I must farther, for a few moments,
request your attention to the alterations made in the light and shade.
You may perhaps remember some of the passages. They occur frequently,
both in my inaugural lectures, and in "Aratra Pentelici," in which I
have pointed out the essential connection between the schools of
sculpture and those of chiaroscuro. I have always spoken of the Greek,
or essentially sculpture-loving schools, as chiaroscurist; always of
the Gothic, or colour-loving schools, as non-chiaroscurist. And in one
place, (I have not my books here, and cannot refer to it,) I have even
defined sculpture as light-and-shade drawing with the chisel.
Therefore, the next point you have to look to, after the absolute
characters of form, is the mode in which the sculptor has placed his
shadows, both to express these, and to force the eye to the points of
his composition which he wants looked at. You cannot possibly see a
more instructive piece of work, in these respects, than Giovanni's
design of the Nativity, Plate X. So far as I yet know Christian art,
this is the central type of the treatment of the subject; it has all
the intensity and passion of the earliest schools, together with a
grace of repose which even in Ghiberti's beautiful Nativity, founded
upon it, has scarcely been increased, but rather lost in languor.
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