forest trunks and meeting branches were more or less consciously
imaged in their piers and vaultings. In the temple-palaces of
Egypt, one of the regular architectural members, the sustaining pier,
is often systematically wrought in the actual likeness of a conventionalized
cluster of lotus stems, with lotus flowers for the capital.
When we come to the fashion, not rare in Greek architecture, of
carving this same sustaining member, the column, in complete human
likeness, and employing caryatids, canephori, atlases or the like,
to support the entablature of a building, it then becomes difficult
to say whether we have to do with a work of architecture or of
sculpture. The case, at any rate, is different from that in which
the sculptor is called in to supply surface decoration to the various
members of a building, or to fill with the products of his own art
spaces in the building specially contrived and left vacant for that
purpose. When the imitative feature is in itself an indispensable
member of the architectural construction, to architecture rather
than sculpture we shall probably do best to assign it.
Defining architecture, then (apart from its utility, which for the present we leave out of consideration), as a shaping art, of which the function is to express and arouse emotion by combinations of ordered and decorated mass, we pass from the characteristics of the non-imitative to those Definition of architecture.of the imitative group of arts, namely sculpture, painting and poetry.
If we keep in mind the source and origin of these arts, we must remember what has already been observed, that they spring by no means from man’s love of imitation alone, but from his desire to record and commemorate experience, using the faculty of imitation as his means. Mnemosyne (Memory) The imitative arts are arts of record using imitation as their means. was in Greek tradition the mother of the Muses; imitation, in the sense above defined, is but their instrument. Hence we might think “arts of record” a better name for this group than arts of imitation. The answer is—but a large part of pure architecture is also commemorative; from the pyramids and obelisks of Egypt down there are many monuments in which the impulse of men to perpetuate their own or others’ memories has worked without any aid of imitation. Hence as the definition of a class of arts contrasted with architecture and music the name “arts of record” would fail; and we have to fall back on the current and established name of the “imitative arts.” In considering them we cannot do better than follow that Aristotelian division which describes each art according, first, to the objects which it imitates, and, secondly, to the means it employs.
Taking sculpture first, as imitating a smaller range of objects than the other two, and imitating them more completely: sculpture may have for the objects of its imitation the shapes of whatever things possess length, breadth and magnitude. For its means or instruments it has solid Sculpture as an imitative art.form, which the sculptor either carves out of a hard substance, as in the case of wood and stone, or models in a yielding substance, as in the case of clay and wax, or casts in a dissolved or molten substance, as in the case of plaster and of metal in certain uses, or beats, draws or chases in a malleable and ductile substance, as in the case of metal in other uses, or stamps from dies or moulds, a method sometimes used in all soft or fusible materials. Thus a statue or statuette may either be carved straight out of a block of stone or wood, or first modelled in clay or wax, then moulded in plaster or some equivalent material, and then carved in stone or cast in bronze. A gem is wrought in stone by cutting and grinding. Figures in jeweller’s work are wrought by beating and chasing; a medallion by beating and chasing or else by stamping from a die; a coin by stamping from a die; and so forth. The process of modelling (Gr. πλάττειν) in a soft substance being regarded as the typical process of the sculptor, the name plastic art has been given to his operations in general.
In general terms, the task of sculpture is to imitate solid form with solid form. But sculptured form may be either completely or incompletely solid. Sculpture in completely solid form exactly reproduces, whether on the original or on a different scale, the relations or proportions of the object imitated Sculpture in the round and in relief. in the three dimensions of length, breadth and depth or thickness. Sculpture in incompletely solid form reproduces the proportions of the objects with exactness only so far as concerns two of its dimensions, namely, those of length and breadth; while the third dimension, that of depth or thickness, it reproduces in a diminished proportion, leaving it to the eye to infer, from the partial degree of projection given to the work, the full projection of the object imitated. The former, or completely solid kind of sculpture, is called sculpture in the round; its works stand free, and can be walked round and seen from all points. The latter, or incompletely solid kind of sculpture, is called sculpture in relief; its works do not stand free, but are engaged in or attached to a background, and can only be seen from in front. According, in the latter kind of sculpture, to its degree of projection from the background, a work is said to be in high or in low relief. Sculpture in the round and sculpture in relief are alike in this, that the properties of objects which they imitate are their external forms as defined by their outlines—that is, by the boundaries and circumscriptions of their masses—and their light and shade—the lights and shadows, that is, which diversify the curved surfaces of the masses in consequence of their alternations and gradations of projection and recession. But the two kinds of sculpture differ in this. A work of sculpture in the round imitates the whole of the outlines by which the object imitated is circumscribed in the three dimensions of space, and presents to the eye, as the object itself would do, a new outline succeeding the last every moment as you walk round it. Whereas a work of sculpture in relief imitates only one outline of any object; it takes, so to speak, a section of the object as seen from a particular point, and traces on the background the boundary-line of that particular section, merely suggesting, by modelling the surface within such boundary according to a regular, but a diminished, ratio of projection, the other outlines which the object would present if seen from all sides successively.
