The Crown of Wild Olive
most accomplished nations has been thus coloured, 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 enclosed by the scratched
outline are filled with colour, the colouring soon becomes a principal
means of effect; so that, in the engraving of an Egyptian-colour
bas-relief (S. 101), 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 coloured 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 colour, and
of colour only; a fact which the Greeks knew well; so that when it
becomes a question in the dialogue of Minos, "[Greek: tini onti te opsei
horatai ta hoomena]," the answer is "[Greek: aisthesei taute te dia ton
ophthalmon deloise hemin ta chromata]."--"What kind of power is the
sight with which we see things? It is that sense which, through the
eyes, can reveal _colours_ to us."
33. 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.
34. 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[114] 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' Athenen
koruphes edeiknye Zeus.]
But I will translate the passage from Lucian to you at length--it is in
every way profitable.
35. "There came to me, in the healing[115] 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 was 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:--
36. "'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_.[116] 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
marvelled at: therefore are these men worshipped with the gods.'"
37. 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, "worshipped 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
labour 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.
38. 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?"
39. 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:
ethos] 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.
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. Observe farther; the increasing truth in representation is
co-relative 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