The grandsire never took it; the naked Pict never had it. And yet the directors of this Crystal Palace have taken Mr Owen Jones’s word for it. They have inconsiderately, and with the worst taste, delivered up the Palace into Mr Jones’s hands. We dread his being put into any other palace, for he evidently longs to be stuccoing and daubing the real marbles. “The experiment cannot be fairly tried, till tried on marble”—and he looks to a wide area, ample verge, and room enough, “and in conditions of space, atmosphere, &c., similar to those under which the originals were placed.” We however owe it to Mr Owen Jones’s candour in admitting a note by Mr Penrose, which vindicates the character of this odious marble. Thus speaks Mr Penrose: “An extensive and careful examination of the Pentelic Quarries, by the orders of King Otho, has shown that large blocks, such as were used at Athens, are very rare indeed. The distance, also, from the city is considerable: whereas there are quarries on Mount Hymettus at little more than one-third the distance (and most convenient for carriage), which furnish immense masses of dove-coloured marble, much prized, it would seem, by the Romans (Hor., ii. 18), and inferior in no respect but that of colour to the Pentelic. It could, therefore, only have been the intrinsic beauty of the latter material that led to its employment by so practical a people as the Athenians.” It will occur to the reader to ask if there is not here something like a proof that they did not intend this Pentelic marble to be painted; for it is manifest, under the stucco-and-painting theory, the dove-coloured of Hymettus would have answered all purposes. But Mr Owen Jones triumphs over his own candour. He sees nothing in the admission of this note of Mr Penrose; he takes it up, he exhibits it, merely for the purpose of throwing it down and trampling upon it. He gives it a scornful reply.—Reply in large letters. It is a curious one, for, like the boomerang, it flies back upon himself, and gives his own arguments a palpable hit. The reader may remember how he had asserted that “the Athenians built with marble because they found it almost beneath their feet.” In his oblivious reply, he discovers that the Athenians used it because it was a great way off from their feet; nay, that the worst part of the matter was, that it was no farther off from their feet. He uprises in reverential dignity, to reprove “our present ideas of economy.” “I do not think that, with our present ideas of economy, we are able to appreciate the motives of the Athenians in choosing their marble from the Pentelic quarries, in preference to those of Mount Hymettus. We must remember that the Greeks built for their gods; and the Pentelic marble, by presenting greater difficulties in its acquisition, may have been a more precious offering.” Mr Jones thus offers two contradictory motives on behalf of the Athenians—one must be given up. It would be strange in so few pages that a writer should so contradict himself, if we did not bear in mind with what ingenuity a theory will invest its own pertinacity. Surely no man on earth will believe that the Athenians, either by any extraordinary devotion[[50]] they showed towards their gods in the time of Pericles, or by an unheard of folly (for they were a practical people), chose the one quarry in preference to the other, for no other reason than its greater cost and difficulty.
We are referred to the evidence of Mr Bracebridge, produced before the committee of the Institute, which Mr Jones says settles the point “as far as regards monumental sculpture.” The evidence is, that in the winter 1835–6, an excavation, to the depth of twenty-five feet, was made at the south-east angle of the Parthenon. “Here were found many pieces of marble, and among these fragments parts of triglyphs, of fluted columns, and of statues, particularly a female head, which was painted (the hair is nearly the costume of the present day).” It is quite an assumption that the spot of this excavation was the place where “the workmen of the Parthenon had thrown their refuse marble.” There is no proof whatever that these fragments were even of the age of the Parthenon; even if they may be supposed so to be, we presume that, as works of art, they are worthless, for they are called refuse, and most likely had nothing to do with the work of the Parthenon. We believe at the same time was found the very beautiful fragment in relief, the Winged Victory, of which but very few casts were taken. One of these we have just now seen, and doubt not its being of the age of Phidias. This is white marble, and we have never heard that it has any indication of having been painted. If Mr Owen Jones could prove to us that the whole Parthenon, with all its statues, showed certain indications of paint, we still have not advanced to any ground of fair conclusion; for, in the want of contemporary evidence—(we cannot call anything yet adduced evidence)—we are left to conjecture that the daubing and plastering were the work of a subsequent age, or ages, when ornament encroached upon and deteriorated every art in Greece, whether dramatic, painting, or sculpture. “Pliny and Vitruvius both repeatedly deplore the corrupt taste of their own times. Vitruvius (vii. 5), observes, that the decorations of the ancients were tastelessly laid aside, and that strong and gaudy colouring and prodigal expense were substituted for the beautiful effects produced by the skill of the ancient artists.”—(Smith’s Antiquities.)
