Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, "Fenton, Edward" to "Finistere" / Volume 10, Slice 3

by Various

That which music is thus among the speaking or time-arts, architecture is among the shaping or space-arts. As music appeals to our faculties for taking pleasure in non-imitative combinations of transitory sound, so architecture appeals Non-imitative character of architecture. to our faculties for taking pleasure in non-imitative combinations of stationary mass. Corresponding to the system of ear-effects or combinations of time, tone and harmony with which music works, architecture works with a system of eye-effects or combinations of mass, contour, light and shade; colour, proportion, interval, alternation of plain and decorated parts, regularity and variety in regularity, apparent stability, vastness, appropriateness and the rest. Only the materials of architecture are not volatile and intangible like sound, but solid timber, brick, stone, metal and mortar, and the laws of weight and force according to which these materials have to be combined are much more severe and cramping than the laws of melody and harmony which regulate the combinations of music. The architect is further subject, unlike the musician, to the dictates and precise prescriptions of utility. Even in structures raised for purposes not of everyday use and necessity, but of commemoration or worship, the rules for such commemoration and such worship have prescribed a more or less fixed arrangement and proportion of the parts or members, whether in the Egyptian temple or temple-tomb, the Greek temple or herōon, or in the churches of the middle ages and Renaissance in the West.

Hence the effects of architecture are necessarily less full of various, rapturous and unforeseen enchantment than the effects of music. Yet for those who possess sensibility to the pleasures of the eye and the perfections of shaping art, the architecture Analogies of architecture and music. of the great ages has yielded combinations which, so far as comparison is permissible between things unlike in their materials, fall little short of the achievements of music in those kinds of excellence which are common to them both. In the virtues of lucidity, of just proportion and organic interdependence of the several parts or members, in the mathematic subtlety of their mutual relations, and of the transitions from one part or member to another, in purity and finish of individual forms, in the character of one thing growing naturally out of another and everything serving to complete the whole—in these qualities, no musical combination can well surpass a typical Doric temple such as the Parthenon at Athens. None, again, can well surpass some of the great cathedrals of the middle ages in the qualities of sublimity, of complexity, in the power both of expressing and suggesting spiritual aspiration, in the invention of intricate developments and ramifications about a central plan, in the union of majesty in the main conception with fertility of adornment in detail. In fancifulness, in the unexpected, in capricious and far-sought opulence, in filling the mind with mingled enchantments of east and west and south and north, music can hardly do more than a building like St Mark’s at Venice does with its blending of Byzantine elements, Italian elements, Gothic elements, each carried to the utmost pitch of elaboration and each enriched with a hundred caprices of ornament, but all working together, all in obedience to a law, and “all beginning and ending with the Cross.”

In the case of architecture, however, as in the case of music, the non-imitative character must not be stated quite without exception or reserve. There have been styles of architecture in which forms suggesting or imitating natural or other Exceptional and limited admission of imitative forms in architecture. phenomena have held a place among the abstract forms proper to the art. Often the mode of such suggestions is rather symbolical to the mind than really imitative to the eye; as when the number and relations of the heavenly planets were imaged by that race of astronomers, the Babylonians, in the seven concentric walls of their great temple, and in many other architectural constructions; or as when the shape of the cross was adopted, with innumerable slight varieties and modifications, for the ground plan of the churches of Christendom. Passing to examples of imitation more properly so called, it may be true, and was, at any rate, long believed, that the aisles of Gothic churches, when once the use of the pointed arch had been evolved as a principle of construction, were partly designed to evoke the idea of the natural aisles of the forest, and that the upsoaring forest trunks and meeting branches were more or less consciously imaged in their piers and vaultings. In the temple-palaces of Egypt, one of the regular architectural members, the sustaining pier, is often systematically wrought in the actual likeness of a conventionalized cluster of lotus stems, with lotus flowers for the capital. When we come to the fashion, not rare in Greek architecture, of carving this same sustaining member, the column, in complete human likeness, and employing caryatids, canephori, atlases or the like, to support the entablature of a building, it then becomes difficult to say whether we have to do with a work of architecture or of sculpture. The case, at any rate, is different from that in which the sculptor is called in to supply surface decoration to the various members of a building, or to fill with the products of his own art spaces in the building specially contrived and left vacant for that purpose. When the imitative feature is in itself an indispensable member of the architectural construction, to architecture rather than sculpture we shall probably do best to assign it.

Defining architecture, then (apart from its utility, which for the present we leave out of consideration), as a shaping art, of which the Definition of architecture. function is to express and arouse emotion by combinations of ordered and decorated mass, we pass from the characteristics of the non-imitative to those of the imitative group of arts, namely sculpture, painting and poetry.

