnian deme, a physician,' and of other members of his family. the relief is surmounted by a row of roughly indicated antefixal tiles. _obtained by fauvel in athens; afterwards in the choiseul-gouffier and pourtalès collections._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; width, foot - / inches. _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, iii., ; panofka, _antiques du cabinet pourtalès_, p. , pl. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxxxi.; wolters, no. . on the cupping vessel see the two references last cited. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral monument of agathemeris and sempronios niketes. draped male and female figures stand to the front. the woman wears the dress of a priestess of isis, with a sistrum in her right hand and a vase in her left hand. inscribed [greek: agathêmeris s Ê aphrodeisiou ek kol(l)yteôn. senprônios nikêtês kollyteus.] the letters [greek: s Ê] have not been explained. discovered, in , _between athens and the piraeus_.--_presented by gen. malcolm._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; width, feet. _c.i.g._, _b_; _c.i.a._, iii., . [sidenote: = .=] figure of a youth, a son of one diodoros, standing, with a chlamys wrapped about his left arm. he holds a cup (?) in the right hand and a strigil in the left hand. beside him, a diminutive figure of a nude boy holding a strigil. a tree on the left. inscribed [greek: ... diodôrou, chrêste, [chaire].--_rhenea._ _from the earl of belmore's coll._ parian marble; height, feet; width, foot inches. _c.i.g._, . [sidenote: = .=] upper part of a sepulchral relief. a draped male figure is seated on a chair. before him stands a figure also draped. in the background, a bearded man and a woman stand one on each side of the seated person. the inscription runs [greek: ari]stonikê diokleio[us xy]p[e(taiôn) | k]êphisogenês kêphisophôntos xy(petaiôn) | arist[o]nikê kêphisophôntos xyp(etaiôn) | kêphisophôn kêphisodôrou xype(taiôn)]. it contains the names of aristonikè, daughter of diocles, of xypetè; of kephisogenes and aristonikè, probably the children of kephisophon; and of kephisophon, son of kephisodoros of xypetè.--_obtained in greece by the fourth earl of aberdeen, and presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen._ pentelic marble; height, foot; width, foot - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, xc.; _c.i.a._, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] male figure stands to the left, with right arm extended. before him is a table, on which is a large hydria.--_obtained in greece by the fourth earl of aberdeen, and presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; width, foot / inch. [sidenote: = .=] beardless male figure stands, wearing a himation. he has a short staff or scroll in the left hand. the relief was originally surmounted by a pediment. inscribed [greek: hermodôros aristomenou(s)]--hermodoros, son of aristomenes. bluish greek marble; height, feet inches; width, foot - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] bearded figure stands, draped in a himation. the stelè is surmounted by a bulbous ornament not worked in relief. inscribed [greek: e]rasippos, [ka]llenikou [kr]iôeus].--erasippos, son of callenicos of crioa.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inch; width, inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxxxviii. [sidenote: = .=] stelè fitting into a base. figures of an athlete anointing himself, and of an attendant holding spear and drapery. marble; height, foot inches; width, foot - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of sepulchral relief, containing the upper parts of a bearded man and a woman conversing. on the left a younger female figure. inscribed: [greek: aristodikê, aristarchos, athênaïs, sêstioi]--aristodikè, aristarchos, and athenais, of sestos.--_athens._ _found by chandler, fixed in the wall of a church, on the road to cephisia. presented by the society of dilettanti._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, foot - / inches. chandler, _inscriptions ant._, part ii., no. ; _synopsis_, no. ( *); _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cviii. [sidenote: = .=] a bearded figure, aristocles, rides a prancing horse and places his right hand on its head. a youth in a short chiton runs behind the horse. inscribed: [greek: polla meth' hêlikias homoêlikos hêdea paisas ek gaias blastôn gaia palin gegona. eimi de aristoklês peiraieus, pais de menônos]. 'after many pleasant sports with my comrades, i who sprang from dust, am dust once more. i am aristocles, of the piraeus, son of menon.'--_athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. stuart, iii., p. ; chandler, _inscriptions ant._, part ii., no. ("fixed in a wall at the door of the greek school"); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, xcii.; kaibel, . [sidenote: = .=] a priestess stands, with chiton, and a knotted himation bordered with a fringe; she holds a key in her right hand, and a basket in her left hand. on the right is a tree. above, a pediment with acroteria and a rosette; also an honorary wreath. inscribed: [greek: ho dêmos isiada mêtrodôrou laodikida].--decreed by the people, in honour of isias of laodicea, daughter of metrodoros.--_smyrna._ _presented by m. duane and t. tyrwhitt, esqs., ._ bluish greek marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. montfaucon, _ant. expl. suppl._, v., p. ; _archaeologia_, iii., pl. , fig. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, . [sidenote: = .=] a draped female figure, seated on a chair, holds out a corner of her veil with her right hand. another female figure stands before her, closely wrapped in her mantle. a diminutive female figure is in the right-hand corner of the relief. the relief is bounded by pilasters, a circular arch, and a pediment. parian marble? height, feet; width, feet inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of sepulchral stelè, with the lower part of a female figure moving to the right.--_from mycenae._ _inwood coll._ red marble; height, inches; width, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] late sepulchral relief. a female figure, seated on a stool, holds her mantle, which passes over her head, with the left hand, and a scroll (?) in her right hand. the relief is surmounted by an arch and rosettes, above which is a pediment with acroteria, unfinished, and a rosette. inscribed: [greek: mousis argaiou milêsia]. mousis, daughter of argaios of miletus.--_athens._ _found by chandler. presented by the society of dilettanti._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot - / inches. chandler, _inscriptiones ant._, part ii., no. ; _synopsis_, st ed., room vi., no. (where thomas hollis is incorrectly said to be the donor); ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, ciii. [sidenote: = .=] a female figure, draped, and seated on a stool, raises her right hand to draw her peplos over her head. a draped male figure stands before her, and a boy at the left corner; above is a pediment. inscribed with a name now illegible, and [greek: chaire].--_found in a store at portsmouth. probably from smyrna._ marble; height, feet; width, foot - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief, mutilated on the left. a female figure draped and seated on a chair, draws her peplos over her shoulder with her left hand. above, a pediment. inscribed with a name now illegible, terminating in [greek: ô], and [greek: chairete hapantes].--_obtained by the fourth earl of aberdeen in greece, and presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen._ marble; height, foot - / inches; width, foot / inch. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxxiii.; conze, _attische grabreliefs_, no. ; pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] lower part of sepulchral relief, much mutilated. a female figure is seated to the front on a lofty throne. she holds a fruit in her left hand. on the left is a youth with a box; and on the right a female figure, whose right hand was raised to her chin. the arms of the throne are supported by sphinxes.--_kertch._ limestone; height, foot inches; width, feet inches. [sidenote: = .=] a female figure, demetria, seated on a chair, extends her right hand to a box, held by a girl standing before her; behind is another standing female figure. inscribed: [greek: [d]êmêtria].--_probably from athens._ _obtained by the fourth earl of aberdeen, and presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen._ pentelic marble; height, feet / inch; width, foot inch. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxiii.; _c.i.a._, iii., . [sidenote: = .=] lower part of a sepulchral relief. a fully draped female figure, wanting above the breast, is seated on a stool. the left hand was probably raised to the chin or to the veil. before her, a female figure of which nothing remains except a portion of drapery, from the knees downwards. a small boy stands at the knee of the seated woman, and raises his right hand.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] boy seated on a rock fishing with a rod and line for a large fish, a basket in his left hand. above a pediment. inscribed in rude late characters, [greek: agathême<t>ros asiachô syntrophô mnêmês charin].--placed by agathemeros in memory of his foster brother asiachos.--_athens._ _purchased from the besborough coll. ._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, - / inches. _c.i.g._, . [sidenote: = .=] a girl, seated on a stool, holds an open scroll on her lap. before her is a column, on which is another scroll (?); on the left is a dog raising a paw. the relief is bounded by pilasters and a pediment, slightly sketched out. inscribed: [greek: abeita zêsasa etê [=i] mênas dyo· chairete]--avita, who lived ten years and two months. hail.--_townley coll._ parian marble; height, foot inch; width, inches. ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. . _c.i.g._, ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] youthful female figure, standing, holding an ivy-leaf fan in the right hand, and a part of the mantle with the left hand. inscribed: [greek: synphoro[n] hêrakleid[ou] karystia]. synphoron, of carystos, daughter of heracleides.--_athens?_ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, - / inches. _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, iii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, ci. [sidenote: = .=] nude figure of boy, standing, with chlamys thrown over his left shoulder. he holds a partridge in his left hand, and holds its beak with his right hand. inscribed: [greek: menekratês menônos]--menecrates, son of menon.--_athens._ _strangford coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxi.; _c.i.a._, iii., ; _arch. anzeiger_, , p. *. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of sepulchral relief. a draped female figure is seated on a couch, with right hand raised to her veil; before her, two girls, of whom one holds a ball and the other a fan.--_found in a store at portsmouth._ _probably from smyrna._ marble; height, inches; width, foot - / inch. [sidenote: = .=] a boy throws a ball for a dog which springs up towards him.--_strangford coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, - / inches. _arch. anzeiger_, , p. *. [sidenote: = .=] draped male figure standing, with a boy at his side; above an arch, springing from pilasters, and surmounted by a pediment with rosette and acroteria.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet - / inches; width, foot - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief, rude and late. standing, draped female figure raises her right hand to her cheek. the first inscription has been obliterated, and in place of it is the inscription, [greek: sÔt ... nike chaire]. greek marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral monument of artipous. an old woman is seated wrapped in her mantle, with a pomegranate in her left hand. a girl stands at her left side holding a box and a purse (?). the relief is bounded by pilasters, surmounted by a pediment with acroteria. inscribed: [greek: artipous alkima] and [symbol: l][greek: p]. [symbol: l] is a symbol, chiefly used in ptolemaic inscriptions to precede a numeral denoting a year. the inscription therefore appears to mean ' years old,' if [greek: p] is given its usual value.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet / inch; width, feet - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, ccii.; latyschev, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] a draped figure, theodotè, seated on a throne, raises her left hand to her veil. before her a figure of a girl, standing. the arms of the throne are supported by sphinxes. above the relief are an arch, springing from pilasters, a pediment with acroteria, and rosettes. inscribed: [greek: [theod]otê gynê [myrinou, chaire]].--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cci.; latyschev, ii., . the restoration is taken from a copy, given by latyschev, which was made before the inscription was broken. [sidenote: = .=] a draped female figure, seated on a throne, raises her left hand to her veil, and holds a mirror in her right hand. a female figure stands before her. on each side of the standing figure is a diminutive figure of a girl; one holds a bird, and the other a vase. above is a pediment with acroteria and rosettes. inscribed: [greek: theophilê thyga[têr]...] theophilè, daughter of ....--_kertch_. limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cc.; latyschev, ii., _b_. [sidenote: = .=] a female figure, seated on a throne, raises her left hand to her veil. on right and left are diminutive figures of girls. the arms of the throne are supported by sphinxes. above is an arch, springing from pilasters, a pediment with rosettes and acroteria. inscribed: [greek: hellas gynê mênodôrou, chaire]--hellas, wife of menodoros, farewell.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet - / inches; width, foot - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxcvii.; latyschev, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] a draped female figure, seated on a chair to the front. the head is wanting. on the left is an attendant figure of a girl holding a box (_pyxis_). on the right is a horseman wearing chlamys, bow-case and bow, and sword. there is also a small part of a second horseman.--_kertch._ limestone; height, foot inches; width, feet inches. [sidenote: = .=] two horsemen standing to right. the foremost has a sword, bow, bow-case; the hinder one wears a conical cap. above, rosettes and a pediment, surmounted by acroteria.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief, with two panels. the upper panel contains a mounted horseman in a chlamys, galloping to the right. of the lower panel only the upper part with one head remains. above the relief is a pediment.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] horseman to the right, with tunic, chlamys, and bow-case with bow. behind him, an attendant male figure. below the horse is a dog running. inscribed: [greek: daïske ariaramnou, chaire]--daïscos, son of ariaramnos, farewell.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, clxxxvii.; latyschev, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief in two panels. the upper part is broken away. the feet and tail of a horse, and a figure of a dog standing to right remain. before the horse are the legs of a small attendant figure. in the lower panel is a horseman riding to the right, with bow, bow-case, sword and long spear. a colt stands beside the horse. inscribed: [greek: artemidôre dioga epi tês pinakeidos, chaire]. wolters translates, "hail, artemidoros, son of diogas, officer in charge of the list."--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, clxxxiii.; wolters, no. latyschev, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, with figures of two horsemen standing confronted. the head of one and the head and body of the other are lost. they have short tunic, cloak, bow and arrows in bow-case, and a saddle cloth.--_kertch._ limestone; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the right-hand lower corner of a relief, which is perhaps sepulchral, with the lower parts of two mounted horsemen, wearing short tunics, cloaks and swords, moving rapidly to the left.--_athens._ _strangford coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief. a woman stands to the front wearing a chiton, and having a mantle wrapped closely about her. the relief is bounded by pilasters and a high-pitched pediment, in the tympanum of which is a vase in low relief. inscribed [greek: epigona moschiônos milêsia], epigona, wife of moschio, of miletus.--_athens._ _presented by j. johnstone, esq., ._ pentelic marble? height, feet inches; width, foot inches. this relief, which was seen at athens, "in the court of giorgaki livaditi," by spon in and by fourmont in , was dug up many years ago below a house in new bond street. spon, _voyage_ (ed. ), ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, iii., . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, with the body and legs of a boy walking to the right. the arms appear to have been raised. a small piece of drapery is seen behind the back of the boy.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] female head to the front in a somewhat severe style. apparently broken from a relief. the features are those of a young girl. the hair is waved on each side, from a central parting.--_athens, ._ _lenormant coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] helmeted head in profile to the right; broken from a relief. above the helmet is what appears to be part of a horse's tail.--_inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] head of a maiden, probably from a sepulchral relief. she wears a closely-fitting cap, with a small flap hanging down before the ear. there are remains of the tips of two fingers and a thumb resting on the top of the head, which make it probable that the complete figure was that of an attendant kneeling before her mistress, like the attendant who fastens the sandal of ameinocleia (no. ).--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] head of a youth, three-quarters turned to the right, from the side of a sepulchral relief. he wears a taenia, and there are traces of drapery which passed over the shoulder. there is a part of a pilaster on the left (pl. xii., fig. .)--_athens._ pentelic marble; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] head of a youth, half turned to the right, together with the neck and part of the breast. from a sepulchral relief. the waving locks of hair are freely treated. (pl. xii., fig. .)--_athens._ pentelic marble; height, inches. the tip of the nose is restored. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a sepulchral relief. a male head in high relief, wearing a taenia, is slightly bent forwards to the right. there are remains of drapery which passed over the shoulder. on the left is part of a pilaster which bounds the relief. marble; height, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] female head, probably from a sepulchral relief. the neck is much bent. a portion of the right hand remains clasping the top of the head. marble; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the head of a youth, perhaps from a sepulchral relief. a band passes across the forehead immediately below the hair.--_excavated by j. t. wood, at ephesus._ marble; height, inches. [sidenote: = .=] portrait head of a bearded man. this head appears to be derived from a sepulchral monument in very high relief, and to have been turned to the left, as the left side is carefully finished, while the right side is rough and inaccurate.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] fragment of the right side of a relief which was probably sepulchral. a female figure, wearing a sleeved chiton and mantle, is seated on a chair. she extends her hands, probably towards a figure now wanting. on the right is the head of a figure looking to the right, and part of a pilaster which bounds the scene. on the left is part of the drapery of a third figure.--_ephesus._ _strangford coll._ pentelic marble? height, foot inches; width, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a relief, perhaps sepulchral, containing the lower part of the body and the right leg of a warrior, who stands on rocky ground drawing himself rather to the left. he wears a short chiton, a cuirass with a triple row of flaps (_pteryges_), and a mantle. behind are the legs from the knees of a recumbent figure. the warrior appears to have had a shield on the left arm, and the right arm raised for a spear thrust at a fallen enemy.--_found at the foot of the inscribed monument, xanthos._ hard limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. _synopsis_, _lycian room_, no. _b_. joints at both sides show that the complete work was of considerable size. compare the scenes of combat in the entrance of the rock tomb at kiöbaschi. benndorf, _reisen in lykien_, i., p. ; and at tyssa, _loc. cit._, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] figure of bull lying down to the right, on rough ground. the head is worked in a very natural manner. the forms of the body are treated in the flat manner of a bas-relief. the back has been left unfinished. probably the bull originally surmounted a tomb, at athens. (compare curtius and kaupert, _atlas von athen_, pl. .)--_brought from greece by c. r. cockerell._ _presented by lord hillingdon._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; length, feet. _journ. of hellen. studies_, vi., pl. c., p. . sepulchral vases. for the supposed significance of vases as sepulchral monuments, see above, p. . [sidenote: = .=] plain sepulchral lekythos, in low relief.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos, with relief. an old man, pytharatos, stands, clasping the hand of a seated man, herophilos, who is also old. inscribed: [greek: pytharatos, hêrophilos].--_sloane coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; diameter, - / inches, ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxvi. [sidenote: = .=] plain sepulchral amphora of phaidimos of naucratis. inscribed: [greek: phaidimos naukratitês].--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; diameter, inches. _synopsis_, no. (a. ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cv.; _c.i.a._, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] body of sepulchral amphora of timophon, of anagyrus, with ornate flutings, and a horizontal band of interwoven fillets. rosettes at the base of the handles. inscribed: [greek: timophôn timostratou anagyrasios].--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; diameter, foot inches. for the form, cf. vase held by the wind skiron on the tower of the winds (stuart, i., chap. iii., pl. ), and the relief from icaria (_american journ. of archaeology_, v., p. , fig. ). published dodwell, _tour_, ., p. ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxxx.; _c.i.g._, . kumanudis ([greek: att. epig.] no. , and p. ) and köhler (_c.i.a._ ii., ) consider the inscription more recent than the vase. [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the top of a sepulchral amphora in relief, with patterns of foliage.--_formerly in lord elgin's collection._ pentelic marble; height, inches. _journ. of hellen. studies_, vi., p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral cippus of anaxicrates with an amphora carved in low relief. inscribed: [greek: anaxikratês dexiochou athênaios].--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet / inch. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, xcvi.; _c.i.g._, . sepulchral vases and reliefs, with figures clasping hands. for the various interpretations that have been proposed for these scenes, commonly known as "scenes of parting," see above, p. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief. a bearded figure stands before a woman seated on a stool, and clasps her hand. inscribed: [greek: pamphilos meixiadou aigilieus· archippê meixiadou]--pamphilos, son of meixiades, of aigilia; archippè, daughter of meixiades. the figures represented are therefore brother and sister.--_found beside the portico of hadrian, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; diameter, foot inches. stuart i., pp. , ; dodwell, _tour_, i., p. ; _mus. marbles_, ix. pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxxv. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief. two female figures, philia and metrodora, stand clasping hands. two bearded figures, mys and meles, stand, one on the left and one on the right, each turning towards the central group. inscribed: [greek: mys, philia, mêtrodôra, melês].--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; diameter, foot - / inches, _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxii. brueckner, _von den griech. grabreliefs_, p. , fig. k. a companion lekythos has been discovered at chasani, in attica, and is now at athens. in this relief, mys and meles clasp hands, while metrodora and philia stand on the right and left. brueckner, _l.c._ [sidenote: = .