by John Ruskin
LECTURE I.
OF THE DIVISION OF ARTS.
_November, 1870._
1. If, as is commonly believed, the subject of study which it is myspecial function to bring before you had no relation to the greatinterests of mankind, I should have less courage in asking for yourattention to-day, than when I first addressed you; though, even then, Idid not do so without painful diffidence. For at this moment, evensupposing that in other places it were possible for men to pursue theirordinary avocations undisturbed by indignation or pity; here, at least,in the midst of the deliberative and religious influences of England,only one subject, I am well assured, can seriously occupy yourthoughts--the necessity, namely, of determining how it has come to pass,that in these recent days, iniquity the most reckless and monstrous canbe committed unanimously, by men more generous than ever yet in theworld's history were deceived into deeds of cruelty; and that prolongedagony of body and spirit, such as we should shrink from inflictingwilfully on a single criminal, has become the appointed and acceptedportion of unnumbered multitudes of innocent persons, inhabiting thedistricts of the world which, of all others, as it seemed, were bestinstructed in the laws of civilization, and most richly invested withthe honour, and indulged in the felicity, of peace.
Believe me, however, the subject of Art--instead of being foreign tothese deep questions of social duty and peril,--is so vitally connectedwith them, that it would be impossible for me now to pursue the line ofthought in which I began these lectures, because so ghastly an emphasiswould be given to every sentence by the force of passing events. It iswell, then, that in the plan I have laid down for your study, we shallnow be led into the examination of technical details, or abstractconditions of sentiment; so that the hours you spend with me may betimes of repose from heavier thoughts. But it chances strangely that, inthis course of minutely detailed study, I have first to set before youthe most essential piece of human workmanship, the plough, at the verymoment when--(you may see the announcement in the journals either ofyesterday or the day before)--the swords of your soldiers have been sentfor _to be sharpened_, and not at all to be beaten into ploughshares. Ipermit myself, therefore, to remind you of the watchword of all myearnest writings--"Soldiers of the Ploughshare, instead of Soldiers ofthe Sword"--and I know it my duty to assert to you that the work weenter upon to-day is no trivial one, but full of solemn hope; the hope,namely, that among you there may be found men wise enough to lead thenational passions towards the arts of peace, instead of the arts of war.
I say the work "we enter upon," because the first four lectures I gavein the spring were wholly prefatory; and the following three onlydefined for you methods of practice. To-day we begin the systematicanalysis and progressive study of our subject.
2. In general, the three great, or fine, Arts of Painting, Sculpture,and Architecture, are thought of as distinct from the lower and moremechanical formative arts, such as carpentry or pottery. But we cannot,either verbally, or with any practical advantage, admit suchclassification. How are we to distinguish painting on canvas frompainting on china?--or painting on china from painting on glass?--orpainting on glass from infusion of colour into any vitreous substance,such as enamel?--or the infusion of colour into glass and enamel fromthe infusion of colour into wool or silk, and weaving of pictures intapestry, or patterns in dress? You will find that although, inultimately accurate use of the word, painting must be held to mean onlythe laying of a pigment on a surface with a soft instrument; yet, inbroad comparison of the functions of Art, we must conceive of one andthe same great artistic faculty, as governing _every mode of disposingcolours in a permanent relation on, or in, a solid substance_; whetherit be by tinting canvas, or dyeing stuffs; inlaying metals with fusedflint, or coating walls with coloured stone.
3. Similarly the word "Sculpture,"--though in ultimate accuracy it is tobe limited to the development of form in hard substances by cutting awayportions of their mass--in broad definition, must be held to signify_the reduction of any shapeless mass of solid matter into an intendedshape_, whatever the consistence of the substance, or nature of theinstrument employed; whether we carve a granite mountain, or a piece ofbox-wood, and whether we use, for our forming instrument axe, or hammer,or chisel, or our own hands, or water to soften, or fire tofuse;--whenever and however we bring a shapeless thing into shape, we doso under the laws of the one great Art of Sculpture.
