Sculpture
the art of cutting or carving any material so as to represent so as to rep represent form. Sculpture may be broadly divided be broadly lly divided into relievo and round. In the former, single figures or groups are represented as more or less raised, but without being entirely detached from a background.
According to the latter method, insulated figures, such as statues, or collections, or groups, are made, so as to be entirely independent of a background.
The origin of sculpture is lost in antiquity. An admirable material for early effort was found in clay, SO widely difso widely diffused in many lands, to which, as knowledge advanced, were added wax, gesso, marble, alabaster, bronze, etc. Hence the rudiments of sculpture are found among all races of mankind. The idolatry of The ido idolatry of the Old World gave it a great impulse, from the necessity which it produced of representing gods. The history of sculpture is almost the history of religion. In the inspired writings, the Israelites are repeatedly exhorted to turn away from the worship of images, the sculptured works of their own hands. Sculptured works have been found in the most ancient Hindu caverns and grotto temples. In the ruins of Persepolis there are many examples attesting to the fact that the Persians possessed many works of sculpture, yet they never carved the semblance of the human form. Sculpture flourished in Assyria. The museums of London and Paris contain colossal slabs, the dates of which range from the time of Sardanapalus, 930 B. c., to the destruction of Nineveh, 625 B. C. The Egyptians were the first who elevated sculpture almost to pure art. In Greece the art of sculpture soon rose superior to all those impediments which trammeled and restricted its advancement in other countries.
The Greeks had an intuitive sympathy with beauty, either in poetry, painting, or sculpture. Sculpture in Greece, as Sculpture in G elsewhere, had its beginning in very rude forms. At first the symbols of divinity were little more than rude quadrangular blocks of stone.
Between the 9th and 7th centuries B. C. the Greeks had frequent intercourse with the commercial Phœnicians. From this nation the Greeks bor- SCULPTURE Till the time rowed their Herme, or god of roads and travelers; at first mere stone pillars. On these pillars a head was afterward carved, afterward carved , thus forming the origin of busts. Hands and feet were next added, a shield and spear were placed in the hands of the of statues; and thus the first semblance of Pallas originated.
Dædalus of Athens, the bodies or trunks of large statues were a mere cylindrical pillar, as in the Colossus of the Amyclean Apollo. Progressing still further, sculpture was called on to assist in the decoration of temples. Dædalus inaugurated a new era; and of his divine genius the Greeks said that he made statues walk, see, and speak. After this great master it was that all artists were symbolically termed Dædalides, the sons of Dædalus. Henceforth, ancient Greek art may be divided into two styles: the Old Attic, and the Æginetic . However, the true, the ideal style of Greek art was not inaugurated till the time of Phidias.
This great genius lived in the time of Pericles, the age of classic models. For the Parthenon at Athens, Phidias wrought the statue of Minerva, and at Elis he set up his other great masterpiece, the famous Olympian Jupiter. Both were executed in ivory and gold. The god Jupiter was 40 feet high. This statue existed till the year 475 of our era, when it was destroyed by fire at Constantinople.
Besides these great works he made a statue of Pallas in brass, for Athens, the Venus Urania, the Nemesis in the temple at Marathon, and an Amazon, famed throughout Greece for the beauty of her limbs. Alcamenes of Africa, and Agoracritus of Paros, were his favorite disciples. The most famous works of Alcamenes were his Mars, Cupid, Venus, and Vulcan. It was said that Agoracritus was even superior to Alcamenes, and when he contended with the latter in the execution of a statue of Venus the Athenians only adjudged the prize to Alcamenes out of partiality for their fellow-citizen. According to Varro, the Venus of Agoracritus was the finest ever wrought.
Polycletus of Argos was the author of the work deemed worthy of being ranked as the companion to the Jupiter of Phidias.
This was the celebrated statue of Juno.
Myron of Eleutheræ, in Bœotia, was the great rival of Polycletus. Despising the soft and graceful forms which his contemporary sculptor loved to represent, Myron sought his models in the brawny athlete. He sculptured the ideal Hercules, the Discobolus throwing the discus .
In one quality, however, he was surpassed by Pythagoras of Rhegium, who executed the ideal of Apollo, who, as an archer, has just shot the serpent Python. The finest statue possessed by the moderns is SCULPTURE an imitation of this great work, the Apollo Belvidere.
With Socrates, the sculptor of the Draped Graces, and Athenodorus and Nancydes, commenced the third epoch of Greek sculpture. It is generally known as the beautiful style, and Scopas, Lysippus, and Praxiteles, because they united beauty and grace, brought the art to its highest perfection. The finest works of Scopas were the Furious Bacchante, his Venus (the original, perhaps from which the Venus de Medici was copied), and the Triumph of Achilles, together with a number of charming combinations of Nereids and sea monsters. PRAXITELES (q. v.) wrought in bronze and marble. Till this sculptor ventured to carve a Venus nude, all statues of female divinities had been draped. The rival and contemporary of Praxiteles was Lysippus of Sicyon, who was the great master of portrait sculpture. He is said to have executed in bronze exclusively. Alexander the Great would permit no other artist to carve his likeness. He represented Alexander from his childhood to his manhood. Pliny declares that Lysippus executed as many as 610 works. His horses were very beautiful. The other great sculptors of this period were Euthycrates and Bedas, sons of Lysippus; Xenocrates, who wrote a treatise on sculpture; Chares of Lindus, who cast the famous Colossus of Rhodes; Agesander, Polydorus and Athenodorus of Rhodes, who executed the celebrated group of Laocoön; Glycon of Athens, who formed the Farnese Hercules at Naples; and Appollonius and Tauriscus, who made the Farnese Bull, also at Naples.