=] part of a sepulchral lekythos with relief. two women, callistratè (?) and demostratè, stand with right hands joined. behind the latter a girl stands in an attitude of grief with her head resting on her right hand. behind the former is a youth supporting his chin on his right hand. inscribed: [greek: dêmostratê, kallistr[atê]].--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; diameter, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , figs. , ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxiv. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral vase, with relief. a young warrior, wearing chiton, shield and helmet, clasps the hand of an old man. behind the man stands a woman, who makes a gesture with her right hand. inscribed with an elegiac inscription of four lines of which only the terminations remain.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; diameter, foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxxii. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief. a young warrior, wearing a cuirass over a short tunic, a chlamys and a helmet, clasps the hand of a seated woman. he appears to hold a scroll in his left hand. behind him is an attendant, holding a large shield.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; diameter, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief. an armed warrior, sosippos, who wears a tunic, cuirass, and chlamys, clasps the hand of a seated woman, who, with her left hand clasps the right hand of a small girl standing at her knee. behind the warrior is a boy carrying a large shield; behind the seated figure is a woman standing with her right hand raised to her chin. inscribed: [greek: sôsippos].--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet; diameter, inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. ; _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxvii. [sidenote: = .=] stelè, with a sepulchral lekythos in relief, supported by a winged sphinx. on the vase is a relief representing two warriors, fully armed, standing with hands clasped. (pl. xi., fig. .) inscribed: [greek: archiadês hagn(o)usios, polemonikos athmoneus]--archiades of hagnus; polemonicos of athmonon.--_formerly in the guilford collection. presented by g. plucknett, esq., ._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches width, foot inch. _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] stelè, with sepulchral relief. a seated woman, xeno, clasps the hand of a girl, cleo, who stands before her. behind her, a bearded man, hermodoros, leans on his staff and looks downwards. the stelè is surmounted by a rounded top as if for a palmette, which may have been painted. inscribed: [greek: xenô, hermodôros, kleô].--_athens?_--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inch; width, foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxxiv. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief. a youth, polystratos, clasps the hand of a woman, archagora, who is seated on a chair. a woman, pithyllis, is seen in the background between these two figures. she stands in an attitude of grief, with her head bowed and her right hand raised to her veil. inscribed: [greek: archagora, pithyllis, polystratos].--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; diameter, inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. ; _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxii. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief. a bearded man stands before a woman seated on a chair and clasps her hand. there is no trace of an inscription.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; diameter, inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_ no. (a. ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief. a bearded man stands before a woman seated on a chair. inscribed above the head of the woman: [greek: ada]. the name of the man may have been inscribed originally, but it is now obliterated.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; diameter, foot. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_ no. ( ); _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._ cxi.; _c.i.a._, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief. a man, alkimachos, stands before a seated woman, hedylè, and clasps her hand. a girl stands behind hedylè, and another girl of a smaller size stands behind alkimachos. inscribed: [greek: hêdylê, alkimachos].--_probably from athens._ _from the earl of belmore's collection_, . pentelic marble; height, foot inches; diameter, foot inch. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxviii.; _c.i.a._, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral lekythos with relief, much defaced. a woman seated on a chair clasps the hand of a woman standing before her. behind the chair is a girl holding a box in her left hand.--_from a store at portsmouth._ _perhaps from smyrna._ marble; height, foot inches; diameter, foot. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of sepulchral relief. a youth standing clasps the hand of a bearded man, seated on a chair. only the upper parts are preserved of both figures, together with the right side of the relief.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches; width, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of sepulchral relief. a woman, seated on a chair, clasps the hand of a woman standing before her. her left hand appears to have been raised to her veil. the upper parts of both figures are wanting, and also the left side of the relief. a nude boy with an uncertain object in his hands stands in the right corner. pentelic marble? height, foot; width, inches. [sidenote: = .=] a woman seated to the right, on a stool, holds her veil with the left hand, and clasps the arm of a boy standing before her. behind the boy, and partly embracing him, stands a woman, who holds her veil with her right hand. on the left, behind the seated figure is a woman standing with the left hand raised to her cheek, and with the right hand supporting the left elbow. at the foot of the seat are two small female figures, one standing and one sitting. these six figures are in high relief. in the background are two men confronted in low relief; one is bearded. two other heads also appear to have been inserted, and to have been afterwards obliterated. the relief is bounded by two pilasters and an architrave, with roof tiles above. inscribed: [greek: sôpatra pausaniou. antimachos pausaniou. philopatra mi[r]ylou. pausanias andriskou.] sopatra and antimachos are the children of pausanias and philopatra.--_pella._ fine-grained white marble; height, feet; width, feet inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, clxxii. [sidenote: = .=] an elderly bearded man, seated, to the left, clasps the hand of an old man standing before him. both figures appear to be portraits. small figures of boys stand at the right and left. the boy on the left holds an uncertain object. above are a pediment with acroteria, and two olive wreaths, and the inscriptions [greek: ho dêmos dêmoklên amphilochou], [greek: ho dêmos dêmoklên dêmoklêous], recording honorary decrees to democles, son of amphilochos, and democles, son of democles. below is a metrical epitaph, in eight lines: [greek: ton pinyton kata panta kai exochon en poliêtais anera gêral(e)ou termat' echonta biou aideô nychioio melas hypedexato kolpos eusebeôn th' hosiên eunasen es klisiên. mnêma d' apophthimenoio para trêchêan atarpon touto païs kednê teuxe syn eunetidi. xeine, sy d' aeisas dêmokleos hyiea chairein dêmoklea steichois ablabes ichnos echôn.] --_smyrna._ _presented by m. duane and t. tyrwhitt, esqs., ._ bluish greek marble; height, feet inches; width, foot - / inches. montfaucon, _ant. expl. suppl._, v., p. ; _archaeologia_, iii., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; kaibel, . [sidenote: = .=] a man, exakestes, seated, clasps the hand of his wife, metreis, standing before him. she holds a spindle in her left hand. in the right and left corners of the relief are small figures of a boy and girl. the girl holds a casket. in the background of the relief are a stelè surmounted by two cornucopiae, and a candelabrum. above, two wreaths and the honorary inscription, [greek: ho dêmos exakestên androboulou. ho dêmos mêtrein hermippou, exakestou de gynaika]. the relief is surmounted by a pediment with acroteria and a rosette.--_perhaps from smyrna._ _townley coll._ greek marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, x., pl. ; _c.i.g._, ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; wolters, no. . this relief was once in the possession of dr. richard mead (_mus. meadianum_, pars alt., , p. ). [sidenote: = .=] a woman seated clasps the hand of a young man who stands before her, placing his left hand on her shoulder. an older man stands on the left. the stelè is surmounted by a pediment. greek marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] a woman, laodikè (?), seated, clasps the hand of a youth standing before her. the relief is crowned by a pediment. a nearly illegible inscription appears to read: [greek: laodikê hêr[ophilou?] ... chaire]. pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] a woman clasps the hand of a warrior, with short tunic, cloak and shield. on the left a second warrior, somewhat smaller, but similarly attired. above is a pediment with acroteria and rosettes.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] two men, one bearded and the other a youth, stand clasping hands. they are father and son, each being named bakchios. above is a pediment with acroteria and rosettes. inscribed: [greek: bakchie bageos kai hyie bakchie chairete]. limestone; height, feet - / inches; width, foot - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, clxxxiv.; latyschev, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] a man and woman stand, clasping hands. a boy on the right. above is a pediment with acroteria and rosettes. inscribed: [greek: gaïos gaïou kai mêtêr basili[nd]ina chairete].--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet - / inches; width, foot - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, clxxxvi.; latyschev, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] circular pedestal or altar on a square plinth, on one side of which is a sepulchral relief. a man stands on the right, clasping the right hand of a seated woman, probably his wife. she holds her veil with her left hand. behind the woman stands hermes psychopompos, about to conduct her shade to hades. he has petasos, talaria, chlamys and caduceus. on the right is another male figure standing, with folded hands, and beyond is what appears to be an altar. the altar is rectangular, and is surmounted by a conical object, round which a serpent is twined. by the side of the altar is the mutilated figure of a boy. on the extreme left behind hermes is a sundial, to which his hand is pointing. at the side of the chair stands a draped female attendant of diminutive stature. this figure is much defaced, and the lower part is broken away. the head of this figure has been broken off, and the faces and general surface of all the figures are much eaten away by exposure to weather. this relief occupies about a third of the circle of the pedestal, the remainder being ornamented by festoons of ivy suspended between three bulls' heads. in the centre of the top of the pedestal is a round hole, as if to receive a dowel, and the surface of the marble seems prepared for a joint. the whole may have served as a pedestal for a statue.--_obtained from greece by the fourth earl of aberdeen, and presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen, ._ greek marble; height, feet inches; diameter, feet inches. _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, part ii., no. . reliefs representing the sepulchral banquet. for a discussion of the interpretation of this class of reliefs, see above, p. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of a sepulchral relief, sometimes known as the "death of socrates." a man, bearded, reclines on a couch, with a bowl in his right hand, held out as if to pour a libation. a woman seated on a stool by the foot of the couch, extends her hands. on the right is a man, draped and bearded, and on the left a nude youth who stands with a jug by a large crater. below the couch is a dog gnawing a bone. the original, of white marble, was found at _the piraeus_ in , and is now in the _national museum at athens_. height, foot - / inches; width, feet inch. [greek: ephêmeris], , no. ; le bas, _mon. fig._, pl. ; pervanoglu, _familienmahl_, p. , no. ; mitchell, p. ; wolters, no. ; roscher, _lexicon_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet. two male figures recline together on a couch. one is a bearded man, the other is a youth. the man holds a bowl in his left hand and places his right hand on the shoulder of the youth who turns his head towards him. before the couch is a table with provisions. on the right is a nude youth with a jug and bowl. on the left is a youth, wearing tunic and chlamys, who leads a horse. the relief is bounded by pilasters and an architrave. on the lower margin is the modern inscription _aesculapio tarentino salenius arcas_, added by some person who supposed that the relief was a votive tablet to aesculapius. the inscription, however, makes it probable that the relief was obtained at tarentum. the type of the horse also agrees well with that on the coins of tarentum, of about the close of the fourth century, b.c. the relief is perhaps erected to a father and two sons. it is also possible that the two figures of the youth represent the same person, and that only two persons in all are here commemorated.--_presented by w. r. hamilton, esq., ._ marble, probably pentelic; height, foot - / inches; width, feet inches. the upper right-hand corner is restored. p. gardner, _journ. of hellen. studies_, v., p. , and plate; wolters, no. ; roscher, _lexicon_, p. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet, serpent, and sacrifice. two men recline on a couch. both have cups in their left hands. one holds up a rhyton terminating in a ram's head; the other stretches out his right hand to a long table which stands before the couch. a woman, seated on the end of the couch, holds a cup in her left hand and stretches out her right hand to the table. below the table is a coiled serpent. on the left of the woman is a nude youth holding up a rhyton. beyond is a square altar, to which a boy, who is now almost obliterated, leads a pig. he holds a bowl in his left hand. on the left are four adult persons and two infants, and above, the head of a horse in a frame. the relief is bounded by two pilasters surmounted by an entablature, above which roof-tiles are slightly indicated.--_townley coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, feet inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief with banquet and sacrifice. on the right is part of the figure of a woman, who is seated at the foot of a couch, most of which is now lost. before her is part of a table. at the foot of the couch is an altar which is approached by a procession of three adult persons and four children, one of whom leads a ram. above, a horse's head is seen at a window. the relief is bounded by pilasters and an entablature, above which roof-tiles are shown.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot / inch. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); welcker, _alte denkmaeler_, ii., p. ; cf. welcker, _loc. cit._, ii., pl. , no. ; pervanoglu, _familienmahl_, p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, which may be supposed to have been similar to the preceding. sacrificial procession, including a man, of whom but little remains, a woman, two children, and one draped figure, whose sex cannot be distinguished, carrying a large vessel on the head.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; width, - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _guide to elgin room_, part ii., no. f. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet and sacrifice. a male figure, who is half draped, reclines on a couch with a bowl in his right hand. he wears a _polos_ and in type resembles a divinity. before him is a table with food. a woman is seated on the foot of the couch and has a cup in her left hand. on the right a youth draws wine from a crater. on the left a man, woman, and boy approach as worshippers. the relief is bounded by two pilasters, surmounted by an entablature, above which are roof-tiles.--_townley coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, foot - / inches. ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; welcker, _alte denkmaeler_, ii. p. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet and sacrifice. a male figure, half draped and wearing a _polos_ as in the last relief, reclines on a couch. he has a cup in the left hand and a rhyton in the right hand. before him is a table with food. a woman is seated at the foot of the couch, with a cup in her left hand. on the left a boy stands beside a jar of wine, which is raised on a pedestal. at the left a woman, and two smaller figures approach as worshippers. above, the head of a horse is seen looking through an opening. the relief is bounded by two pilasters, surmounted by an entablature, above which are roof-tiles.-- _halicarnassos._ _presented by h.m. sultan abdul medjid to viscount stratford de redcliffe, and by him presented to the british museum._ marble; height, inches; width, foot inch. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief. a nude male figure who seems to be wearing a phrygian cap, and holds some object in his right hand, stands with his left hand over an altar. on the right side of the altar was a male figure making a libation. only the right hand with the saucer, and the right foot remain. on the left a bearded man stands, with his right hand raised.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] group of persons about to sacrifice; from the left side of a sepulchral relief. on the right of the fragment is a man with a large amphora, turned to the right. behind him are two men and two women, all standing as worshippers.--_mytilene._ marble; height, inches; width, inches. conze, _lesbos_, p. , note , no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief with banquet and serpent. a man reclines on a couch and pours a libation from a bowl. before the couch is a table with food. a serpent is coiled beneath the table and stretches its head towards the bowl. on the left is the hand holding a casket (_pyxis_) of a woman, who had been seated at the foot of the couch. the relief is bounded by pilasters, an entablature and a roof. marble; height, foot inch; width, inches. [sidenote: = .=] relief with a female figure of the type of the banquet reliefs. a woman seated, wearing a lofty head-dress (_polos_), holds an ivy-leaf fan in her left hand, and with the right hand appears to be offering a cup to a serpent.--_athens?_ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet. a man reclines on a couch with a cup in his left hand. before him is a table with food. a woman is seated near the foot of the couch with her left hand raised to her veil. on the right is a boy in a short tunic, perhaps holding a kyathos. on the left is a girl who is standing, and seems to be holding a vase. the relief is surmounted by a pediment. inscribed: [greek: hermias athaniônos]. hermias, son of athenion.--_athens._ _strangford coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxvi.; _arch. anzeiger_, , p. *; pervanoglu, _familienmahl_, p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet. a man reclines on a couch, with a bowl in his left hand; with the right hand he holds a wreath on his head. before him is a table with food. the legs of the table terminate above in the form of swans' heads. above is an olive wreath, containing the words [greek: ho dêmos]; also a pediment, having acroteria, and containing a rosette. inscribed: [greek: ho dêmos lênaion artemidôrou· kai to prin en polemois têrôn pyrgon, parodita, kai nyn têrêsô, hôs dynamai, nekys ôn.] the 'tower' which lenaios undertakes to defend in death has been conjectured to be the dipylon gate at athens, whence the relief was probably obtained. bluish greek marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. _rhein. mus. n.f._ , p. ; kaibel, . [sidenote: = .=] sculptured pedestal. on the front is a relief of a banquet. a man reclines on a couch, with a table of food before him. he holds a bowl in his left hand, and clasps with his right hand the hand of a woman who is seated at the foot of the couch. a boy stands on the left. a wreath is carved on the pilaster to the right of the relief, which probably contained the inscription: [greek: ho dêmos]. inscribed: [greek: hellaniôn tarseus], hellanion of tarsus. on the right and left ends the pedestal is adorned with pediments. above, it is roughly worked to fit the plinth of a statue.--_xanthos?_ _presented by j. scott tucker, esq., r.n._ bluish-grey marble; height, feet / inch; width, feet inches. _arch. anzeiger_, , p. ; pervanoglu, _familienmahl_, p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, with banquet. the upper half is wanting. a man reclines on a couch, and holds a bowl and a rhyton (?), which were perhaps of bronze attached, in the left and right hands respectively. a woman sits on the end of the couch. on the right is a diminutive male figure with the hands clasped. on the left is a girl, who stands leaning against the foot of the couch, and holds an ivy-leaf fan in her left hand.--_halicarnassos._ marble; height, foot inches; width, feet. [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet and serpent. a man fully draped, reclines on a couch, with a bowl in his left hand. before the couch is a table with provisions. a woman is seated on a stool by the foot of the couch. in her left hand she extends a bowl from which a serpent is drinking. the serpent is coiled about the trunk of a tree. on the right is a diminutive male figure standing by a crater; on the left is a female figure holding a box.--_found in a store at portsmouth._ _probably from smyrna._ bluish marble; height, foot - / inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a relief with banquet and serpent. a man reclines on a couch holding a bowl in his left hand. a woman is seated on a chair by the head of the couch. a snake issues from under the chair and approaches the woman. one arm of the chair is supported by a figure of a sphinx. the heads of both figures are wanting of _mytilene_. marble; height, inches; width, - / inches. conze, _lesbos_, p. , note , no. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet and serpent. a figure, apparently that of a man, reclines on a couch. he has long hair, and a closely-fitting chiton, and holds a cup in his left hand. before him is a table with food, towards which he extends his right hand. a woman is seated on the foot of the couch, and gives drink from a bowl to a serpent. on the right a boy has drawn wine from a crater with a jug, and is offering a bowl to the reclining figure. behind is a stair-like series of shelves, on which stand several vessels. on the left a woman raises her right hand with a gesture as of adoration. above, a horse's head is seen looking through an opening. the relief is bounded by two ionic columns surmounted by a flat arch.--_naucratis._ _presented by the egypt exploration fund, ._ limestone, with traces of red paint; height, foot inches; width foot - / inches. gardner, _naukratis_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, with banquet and serpent. the fragment contains the upper part of a male figure, wearing a polos, reclining on a couch, holding a cup in the left hand, and having a table before him. a snake is coiled about one leg of the table.--_mytilene._ marble; height, foot / inch; width, inches. conze, _lesbos_, p. , note , no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, with banquet. a male figure reclines on a couch. before him is a table with food. he has a rhyton in his right hand and a cup in his left hand. marble; height, inches; width, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief with banquet. a male figure reclines on a couch between two columns, with a bowl in his right hand. a table with cups stands before the couch.--_thasos._ _strangford coll._ marble; height, inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief with banquet. a male figure, whose legs alone are preserved, reclines on a couch. before him is a table with food. a woman, whose lower limbs are alone preserved, is seated on a chair at the foot of the couch. a small draped figure of a youth is on the right, and there are remains of the figure of a girl on the left. marble; height, foot inches; width, feet inches. [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet. a man, bearded, reclines on a couch, and holds up a rhyton in his right hand. before him is a table with food. a woman is seated on the couch, and raises with the left hand a fold of her peplos. on the left a boy draws wine from a large crater. the head of a horse is seen at an opening. a round shield hangs on the wall. the relief is bounded by two pilasters and an entablature.