Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/216

 20G FINE ARTS sculp ture. another kind of relief sculpture in which the artist has less choice. That is the kind in which the sculptor is called in to decorate with carved work parts of an architectural con struction which are not adapted for the introduction of figure subjects, or for their introduction only as features in a scheme of ornament that comprises many other elements. To this head belongs most of the carving of capitals, mould ings, friezes (except the friezes of Greek temples), bands, cornices, and in the Gothic style, of doorway arches, niches, canopies, pinnacles, brackets, spandrils, and the thousand members and parts of members which that style so exqui sitely adorned with true or conventionalized imitations of natural forms. This is no doubt a subordinate function of the art j and it is impossible, as we have seen already, to find a precise line of demarcation between carving, in this decorative use, which is properly sculpture, and that which belongs properly to architecture, Defini- Leaving such discussions, we may content ourselves with tion of the definition of sculpture as a shaping art, of which the business is to imitate natural objects, and principally the human body, by reproducing in solid form either their true proportions in all dimensions, or else their true pro portions in the two dimensions of length and breadth only, with a diminished proportion in the third dimension of depth or thickness. Nature In considering bas-relief as a form of sculpture, we have ancl found ourselves approaching the confines of the second of oTpaiut- ^ e sna pi n g-i m i tat i ve art s, the graphic art, or art of paint- j n &amp;lt;r. ing. Painting, as to its means or instruments of imitation, dispenses with the third dimension altogether. It imitates natural objects by representing them as they are repre sented on the retina of the eye itself, simply as an assem blage of lines and colours on a flat surface. The charac ter and disposition of the lines and colours in painting are determined by two things, the local colours of the ob jects themselves, and their shapes and positions in space. Painting does not reproduce the third dimension of reality by any third dimension of its own whatever ; but leaves the eye to infer the solidity, the recession and projection, the nearness and remoteness of objects, by the same per spective signs by which it also infers those facts in nature namely, by the direction of their several bound ary lines, the incidence and distribution of their lights and shadows, the strength or faintness of their tones of colour. Hence this art has an infinitely greater range and freedom than any form of sculpture. Near and far is all the same to it, and whatever comes into the field of vision can come also into the field of a picture ; trees as well as personages, and clouds as well as trees, and stars as well as clouds; and on earth the remotest mountain snows as well as the violet of the foreground, and far-off multi tudes of people as well as one or two near the eye. What ever any man has seen, or can imagine himself as seeing, that he can also fix by painting, subject only to one great limitation, that of the range of brightness which he is able to attain in imitating natural colour illuminated by light, In this particular his art can but correspond according to a greatly diminished ratio with the effects of nature. But excepting this it can do for the eye almost all that nature herself does ; or at least all that nature would do if man had only one eye ; since the three dimensions of space pro duce upon our binocular machinery of vision a particular stereoscopic effect of which a picture, with its two dimen sions only, is incapable. The range of the art being thus almost unbounded, its selections have naturally been dic tated by the varying interest felt in this or that subject of representation by the societies among whom the art has at various times been practised. As in sculpture, so in painting, man, whether as figuring God, or for the sake of his own looks and doings, has always held the first place. For the painter, the intervention of costume between man and his environment is not a misfortune in the same degree as it is for the sculptor. For him, clothes of whatever fashion or density have their own charm; they serve to diversify the aspect of the world, and to express the charac ters and stations, if not the physical frames, of his person ages ; and he is as happy or happier among the brocades of Venice as among the bare limbs of the Spartan palaestra. Along with man, there come into painting all animals and vegetation, all man s furniture and belongings, his dwelling- places, fields, and landscape ; and in modern times also landscape and nature for their own sakes, skies, seas, mountains, and wildernesses apart from man. Besides the two questions about any art, what objects Three does it imitate, and by the use of what means or instru- modes ments, Aristotle proposes (in the case of poetry) the further at |~ question, which of several possible forms does the imitation, ia turo in any given case assume 1 We may transfer very nearly in paint the same inqtiiry to painting, and may ask, concerning any ing- painter, according to which of three possible systems he works. The three possible systems are (1) that which attends principally to the configuration and relations of natural objects as indicated by their circumscribing lines this may be called for short the system of line ; (2) that which attends chiefly to their configuration and relations, as indicated by the incidence and distribution of their lights and shadows this may be called the system of light-and- shade ; and (3) that which attends chiefly, not to their configuration at all, but to the distribution, qualities, and relations of colours upon their surface this is the system of colour. Line, light-and-shade, and colour, these three kinds of appearances between them make up the whole world of sight. (We do not pause to insist on the fact that line is in truth partly an invention of the mind ; those divisions between objects which the painter or draughtsman indicates with an outline or dark marking being in nature only in dicated by the even edge where one colour ends and another begins.) It is not possible for a painter to imitate natural objects to the eye at all without either defining their masses by outlines, or suggesting them by juxtapositions of light and dark or of local colours. In the complete art of paint ing, of course, all three methods are employed at once. But iu what is known as outline drawing and outline en graving, one of the three methods only is employed, line; in grisaille pictures, and in shaded drawings and engrav ings, two only, line with light-and-shade ; and in the shadowless pictures of the early religious schools, a differ ent two only, line with colour. And even in the most accomplished examples of the complete art of painting, as has been justly pointed out by Professor Ruskin, we find that there almost always prevails a predilection for some one of these three parts of painting over the other two. Thus among the mature Italians of the Eenaissance, Titian is above all things a painter in colour, Michelangelo in line, and Leonardo in light-and-shade. The value of a pictorial imitation is by no means neces- Com- sarily in proportion to its completeness. Many accom- P lete plished pictures, in which all the resources of line, colour, ne ? s t i and light-and-shade have been used to the uttermost of test of the artist s power for the imitation of all that he could see value in nature, are worthless in comparison with a few faintly- in a P&amp;gt; C - touched outlines or lightly-laid shadows or tints of another * 01 ? al artist who could see nature better. The fine art of paint- tiou ing addresses not merely the eye but the imagination. Unless the painter knows how to choose and combine the elements of his finished work so that it shall contain in every part suggestions and delights over and above the mere imitation, it will fall short, in that which is the essential charm of fine art, not only of any scrap of a great master s handiwork, such as an outline sketch of a child by Raphael,