The Crown of Wild Olive
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,[127] 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.
149. 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: Prometheia]; the personal
type of it is in Prometheus, and all the first power of [Greek: techne],
is from him, as compared to the weakness of days when men without
foresight "[Greek: ephyron eike 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.
150. 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.
151. 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 unctious
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 colour 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.
152. 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."
153. Sculpture in clay will accordingly include all cast brick-work,
pottery, and tile-work[128]--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.
154. 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.
155. 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.
1. That the work is to be with tools of men.
2. That it is to be in natural materials.
3. That it is to exhibit the virtues of those materials, and aim at no
quality inconsistent with them.
4. 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.
156. 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 chiselling 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.
157. 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 colour 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. Verrochio'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 goldsmith's 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. 8, used
to close small apertures in countries possessing any good primitive
style of iron-work, formed by alternate cuts on its sides, and the
bending down of the several portions. The ordinary domestic window
balcony of Verona is formed by mere ribands 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.
158. 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.
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 honour 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.
159. C. By the true "Providence" of Nature, the rock which is thus
submissive has been in some places stained with the fairest colours, and
in others blanched into the fairest absence of colour, 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