--_excavated by mr. wood at ephesus._ ephesian marble; height, foot - / inches; width, feet - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet. a portrait figure of an old man, whose head is bound with a taenia, reclines on a couch with a two-handled cup in his left hand. before him is a table with pomegranate fruits and other food. a portrait figure of a woman is seated near the foot of the couch, with her left hand raised to her veil. a boy in a short tunic stands on the right, and holds a kyathos for drawing wine; a rhyton and a vase are seen above his head. a girl kneels on the left below the seat of the woman; a dog lies between the legs of the table.--_townley coll._ greek marble; high relief. the upper part is wanting. height foot - / inches; width, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, x., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet. a male figure reclines on a couch, before which is a table with provisions. a woman is seated on a stool at the foot of the couch with her hand raised to her chin. inscribed: [greek: ....nou chaire].--_cyzicus._ _presented by a. van branteghem, esq., ._ marble; height, - / inches; width, - / inches. _rev. arch._, , p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet. three elderly male figures recline on a long couch, wearing diadems and holding large bowls in their left hands. before them is a table with two large pomegranates and a basket of fruit. at each end of the couch is a seated woman. the head is lost of the woman on the left. at the left angle in low relief is a diminutive figure of a girl, with a basket (_calathos_); at the right angle is a diminutive figure of a boy, with a crater. the relief is bounded by pilasters and an entablature. below is the hull of a vessel in low relief, and the metrical epitaph of dionysodoros, son of pytheas. [greek: dionysodôrou tou pytheou. a. dionysodôre, chaire; b. kai sy ge, ô phile, to nyn ech[on g]einôske me hôde keimenon, kalon kai agathon kai kalôs ezôkota, l]imnagenê gegonota, pasi prosphil[ê.] --_brought from cyzicus, in , by h.m.s. blonde._ _found in in a store at portsmouth._ bluish greek marble; height, feet - / inches; width, feet inches. _c.i.g._, ; kaibel, ; wolters, _rhein. mus. n.f._, , p. . [sidenote: = .=] late relief with banquet. a man and woman recline on a couch. before them is a table with food. the man puts his right arm round the neck of the woman, who appears to be holding a cup, or a wreath. on the left a woman is seated on a stool; beneath the couch are a child and a girl (the upper part alone seen), who holds a dish. the relief is bounded by two doric columns and a pediment. the monument was erected by one alexander for his mother, his wife philippa, and himself. penalties are prescribed for persons violating the tomb. inscribed: [greek: alexandros alexandrou beithynieu[s] kai neikomêdeus zôn heautô kateskeuas[a] to mnêmeion kai tê mêtri mou kai tê symbiô philippa pontianou. kai boulome meta to tethênai hêmas eis tên kamaran mêdena heteron anoixe; ei de para tauta poiêsei dôsei is ton phiskon dên. b,ph ( , ) kai is tên polin dên. b,ph ( , ). chairete.]--_smyrna._ _presented by m. duane and t. tyrwhitt, esqs., ._ marble; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. _archaeologia_, iii., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; pervanoglu, _familienmahl_, p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief. two men recline on a couch; a woman is seated on a stool at the head of the couch. the inscribed metrical epitaph, in which one cassiodoros relates his death at the age of twenty-four, has no appropriateness to the relief. [greek: nymphidiou thalamoio lipôn dyspenthea kosmon kai goneôn oik[t]rôn dakryoenta domon keimai es [au]chmêrous kai alampeas aïdos eunas eikos[i t]essar' echôn kassiodôros etê; ap[roi]dês nous[o]s me synêrpase; mounoeti[n de n]êp[i]achon kourên lipô hyp' êelion.]--_antioch?_ marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. drummond's _travels_ ( ), pl. facing p. , fig. (very rudely drawn), and p. ; _c.i.g._, ; kaibel, . in drummond's time the stone was "in the library of the right worshipful the levant company" at aleppo. [sidenote: = .=] stelè with reliefs in two panels. in the upper panel is a figure on a couch holding a bunch of grapes. the upper part of the figure is wanting. before the couch are a table with food and three attendant male figures. in the lower panel is a woman seated with a boy standing beside her. most of these two figures is wanting. in front are two warriors standing, with shields and spears.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet; width, foot inches. for the collection of sculptures from kertch, see above, p. . [sidenote: = .=] relief with banquet. a draped figure, now for the most part lost, reclines on a very lofty couch, holding a two-handled cup in the left hand. on the left are the knees and legs of a woman seated on a lofty throne, with an arm supported by a series of arches. before the couch is a table with vessels of wine. a boy stands on a stool, and holds a jug in his hands. on the right is an attendant. on the left is a female figure holding a vase, and a smaller figure. inscribed: [greek: ... de hyie androne[ik]ou chaire]. hail! ... son of andronicos.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, clxxxii.; latyschev, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] lower part of relief with banquet, of very rude style. a male figure reclines to the right on a couch, holding a two-handled cup in the right hand. before him is a table, with vessels of wine. at the end of the couch a woman is seated, enthroned, holding a veil with her left hand. a boy with an oinochoè stands on the right by the table. a girl with a pyxis stands on the left behind the throne. there are remains of pilasters. inscribed: [greek: isigonê gynê hêraklidou chaire. hêrakleidê g(ynê) b chaire.]--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxci.; latyschev, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral monument with a banquet relief of very rude style, contained in a lunette above the inscribed panel. a male figure reclines on a couch, with a cup in his right hand, with an uncertain object near the cup, which may perhaps be intended to represent the snake. a table stands before the couch with food. a woman sits on a stool at the foot of the couch, and holds her veil with her left hand. a small figure of a boy is at the head of the couch. on each side of the inscribed panel is a vine branch with grapes; above are a pine cone and two lions' heads to the front in high relief. below are the remains of a relief with a mounted horseman. on the right and left edges of the relief are snakes. the inscription states that the monument is erected by timocrates for his wife, his son, and himself.--_tomis._ limestone; height, feet inches; width, feet - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, clxxvii. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral monument with a banquet relief of the rudest style. two male figures, one being bearded, recline on a couch, holding cups in their left hands. before them is a table with food; beside it a boy with a cup and oinochoè (?), and a girl with a phialè. a woman is seated on a chair by the head of the couch, with the right hand raised to her chin. a vine branch with grapes runs round the relief and the inscribed panel. a latin inscription states that the monument was erected in memory of a girl, ulpia aurelia valeria.--_kertch._ limestone; height, feet inch; width, feet. [sidenote: = .=] late sepulchral relief. a man reclines on a couch. a woman stands at the foot of the couch. the relief is contained in an arch-shaped field below a pediment. inscribed, [greek: lyte ...]--_obtained by the euphrates expedition_ _( - ) and presented by sir j. c. hobhouse, president of the board of control._ marble; height, feet; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief, with a man seated, and a man standing holding a scroll in his left hand. the two figures probably joined their right hands. in the right and left angles are diminutive figures. on the right is a horse's head. a tree with a snake is seen above a wall in the background. the relief is surmounted by an entablature. inscribed with the metrical epitaph: [greek: oupô] nymphidiôn kradiê peplêthota lektrôn diphi]lon aiaktô tôd' hypenasse taphô gnôton] te gnôtê te panaidoiê<i> stratonikê hô k]ai alexandron kouron homêgenea, ast]ois kai xeinoisi prosêneas, esthla men eipein esth]la de kai rhexai pantas epistamenous: maio]genes, sy de paidas en hêrôessi phylassois eusebe]ôn aiei chôron eperchomenos.] this sculpture, and the following, no. , have been placed here, though they do not include the banquet, because they have some details, such as the serpent and the horse's head, similar to those on the banquet reliefs.--_ephesus._ _excavated by mr. wood, between the magnesian gate and the temple of artemis._ ephesian marble; height, feet; width, foot - / inches. wood, _ephesus_, p. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, dcxxv_a._ [sidenote: = .=] a boy, serapion, stands between two figures, probably those of his father and mother. all three are closely wrapped in himatia. behind is a tree, about which is a serpent; a bird sits on a branch. the relief is bounded by pilasters, a circular arch with rosettes in the spandrels, and a pediment. inscribed: [greek: serapiôn, chrêste kai alype chaire]. greek marble; height, feet inches; width, foot - / inches. this stone was formerly at venice, and afterwards in london, "apud dodd chemicum." boeckh, _c.i.g._, . reliefs with rider and horse, heroified. in the following reliefs the deceased person is heroified, and represented as receiving libations or worship. the sepulchral serpent is frequently introduced. for a discussion of the type, see above, p. . [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief of a warrior. in the centre of the relief is a bearded male figure, heavily armed. he wears a helmet, cuirass, and greaves, and has a spear in his left hand. he stands near a trophy which consists of a helmet, cuirass, and greaves attached to the trunk of a tree. on the left side of the trophy stands a female figure, pouring a libation from a jug into a cup. a serpent, coiled about the trophy, drinks from the cup. on the right of the relief is the forepart of the warrior's horse and the head of a groom. the relief is bounded by two pilasters and an architrave. the inscription on the upper and lower edges contains a list of names of men in the dative case, with their cities added. the persons commemorated belonged to various parts of the peloponnesus, northern greece, thrace and macedonia. from the position of the inscription, it is plain that it is independent of the relief, and probably it is earlier.--_brought from greece by mr. topham, ; presented by sir joseph banks and the hon. a. c. fraser, ._ greek marble; height, feet - / inch; width, feet - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ii., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; jahn, _de ant. minervae simulacris_, p. , pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; wolters, . [sidenote: = .=] mutilated relief. a horseman is mounted, to the right. he has an elaborate skin saddle-cloth, terminating with an animal's head before the horse. behind on the left is an attendant with a tunic worn over one shoulder (_heteromaschalos_), and with a shield. on the right are an altar and a tree, about which a serpent is entwined. an uncertain object is seen in the upper left corner of the relief. the relief is very high. the horse originally had reins of bronze. marble; height, feet; width, feet. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of sepulchral relief? a figure was represented leading a horse to the right. only one hand and foot, and parts of the horse remain. before it stand three male figures on a smaller scale, each figure raising the right hand, making a gesture as of adoration. the relief was bounded by pilasters and an entablature.--_blayds coll._ white marble; height, foot inch; width, foot inch. [sidenote: = .=] sepulchral relief. a youth rides on a horse, to the right, wearing a short tunic and cloak. he approaches a female figure, of a larger scale, who wears a long chiton and himation. she has an oinochoè in the right hand and a phialè in the left hand. behind her is a bearded figure on a smaller scale with the right hand raised as in adoration.--_aphanda, rhodes._ marble; height, foot inches; width, feet. _arch. anzeiger_, , p. , no. ; _athenische mittheilungen_, viii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a sepulchral relief, of a late period. a mounted horseman advances to a flaming altar. on the right of the altar is a pine tree, about which a snake is coiled. only the head and forelegs of the horse, and the left hand of the horseman is preserved. the hand holds a double-headed axe. a dog stands below the horse.--_ephesus._ _j. t. wood._ ephesian marble; height, foot - / inches; width, inches. the figure with the double-headed axe resembles that of the so-called [greek: theos sôzôn] on late reliefs from asia minor (_journ. of hellen. studies_, viii., p. ; roscher, _lexicon_, p. ). [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a sepulchral relief of a late period. a mounted horseman with a chiton and a cloak flying behind him stands on the left of an altar, at which a draped youth makes a libation. on the right is a tree about which a snake is coiled. the left side of the relief is wanting.--_ephesus._ _j. t. wood._ ephesian marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a sepulchral relief, with a figure of a mounted horseman wearing a chiton and cloak. the head of the rider, and the head and hind-part of the horse are wanting.--_ephesus._ _j. t. wood._ ephesian marble; height, inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] mounted horseman to the right. before him stands a figure making a gesture of adoration. above is a pediment, with rosettes. the relief is in very late rude style. inscribed: [greek: Êzous apoll[ôni]dou tois parag[ou]sin chairein].--_from phanagoria._ limestone; height, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. _c.i.g._, ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, ccvi.; latyschev, ii., . casts of lycian sepulchral reliefs. the following casts are derived from lycian rock-cut tombs, discovered by sir c. fellows. tombs of the normal type have a facade with architecture imitating wooden construction. behind the facade is a vestibule, or portico, often adorned with reliefs on each side. at the back is the door of the actual sepulchral chamber. nos. - are derived from tombs of this type. [sidenote: = .=] cast of relief from the east or left side of the portico of a rock-cut tomb. bellerophon mounted on pegasos appears to be thrusting as with a spear at the chimaera which is roughly indicated in the right-hand lower corner of the relief. pegasos has the mane tied in a topknot between the ears, as in the relief from xanthos, no. . the cast is painted in imitation of the original.--_tlos._ height, feet - / inches; width, feet - / inches. fellows, _lycia_, p. and plate. for general view of the tomb, see benndorf, _reisen in lykien_, i., p. , and pl. (on the right). [sidenote: = - .=] casts of reliefs from the sides of the portico of a rock-cut tomb at _pinara_. the outside of the tomb has an elaborate facade with sculptured pediment, frieze, and other ornaments. (for general view, see fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. , and benndorf, _reisen in lykien_, i., pl. .) within the portico, on each side, projecting beam ends divide the sculpture into two panels. each of the four reliefs represents a view of a lycian city, but there is no proof that they are four different views of the city of pinara, as fellows thought (_lycia_, p. ). [sidenote: = .=] cast of the upper relief on the left or west side of the portico. view of part of a city on a hill, with castellated walls. within are towers, with windows and connected by a wall, on which is a relief of three male figures. height, feet / inch; width, feet - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] cast of the lower relief on the left or west side of the portico. view of part of a city on a hill with castellated walls and turrets, a large pylon (?) and several tombs of forms well known in lycia. in the lower wall is a relief, with a draped and bearded man leaning on a staff and addressing a smaller figure. for the triangular arch openings in the wall, compare dodwell, _pelasgic remains_, pl. , view of walls of a city near mesolonghi. height, feet inches; width, feet - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] cast of the upper relief on the right or east side of the portico. view of part of a city on a hill with castellated walls and turrets. a figure, apparently intended to represent a living man, and not a sculpture, as on the other reliefs, lifts his hand near one of the towers. height, feet inches; width, feet / inch. [sidenote: = .=] cast of the lower relief on the right or east side of the portico. view of part of a city with castellated walls and turrets, built on natural rocks. on the right is a large structure resembling a tomb. on the left is a staircase, leading up to a door in a turret. height, feet inches; width, feet / inch. the four reliefs are engraved, fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. ; benndorf, _reisen in lykien_, i., p. ; _synopsis_, _lycian room_, nos. , . [sidenote: = , .=] the following casts are from a portion of the sculptures decorating a tomb, discovered by sir c. fellows, at _cadyanda_. the tomb is cut out of a large piece of detached rock, and in type somewhat resembles the large lycian tombs in the british museum, or the tomb of xanthos, shown in the background of pl. iii., the principal difference being in the treatment of the roof. at the end of the tomb are two doors. one door is filled with an immovable panel, with a figure of a draped bearded man holding an oinochoè, and inscribed [greek: salas], and in lycian _zzala_. the second door is believed to have been fitted with a panel, having the wife of salas in relief. (fellows, _lycia_, p. .) the reliefs, of which casts are preserved in the british museum, formed a frieze immediately below the cornice on each side of the tomb. below this frieze on each side was a combat of warriors on a larger scale. fellows, _lycia_, p. ; petersen, _reisen in lykien_, ii., p. . views and plans of the tomb are included in the scharf portfolio of drawings in the british museum. [sidenote: = .=] cast of a portion of the relief on the south side of the tomb at _cadyanda_. at the left end of the relief a girl draped in plain long chiton with sleeves, and a cap with tassel, stands to the right holding an aryballos and alabastron. on the left of the principal relief is a group of four figures playing with knuckle-bones. in front are a girl seated and a girl kneeling, both closely draped and having long hair. behind are a youth standing, wrapped in a mantle, and a woman who holds an aryballos in her left hand and wears her mantle over her head. all the figures make animated gestures. near the head of the youth is the inscription [greek: mesos]. next on the right is a woman seated, holding a boy in her hands, and wearing her mantle over her head. behind her is a female figure, much mutilated, standing to the left with her right hand under her chin. the remainder of the relief, which is not represented by a cast, appears to have contained either a sacrificial group (scharf), or warriors (petersen, _reisen in lykien_, ii., p. ). height, feet / inch; length, feet inches. fellows, _lycia_, frontispiece, and pl. facing p. ; _synopsis_, _lycian room_, no. ; petersen, _reisen in lykien_, ii., p. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] cast of the relief on the north side of the tomb at _cadyanda_. this relief which is much mutilated, appears to contain a banquet scene, with four couches, each having two persons reclining and several attendant figures. two attendants stand near the first couch on the left. one has a wreath in the right hand. near him is the inscription [greek: ...a....a]. a smaller figure plays on the flute. on the first couch are remains of a figure seated, nearly erect, and of a figure lying with his head resting on his left hand and having a bowl in his right hand. a portion of the original sculpture is here inserted in the cast. above is the inscription [greek: ...easob] (?), and below is the bilingual inscription _edazzala_ [greek: eidassalas]. the next group is obscure, but appears to consist of a figure seated, with the right hand stretched out, so as to be seen above the head of the figure last described, and a figure holding a child which stretches out its arms to a figure on the right. below the first of these two figures is the bilingual inscription _mezo_ [greek: mesos]. on the left of the second of the two figures is the bilingual inscription _zzala_ [greek: salas], the lycian being also repeated below, _zzal(a)_. we must, therefore, suppose this figure to be salas, the owner of the tomb. the child is named _horlar_ (?) on the next couch is a draped figure reclining on the left elbow, and holding out his right hand to the child. near this figure is the inscription [greek: siro] (?), and below it, remains of an illegible inscription. next on the right is a small draped female figure, seated on a chair, with the hands stretched out. behind her is a larger figure standing, with the bilingual inscription _...katamna_ [greek: hekatomnas]. on the third couch are two men reclining. above the first is the inscription [greek: kparam[os]], and below _[k]pparama_. below the second is the bilingual inscription _mola_ [greek: molos] (?). below the couch is a dog. on the fourth couch are also two men reclining. above the first is the inscription [greek: seskôs], and below remains of the corresponding lycian inscription _ze...wwa_. below the second is a bilingual inscription, in which only the greek name, [greek: kendyomis], is legible. a dog stands below the couch. at the right end of the relief, corresponding to the figure at the left end of the north side, is a nude male figure dancing, with the bilingual inscription _äkatam[n]a_ [greek: hekatomnas]. height, feet inch; length, feet inches. fellows, _lycia_, pl. facing p. (very inaccurate); _c.i.g._, ; _synopsis_, _lycian room_, no. ; petersen, _reisen in lykien_, ii., p. . votive reliefs. for an account of greek votive reliefs, of the occasions on which they were dedicated and of the objects represented, see above, p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief. zeus, wearing a mantle, is seated on a stool (_diphros_). his left arm is raised, as if resting on a sceptre. the right hand is extended. near him is hera, standing, with her right arm across her breast and her left hand raised to her veil. the relief which is only complete at the right side, was bounded by pilasters and an architrave. the missing part may have contained the figures of suppliants.--_athens (?)._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; cf. schöne, _griechische reliefs_, pl. , figs. , . [sidenote: = .=] relief from the upper part of an inscribed stelè. athenè, standing on the right of the scene, places with her right hand a wreath on the head of a male figure less in stature. on the left is a draped female figure holding out in her right hand a wreath or a cup. the left hand of this figure is raised to the level of the top of her head, as if resting on a staff. she wears a long chiton, over which is a diploïdion reaching nearly to the knees. a short mantle hangs on her left arm. athenè is clad in a long chiton with diploïdion; her left hand rests on the edge of her shield at her side. from a comparison of this relief, with other similar compositions from athens, it is probable that it is the heading broken off from an honorary decree of the athenian people by which a crown was conferred on some city or individual for services. (compare above, p. ; schöne, _griech. reliefs_, pl. , fig. , p. ; and the fragment, no. .) the figure of athenè here as on many other reliefs is in its general outlines copied from the athenè parthenos of pheidias. (compare michaelis, pl. , figs. - .)--_athens (?)._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches; width, foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _elgin room guide_, part ii., no. f. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief from the upper part of an inscribed stelè. athenè stands on the right; with her right hand she places a crown on the head of a youth, who stands facing her on the left. he is clad in a mantle. athenè wears a crested helmet and a long chiton, over which is a diploïdion; on her breast is the aegis; her left hand holds her shield which rests on the ground on its edge. the relief was bounded by pilasters and a pediment. it is probable that originally a third figure balanced the figure of athenè, as in the preceding relief, no. . this figure of athenè, like the preceding, is in its general outlines copied from the athenè parthenos of pheidias.--_athens (?)