Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/603

Rh and composers of hymns as well as to those of the plastic artists, says that "the service of the temple comprehends the whole variety of these efforts," also says that "the earliest sculptors were persons of a sacerdotal character." On another page he adds, concerning sculpture—

". . . in this domain of artistic activity, all things were bound by the decrees of the priests and by close relations with religion. . . . They [artists] were regarded as persons in the service of the divine religion."

The extent to which sculpture subserved religious purposes may he judged from the statement of Mahaffy that—

"The greatest sculptors, painters, and architects had lavished labor and design upon the buildings [of the oracle at Delphi]. Though Nero had carried off 500 bronze statues, the traveler estimated the remaining works of art at 3,000, and yet these seem to have been almost all statues."

As showing the course of professional development it may be remarked that though, in archaic Greek sculpture, the modes of representing the various deities were, as in Egypt and India, so completely fixed in respect of attitudes, clothing, and appurtenances that change was sacrilege, the art of the sculptor, thus prevented from growing while his semi-priestly function was under priestly control, simultaneously began to acquire freedom and to lose its sacred character when in such places as the pediments of temples, figures other than divine, and subjects other than those of worship, came to be represented. Apparently through transitions of this kind it was that sculpture became secularized. Men engaged in chiseling out statues and reliefs in fulfillment of priestly dictates were regarded simply as a superior class of artisans, and did not receive credit as artists. But when, no longer thus entirely controlled, they executed works independently, they gained applause by their artistic skill and "became prominent celebrities, whose studios were frequented by kings.

To the reasons, already more than once suggested, why in Rome the normal development of the professions was broken or obscured, may be added, in respect of the profession of sculptor, a special reason. Says Mommsen:—

"The original Roman worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them; and although the god was at an early period worshiped in Latium, probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and had a little chapel (aedicula) built for him, such a figurative representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa."

The appended remark that the representation of the gods was "generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation" appears to be in harmony with the statement of Duruy.

"Even after the Tarquins, the images of the gods, the work of Etruscan artists, were still made only in wood or clay, like that of Jupiter in the Capitol, and like the quadriga placed on the top of the temple."