The next feature of great importance which concerns us is that this branch of art began (as did mediæval art) in the service of religion. It was to represent the figure of the god, it was to decorate his temple, that the sculptor made his great efforts. And I hasten to add that the art was never dissociated from its sister art of painting, for the Greeks always called in the help of colour; not only in architecture, but even in representing single human figures. They felt the utter coldness of Parian or Pentelican marble and they were not afraid to use rich colours and even kindred materials to increase the majesty of their representations of the Divine.
It is very remarkable how timid and sporadic, mainly from a misinterpretation of Greek teaching, have hitherto been the attempts to return to this sound principle. In the twelfth century, indeed, admirable work was done by the sculptor in producing coloured statues, generally, I think, of wood. Thus the kings and bishops of that time in the Cathedral of Henry the Lion at Brunswick are most striking and lifelike specimens of the art, and there are many more in the churches and the museums of Northern Europe.[26] But it seems that the discovery in the Renaissance of Græco-Roman statues from which all the colour had been effaced by the action of time, damp, and the contact with clay, misled the early sculptors of that day into the belief that Greek statues were always in the purest white marble; that form only and not colour was the aim of that art; and so we have had our galleries flooded with cold figures, which are only beginning to give way, as may be seen in the recent exhibitions of the Royal Academy in London, to more or less delicate tinting, or even to relief in high colours, using other materials than marble. Thus the Greeks have been our masters as well in our mistakes as in our successes. But we can now have no doubt as to their principles. Even in their bronze statues, they were so anxious to give expression by colour that they commonly made the eyes of their figures in black and white.
I turn now to speak for a moment on the principles of composition in Greek sculpture, for in such a discourse as this it is obviously better to spend time on general considerations than in emphasising details. There were, of course, from archaic times single figures, first of gods, then of men, which ultimately became portrait statuary; but in early days a composition of figures in stone or wood was unknown till they came to decorate architecture with friezes and pediments. Thus the statues which adorned the state entrance to the old temple at Miletus were simply a row of sitting figures like the rows of sphinxes guarding the approach to the Egyptian temple, but there is no composition. It was not till the rise of the fashion of ornamenting buildings with the sculptor’s art that, as before said, compositions come into play; and mainly in two forms—triangular pediments which filled the once open end or gable of a roof, and bands of decoration along the walls of the building. The form of the gable—a very flat triangle, with the obtuse angle at the vertex—determined the sculptor, just as the shackles of metre determine the poet. But even as these apparent shackles have produced the most splendid effects in poetry, so the limitations of space have suggested to the Greek sculptors the most poetical devices. We now know that even the pre-Persian Parthenon had such a composition on its gable, of which great serpentine monsters, carved in local stone, and then coloured, have been recently recovered. But when the art reached its perfection, we have the device of a notable mythical event, or a struggle, with agitated or combating figures, arranged symmetrically on either side of a central god, who is greater, calmer than the rest; while in the acute angles, the aspects of nature—rivers, woods, the rising and setting sun—were suggested by graceful lying figures, which show that air of peaceful and silent indifference that is the usual aspect of nature around a great human tragedy.[27]
These marvellous compositions, full of symmetry and of variety, have been the examples set before scores of European sculptors, in their imitations of classical architecture; but I cannot say that I know a single specimen that I should like to show here to you in direct comparison with the work of the ancients. It is in this, as in so many walks of art: all the modern resources of science, all the study of the old masterpieces, have not sufficed to kindle the spark of genius in our inartistic age. We have a thousand resources that the Greeks had not—we have a thousand volumes of exposition, analysis, criticism, telling how these things were done—yet we are like the civilised man trying to elicit flame from the sticks which furnish the primitive man with his fire. All our efforts only succeed in producing smoke; the living spark will not come.[28]
Much the same may be said of the second favourite form of Greek composition in sculpture, the ornamenting of long flat surfaces with rows or successions of figures, of which the frieze of the Parthenon is the most familiar, but not the only example. We now know from the recoveries at Delphi, especially the so-called treasury of Siphnos, that this theme was derived by Phidias from older examples.
