Remarkable evidence of the universality of ideals, is afforded by the galaxy of French sculptors who appeared in the thirteenth century. They could have had no teachers beyond those responsible for the stiff and formal works characterizing the merging of Norman with Gothic art; they could have seen few of the fragments of ancient sculpture; and yet they left behind them monuments which rival in noble beauty much of the work produced in the greatest art period. How their art grew, and how it withered; how such a brilliant bloom in the life of a nation should so quickly fade, needs too detailed an argument to be ventured upon here, if indeed a properly reasoned explanation can be given at all; but the flower remains, as great a pride to mankind as it is a glory to France: remains, though sadly drooping, for the petals of Rheims are gone.
Now these Frenchmen were in much the same position as the early Greeks. They were confronted with the task of making images of their objects of worship for great temples. They had no more real knowledge of the Personality of Christ, the Virgin, and most of the Saints than had the Greeks of the Homeric gods and legendary heroes, and like the Grecian sculptors they fully believed in the spiritual personages and religious events with which they dealt. The Grecian and French artists therefore started from the same line with similar general ideals, for the ancient workers took no heed of Homer and Hesiod in respect of the failings of their gods; and they both had only pure formalities in sculpture behind them. And what was the result? The ideal divine head of the Christian Frenchman is much the same as that of the Greeks in regard to form, and only varies in expression with the character of the respective religious conceptions.
The French sculptors did not reach the sublime height of the Phidian school, nor did they attempt the more human beauty typified by the giants of the fourth century B.C.; but apart from these, and leaving aside considerations of the nude with which they were little concerned, they climbed to the highest level of the latter end of the fourth century and the beginning of the third—the level attained by those Grecian sculptors who more or less idealized portrait heads by adding Phidian traits. And it would appear that in reaching towards their goal they followed the same line of thought as the Greeks, and arrived at similar conclusions in respect to every detail of the head and pose of the figure. As a rule they gave to the faces of Christ and the Saints a large facial angle, set the eyes in deeply and the ears close to the head, and generally worked on parallel lines with the principal sculptors of Peloponesia living sixteen hundred years before their time. It is perhaps natural that they should make similar variations in the proportions of the figures to provide for the different levels from which they were to be seen, but it is curious that they should adopt the practice followed by the Greeks in the representation of children in arms, by minimizing to the last degree the figure of the Infant Christ in the arms of the Madonna. They could not have more closely imitated the Greeks in this respect had they had Grecian models in front of them. No doubt they fixed the position of the Child at the side of the Virgin in order that the line of her majestic form might not be broken, and that her face might be revealed to observers below the level of the statues, but that they should have made the Child so extremely small and insignificant considering His relative importance compared with that of the Grecian infant in arms, is remarkable.
[NOTE 37. PAGE 90]
It is too early yet to fix definitely the position of Rodin in art. There is much sifting of his works to be done, for of all artists with a wide reputation, he was perhaps the most variable. Still he may be called one of the greater artists, and so is amongst the rare exceptions mentioned, for he executed one or two hideous figures, the most notable being La Vieille Heaulmière.[a] This cannot properly be described as a work of art because it is revolting to the senses: it is merely a species of writing—a hieroglyph, and Rodin's own apology for it is a direct condemnation, since a work of sculpture cannot be good if general opinion does not approve of it. He says[]:
What matters solely to me is the opinion of people of taste, and I have been delighted to gain their approbation for my La Vieille Heaulmière. I am like the Roman singer who replied to the jeers of the populace, Equitibus Cano. I sing only for the nobles; that is to say for the connoisseurs. The vulgar readily imagine that what they consider ugly is not a fit subject for the artist. They would like to forbid us to represent what displeases and offends them in nature. It is a great error on their part. What is commonly called "ugliness" in nature can in art become full of great beauty. In the domain of art we call ugly what is deformed, whatever is unhealthy.... Ugly also is the soul of the vicious or criminal man.... But let a great artist or writer make use of one or other of these uglinesses, instantly it becomes transfigured: with a touch of his fairy wand he has turned it into beauty: it is alchemy: it is enchantment.
Rodin then goes on to refer to the description of ugly objects by the poets, in support of his argument that they may be represented by the painter! It was his error in confusing the objects of the literary with those of the plastic arts, that led him to carve La Vieille Heaulmière, for he admitted that he wished to put into sculpture what Villon had put into a poem. Professor Waldstein properly pointed out that, this being so, the observer of the sculpture should be provided with a copy of the poem when in front of the statue, adding[c]:
and even then the work remains only the presentation of a female figure deformed in every detail by the wear and tear of time, and of a life ending in disease and nothing more. It is the worst form of literary sculpture, of which we have had so much by artists who represent the very opposite pole of the modern realists.
Elsewhere the respective positions of the poet and painter (or sculptor) in the representation of ugliness are dealt with, but it may be added that in the case of La Vieille Heaulmière, Rodin does not render in sculpture the poem of Villion, but only a part of it, for of course he could not show the progression in the life of the courtesan, indicated by the poet, which progression puts an entirely different complexion upon the ugly figure of the poet compared with that of the sculptor. Clearly Rodin was misled when he said that people of taste have given their approbation to his appalling figure, for it has been condemned among all classes, while its few defenders have failed to support their opinions by reason or experience.