4. Having thus broadly defined painting and sculpture, we shall see thatthere is, in the third place, a class of work separated from both, in aspecific manner, and including a great group of arts which neither, ofnecessity, _tint_, nor for the sake of form merely, _shape_, thesubstances they deal with; but construct or arrange them with a view tothe resistance of some external force. We construct, for instance, atable with a flat top, and some support of prop, or leg, proportioned instrength to such weights as the table is intended to carry. We constructa ship out of planks, or plates of iron, with reference to certainforces of impact to be sustained, and of inertia to be overcome; or weconstruct a wall or roof with distinct reference to forces of pressureand oscillation, to be sustained or guarded against; and therefore, inevery case, with especial consideration of the strength of ourmaterials, and the nature of that strength, elastic, tenacious, brittle,and the like.
Now although this group of arts nearly always involves the putting oftwo or more separate pieces together, we must not define it by thataccident. The blade of an oar is not less formed with reference toexternal force than if it were made of many pieces; and the frame of aboat, whether hollowed out of a tree-trunk, or constructed of planksnailed together, is essentially the same piece of art; to be judged byits buoyancy and capacity of progression. Still, from the most wonderfulpiece of all architecture, the human skeleton, to this simple one,[107]the ploughshare, on which it depends for its subsistence, _the puttingof two or more pieces together_ is curiously necessary to theperfectness of every fine instrument; and the peculiar mechanical workof Daedalus,--inlaying,--becomes all the more delightful to us inexternal aspect, because, as in the jawbone of a Saurian, or the wood ofa bow, it is essential to the finest capacities of tension andresistance.
5. And observe how unbroken the ascent from this, the simplestarchitecture, to the loftiest. The placing of the timbers in a ship'sstem, and the laying of the stones in a bridge buttress, are similar inart to the construction of the ploughshare, differing in no essentialpoint, either in that they deal with other materials, or because, of thethree things produced, one has to divide earth by advancing through it,another to divide water by advancing through it, and the third to dividewater which advances against it. And again, the buttress of a bridgediffers only from that of a cathedral in having less weight to sustain,and more to resist. We can find no term in the gradation, from theploughshare to the cathedral buttress, at which we can set a logicaldistinction.
6. Thus then we have simply three divisions of Art--one, that of givingcolours to substance; another, that of giving form to it withoutquestion of resistance to force; and the third, that of giving form orposition which will make it capable of such resistance. All the finearts are embraced under these three divisions. Do not think that it isonly a logical or scientific affectation to mass them together in thismanner; it is, on the contrary, of the first practical importance tounderstand that the painter's faculty, or masterhood over colour, beingas subtle as a musician's over sound, must be looked to for thegovernment of every operation in which colour is employed; and that, inthe same manner, the appliance of any art whatsoever to minor objectscannot be right, unless under the direction of a true master of thatart. Under the present system, you keep your Academician occupied onlyin producing tinted pieces of canvas to be shown in frames, and smoothpieces of marble to be placed in niches; while you expect your builderor constructor to design coloured patterns in stone and brick, and yourchina-ware merchant to keep a separate body of workwomen who can paintchina, but nothing else. By this division of labour, you ruin all thearts at once. The work
of the Academician becomes mean and effeminate,because he is not used to treat colour on a grand scale and in roughmaterials; and your manufactures become base because no well educatedperson sets hand to them. And therefore it is necessary to understand,not merely as a logical statement, but as a practical necessity, thatwherever beautiful colour is to be arranged, you need a Master ofPainting; and wherever noble form is to be given, a Master of Sculpture;and wherever complex mechanical force is to be resisted, a Master ofArchitecture.
