grotesque Egyptian images worshipped on the Nile before the building of the pyramids, are, judging from the best preserved antiquities, not very much inferior to the gilded deities to be seen to-day in the thousand pagodas of heathen lands.
Take for example a Chinese idol of modern make: while it is less angular and more elaborately finished than the ancient monstrosities found in Egypt, still, so far as perfection of form or beauty of expression is concerned, there is little to choose between the two. Each is a fitting type of the degree of civilization and soul culture of the peoples that produced them. It must not be urged that the success of sculpture in Greece and Rome disproves the proposition that the art could not develop itself among a strictly idolatrous race.
The splendid mythologies of the Greeks and Romans must not be considered as the highest forms even of the worship of idols or inanimate things. The gods and goddesses of these mythological systems were principally the powers that were supposed to preside over the different forces and elements of nature, and were invested with the celestial attributes of a higher order of beings. Neptune ruled the sea, Pluto was director of ceremonies in the infernal regions, while Jupiter was emperor of the sky and king of all the lesser gods.
These deities were the invention of a cultivated intellect, a refined taste and polished civilization, and furnish a striking proof of man's longing after the Infinite, unguided by the star of revelation.
The imaginative Greeks did not worship the statues of the gods per se, but only admired them as the fitting representations of those mysterious forces that hold sway over earth, air, fire, and water, or reverenced them as the symbols of noble sentiments or sublime passions. The thing itself, the cunning but lifeless figure, was only incidental, while the idea thus typified was the real incentive to worship. This was also the age that produced hero worship, and the great man who won the praise and admiration of the people by his exalted qualities, or his prowess in arms, was considered as a demigod, or one in favor with the tenants of Olympus, and his statue was accordingly erected, to stand beside that, perhaps, of Mars, Apollo, or Mercury.
Thus we trace the history of sculpture in its steady progress from its use as a chronicler of events to its employment in the production of the objects of idolatry, and thence to the mythological period, when it became the medium of æsthetic expression, attaining its highest perfection in the palmy days of Greece.
In no people of which the records of the past give any account, can we find such an active sense of the beautiful as that which permeated the minds of the polished Greeks. The admiration of physical beauty became an almost absorbing passion, and its attainment was sought after in every process which human ingenuity could devise.
The Lacedemonian women were accustomed to place the statues of beautiful gods or goddesses in their rooms, to the end that the children they should give birth to, would, by nature's mysterious methods, assimilate the artistic graces of these celestial models. Perfection of form and manly strength were the pride of the wisest and most learned men of the nation, denoting that physical excellence was considered the necessary concomitant of moral or intellectual worth. Authentic annals tell us that Plato and Pythagoras appeared as wrestlers at the public games; and who shall say that these philosophical gymnasts did not derive much of their mental vigor from this exciting exercise? In this age it is easy to see that sculpture must have received every incentive to full development. In the people about him the artist saw the most excellent models for his chisel, while the national taste was educated to the highest degree in the beauties of form and the harmonies of proportion.
But the grand conceptions of Phidias, full of majesty and of grandeur as they are—the matchless finish of the works of Apelles and Praxiteles, ravishing the senses with their carnal beauty, still lacked one element, without which art can never reveal itself in the full perfection of its latent capabilities.
Mere physical beauty, which contains no spiritual element, no drawing of the immortal soul, no suggestion of purer and nobler sentiments struggling for expression in the cunning marble, can never satisfy the requirements of the Christianized taste of modern times.
The Venus de Medici was undoubtedly the ideal type of womanly perfection in the age which produced it, but now the sex would hardly feel themselves flattered by so poor an interpretation. The form is all that could be desired, but the head and features are positively insipid, and a phrenologist would tell you by the development of the cranium that female education was not a part of the Grecian policy. There is in this statue a certain air of wantonness, a perceptible consciousness of being valued and admired solely for physical beauty, which just as plainly tells the estimate placed upon woman in those times as we can read the fact in history.
Thus we perceive sculpture as a representative art has become a chronicler of the world's advancement, so that those who accept the theory of human progression would naturally look for purer and more spiritual conceptions in the artist's soul, with a corresponding nobility in the creations of his genius. The æsthetic principle in its higher manifestations is not the product of pagan mind, because ideal beauty and the rules governing its expression can only be conceived by him to whom Faith has opened the glorious possibilities of our existence beyond the grave. In no classic picture or statue is there anything akin to that divine affinity that is apparent in the Madonnas of the Italian masters of the sixteenth century, investing them with a charm that lingers like an autumn sunset In the recollection of long-departed years. Compare the loveliest of the Madonnas of Correggio and Raphael with the Venus of Cos, and we perceive the inferiority of mere physical perfection to that spiritual beauty that exalts the soul of the beholder, and awakens the slumber of his immortal longings.
Faultless finish, harmonious outlines, and voluptuous proportions are only the result of mechanical skill, that a good imitator or copyist can for the most part achieve by the aid of his master's model. But the sentiment, emotion, passion, the character, so to speak, of the statue, is the creation of the artist, the offspring of his quickened brain.
It is to express the æsthetic idea struggling in the soul of genius, that the marble takes its form, the canvas its color, sweet sounds combine in melody, and language weaves itself into the wreath of song. The same divine impulse, the same grasping after a higher excellence inspires the sculptor, the painter, the composer, and the poet, but some chance bent of nature has decided them to choose different mediums of expression.
Some critic has written, had Coles' 'Voyage of Life' been executed in verse, instead of a series of pictures, it would have ranked as one of the grandest poems of the age. High art, then, whatever its kind, is the language of the æsthetic feeling in man—it symbolizes the god-like element in his nature. Cumulative and progressive, it keeps even pace with an improving civilization, and should therefore furnish fairer products to-day than in any period of the past. It assimilates the spirit of the times in which it is exercised; for as Ralph Waldo Emerson remarks in his subtle, essay: 'No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts of his times shall have no share.'
So we see from the very necessity of this truism, that if our painters and sculptors would not be mere imitators of the exponents of another age, there would be soon established a national school of art. We do not mean by this a mere conventional type in finish and mode of treatment, but certain marked, characteristic excellences and features that would identify it with the history of our country and the peculiarities of our people. There are a few native artists who have struggled to achieve this consummation, and preëminent among these is Erastus D. Palmer, the American sculptor.
The history of his career, his origin, his process of study, his choice of subjects in all his great works, his rise and triumph as an artist, all entitle him to this distinctive appellation. He commenced life as a carpenter and joiner, but, while practising his trade in Utica, N. Y., his eye accidentally fell on a cameo likeness, and as the dropping of an apple suggested to Newton the laws of gravitation, so the sight of this little trifle was the talisman that revealed to Palmer the artistic capabilities