._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _elgin room guide_, part ii., no. f. . for similar subjects, see schöne, _griech. reliefs_, pl. , no. ; wolters, nos. - . [sidenote: = .=] part of a relief, from the upper part of an inscribed stelè. athenè stands on the left, and with her right hand she crowns a draped male figure, apparently a bearded man, who raises his right arm as if in adoration. athenè wears a helmet and chiton with diploïdion, and places her left hand on her shield, of which the inner side is shown. the spear of athenè rests against her left shoulder, with its end on the ground inside the shield. the relief is bounded by pilasters, with entablature and roof-tiles. the figure of athenè (like nos. , ) is roughly copied from the athenè parthenos of pheidias. pentelic marble; height, foot inches; width, - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] relief: apollo receiving a libation from victory. apollo wears the dress of a kitharoedos, namely, a long chiton with sleeves, over which is a diploïdion girt at the waist; a mantle hangs from his left shoulder; his long hair is looped up in a broad plait behind, under a diadem; a single long plait falls over each ear; he holds out a bowl with his right hand, while his left strikes his lyre, which is supported by a broad band passing over the left wrist; from the lyre hang two ends of ribbons; he wears armlets and sandals. the victory is clad in a long chiton, over which is a diploïdion girt at the waist; she wears bracelets and armlets. both figures stand with the heels raised from the ground: at the side of the victory is a circular altar, on which is sculptured in relief a winged female figure between two festoons. this subject occurs on several other reliefs in marble, for one of which see below, no. , and also on a terracotta relief in the british museum. (for a list, see welcker, _alte denkmaeler_, ii., p. .) all these sculptures exhibit the same peculiar style of affected archaism, known as archaistic. on a comparison of the reliefs in which this subject occurs, it will be seen that the one here described is part of a larger composition in which leto and artemis follow behind apollo, and a temple is introduced in the background; a tripod, a statue on a pedestal, the _omphalos_, a plane tree, and the horae on the altar also occur as accessories. it seems probable that these reliefs are votive, and that in selecting as their subject the victory of apollo in a musical contest, the dedicator indirectly commemorated his own triumph in a similar exercise of skill.--_hamilton coll., ._ marble; height, feet inch; width, feet inch. restored: the greater part of the body of apollo, lower part of body of victory, column on left, and lower part of column on right. the parts restored have been copied from more perfect marbles in the villa albani. _mus. marbles_, ii., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, i., no. ; wolters, no. ; welcker, _alte denkmaeler_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a relief which probably commemorates a musical or dramatic victory. two draped female figures move to the right: the foremost of these (artemis) holds out in both hands a lighted torch; she also has a quiver with a bow projecting from it, behind her shoulder. the second figure, who is probably leto, holds in her left hand a sceptre, the head of which is formed by a pomegranate flower. the drapery of both figures is arranged in the archaistic style. both figures wear a long chiton with sleeves, over which is a long full garment reaching nearly to the feet; over this again is a diploïdion girt at the waist. a mantle falls from the left shoulder of artemis, floating to below her knees; her companion with her right hand draws forward over her right shoulder the edge of a mantle, the other end of which falls over her left arm. the heads of both figures are encircled by a diadem, from beneath which two long plaits of hair fall on each shoulder. these figures are moving beside a plain wall, beyond which is shown a corinthian temple; the tiles of the roof with the ornamental fronts of the covering tiles are represented, but in incorrect perspective: on the extreme left of the scene is a tripod standing on a polygonal pedestal which forms the termination of the wall. in order to understand the subject of this fragment, it must be compared with similar reliefs in which the remainder of the original composition has been preserved. (see above, no. .) we may assume that the fragment here described, when complete, had on the right a figure of apollo kitharoedos leading the procession, and holding out a bowl to receive a libation from a victory. the temple represented in these reliefs may be that of apollo at delphi.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _guide to elgin room_, part ii., no. f. ; welcker, _alte denkmaeler_, ii., p. . [sidenote: = .=] votive relief representing an offering to apollo. on the right, the god is seated on the _omphalos_, holding up his right hand. the object held up in this hand has been broken away. a mantle is wrapped round his body, and he wears sandals. on the left are three mortals, clad in roman military armour, who appear to be approaching as if to consult the oracle of apollo, and who, from the difference of stature, are probably a father and two sons. between them and the god are two female figures, of colossal proportions, who stand to the front, their heads turned towards apollo. each wears a diadem, and the figure on the left holds a box containing incense in her left hand. these two figures are thought to be leto and artemis, whose worship was associated with that of apollo. the relief is bounded by two pilasters surmounted by an entablature. on the base are the remains of a dedication to apollo, in elegiac verse, which has been restored as follows, by koehler: [greek: s[oi] char[mos, ba]sileu paian, hekatêbol' apol[lon], hippo[kratous dôron] p[ai]s anethêke tode.]--_townley coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; width, feet inches. presented by the duke of bedford to mr. townley, in . _mus. marbles_, ii., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, i., no. ; wolters, no. ; _c.i.g._, ; _c.i.a._, ii., _b_; kaibel, ; _rhein. mus. n.f._, , p. ; cavaceppi, _raccolta d'antiche statue_, iii., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of votive relief dedicated by asclepiodotos to apollo tadokomeites. the upper part is missing. on the right is the figure on a colossal scale of apollo kitharoedos, preserved only from the knees downwards. on the left a draped male figure kneels by an altar, holding a ram, and having a knife in the right hand. behind the altar is a tree. on the left of the relief, a male figure, whose head is wanting, stands holding a conical object in his right hand. inscribed: [greek: asklêpiodotos diphilou apollôni tadokômeitê euchên].--_cyzicus._ _presented by a. van branteghem, esq., ._ marble; height, foot inch; width, - / inches. _rev. arch._, , p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of votive relief. artemis stands with the right arm on her right thigh, and leaning on what appears to be a torch. she wears a huntress dress, with short chiton, and has a hound standing beside her. on the right is an altar at which a male worshipper appears to be making an offering. on the extreme right is the hand and drapery of a female figure making a gesture of adoration.--_ephesus._ _j. t. wood._ ephesian marble; height, foot inch; width, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, including the upper part of a standing figure of artemis, from the middle of the thighs. at her left side was a stag, of which the head alone remains. in the centre is a female figure with the right arm extended. on the right is a female worshipper of smaller stature, who has the right hand raised, making a gesture of adoration. around the relief is a rudely cut rocky background. greek marble; height, foot - / inches; width, foot. [sidenote: = .=] votive relief (?). two youths on horseback, probably the dioscuri, though the conical cap, _pileus_, by which they are distinguished is wanting. each wears a chiton and chlamys. they are beardless; their hair is short and bound with a diadem; the bridles have been painted in red, which is still faintly visible on the marble. the horses are small and compact, like those on the frieze of parthenon, and have hogged manes.--_purchased from sir w. hamilton, ._ marble; height, foot - / inches; length, foot - / inches. _mus. marbles_, ii., pl. ; ellis, _townley gallery_, ii., p. ; _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, part i., no. . [sidenote: = .=] votive relief. two youthful male figures, perhaps the dioscuri, stand to the front, having an altar between them. one is nude, and the other only has drapery on the left arm. they have spears in their left hands. one appears to be holding an oinochoè in his right hand, and the other a phialè. they stand between two ionic columns, surmounted by an entablature, with antefixal tiles, and festoons of rosettes above. marble; height, foot - / inches; width, foot - / inches. [sidenote: = .=] votive tablet with relief representing kybelè seated. she wears a polos, and has a tympanum in the left hand, and has a lion by her left side. with the right hand she holds a phialè over an altar; on the left of the altar is a male worshipper standing.--_cyzicus._ _presented by a. van branteghem, esq._ marble; height, inches; width, inches. _rev. arch._, , p. no. . [sidenote: = .=] votive relief. kybelè seated within a distyle temple. on her head is a calathos; a long tress of hair falls on each shoulder; she wears a long chiton with sleeves and girt at the waist, and a mantle. in her right hand she holds a bowl; at her right side is a lion; her left hand is advanced as if it had held a sceptre, probably of metal, which is now wanting. on each side of the base of the calathos is a hole, probably for the attachment of a metal wreath.--_elgin coll._ greek marble; height, foot inches; width, inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _guide to elgin room_, part ii., no. f. . [sidenote: = .=] votive relief. kybelè seated, with a recumbent lion in her lap, its head to the left. in her right hand she has a bowl; in her left she holds some object, the form of which cannot be made out. she wears a long chiton, girt at the waist, and a mantle. her head is broken off; on each side of her neck a long tress falls on her shoulder. sculpture late and rough.--_presented by j. p. gandy deering, esq., ._ greek marble; height, inches; width, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( *). [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a relief, probably votive, containing hermes, who wears a short chiton, chlamys, and petasos, and holds out a phialè in the right hand. on his left is a female figure, also holding a phialè. on the right, the right arm alone remains of a third figure with a phialè.--_knidos._ marble; height, foot inches; width, foot / inch. [sidenote: = .=] relief with three figures. on the left is athenè, having long chiton, peplos, helmet, aegis, spear. beside her is a seated animal, perhaps a lion. in the centre is aphroditè (?), wearing long chiton, peplos, and polos. she has a spear in her left hand, and a much mutilated eros (?) standing by her side. on the right is a figure of the deified heracles (?), half-draped in mantle and lion's skin, with the club in his left hand and a sceptre or thyrsus in his right hand. he appears to wear the egyptian crown.--_presented by h. gally knight, esq., ._ parian marble (?); height, foot - / inches; width, foot - / inches. wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a relief, with a male figure, heavily draped, wearing long chiton and himation, and having long hair falling on the shoulders. the left hand is raised, and there are marks of the attachment of a metal object, perhaps a sceptre or thyrsos. the figure also wore a metal wreath. the relief, which is only complete on the right side, was bounded by pilasters and an entablature.--_athens (?)._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, feet inches; width, foot inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a relief, with a group of gods, viz.: hermes, with caduceus and petasos; zeus, with a sceptre; and kybelè, having a polos and sceptre. each of the three holds out a bowl in the right hand. on the left, in low relief, is a diminutive figure seated on rocks by a ship; on the right are two warriors, seated, having shields and swords. marble; height, foot inches; width, foot inches. [sidenote: = .=] relief, representing offerings to eileithyia (?). a draped female figure is seated on a chair with foot-stool, turned to the right. with the left hand she holds a part of her mantle which passes over her head. on the right is a draped woman who approaches, holding a closely-swathed baby on her left arm, and making a gesture with the right hand. a similar figure stands on the right, with a baby on her left arm, and having the right hand raised to her head in a manner expressive of sorrow. behind the chair is a woman advancing, holding a baby in both arms, and on the left is a woman who carries a dish (?) on her left hand and has a casket hanging from her right hand. the separate figures would be well suited to a sepulchral relief, on which the seated figure and a figure with a baby might well be represented. the whole composition, however, seems more suitable for a representation of mothers making offerings to some goddess, perhaps eileithyia.--_from sigeum in the troad._ _elgin coll._ bluish marble; height, foot inches; length, feet inches; width, feet. the marble was probably the sculptured base of a statue or group. afterwards it was roughly converted into a water-basin, and in modern times it served as a seat at the right side of the door of a church at sigeum. the sigean inscription formed a corresponding seat at the left side of the door. lady m. wortley montagu, _letter_ xliv. (of july , ); chandler, _travels in asia minor_ ( ), p. ; _antiquities of ionia_, i., p. i. (the original drawing by pars is in the brit. mus.) choiseul-gouffier, _voyage pittoresque_, ii., pl. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. . [sidenote: = .=] relief: cyrenè crowned by libya. this relief represents the nymph cyrenè in the act of strangling a lion, while, to commemorate this triumph, a crown is held over her head by libya. inscribed: [greek: kyrênên poliôn mêtroptolin hên stephei autê êpeirôn libyê trisson echousa kleos, enthad' hyper melathroio leontophonon theto karpos, euxamenos, megalês sêma philoxeniês.] the inscription may be thus translated: "here over the architrave, karpos, making this dedication, placed cyrenè, mother of cities, slayer of lions, in token of great hospitality. libya, who has the glory of being a third continent, herself crowns her." cyrenè stands on the left, in attire very like that of artemis as a huntress. she wears a chiton reaching to the knees, over which is a chlamys, and buskins; her hair is drawn back from her face. both her arms are locked round the lion's neck. libya wears a long chiton girt at the waist, and a mantle fastened between the breasts and falling down behind; her hair, bound with a diadem, is arranged over her forehead in long, regular curls, and falls down her neck; at her side is an animal couchant, of which the head is broken off, and which is perhaps a gazelle. the scene takes place on rocky ground. two vines arch their branches over the group. according to the legend told by pindar (_pyth._ ix. ) cyrenè was the daughter of hypseus, king of the lapiths in thessaly, whose flocks she guarded against wild beasts. apollo, seeing her slaying a lion in the valleys of pelion, became enamoured of her, and carried her off to the part of libya which afterwards bore her name. according to another legend (scholiast on apoll. rhod. _argon._, ii., , &c.), eurypylos, king of libya, had promised a portion of his kingdom to the person who would slay a lion then dreaded for his ravages. cyrenè performed this exploit, and received in reward the promised district. it is probably in connection with this later legend that libya is introduced crowning cyrenè in the relief. aristaeus, a mythic founder of cyrenè, was the son of apollo and cyrenè. the form of the relief suggests that it may have been a metope, and the words [greek: hyper melathroio] in the inscription have therefore been translated "above the architrave."--_found outside the temple of aphroditè, cyrenè._ marble; height, feet inches; width, feet inches. smith and porcher, pl. , p. ; pl. , no. . r. c. puckett, _de marmoribus tribus cyrenaicis_; bonn, , p. , and plate; _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, part ii., no. ; overbeck, _griech. kunstmythologie_, iii., p. ; _atlas_, pl. , fig. ; wolters, no. ; studniczka, _kyrene_, p. . the inscription is given by kaibel, _add._ _a_ (in some points incorrectly). for the legends of cyrenè, see studniczka, p. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment from the right side of a votive relief. heracles stands, nude, with the lion-skin and club on his left arm. the head and extended right hand are wanting. on the left is a fragment of a draped figure. the relief was contained in pilasters, surmounted by an entablature. pentelic marble; height, feet / inch; width, inches. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a votive relief. a beardless male figure stands to the front, with a chlamys on the raised left arm, and with a cup held out in his right hand. on the right is the right arm, and a portion of the skirt of another figure, perhaps female, of equal scale. on the left is the figure, much defaced, of a bearded worshipper.--_elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot / inch; width, inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] votive relief to demeter and persephonè (?). two female figures, each wearing a chiton and himation, stand to the front. between them is the stump of a tree, on which the figure on the right (persephonè (?)) leans her right elbow.--_castellani coll._ limestone; height, foot; width, - / inches. restorations:--upper part of ground and frame of relief with top of tree and right forearm of persephonè. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, with the lower part of a draped female figure, standing on a nude prostrate figure of a boy. on the right is a gryphon and on the left a large serpent.--_from amphitheatre, gortyna._ white marble; height, foot; width, - / inches. the gryphon and serpent are attributes of sarapis on a relief at andriakè in lycia. petersen, _reisen in lykien_, ii., p. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] left side of votive tablet, on which is sculptured a female figure standing to the front, holding a bowl in her right hand: her head and left arm from above the elbow are broken away. some vertical object, perhaps a censer, similar to that held by figure no. in the eastern frieze of the parthenon, or perhaps a fold of her mantle, is sculptured on the right.--_athens._ _inwood coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, inches. _elgin room guide_, part ii., no. f. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief, containing a part of a half-draped bearded man, standing as if leaning on a staff, to the right, holding what appears to be a flower in his right hand; and also part of the figure of a woman holding what appears to be a pomegranate. the figures may be those of suppliants with offerings on a votive relief.--_cyrenè._ white marble; height, - / inches; width, inches. smith and porcher, p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of relief containing a half-draped elderly male figure, and a female figure wearing a long chiton. perhaps a fragment of a votive relief.--_temple of aphroditè, cyrenè._ white marble; height, foot; width, inches. smith and porcher, p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] votive relief, with two plaits of formally twisted hair, dedicated to poseidon by philombrotos and aphthonetos. the relief is bounded by two pilasters and an entablature. inscribed: [greek: philombrotos, aphthonêtos deinomachou, poseidôni].--_from phthiotic thebes, in thessaly._ _presented by col. leake, ._ marble; height, foot - / inches; width, foot - / inches; millingen, _ancient unedited monuments_, part ii., pl. , fig. ; leake, _travels in northern greece_, iv., p. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, clxiii.; daremberg and saglio, _dict. des antiqs._, _s.vv._ coma and donarium. on the custom of dedicating hair by youths reaching manhood, see daremberg and saglio, _loc. cit._, and _bull. de corr. hellénique_, , p. . see also _mus. worsleyanum_, pl. . the following votive tablets (nos. - ), with representations of portions of the human body and with votive inscriptions to highest zeus ([greek: zeus hypsistos]), were discovered by the fourth earl of aberdeen, in . excavations were made at the foot of the rock-wall near the rock-cut structure commonly known as the bema of the pnyx, and the tablets which were then found, are presumed to have fallen from niches cut to receive them in the rock above (dodwell, _tour_, i., p. ). it has been argued that the spot where the reliefs were found was not the pnyx, but the altar of highest zeus (welcker, _der fels-altar des höchsten zeus_, &c., ). the inscriptions, however, which are here described, are of roman times, and are of little value for the decision of the question. (cf. hicks, _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._ lx.) [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief representing a female breast dedicated by eutychis. inscribed: [greek: eutychis hypsistô euchê(n)].--_pnyx, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, - / inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. , no. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxvi. [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief representing a female breast, dedicated by isias. inscribed: [greek: eisias hyps[istô] eu[chên]].--_pnyx, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches; width, - / inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. , no. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxvii. [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief, representing a pair of eyes, dedicated by philemation. inscribed: [greek: philêmatin [e]uchên ane[th]êken].--_pnyx, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, - / inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. , with woodcut; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. , no. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxviii. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a votive relief, which originally represented a pair of eyes in relief, but now has little remaining except the left eye and part of the inscription: [greek: hyps]ist[ô].--_pnyx, athens._ _found by the fourth earl of aberdeen in , and presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen in ._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxix. this relief is perhaps identical with _c.i.g._, . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of votive relief, with toes and the forepart of the right foot.--_pnyx, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, - / inches. _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief of vulva, dedicated by olympias. inscribed: [greek: olympias hypsistô euchên].--_pnyx, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, - / inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _c.i.g._, ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxii. [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief, representing a human face from the bridge of the nose downwards, dedicated by tertia. inscribed: [greek: tertia hypsistô euchên].--_pnyx, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, - / inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. , with woodcut; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. , no. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxiii. [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief, representing a pair of arms, within a panel, dedicated by claudia prepusa. the hands are wanting. inscribed: [greek: klaudia prepousa eucharistô hypsistô].--_pnyx, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, inches; width, - / inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. , with woodcut; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. , no. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxiv. [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief, representing a female breast somewhat broken, dedicated by onesimè. inscribed: [greek: onêsimê euchên diï hypsistô].--_pnyx, athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, inches. dodwell, _tour_, i., p. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ); _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. , no. ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxv. [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a votive relief, with part of a thigh, or perhaps part of the shoulder. inscribed: [greek: ....a theô hypsi[stô e]uchên].