7. But over this triple division there must rule another yet moreimportant. Any of these three arts may be either imitative of naturalobjects or limited to useful appliance. You may either paint a picturethat represents a scene, or your street door, to keep it from rotting;you may mould a statue, or a plate; build the resemblance of a clusterof lotus stalks, or only a square pier. Generally speaking, Painting andSculpture will be imitative, and Architecture merely useful; but thereis a great deal of Sculpture--as this crystal ball[108] for instance,which is not imitative, and a great deal of Architecture which, to someextent is so, as the so called foils of Gothic apertures; and for manyother reasons you will find it necessary to keep distinction clear inyour minds between the arts--of whatever kind--which are imitative, andproduce a resemblance or image of something which is not present; andthose which are limited to the production of some useful reality, as theblade of a knife, or the wall of a house. You will perceive also, as weadvance, that sculpture and painting are indeed in this respect only oneart; and that we shall have constantly to speak and think of them assimply _graphic_, whether with chisel or colour, their principalfunction being to make us, in the words of Aristotle, "[Greek:theoretikoi tou peri ta somata kallous]" (Polit. 8, 3.), "havingcapacity and habit of contemplation of the beauty that is in materialthings;" while Architecture, and its co-relative arts, are to bepractised under quite other conditions of sentiment.
8. Now it is obvious that so far as the fine arts consist either inimitation or mechanical construction, the right judgment of them mustdepend on our knowledge of the things they imitate, and forces theyresist: and my function of teaching here would (for instance) so farresolve itself, either into demonstration that this painting of apeach,[109] does resemble a peach, or explanation of the way in whichthis ploughshare (for instance) is shaped so as to throw the earth asidewith least force of thrust. And in both of these methods of study,though of course your own diligence must be your chief master, to acertain extent your Professor of Art can always guide you securely, andcan show you, either that the image does truly resemble what it attemptsto resemble, or that the structure is rightly prepared for the serviceit has to perform. But there is yet another virtue of fine art which is,perhaps, exactly that about which you will expect your Professor toteach you most, and which, on the contrary, is exactly that about whichyou must teach yourselves all that it is essential to learn.
9. I have here in my hand one of the simplest possible examples of theunion of the graphic and constructive powers,--one of my breakfastplates. Since all the finely architectural arts, we said, began in theshaping of the cup and the platter, we will begin, ourselves, with theplatter.
Why has it been made round? For two structural reasons: first, that thegreatest holding surface may be gathered into the smallest space; andsecondly, that in being pushed past other things on the table, it maycome into least contact with them.
FIG. 1.]
Next, why has it a rim? For two other structural reasons; first, that itis convenient to put salt or mustard upon; but secondly and chiefly,that the plate may be easily laid hold of. The rim is the simplest formof continuous handle.
Farther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to put thisridge beneath, round the bottom; for as the rim is the simplest possibleform of continuous handle, so this is the simplest form of continuousleg. And we get the section given beneath the figure for the essentialone of a rightly made platter.
10. Thus far our art has been strictly utilitarian having respect toconditions of collision, of carriage, and of support. But now, on thesurface of our piece of pottery, here are various bands and spots ofcolour which are presumably set there to make it pleasanter to the eye.Six of the spots, seen closely, you discover are intended to representflowers. These then have as distinctly a graphic purpose as the otherproperties of the plate have an architectural one, and the firstcritical question we have to ask about them is, whether they are likeroses or not. I will anticipate what I have to say in subsequentlectures so far as to assure you that, if they are to be like roses atall, the liker they can be, the better. Do not suppose, as many peoplewill tell you, that because this is a common manufactured article, yourroses on it are the better for being ill-painted, or half-painted. Ifthey had been painted by the same hand that did this peach, the platewould have been all the better for it; but, as it chanced, there was nohand such as William Hunt's to paint them, and their graphic power isnot distinguished. In any case, however, that graphic power must havebeen subordinate to their effect as pink spots, while the band ofgreen-blue round the plate's edge, and the spots of gold, pretend to nographic power at all, but are meaningless spaces of colour or metal.Still less have they any mechanical office: they add nowise to theserviceableness of the plate; and their agreeableness, if they possessany, depends, therefore, neither on any imitative, nor any structural,character; but on some inherent pleasantness in themselves, either ofmere colours to the eye (as of taste to the tongue), or in the placingof those colours in relations which obey some mental principle of order,or physical principle of harmony.
