IV. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF
SCULPTURE AND PAINTING
“If you know how to describe and write down the appearance of the forms, the painter can make them so that they appear enlivened with lights and shadows which create the very expression of the faces; herein you cannot attain with the pen where he attains with the brush.”
—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, p. 159.
Differences among the arts.—Each fine art possessing its distinctive line of appeal. This evidenced in the fact that it is rare to find an artist, practising one, adequately appreciating others. Tendency in artist and student alike to see the one art from within and appreciate its significance, the others from without and perceive their limitations. Evil of this. Great need that the artist should saturate himself with the material of other arts than his own. Thus need to see broadly and impersonally the meaning and function of each art in relation to the spirit of man and in relation to the other arts expressing the same universal basis.
The three questions: (1) What of the whole content of the human spirit does the particular art express? (2) What is the means and method of its expression? (3) What are its limitations?
Method of answering: not by philosophic theory, but by an open study of works of art in each field. A little first-hand study of art better worth while than much reading of criticism.
The fact of the permanence of a particular art proving that it expresses or interprets some aspect of man’s spirit better or more easily than any other. Compare, otherwise the art would not persist except as novelty. Note the rise and subsidence of certain arts historically. The reasons why mosaic work has lost the place it occupied in the days when Ravenna’s churches were being adorned. Compare changes in fresco painting. Significance of the permanence of sculpture, painting, poetry and music.
Characteristics of sculpture.—The Venus de Milo as a representative work of ancient art. What is given in this statue? Character of the conception embodied. Method by which it is expressed. Effect on the beholder of the color of the marble and of the beauty of technical execution. The deeper feelings one has in the presence of the statue. Significance that these emotions vary with different individuals; yet, the conception, if understood, entirely definite and embodied in defined, permanent form. Thus the conception given, the emotions, relatively speaking, associated.
The Hermes of Praxiteles and the three Goddesses of the Parthenon. What these express in idea and execution. Causes of the feelings they tend to arouse in the beholder. Difference in the ancient and modern feeling associated with such a statue as the Amazon of the Villa Mattei.
Michael Angelo’s statues on the Medicean tombs. Comparison with Greek sculpture in conception, execution and associated emotions.
Modern work in the field of sculpture analyzed. The Joan of Arc of Chapu; other characteristic work in the Luxembourg gallery. Max Klinger’s Salome.
Transition from sculpture to painting through relief-work. The Nymph and Infant Bacchus; the bronze doors of Ghiberti.
Painting.—The Pompeian frescoes as painting in its nearest approach to sculpture. These as presenting human figures, simply treated, with slight background. Less complete and realistic form than in sculpture; but vastly increased scope in both breadth and depth. Effect of the much greater use of color.
Michael Angelo’s Creation of Adam; his Last Judgment. Difference in feelings aroused by the latter work in accordance with the training and belief of the beholder.
Raphael’s Sistine Madonna: the conception given; method by which expressed. Direct emotional effect of the color used and of the grace and beauty of execution.
Characteristics of a Corot landscape: what we feel in the presence of it as compared with what the Greeks might have felt. The interpretation of humanity in modern art: compare in Millet, Bastien-Lepage, Cormon. Relation of conception to emotion in such work; contrast with the painting of the Italian Renaissance.
Summary.—What sculpture and painting are alike capable of giving definitely. Elements common to both in method. Differences between them. What neither is capable of achieving. Why sculpture was the characteristic art of the ancient Greeks, painting of the Renaissance Italians.
All art appealing immediately to the senses; danger if it stops there. The true appeal through the senses to the soul. Thus how art may degenerate and become dangerous. The problem of Faust’s vision in the mirror.
ILLUSTRATIONS
“The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding may most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second inasmuch as it acquires its importance from the fact that it hears the things which the eye has seen. If you historians, or poets, or mathematicians had never seen things with your eyes you would be ill able to describe them in your writings. And if you, O poet, represent a story by depicting it with your pen, the painter with his brush will so render it as to be more easily satisfying and less tedious to understand. If you call painting ‘dumb poetry,’ then the painter may say of the poet that his art is ‘blind painting.’ Consider then which is the more grievous affliction, to be blind or be dumb! Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings, for while poetry attempts with words to represent forms, actions, and scenes, the painter employs the exact images of the forms in order to reproduce these forms. Consider, then, which is more fundamental to man, the name of man or his image? The name changes with change of country; the form is unchanged except by death.”
—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, pp. 156, 157.
“If the artist, out of ever-varying nature, can only make use of a single moment, and the painter especially can only use this moment from one point of view, whilst their works are intended to stand the test not only of a passing glance, but of long and repeated contemplation, it is clear that this moment, and the point from which this moment is viewed, cannot be chosen with too great a regard to results. Now that only is a happy choice which allows the imagination free scope. The longer we gaze, the more must our imagination add; and the more our imagination adds, the more we must believe we see. In the whole course of an emotion there is no moment which possesses this advantage so little as its highest stage. There is nothing beyond this; and the presentation of extremes to the eye clips the wings of fancy, prevents her from soaring beyond the impression of the senses, and compels her to occupy herself with weaker images; further than these she ventures not, but shrinks from the visible fulness of expression as her limit. Thus, if Laokoön sighs, the imagination can hear him shriek; but if he shrieks, it can neither rise a step higher above nor descend a step below this representation, without seeing him in a condition which, as it will be more endurable, becomes less interesting. It either hears him merely moaning, or sees him already dead.
