Mr. Flaxman makes an attempt to vindicate the golden ornaments, and eyes of precious stones, in the ancient statues, as calculated to add to the awe of the beholder, and inspire a belief in their preternatural power. In this point of view, or as a matter of religious faith, we are not tenacious on the subject, any more than we object to the wonder-working images and moving eyes of the patron saints in Popish churches. But the question, as it regards the fine arts in general, is curious, and treated at some length, and with considerable intricacy and learning, by the Lecturer.
‘We certainly know,’ he says, ‘that the arts of painting and sculpture are different in their essential properties. Painting exists by colours only, and form is the peculiarity of sculpture; but there is a principle common to both, in which both are united, and without which neither can exist—and this is drawing; and in the union of light, shadow, and colour, sculpture may be seen more advantageously by the chill light of a winter’s day, or the warmer tints of a midsummer’s sun, according to the solemnity or cheerfulness of the subject. These positions will be generally agreed to; but the question before us is, “How far was Phidias successful in adding colours to the sculpture of the Athenian Minerva, and the Olympian Jupiter?”—which examples were followed by succeeding artists.
‘We have all been struck by the resemblance of figures in coloured wax-work to persons in fits, and therefore such a representation is particularly proper for the similitude of persons in fits, or the deceased: but the Olympian Jupiter and the Athenian Minerva were intended to represent those who were superior to death and disease. They were believed immortal, and therefore the stillness of these statues, having the colouring of life, during the time the spectator viewed them, would appear divinity in awful abstraction or repose. Their stupendous size alone was preternatural; and the colouring of life without motion increased the sublimity of the statue and the terror of the pious beholder. The effect of the materials which composed these statues has also been questioned. The statues themselves (according to the information of Aristotle, in his book concerning the world) were made of stone, covered with plates of ivory, so fitted together, that at the distance requisite for seeing them, they appeared one mass of ivory, which has much the tint of delicate flesh. The ornaments and garments were enriched with gold, coloured metals, and precious stones.
‘Gold ornaments on ivory are equally splendid and harmonious, and in such colossal forms must have added a dazzling glory, like electric fluid running over the surface: the figure, character, and splendour must have had the appearance of an immortal vision in the eyes of the votary.
‘But let us attend to the judgment passed on these by the ancients: we have already quoted Quintilian, who says, “they appear to have added something to religion, the work was so worthy of the divinity.” Plato says, “the eyes of Minerva were of precious stones,” and immediately adds, “Phidias was skilful in beauty.” Aristotle calls him “the wise sculptor.” An opinion prevailed that Jupiter had revealed himself to Phidias; and the statue is said to have been touched by lightning in approbation of the work. After these testimonies, there seems no doubt remaining of the effect produced by these coloured statues; but the very reasons that prove that colours in sculpture may have the effect of supernatural vision, fits, or death, prove at the same time that such practice is utterly improper for the general representation of the human figure: because, as the tints of carnation in nature are consequences of circulation, wherever the colour of flesh is seen without motion, it resembles only death, or a suspension of the vital powers.
‘Let not this application of colours, however, in the instances of the Jupiter and Minerva, be considered as a mere arbitrary decision of choice or taste in the sculptor, to render his work agreeable in the eyes of the beholder. It was produced by a much higher motive. It was the desire of rendering these stupendous forms[[32]] living and intelligent to the astonished gaze of the votary, and to confound the sceptical by a flash of conviction, that something of divinity resided in the statues themselves.
‘The practice of painting sculpture seems to have been common to most countries, particularly in the early and barbarous states of society. But whether we look on the idols of the South Seas, the Etruscan painted sculpture and terra-cotta monuments, or the recumbent coloured statues on tombs of the middle ages, we shall generally find the practice has been employed to enforce superstition, or preserve an exact similitude of the deceased.
