SCULPTURE figure, which must therefore belong to the noblest type both physical and mental, that is, in both beauty and significance; but when it so does, proves a very gospel of art in the uplift to finer sense and sentiment which it elicits from the normally minded observer. Sculpture is also the noblest of the decorative arts as well as that the most constantly in use in all ages. Architectural sculpture occupies itself largely with vegetable forms, mingling with them animal and human forms freely treated; and finds its cels in vigor and movement especially in the rep resentation of animals, but lacks variety and ig nores the life of woman. The art of Egypt and Assyria was carried by the Phoenicians both eastward and westward, and proved of special moment in the development of the Greeks. The wide distribution of the Greeks in Europe, Asia, and Africa, combined with their tribal distinctions to favor a healthy rivalry in the arts. The largest and chief classes of sculpture consisted of, first, free statues, some of which were Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, Athens. highest reach in the nobly designed human form with its drapery, as in the Caryatid porch of the Erechtheum and the portals of Reims cathedral. Egyptian sculpture, whose first monuments date from the fifth millennium B.C., forms, with that of Chaldea-Assyria, the two tap-roots for subsequent tradition in Europe. Tomb and temple are responsible for the great mass of Egyptian sculptures. Religious belief held that survival of the ka or spirit after death depended upon preservation of the body (as a mummy), or failing that, upon provision of a ushabti or sculptured portrait. Scenes from the past and future life of the deceased were also sculptured upon the wall of his tomb. Temples were covered within and without with scenes from the victories and consequent offerings to the god made by a king. The workmanship on some of the hardest stones known was superb and achieved only with immense toil, to lessen which the statue was generalized as much as possible, though at the same time made to express the salient traits of the subject. The ushabti, on the other hand, called for a realistic portrait, and this was achieved in the softer material with great skill. All of the reliefs and most of the statues received a decorative coloring. Curious conventions gave part of a figure in profile, but part full face; and principal objects, like gods and kings, were represented larger than their fellows. Chaldæan sculpture showed great technical skill as early as the fourth millennium B.C. The tomb had little importance, since the corpse was burned, but temples sheltered idols in stone, and palaces contained demonic images, royal statues, and historical stela. Stone was used for the larger pieces, terra-cotta for the smaller. The Assyrians adapted Chaldæan art traditions, but gave chief attention to the palace where reliefs depict a king in war or the chase. The style ex SCULPTURE Gold, silver, and bronze were both hammered fection as to furnish a canon or standard for all and cast into statues, which were then variously inlaid and provided with realistic eyes. Wood was carved and then painted or else covered with metal plates; and wooden figures made to be covered with drapery were fitted with heads and hands of finer material. Terra-cotta, which ranked with wood as the earliest material used for sculpture and largely in architectural accessories, was also painted in part or whole. In all Greek sculpture, therefore, the finished work was polychromatic. Crude statuettes remain from a Greek prehistoric stone age, 2500-1500 B.C., and stone reliefs from the Mycenæan bronze age, 1500-1000 B.C. Incursions of Hellenic tribes from Thessaly led to transition and progress, until by the 6th century sculpture in marble and bronze had become a national art, of which there were two types. The Ionic preferred rounded forms, slender proportions, light draperies revealing the figure, and organic groups. It quickly developed the draped female figure. The Doric type shows sturdy, muscular forms, heavy draperies, and figures merely juxtaposed. It developed the nude male figure. But Athens drew sculptors from both sources, and thus combined grace and force to form a third school, the Attic. The 5th century witnessed achievement of a mastery that allows interest in prior work elsewhere only in so far as it contributed to this, and that has remained until this present time, a source of perennial delight and instruction. We are told that Polykleitos brought his athlete carrying a spear, the Doryphoros, to such per such subjects. Myron showed fine naturalism in his Discobolos, and the artists who worked under the direction of Phidias combined figures of unsurpassed dignity and beauty into coherent compositions, such as those on the pediments, metopes, and friezes of the Parthenon. The 4th century saw a movement toward slender proportions and graceful line, especially with Praxiteles, as in his Hermes and the Aphrodite of Knidos. The Apoxyomenos of Lysippos, probably well represented by the marble statue in the Vatican, which is assumed to be a copy of the lost original, shows the same qualities, in contrast to the Polykleitan canon. Scopas is said to have excelled in expression of spirited action whether as boar hunt or bacchante. The Aphrodite of Melos, in the Louvre, free equally from shame and coquetry, and uniting supert form with facial expression, belongs to this or a century later. The 3d and 2d centuries saw the diffusion of Greek art over the known world, and the various modifications consequent upon it. The friezes on the altar of Zeus at Pergamon exhibited originality of design and vigorous action; and akin to them are such statues as the Apollo Belvedere, the Diana of Versailles, and the torso of the Belvedere. The group known as the Laokoön belongs to the same general type and period, the ripe autumn of Greek art, but not in any sense a degeneration. The Romans as a race were deficient in plastic sense. Sculpture appealed chiefly to their personal ambition as portraiture, which under the early empire reached a realistic perfection never before attained. Relief was the next most practised branch of sculpture, and reached great excellence as decorative art and as commemorative representation, in such monuments as arches and columns, especially those of Trajan. Roman taste for imaginative sculpture depended almost entirely upon Greek sculptors resident in Rome and upon Greek masterpieces, which were transported thither in great numbers from the entire Greek world. Finally, sculpture declined along with the Roman Empire, until in the 4th century A.D. not even fair copies could be made. Early Christian art, which extends from the 3d to the 6th centuries, found use for sculpture only on sarcophagi, where scenes from the Old Testament were depicted in high relief by artisans rather than artists. What the barbarian incursions did to break the continuity of artistic tradition in the West was accomplished in the East by the Iconoclast persecutions, so that Byzantine sculpture from the 7th to the 9th century calls for no further notice. Medieval sculpture, from the 8th to the 14th centuries, had various fortunes in Italy and the North. In Italy it was applied as relief to the decoration of church furniture such as pulpits, altars, and fonts; whereas in France and Germany both reliefs and statuary formed an integral part of the Gothic architecture on portal and façade. Sculpture, founded upon classical models, was revived in Italy near the middle of the 13th century, under the leadership of Niccola Pisano. His son, Giovanni, felt the influence of northern schools, and introduced thence the allegorical and symbolic qualities of Gothic. His successor, Andrea Pisano, led the |