11. These abstract relations and inherent pleasantnesses, whether inspace, number, or time, and whether of colours or sounds, form what wemay properly term the musical or harmonic element in every art; and thestudy of them is an entirely separate science. It is the branch ofart-philosophy to which the word "aesthetics" should be strictly limited,being the inquiry into the nature of things that in themselves arepleasant to the human senses or instincts, though they representnothing, and serve for nothing, their only service _being_ theirpleasantness. Thus it is the province of aesthetics to tell you, (if youdid not know it before,) that the taste and colour of a peach arepleasant, and to ascertain, if it be ascertainable, (and you have anycuriosity to know,) why they are so.
12. The information would, I presume, to most of you, be gratuitous. Ifit were not, and you chanced to be in a sick state of body in which youdisliked peaches, it would be, for the time, to you false information,and, so far as it was true of other people, to you useless. Nearly thewhole study of aesthetics is in like manner either gratuitous or useless.Either you like the right things without being recommended to do so, orif you dislike them, your mind cannot be changed by lectures on the lawsof taste. You recollect the story of Thackeray, provoked, as he washelping himself to strawberries, by a young coxcomb's telling him that"he never took fruit or sweets." "That" replied, or is said to havereplied, Thackeray, "is because you are a sot, and a glutton." And thewhole science of aesthetics is, in the depth of it, expressed by onepassage of Goethe's in the end of the 2nd part of Faust;--the notableone that follows the song of the Lemures, when the angels enter todispute with the fiends for the soul of Faust. They entersinging--"Pardon to sinners and life to the dust." Mephistopheles hearsthem first, and exclaims to his troop, "Discord I hear, and filthyjingling"--"Mistoene hoere ich; garstiges Geklimper." This, you see, isthe extreme of bad taste in music. Presently the angelic host beginstrewing roses, which discomfits the diabolic crowd altogether.Mephistopheles in vain calls to them--"What do you duck and shrinkfor--is that proper hellish behaviour? Stand fast, and let themstrew"--"Was duckt und zuckt ihr; ist das Hellen-brauch? So haltetstand, und lasst sie streuen." There you have, also, the extreme of badtaste in sight and smell. And in the whole passage is a brief embodimentfor you of the ultimate fact that all aesthetics depend on the health ofsoul and body, and the proper exercise of both, not only through years,but generations. Only by harmony of both collateral and successi
velives can the great doctrine of the Muses be received which enables men"[Greek: chairein orthos]," "to have pleasures rightly;" and there is noother definition of the beautiful, nor of any subject of delight to theaesthetic faculty, than that it is what one noble spirit has created,seen and felt by another of similar or equal nobility. So much as thereis in you of ox, or of swine, perceives no beauty, and creates none:what is human in you, in exact proportion to the perfectness of itshumanity, can create it, and receive.
13. Returning now to the very elementary form in which the appeal to ouraesthetic virtue is made in our breakfast-plate, you notice that thereare two distinct kinds of pleasantness attempted. One by hues of colour;the other by proportions of space. I have called these the musicalelements of the arts relating to sight; and there are indeed twocomplete sciences, one of the combinations of colour, and the other ofthe combinations of line and form, which might each of them separatelyengage us in as intricate study as that of the science of music. But ofthe two, the science of colour is, in the Greek sense, the more musical,being one of the divisions of the Apolline power; and it is sopractically educational, that if we are not using the faculty for colourto discipline nations, they will infallibly use it themselves as a meansof corruption. Both music and colour are naturally influences of peace;but in the war trumpet, and the war shield, in the battle song andbattle standard, they have concentrated by beautiful imagination thecruel passions of men; and there is nothing in all the Divina Commediaof history more grotesque, yet more frightful, than the fact that, fromthe almost fabulous period when the insanity and impiety of war wrotethemselves in the symbols of the shields of the Seven against Thebes,colours have been the sign and stimulus of the most furious and fatalpassions that have rent the nations: blue against green, in the declineof the Roman Empire; black against white, in that of Florence; redagainst white, in the wars of the Royal houses in England; and at thismoment, red against white, in the contest of anarchy and loyalty, in allthe world.
