Читать книгу A History of Sculpture - Ernest Henry Short - Страница 13

One thing will have struck our readers throughout the foregoing argument. It has been impossible to avoid a certain tendency towards confusing terms. For instance, stress has been laid upon three factors in Greek life, as exercising an immense influence upon Hellenic sculpture—civic pride, a deep tolerance in religious opinion, and an intense feeling for physical strength and beauty. Yet, directly we have come to grips with these conceptions, they have appeared to be inextricably commingled. The Greek’s pride in his city-state, his absorption in physical beauty, are religious in their fervour and in the way in which they are utilized to uphold a strenuous moral ideal. Again, the actions which are most akin to what we term religion nowadays, closely resemble philosophy in their rigid rejection of everything approaching mysticism.

In relating any art to the social and political circumstances which gave it birth, it is all-important to remember that the distinctions between such terms as science, art, religion, and philosophy are more or less arbitrary. In the earliest times men did not distinguish between any of the four. When the skin-clad dweller in the forests gazed upon the lightning flashing among the oak branches, and imaged the angry ruler of earth and sky, he did not separate the explanation of the natural phenomenon from the symbolical incarnation, or both from the religious belief. Nor was this less so when the human mind rose to more complex conceptions. The Pueblo Indian, for instance, recognizes a Sky-god and an Earth-goddess, the parents of all living things. The Sky-god passes across the heavens with the blazing shield of the sun’s disc in his hand, to vanish beyond the portals of the dark underworld where the spirits of the dead are at rest. This is at once the science, the art, and the religion of the Pueblo Indian. It satisfies two elemental cravings of his nature. In the first place it translates the phenomena of the natural world into terms which his reason can grasp. In the second place it satisfies his yearning for some superior will—we call this God—to which he may attribute the purpose and order which he instinctively assumes in the world.

So it was in Greece. We may be convinced that the Iliad and the Odyssey should be described as art. They are art to our way of thinking; that is to say, to our minds they are clearly more akin to “Paradise Lost” than to the religious poetry of the Jews. But to the Greek they were at once religion and art and philosophy.

Exactly the same remark must preface our consideration of the third class into which the sculptures of fifth-century Greece may be divided—the temple statues, erected to such deities as Zeus, Hera, and Athena.

For five hundred years or more the best elements in the religious faith of ancient Greece had been fostered and sustained by the Homeric poems. These, at least, offered an antidote to the brutal temple myths which had gradually gathered around the names of the gods, the nature of which can be realized from the pages of Hesiod. But the Greeks must at times have hungered for more definite representations of the great gods and goddesses.

In the fifth century, however, the sculptors shook off the bonds of realism, which had prevented the portrayal of such a purely ideal figure as the deity “who dwelt in the heights of the air,” and whose voice could be heard in the rustling of the oak-leaves of Dodona. It was realized that a divine image, as satisfying to the imagination of the Greek as the word-pictures of Homer, was possible. The success of the great artists of the fifth century was instantaneous. Within a short time all the great temples of the Hellenic world were furnished with statues of the deities in whose honour they were erected.

The sculptors were content for the most part to follow the imaginations of the earlier poets. They only sought to realize in the god-like forms their highest ideals of human beauty and dignity. They avoided the example of the Babylonians and Egyptians who had emphasized the unworldliness of their deities by investing them with strange shapes and symbols. The Greek imagination was content to add to the human form a more than human majesty. Gradually these statues became so much a part of their imagination that the Greeks found it impossible to picture the great gods apart from the artists’ portrayals. So widespread was the effect of sculpture on Greek and Roman religious thought that, at length, no other conception of the gods could be formed. In the wall paintings of Pompeii the deities are represented as of the colour and material of statues, the sculptural effect being imitated as closely as possible.

Lucian, too, in one of his dialogues, pictures the assembly of the Olympian deities who are dismayed that men no longer rest upon the faiths of their forefathers. In the course of the dialogue, Zeus orders “that the gods should be seated in order of merit. The gold gods first, then the silver, then the ivory, bronze, and stone,” he commands, “and give preference to any work of Phidias, or Alcamenes, or Myron, or Euphranor, or other artist of distinction.”