--_pnyx, athens. found by the fourth earl of aberdeen in , and presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen in ._ pentelic marble; height, - / inches; width, - / inches. _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, lxx. [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief representing a left leg from above the knee in relief, dedicated to asclepios and hygieia. inscribed: [greek: asklêpiô kai hyg(i)eia eucharistêrion].--_found in , in a shrine of asclepios in melos._ _blacas coll._ parian marble; height, foot - / inches; width, - / inches. _annali dell' inst._, , p. ; _exp. de morée_, iii., pl. , fig. ; _c.i.g._, ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, ccclxv. this relief was found together with the fine head of asclepios (no. ) and with a votive inscription (_c.i.g._, ). [sidenote: = .=] tablet with votive relief, representing a right ear. the right side of the tablet is lost.--_cyrenè._ marble; height, - / inches; width, inches. smith and porcher, p. , no. . [sidenote: = .=] square votive tablet, dedicated by anthusa, the daughter of damainetos. on the tablet, within a raised wreath, the following objects are sculptured in relief:--in the centre is a bowl (phialè) inscribed with the dedication. round this bowl are ranged a mirror, a torch, a spindle, a comb, a small phial, a small box with a lid containing three little circular boxes, which probably held paints; a pair of shoes; a small mortar, containing a pestle, shaped like a bent thumb; a knife, a strigil, a bottle, two bodkins, a small oval box with a lid, which probably held a sponge; a pair of shoes, and a conical object like a cap. the raised wreath which encircles these objects is composed of pomegranates, ears of corn, and ivy-berries, round which a sash is wound. outside the wreath, on the upper right-hand corner of the tablet, a situla is sculptured in low relief, and a small footstool (?) on the lower corner on the same side. the corresponding angles on the left side of the tablet have been broken away, but the upper angle appears to have contained a situla. the relief is inscribed [greek: anthousê damainetou hypostatria]. [greek: hypostatria] probably denotes some minister of inferior rank in the temple of the goddess to whom the tablet was dedicated. the explanation of the word [greek: statria] given by hesychius ([greek: emplektria]), makes it probable that the function of the [greek: hypostatria] here mentioned was to dress the image of the goddess. this and the tablet no. were found by the earl of aberdeen built into a ruined byzantine church at _slavochori in laconia_, a place which is believed to be the site of the ancient amyclae. the combination of pomegranates and ears of corn, the symbols of persephonè and demeter, with ivy-berries and fir-cones, the symbols of dionysos, makes it probable that in the temple in which these tablets were dedicated, these deities had a joint worship. pausanias (iii., , ) mentions a town near amyclae called bryseae, where was a temple of dionysos which none but women were permitted to enter, and where women only performed the sacrifices. it is not improbable, as lord aberdeen conjectured, that these votive tablets were originally dedicated in this temple, and thence brought to slavochori. it was a common custom among the greeks to dedicate articles of female attire and toilet in the temples of goddesses. (see _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, no. xxxiv.)--_brought from greece by george, fourth earl of aberdeen; presented by george, fifth earl of aberdeen, ._ marble; height, feet; width, feet - / inches. this sculpture, with the following, was first published, in a strangely perverted form, by caylus (_recueil d'antiq._, ii., pl. ), from drawings by fourmont. lord aberdeen published them, with an engraving in walpole's _memoirs relating to turkey_, london, , i., p. . see also _c.i.g._, ; leake, _travels in the morea_, i., p. , and _peloponnesiaca_, pp. - ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxli.; wolters, no. ; _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, part ii., no. ; mansell, no. . [sidenote: = .=] votive tablet, dedicated by a priestess called claudia ageta, on which are sculptured in relief various articles of the toilet. in the centre is a bowl inscribed with the name of the priestess, [greek: klau(dia) agêta antipatrou, hiereia]; round it are the following objects:--on the left of the bowl, a shell to hold unguents, two mirrors (one much smaller than the other), a small comb, a hair-pin, a small bottle for unguents, a small oval tray with a lid, containing a sponge, a larger bottle, a cylindrical object, and a circular object like a stud; above the bowl is a small elliptical box, a bottle, and an object which appears to be a net for the hair; below are a comb, two bodkins, and a strigil. on the right of the bowl are two pairs of shoes, two studs linked together, a small mortar (in which is a pestle like a bent thumb), a spoon, and a small oblong box with a lid, into which are fitted six little circular boxes or bottles. round these sculptured objects runs a raised frame richly ornamented with fir-cones, ivy, ears of corn, and pomegranates, and with a coiled snake in its lower side.--_from slavochori in laconia (cf. no. ). presented by the fifth earl of aberdeen, ._ marble; height, feet - / inches; width, feet inches. walpole's _memoirs relating to turkey_, , i., p. ; _c.i.g._, ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, cxlii.; _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, part ii., no. ; wolters, no. . [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a votive relief dedicated by a victor in a torch race. on the right a youth, with a whisk for sprinkling, and a man stand at an altar. the head of the man is lost. three nude athletes, of whom two are bearded, stand on the left conversing. above is an entablature with the dedicatory inscription: [greek: ho deina l]ampadi nikêsas, gymnasiarchôn [anethêken]].--_athens._ _strangford coll._ pentelic marble; height, foot - / inches; width, foot / inch. _c.i.g._, ; _greek inscriptions in brit. mus._, xli.; _c.i.a._, ii., . [sidenote: = .=] votive tablet in commemoration of a victory in the chariot race. a draped charioteer drives a chariot, drawn by four horses, which move to the left in spirited action. over them floats in the air a winged victory extending a wreath, now wanting, towards the charioteer. the left side of the relief and the lower edge have been broken away. the missing portion on the left probably contained a figure running in front of the chariot, as the end of a staff and traces of the hand which grasped it, appear at the edge of the slab. the charioteer wears a tunic girt at the waist; a scarf passing round the back of the head bellies out with the wind, while the ends, drawn back under the arms, float behind. this figure appears to be female, and in that case would doubtless be a personification, possibly of the city to which the victorious charioteer belonged. a similar votive tablet mounted on a pilaster is shown outside a house or temple in the composition representing the visit of dionysos to icarios, in the third graeco-roman gallery (_guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, pt. i., no. ), and such commemorative tablets were often dedicated by agonistic victors. compare a fragmentary relief at athens, on which a horse is crowned by victory. (schöne, _griechische reliefs_, pl. , fig. .)--_from consul logothetis' house at athens._ _elgin coll._ pentelic marble; present height, feet - / inches; width, feet inches. _mus. marbles_, ix., pl. , fig. ; ellis, _elgin marbles_, ii., p. ; _synopsis_, no. ( ). [sidenote: = .=] fragment of a relief, perhaps a votive tablet in commemoration of a chariot race. four heads of horses in rapid movement to the right; the head of the foremost horse has been held by a figure, of which the right hand only remains. marble; height, - / inches; width, foot inch. _guide to graeco-roman sculptures_, part ii., no. . [sidenote: = .=] votive relief. hecatè stands, turned to the left, with a large torch in her left hand. with the right hand she places a wreath on the head of a mare standing before her. she wears a chiton, confined by bands crossing on the breast, such as are common on figures of charioteers, furies, and others. behind her is a large dog. the relief is surmounted by a large pediment. this relief appears to have been dedicated by the owner of a successful horse.--_crannon in thessaly._ _presented by col. leake, ._ white marble, with remains of blue paint on the ground; height, foot - / inches; width, foot inches. millingen, _anc. uned. monuments_, ii., pl. , fig. . compare a relief at athens, schöne, _griechische reliefs_, pl. , fig. . [sidenote: = .=] votive relief with three figures standing to the front. on the right is apollo wearing the dress of a minstrel, having a long chiton girt at the waist, and a himation. he holds out a phialè in his right hand. on the right is an omphalos, about which a snake is coiled. the central figure, who is bearded, wears the dress of dionysos with short tunic, high boots, and a himation closely confined. he has a torch in the left hand and holds out a phialè in the right hand. on the left is a figure of zeus, with a phialè held out in the right hand, and a sceptre in the left hand. the relief is bounded by two pilasters surmounted by an entablature and pediment. below is a group of six male figures reclining, who are sketched out in low relief. before them are four figures: (_a_) on the left a comic figure seated, playing on double flutes, and beating time with a _kroupezion_ or scabellum; (_b_) a nude female figure dancing; (_c_) a comic figure running, wearing a phrygian cap, and having a pair of double flutes in each hand; (_d_) on the right, a figure with an oinochoè in each hand drawing wine from a large vessel. inscribed: [greek: diï hypsistô k(ai) tô ch(o)rô thallos epônymos ton telamôna apedôka]. the relief ([greek: telamôn]) appears to have been dedicated by a successful dramatic poet, thallos, who gave his name to the fête.--_cyzicus._ _presented by a. van branteghem, esq._ marble; height, feet - / inches; width, foot inches. _rev. arch._, , p. , no. . compare a relief now at athens, from nicaea, in conze, _reise auf der insel lesbos_, pl. ; lüders, _dionys. künstler_, pl. . london: printed by william clowes and sons, limited, stamford street and charing cross. plate i. [illustration: sculptured column from the archaic temple at ephesus. no. .] plate ii. [illustration: view of the lion tomb at xanthos. no. . (_from a drawing by george scharf._)] plate iii. [illustration: view of the harpy tomb at xanthos. no. . (_from a drawing by george scharf._)] plate iv. [illustration: sectional view of the east end of the parthenon. (_g. niemann._)] plate v. [illustration: fig. . carrey's drawing of the east pediment of the parthenon.] [illustration: fig. . carrey's drawing of the west pediment of the parthenon.] plate vi. [illustration: fig. . iris and hera. east frieze of parthenon. nos. , .] [illustration: fig. . arm. no. .] plate vii. [illustration: the north frieze of the parthenon (slabs i.-vii.) restored.] plate viii. [illustration: the north frieze of the parthenon (slabs vii.-xiii.) restored.] plate ix. [illustration: lusieri's drawing of the missing group from the monument of lysicrates. no. , _ _.] plate x. [illustration: view of the temple of apollo at phigaleia. (_from a photograph._)] plate xi. [illustration: fig. . sepulchral relief. no. .] [illustration: fig. . monument of xanthippos. no. .] [illustration: fig. . sepulchral relief. no. .] plate xii. [illustration: fig. . fragment of a sepulchral relief. no. .] [illustration: fig. . fragment of a sepulchral relief. no. .] * * * * * * transcriber's note: some illustrations have been moved to the ends of their descriptive paragraphs to allow for freer flow of the text. there are some inconsistencies in the spelling of (foreign) proper names throughout the book. in each case, both forms have been retained. journal numbers (x...; x...; etc.) appear in both upper and lower case throughout the book. both forms have been retained. there are a few instances of the high dot ·, or greek colon, in the greek text, which have been retained. pages and : fig. was used twice in the original book, and both instances have been retained. page : 'donotion' corrected to 'donation' - " ... have been acquired by donation or bequest," page , footnote : ' ' corrected to ' '. numbers ' ', ' ' and ' ' do not exist. thus, ' ' is the number before ' '; and ' ' fits the category of the other numbers in this footnote. "see nos. , , , , , , , , ." page : 'beechino' corrected to 'beecheno' - "see also solly, _memoirs of w. j. müller_, ; beecheno," page : 'real' corrected to 'reel' - "... but include bead and reel mouldings," auguste rodin by rainer maria rilke translated by jessie lemont and hans trausil. new york sunwise turn inc. [illustration: rodin _photographed by gertrude kasebier_] archaic torso of apollo we cannot fathom his mysterious head, through the veiled eyes no flickering ray is sent; but from his torso gleaming light is shed as from a candelabrum; inward bent his glance there glows and lingers. otherwise the round breast would not blind you with its grace, nor could the soft-curved circle of the thighs steal to the arc whence issues a new race. nor could this stark and stunted stone display vibrance beneath the shoulders' heavy bar, nor shine like fur upon a beast of prey, nor break forth from its lines like a great star-- each spot is like an eye that fixed on you with kindling magic makes you live anew. _rainer maria rilke._ _rendered into english by jessie lemont._ preface rodin has pronounced rilke's essay the supreme interpretation of his work. a few years ago the sculptor expressed to the translators the wish that some day the book might be placed before the english-speaking public. the appreciation was published originally as one of a series of art monographs under the editorship of the late richard muther. to estimate and interpret the work of an artist is to be creatively just to him. for this reason there are fewer critics than there are artists, and criticism with but few exceptions is almost invariably negligible and futile. the strongest and most procreant contact is that which takes place between two creative minds. this book of rilke on rodin is the fruit of such a contact. it ripened on the tree of a great friendship for the master. for a number of years rilke lived close to rodin at rue de varenne, in the old mansion surrounded by a beautiful park which was subsequently dedicated to france by the artist and is now the musée de rodin. here the young poet shared the life of the aged sculptor and his most silent hours. rodin felt that rilke approached his sculptures from the same imaginative sphere whence his own creative impulse sprang; he knew that in the pellucid and illuminating realm of the poetic his works found their spiritual home as their material manifestation partook of the atmosphere when placed under the open sky, given wholly to the sun and wind and rain. h. t. auguste rodin "_writers work through words--sculptors through matter"--pomponius gauricus in his essay, "de sculptura"_ (_about_ ). _"the hero is he who is immovably centred."--emerson._ rodin was solitary before fame came to him and afterward he became, perhaps, still more solitary. for fame is ultimately but the summary of all misunderstandings that crystallize about a new name. rodin's message and its significance are little understood by the many men who gathered about him. it would be a long and weary task to enlighten them; nor is this necessary, for they assembled about the name, not about the work,--a work that has grown far beyond this name's sound and limitations, and that has become nameless as a plain is nameless or a sea that has a name but on the map, in books, and to men, but which is, in reality, but distance, movement and depth. the work that is to be spoken of in these pages developed through long years. it has grown like a forest and has not lost one hour. one walks among these thousand forms overwhelmed with the imagination and the craftsmanship which they represent, and involuntarily one looks for the two hands out of which this world has risen. one thinks of how small man's hands are, how soon they tire, and how little time is given them to move. and one longs to see these hands that have lived like a hundred hands; like a nation of hands that rose before sunrise for the accomplishment of this work. one asks for the man who directs these hands. who is this man? he is a man rich in years; and his life is one that cannot be related. it began and still continues; stretches out deeply into a great age, and to us, it seems as though it had passed many hundreds of years ago. it perhaps had a childhood; a childhood in poverty--dark, groping and uncertain. and maybe it possesses this childhood still, for, says st. augustine somewhere, whither should it have gone? it holds, perchance, all its past hours, the hours of expectation and abandonment, the hours of doubt and the long hours of need. it is a life that has lost nothing and has forgotten nothing; a life that has absorbed all things as it passed, for only out of such a life as this, we believe, could have risen such fulness and abundance of work; only such a life as this, in which everything is simultaneous and awake, in which nothing passes unnoticed, could remain young and strong and rise again and again to high creations. perchance the time will come when someone will picture this life, its details, its episodes and its conflicts. someone will tell a story of a child that often forgot to eat because it seemed more important to him to carve inferior wood with a cheap knife, and someone will relate some event of the days of early manhood that contained promise of future greatness--one of those incidents that are intimate and prophetic. perhaps some such thought as that which, five hundred years ago, a monk expressed to young michel colombe, may have suggested itself to rodin on one of the crossways, at the beginning of his work: "travaille, petit, regarde tout ton saoul et le clocher à jour de saint pol, et les belles oeuvres des compaignons, regarde, aime le bon dieu, et tu auras la grâce des grandes choses." "and thou wilt have the grace of the great things." for it was just that which rodin was seeking: the grace of the great things. the galleries of the louvre revealed to the young artist radiant visions of the antique world; visions of southern skies, and of the sea, and far beyond rose heavy stone monuments, reaching over from immemorial civilizations into times not yet existent. there were stones that lay as if asleep but that held a suggestion that they would awake on some last judgment day, stones on which there was nothing mortal. there were others that bore a movement, a gesture that had remained as fresh as though it had been caught there in order to be given to some child that was passing by. not alone in the great works and in these monuments was this vitality alive: the unnoticed, the small, the concealed, were not less filled with this deep inward excitement, with this rich and surprising unrest of living things. even stillness, where there was stillness, consisted of hundreds and hundreds of moments of motion that kept their equilibrium. there were small figures, animals particularly, that moved, stretched or curled; and although a bird perched quietly, it contained the element of flight. a sky grew back of it and hung about it; the far distance was folded down on each of its feathers, and should these feathers spread out like wings, the wide expanse of them would be quite great. there was stillness in the stunted animals that stood to support the cornices of the cathedrals or cowered and cringed beneath the consoles, too inert to bear the weight; and there were dogs and squirrels, wood-peckers and lizards, tortoises, rats and snakes. at least one of each kind; these creatures seemed to have been caught in the open, in the forest and on roads, and the compulsion to live under stone tendrils, flowers and leaves must have changed them slowly into what they were now and were to remain forever. but other animals could be found that were born in this petrified environment, without remembrance of a former existence. they were entirely the natives of this erect, rising, steeply ascending world. over skeleton-like arches they stood in their fanatic meagerness, with mouths open, like those of pigeons; shrieking, for the nearness of the bells had destroyed their hearing. they did not bear their weight where they stood, but stretched themselves and thus helped the stones to rise. the bird-like ones were perched high up on the balustrades, as though they were on the way to other climes, and wanted but to rest a few centuries and look down upon the growing city. others in the forms of dogs were suspended horizontally from the eaves, high up in the air, ready to throw the rainwater out of their jaws that were swollen from vomiting. all had transformed and accommodated themselves to this environment; they had lost nothing of life. on the contrary, they lived more strongly and more vehemently--lived forever the fervent anu impetuous life of the time that had created them. and whosoever saw these figures felt that they were not born out of a whim nor out of a playful attempt to find forms unheard of before. necessity had created them. out of the fear of invisible doomsdays of a hard faith men had freed themselves by these visible things; from uncertainty men had taken refuge in this reality. they sought god no more by inventing images of him or by trying to conceive the much-too-far-one; but they evinced their piety by carrying all fear and poverty, all anxiety and all pleading of the lowly into his house. this was better than to paint; for painting was a delusion, a beautiful and skillful deception. men were longing for the more real and simple. thus originated the strange sculpture of the cathedrals, this! cross-breed of the heavy laden and of the animals. as the young artist looked from the plastic art of the middle ages, back to the antique, and again beyond the antique into the beginnings of untold pasts, did it not seem as though the human soul had longed again and again through the bright and dark periods of history, for this art which expressed more than word and painting, more than picture and symbol; this art which is the humble materialization of mankind's hopes and fears? at the end of the renaissance there was the flowering of a great plastic art; at that time when life renewed itself, when there was a revealment of the secret of faces, and a great vital movement was in the state of growth. and now? had not a time come again that was urging toward this expression--this strong and impressive exposition of what was unexpressed, confused, unrevealed? the arts somehow had renewed themselves, zeal and expectation filled and animated them. but perhaps this art, the plastic art that still hesitated in the fear of a great past, was to be called upon to find that which the others sought gropingly and longingly. this art was to help a time whose misfortune was that all its conflicts lay in the invisible. the language of this art was the body. and this body--when had one last seen it? strata after strata of costumes were piled over it like an ever renewed varnish; but under this protecting crust the growing soul had changed it; and this growing soul worked breathlessly at remodeling the expression of die faces. the body had become a different one. were it now unveiled, it would perhaps reveal the imprint of a thousand new expressions as well as the stamp of those old mysteries that, rising from the unconscious, reared their dripping heads like strange river-gods out of the singing blood. and this body could not be less beautiful than that of the antique. it must be of a still higher beauty. for two thousand years life had held this body in its hands and had moulded it, had forged it, now listening, now hammering, night and day. the art of painting dreamed of this body, adorned it with light and illumined it with twilight, surrounded it with all softness and all delight; touched it like a petal, and in turn was swept by it as by a wave. but plastic art, to which it in truth belonged, as yet of this body knew nothing. here was a task as great as the world. and he who stood before it and beheld it was unknown and struggling under the necessity of earning his bread. he was quite alone and if he had been a real dreamer, he would have dreamed a beautiful and deep dream--a dream that no one would have understood--one of those long, long dreams in which a life could pass like a day. but this young man who worked in the factory at sèvres was a dreamer whose dream rose in his hands and he began immediately its realization. he sensed where he had to begin. a quietude which was in him showed him the wise road. here already rodin's deep harmony with nature revealed itself; that harmony which the poet george rodenbach calls an elemental power. and, indeed, it is an