14. On the other hand, the directly ethical influence of colour in thesky, the trees, flowers, and coloured creatures round us, and in our ownvarious arts massed under the one name of painting, is so essential andconstant that we cease to recognize it, because we are never long enoughaltogether deprived of it to feel our need; and the mental diseasesinduced by the influence of corrupt colour are as little suspected, ortraced to their true source, as the bodily weaknesses resulting fromatmospheric miasmata.
15. The second musical science which belongs peculiarly to sculpture(and to painting, so far as it represents form), consists in thedisposition of beautiful masses. That is to say, beautiful surfaceslimited by beautiful lines. Beautiful _surfaces_, observe; and rememberwhat is noted in my fourth lecture of the difference between a space anda mass. If you have at any time examined carefully, or practised from,the drawings of shells placed in your copying series, you cannot buthave felt the difference in the grace between the aspects of the sameline, when enclosing a rounded or unrounded space. The exact science ofsculpture is that of the relations between outline and the solid form itlimits; and it does not matter whether that relation be indicated bydrawing or carving, so long as the expression of solid form is themental purpose; it is the science always of the beauty of relation inthree dimensions. To take the simplest possible line of continuouslimit--the circle: the flat disc enclosed by it may indeed be made anelement of decoration, though a very meagre one but its relative mass,the ball, being gradated in three dimensions, is always delightful.Here[110] is at once the simplest, and in mere patient mechanism, themost skilful, piece of sculpture I can possibly show you,--a piece ofthe purest rock-crystal, chiselled, (I believe, by mere toil of hand,)into a perfect sphere. Imitating nothing, constructing nothing;sculpture for sculpture's sake, of purest natural substance intosimplest primary form.
16. Again. Out of the nacre of any mussel or oyster-shell you might cut,at your pleasure, any quantity of small flat circular discs of theprettiest colour and lustre. To some extent, such tinsel or foil ofshell _is_ used pleasantly for decoration. But the mussel or oysterbecoming itself an unwilling modeller, agglutinates its juice into threedimensions, and the fact of the surface being now geometricallygradated, together with the savage instinct of attributing value to whatis difficult to obtain, make the little boss so precious in men's sightthat wise eagerness of search for the kingdom of heaven can be likenedto their eagerness of search for _it_; and the gates of Paradise can beno otherwise rendered so fair to their poor intelligence, as by tellingthem that every several gate was of "one pearl."
17. But take note here. We have just seen that the sum of the perceptivefaculty is expressed in those words of Aristotle's "to take pleasurerightly" or straightly--[Greek: chairein orthos]. Now, it is notpossible to do the direct opposite of that,--to take pleasureiniquitously or obliquely--[Greek: chairein adikos] or [Greek:skolios]--more than you do in enjoying a thing because your neighbourcannot get it. You may enjoy a thing legitimately because it is rare,and cannot be seen often, (as you do a fine aurora, or a sunset, or anunusually lovely flower); that is Nature's way of stimulating yourattention. But if you enjoy it because your neighbour cannot haveit--and, remember, all value attached to pearls more than glass beads,is merely and purely for that cause,--then you rejoice through the worstof idolatries, covetousness; and neither arithmetic, nor writing, norany other so-called essential of education, is now so vitally necessaryto the population of Europe, as such acquaintance with the principles ofintrinsic value, as may result in the iconoclasm of jewellery; and inthe clear understanding that we are not in that instinct, civilized, butyet remain wholly savage, so far as we care for display of this selfishkind.
