THE NEW-YORK EXHIBITION ILLUSTRATED.

THE FINE ARTS.—SCULPTURE.

I T is a curious speculation, how far the varieties of what are commonly termedThe Fine Arts , are exhausted by certain modes of thought and consequentcivilization. If we mention the usual classification into Architecture, Sculpture,Painting, and Music, it is impossible not to see that we have indicated a kind ofprogression. If Architecture be the first in time, and dealing with the heaviermasses of matter, so it represents a more material necessity. If, of such a classifi-cation, Architecture he the solid foundation, it is certain that Music is the airyand spiritual completion, and if it be related to the rest only as ornament, it is thatdecoration which is equally essential, with all other parts, to the perfect whole.The most delicate bloom upon Hebe’s cheek is the sweet result of her most bal-anced health, and is then purest when the lowest offices of the animal economyare faithfully fulfilled.

There may be found something fanciful in such views of Art. But the phi-losophy of Art passes so constantly into the sphere of the imagination, that itmay well be excused, if not justified, in aiming to prove what seems only poetry(in the sense of beautiful fiction), by the cold details of history. And it is theconstant tendency of history to reveal certain great laws in the development ofthe human race, to which all art, meaning by the term all the actual resultachieved by man, may be referred. The lands and age in which were made thefirst efforts of what we will call the Fine Arts, to distinguish them from thedirectly and palpably Useful Arts—the primitive character of Art itself—itsgrowth,—the gradual addition and incorporation of other arts occasioned by ahigher human development—the fact that Art has proceeded by successive steps—that while each variety advanced and completed itself, the progress of Art wasmaintained, but in another form, and a form which may be considered of a higherspiritual significance—all these truths point directly at the conclusion, that Art,like man, advances by constantly finer varieties, and not by the steady and con-temporaneous progress of all its forms.

When Architecture was in its prime, Painting was comparatively unknown.In the great era of Painting, Sculpture was a relic or imitation of the past, andMusic was beginning. Egypt and India were the pioneers in civilization. Theirart was Architecture. They lay at the base of history, and their forms of Artwere, so to speak, fundamental. Shelter is the first absolute necessity of manwhich can be made the subject of treatment as a Fine Art. Greece followed.Grecian civilization was the flower and refinement of the Egyptian. Its Art, nat-urally, completed the earlier Art. Upon the foundation it reared the super-structure. With Greece, came grace adorning strength. The ideal of the super-nal powers was elevated, and the expression arose in due degree. The rudeblocks of Egyptian Deities were refined into the persuasive grace of Grecian Gods.Egypt represented brute force, the foundation. Greece was the symbol of intel-lect, clothing strength with grace. The qualities of character it commended andnurtured, belonged to heroism. It was the perfection of material triumph.Hence, as man is the type of informed strength, of external power in the com-pactest and loftiest form, and as the physical proportions of man best representthe kind of power intended, arose sculpture. It was the natural result ofthe spirit which inspired and created the advanced civilization of Greece as com-pared with Egypt. The'same advance which perfected Architecture, which flutedthe column, and crowned it with Doric and Ionic grace, of which only the suggestionoccurs, once or twice, in the Egyptian temples—this naturally led to the finerarchitecture of the human form. And as the highest general Greek conceptionof divinity was that of the perfection of obvious, and, in such a state of society,necessarv, human qualities, the Greek genius passed from the lower to the higherwork and, still dealing with the same material as the older civilization, of whichit was the legitimate child, it gave the highest possible success to that materialand that division of art. The rudest, earliest Egyptian temples of Aboo Simbel,and elsewhere, were the uncouth and distant beginnings of the Apollo Belvidere.Out of so strange an Egy ptian seed bloomed that fair Greek flower!

It is necessary to remark that the Greek civilization did not essentially differfrom the Egyptian. Plato, and Solon, and Pythagoras studied in Egypt. TheGreek introduced no new cardinal idea of human action and character into theworld. It was the primitive man more perfect; it was not a man so differentlydeveloped as to be fairly called a new man. Therefore its Art, using the samematerial and means, was not essentially new. And precisely as Greece maybesaid to have fulfilled Egypt, precisely so does Sculpture fulfil Architecture. Itbelongs, if we may say so, in a sense which the context will explain, to the mate-rial sphere. There was painting, indeed, in Greece; as there had been music inEgypt. The interior of the Parthenon, and the drapery of statues, were colored;and there are supposed to have been Greek pictures; there are certainly remainsof such at Pompeii.

But the earliest paintings which indicate any sympathy with the spirit ofwhich Painting was the peculiar expression, are to be traced to the decline ofthe Eastern Roman Empire, and were posterior to the introduction of Christianity.