We pay little attention to what has been said by the writers quoted regarding Acrolithic or Chryselephantine statues, whether of the best or lowest character. Whatever they were, they have perished, and there is nothing left for modern barbarism to restore. We have looked chiefly to undoubtedly good genuine marble—white marble statues, and reliefs of the best times, of such as are to be seen and admired, unadorned, in our British Museum. “It is the custom of all barbarous nations to colour their idols,” says the writer of the historical evidence. We perfectly assent to this, and believe we shall ourselves be a very barbarous nation whenever the statues in that Museum shall be plastered with stucco, or painted over with four coats of vermilion or any other colour. Barbarous nations have painted, and do so still, not only their idols but themselves. Our Picts, with their woad colouring, may have emulated the peculiar beauty of blue-faced baboons. We dispute not the point that Greece, as well as every other country, at some period of its history was addicted to the common barbarous taste of colouring to the utmost of their means. The question is not whether they did it, but when they left it off. It is said in the “Apology,” that if they had ever left off the practice, it would have been so remarkable an event that it would have been noted in history. We know not where any one will be able to put his hand upon any passage in history, showing the exact or probable period at which our neighbours the Picts left off the fashion, which we learn prevailed. We think Mr Owen Jones himself would be very much astonished if, even though in pursuit and pursuance of his own argument, he should turn the corner of Pall Mall, and come face to face with half-a-dozen naked Picts in the ancient blue and vermilion costume. Quite satisfied that the fashion has been superseded, we care not about the when. Nor do we care to know, in our practical age, what finery they put upon their idols; and although a commission under Polychromatic direction may bring back, from no very distant travel, accounts of multitudes of idols still draped and painted, we are sure this English nation will not resume the practice. We have something else to do, which the “Wisdom of Solomon” tells us they had not, who fabricated such monstrosities. “The carpenter carved it diligently, when he had nothing else to do, and formed it by the skill of his understanding, and fashioned it to the image of a man, or made it like some vile beast, laying it over with vermilion, and with paint colouring it red, and covering every spot therein.”
Much is made of the notices of Pausanias, who, in the 177th year of the Christian era, travelled over Greece. Mr (afterwards Sir Uvedale) Price, in 1780 published “an accurate bill of fare of so sumptuous an entertainment,” in relation to the temples, statues, and paintings remaining in Greece in the time of Pausanias. We have thought it worth while to look over this bill of fare, and to extract all that is said about painted statues. Page 45: “In the great square, where there are several temples, there are the statues of the Ephesian Diana, and of Bacchus in wood—all the parts of which are gilt with gold, except the faces, which are coloured with vermilion.” Immediately follows—“There is a Temple of Fortune with her statue, which is an upright figure of Parian marble”—Nothing about painting this! Page 177–78: “In Ægina there is a Temple of Jupiter, in which there is his statue of Pentelican marble, in a sitting posture, and one of Minerva in wood, which is gilt with gold, and adorned with various colours; but the head, hands, and feet are of ivory.” “At Philoe there are the temples of Bacchus and Diana: the statue of the goddess is in brass, and she is taking an arrow out of her quiver; but that of Bacchus is of wood, and is painted of a ruddy colour.” It is only the wooden are painted! Page 199: “In Phigalia there is a Temple of Diana Sospita, with her statue in marble; and in Gymnasium there is a statue of Mercury, and likewise a Temple of Bacchus Acratophorus with his statue—the upper part of which is painted with vermilion, but the lower part is covered by the ivy and laurel that grows over it.” This is the statue mentioned in the historical evidence, where it says “the body being of gilded wood.” There is no doubt it was so—but in fairness we must say, that, having examined the original passage in Pausanias (Arcad., lib. viii. cap. 89), we find no mention of the material of which it was made. Here it will be observed that in no instance does Pausanias speak of a marble statue painted.