underlying patience in rodin which renders him so great, a silent, superior forbearance resembling the wonderful patience and kindness of nature that begins creation with a trifle in order to proceed silently and steadily toward abundant consummation. rodin did not presume to create the tree in its full growth. he began with the seed beneath the earth, as it were. and this seed grew downward, sunk deep its roots and anchored them before it began to shoot upward in the form of a young sprout. this required time, time that lengthened into years. "one must not hurry," said rodin to the few friends who gathered about him, in answer to their urgence. at that time the war came and rodin went to brussels. he modeled some figures for private houses and several of the groups on the top of the bourse, and also the four large corner figures on the monument erected to loos, city-mayor in the parc d'anvers. these were orders which he carried out conscientiously, without allowing his growing personality to speak. his real development took place outside of all this; it was compressed into the free hours of the evening and unfolded itself in the solitary stillness of the nights; and he had to bear this division of his energy for years. he possessed the quiet perseverance of men who are necessary, the strength of those for whom a great work is waiting. while he was working on the exchange of brussels, he may have felt that there were no more buildings which admitted of the worth of sculpture as the cathedrals had done, those great magnets of plastic art of past times. sculpture was a separate thing, as was the easel picture, but it did not require a wall like the picture. it did not even need a roof. it was an object that could exist for itself alone, and it was well to give it entirely the character of a complete thing about which one could walk, and which one could look at from all sides. and yet it had to distinguish itself somehow from other things, the ordinary things which everyone could touch. it had to become unimpeachable, sacrosanct, separated from chance and time through which it rose isolated and miraculous, like the face of a seer. it had to be given its own certain place, in which no arbitrariness had placed it, and it must be intercalated in the silent continuance of space and its great laws. it had to be fitted into the space that surrounded it, as into a niche; its certainty, steadiness and loftiness did not spring from its significance but from its harmonious adjustment to its environment. rodin knew that, first of all, sculpture depended upon an infallible knowledge of the human body. slowly, searchingly, he had approached the surface of this body from which now a hand stretched out toward him, and the form, the gesture of this hand contained the semblance of the force within the body. the farther he progressed on this remote road, the more chance remained behind, and one law led him on to another. and ultimately it was this surface toward which his search was directed. it consisted of infinitely many movements. the play of light upon these surfaces made manifest that each of these movements was different and each significant. at this point they seemed to flow into one another; at that, to greet each other hesitatingly; at a third, to pass by each other without recognition, like strangers. there were undulations without end. there was no point at which there was not life and movement. rodin had now discovered the fundamental element of his art; as it were, the germ of his world. it was the surface,--this differently great surface, variedly accentuated, accurately measured, out of which everything must rise,--which was from this moment the subject matter of his art, the thing for which he laboured, for which he suffered and for which he was awake. his art was not built upon a great idea, but upon a minute, conscientious realization, upon the attainable, upon a craft. there was no haughtiness in him. he pledged himself to a humble and difficult beauty that he could oversee, summon and direct. the other beauty, the great beauty, had to come when everything was prepared, as animals come to a drinking-place in the forest in the late night when nothing foreign is there. with this awakening rodin's most individual work began. not until now had all the traditional conceptions of plastic art become worthless to him. pose, grouping, composition now meant nothing to him. he saw only innumerable living surfaces, only life. the means of expression which he had formed for himself were directed to and brought forward this aliveness. the next task was to become master of himself and of his abundance. rodin seized upon the life that was everywhere about him. he grasped it in its smallest details; he observed it and it followed him; he awaited it at the cross-roads where it lingered; he overtook it as it ran before him, and he found it in all places equally great, equally powerful and overwhelming. there was not one part of the human body that was insignificant or unimportant: it was alive. the life that was expressed in faces was easily readable. life manifested in bodies was more dispersed, greater, more mysterious and more eternal. here it did not disguise itself; it carried itself carelessly where there was carelessness and proudly with the proud. receding from the stage of the face it had taken off its mask and concealed itself behind the scenes of garments. here in the body rodin found the world of his time as he had recognized the world of the middle ages in the cathedrals. a universe gathered about this veiled mystery--a world held together by an organism was adapted to this organism and made subject to it. man had become church and there were thousands and thousands of churches, none similar to the other and each one alive. but the problem was to show that they were all of one god. for years rodin walked the roads of life searchingly and humbly as one who felt himself a beginner. no one knew of his struggles; he had no confidants and few friends. behind the work that provided him with necessities his growing work hid itself awaiting its time. he read a great deal. at this time he might have been seen in the streets of brussels always with a book in his hand, but perhaps this book was but a pretext for the absorption in himself, in the gigantic task that lay before him. as with all creative people the feeling of having a great work before him was an incitement, something that augmented and concentrated his forces. and if doubts or uncertainties assailed him, or he was possessed of the great impatience of those who rise, or the fear of an early death, or the threat of daily want, all these influences found in him a quiet, erect resistance, a defiance, a strength and confidence--all the not-yet-unfurled flags of a great victory. perhaps it was the past that in such moments came to his side, speaking in the voice of the cathedrals that he went to hear again and again. in books, too, he found many thoughts that gave him encouragement. he read for the first time dante's divina comedia. it was a revelation. the suffering bodies of another generation passed before him. he gazed into a century the garments of which had been torn off; he saw the great and never-to-be-forgotten judgment of a poet on his age. there were pictures that justified him in his ideas; when he read about the weeping feet of nicholas the third, he realized that there _were_ such feet, that there was a weeping which was everywhere, over the whole of mankind, and there were tears that came from all pores. from dante he came to baudelaire. here was no judgment, no poet, who, guided by the hand of a shadow, climbed to the heavens. a man who suffered had raised his voice, had lifted it high above the heads of others as though to save them from perishing. in this poet's verses there were passages, standing out prominently, that did not seem to have been written but moulded; words and groups of words that had melted under the glowing touch of the poet; lines that were like reliefs and sonnets that carried like columns with interlaced capitals the burden of a cumulating thought. he felt dimly that this poetic art, where it ended abruptly, bordered on the beginning of another art and that it reached out toward this other art. in baudelaire he felt the artist who had preceded him, who had not allowed himself to be deluded by faces but who sought bodies in which life was greater, more cruel and more restless. after having read the works of these two poets they remained always near him, his thoughts went from them and yet returned to them again. at the time when his art took form and prepared itself for expression, when life as it presented itself before him had little significance, rodin dwelt in the books of the poets and gleaned from the past. later, when as a creator he again touched those realms, their forms rose like memories in his own life, aching and real, and entered into his work as though into a home. at last, after years of solitary labor he made the attempt at a step forward with one of his creations. it was a question put before the public. the public answered negatively. and rodin retired once more for thirteen years. these were the years during which he, still unknown, matured to a master and became the absolute ruler of his own medium, ever working, ever thinking, ever experimenting, uninfluenced by the age that did not participate in him. perhaps the fact that his entire development had taken place in this undisturbed tranquility gave him later, when men disputed over the value of his work, that powerful certainty. at the moment when they began to doubt him, he doubted himself no longer, all uncertainty lay behind him. his fate depended no more upon the acclamation or the criticism of the people; it was decided at the time they thought to crush it with mockery and hostility. during the period of his growth no strange voice sounded, no praise bewildered, no blame disturbed him. as parsifal grew so his art grew in purity alone with itself and with a great eternal nature. only his work spoke to him. it spoke to him in the morning when he awakened, and at even it sounded in his hands like an instrument that has been laid away. hence his work was so invincible. for it came to the world ripe, it did not appear as something unfinished that begged for justification. it came as a reality that had wrought itself into existence, a reality which is, which one must acknowledge. like a monarch who, hearing that a city is to be built in his kingdom, meditates whether it would be well to grant the privilege, and hesitates; and finally goes forth to see the place and finds there a great powerful city which is finished, which stands as though from eternity with walls, towers and gates, so the world came when ultimately called to the completed work of rodin. this period of rodin's maturescence is limited by two works. at its beginning stands the head of "the man with the broken nose," at its end the figure of "the man of the primal age." "l'homme au nez cassé" was refused by the salon in the year of . one comprehends this rejection, for one feels that in this work rodin's art was mature, certain and perfected. with the inconsiderateness of a great confession it contradicted the requirements of academic beauty which were still the dominating standard. in vain rude had given his goddess of rebellion on the top of the triumphal gate of the place de l'Étoile that wild gesture and that far-reaching cry. in vain barye had created his supple animals; and the dance by carpeaux was merely an object of mockery until finally it became so accustomed a sight that it was passed by unnoticed. the plastic art that was pursued was still that based upon models, poses and allegories; it held to the superficial, cheap and comfortable metier that was satisfied with the more or less skillful repetition of some sanctified appeal. in this environment the head of "the man with the broken nose" should have roused the storm that did not break out until the occasion of the exhibition of some later works of rodin. but probably it was returned almost unexamined as the work of some one unknown. rodin's motive in modeling this head, the head of an ageing, ugly man, whose broken nose even helped to emphasize the tortured expression of the face, must have been the fulness of life that was cumulated in these features. there were no symmetrical planes in this face at all, nothing repeated itself, no spot remained empty, dumb or indifferent. this face had not been touched by life, it had been permeated through and through with it as though an inexorable hand had thrust it into fate and held it there as in the whirlpool of a washing, gnawing torrent. when one holds and turns this mask in the hand, one is surprised at the continuous change of profiles, none of which is incidental, imagined or indefinite. there is on this head no line, no exaggeration, no contour that rodin has not seen and willed. one feels that some of these wrinkles came early, others later, that between this and that deep furrow lie years, terrible years. one knows that some of the marks on this face were engraved slowly, hesitatingly, that others were traced gently and afterwards drawn in strongly by some habit or thought that came again and again; one recognizes sharp lines that must have been cut in one night, as though picked by a bird in the worn forehead of a sleepless man. all these impressions are encompassed in the hard and intense life that rises out of this one face. as one lays down this mask one seems to stand on the height of a tower and to look down upon the erring roads over which many nations have wandered. and as one lifts it up again it becomes a thing that one must call beautiful for the sake of its perfection. but this beauty is not the result of the incomparable technique alone. it rises from the feeling of balance and equilibrium in all these moving surfaces, from the knowledge that all these moments of emotion originate and come to an end in the thing itself. if one is gripped by the many-voiced tortures of this face, immediately afterwards there comes the feeling that no accusation proceeds from it. it does not plead to the world; it seems to carry its justice within itself, to hold the reconciliation of all its contradictions and to possess a forbearance great enough for all its burden. when rodin created this mask he had before him a man who sat quiet with a calm face. but the face was that of a living person and when he searched through it he saw that it was as full of motion, as full of unrest as the dashing of waves. in the course of the lines there was movement; there was movement in the contours of the surfaces; shadows stirred as in sleep and light seemed to softly touch the forehead. nothing possessed rest, not even death; for decay, too, meant movement, dead matter still subject to life. nature is all motion and an art that wished to give a faithful! and conscientious interpretation of life could not make rest, that did not exist, its ideal. in reality the antique did not hold such an ideal. one has only to think of the nike. this piece of sculpture has not only brought down to us the movement of a beautiful maiden who goes to meet her lover, but it is at the same time an eternal picture of hellenic wind in all its sweep and splendour. there was no quiet even in the stones of still older civilizations. the hieratically retained gesture of very ancient cults contained an unrest of living surfaces like water within a vessel. there were currents in the taciturn gods that were sitting; and those that were standing commanded with a gesture that sprang like a fountain out from the stone and fell back again causing many ripples. this was not movement that opposed the intrinsic character of the sculpture. only the movement that does not complete itself within the thing, that is not kept in balance by other movements, is that which exceeds beyond the boundaries of sculpture. the plastic work of art resembles those cities of olden times where the life was spent entirely within the walls. the inhabitants did not cease to breathe, their life ran on; but nothing urged them beyond the limits of the walls that surrounded them, nothing pointed beyond the gates and no expectation opened a vista to the outer world. however great the movement of a sculpture may be, though it spring out of infinite distances, even from the depths of the sky, it must return to itself, the great circle must complete itself, the circle of solitude that encloses a work of art. this was the law which, unwritten, lived in the sculptures of times gone by. rodin recognized it; he knew that that which gave distinction to a plastic work of art was its complete self-absorption. it must not demand nor expect aught from outside, it should refer to nothing that lay beyond it, see nothing that was not within itself; its environment must lie within its own boundaries. the sculptor leonardo has given to gioconda that unapproachableness, that movement that turns inward, that look which one cannot catch or meet. probably his francesco sforza contained the same element, it carried a gesture which was like a proud envoy of state who returned after a completed commission. during the long years that passed between the mask of "the man with the broken nose" and the figure of "the man of primal times" many silent developments took place in rodin. new relations connected him more closely with the past of the art of sculpture, and the greatness of this past, which has been a restriction to so many, to him had become the wing that carried him. for if he received during that time an encouragement and confirmation of that which he wished and sought, it came to him from the art of the antique world and from the dim mystery of the cathedrals. men did not speak to him. stones spoke. "the man with the broken nose" had revealed how rodin sought his way through a face. "the man of primal times" proved his unlimited supremacy over the body. "souverain tailleur d'ymaiges"--this title, which the masters of the middle ages bestowed on one another without envy and with serious valuation, should belong to him. here was a life-sized figure in all parts of which life was equally powerful and seemed to have been elevated everywhere to the same height of expression. that which was expressed in the face, that pain of a heavy awakening, and at the same time the longing for that awakening, was written on the smallest part of this body. every part was a mouth that spoke a language of its own. the most critical eye could not discover a spot on this figure that was the less alive, less definite and clear. it was as though strength rose into the veins of this man from the depths of the earth. this figure was like a silhouette of a tree that has the storms of march still before it and trembles because the fruit and fulness of its summer lives no more in its roots, but is slowly rising to the trunk about which the great winds will tear. the figure is significant in still another sense. it indicates in the work of rodin the birth of gesture. that gesture which grew and developed to such greatness and power, here bursts forth like a spring that softly ripples over this body. it awakens in the darkness of primal times and in its growth seems to flow through the breadth of this work as though reaching out from by-gone centuries to those that are to come. hesitatingly it unfolds itself in the lifted arms. these arms are still so heavy that the hand of one rests upon the top of the head. but this hand is roused from its sleep, it concentrates itself quite high on the top of the brain where it lies solitary. it prepares for the work of centuries, a work that has no measure and no end. and the right foot stands expectant with a first step. one would say of this gesture that it is wrapped into a hard bud. in a thought's glow and a storm in will it unfolds itself and that "st. john" steps forth with excited, speaking arms and with the splendid step of one who feels another follow him. the body of this man is not untested. deserts have glowed through it, hunger has made it ache and all thirsts have tried it. he has endured and has become hard. his lean, ascetic body is like a forked piece of wood that encloses, as it were, the wide angle of his stride. he walks. ... he walks as though all distances of the world were within him and he distributed them through his mighty step. he strides.... his arms speak of this step, his fingers spread and seem to make the sign of striding in the air. this "st. john" is the first that walks in the work of rodin. many follow. the citizens of calais begin their heavy walk, and all walking seems to prepare for the mighty, challenging step of balzac. the gesture of the standing figure develops further. it withdraws into itself, it shrivels like burning paper, it becomes stronger, more concentrated, more animated. that eve, that was originally to be placed over the gates of hell, stands with head sunk deeply into the shadow of the arms that draw together over the breast like those of a freezing woman. the back is rounded, the nape of the neck almost horizontal. she bends forward as though listening over her own body in which a new future begins to stir. and it is as though the gravity of this future weighed upon the senses of the woman and drew her down from the freedom of life into the deep, humble service of motherhood. again and again in his figures rodin returned to this bending inward, to this intense listening to one's own depth. this is seen in the wonderful figure which he has called "la méditation" and in that immemorable "voix intérieure," the most silent voice of victor hugo's songs, that stands on the monument of the poet almost hidden under the voice of wrath. never was human body assembled to such an extent about its inner self, so bent by its own soul and yet upheld by the elastic strength of its blood. the neck, bent side-wise on the lowered body, rises and stretches and holds the listening head over the distant roar of life; this is so impressively and strongly conceived that one does not remember a more gripping gesture or one of deeper meaning. it is striking that the arms are lacking. rodin must have considered these arms as too facile a solution of his task, as something that did not belong to that body which desired to be enwrapped within itself without the aid of aught external. when one looks upon this figure one thinks of duse in a drama of d'annunzio's, when she is painfully abandoned and tries to embrace without arms and to hold without hands. this scene, in which her body has learned a caressing that reaches beyond it, belongs to the unforgettable moments in her acting. it conveys the impression that the arms are something superfluous, an adornment, a thing of the rich, something immoderate that one can throw off in order to become quite poor. she appeared in this moment as though she had forfeited something unimportant, rather like someone who gives away his cup in order to drink out of the brook. the same completeness is conveyed in all the armless statues of rodin: nothing necessary is lacking. one stands before them as before something whole. the feeling of incompleteness does not rise from the mere aspect of a thing, but from the assumption of a narrow-minded pedantry, which says that arms are a necessary part of the body and that a body without arms cannot be perfect. it was not long since that rebellion arose against the cutting off of trees from the edge of pictures by the impressionists. custom rapidly accepted this impression. with regard to the painter, at least, came the understanding and the belief that an artistic whole need not necessarily coincide with the complete thing, that new values, proportions and balances may originate within the pictures. in the art of sculpture, also, it is left to the artist to make out of many things one thing, and from the smallest part of a thing an entirety. there are among the works of rodin hands, single, small hands which, without belonging to a body, are alive. hands that rise, irritated and in wrath; hands whose five bristling fingers seem to bark like the five jaws of a dog of hell. hands that walk, sleeping hands, and hands that are awaking; criminal hands, tainted with hereditary disease; and hands that are tired and will do no more, and have lain down in some corner like sick animals that know no one can help them. but hands are a complicated organism, a delta into which many divergent streams of life rush together in order to pour themselves into the great storm of action. there is a history of hands; they have their own culture, their particular beauty; one concedes to them the right of their own development, their own needs, feelings, caprices and tendernesses. rodin, knowing through the education which he has given himself that the entire body consists of scenes of life, of a life that may become in every detail individual and great, has the power to give to any part of this vibrating surface the independence of a whole. as the human body is to rodin an entirety only as long as a common action stirs all its parts and forces, so on the other hand portions of different bodies that cling to one another from an inner necessity