Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/743

 SCULPTURE and combats, the figures in which are heavily draped and exhibit little variety, action, or character. The sculpture of the remoter east- ern nations, including the Chinese and Hin- doos, has little to recommend it in the qualities of art, and affords no assistance in tracing the history of our subject. The hierarchical au- thority, by confining its exercise to mytho- logical subjects, prevented it from becoming imitative or progressive. In vastness of scale and the sentiment of repose the Hindoo sculp- tures at Ellora, Elephanta, and elsewhere, are equal to the productions of any Asiatic race. The Egyptians, perhaps more than any other nation of antiquity, associated the practice of sculpture with religious worship ; hence most of their extant works of this class comprise conventional representations of deities and their attributes or qualities. Kecent discov- eries, however, show that their earliest sculp- tures were free from restraint, and represent- ed animate and inanimate forms with great accuracy ; whence the remark of Lenormant : "Alone of all the world the Egyptians began with living reality to finish with hieratic con- vention." A striking example of their early proficiency is afforded in a wooden statue of one Ra-em-ke, preserved in the museum at Boolak near Cairo, and attributed to the era of the fifth dynasty, or nearly 4000 B. 0. (ac- cording to Mariette). The body is admirably modelled, and the head life-like. This primi- tive art period expired with the sixth dynasty, and from the eleventh dynasty, or formation of the middle empire, about 3000 B. C., Egyp- tian artists formed a sort of hereditary craft, whose labors, controlled by a rigid code of rules prescribed by the sacerdotal authority, exhibit a uniformity of results so striking as to justify the statement that until the conquest of the country by the Macedonian Greeks, 332 B. C., a period of nearly 2,800 years, there was but one epoch in Egyptian sculpture. A Grae- co-Egyptian style succeeded with the Ptole- mies, and expired with the art itself. Not only were the artists forbidden to make inno- vations, but they were never allowed, Plato tells us, " to invent any new subjects or any new habits. Hence the art remains the same, the rules of it the same." The standard types of form were archaic in character and deficient in action and expression, which will account for the utter absence of anything approach- ing grace, symmetry, or elegance in Egyptian art. The figures are generally equally poised on both legs, one of which is sometimes slightly advanced ; the arms either hang down straight on each side, or if one be raised, it is at a right angle across the body ; and the head looks directly in front. Many statues, how- ever, are seated or kneeling, the former atti- tude being that in which, on the whole, Egyp- tian sculptors excelled ; and the colossal sitting figures of their kings frequently exhibit gran- deur of proportion and repose and dignity of expression. Anatomy was little regarded in representations of the human form, and the draperies were of the simplest character, fre- quently falling straight to the ground, with- out folds. Where elaborate representations in bass relief or intaglio of battles, processions, or religious ceremonies were attempted, great- er freedom seems to have been allowed the artist ; and in this class of works, as well as in occasional heads, such as the so-called Young Memnon in the British museum, there are evi- dences of inventive power and a feeling for ideal beauty, which, but for tbe restraints im- posed upon the sculptor, might have borne worthy fruits. Egyptian sculpture of all kinds was usually colored, and statues of the hard- est granite, the material most commonly em- ployed, are as cleanly cut as marble and beau- tifully polished. Etruscan sculpture, so far as can be ascertained by existing specimens, was connected in a greater or less degree with that of the Greeks, although there is reason to believe that previous to the arrival of Greek colonists in Etruria a purely national style was in existence there. K. O. Muller has observed that the art of the country, being receptive rather than creative, and not indi- genous, began to decline as soon as deprived of the Greek influence. The best specimens of Etruscan sculpture in existence are bronze works of the kind known as Tuscanica signa, which were highly esteemed by Roman con- noisseurs. They are characterized by a stiff, archaic style resembling the early Greek, which seems to have been retained as the standard. Well known examples of Etruscan bronzes are the " She Wolf " of the capitol at Rome, and the " Chimaera " at Florence. Innumer- able smaller figures have been found, and such was the facility of the people in cast- ing, that after the capture of Volsinii by the Romans, about 280 B. C., 2,000 statues in bronze were carried away by the victors. Etruscan carvings, whether in wood or stone, are unskilful, but their terra cotta vases and ornamental work are of high artistic value. The Etruscan vases, however, so celebrated for their elegance of form and the paintings with which they are embellished, are now be- lieved to be of Greek origin. In the hands of the Greeks sculpture was brought to a degree of perfection scarcely approached in modern times, and quite as marked, in comparison with the progress of other ancient nations, as their superiority in every department of imi- tative art and literature. Similar causes con- tributed to this universal excellence, the prin- cipal of which, according to Winckelmann, were the innate genius of the people, their re- ligion, and their social and political institutions. While in the East, and even among the Etrus- cans, art never advanced beyond the types es- tablished almost at its birth, the Greeks, led on by an intuitive sense of beauty, which was with them almost a religious principle, aimed at an ideal perfection, and, by making nature in her most perfect forms their model, " ac-