As sculpture in the round reproduces the real relations of a solid object in space, it follows that the only kind of object which it can reproduce with pleasurable effect according to the laws of regulated or rhythmical design must be one not too vast or complicated, one that can afford to be detached Subjects proper for sculpture in the round. and isolated from its surroundings, and of which all the parts can easily be perceived and apprehended in their organic relations. Further, it will need to be an object interesting enough to mankind in general to make them take delight in seeing it reproduced with all its parts in complete imitation. And again, it must be such that some considerable part of the interest lies in those particular properties of outline, play of surface, and light and shade which it is the special function of sculpture to reproduce. Thus a sculptured representation in the round, say, of a mountain with cities on it, would hardly be a sculpture at all; it could only be a model, and as a model might have value; but value as a work of fine art it could not have, because the object imitated would lack organic definiteness and completeness; it would lack universality of interest, and of the interest which it did possess, a very inconsiderable part would depend upon its properties of outline, surface, and light and shade. Obviously there is no kind of object in the world that so well unites the required conditions for pleasurable imitation in sculpture as the human body. It is at once the most complete of organisms, and the shape of all others the most subtle as well as the most intelligible in its outlines; the most habitually detached in active or stationary freedom; the most interesting to mankind, because its own; the richest in those particular effects, contours and modulations, contrasts, harmonies and transitions of modelled surface and circumscribing line, which it is the prerogative of sculpture to imitate. Accordingly the object of imitation for this art is pre-eminently the body of man or woman. That it has not been for the sake of representing men and women as such, but for the sake of representing gods in the likeness of men and women, that the human form has been most enthusiastically studied, does not affect this fact in the theory of the art, though it is a consideration of great importance in its history. Besides the human form, sculpture may imitate the forms of those of the lower animals whose physical endowments have something of a kindred perfection, with other natural or artificial objects as may be needed merely by way of accessory or symbol. The body must for the purposes of this art be divested of covering, or covered only with such tissues as reveal, translate or play about without concealing it. Chiefly in lands and ages where climate and social use have given the sculptor the opportunity of studying human forms so draped or undraped has this art attained perfection, and become exemplary and enviable to that of other races.
Relief sculpture is more closely connected with architecture than
the other kind, and indeed is commonly used in subordination to it.
But if its task is thus somewhat different from that of
sculpture in the round, its principal objects of imitation
are the same. The human body remains the principal
Subjects proper for sculpture
in relief.
theme of the sculptor in relief; but the nature of his art
allows, and sometimes compels, him to include other
objects in the range of his imitation. As he has not to
represent the real depth or projection of things, but only
to suggest them according to a ratio which he may fix himself, so
he can introduce into the third or depth dimension, thus arbitrarily
reduced, a multitude of objects for which the sculptor in the round,
having to observe the real ratio of the three dimensions, has no room.
He can place one figure in slightly raised outline emerging from
behind the more fully raised outline of another, and by the same
system can add to his representation rocks, trees, nay mountains
and cities and birds on the wing. But the more he uses this liberty
the less will he be truly a sculptor. Solid modelling, and real light
and shade, are the special means or instrument of effect which the
sculptor alone among imitative artists enjoys. Single outlines and
contours, the choice of one particular section and the tracing of its
circumscription, are means which the sculptor enjoys in common
with the painter or draughtsman. And indeed, when we consider
works executed wholly or in part in very low relief, whether Assyrian
battle-pieces and hunting-pieces in alabaster or bronze, or the
backgrounds carved in bronze, marble or wood by the Italian
sculptors who followed the example set by Ghiberti at the Renaissance,
we shall see that the principle of such work is not the principle
of sculpture at all. Its effect depends little on qualities of surface-light
and shadow, and mainly on qualities of contour, as traced by a
slight line of shadow on the side away from the light, and a slight
line of light on the side next to it. And we may fairly hesitate
whether we shall rank the artist who works on this principle, which