merge into one organism. a hand laid on another's shoulder or thigh does not any more belong to the body from which it came,--from this body and from the object which it touches or seizes something new originates, a new thing that has no name and belongs to no one. this comprehension is the foundation of the grouping of figures by rodin; from it springs that coherence of the figures, that concentration of the forms, that quality of clinging together. he does not proceed to work from figures that embrace one another. he has no models which he arranges and places together; he starts with the points of the strongest contact as being the culminating points of the work. there where something new arises, he begins and devotes all the capacity of his chisel to the mysterious phenomenon that accompanies the growth of a new thing. he works, as it were, by the light of the flame that flashes out from these points of contact, and sees only those parts of the body that are thus illuminated. the spell of the great group of the girl and the man that is named "the kiss" lies in this understanding distribution of life. in this group waves flow through the bodies, a shuddering ripple, a thrill of strength, and a presaging of beauty. this is the reason why one beholds everywhere on these bodies the ecstacy of this kiss. it is like a sun that rises and floods all with its light. still more marvelous is that other kiss "l'éternelle idole." the material texture of this creation encloses a living impulse as a wall encloses a garden. one of the copies of this marble is in the possession of eugène carrière, and in the silent twilight of his house this stone pulsates like a spring in which there is an eternal motion, a rising and falling, a mysterious stir of an elemental force. a girl kneels, her beautiful body is softly bent backward, her right arm is stretched behind her. her hand has gropingly found her foot. in these three lines which shut her in from the outer world her life lies enclosed with its secret. the stone beneath her lifts her up as she kneels there. and suddenly, in the attitude into which the young girl has fallen from idleness, or reverie, or solitude, one recognizes an ancient, sacred symbol, a posture like that into which the goddess of distant, cruel cults had sunk. the head of this woman bends somewhat forward; with an expression of indulgence, majesty and forbearance, she looks down as from the height of a still night upon the man who sinks his face into her bosom as though into many blossoms. he, too, kneels, but deeper, deep in the stone. his hands lie behind him like worthless and empty things. the right hand is open; one sees into it. from this group radiates a mysterious greatness. one does not dare to give it one meaning, it has thousands. thoughts glide over it like shadows, new meanings arise like riddles and unfold into clear significance. something of the mood of a purgatorio lives within this work. a heaven is near that has not yet been reached, a hell is near that has not yet been forgotten. here, too, all splendour flashes from the contact of the two bodies and from the contact of the woman with herself. another conception of the theme of the contact of living surfaces and moving planes is that stupendous "porte de l'enfer" on which rodin has worked for twenty years and the final casting into bronze of which is imminent. advancing simultaneously in the pursuit of the import of the movements of planes and their points of confluence rodin came to seek bodies that touched one another on many points, bodies whose movements were more vehement, stronger and more impetuous. the more mutual points of contact two bodies offered, the more impatiently they rushed upon each other like chemicals of close affinity. the tighter the new whole which they formed held together, the more they became like one organism. from "the gates of hell" memories of dante emerged. ugolino; the wandering ones, dante and virgil, close together; the throng of the voluptuous from among whom like a dried up tree rose the grasping gesture of the avaricious. the centaurs, the giants and monsters, the syrens, fauns and wives of fauns, all the wild and ravenous god-animals of the pre-christian forest rose before him. he conjured all the forms of dante's dream as though from out the stirring depths of personal remembrance and gave them one after another the silent deliverance of material existence. hundreds of figures and groups were thus created. the visions of the poet who belonged to another age awakened the artist who made them rise again to the knowledge of a thousand other gestures; gestures of seizing, losing, suffering and abandoning, and his tireless hands stretched out farther and farther beyond the world of the florentine to ever new forms and revelations. this earnest, self-centred worker who had never sought for material and who desired no other fulfilment than was attainable by the increasingly maturing mastery of his chisel thus penetrated through all the dramas of life. the depths of the nights of love unfolded themselves to him and revealed the dark, sorrowful and blissful breadth of a realm like that of a still heroic world in which there were no garments, in which faces were extinguished and bodies were supreme. with senses at white heat he sought life in the great chaos of this wrestling, and what he saw was life. life did not close in about him in sultry narrowness: the atmosphere of the alcoves was far away. here life became work; a thousandfold life throbbed in every moment. here was loss and gain, madness and fright, longing and sorrow. here was a desire that was immeasurable, a thirst so great that all the waters of the world dried up in it like a single drop. here was no lying and denying, and here the joys of giving and taking were genuine and great. here were the vices and blasphemies, the damnations and the beatitudes; and suddenly it became evident that a world was poor that concealed or buried all this life or pretended that it did not exist. _it was!_ alongside of the whole history of mankind was this other history that did not know disguises, conventions, differences or ranks, that only knew strife. this history, too, had its evolution. from an instinct it had become a longing, from a physical possessorship between man and woman it had become an uplifting desire of human being for human being. thus this history appears in the work of rodin; still the eternal struggle of the sexes, but the woman is no more the overpowered or willing animal. she is longing and awake like the man, and both man and woman seem to have met in order to find their souls. the man who rises at night and softly seeks another is like a treasure-seeker who wishes to find on the cross-roads of sex the great happiness. to discover in all lusts and crimes, in all trials and all despair, an infinite reason for existence is a part of that great longing that creates poets. here humanity hungers for something beyond itself. here hands stretch out for eternity. here eyes open, see death and do not fear him. here a hopeless heroism reveals itself whose glory dawns and vanishes like a smile, blossoms and withers like a rose. here are all the storms of desire and the calms of expectation. here are dreams that become deeds and deeds that fade into dreams. here, as at a gigantic gambling table, great fortunes are lost or won. rodin's work embodied all this. he who had seen so much life found here life's fulness and abundance: the body each part of which was will, the mouths, that had the form of cries which seemed to rise from the depths of the earth. he found the gestures of the ancient gods, the beauty and suppleness of animals, the reeling of old dances, the movements of forgotten divine services, strangely combined with new gestures that had originated during the long period in which art was alien and blind to all these relations. these new gestures were particularly interesting to him. they were impatient. as someone who seeks for an object for a long time becomes more and more helpless, confused, and hasty, and finally creates a disorder in an accumulation of things about him, so the gestures of mankind who cannot find reason for existence, have become more and more impatient, nervous and hurried. man's movements have become more hesitating. they have no more the athletic and resolute strength with which former men grappled all things. they do not resemble those movements that are preserved in ancient images, those gestures of which only the first and the last were important. between these two simple movements innumerable transitions have been interpolated, and it is manifest that it is just in these intervening moments that the life of the man of to-day passes by; his action and his disability for action, the seizing, the holding, the abandoning has changed. in everything there is much more experience and at the same time more ignorance; there is despondency and a continuous attack against opposition; there is grief over things lost; there is calculation, judgment, consideration and less spontaneity. rodin has discovered these gestures, has evolved them out of one or several figures and moulded them into sculptural forms. he has endowed hundreds and hundreds of figures that were only a little larger than his hand with the life of all passions, the blossoming of all delights and the burden of all vices. he nas created bodies that touch each other all over and cling together like animals bitten into each other, that fall into the depth of oneness like a single organism; bodies that listen like faces and lift themselves like arms; chains of bodies, garlands and tendrils and heavy clusters of bodies into which sin's sweetness rises out of the roots of pain. leonardo only with equal power has thus joined men together in his grandiose representation of the end of the world. in his work as in this are those who throw themselves into the abyss in order to forget the great grief, and those who shatter their children's heads lest they should grow to experience the great woe. the army of these figures became much too numerous to fit into the frame and wings of the "gates of hell." rodin made choice after choice and eliminated everything that was too solitary to subject itself to the great totality; everything that was not quite necessary was rejected. he made the figures and groups find their own places; he observed the life of the people that he had created, listened to them and left every one to his will. thus year after year the world of this gate grew. its surface to which plastic forms were attached began to live. and as the reliefs became softer and softer the excitement of the figures died away into the surface. in the frame there is from both sides an ascension, a mutual uplifting; in the wings of the gates the predominating motion is a falling, gliding and precipitating. the wings recede somewhat and their upper edge is separated from the projecting edge of the cross-frame by a large surface. before the silent, closed room of this surface is placed the figure of "the thinker," the man who realizes the greatness and terror of the spectacle about him, because he _thinks_ it. he sits absorbed and silent, heavy with thought: with all the strength of an acting man he thinks. his whole body has become head and all the blood in his veins has become brain. he occupies the center of the gate. above him, on the top of the frame, are three male figures; they stand with heads bent together as though overlooking a great depth; each stretches out an arm and points toward the abyss which drags them ever downward. the thinker must bear this weight within himself. among the groups and figures that have been modeled for this gate are many of great beauty. it is impossible to enumerate all of them as it is impossible to describe them. rodin himself once said that he would have to speak for one year in order to recreate one of his works in words. these small figures which are preserved in plaster, bronze and stone, like some animal figures of the antique, give the impression of being quite large. there is in rodin's studio the cast of a panther, a greek work hardly as large as a hand (the original of which is in the cabinet of medallions in the national library of paris); as one stands in front of this beast and looks under its body into the room formed by the four strong, supple paws, one seems to look into the depth of an indian stone temple. as this work grows and extends itself to the greatness of its suggestion, so the small plastic figures of rodin convey the sense of largeness. by the play of innumerably many surfaces and by the perfect and decisive planes, he creates an effect of magnitude. the atmosphere about these figures is like that which surrounds rocks. an upward sweep of lines seems to lift up the heavens, the flight of their fall to tear down the stars. at this time, perhaps, the danaide was created, a figure that has thrown itself from a kneeling position down into a wealth of flowing hair. it is wonderful to walk slowly about this marble, to follow the long line that curves about the richly unfolded roundness of the back to the face that loses itself in the stone as though in a great weeping, and to the hand which like a broken flower speaks softly once more of life that lies deep under the eternal ice of the block. "illusion," the daughter of icarus, is a luminous materialization of a long, helpless fall. the beautiful group that is called "l'homme et sa pensée" is the representation of a man who kneels and with the touch of his forehead upon the stone before him awakens the silent form of a woman who remains imprisoned in the stone. in this group one is impressed with the expression of the inseparableness with which the man's thought clings to his forehead; for it is his thought that lives and is always present before him, the thought which takes shape in the stone. the work most nearly related to this in conception is the head that musingly and silently frees itself from a block. "la pensée" is a transcendent vision of life that rises slowly out of the heavy sleep of the stone. "the caryatid" is no more the erect figure that bears lightly or unyieldingly the heaviness of the marble. a woman's form kneels crouching, as though bent by the burden, the weight of which sinks with a continuous pressure into all the figure's limbs. upon every smallest part of this body the whole stone lies like the insistence of a will that is greater, older and more powerful, a pressure, which it is the fate of this body to continue to endure. the figure bears its burden as we bear the impossible in dreams from which we can find no escape. even the sinking together of the failing figure expresses this pressure; and when a greater weariness forces the body down to a lying posture, it will even then still be under the pressure of this weight, bearing it without end. such is the "caryatid." one may always explain, accompany and surround rodin's works with thoughts. for all to whom simple contemplation is too difficult and unaccustomed a road to beauty there are other roads, detours leading to meanings that are noble, great, complete. the infinite correctness of these creations, the perfect balance of all their movements, the wonderful inward justice of their proportions, their penetration into life--all that makes them beautiful--gives them the strength of being unsurpassable materializations of the ideas which the master called into being when he named them. rodin lived near his work and, like the custodian of a museum, continuously evolved from it new meanings. one learns much from his interpretations but in the contemplation of these works, alone and undisturbed, one gathers a still fuller and richer understanding of them. where the first suggestion comes from some definite subject, where an ancient tale, a passage from a poem, an historical scene or some real person is the inspiration, the subject matter transforms itself more and more into reality during the process of the work. translated into the language of the hands, the interpretations acquire entirely new characteristics which develop into plastic fulfilment. the drawings of rodin prepare the way for the sculptural work by transforming and changing the suggestions. in this art, too, rodin has cultivated his own methods of expression. the individuality of these drawings--there are many hundreds of them--presents an independent and original manifestation of his artistic personality. there are from an earlier period water colours with surprisingly strong effects of light and shade, such as the famous "homme au taureau", which reminds one of rembrandt. the head of the young "st. jean baptiste" and the shrieking mask for the "genius of war"--all these are sketches and studies which helped the artist to recognize the life of surfaces and their relationship to the atmosphere. there are drawings that are done with a direct certainty, forms complete in all their contours, drawn in with many quick strokes of the pen; there are others enclosed in the melody of a single vibrating outline. rodin, acceding to the wish of a collector, has illustrated with his drawings one copy of the "fleurs du mal." to speak of expressing a fine understanding of baudelaire's verses, conveys no meaning; more is conveyed if it is recalled that these poems in their fulness do not admit of supplement. yet in spite of this one feels an enhancement where rodin's lines interpret this work, such is the measure of the overpowering beauty of these drawings. the pen and ink drawing that is placed opposite the poem "la mort des pauvres" exceeds these great verses with so simple and ever-growing a breadth of meaning that the sweep of its lines seems to include the universal. this quality of enhancement is also found in the dry-point etchings, in which the course of infinitely tender lines appears to flow with an absolute accuracy of movement over the underlying essence of form, like the outer markings of some beautiful crystalline thing. the strange documents of the momentary and of the unnoticeably passing, originated at this time. rodin assumed that if caught quickly, the simple movements of the model when he believes himself unobserved, contain the strength of an expression which is not surmised, because one is not wont to follow it with intense and constant attention. by not permitting his eyes to leave the model for an instant, and by allowing his quick and trained hand free play over the drawing paper rodin seized an enormous number of never before observed and hitherto unrecorded gestures of which the radiating force of expression was immense. conjoining movements that had been overlooked and unrecognized as a whole, represented and contained all the directness, force and warmth of animal life. a brush full of ochre outlined the contours with quickly changing accentuation, modeled the enclosed surface with such incredible force that the drawing appears like a figure in terra cotta. and again a new depth was discovered full of unsurmised life; a depth over which echoing steps had passed and which gave its waters only to him whose hands possessed the magic wand that disclosed its secret. in portraiture the pictorial expression of the theme belonged to the preparation from which rodin proceeded slowly to the completion of the work. for erroneous as it is to see in rodin's plastic art a kind of impressionism, it is the multitude of precisely and boldly seized impressions that is always the great treasure from which he ultimately chooses the important and necessary, in order to comprehend his work in its perfect synthesis. as he proceeds from the bodies to the faces it must seem to him as though he stepped from a wind-swept distance into a room in which many men are gathered. here everything is crowded and dim and the mood of an interior predominates under the arches of the brow and in the shadows of the mouth. over the bodies there is always change, an ebb and flood like the dashing of waves. the faces possess an atmosphere like that of rooms in which many things have happened, joyous and tragic incidents, experiences deadening or full of expectation. no event has entirely passed, none has taken the place of the other, one has been placed beside the other and has remained there and has withered like a flower in a glass. but he who comes from the open out of the great wind brings distance into the room. the mask of "the man with the broken nose" was the first portrait that rodin modeled. in this work his individual manner of portraying a face is entirely formed. one feels his admitted devotion to reality, his reverence for every line that fate has drawn, his confidence in life that creates even where it disfigures. in a kind of blind faith he sculptured "l'homme au nez cassé" without asking who the man was who lived again in his hands. he made this mask as god created the first man, without intention of presenting anything save life itself--immeasurable life. but he returned to the faces of men with an ever-growing, richer and greater knowledge. he could not look upon their features without thinking of the days that had left their impress upon them, without dwelling upon the army of thoughts that worked incessantly upon a face, as though it could never be finished. from a silent and conscientious observation of life, the mature man, at first groping and experimenting, became more and more sure and audacious in his understanding and interpretation of the script with which the faces were covered. he did not give rein to his imagination, he did not invent, he did not neglect for a moment the hard struggle with his tools. it would have been easy to surmount, as if with wings, these difficulties. he walked side by side with his work over the far and distant stretches that had to be covered, like the plough-man behind his plough. while he traced his furrows, he meditated over his land, the depth of it, the sky above it, the flights of the winds and the fall of the rains; considered all that existed and passed by and returned and ceased not to be. he recognized in all this the eternal, and becoming less and less perplexed by the many things, he perceived the one great thing for which grief was good, and heaviness promised maternity, and pain became beautiful. the interpretation of this perception began with the portraits, and from that time penetrated ever deeper into his work. it is the last step, the last cycle in his development. rodin began slowly and with infinite precaution entered upon this new road. he advanced from surface to surface following nature's laws. nature herself pointed out to him, as it were, the places in which he saw more than was visible. he evolved one great simplification out of many confusions as christ brought unity into the confusion of a guilty people by the revelation of a sublime parable. he fulfilled an intention of nature, completed something that was helpless in its growth. he disclosed the coherences as a clear evening following a misty day unveils the mountains which rise in great waves out of the far distance. full of the vital abundance of his knowledge, he penetrated into the faces of those that lived about him, like a prophet of the future. this intuitive quality gives to his portraits the clear accuracy and at the same time the prophetic greatness which rises to such indescribable perfection in the figures of victor hugo and of balzac. to create an image meant to rodin to seek eternity in a countenance, that part of eternity with which the face was allied in the great course of things eternal. each face that he has modeled he has lifted out of the bondage of the present into the freedom of the future, as one holds a thing up toward the light of the sky in order to understand its purer and simpler forms. rodin's conception of art was not to beautify or to give a characteristic expression, but to separate the lasting from the transitory, to sit in judgment, to be just. beside the etchings, his portrait work embraces a great number of finished and masterly drawings. there are busts in plaster, in bronze, in marble and in sand-stone, heads and masks in terra cotta. portraits of women occur again and again through all the periods of his work. the famous bust of the luxembourg is one of the earliest. this bust is full of individual life, of a certain beautiful, womanly charm, but it is surpassed in simplicity and concentration by many later works. it is, perhaps, the only bust which possesses a beauty not absolutely characteristic of rodin's work. this portrait survives partly because of a certain graciousness which has been hereditary for centuries in french plastic art. it shines somewhat with the elegance of the inferior sculptures of french tradition; it is not quite free from that gallant conception of the "belle femme" beyond which the serious and the deeply penetrating work of rodin grew so quickly. one should remember that he had to overcome the ancestral conception, had to suppress an inborn capacity for this flowing grace in order to begin his work quite simply. he must not cease to be a frenchman; the master builders of the cathedrals were also frenchmen. his later sculptures of women have a different beauty, more deeply founded and less