‘The reign of Edward I. produced a new species of monument. When Eleanor the beloved wife of that monarch died, who had been his heroic and affectionate companion in the Holy War, he raised some crosses of magnificent architecture, adorned with statues of his departed queen, wherever her corpse rested on the way to its interment in Westminster Abbey. Three of these crosses still remain, at Northampton, Geddington, and Waltham. The statues have considerable simplicity and delicacy; they partake of the character and grace particularly cultivated in the school of Pisano; and it is not unlikely, as the sepulchral statue and tomb of Henry III. were executed by Italians, that these statues of Queen Eleanor might be done by some of the numerous travelling scholars from Pisano’s school.
‘The long and prosperous reign of Edward III. was as favourable to literature and liberal arts, as to the political and commercial interests of the country. So generally were painting, sculpture, and architecture encouraged and employed, that besides the buildings raised in this reign, few sacred edifices existed, which did not receive additions and decorations. The richness, novelty, and beauty of architecture may be seen in York and Gloucester Cathedrals, and many of our other churches: besides the extraordinary fancy displayed in various intricate and diversified figures which form the mullions of windows, they were occasionally enriched with a profusion of foliage and historical sculpture, equally surprising for beauty and novelty. In the chancel of Dorchester Church, near Oxford, are three windows of this kind, one of which, besides rich foliage, is adorned with twenty-eight small statues relating to the genealogy of our Saviour; and the other two with alto-relievos from acts of his life.’
Mr. Flaxman then proceeds to trace the progress of Sculpture, and the growing passion for it in this country, through the reign of Henry VII. to the period when its prospects were blighted by the Reformation, and many of its monuments defaced by the Iconoclastic fury of the Puritans and zealots in the time of Charles I. The Lecturer seems to be of opinion that the genius of sculpture in our island was arrested, in the full career of excellence, and when it was approaching the goal of perfection, by these two events; which drew aside the public attention, and threw a stigma on the encouragement of sacred sculpture; whereas, it would perhaps be just as fair to argue, that these events would never have happened, had it not been for a certain indifference in the national character to mere outward impressions, and a slowness to appreciate, or form an enthusiastic attachment to objects that appeal only to the imagination and the senses. We may be influenced by higher and more solid principles,—reason and philosophy; but that makes nothing to the question. Mr. Flaxman bestows great and deserved praise on the monuments of Aylmer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, and Edmund Crouchback, in Westminster Abbey, which are by English artists, whose names are preserved; but speaks slightingly of the tomb of Henry VII. and his wife, in Henry VII.’s Chapel, by Torregiano; from whom, on trivial and insufficient grounds, he withholds the merit of the other sculptures and ornaments of the chapel. This is prejudice, and not wisdom. We think the tomb alone will be monument enough to that artist in the opinion of all who have seen it. We have no objection to, but on the contrary applaud the Lecturer’s zeal to repel the imputation of incapacity from British art, and to detect the lurking traces and doubtful prognostics of it in the records of our early history; but we are, at the same time, convinced that tenaciousness on this point creates an unfavourable presumption on the other side; and we make bold to submit, that whenever the national capacity bursts forth in the same powerful and striking way in the Fine Arts that it has done in so many others, we shall no longer have occasion to praise ourselves for what we either have done, or what we are to do:—the world will soon be loud in the acknowledgment of it. Works of ornament and splendour must dazzle and claim attention at the first sight, or they do not answer their end. They are not like the deductions of an abstruse philosophy, or even improvements in practical affairs, which may make their way slowly and under-ground. They are not a light placed under a bushel, but like ‘a city set on a hill, that cannot be hid.’ To appear and to be, are with them the same thing. Neither are we much better satisfied with the arguments of the learned professor to show that the series of statuary in Wells Cathedral is of native English workmanship. The difference of style from the tombs of Edward the Confessor and Henry III. by Italians, can be of little weight at a period when the principles of art were so unsettled, and each person did the best he could, according to his own taste and knowledge; and as to the second branch of the evidence, viz. that ‘the family name of the Bishop is English, Jocelyn Troteman,’ it sounds too much like a parody on the story of him who wanted to prove his descent from the ‘Admirable Crichton,’ by his having a family cup in his possession with the initials A. C.!
