Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/590

Rh 564 SCULPTURE [GERMAN*. pseudo-Roman art to be more pronounced than elsewhere. Among the first sculptors of this school were Antoine Chaudet (1763-1810) and Joseph Bosio (1769-1845). The latter was largely employed by Napoleon I. : he exe- cuted with some ability the bronze spiral reliefs round the column of the Place VendOme and the statue of Napoleon on the top, and also modelled the classical quadriga on the triumphal arch in the Place du Carrousel. Jacques Pradier of Geneva (1790-1852) produced the Chained Prometheus of the Louvre and the Niobe group (1822). He possessed great technical ability, but aimed in most of his works at a soft sensuous beauty which is specially unsuited to sculpture. Francois Rude (1784-1855) worked in a style modelled on Grceco- Roman sculpture treated with some freedom. His bronze Mercury in the Louvre is a clever work, but his statues of Marshal Ney in the Luxembourg Gardens and of General Cavaignac (1847) in the cemetery of Montmartre are conspicuously bad. The reliefs on the pediment of the Pantheon are by Pierre Jean David of Angers (1789-1856); his early works are of dull classic style, but later in life he became a realist and produced the most unsculpturesque results. A bronze statue of a Dancing Fisher-lad modelled by Francois Joseph Duvet, now in the Luxembourg collection, is an able work of the genre class. Other French sculptors who were highly esteemed in their time were Ottin, Courtet, Simart, Etex, and Carpeaux. 1 The last was an artist of great ability, and produced an immense number of clever but often very offensive statues. He obtained the highest renown in France, and was a typical example of the sad degradation of taste which prevailed under the rule of Napoleon III. Modern The existing schools of French sculpture are by far the knowledge of the human form are possessed by several living sculptors of France to a degree which has probably never been surpassed, and some of them produce works of very great power, beauty, and originality. Many of their works have a similar fault to that of one class of French painters : they are much injured by an excess of sensual realism ; in many cases nude statues are simply life-studies with all the faults and individual peculiarities of one model. Very unsculpturesque results are produced by treating a statue as a representation of a naked person, one, that is, who is obviously in the habit of wearing clothes, a very different thing from the purity of the ancient Greek treatment of the nude. Thus the great ability of many French sculptors is degraded to suit the taste of the voluptuary. An extravagance of attitude and an undignified arrangement of the figures do much to injure some of the large groups which are full of technical merit, and executed with marvellous anatomical knowledge. This is specially the case with much of the sculpture that is intended to decorate the buildings of Paris. The group of nude dancers by Carpeaux outside the new opera- house is a work of astonishing skill and prurient imagi- nation, utterly unsculpturesque in style and especially unfitted to decorate the comparatively rigid lines of a building. The egotism of modern French sculptors will not allow them to accept the necessarily subordinate reserve which is so necessary for architectonic sculpture. Other French works, on the other hand, err in the direc- tion of a sickly sentimentalism, or a petty realism, which is fatal to sculpturesque beauty. The real power and merits of the modern French school make these faults all the more conspicuous. 2 1 See Chesneau, J. B. Carpeaux, sa vie, &c. f Paris, 1880. 2 On French sculpture see Adams, Recueil de Sculptures Gothiques, Paris, 1858 ; Cerf, Description de Notre Dame de Reims, Rheims, 1861 ; iWric-David, L'Art Statvaire, Paris, 1805, and Hisloire de la Sculpture Francaise, Paris, 1S53 ; Guilhebaud, L' Architecture et la Germany. Till the 12th century sculpture in Germany continued to be under the lifeless influence of Byzantium, tempered to some extent by an attempt to return to classical models. This is seen in the bronze pillar reliefs Broni and other works produced by Bishop Bernward after his work, visit to Rome (see METAL- WORK, vol. xvi. p. 77). Hildes- 12th heim, Cologne, and the whole of the Rhine provinces cei were the most active seats of German sculpture, especially in metal, till the 12th century. Many remarkable pieces of bronze sculpture were produced at the end of that period, of which several specimens exist. The bronze font at Lie"ge, with figure -subjects in relief of various baptismal scenes from the New Testament, by Lambert Patras of Dinant, cast about 1112, is a work of most wonderful beauty and perfection for its time ; other fonts in Osnabruck and Hildesheim cathedrals are surrounded by spirited reliefs, fine in conception, but inferior in beauty to those on the Lie"ge font. Fine bronze candelabra exist in the abbey church of Comburg and at Aix-la-Chapelle, the latter of about 1165. Merseburg cathedral has a strange realistic sepulchral figure of Rudolf of Swabia, executed about 1100; and at Magdeburg is a fine effigy, also in bronze, of Bishop Frederick (d. 1152), treated in a more graceful way. The last figure has a peculiarity which is not uncommon in the older bronze reliefs of Germany : the body is treated as a relief, while the head sticks out and is quite detached from the ground in a very awkward way. One of the finest plastic works of this century is the choir screen of Hildesheim cathedral, executed in hard stucco, once rich with gold and colours ; on its lower part is a series of large reliefs of saints modelled with almost classical breadth and nobility, with drapery of especial excellence. In the 13th century German sculpture had made con-TLir- siderable artistic progress, but it did not reach the high teenti standard of France. One of the best examples is the centu "golden gate" of Freiburg cathedral, with sculptured figures on the jambs after the French fashion. The statues of the apostles on the nave pillars, and especially one of the Madonna at the east end (1260-70), possess great beauty and sculpturesque breadth. The statues both inside and outside Bamberg cathedral, of the middle of the 1 3th century, are nobly designed ; and an equestrian statue of Conrad III. in the market-place at Bamberg, supported by a foliated corbel, exhibits startling vigour and originality, and is designed with wonderful largeness of effect, though small in scale. The statues of Henry the Lion and Queen Matilda at Brunswick, of about the same period, are of the highest beauty and dignity of expression. Strasburg cathedral, though sadly damaged by restoration, still possesses a large quantity of the finest sculpture of the 13th century. One tympanum relief of the Death of the Virgin, surrounded by the sorrowing Apostles, is a work of the very highest beauty, worthy to rank with the best Italian sculpture of even a later period. Of its class nothing can surpass the purely decorative carving at Stras- burg, with varied realistic foliage studied from nature, evidently with the keenest interest and enjoyment. Nuremberg is rich in good sculpture of the 14th century. Nnre The church of St Sebald, the Frauenkirche, and the west ber s facade of St Lawrence are lavishly decorated with reliefs sclloc and statues, very rich in effect, but showing the germs of Sculpture du Vme au XVIme SiScle, Paris, 1851-59 ; Menard, Sculp- ture Antique et Moderne, Paris, 1867 ; Didron, Annales ArchSo- logiques, various articles ; Felibien, Histoire de I'Art en France, Paris, 1856 ; Mrs Pattison, Renaissance of Art in France, London, 1879 ; Moutfaucon, Monumens de la Monarchic Francaise, Paris, 1729-33 ; Jouy, Sculptures Modernes du Louvre, Paris, 1855 ; Reveil, CEuvre de Jean Goujon, Paris, 1868 ; Viollet-le-Duc, IHctionnaire de V Architecture, Paris, 1869, art. "Sculpture," vol. viii. pp. 97-279; Claretie, Peintres et Sculpteurs Contemporains, Paris, in progress.
 * most important in the world. Technical skill and intimate