You think, perhaps, I am quitting my subject, and proceeding, as it istoo often with appearance of justice alleged against me, into irrelevantmatter. Pardon me; the end, not only of these lectures, but of my wholeprofessorship, would be accomplished,--and far more than that,--if onlythe English nation could be made to understand that the beauty which isindeed to be a joy for ever, must be a joy for all; and that though theidolatry may not have been wholly divine which sculptured gods, theidolatry is wholly diabolic, which, for vulgar display, sculpturesdiamonds.
18. To go back to the point under discussion. A pearl, or a glass bead,may owe its pleasantness in some degree to its lustre as well as to itsroundness. But a mere and simple ball of unpolished stone is enough forsculpturesque value. You may have noticed that the quatrefoil used inthe Ducal Palace of Venice owes its complete loveliness in distanteffect to the finishing of its cusps. The extremity of the cusp is amere ball of Istrian marble; and consider how subtle the faculty ofsight must be, since it recognizes at any distance, and is gratified by,the mystery of the termination of cusp obtained by the gradated light onthe ball.
In that Venetian tracery this simplest element of sculptured form isused sparingly, as the most precious that can be employed to finish thefacade. But alike in our own, and the French, central Gothic, theball-flower is lavished on every line--and in your St. Mary's spire, andthe Salisbury spire, and the towers of Notre Dame of Paris, the richpleasantness of decoration,--indeed, their so-called "decoratedstyle,"--consists only in being daintily beset with stone balls. It istrue the balls are modified into dim likeness of flowers; but do youtrace the resemblance to the rose in their distant, which is theirintended effect?
19. But farther, let the ball have motion; then the form it generateswill be that of a cylinder. You have, perhaps, thought that pure EarlyEnglish Architecture depended for its charm on visibility ofconstruction. It depends for its charm altogether on the abstractharmony of groups of cylinders,[111] arbitrarily bent into mouldings,and arbitrarily associated as shafts, having no _real_ relation toconstruction whatsoever, and a theoretical relation so subtle that noneof us had seen it, till Professor Willis worked it out for us.
20. And now, proceeding to analysis of higher sculpture, you may haveobserved the importance I have attached to the porch of San Zenone, atVerona, by ma
king it, among your standards, the first of the group whichis to illustrate the system of sculpture and architecture founded onfaith in a future life. That porch, fortunately represented in thephotograph, from which Plate I. has been engraved, under a clear andpleasant light, furnishes you with examples of sculpture of every kindfrom the flattest incised bas-relief to solid statues, both in marbleand bronze. And the two points I have been pressing upon you areconclusively exhibited here, namely,--(1). That sculpture is essentiallythe production of a pleasant bossiness or roundness of surface; (2) thatthe pleasantness of that bossy condition to the eye is irrespective ofimitation on one side, and of structure on the other.
21. (1.) Sculpture is essentially the production of a pleasant bossinessor roundness of surface.
If you look from some distance at these two engravings of Greek coins,(place the book open so that you can see the opposite plate three orfour yards off,) you will find the relief on each of them simplifiesitself into a pearl-like portion of a sphere, with exquisitely gradatedlight on its surface. When you look at them nearer, you will see thateach smaller portion into which they are divided--cheek, or brow, orleaf, or tress of hair--resolves itself also into a rounded orundulated surface, pleasant by gradation of light. Every several surfaceis delightful in itself, as a shell, or a tuft of rounded moss, or thebossy masses of distant forest would be. That these intricatelymodulated masses present some resemblance to a girl's face, such as theSyracusans imagined that of the water-goddess Arethusa, is entirely asecondary matter; the primary condition is that the masses shall bebeautifully rounded, and disposed with due discretion and order.
PLATE I.--PORCH OF SAN ZENONE. VERONA.]
