I believe that, with the advance of a scientific criticism nurtured on an accurate knowledge of physiology, and intimately acquainted with the functions of the muscles, we shall one day recognise that the Greeks of the epoch of Phidias and Praxiteles were unequal to the effectual reproduction of violent passions.
Winckelmann said that Greek art was always tranquil and majestic, like the depths of the sea, which remain immovably calm, however the tempest may ruffle the surface. But I fear there is some exaggeration in the statement that beauty was the only law of Greek art, and that the Greeks shunned the expression of pain because the sight of suffering excites disgust in the spectator. Sophocles and Homer believed in an art of wider limits; they made their heroes weep, and shriek, and groan; all human weaknesses are faithfully represented by them, descending even to the grotesque and ridiculous. At the epoch of Phidias monuments vividly expressing the internal passions of the soul are rare. It was only later, in the time of Praxiteles and Scopas, that subjects and compositions of greater effect were attempted. The most ancient monument of pain, that representing the destruction of Niobe’s children, does not attain the perfection of other famous works of that epoch. The subject is tragic in the highest degree, and such that one cannot say the Greeks shunned the terrific. It may be that the statue of the Niobe in Florence is a bad copy, but it is much more probable that the artists of that epoch, who were unrivalled and beyond all rivalry in the representation of grace of attitude and silent majesty, could not touch with the same master-hand the other chords to which the human heart vibrates.
Some great artist—perhaps Praxiteles or Scopas—wished to adorn the temple of Apollo with this terrible picture of revenge taken upon man by an offended deity. It is Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, who, proud of her children, dared to compare herself to the mother of Apollo, and now sees them killed one after another, shot by the revengeful arrows of Apollo and Artemis. No subject could be more tragic. The first time I entered the 'Galleria degli Uffizi’ in Florence, I remember halting, almost afraid, at the door leading to the hall of the Niobean group, thinking of the heart-rending scene I was about to see, and of the emotion which I should feel while contemplating one of the most celebrated productions of Greek art. I confess that it did not produce the effect which I had imagined, and that a careful examination of the statues forming the group resulted in a great disappointment.
Only the mother filled me with emotion, so perfect is her attitude, so real her gesture; but in her face and in that of her children there is no true reflection of the awful event taking place. There is no physiological correspondence in the pose of the limbs and between the muscles of the body and those of the face. There is insufficient accuracy in the sculpture of the heads, for in them is lacking the expression of intense emotion, of horror, fear, and pain which would inevitably be present in the terrible moment of so cruel a butchery. Even though the convulsions and spasms had altered the beauty of the lines to which the eye of the Greeks was accustomed, it was yet the duty of the artist faithfully to represent reality. Nor can it be said that the artist feared to fall into the grotesque, because certain postures of the children are so violent, that in their boldness they perhaps exaggerate the truth. Though Praxiteles himself were the creator of the Niobean group, I yet hold that a humble physiologist, looking with dispassionate eye at these statues, may affirm that they fall short of the fame of so great a master, because the faces are not so modelled as to produce the desired effect, because nature is not faithfully copied, and because there lacks the sublime ideality of terror aroused by the chastisement of an offended deity, which was the subject of the work.
It was in the schools of Asia Minor, after the time of Alexander, in Pergamos and Rhodes, that antique art, before it became extinct, developed its greatest splendour, showing an irresistible tendency to the representation of pain. It is to the school of Rhodes that the Laocoon group belongs. So much has been written about this celebrated work, that I should have nothing to add if the face of Laocoon were anatomically correct. Duchenne de Boulogne was the first to notice the defects of the Laocoon of Rome, and to declare that the furrows of the brow in this celebrated statue are physiologically impossible. The eye of the superficial observer does not notice this defect, because the movement of the eyebrows which produces the fundamental line of pain is marvellously modelled. Some perhaps will say that it is useless to stop to criticise the delineation of a few furrows when such an intense and majestic pain is written on the face, when one seems to hear the sigh of superhuman agony from his lips, and sees the lines of beauty and of pain so wonderfully blended.
The discoveries which have been made of late years in the excavations in the Acropolis of Pergamos have restored to the admiration of centuries treasures which mark an epoch in the history of plastic art, and throw a vivid light on the last phase with which Greek art completed its evolution. Works so moving as those of the sculptors of Pergamos had never been produced before. Art devoted itself entirely to the embodiment and representation of physical pain in its innumerable manifestations, as though the observation and experience of suffering, the study of the pathetic, having accumulated for centuries in the mind of artists and people, burst forth impetuously at the sight of the victories over the barbarians who threatened their country with invasion. We have in Italy some of the most celebrated masterpieces of the school of Pergamos. As all know them I shall only mention the statue of the dying Gaul in the Museo Capitolino. The head is not so beautiful as those of the Greek statues, but, on the other hand, it wears so vivid an expression of pain that we feel touched at the brave death of this barbarian, who breathes his last leaning upon his shield, while the blood gushes from the fatal wound. This statue, together with the group in the Villa Ludovisi to which it belongs, was placed on the Acropolis of Pergamos about 200 years before the vulgar era, in order to celebrate the victory of Attalus I. over the barbarians. In the second group we have again a barbarian before us, who, pursued by an enemy, kills his wife, and then with the same dagger, as he looks behind him, his eyes wild with the fear that the enemy may be near and make him a prisoner before he dies, he stabs himself.
Brizio, in his 'Studies of the Laocoon,’ speaking of the school of Pergamos, says: 'After an exhaustive examination of the statues in the museums of Naples, Venice, Rome, and St. Germain-en-Laye, not only the intention of the artists becomes evident, but also the pleasure they took in representing with the greatest perspicuity the death of combatants with all the torture and agony preceding it. In none of the monuments prior to this epoch is anything similar to be found, although Greek sculpture, beginning with Phidias, boasts a conspicuous series of representations of combats. In all these scenes the artists endeavoured to find new situations, to recreate and vary the groups of combatants, to reproduce the ardour of the fight; they even represented the wounded and the dead, but simply as episodes; they never made a study of death itself, of its tragic effects, with the manifest object of moving and exciting to the highest degree the compassion of the spectator. In these groups death is rather indicated than represented.
A further step in the representation of physical pain is marked by the sculpture of the 'War of the Titans’ around the altar of Jove. When we throw a comprehensive glance on these scenes of the battle between gods and giants, we are struck by a new and horrible phenomenon—namely, the part which the animals, tearing the human bodies to pieces, take in it.
Anyone contemplating in the Museum of Berlin the figures in haut-relief which formerly adorned the plinth of the altar at Pergamos, 135 metres in length, feels that this is perhaps the most imposing work which sculpture has ever produced. Art was in full possession of its most potent means, and more advanced science had contributed its part. It was by a most minute study of details, by an exact knowledge of the movements of the muscles, and long practice in the observation of the physiognomy of passion, that antique plastic art, in the last period of its splendour, attained its highest effect in the expression of feeling. This, I think, is the natural law in the evolution of art.