Egypt, Greece, and Rome, fell. Then arose Papal Rome, the only externallyorganized empire of Christianity in history. A new idea, a new sentiment had

been introduced into human life and character. It was the spirit of Christianity.It is not to be denied, that thoughts similar to the principles of the Christianpreaching had appeared in philosophy and speculation. But the principles ofChristianity had not inspired civilization until long after the decline of the oldphilosophies, and the fall of the empires of which those philosophies justly ex-pressed the average sentiment. The height of material development had beenachieved. The Egyptian spirit and the Greek spirit had triumphed in Life andArt; and the forms of that art had strictly corresponded to that material devel-opment. Those arts would, under new inspirations, take new forms. The ques-tion is, could those new forms be more than adaptations of the old ? Would notthe new spirit instinctively create an adequate and peculiar form ?

The answer is, the art of Painting, which, in illustrating the idea of Chris-tianity and supported by the patronage of the Christian church, reached its culmi-nation. The new ideas- were spiritually discerned. The qualities of characterpeculiar to it, were not the heroic nor those which can be best expressed byphysical prowess. It implied something more than the beauty and grace of theApollo and Yenus, something subtler than the wisdom and might of Jupiter andMinerva. Mythology was material, in comparison with the spirituality of Chris-tianity. But as this different principle implied a play of character, a variety inunity, arising from the universal sympathy, which is the soul of Christianity, itsArt must be susceptible of the same varieties and gradations. A Greek Godrepresented the completeness of one attribute, or quality, or sentiment. To the rep-resentation of that, form, was quite adequate. But the representation of a Chris-tian saint, or scene, was full of such various emotion that form alone could notexpress it. Hence color, as the means of graduated and various expression, wasadded to form. Thus Painting was the younger sister of Sculpture and Architec-ture, and as no new element of human conduct or life has been actually introducedsince the Christian Painting reached its highest historical point, in the fifteenthand sixteenth centuries, therefore since that period it has been either a repro-duction of that old tradition, or a simple imitation of nature, which is obviouslya lower level of the art.

Music seems to be almost too exclusively dependent upon a caprice of Nature,in furnishing an ear, to be submitted to the analogies of this speculation. Thusmuch is, however, evident, that, in the degree that the whole tone of human lifehas become elevated by obedience to the Christian principle, has music matured,and as the great sculptors had declined before the great painters arose, so werethe latter gone before the musicians came. Phidias was a memory to Raphael;and Michael Angelo to Beethoven.

Yet as Philosophy seeks constantly to trace relation, and dependence, and gen-eral unity in every phenomenon of progress, it is not difficult to see that, as Egyptfounded and shaped the structure, thereby representing Architecture, so Greececompleted it and adorned it with ornaments suggested by a similar spirit, therebyrepresenting Sculpture; and so Italy, with a new inspiration added a new essen-tial in Painting, while subtle, Gothic Germany (following the image) pours throughthe aisles, and past the statues and the pictures, a torrent of music, crowningwith speech the perfected work of the ages. And, clinging to this general ideaof sequence in unity, it is a favorite thought of the greatest artists, that the com-pletest work of Art is a temple, sculptured and painted, in which music wafts auniversal anthem of worship to Heaven.

The theory, shadowed forth in such a speculation upon the historical surface ofArt, is, of course, that certain forms of art are peculiar to certain periods of History,and to certain degrees of development; and that whenever, at other periods, works,in that kind, are attempted, they can only be successful'in a limited degree; that,absolutely, they aim to do what has been already done; and that, relatively, theycan only legitimately represent that which is the peculiar subject of that form ofArt, but which, as the greater includes the less, still exists as it did in the timewhen it was the chief and remarkable aspect. In other words, that, absolutely,such attempts are partial, or aim only at the representation of a part, whichpart, in the days when that particular form of Art was in the ascendant, was thewhole; and that, therefore, relatively, that form of Art cannot aim to embracethe present whole, but can only succeed as to that part, which is only one divi-sion of the present whole.

This can be made clear, we hope, by an illustration. The Greek Venus is thesymbol of perfect material grace and loveliness. Now at a time when that is thehighest ideal it can bo perfectly expressed in marble, and a statue is made. Butnow let us suppose the Christian Madonna, to represent whom, marble is obviouslyinadequate. Why ? Because the idea of the Madonna requires a spiritual varietywhich cannot be sufficiently expressed in stone. Yet, as the highest ideal ofwomanhood, it necessarily contains that lower one of material grace and loveli-ness, and therefore an artist, aiming to make a statue of the Madonna, could onlysucceed in so far as he adequately presented that lower one. But in view of thehigher ideal, and of an art competent to express that height, of course, in repre-senting the lower, he is only representing a part, which was once a whole. Heis aiming at an old result. It may be a very pretty thing to do, and may bedone as well as in the old days, but, in view of the high requirements of Art, it isan imperfect success.

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