The most famous of the religious statues of ancient Greece were erected to Zeus and Hera. Other gods and goddesses were particularly identified with the various cities of Greece, such as Athena with Athens. But for the whole Greek world Zeus and Hera were the recognized rulers among the dwellers in Olympus. The chief temple of Zeus was at Olympia where, as we have seen, the Pan-Hellenic Games were held in his honour. That of Hera lay between Argos and Mycenæ. To these the Hellenic world came from time to time to honour the Father of the gods and his chosen consort. In the inner shrine of each stood a great “chryselephantine” statue—a term used to distinguish the wooden statues, with their veneer of ivory and gold, from the ordinary marbles and bronzes. No trace of either remains to-day. Wood is perishable, and the plunder of gold would doubtless have proved irresistible to the Turk, even had the Christian been scrupulous enough to resist the temptation. Had they been cut from the cold marble it might have been otherwise. They were, however, still in their places in the time of Hadrian, when Pausanias wrote the greatest of all guide-books.

ZEUS

Vatican, Rome

HERA

Terme Museum, Rome

We can picture the great statue of Zeus, possibly the most remarkable creation of the sculptor’s art in Greece. The features of the “Father of the Gods” are majestic, yet not unkindly; the arms and the upper parts of the body are fashioned from the gleaming ivory, the lower limbs being wrapped in the golden mantle. In the days of Pausanias there was a building outside the sacred Grove, which was still treasured by the people of Elis as the workshop in which, for five years, the sculptor wrought the image piece by piece. “Why,” says Pausanias, “the god himself bore witness to the art of Phidias. For when the image was completed Phidias prayed that the god would give a sign if the work was to his mind, and straightway, they say, the god hurled a thunderbolt into the ground at the spot where the bronze urn stood down to my time.” This second-century Baedeker has given us the greater part of our knowledge of the works of antiquity, which are now lost or survive only in Roman copies. He described the statue of Zeus by Phidias thus:

“The god is seated on a throne: he is made of gold and ivory: on his head is a wreath made in imitation of sprays of olive. In his right hand he carries a Victory, also of ivory and gold: she wears a ribbon, and on her head a wreath. In the left hand of the god is a sceptre, curiously wrought in all the metals: the bird perched on the sceptre is the eagle. The sandals of the god are of gold and so is his robe. On the robe are wrought figures of animals and the lily flowers. The throne is adorned with gold and precious stones, also with ebony and ivory; and there are figures painted and images wrought on it.”

The statue of Hera in the temple between Argos and Mycenæ was the work of Polyclitus. It was erected after 423 b.c., when it was necessary to rebuild the shrine of the goddess owing to the burning of the older temple. The goddess was seated on her throne; the crown on her head was decorated with a design of the Graces and the Seasons in relief. Ivory was used to represent the flesh of the “white-armed” goddess, and her rich garments were elaborately decorated with gold, the finish of every detail being even more complete than was the case with the work of Phidias. If the statue of Hera was second to that of Zeus in its suggestion of god-like majesty and repose, it was nevertheless remarkable for its stately beauty. The head, as would be expected from the hand of Polyclitus, was noticeable for the absolute symmetry of every feature. The ripples of hair falling on either side of the central parting gave an impression of dignified calm to the face of the goddess.

The “Zeus” of Phidias and the “Hera” of Polyclitus are the most famous examples of the Greek statues which we have designated as “religious.” The term is, however, misleading. Religious art proper, religious art in the modern sense of the term, did not exist for the citizens of Periclean Athens: “personal” religion—with its intense subjectivity—was a closed book to him. The mysticism—that yearning to be at one with the ultimate reality—which is the keynote of what we moderns deem religion, would have been simply meaningless to the Argive, the Spartan, or the Athenian of the fifth century. No Greek could ever have said with Bacon, “Our humanity were a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us.” Such sentiments as those of the mystic, Antony, the Egyptian, would have struck him as sheer nonsense. “He who sits still in the desert is safe from three enemies—from hearing, from speech, from sight; and has to fight against only one—his own heart.” The Greek had no conception of a “personal” and quasi-human intelligence working in and through the human agent. Human speech, human sight, and, above everything, the promptings of the heart, were all in all to him.

We are, therefore, unable to correlate such a statue as the Zeus of Olympia with such an every-day human craving as that for communion with a personal creator and ruler of the universe which we experience. It rather depends upon a desire for an all-embracing interpretation of the phenomenal world. In other words, such a statue might more rightly be called philosophical than religious.

With the rise of the city-states, the growth of an intense desire for all knowledge brought a new light to bear upon the whole content of consciousness. Men began to distinguish between those impressions which came from outside, and those which seemed rather to depend upon emotional interpretation supplied by the self. The deductions that appeared to be correctly drawn from sense impressions came to be regarded as having a greater validity than the rest, and science arose as a sphere of thought sufficient unto itself and governed by its own rules. During the fifth century the scientists strove to relate the phenomena of the senses, now to one natural force, now to another. But they never reached a unity that carried conviction. The general law upon which they seemed to come ever and again was a constant and eternal flux. “Strife is the father of all things,” said Heraclitus.

