GHEE PAINT, BOX

Page Eight

remains of a magnificent artistic conception. To Phidias, the giant sculptor who
lived about 500 years B. C., we owe the birth of this most noble conception, this
glorious and incomparable rendering of the most beautiful forms to be found in
nature. Selection and treatment of true form were the first aims of the Greek
sculptor.

In the Roman busts and statues there is a more varied difference of character
in the features than we found with the Greeks. Indeed, the Romans went more
nearly for getting the character of the individual. Though the features of the
Roman sculptures vary considerably, there is a great sameness to all, in pose of the
head, general attitude, gesture, and indeed in dress and arrangement of draperies;
so much so, that many of their busts of emperors might almost have been taken
from the same mould with different features put on them.

Without doubt to Pisano, born about 1206, is due the credit for the develop-
ment of the early Renaissance in sculpture, corresponding to Cimabue or Giotto in
painting. His great service was to make the language of sculpture once more a
living language, which became the germ of the Italian Renaissance. The master
who in Florentine sculpture marks most clearly the transition from Gothic to
Renaissance methods is Ghiberti, born in 1378.

Born also in Florence in 1386, after Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps the most
fascinating figure in the history of Florentine Art, was Donatello. In the reliefs of
Donatello, look at the grace and beauty, tenderness and feeling, carried to the very
end, finished, yet never tight or hard; the drawing and modelling of this master are
exquisite, the color (light and shade) full of sweet variety and refinement of
touch. Then take the busts of the same master. You feel yourself to be in the
presence of living people, so intimate are they, moving, yet full of reticence stilled
only by the master-hand; for though they almost breathe, they never startle you
with their challenge. They are works of art, tenderly wrought after nature with
loving fidelity.

To mention all the artists from Donatello to Michelangelo would take an
immense amount of time. I will therefor mention several names of the foremost
sculptors: Luca and Andrea della Robbia, who made wonderful colored and glazed
terra cottas ; Verrochio and della Quercia.

In the year 1475, Tuscany gave birth to the greatest prince of sculpture, the
towering figure of Michelangelo. He belongs mainly to the sixteenth century and
Tuscan sculpture, and his history is a history of passionate experiment. He is like
a man seeking for a fourth dimension in which to express himself. He makes no
attempt to render the human form according to ordinary ideas of anatomical
accuracy ; he sins deliberately against all rules of proportion and symmetry, yet his
works are not in any sense the outcome of the fevered incoherent imaginations
of an ill-balanced mind. The amazingly fine construction and arrangement in all
his work shows from the first the suitability of the subject and adaptation of
design to the material were thoroughly considered; the same is the case in respect
to treatment, always masterly. All his great works are impressed with the mind
that produced them in sure and persistent effort; they seem at first to have been
made easily ; they are finished and consummate; they betray no traces of effort or
labour ; in them nothing appears due to chance; but when we reflect, we feel that
this mysterious perfection has not been achieved in one day. Such was this glorious
master who died in 1564 at the age of 89.

Of Michelangelo’s contemporaries Sansovino carried on the great work even
during the great master’s lifetime. He was an architect as well as a sculptor, and