PLATE XXXVII.
The artist by whom this pleasing group has been executed is still quite young; and, if we are rightlyinformed, this may almost be looked upon as in every respect his “First Step.” The popularity obtained byMagni through his contribution of this work to the Academy of Fine Arts at Milan , has, we believe,procured him many commissions, and there is every reason to hope that his future career may fulfil thepromise held out by this his first important exhibited work.
Among the beautiful objects contributed to the Great Exhibition by the sculptors of Milan , it wouldhave been possible to have selected many of greater academic correctness, and treading with a more reverentfootstep in the traditions of the antique. From the fine works of Fraccaroli, whose manner was stronglysuggestive of that of Canova; of Strazza , whose “ Ishmael fainting with Hunger” was a work of very greatpower; of Gaetano Motelli, whose group of “Paolo and Francesca da Rimini” evinced a high aim and
poetic imagination; or of Raffaelle Monti , whose “ Eve after the Fall,” and other statues, displayed a thoroughacquaintance with his art and a great mastery over the technical difficulties of the material,— specimensmight have been chosen possessing even greater merit than that which forms the subject of our present Plate.We have, however, preferred to engrave Magni ’s group as being probably the. most important work in
Picturesque Sculpture in the whole Exhibition.
There is no class of objects more difficult to redeem from vulgarity than that in which every-day costumeand incident are depicted on a scale approaching that of life. The directness of the imitation leads thespectator to demand an almost greater power of reproducing nature than can possibly be accordant with theconditions of the sculptor’s art or the nature of the material in which he works. The demand for colourto perfect the resemblance becomes almost as imperative as the supply of that demand would inevitably provepainful. Thus subjects of a picturesque character, unless treated with very remarkable skill, almost necessarilyrequire to be rendered on a scale considerably smaller than life. The difference of dimension at once precludesthe idea that the work is merely a transcript of nature; the mind recognises the conventionalities peculiai
to the art, and makes allowance for the necessary departure from nature in the details. Thus a lefined
carrying out of the minutiae of modern costume becomes perfectly agreeable in a statuette; and thus theapplication of colour, which would be intolerable in a life-sized figure, serves to confer an additional charmon the pleasing little groups of shepherds and shepherdesses, fine ladies and fine gentlemen, which constitutethe ordinary subjects of old French and Dresden china. It is scarcely less painful to meet with a subjectof every-day life—one in which the eye instantly detects that the marble mantle 01 shoe by no means carriesout the idea of cloth or leather—represented to the full scale of nature, than it is to see an ideal work,portraying the grand emotions of a god-like energy, reduced to the usual limits of woiks in Parian or biscuit.
As every class of material involves on the part of the artist a mode of tieatment consonant with itsconditions of plasticity, so every variation of scale to a certain extent requiies a vaiiety of conventionality.The breadth and massive modelling of drapery which strike us as noble in a statue of heroic size, would