Sculpture in Spain

by Albert Frederick Calvert

It will readily be seen that marble—the substance most fitting for the artistic rendering of form—would not comply with these demands. Thus in Spain the classic marble was discarded, while wood and plaster were employed in its place. These substances could be readily coloured, or even covered with canvas resembling stone, and then painted to counterfeit life. Thus out of the religious requirements—which in Spain, so much more than in any other country, decided the expression of art—was developed a natural employment of multi-colouring, whose principle was the diversity of the various materials and the use of the two arts of painting and sculpture in the same work.

This almost universal use of colour—a relic of very ancient art—has really decided the fate of Spanish sculpture. For some centuries public taste was firmly decided in condemning statue colourisation as “an offence against good taste.” It is held that the true purpose of sculpture is to depict form, and that painting an image in relief is barbarous and shows a want of culture, because the sculptor, attentive alone to the beauties of form, should observe the limits set by the material in which he has to work, and should resist the seductions of colour which belong to the painter. Coloured statues have even been compared with the wax figures displayed in shows.

There is much to be said on both sides of the question. We shall not here try to answer it, for to do so would be to anticipate all that we hope to establish of the beauty of the polychrome statuary of Spain. Rather we would ask the reader to look now at the illustrations at the end of this volume. Great works are the only answer that can silence criticism.

Those who have condemned polychrome sculpture have, almost without exception, instanced its worst examples. This is absurd; it is like giving a judgment of painting by the pictures exhibited each year in the Royal Academy of London.

It must be remembered that polychrome statuary is a very ancient art; moreover, it is a perfectly natural and spontaneous development, growing out of the need for intensified expression. It was not an arbitrary practice adopted as “a trick of the trade.” This is important. Those who deny the use of colour to the sculptor have tried to prove that among the Greeks sculpture was anterior to painting, and that in the case of certain statues which we find coloured the painting was an injury added at a later date. This is entirely erroneous, as M. Marcel Dieulafoy proves by referring to the recent excavations made in Greece and Italy. The most ancient of the statues carved by the Greeks were those on which pigments were used. Carved out of wood, which lent itself readily to encrustations of bronze, ivory, and precious stones, as well as of colour, the figures were enriched in this way to give them a closer relation to life. Such was the bas-relief at Olympia in the Treasury of the Megarians, which represents a combat between Herakles and Acheloss, where the figures are carved out of cedar-wood richly embellished with gold; or the group of the Dioscuri, attributed by Pausanias to Dépoinos and Skyllis, where again the figures were enriched with films of ebony and of ivory placed upon the wood.

When wood gave way to marble and bronze, sculptors still continued the use of encrustation; especially a paste of glass was used to form the eyes of the figures. Often we find a gilded or silver necklace added. Bronzers tinted their statues, and in this way bronze had the aspect of colour. Silver was largely used. A very interesting example is furnished by Silamin of Athens, who, wishing to represent Jocasta in her last hour, silvered the face so skilfully as to give it the pallor of death.

Of even greater interest is a small bas-relief in the St. Angelo Collection in the Museum of Naples. It represents a maiden dressed in a double robe, the under one pale green, the outer one rose-coloured. She wears besides an upper garment of a darker colour and a white fichu bordered with red.

We find this custom of multi-colouring in the work of the greatest masters. We know that Phidias made use of gems and gold to heighten the beauty of his statues. Strabo wrote of his incomparable work in the Temple of Zeus at Olympia: “What adds greatly to its success is that his cousin the painter Panæus lent his talent in covering certain parts of the statue with brilliant colours, notably the draperies.” How significant is this statement to those who condemn the colouring of statuary!

It is purely arbitrary to maintain that relief and colour may not be united in art. Rather we may agree with M. Homobles when he declares that “the Greeks harmonised colour and form so perfectly that for them in the sixth century painting was a flattened bas-relief, and bas-relief a painting with the paste laid on very thick.” It is the opinion of M. Marcel Dieulafoy, founded, as he tells us, on researches pursued during more than half a century, that “no matter what the material—wood, stone, bronze, marble, terra-cotta—nor the epoch of production, the Hellenes accentuated with coatings and sometimes with coloured enamels the figures in bas-reliefs and alto-reliefs, unless in the case of juxtaposition with other materials of different colour.” Thus we are brought to the conclusion that those who condemn as barbarous the use of colour in statuary must condemn also the statuary of Greece.

Nor was multi-colourisation confined to the Greek sculptors. It was a natural development in the art of carving in every country, arising, as we have seen, out of the desire of the artist to bring his work into a closer relation with life. The Egyptians and the Chaldeans never limited themselves to the use of form in their statues and in their architecture, but sought for ways of rendering colour. The great Asiatic races used enamel as the basis of their decoration. Here we find the origin of the multi-coloured sculpture of Babylon, Assyria, and Susa, and, at a later date, that of Medea and Persia. This art reached Byzantium—a country which gained the highest skill in glass mosaic—and also Rome. Persian artists, following in the train of the conquering Arabs, brought the secrets and methods of their art to many European countries, and among them to Spain and Portugal. The influence spread also from Byzantium, and, in a lesser degree, from Rome, and soon multi-colourisation was universally adopted, and all statues, whether of wood, stone, or copper, were covered with colour.