Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/593

Rh ITALIAN.] SCULPTURE 567 central pillar. These noble figures, though treated in a somewhat rigid manner, are thoroughly subordinate to the main lines of the building. Their heads, with pointed beards and a fixed mechanical smile, together with the stiff drapery arranged in long narrow folds, recall the ./Eginetan pediment sculpture of about 500 B.C. This appears strange at first sight, but the fact is that the works of the early Greek and the mediaeval Spaniard were both produced at a somewhat similar stage in two far distant periods of artistic development. In both cases plastic art was freeing itself from the bonds of a hieratic archaism, and had reached one of the last steps in a de- velopment which in the one case culminated in the per- fection of the Phidian age, and in the other led to the exquisitely beautiful yet simple and reserved art of the end of the 13th and early part of the 14th century, the golden age of sculpture in France and England. In the 14th century the silversmiths of Spain produced h many works of sculpture of great size and technical power. One of the finest, by a Valencian called Peter Bernec, is the uries. great silver retable at Gerona cathedral. It is divided ' into three tiers of statuettes and reliefs, richly framed in canopied niches, all of silver, partly cast and partly hammered. In the 15th century an infusion of German influence was mixed with that of France, as may be seen in the very rich sculptural decorations which adorn the main door of Salamanca cathedral, the fagade of S. Juan at Valladolid, and the church and cloisters of S. Juan de los Reyes at Toledo, perhaps the most gorgeous examples of architectural sculpture in the world. The carved foliage of this period is of especial beauty and spirited execution ; realistic forms of plant -growth are mingled with other more conventional foliage in the most masterly manner. The very noble bronze monument of Archdeacon Pelayo (d. 1490) in Burgos cathedral was probably the work of Simon of Cologne, who was also architect of the Certosa at Miraflores, 2 miles from Burgos. The church of this monastery contains two of the most magnificently rich monuments in the world, especially the altar-tomb of King John II. and his queen by Gil de Siloe, a perfect marvel of rich alabaster canopy-work and intricate under-cutting. The effigies have little merit. teenth In the early part of the 16th century a strong Italian tur y- influence superseded that of France and Germany, partly owing to the presence in Spain of the Florentine Torri- giano and other Italian artists. The magnificent tomb of Ferdinand and Isabella in Granada cathedral is a fine specimen of Italian Renaissance sculpture, somewhat similar in general form to the tomb of Sixtus IV. by Ant. Pollai- uolo in St Peter's, but half a century later in the style of its detail. It looks as if it had been executed by Torri- giano, but the design which he made for it is said to have been rejected. Some of the work of this period, though purely Italian in style, was produced by Spanish sculp- tors, for example, the choir reliefs at Toledo cathedral, and those in the Colegio Mayor at Salamanca by Alonso Berruguete, who obtained his artistic training in Rome and Florence. Esteban Jordan, Gregorio Hernandez, and other Spanish sculptors produced a large number of elabo- rate retables, carved in wood with subjects in relief and richly decorated in gold and colours. These sumptuous masses of polychromatic sculpture resemble the 15th- century retables of Germany more than any Italian ex- amples, and were a sort of survival of an older mediaeval style. Alonso Cano (1600-1667), the painter, was re- markable for clever realistic sculpture, very highly coloured and religious in style. Montanes, who died in 1614, was one of the ablest Spanish sculptors of his time. His finest works are the reliefs of the Madonna and Saints on an altar in the university church of Seville, and in the cathedral, in the chapel of St Augustine, a very nobly designed Conception, modelled with great skill. In later times Spain has produced little or no sculpture of any merit. Italy. Till the great revival of plastic art took place Thir- in the middle of the 13th century, the sculpture of Italy teeuth was decidedly inferior to that of other more northern century- countries. Much of it was actually the work of northern sculptors, as, for example, the very rude sculpture on the facade of S. Andrea at Pistoia, executed about 1186 by Gruamons and his brother Adeodatus. 1 Fig. 15 shows a FIG. 15. Belief by Benedetto Antelami for the pulpit of Parma cathedral in 1178 ; Byzantine style. relief by Antelami of Parma of the year 1178. Unlike the sculpture of the Pisani and later artists, these early figures are thoroughly secondary to the architecture they are de- signed to decorate; they are evidently the work of men who were architects first and sculptors in a secondary degree. After the 13th century the reverse was usually the case, and, as at the west end of Orvieto cathedral, the sculptured decorations are treated as being of primary importance, not that the Italian sculptor-architect ever allowed his statues or reliefs to weaken or damage their architectural surroundings, as is unfortunately the case with much modern sculpture. In southern Italy, during the 13th century, there existed a school of sculpture resembling that of France, owing probably to the Norman occupa- tion. The pulpit in the cathedral of Ravello, executed by Mcolaus di Bartolomeo di Foggia in 1272, is an import- ant work of this class; it is enriched with very noble sculpture, especially a large female head crowned with a richly foliated coronet, and combining lifelike vigour with largeness of style in a very remarkable way. The bronze doors at Monreale, Pisa, and elsewhere, which are among the chief works of plastic art in Italy during the 12th century, are described in MONREALE and METAL-WORK. The history of Italian sculpture of the best period is given to a great extent in the separate articles on the PISANI (q.v.) and other Italian artists. During the 13th century Home and the central provinces of Italy produced very few sculptors of ability, almost the only men of note being the Cosmati (see ROME, vol. xx. p. 835). During the 14th century Florence and the neighbouring Four- cities were the chief centres of Italian sculpture, and there teenth numerous sculptors of successively increasing artistic power centuJ T- lived and worked, till in the 15th century Florence had become the aesthetic capital of the world, and reached a pitch of artistic wealth and perfection which Athens 1 The other finest examples of this early class of sculpture exist at Pisa, Parma, Modena, and Verona ; in most of them the old Byzantine influence is very strong.