The beautiful fragment known as the Torso of the Belvidere, at Rome, and the Hermaphrodite at Paris, also belong to this era of Greek art. From an early period, and even during the best era of Greek art, the age of Phidias, the Greeks were accustomed to combine different marbles in the same work. The Greeks also painted their statues. The hair was often gilt, and even colored sometimes; the backgrounds of alti-relievi were painted in order to heighten the effect, and occasionally eyes of glass or silver were introduced.
The victorious Romans destroyed the existence of the arts in Greece; but all the great works in painting and sculpture were taken to Rome, and with these masterpieces the artists emigrated to the capital of their conquerors. The celebrated reclining statue of the Dying Cleopatra was executed in the reign of Augustus, and a son of Cleomenes the Athenian made a statue which is held by some to be a figure of Germanicus.
This work is now in the Louvre at Paris.
Sculpture flourished under the patronage SCULPTURE of Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Nero, Trajan, Adrian, and the Antonines. After Rome had been destroyed by the several inroads of the Northern nations, the finest productions of ancient art were demolished, and this work of destruction was consummated by the religious zeal of the primitive Christians, who swept away what remains there were of the statues of the Greek and Roman divinities.
Sculpture awoke to renewed life about the 10th or 11th century in Italy. Niccolo Pisano, who died 1278, is esteemed the "father of modern sculpture." Two of his finest compositions are the "Taking down from the Cross," in front of the Duomo of Luca, and the "Last Judgment and Punishment of the Wicked," in the cathedral of Siena. Luca della Robbia covered his beautiful terra-cotta models with a glaze which gave them the hardness of stone. Lorenzo Ghiberti and Donato di Betto Bardi (Donatello) were distinguished masters of sculpture.
Donatello (died 1466), enriched Florence, Genoa, and Venice with his works. During the 15th century Andrea Verrocchio, Andrea Ferracci, the two Pollajuoli, and Mino di Fiesole, were great masters.
Michelangelo Buonarotti was the greatest sculptor of this period. Baccio Bandinelli, born at Florence in 1493, attempted to become the rival of Michelangelo. A great anatomist, his style was rude and energetic. He restored the right arm of the Laocoön. Benvenuto Cellini was a Florentine sculptor; most of his finest large works, which were cast in bronze, are preserved in his native city.
The one celebrated female sculptor is Properzia di Rossi, of Bologna, who died at an early age in 1530.
To Flaxman, the English are indebted for founding on true principles the British school of sculpture. This great sculptor has had worthy followers in Sir R. Westmacott, Sir F. Chantrey, Bailey, Carew, Gibson, and Foley, Woolner, and Boehm.
Other important British sculptors are Thornycroft, Leighton, Simonds, Brock, Thornycroft, Ford, Frith, Gilbert, and Frampton. In France, Jean Goujon (died 1566) is the first distinguished sculptor. In the 17th century we have the brothers Marsy, Girardon, Falconet, Clodion, also Guillain, Franqueville, Anguier, and Puget. Of 18th century masters are Jean Antoine Houdon, Antoine Chaudet, J. Bosio, Pradier, Rude, Duvet, etc. Jean Baptiste Pigalle (died 1785), executed a Mercury and a Venus for the King of Prussia. David (d'Angers) and Pradier belonged to the French school of the 19th century, and, among later sculptors, Guillaume, Carpeaux, Bartholdi, Dubois, Chapu, Mercie, Barge, Fremiet, Dalou, Falquière, R Rodin, Bartholomé, Delarche and Wynant take high rank.
SCURVY Among modern German sculptors, Christian Rauch and Dannecker take high rank. Famous sculptors of more recent times are Schadow, Schilling, Begas, Stuck, Klinger, and Seffner. As Canova emancipated modern Italy from those false perceptions which had so long diverted the current of pure taste, so Thorwaldsen, the Danish sculptor, was superior to all his contemporaries in the grandeur of his form and in strength of expression. John Gibson was the most distinguished pupil of both Canova and Thorwaldsen. Few American sculptures worthy of note were executed previous to Greenough's time, but since his day the names of Hiram Powers, Crawford, Brown, Clevenger, Palmer, Miss Hosmer, Story, Saint Gaudens, Ward, MacMonnies, French, Hartley, Partridge, Manship, Herbert Adams, Bartlett, Bitter, Nichaus, Proctor, Barnard, Borglum, Lorado Taft, Akin, Aitken, French and Werneman have been added to the list of American sculptors.