We have been reading an account of the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii—without doubt, both these places contained Greek sculpture of a good period. There have been a vast number of marble statues and fragments of statues found. The marble of which they are made is mentioned. They are mostly white marble, and there is no notice of any having been painted. If one should be, or should have been found coloured, it would be an exception, the not unlikely experiment of individual bad taste. We should bear in mind, also, that the discovered works must have been found with regard to substance and colour in the state in which they were overwhelmed in the sudden destruction of the towns. Yet do we read of a single painted marble statue? The paintings are, however, minutely described, and their coloured wall decorations. We have yet to learn that there has been any paint discovered upon those exquisitely beautiful statues belonging to the Lycian Temple Tomb, in the British Museum, discovered and brought to this country by Sir Charles Fellowes. Could we be brought to believe that marble statues were stuccoed or painted—and we utterly repudiate any such attempts as Mr Jones’s to make it credible—we should bless the memories, had they left us any notices of their names, of those worthies of a better taste who had the good sense to obliterate, to the utmost of their power, the bedaubers’ doings. With them we venerate white marble; and while we think of the Polychromatists, we entertain greater respect for the taste and sense of the so-called simpletons of the fable who endeavoured to wash the blackamoor white, than for the fatuous who would make the white black, or even vermilion.
It is surprising that in the history of the arts the Homeric period is made of so little account. We are inclined to believe that the arts had reached a high state, at least of workmanship; that they were subsequently lost, and revived. If Homer and Hesiod, the eldest of heathen authors, introduced into their poems elaborate descriptions of the shields of Hercules and Achilles, and in some degree spoke of the actual workmanship, can we believe that either of them treated of things totally unknown at the times they wrote? If so, they were inventors—or at least one of them—of the arts they describe. It is all very well to ascribe all that we read of as mere poetry; but poetry, however it invents, or partakes of invention, builds invention on fact. It would not invent an art, and offer it to the world as a thing already known. The shields exhibit extraordinary workmanship, which is thought worthy to be attributed to the skill of a deity. That of Hercules in Hesiod implies the use of hidden springs, for Perseus is described as hovering over and not touching the shield, and the Gorgons pursuing him as making a noise with the shield’s motion. The gold and silver dogs keeping watch at the gates of Alcinous could scarcely be the unauthorised invention of the poet. Much might be said upon the Nineveh discoveries; references might be made to the time of Moses—and instances more than that of the brazen serpent; the subsequent building of the Temple might supply most curious detail—all these proving the existence of sculptural arts, more or less refined, long antecedent to what we would fain call the revival of art in Greece. But we cannot be allowed space for a discussion not immediately bearing upon the subject of this paper.
It may be fairly conceded, that we are not to look to the earliest periods of art for its greatest simplicity. In all countries monstrosities and ornament were more eagerly sought, soon after the first attempts at representation, than accuracy and beauty. The time of the
“Fictilis et nullo violatus Jupiter auro,”
if not the poets’ fiction, was of short duration.
In this paper we treat not of the barbarities of art. Barbarous ages may be of all or of any times. Art having once reached perfection, and having mastered, over the falsities of bad taste, its own independence and emancipation from every other art, we deprecate the return of a barbarism which shall unite it with a gaudy presumption of another and a lower art, subjugating the genius of mind to the meaningless handling of the decorator.