What is the strange fascination in this long row of figures? There is that peculiar combination of sameness and of variety which affords us delight in all the occupations of our life. This procession has one general scope. It is bringing offerings to do honour to the gods, and bringing them with pomp and circumstance. But while all these men and maidens are bent on the same pursuit, they are represented with an endless variety in detail. Some are on curvetting horses, some are leading bulls both quiet and uneasy, some are carrying weights upon their shoulders, some have them on the ground—and are lifting them. There is the unity and difference which in music we know as harmony, and each figure is carried out with such simple perfection, with such unassuming grace and beauty, that it is hard indeed to point out any insufficiency or defect. There is even this subtlety in the detail of the work—that, as this band of figures was intended to be seen high above the spectator, care was taken to carve the lower limbs in slightly flatter relief than the upper, and the limbs of the horses were even made a little lighter than in nature, in order to counterbalance the predominance which the part nearer to the spectator’s vision might assume.
When such are the shattered fragments of an art which once adorned every city and every public building in Greece, it seems impossible to conjecture what would have been the effect on modern Europe had the great mass of it survived. Perhaps not so great as we should be disposed to assert at the first blush of the suggestion. For we could hardly avoid calling in the analogy of other arts, and of other times, where the works of genius preserved and known do not inspire modern artists. There is plenty of splendid mediæval architecture existing, and yet our modern architects have not been able to take their place as independent successors. In literature we have had many similar facts discussed during previous lectures. All the models in the world will not suffice without the divine spark in the teacher as well as the pupil, and this gift is rare and sporadic not only in the individual, but among the nations which have hitherto appeared in the course of history. There is, moreover, in using workers of a remote age or country as models, one concomitant circumstance which may make our efforts wholly incommensurate with theirs. It is the atmosphere in which every society lives, by which it has been created or at least fed, and which it creates in its turn. As the modern artist cannot possibly reproduce these surroundings, it is wellnigh impossible that he should reproduce the subtle spirit, once the very breath of Greek art, which has long vanished, and which has never since been recalled by the wit of man.
V
GREEK ART—II: PAINTING AND MUSIC
WHEN we pass from the monumental arts of architecture and sculpture to those of a more subjective character, which use more fleeting vehicles for their expression, we have in modern life painting and music, which we may expect to be more independent of Greek models than the rest. For, ex hypothesi, pictures so far as they are on panels of wood or canvas can hardly survive the lapse of ages of neglect,[29] and as for music, the notation is so small and poor a clue to its real meaning, that even if we understood it perfectly, we should still be a long way from grasping the full meaning as felt by the Greek public. I will give you an illustration of this from my own experience. There is in our English and Irish cathedrals a tradition of the way in which certain anthems are to be sung—a tradition generally derived from those who sang them in the composer’s presence, or under his influence. The older editions of these anthems seldom give any expression marks, the performance being entrusted to the taste of the choir or its knowledge of the composer’s intentions. A signal example is the finest of Blow’s anthems, “I beheld and lo! a great multitude,” composed in the reign of Charles II. (1680), and sung ever since by sundry cathedral choirs, amongst others those of Dublin, where there has from long since been a great school of church music. In Dublin, this is one of the most moving and dramatic anthems, owing to the great liberties taken with the time by the Vicars Choral, who have kept the tradition unbroken. I chanced to hear it sung by the very excellent choir of Magdalen College, Oxford, on their high day—All Saints’ Day, when it is annually performed. I was astonished to find that they merely sang it from the text without any of the traditional liberties. The effect was so poor and unmeaning as to be almost ridiculous to one who had been taught to understand the inner sense of the work.
We are not quite so destitute as to Greek painting, for we have at least a good many fresco pictures, by more or less obscure and incompetent workmen of the Hellenistic age, to show us what the Greeks aimed at; we have on the many beautiful examples of pottery preserved to us the representations of mythical or other scenes which must have had some analogy with the paintings of the same or similar scenes. Lastly, we have many descriptions and epigrams from those who admired the masterpieces of this art, and although these are inadequate, and are often the observations of incompetent rhetorical critics, they still give us far more definite ideas than any description of a musical work could possibly supply. As to the Golden Age of painting, we have nothing but these, for our specimens of frescoes on the walls are all either from pre-historic palaces, or from Græco-Roman houses. If we wish, therefore, to obtain any understanding of this side of Greek art, we must not be content with our poor and sporadic examples, but must enter upon some general considerations which will afford a larger and deeper basis for our judgment. For our inferences from the Pompeiian frescoes to the lost masterpieces are just as hazardous as if we had lost all the masterpieces of sculpture, and endeavoured to judge of their quality by reasoning from the terra cotta figurines of Tanagra and other places, which are often graceful, but almost always faulty in their modelling. Should we indeed have inferred that the modelling of statues in marble and in bronze was absolutely perfect?