Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/685

Rh WOOD-CARVING 645 another, make it very necessary for the carver to suit his design to the exigencies of the material. Large curves should be avoided, on account of their tendency to split across with the grain, and deep under-cutting is objection able for the same reason. A tough fibrous substance like wood obviously calls for a very different treatment from that which is suitable to a homogeneous substance like stone or marble. This adaptation of the design to the material is very conspicuous in the wood-carving of the finest kinds, such as the Scandinavian doorways of the 9th to the 12th centuries, the Perpendicular roofs and screens of England in the 15th century, and the richly carved panelling of Moslem countries throughout the Middle Ages. Some woods, such as pear, lime, and more especially box, are comparatively free from any distinct grain, and may be carved almost like marble, but these woods are only to be had in small pieces, and from their want of fibre are structurally weak, and are therefore only avail able for decorative purposes on a small scale. It is this absence of grain which makes boxwood the material selected for engraving on wood, a form of wood-carving in which the artist needs to be as little as possible hampered by the structure of his material. In ancient times cedar wood was specially used for decorative carving, and in the East various perfumed woods, such as that of the sandal- tree, have always been favourites with the carver. In Europe the oak, the chestnut, 1 the fir, and the walnut have been chiefly used, and for sculpture in the round or high relief the sycamore and the plane-tree, as well as the oak. One objection to using wood for life-sized or colossal sculpture is that large blocks are very liable to crack and split from end to end, owing to the fact that the parts near the surface dry and shrink more rapidly than the core. For this reason the mediaeval carvers usually hollowed out their wooden statues from the back, so as to equalize the shrinkage and prevent splitting. In all cases wood for carving should be very well seasoned, and it is especially necessary to get rid of the natural sap, which causes rot if it is not dried out. It is useful to soak newly cut timber in running water, so that the sap may be washed away; it is then comparatively easy to dry out the water which has soaked into the pores of the wood and taken the place of the sap. Egyptian. One of the most remarkable examples of ancient Egyptian art, dating probably from nearly 400 years B.C., is a life-sized portrait statue of a stout elderly man, now in the Boulak museum. This is carved out of a solid block of sycamore wood, except that the right arm is worked separately and attached by a mortice and tenon ; the eyes are formed by inlaid bits of shell and crystal, and the whole is a most wonderful piece of life-like realism (see fig. 1). Although dating from so remote a period, this statue bears witness to an amount of technical skill and artistic knowledge which shows that long centuries of experience and artistic development must have preceded its production, a period of which we have no remains, this statue being one of the earliest works of art which even Egypt has preserved for us. In the same museum are also some very remarkable wooden panels from the tomb of Hosi, about four feet high, carved in low relief with standing figures of men and hieroglyphs. These large slabs of wood formed part of the wall lining of the tomb. The reliefs are executed with the utmost spirit and extreme delicacy of treatment, and are highly decorative in style ; they show, moreover, a keen sense of the special treatment suitable to the material in which 1 In many cases it is almost impossible to distinguish between chestnut and oak, especially in the mediaeval roofs of England. they are carved. These also date from nearly 4000 B.C. After the early dynasties in Egypt wood does not seem to have been used for sculpture on a large scale, although it was very commonly employed for mummy cases or coffins, one end carved with a human face and the rest almost plain, except for its elaborate painted ornaments in gold and colours, applied on a thin coat of stucco laid evenly over the wood. A large number of smaller examples of Egyptian wood-carving exist in various museums, such as furniture, boxes, im plements for the toilet, and the like, frequently decorated with slight surface reliefs of animals or plants, and graceful patterns formed of the lotus or papyrus flower treated with great deco rative skill. Greek. Owing to the perishable nature of the material, almost the only ancient examples of wood-carving which have survived to our time are those from the tombs of Egypt. 2 The many important pieces of wooden sculpture which once existed in Greece and other ancient countries are only known to us by the descriptions of Pausanias and various classical writers. It is probable that the earliest examples of the plastic art among the Hellenic race were the rude wooden images of the gods (oava), of which many examples were preserved down to late historic times. The art of sculpture, and especially sculpture in wood, is probably older than that of painting, as it requires less artistic knowledge to rudely fashion a log of wood into a rough body with rounded head, two holes for the eyes and slits for the mouth and nose, than to conceive mentally and set down on a plane surface any attempt even at the rudest outline drawing, a process which requires a distinct act of abstraction and some notion of treating the subject in a conventionally symbolic way. Real things have of course no enclosing line, and the representation of an object in outline conveys little or no idea to the mind of a man who is yet in a very early stage of culture. The Palladium, or sacred figure of Pallas, which was guarded by the vestal virgins in Rome, and which was fabled to have been brought by yEneas from the burn ing Troy, was one of these wooden oava (see VESTA). A wooden figure of the Armed Aphrodite at Cythera is men tioned by Pausanias, iii. 23, 1. Of the same kind was the wooden statue of Hermes in the shrine of Athene Polias on the Acropolis of Athens, said to have been the offering of Cecrops (Pausan., i. 27, 1); and the figure of Athene Polias itself was an ancient wooden oawr. Another very ancient statue, carved out of cedar wood, was the statue of Apollo in his temple, dedicated 428 B.C., in the Campus Martins of Rome ; this statue was called Apollo FIG. 1. Life-sized Portrait Statue from a Tomb of the Fourth Dynasty. 2 Acacia and sycamore wood were chielly used for the larger wood sculpture of Egypt. A wooden coffin, covered with line Greek paint ings of c. 300 B.C., was discovered in a tomb at Panticapceum (Kertch), and is now in tlie museum at St Petersburg.