‘These, however, are in themselves perverted purposes. The real ends of painting, sculpture, and all the other arts, are to elevate the mind to the contemplation of truth, to give the judgment a rational determination, and to represent such of our fellow-men as have been benefactors to society, not in the deplorable and fallen state of a lifeless and mouldering corpse, but in the full vigour of their faculties when living, or in something corresponding to the state of the good received among the just made perfect.’
All this may be very true and very fine; what the greater part of it has to do with the colouring of statues, we are at a loss to comprehend. Whenever Mr. Flaxman gives a reason, it usually makes against himself; but his faith in his conclusion is proof against contradiction. He says, that adding flesh-colour to statues gives an appearance of death to them, because the colour of life without motion argues a suspension of the vital powers. The same might be said of pictures which have colour without motion; but who would contend, that because a chalk-drawing has the tints of flesh (denoting circulation) superadded to it, this gives it the appearance of a person in fits, or of death? On the contrary, Sir Joshua Reynolds makes it an objection to coloured statues, that, as well as wax-work, they were too much like life. This was always the scope and ‘but-end’ of his theories and rules on art, that it should avoid coming in too close contact with nature. Still we are not sure that this is not the true reason, viz. that the imitation ought not to amount to a deception, nor be effected by gross or identical means. We certainly hate all wax-work, of whatever description; and the idea of colouring a statue gives us a nausea; but as is the case with most bigoted people, the clearness of our reasoning does not keep pace with the strength of our prejudices. It is easy to repeat that the object of painting is colour and form, while the object of sculpture is form alone; and to ring the changes on the purity, the severity, the abstract truth of sculpture. The question returns as before; Why should sculpture be more pure, more severe, more abstracted, than any thing else? The only clew we can suggest is, that from the immense pains bestowed in sculpture on mere form, or in giving solidity and permanence, this predominant feeling becomes an exclusive and unsociable one, and the mind rejects every addition of a more fleeting or superficial kind as an excrescence and an impertinence. The form is hewn out of the solid rock; to tint and daub it over with a flimsy, perishable substance, is a mockery and a desecration, where the work itself is likely to last for ever. A statue is the utmost possible developement of form; and that on which the whole powers and faculties of the artist have been bent: It has a right then, by the laws of intellectual creation, to stand alone in that simplicity and unsullied nakedness in which it has been wrought. Tangible form (the primary idea) is blind, averse to colour. A statue, if it were coloured at all, ought to be inlaid, that is, done in mosaic, where the colour would be part of the solid materials. But this would be an undertaking beyond human strength. Where art has performed all that it can do, why require it to begin its task again? Or if the addition is to be made carelessly and slightly, it is unworthy of the subject. Colour is at best the mask of form: paint on a statue is like paint on a real face,—it is not of a piece with the work, it does not belong to the face, and justly obtains the epithet of meretricious.
Mr. Flaxman, in comparing the progress of ancient and modern sculpture, does not shrink from doing justice to the latter. He gives the preference to scriptural over classical subjects; and, in one passage, seems half inclined to turn short round on the Greek mythology and morality, and to treat all those Heathen Gods and Goddesses as a set of very improper people:—as to the Roman bas-reliefs, triumphs, and processions, he dismisses them as no better than so many ‘vulgar, military gazettes.’ He, with due doubt and deference, places Michael Angelo almost above the ancients. His statues will not bear out this claim; and we have no sufficient means of judging of their paintings. In his separate groups and figures in the Sistine Chapel, there is, we indeed think, a conscious vastness of purpose, a mighty movement, like the breath of Creation upon the waters, that we see in no other works, ancient or modern. The forms of his Prophets and Sibyls are like moulds of thought. Mr. Flaxman is also strenuous in his praises of the Last Judgment; but on that we shall be silent, as we are not converts to his opinion. Michael Angelo’s David and Bacchus, done when he was young, are clumsy and unmeaning; even the grandeur of his Moses is confined to the horns and beard. The only works of his in sculpture which sustain Mr. Flaxman’s praise, are those in the chapel of Lorenzo de Medici at Florence; and these are of undoubted force and beauty.