A History of Sculpture

by Ernest Henry Short

The differences between Northern France in the eleventh and twelfth centuries a.d. and Greece in the fifth century b.c. at once show why we must look elsewhere for a social state in which the art of the sculptor could find sustenance. As we should expect we find this in a country where Gothic architecture never achieved the brilliant success that attended it in France and England. We mean, of course, Italy.

The culture of Gothic architecture never bore transplanting from French to Italian soil satisfactorily. Many so-called Gothic cathedrals were erected. But the Italian architects always leant towards the Roman simplicity, and never multiplied the niches and columns in the way the French architect did. As a consequence the opportunities for marble and bronze decorations were greater than in the north, and the art of sculpture at once took a firmer position.

But the chief reason for the immediate growth of sculpture in Italy was not material but psychological. It depended not upon opportunity but upon the mental and emotional temper of those to whom it appealed. The Gothic architect in Italy did not adopt the methods by which his French brother appealed to the mystic instincts of his countrymen, simply because the Italian temperament was less eager to “dwell overmuch among desired illusions.” With a far fuller emotional and intellectual experience, the Italian did not feel, in the same degree, what Matthew Arnold has called “that passionate, turbulent, indomitable reaction against the despotism of fact.”

For many years the population of Northern Italy had been victimized by the continual invasions which the Holy Roman emperors made against the Pope. At first there were constant efforts to form leagues of townships to combat Emperor or Pope. But the cities could not put large bodies of fighters in the field, and their condition was deplorable. The great struggle between Henry IV. of Germany and the Papacy aided by Matilda and the Normans, brought matters to a head.

The remedy was found towards the end of the eleventh century, when each town discovered that it could best serve its interests by acting alone. In other words, the conception of a city-state was reached. During the struggle in which bishop was pitted against feudal lord, feudal lord against bishop, and both or either against Emperor or Pope, each city developed a political individuality. Genoa became distinguished from Pisa, and both from Milan in marked fashion. Nor was this all. It was soon realized that the bond of citizenship was an asset that could be used with magnificent effect. As had been the case in Greece, a city with a few thousand burghers found it could safely face a power apparently vastly stronger. The enthusiasm of every citizen was fired in a manner unequalled since a similar concatenation of circumstances had given Phidias and Praxiteles to the Ægean Peninsula. Finally, this civic ideal did not entail the jettisoning of a hundred human ambitions and emotions which were entirely foreign to the Roman Catholic Church.

A social philosophy began to arise in which human interests predominated. Here was the very condition for lack of which Gothic sculpture had been still-born.

THE PISANI

The city of Pisa is particularly identified with the rise of Italian sculpture. Near the town lay the marble mines of Carrara. The Crusades, by opening up the markets of the East and, particularly, Byzantium, had done much to increase its material prosperity. The citizens of Pisa, for instance, had contributed largely to the success of the second Crusade. Their reward for assistance in the capture of Jerusalem was a series of trading privileges extending over a great part of the East. Pisan banks and warehouses arose in every port. Material prosperity freed social life from many hampering conventions. Economic independence proved the first step towards the consciousness of intellectual liberty which was so striking a characteristic of the Renaissance. Pisa was only nominally a republic. Its aristocrats wielded power, and they realized, as Pisistratus had done in ancient Athens, that their tenure of authority was held at the price of magnificent schemes of public utility. The Cathedral was consecrated in 1118, and forty years later the Baptistery was finished. During this time the Republic, owing to its successful campaigns against Genoa and Lucca, became more and more powerful.

One of the principal results following the opening up of the Eastern world was a revelation of the grace and beauty of the sculpture of the ancients. The Pisans evinced a strong interest in the few works of antiquity that could be found. The merchants eagerly competed for one of the carved Roman sarcophagi which the Pisan fleets occasionally brought over from the East.

Under these influences, the sculptors who were engaged upon the decoration of Gothic cathedrals in Italy found themselves called upon to add a beauty to their work which was not required in North-west Europe. In their search for this beauty, the harmonious naturalism lacking in the plastic arts prior to the thirteenth century was attained. Craftsmen from Byzantium and architects and masons from the North came to such a town as Pisa to educate a band of local artists. They, too, drank deep at the well of Hellenic genius. The sculptors of Italy still worked under the inspiration of the Catholic Church. But, fired by the achievements of Greece, their work displayed a natural grace far in advance of the realistic fables in stone which the Northern artist fashioned or the symbolic pictures which the Byzantium craftsman produced. Niccola Pisano (1205-1278 a.d.) was the greatest Italian architect of his day and the wealth of his native town early furnished him with opportunities for exercising his skill both as an architect and as a sculptor. From Pisa, Niccola’s reputation spread through Italy. As a sculptor he was influenced strongly by Græco-Roman art. Being intended for Gothic buildings, his sculptural work has many of the characteristics of the French style, but it shows the clearest signs of classical feeling. It is true that he crowds the space he has to fill with a multitude of figures, where the taste of the Greek would have suggested a simpler scheme. His figures and drapery are heavy when compared with the graceful forms of the Hellenic artists. But all Niccola Pisano’s later work proves how thoroughly he appreciated, and how earnestly he strove to attain, the stately beauty that pervaded the art of Hellas.