If we keep in mind the source and origin of these arts, we must remember what has already been observed, that they spring by no means from man’s love of imitation alone, but from his desire to record and commemorate experience, using the The imitative arts are arts of record using imitation as their means. faculty of imitation as his means. Mnemosyne (Memory) was in Greek tradition the mother of the Muses; imitation, in the sense above defined, is but their instrument. Hence we might think “arts of record” a better name for this group than arts of imitation. The answer is—but a large part of pure architecture is also commemorative; from the pyramids and obelisks of Egypt down there are many monuments in which the impulse of men to perpetuate their own or others’ memories has worked without any aid of imitation. Hence as the definition of a class of arts contrasted with architecture and music the name “arts of record” would fail; and we have to fall back on the current and established name of the “imitative arts.” In considering them we cannot do better than follow that Aristotelian division which describes each art according, first, to the objects which it imitates, and, secondly, to the means it employs.

Taking sculpture first, as imitating a smaller range of objects than the other two, and imitating them more completely: sculpture may have for the objects of its imitation the shapes of whatever things possess length, breadth and magnitude. For its Sculpture as an imitative art. means or instruments it has solid form, which the sculptor either carves out of a hard substance, as in the case of wood and stone, or models in a yielding substance, as in the case of clay and wax, or casts in a dissolved or molten substance, as in the case of plaster and of metal in certain uses, or beats, draws or chases in a malleable and ductile substance, as in the case of metal in other uses, or stamps from dies or moulds, a method sometimes used in all soft or fusible materials. Thus a statue or statuette may either be carved straight out of a block of stone or wood, or first modelled in clay or wax, then moulded in plaster or some equivalent material, and then carved in stone or cast in bronze. A gem is wrought in stone by cutting and grinding. Figures in jeweller’s work are wrought by beating and chasing; a medallion by beating and chasing or else by stamping from a die; a coin by stamping from a die; and so forth. The process of modelling (Gr. πλάττειν) in a soft substance being regarded as the typical process of the sculptor, the name plastic art has been given to his operations in general.

In general terms, the task of sculpture is to imitate solid form with solid form. But sculptured form may be either completely or incompletely solid. Sculpture in completely solid form exactly reproduces, whether on the original or on a different Sculpture in the round and in relief. scale, the relations or proportions of the object imitated in the three dimensions of length, breadth and depth or thickness. Sculpture in incompletely solid form reproduces the proportions of the objects with exactness only so far as concerns two of its dimensions, namely, those of length and breadth; while the third dimension, that of depth or thickness, it reproduces in a diminished proportion, leaving it to the eye to infer, from the partial degree of projection given to the work, the full projection of the object imitated. The former, or completely solid kind of sculpture, is called sculpture in the round; its works stand free, and can be walked round and seen from all points. The latter, or incompletely solid kind of sculpture, is called sculpture in relief; its works do not stand free, but are engaged in or attached to a background, and can only be seen from in front. According, in the latter kind of sculpture, to its degree of projection from the background, a work is said to be in high or in low relief. Sculpture in the round and sculpture in relief are alike in this, that the properties of objects which they imitate are their external forms as defined by their outlines—that is, by the boundaries and circumscriptions of their masses—and their light and shade—the lights and shadows, that is, which diversify the curved surfaces of the masses in consequence of their alternations and gradations of projection and recession. But the two kinds of sculpture differ in this. A work of sculpture in the round imitates the whole of the outlines by which the object imitated is circumscribed in the three dimensions of space, and presents to the eye, as the object itself would do, a new outline succeeding the last every moment as you walk round it. Whereas a work of sculpture in relief imitates only one outline of any object; it takes, so to speak, a section of the object as seen from a particular point, and traces on the background the boundary-line of that particular section, merely suggesting, by modelling the surface within such boundary according to a regular, but a diminished, ratio of projection, the other outlines which the object would present if seen from all sides successively.