“Furthermore, this single moment receives through art an unchangeable duration; therefore it must not express anything, of which we can think only as transitory. All appearances, to whose very being, according to our ideas, it is essential that they suddenly break forth and as suddenly vanish, that they can be what they are but for a moment,—all such appearances, be they pleasing or be they horrible, receive, through the prolongation which art gives them, such an unnatural character, that at every repeated glance the impression they make grows weaker and weaker, and at last fills us with dislike or disgust of the whole object.”
—Lessing, Laokoön, pp. 19, 20.
“It is neither charm nor is it dignity which speaks from the glorious face of the Juno Ludovici; it is neither of these, for it is both at once. While the female god challenges our veneration, the godlike woman at the same time kindles our love. But while in ecstacy we give ourselves up to the heavenly beauty, the heavenly self-repose awes us back. The whole form rests and dwells in itself—a fully complete creation in itself—and as if she were out of space, without advance or resistance; it shows no force contending with force, no opening through which time could break in. Irresistibly carried away and attracted by her womanly charm, kept off at a distance by her godly dignity, we also find ourselves at length in the state of the greatest repose, and the result is a wonderful impression, for which the understanding has no idea and language no name.”
—Schiller, Essays Æsthetical and Philosophical, p. 72.
“As practising myself the art of sculpture no less than that of painting, and doing both the one and the other in the same degree, it seems to me that without suspicion of unfairness I may venture to give an opinion as to which of the two is the more intellectual, and of the greater difficulty and perfection. In the first place sculpture is dependent on certain lights, namely those from above, while a picture carries everywhere with it its own light and shade; light and shade therefore are essential to sculpture. In this respect the sculptor is aided by the nature of the relief which produces these of its own accord, but the painter artificially creates them by his art in places where nature would normally do the like. The sculptor cannot render the difference in the varying natures of the colours of objects; painting does not fail to do so in any particular. The lines of perspective of sculptors do not seem in any way true; those of painters may appear to extend a hundred miles beyond the work itself.”
—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, pp. 160, 161.
“What the artist does or has done excites in us the mood in which he himself was when he did it. A free mood in the artist makes us free; a constrained one makes us uncomfortable. We usually find this freedom of the artist where he is fully equal to his subject. It is on this account we are so pleased with Dutch pictures; the artists painted the life around them, of which they were perfect masters. If we are to feel this freedom of mind in an actor, he must, by study, imagination, and natural disposition, be perfect master of his part, must have all bodily requisites at his command, and must be upheld by a certain youthful energy. But study is not enough without imagination, and study and imagination together are not enough without natural disposition. Women do the most through imagination and temperament.”
—Goethe, Conversations with Eckermann and Soret, pp. 417, 418.
“If you would have me speak only of panel painting I am content to give an opinion between it and sculpture by saying that painting is more beautiful, more imaginative, and richer in resource, while sculpture is more enduring, but excels in nothing else. Sculpture reveals what it is with little effort; painting seems a thing miraculous, making things intangible appear tangible, presenting in relief things which are flat, in distance things near at hand. In fact painting is adorned with infinite possibilities of which sculpture can make no use.”
—Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books, arranged by Edward McCurdy, p. 162.
TOPICS FOR STUDY AND DISCUSSION
1. What peculiar excellences has sculpture that are shown by no other art?
2. What special excellences has painting that are shown by no other art?
3. What cannot be directly or adequately expressed in sculpture? In painting?
4. Compare in conception, execution and associated emotions Andrea del Sarto’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper.
5. What effect has the color and texture of marble upon the emotions?
6. Analyze carefully the effect of Michael Angelo’s Last Judgment upon your senses, intellect and emotions.
7. Compare carefully, in the effect upon the beholder, the Venus de Milo, Michael Angelo’s Pietà (in St. Peter’s) and Chapu’s Joan of Arc.
8. Study the relation of significance to beauty in Raphael’s Sistine Madonna and Millet’s Sower.
9. What is the significance for the function of sculpture and painting that in both arts form is statical and relatively permanent?
10. Study the respective effects of form and color in sculpture; in painting.
REFERENCES
Brown, The Fine Arts. Caffin, How to Study Pictures. Goethe, Travels in Italy. Holden, Audiences. Knight, The Philosophy of the Beautiful. LaFarge, Considerations on Painting. Leighton, Addresses. Lessing, Laokoön. Mach, Greek Sculpture. Noyes, The Enjoyment of Art. Palgrave, Poetry Compared with the Other Fine Arts. Parry, The Ministry of Fine Art to the Happiness of Life. Puffer, The Psychology of Beauty, chapter iv. Raymond, Painting, Sculpture and Architecture as Representative Arts. Ruskin, Aratra Pentelici; Lectures on Art; Modern Painters. Sturgis, The Appreciation of Pictures; The Appreciation of Sculpture. Van Dyke, Art for Art’s Sake; How to Judge of a Picture; The Meaning of Pictures; Principles of Art. Vinci, Leonardo da Vinci’s Note-Books; Treatise on Painting. Witt, How to Look at Pictures.