22. (2.) It is difficult for you, at first, to feel this order andbeauty of surface, apart from the imitation. But you can see there is apretty disposition of, and relation between, the projections of afir-cone, though the studded spiral imitates nothing. Order exactly thesame in kind, only much more complex; and an abstract beauty of surfacerendered definite by increase and decline of light--(for every curve ofsurface has its own luminous law, and the light and shade on a parabolicsolid differs, specifically, from that on an elliptical or sphericalone)--it is the essential business of the sculptor to obtain; as it isthe essential business of a painter to get good colour, whether heimitates anything or not. At a distance from the picture, or carving,where the things represented become absolutely unintelligible, we mustyet be able to say, at a glance, "That is good painting, or goodcarving."
And you will be surprised to find, when you try the experiment, how muchthe eye must instinctively judge in this manner. Take the front of SanZenone for instance, Plate I. You will find it impossible without alens, to distinguish in the bronze gates, and in great part of the wall,anything that their bosses represent. You cannot tell whether thesculpture is of men, animals, or trees; only you feel it to be composedof pleasant projecting masses; you acknowledge that both gates and wallare, somehow, delightfully roughened; and only afterwards, by slowdegrees, can you make out what this roughness means; nay, though here(Plate III.) I magnify[112] one of the bronze plates of the gate to ascale, which gives you the same advantage as if you saw it quite close,in the reality,--you may still be obliged to me for the information,that _this_ boss represents the Madonna asleep in her little bed, andthis smaller boss, the Infant Christ in His; and this at the top, acloud with an angel coming out of it, and these jagged bosses, two ofthe Three Kings, with their crowns on, looking up to the star, (which isintelligible enough I admit); but what this straggling, three-leggedboss beneath signifies, I suppose neither you nor I can tell, unless itbe the shepherd's dog, who has come suddenly upon the Kings with theircrowns on, and is greatly startled at them.
23. Farther, and much more definitely, the pleasantness of the surfacedecoration is independent of structure; that is to say, of anyarchitectural requirement of stability. The greater part of thesculpture here is exclusively ornamentation of a flat wall, or of doorpanelling; only a small portion of the church front is thus treated, andthe sculpture has no more to do with the form of the building than apiece of a lace veil would have, suspended beside its gates on a festalday; the proportions of shaft and arch might be altered in a hundreddifferent ways, without diminishing their stability; and the pillarswould stand more safely on the ground than on the backs of these carvedanimals.
24. I wish you especially to notice these points, because the falsetheory that ornamentation should be merely decorated structure is sopretty and plausible, that it is likely to take away your attention fromthe far more important abstract conditions of design. Structure shouldnever be contradicted, and in the best buildings it is pleasantlyexhibited and enforced; in this very porch the joints of every stone arevisible, and you will find me in the Fifth Lecture insisting on thisclearness of its anatomy as a merit; yet so independent is themechanical structure of the true design, that when I begin my Lectureson Architecture, the first building I shall give you as a standard willbe one in which the structure is wholly concealed. It will be theBaptistry of Florence, which is, in reality, as much a buttressed chapelwith a vaulted roof, as the Chapter House of York--but round it, inorder to conceal that buttressed structure, (not to decorate, observe,but to _conceal_) a flat external wall is raised; simplifying the wholeto a mere hexagonal box, like a wooden piece of Tunbridge ware, on thesurface of which the eye and intellect are to be interested by therelations of dimension and curve between pieces of encrusting marble ofdifferent colours, which have no more to do with the real make of thebuilding than the diaper of a Harlequin's jacket has to do with hisbones.
PLATE II.--THE ARETHUSA OF SYRACUSE.]
PLATE III.--THE WARNING TO THE KINGS.
San Zenone. Verona.]