But while Greek science was growing there were many—say one half of the Greek world—to whom its generalisations were simply uninteresting. They were the men to whom the poet could appeal. The mystery all desired to fathom was deeper than sense. Each felt, rather than saw, that:

“Something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams— Of something felt, like something here, Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare.”

To such men the “realities” of the scientists were but shadows behind which lay a more abiding truth. The riddle they desired to solve was what relation the fictional realities of the scientists bore to the abiding truths beyond. And the bolder spirits, spurred on by the great intellectual and emotional flood which followed the Persian wars, started upon the quest.

These were craftsmen all—the artists proper. In obedience to some unreasoned desire, these men bethought them to fashion new representations of “the all of things.” They took the ultimate conceptions of life. For example:

“Him, who from eternity, self-stirred, Himself hath made by His creative word.”

They strove to convey, not only the impressions realised by their brothers, the scientists, but the emotions astir in their own hearts. What matter if the scientists proved these “ideal types” to be mere lies. The artists felt that the unconscious criticism of nature revealed truths far beyond those at which the conscious criticism of science stopped.

THE BARBERINE HERA

Vatican, Rome

By the middle of the fifth century the Greek artist had realized that his true task was not to strive to copy the known, but, “hungry for the infinite,” to seek the ideal whose home was in the unknown. The inmost revelations vouchsafed to Greek thought and imagination in the fifth century found expression in the great temple statues. Earlier they had been embodied in such poems as the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” Later they were to find expression in the dialogues of Plato. But between 450 b.c. and 400 b.c. the natural philosophy of the Greek world was embodied in such sculptures as the “Zeus” of Olympia and the “Hera” of Argos. That is why we call the second half of the fifth century “the golden age of Greek sculpture.” Then, and only then, did it embody all Greek thought; then, and only then, were the workers in marble and bronze inspired to express the passion for physical beauty, the fierce pride in citizenship, as well as the deepest thoughts upon nature and humanity.

The passion for physical beauty found material expression in the great series of athletic sculptures of Argos and Athens. The Parthenon was the outcome of the Hellene’s civic pride. The deepest philosophical beliefs of the fifth-century Greek are to be found in such statues as the “Zeus Otricoli” and the “Hera Ludovisi.” These are certainly the finest conceptions of the great god and goddess which have been preserved to us. Both are based on the statues of Phidias and Polyclitus, though there are traces of a more sensuous and florid taste than would have been possible in the fifth century. In the head of Zeus, for instance, the suggestion of awful power is lacking. The great sculptor working under the inspiration of Homer’s lines: “Spake the Son of Cronus and nodded thereto with swart brows and the ambrosial lock of the King rolled backward from his immortal head and the heights of Olympus quaked,” could not have missed this. The two heads convey all the beauty of the first conceptions, but they lack the serene austerity—the stern aloofness—that we may be sure characterized the work of Phidias and Polyclitus. The fifth-century artists were appealing to men who preserved a measure of unreasoning faith in the gods of their fathers.

The beautiful full length “Barbarian Hera,” in the Vatican Collection, represents a step further in the emphasizing of sensuous charm, and consequently there is even less insistence upon the severe beauty which the fifth-century sculptor sought to portray. To be understood the statue must be regarded as a work of the fourth century, and be judged by the standards of Scopas and Praxiteles.

The ideal head of Asclepius, in the British Museum, which has been ascribed to Thrasymedes of Paros, the sculptor of the great chryselephantine statue at Epidaurus, is a work bearing a strong resemblance to the “Zeus Otricoli.” It was found in the Island of Melos, in a shrine dedicated to the Physician of the Gods, hence the title. The expression of the God of Healing, whose worship was so general in Greece at one time that it threatened to become almost universal, is, however, more kindly and human than that of Zeus. It is a beautiful example of the joyousness and sweet reasonableness which Greek sculpture possessed through contact with a system of religious belief which left the intelligence unhampered and the human emotions free. It is true that the religion of ancient Greece lacked the driving power of other and more potent faiths. It was not based upon such personalities as Buddha, Moses, or, greatest of all, the Founder of the faith which eventually Hellenized the Western world. But for a few short years the humane and tolerant religion of Greece was all-sufficient. Any one who would have abundant proof has only to stand for a few minutes before the marbles which sum up and express the Greek belief in an entirely reasonable and beautiful world.