As sculpture in the round reproduces the real relations of a solid object in space, it follows that the only kind of object which it can reproduce with pleasurable effect according to the laws of regulated or rhythmical design must be one not too Subjects proper for sculpture in the round. vast or complicated, one that can afford to be detached and isolated from its surroundings, and of which all the parts can easily be perceived and apprehended in their organic relations. Further, it will need to be an object interesting enough to mankind in general to make them take delight in seeing it reproduced with all its parts in complete imitation. And again, it must be such that some considerable part of the interest lies in those particular properties of outline, play of surface, and light and shade which it is the special function of sculpture to reproduce. Thus a sculptured representation in the round, say, of a mountain with cities on it, would hardly be a sculpture at all; it could only be a model, and as a model might have value; but value as a work of fine art it could not have, because the object imitated would lack organic definiteness and completeness; it would lack universality of interest, and of the interest which it did possess, a very inconsiderable part would depend upon its properties of outline, surface, and light and shade. Obviously there is no kind of object in the world that so well unites the required conditions for pleasurable imitation in sculpture as the human body. It is at once the most complete of organisms, and the shape of all others the most subtle as well as the most intelligible in its outlines; the most habitually detached in active or stationary freedom; the most interesting to mankind, because its own; the richest in those particular effects, contours and modulations, contrasts, harmonies and transitions of modelled surface and circumscribing line, which it is the prerogative of sculpture to imitate. Accordingly the object of imitation for this art is pre-eminently the body of man or woman. That it has not been for the sake of representing men and women as such, but for the sake of representing gods in the likeness of men and women, that the human form has been most enthusiastically studied, does not affect this fact in the theory of the art, though it is a consideration of great importance in its history. Besides the human form, sculpture may imitate the forms of those of the lower animals whose physical endowments have something of a kindred perfection, with other natural or artificial objects as may be needed merely by way of accessory or symbol. The body must for the purposes of this art be divested of covering, or covered only with such tissues as reveal, translate or play about without concealing it. Chiefly in lands and ages where climate and social use have given the sculptor the opportunity of studying human forms so draped or undraped has this art attained perfection, and become exemplary and enviable to that of other races.

Relief sculpture is more closely connected with architecture than the other kind, and indeed is commonly used in subordination to it. But if its task is thus somewhat different from that of sculpture in the round, its principal objects of imitation Subjects proper for sculpture in relief. are the same. The human body remains the principal theme of the sculptor in relief; but the nature of his art allows, and sometimes compels, him to include other objects in the range of his imitation. As he has not to represent the real depth or projection of things, but only to suggest them according to a ratio which he may fix himself, so he can introduce into the third or depth dimension, thus arbitrarily reduced, a multitude of objects for which the sculptor in the round, having to observe the real ratio of the three dimensions, has no room. He cam place one figure in slightly raised outline emerging from behind the more fully raised outline of another, and by the same system can add to his representation rocks, trees, nay mountains and cities and birds on the wing. But the more he uses this liberty the less will he be truly a sculptor. Solid modelling, and real light and shade, are the special means or instrument of effect which the sculptor alone among imitative artists enjoys. Single outlines and contours, the choice of one particular section and the tracing of its circumscription, are means which the sculptor enjoys in common with the painter or draughtsman. And indeed, when we consider works executed wholly or in part in very low relief, whether Assyrian battle-pieces and hunting-pieces in alabaster or bronze, or the backgrounds carved in bronze, marble or wood by the Italian sculptors who followed the example set by Ghiberti at the Renaissance, we shall see that the principle of such work is not the principle of sculpture at all. Its effect depends little on qualities of surface-light and shadow, and mainly on qualities of contour, as traced by a slight line of shadow on the side away from the light, and a slight line of light on the side next to it. And we may fairly hesitate whether we shall rank the artist who works on this principle, which is properly a graphic rather than a plastic principle, among sculptors or among draughtsmen. The above are cases in which the relief sculptor exercises his liberty in the introduction of other objects besides human figures into his sculptured compositions. But there is another kind of relief sculpture in which the artist has less choice. That is, the kind in which the sculptor is called in to decorate with carved work parts of an architectural construction which are not adapted for the introduction of figure subjects, or for their introduction only as features in a scheme of ornament that comprises many other elements. To this head belongs most of the carving of capitals, mouldings, friezes (except the friezes of Greek temples), bands, cornices, and, in the Gothic style, of doorway arches, niches, canopies, pinnacles, brackets, spandrels and the thousand members and parts of members which that style so exquisitely adorned with true or conventionalized imitations of natural forms. This is no doubt a subordinate function of the art; and it is impossible, as we have seen already, to find a precise line of demarcation between carving, in this decorative use, which is properly sculpture, and that which belongs properly to architecture.

Leaving such discussions, we may content ourselves with the definition of sculpture as Definition of sculpture. a shaping art, of which the business is to express and arouse emotion by the imitation of natural objects, and principally the human body, in solid form, reproducing either their true proportions in three dimensions, or their proportions in the two dimensions of length and breadth only, with a diminished proportion in the third dimension of depth or thickness.