25. The sense of abstract proportion, on which the enjoyment of such apiece of art entirely depends, is one of the aesthetic faculties whichnothing can develop but time and education. It belongs only tohighly-trained nations; and, among them, to their most strictly refinedclasses, though the germs of it are found, as part of their innatepower, in every people capable of art. It has for the most part vanishedat present from the English mind, in consequence of our eager desire forexcitement, and for the kind of splendour that exhibits wealth, carelessof dignity; so that, I suppose, there are very few now even of ourbest-trained Londoners who know the difference between the design ofWhitehall and that of any modern club-house in Pall-mall. The order andharmony which, in his enthusiastic account of the Theatre of Epidaurus,Pausanias insists on before beauty, can only be recognized by sternorder and harmony in our daily lives; and the perception of them is aslittle to be compelled, or taught suddenly, as the laws of still finerchoice in the conception of dramatic incident which regulate poeticsculpture.
26. And now, at last, I think, we can sketch out the subject before usin a clear light. We have a structural art, divine, and human, of whichthe investigation comes under the general term, Anatomy; whether thejunctions or joints be in mountains, or in branches of trees, or inbuildings, or in bones of animals. We have next a musical art, fallinginto two distinct divisions--one using colours, the other masses, forits elements of composition; lastly, we have an imitative art, concernedwith the representation of the outward appearances of things. And, formany reasons, I think it best to begin with imitative Sculpture; thatbeing defined as _the art which, by the musical disposition of masses,imitates anything of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us; anddoes so in accordance with structural laws having due reference to thematerials employed_.
So that you see our task will involve the immediate inquiry what thethings are of which the imitation is justly pleasant to us: what, in fewwords,--if we are to be occupied in the making of graven images--weought to like to make images _of_. Secondly, after having determined itssubject, what degree of imitation or likeness we ought to desire in ourgraven image; and lastly, under what limitations demanded by structureand material, such likeness may be obtained.
These inquiries I shall endeavour to
pursue with you to some practicalconclusion, in my next four lectures, and in the sixth, I will brieflysketch the actual facts that have taken place in the development ofsculpture by the two greatest schools of it that hitherto have existedin the world.
27. The tenor of our next lecture then must be an inquiry into the realnature of Idolatry; that is to say, the invention and service of Idols:and, in the interval, may I commend to your own thoughts this question,not wholly irrelevant, yet which I cannot pursue; namely, whether theGod to whom we have so habitually prayed for deliverance "from battle,murder, and sudden death," _is_ indeed, seeing that the present state ofChristendom is the result of a thousand years' praying to that effect,"as the gods of the heathen who were but idols;" or whether--(andobserve, one or other of these things _must_ be true)--whether ourprayers to Him have been, by this much, worse than Idolatry;--thatheathen prayer was true prayer to false gods; and our prayers have beenfalse prayers to the True One.
FOOTNOTES:
[107] I had a real ploughshare on my lecture table; but it wouldinterrupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if Iattempted here to illustrate by figures the relation of the coulter tothe share, and of the hard to the soft pieces of metal in the shareitself.
[108] A sphere of rock crystal, cut in Japan, enough imaginable by thereader, without a figure.
[109] One of William Hunt's peaches; not, I am afraid, imaginablealtogether, but still less representable by figure.
[110] The crystal ball above mentioned.
[111] All grandest effects in mouldings may be, and for the most parthave been, obtained by rolls and cavettos of circular (segmental)section. More refined sections, as that of the fluting of a Doric shaft,are only of use near the eye and in beautiful stone; and the pursuit ofthem was one of the many errors of later Gothic. The statement in thetext that the mouldings, even of best time, "have no real relation toconstruction," is scarcely strong enough: they in fact contend with, anddeny the construction, their principal purpose seeming to be theconcealment of the joints of the voussoirs.
[112] Some of the most precious work done for me by my assistant Mr.Burgess, during the course of these lectures, consisted in makingenlarged drawings from portions of photographs. Plate III. is engravedfrom a drawing of his, enlarged from the original photograph of whichPlate I. is a reduction.