We dwell the longer and more willingly on the details and recollections of the early works of which the author speaks so feelingly, as first informed with life and sentiment, because all relating to that remote period of architecture and sculpture, exercises a peculiar charm and fascination over our minds. It is not art in its ‘high and palmy state,’ with its boasted refinements about it, that we look at with envy and wonder, so much as in its first rude attempts and conscious yearning after excellence. They were, indeed, the favoured of the earth, into whom genius first breathed the breath of life; who, born in a night of ignorance, first beheld the sacred dawn of light—those Deucalions of art, who, after the deluge of barbarism and violence had subsided, stood alone in the world, and had to sow the seeds of countless generations of knowledge. We can conceive of some village Michael Angelo, with a soul too mighty for its tenement of clay, whose longing aspirations after truth and good were palsied by the refusal of his hand to execute them,—struggling to burst the trammels and trying to shake off the load of discouragement that oppressed him: What must be his exultation to see the speaking statue, the stately pile, rise up slowly before him,—the idea in his mind embodied out of nothing, without model or precedent,—to see a huge cathedral heave its ponderous weight above the earth, or the solemn figure of an apostle point from one corner of it to the skies; and to think that future ages would, perhaps, gaze at the work with the same delight and wonder that his own did, and not suffer his name to sink into the same oblivion as those who had gone before him, or as the brutes that perish;—this was, indeed, to be admitted into the communion, the ‘holiest of holies’ of genius, and to drink of the waters of life freely! Art, as it springs from the source of genius, is like the act of creation: it has the same obscurity and grandeur about it. Afterwards, whatever perfection it attains, it becomes mechanical. Its strongest impulse and inspiration is derived, not from what it has done, but from what it has to do. It is not surprising that from this state of anxiety and awe with which it regards its appointed task,—the unknown bourne that lies before it, such startling revelations of the world of truth and beauty are often struck out when one might least expect it, and that Art has sometimes leaped at one vast bound from its cradle to its grave! Mr. Flaxman, however, strongly inculcates the contrary theory, and is for raising up Art to its most majestic height by the slow and circuitous process of an accumulation of rules and machinery. He seems to argue that its advance is on a gradually inclined plane, keeping pace and co-extended with that of Science; ‘growing with its growth and strengthening with its strength.’ It appears to us that this is not rightly to weigh the essential differences either of Science or of Art; and that it is flying in the face both of fact and argument. He says, it took sculpture nine hundred or a thousand years to advance from its first rude commencement to its perfection in Greece and Egypt: But we must remember, that the greatest excellence of the Fine Arts, both in Greece, Italy, and Holland, was concentrated into little more than a century; and again, if Art and Science were synonymous, there can be no doubt that the knowledge of anatomy and geometry is more advanced in England in the present day than it was at Athens in the time of Pericles; but is our sculpture therefore superior? The answer to this is, ‘No; but it ought to be, and it will be.’ Spare us, good Mr. Prophesier! Art cannot be transmitted by a receipt, or theorem, like Science; and cannot therefore be improved ad libitum: It has inseparably to do with individual nature and individual genius.
The Second Lecture is on Egyptian Sculpture, and here Mr. Flaxman displays the same accurate information and diligent research as before. The Egyptian statues, the Sphinx, the Memnon, &c. were, as is well known, principally distinguished for their size, and the immense labour and expense bestowed upon them. The critic thus justly characterizes their style and merits:
‘The Egyptian statues stand equally poised on both legs, having one foot advanced, the arms either hanging straight down on each side; or, if one is raised, it is at a right angle across the body. Some of the statues sit on seats, some on the ground, and some are kneeling; but the position of the hands seldom varies from the above description; their attitudes are of course simple, rectilinear, and without lateral movement; the faces are rather flat, the brows, eyelids, and mouth formed of simple curves, slightly but sharply marked, and with little expression; the general proportions are something more than seven heads high; the form of the body and limbs rather round and effeminate, with only the most evident projections and hollows. Their tunics, or rather draperies, are in many instances without folds. Winckelman has remarked, that the Egyptians executed quadrupeds better than human figures; for which he gives the two following reasons: first, that as professions in that country were hereditary, genius must be wanting to represent the human form in perfection; secondly, That superstitious reverence for the works of their ancestors prevented improvements. This is an amusing, but needless hypothesis: for there are statues in the Capitoline Museum with as great a breadth, and choice of grand parts proper to the human form, as ever they represented in their lions, or other inferior animals. In addition to these observations on Egyptian statues, we may remark, the forms of their hands and feet are gross; they have no anatomical detail of parts, and are totally deficient in the grace of motion. This last defect, in all probability, was not the consequence of a superstitious determination to persist in the practice of their ancestors; it is accounted for in another and better way.
‘Pythagoras, after he had studied several years in Egypt, sacrificed a hundred oxen in consequence of having discovered, that a square of the longest side of a right-angled triangle is equal to the two squares of the lesser sides of the same triangle; and thence it follows, that the knowledge of the Egyptians could not have been very great at that time in geometry. This will naturally account for that want of motion in their statues and relievos, which can only be obtained by a careful observation of nature, assisted by geometry.’
This is, we apprehend, one of the weak points of Mr. Flaxman’s reasoning. That geometry may be of great use to fix and ascertain certain general principles of the art, we are far from disputing; but surely it was no more necessary for the Egyptian sculptor to wait for the discovery of Pythagoras’s problem before he could venture to detach the arms from the sides, than it was for the Egyptians themselves to remain swathed and swaddled up like mummies, without the power of locomotion, till Pythagoras came with his geometrical diagram to set their limbs at liberty. If they could do this without a knowledge of mechanics, the sculptor could not help seeing it, and imperfectly copying it, if he had the use of his senses or his wits about him. The greater probability is, that the sepulchral statues were done from, or in imitation of the mummies; or that as the imitation of variety of gesture or motion is always the most difficult, these stiff and monotonous positions were adopted (and subsequently adhered to from custom) as the safest and easiest. After briefly noticing the defects of the Hindoo and other early sculpture, the author proceeds to account for the improved practice of the Greeks on the same formal and mechanic principles.
‘We find,’ he says, ‘upon these authorities (Vitruvius and the elder Pliny), that geometry and numbers were employed to ascertain the powers of motion and proportions; optics and perspective (as known to the ancients) to regulate projections, hollows, keeping, diminution, curvatures, and general effects in figures, groups, insulated or in relief, with accompaniments; and anatomy, to represent the bones, muscles, tendons, and veins, as they appear on the surface of the human body and inferior animals.
‘In this enlightened age, when the circle of science is so generally and well understood—when the connexion and relation of one branch with another is demonstrated, and their principles applied from necessity and conviction, wherever possibility allows, in the liberal and mechanical arts, as well as all the other concerns of life—no one can be weak or absurd enough to suppose it is within the ability and province of human genius, without the principles of science previously acquired—by slight observation only—to become possessed of the forms, characters, and essences of objects, in such a manner as to represent them with truth, force, and pathos at once! No; we are convinced by reason and experience, that “life is short and art is long;” and the perfection of all human productions depends on the indefatigable accumulation of knowledge and labour through a succession of ages.’—P. 55.