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Aratra pentelici; seven lectures on the elements of sculpture given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas term, 1870 Overviews
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1890 Excerpt: ... the Purgatory, and learn that whole passage by heart; and if ever you chance to go to Pistoja, look at La Robbia's coloured porcelain bas-reliefs of the seven works of Mercy on the front of the hospital there; and note especially the faces of the two sick men--one at the point of death, and the other in the first peace and long-drawn breathing of health after fever--and you will know what Dante meant by the preceding line, "Morti li morti, e i vivi paren vivi." 130. But now, may we not ask farther,--is it impossible for art such as this, prepared for the wise, to please the simple also? Without entering on the awkward questions of degree, how many the wise can be, or how much men should know, in order to be rightly called wise, may we not conceive an art to be possible, which would deceive everybody, or everybody worth deceiving? I showed you at my First Lecture, a little ringlet of Japan ivory, as a type of elementary bas-relief touched with colour; and in your rudimentary series you have a drawing, by Mr. Burgess, of one of the little fishes enlarged, with every touch of the chisel facsimiled on the more visible scale; and showing the little black bead inlaid for the eye, which in the original is hardly to be seen without a lens. You may, perhaps, be surprised when I tell you that (putting the question of subject aside for the moment, and speaking only of the mode of execution and aim at resemblance,) you have there a perfect example of the Greek ideal of method in sculpture. And you will admit that, to the simplest person whom we could introduce as a critic, that fish would be a satisfactory, nay, almost a deceptive, fish; while, to any one caring for subtleties of art, I need not point out that every touch of the chisel is applied with consum...