The Crown of Wild Olive Part 27

168. 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 ordinary trained sculptor, or even a mechanical workman, could produce bas-relief; but the business is to carve a _round_ thing out of _flat_ thing; to carve an apple out of a biscuit!--to conquer, as a subtle Florentine has here conquered,[130]

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 s.p.a.ce of heavenly air behind all, out of a film of stone not the third of an inch thick where it is thickest.

169. 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.

170. 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 the scale,[131] say the depth of the 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.

171. 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!

172. 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 quant.i.ty "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 ma.s.s, 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.

173. Thus far, I have been speaking only of the laws of structure relating to the projection of the ma.s.s 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, enclosed each in a quatrefoil panel; the s.p.a.ces between this panel and the enclosing square being filled with sculptures of animals.

You cannot anywhere find a more lovely piece of fancy, or more ill.u.s.trative of the quant.i.ty of result that may be obtained with low and simple chiselling. 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 princ.i.p.al 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 playfullest beasts must never come out of their narrow corners. The attention with which s.p.a.ces of this kind are filled by the Gothic designers is not merely a beautiful compliance with architectural requirements, but a definite a.s.sertion 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 enclosed by limits approximately rectilinear, and in gracefullest branching often detach themselves from the right line only by curvature of extreme severity.

174 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 pa.s.sion 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 vigour 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 chiselling was done through the holes, or that they may see every monster white against black.

175. 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, caeteris 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:--

1st. 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.

2nd. Round Relief, in which, as in the best coins, the sculptured ma.s.s 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.

3rd. Edged Relief. Undercutting admitted, so as to throw out the forms against a background of shadow.

4th. 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.

176. 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--

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 projection 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 cla.s.ses 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XII.--BRANCH OF PHILLYREA. DARK PURPLE]

177. 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 imagine that work was easy; but judge for yourselves whether it be or not. In Plate XII., I have drawn, with approximate accuracy, a cl.u.s.ter 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 n.o.ble obedience to lovely laws than could be explained to you if I took twenty lectures to do it in, instead of one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 9.]

178. 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 tools exactly as a painter his pencil, and you may recognize the decision of his thought, and glow of his temper, no less in the workmans.h.i.+p than the design. The modern system of modelling 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 or power, and that nothing is looked for except mechanical polish.

179. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE XIII.--GREEK FLAT RELIEF AND SCULPTURE BY EDGED INCISION.]

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,[132] 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 modelled 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 n.o.ble 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 St'a Maria Novella;[133] 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.

180. 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 ploughshare.

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 ploughing 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 ploughing 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;[134] you will recognize one law of right, p.r.o.nouncing 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 colour 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: chara.s.so];--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 fruitfullest, or the fatallest of all ploughing 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 chara.s.setai 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 colours, and engraved the just Characters, of aeonian life.

FOOTNOTES:

[126] 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 gla.s.s 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."

[127] Such as the sculptureless arch of Waterloo Bridge, for instance, referred to in the Third Lecture, - 84.

[128] 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, 1870.)

[129] This relief is now among the other casts which I have placed in the lower school in the University galleries.

[130] The reference is to a cast from a small and low relief of Florentine work in the Kensington Museum.

[131] 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.

[132] 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.

[133] These two marbles will always, henceforward, be sufficiently accessible for reference in my room at Corpus Christi College.

[134] 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.