traditional. rodin has, for the most part, executed portraits of foreign women, especially american women. there are among these busts some of wonderful craftsmanship, marbles that are like pure and perfect antique cameos. faces whose smiles play softly over the features like veils that seem to rise and fall with every breath; strangely half-closed lips and eyes which seem to look dreamily into the bright effulgence of an everlasting moonlit night. to rodin the face of a woman seems to be a part of her beautiful body. he conceives the eyes of the face to be eyes of the body, and the mouth the mouth of the body. when he creates both face and body as a whole, the face radiates so vital an expression of life that these portraits of women seem prophetic. the portraits of men are different. the essence of a man can be more easily imagined to be concentrated within the limits of his face; there are moments of calm and of inward excitement in which all life seems to have entered into his face. rodin chooses or rather creates these moments when he models a man's portrait. he searches far back for individuality or character, does not yield to the first impression, nor to the second, nor to any of those following. he observes and makes notes; he records almost unnoticeable moments, turnings and semi-turnings of many profiles from many perspectives. he surprises his model in relaxation and in effort, in his habitual as well as in his impulsive expressions; he catches expressions which are but suggested. he comprehends transitions in all their phases, knows from whence the smile comes and why it fades. the face of man is to him like a scene in a drama in which he himself takes part. nothing that occurs is indifferent to him or escapes him. he does not urge the model to tell him anything, he does not wish to know aught save that which he sees. he sees everything. thus a long time passes during the creation of each work. the conception evolves partly through drawings, seized with a few strokes of the pen or a few lines of the brush, partly from memory. for rodin has trained his memory to be a means of assistance as dependable as it is comprehensive. during the hours in which the model poses he perceives much more than he can execute. often after the model has left him the real work begins to take form from out the fulness of his memory. the impressions do not change within it but accustom themselves to their dwelling-place and rise from it into his hands as though they were the natural gestures of these hands. this manner of work leads to an intense comprehension of hundreds and hundreds of moments of life. and such is the impression produced by these busts. the many wide contrasts and the unexpected changes which comprise man and man's continuous development here join together with an inner strength. all the heights and depths of being, all the climates of temperament of these men are concentrated and unfold themselves on the hemispheres of their heads. there is the bust of dalou in whom a nervous fatigue vibrates side by side with a tenacious energy. there is henry rochefort's adventurous mask, and there is octave mirabeau in whom behind a man of action dawns a poet's dream and longing, and puvis de chavannes, and victor hugo whom rodin knows so well; and there is above all the indescribably beautiful bronze portrait bust of the painter jean paul laurens which is, perhaps, the most beautiful thing in the luxembourg museum. this bust is penetrated by such deep feeling, there is such tender modeling of the surface, it is so fine in carriage, so intense in expression, so moved and so awake that it seems as if nature had taken this work out of the sculptor's hands to claim it as one of her most precious possessions. the gleam and sparkle of the metal that breaks like fire through the smoke-black patina coating adds much to make perfect the unique beauty of this work. there is also a bust of bastien lepage, beautiful and melancholy with the expression of the suffering of the man whose realization is a continuous departure from his conception. this bust was executed for damvillers, the little home village of the painter, and was placed there in the churchyard as a monument. in their breadth of conception these busts of rodin's have something of the monumental in them. to this quality is added a greater simplification of the surfaces, and a still more severe choice of the necessary with a view to perspective and placement. the monuments which rodin has created approach more and more these requirements. he began with the monument of claude gelée for nancy, and there is a steep ascent from this first interesting production to the grandiose triumph of balzac. several of the monuments by rodin were sent to america. the most mature of them was destroyed during the disturbances in chile before it reached its destination. this was the equestrian statue of general lynch. like the lost masterpiece of leonardo, which it resembled perhaps in the force of expression and in the wonderfully vital unity of man and horse, this statue was not to be preserved. a small copy in plaster in rodin's museum at meudon shows that it was the plastic portrait of a lean man who rises commandingly in his saddle, not in the brutal, tyrannical manner of a condottiere but with the nervous excitement of one who exercises the power of command only in office but who is not ordinarily wont to use this authority. the forward-pointing hand of the general rises out of the mass of the monument, out of man and animal. this gesture of command gives to the statue of victor hugo its memorable power and majesty. the gesture of the aged man's strong, live hand raised commandingly toward the ocean does not come from the poet alone but descends from the summit of the whole group as though from a mountain on which it had prayed before it spoke. victor hugo is here the exile, the solitary of guernsey. the muses that surround him are like thoughts of his solitude become visible. rodin has conveyed this impression through the intensification and concentration of the figures about the poet. by converging the points of contact rodin has succeeded in creating the impression that these wonderfully vibrant figures are parts of the sitting man. they move about him like great gestures made some time during his life, gestures that were so beautiful and young that a goddess granted them the grace not to perish but to endure for ever in the forms of beautiful women. rodin made sketches and studies of the figure of the poet. at the time of the receptions in the hotel lusignan he observed from a window and made notes of hundreds and hundreds of movements and of the changing expressions of the animated face of the old man. these preparations resulted in the several portraits of hugo which rodin modeled. the monument itself embodied a still deeper interpretation. all these single impressions he gathered together, and as homer created a perfect poem out of many rhapsodies, so he created from all the pictures in his memory, this one portrait. and to this last picture he gave the greatness of the legendary. myth-like it might return to a fantastically towering rock in the sea in whose strange forms far-removed peoples see life asleep. the most supreme instance of rodin's power of exalting a past event to the height of the imperishable, whenever historical subjects or forms demand to live again in his art, is found perhaps in "the citizens of calais." the suggestion for this group was taken from a few passages in the chronicles of froissart that tell the story of the city of calais at the time it was besieged by the english king, edward the third. the king, not willing to withdraw from the city, then on the verge of starvation, ultimately consents to release it if six of its most noble citizens deliver themselves into the hands "that he may do with them according to his will." he demands that they leave the city bare-headed, clad only in their shirts, with a rope about their necks and the keys of the city and of the citadel in their hands. the chronicler describes the scene in the city. he relates how the burgomaster, messire jean de vienne, orders the bells to be rung and the citizens to assemble in the market place. they hear the final message and wait in expectation and in silence. then heroes rise among them, the chosen ones, who feel the call to die. the wailing and weeping of the multitude rises from the words of the chronicler, who seems to be touched for the moment and to write with a trembling pen. but he composes himself once more and mentions four of the heroes by name; two of the names he forgets. he says that one man was the wealthiest citizen of the city and that another possessed authority and wealth and "had two beautiful maidens for daughters"; of the third he only knows that he was rich in possessions and heritage, and of the fourth that he was the brother of the third. he reports that they removed all their clothing save their shirts, that they tied ropes about their necks and thus departed with the keys of the city and of the citadel. he tells how they came to the king's camp and of how harshly the king received them and how the executioner stood beside them when the king, at the request of the queen, gave them back their lives. "he listened to his wife," says froissart, "because she was very pregnant." the chronicle does not continue further. for rodin this was sufficient material. he felt immediately that there was a moment in this story when something portentous took place, something independent of time and place, something simple, something great. he concentrated all his attention upon the moment of the departure. he saw how the men started on their way, he felt how through each one of them pulsated once more his entire past life, he realized how each one stood there prepared to give that life for the sake of the old city. six men rose before him, of whom no two were alike, only two brothers were among them between whom there was, possibly, a certain similarity. but each of them had resolved to live his last hour in his own way, to celebrate it with his soul and to suffer for it with his body, which clung to life. rodin then no longer saw the forms of these men. gestures rose before him, gestures of renunciation, of farewell, of resignation. gestures over gestures. he gathered them together and gave them form. they thronged about him out of the fulness of his knowledge, a hundred heroes rose in his memory and demanded to be sacrificed. and he concentrated this hundred into six. he modeled them each by himself in heroic size to represent the greatness of their resolution, modeled them nude in the appeal of their shivering bodies. he created the old man with loose-jointed hanging arms and heavy dragging step, and gave him the worn-out walk of old men and an expression of weariness that flows over his face into the beard. he created the man that carries the key, the man who would have lived for many years to come, but whose life is condensed into this sudden last hour which he can hardly bear. his lips are tightly pressed together, his hands bite into the key. there is fire in his strength and it burns in his defiant bearing. he created the man who holds his bent head with both hands to compose himself, to be once more alone. he created the two brothers, one of whom looks backward while the other bends his head with a movement of resolution and submission as though he offered it to the executioner. he created the man with the vague gesture whom gustave geffroy has called "le passant". this man moves forward, but he turns back once more, not to the city, not to those who are weeping, and not to those who go with him: he turns back to himself. his right arm is raised, bent, vacillating. his hands open in the air as though to let something go, as one gives freedom to a bird. this gesture is symbolic of a departure from all uncertainty, from a happiness that has not yet been, from a grief that will now wait in vain, from men who live somewhere and whom he might have met some time, from all possibilities of to-morrow and the day after to-morrow; and from death which he had thought far distant, that he had imagined would come mildly and softly and at the end of a long, long time. this figure, if placed by itself in a dim, old garden, would be a monument for all who have died young. thus rodin has made each of these men live again the last concentrated moment of life. each figure is majestic in its simple greatness. they bring to mind donatello and, perhaps, claux sluter and his prophets in the chartreuse of dijon. it seems at first as though rodin had done nothing more than gather them together. he has given them the same attire, the shirt and the rope, and has placed them together in two rows: the three that are in the first row, are about to start forward, the other three turn to the right and follow behind. the place that was decided upon for the erection of the monument was the market place of calais, the same spot from which the tragic procession had formerly started. there the silent group was to stand, raised by a low step above the common life of the market place as though the fearful departure were always pending. the city of calais refused to accept a low pedestal because it was contrary to custom. rodin then suggested that a square tower, two stories high and with simply-cut walls, be built near the ocean and there the six citizens should be placed, surrounded by the solitude of the wind and the sky. this plan, as might have been expected, was declined, although it was in harmony with the character of the work. if the trial had been made, there would have been an incomparable opportunity for observing the unity of the group, which, although it consisted of single figures, held closely together as a whole. the figures do not touch one another, but stand side by side like the last trees of a hewn-down forest united only by the surrounding atmosphere. from every point of view the gestures stand out clear and great from the dashing waves of the contours; they rise and fall back into the mass of stone like flags that are furled. the entire impression of this group is precise and clear. like all of rodin's compositions, this one, too, appears to be a pulsating world enclosed within its own boundaries. beside the points of actual contact there is a kind of contact produced by the surrounding atmosphere which diminishes, influences and changes the character of the group. contact may exist between objects far distant from one another, like the conflux of forms such as one sees sometimes in masses of clouds, where the interjacent air is no separating abyss, but rather a transition, a softly-graduated conjunction. to rodin the participation of the atmosphere in the composition has always been of greatest importance. he has adapted all his figures, surface after surface, to their particular space and environment; this gives them the greatness and independence, the marvelous completeness and life which distinguishes them from all other works. when interpreting nature he found, as he intensified an expression, that, at the same time, he enhanced the relationship of the atmosphere to his work to such a degree that the surrounding air seemed to give more life, more passion, as it were, to the embraced surfaces. a similar effect may be observed in some of the animals on the cathedrals to which the air relates itself in strange fashion; it seems to become calm or storm according to whether it sweeps over emphasized or level surfaces. when rodin concentrates the surfaces of his works into culminating points, when he uplifts to greater height the exalted or gives more depth to a cavity, he creates an effect like that which atmosphere produces on monuments that have been exposed to it for centuries. the atmosphere has traced deeper lines upon these monuments, has shadowed them with veils of dust, has seasoned them with rain and frost, with sun and storm, and has thus endowed them with endurance so that they may remain imperishable through many slowly-passing dusks and dawn. this effect of atmosphere, which is the monumental principle of rodin's art, is wonderfully achieved in "the citizens of calais." these sculptural forms seen from a distance are not only surrounded by the immediate atmosphere, but by the whole sky; they catch on their surfaces as with a mirror its moving distances so that a great gesture seems to live and to force space to participate in its movement. this impression is conveyed also by the figure of the slender youth who kneels with outstretched, imploring arms. rodin has called this figure "the prodigal son," but it has recently received the name--from whom or from whence no one knows--of "prière". the gesture of this figure raises it even beyond this name. this is no son kneeling before his father. a god is necessary to him who thus implores and in him are all who need this god. this prayer in stone reaches out to such distance that the figure seems to be withdrawn into a great isolation. such, too, is the "balzac" to whom rodin has given a greatness which, perhaps, overtowers the figure of the writer. rodin has seized upon the essence of balzac's being, has not confined himself to the limitations of his personality, but has gone beyond into his most extreme and distant possibilities. these mighty contours might have been formed in the tombstones of by-gone nations. for years rodin was entirely absorbed in this figure. he visited balzac's home, he went to the landscapes of the touraine that rise continually in balzac's books; he read his letters, he studied the portraits of balzac and he read his works again and again. on all the intricate and intertwining roads of these works he was met by the people of balzac, whole families and generations, a world that still seemed to receive life from its creator. rodin saw that all these thousands of people, no matter what their occupation or their life, contained him who had created them. as one may perceive the character and the mood of a play through the faces of an audience, so he sought in all these faces him who still lived in them. he believed like balzac in the reality of his world and he became for a time a part of it. he lived as though balzac had created him also, and he dwelt unnoticed among the multitude of his people. thus he gathered his impressions. the actual world appeared at this time vague and unimportant. the daguerreotypes of balzac offered only general suggestions and nothing new. the face which they represented was the one he had known from boyhood days. the one that had been in the possession of stéphan mallarmé, which showed balzac without coat and suspenders, was the only one which was more characteristic. reminiscences of contemporaries helped him; the words of théophile gautier, the notes of the goncourts, and the beautiful essay by lamartine. beside these pen portraits there was only the bust by david in the comédie française and a small picture by louis boulanger. completely filled with the spirit of balzac, rodin, with the aid of these auxiliaries, began to model the figure of the writer. he used living models of similar proportions and completed seven perfectly executed portraits in different positions. the models were thick-set, medium-sized men with heavy limbs and short arms. after these studies he created a balzac much like the one in nadar's daguerreotype. but he felt this was not final. he returned to the description of lamartine, to the lines: "he had the face of an element," and "he possessed so much soul that his heavy body seemed not to exist." rodin felt that a great part of his task was suggested in these sentences. he approached nearer its solution by dothing the seven figures with monk's cowls, the kind of garment that balzac was wont to wear while at work. he created a balzac with a hood, a garb much too intimate, the figure much too retired into the stillness of its disguise. rodin slowly developed form after form. at last he saw balzac. he saw a mighty, striding figure that lost all its heaviness in the fall of its ample cloak. the hair brisded from the nape of the powerful neck. and backward against the thick locks leaned the face of a visionary in the intoxication of his dream, a face flashing with creative force: the face of an element. this was balzac in the fulness of his productivity, the founder of generations, the waster of fates. this was the man whose eyes were those of a seer, whose visions would have filled the world had it been empty. this was the balzac that creation itself had formed to manifest itself and who was creation's boastfulness, vanity, ecstasy and intoxication. the thrown-back head crowned the summit of this figure as lightly as a ball is upheld by the spray of a fountain. there was no sense of weight, but a magnificent vitality in the free, strong head. rodin had seen in a moment of large comprehension and tragic exaggeration his balzac and thus he created him. the vision did not fade, it only changed. the comprehensiveness which gave breadth to rodin's monumental works gave to the others also a new beauty; it gave them a peculiar nearness. there are among the more recent works small groups that are striking because of their concentration and the wonderful treatment of the marble. the stones preserve, even in the midst of the day, that mysterious shimmer which white things exhale in the twilight. this radiance is not the result of the vibrant quality of the points of contact alone, but is due in part to the flat ribbands of stone that lie between the figures like small bridges which connect one form with the other over the deepest clefts in the modeling. these ribband fillings are not incidental, but are placed there to prevent too sharp an outline. they preserve in the forms that otherwise would appear too clear cut an effect of roundness; they gather the light like vases that gently and continuously overflow. when rodin seeks to condense the atmosphere about the surfaces of his works, the stone appears to almost dissolve in the air, the marble is the compact, fruitful kernel, and its last softest contour the vibrating air. the light touching the marble loses its will, it does not penetrate into the stone, but nestles close, lingers, dwells in the stone. this closing up of unessential clefts is an approach to the relief. rodin planned a great work in relief in which there were to be effects of light such as he achieved in the smaller groups. he constructed a column about which a broad ribband of relief winds upward. this encircling ribband conceals a staircase which ascends under arched vaultings. the figures in this ascending relief are modeled and placed so as to receive an effect of life and vibrance from the atmosphere and lighting. a plastic art will some time rise which will disclose the secret of twilight as it is related to those sculptures that stand in the vestibules of old cathedrals. this "monument of work" represents a history of work which develops upon these slowly rising reliefs. the long line begins in a lower chamber or crypt with the figures of those who have grown old in mines. the procession traces its steps through all the phases of work, from those who work in the roar and red glow of furnaces to those who work in silence in the light of a great idea: from the hammers to the brains. two figures guard the entrance, day and night, and upon the summit of this tower stand two winged forms to symbolize the blessings descending from the luminous heights. rodin did not conceive work as a monumental figure or a great gesture; for work is something near, it takes place in the shops, in the rooms, in the heads, in the dark. he knows, for he, too, worked; he worked incessantly; his life passed like a single working day. rodin had several studios, some that are well-known in which visitors and letters found him. there were others in out-of-the-way, secluded places of which no one knew. these rooms were like cells, bare, poor and grey with dust, but their poverty was like the great, grey poverty of god out of which trees bud in march. something of the spring was in each of these rooms, a silent promise and a deep seriousness. in one of these studios "the tower of work" has risen. now that it is accomplished, it is time to speak of its significance. some time after this monument has been erected it will be recognized that rodin willed nothing that was beyond his art. the body of work here manifests itself as did formerly the body of love:--it is a new revelation of life. this creator lived so completely in his conceptions, so entirely in the depths of his work, that inspiration or revelation came to him only through the medium of his art. new life in the ultimate sense meant to him, new surfaces, new gestures. thus to him the meaning of life became simple, he could err no more. with his own development rodin has given an impetus to all the arts in this confused age. some time it will be realized what has made this great artist so supreme. he was a worker whose only desire was to penetrate with all his forces into the humble and difficult significance of his tools. therein lay a certain renunciation of life, but in just this renunciation lay his triumph, for life entered into his work.