Part IV — Modern Sculpture
Chapter XII The Art of Monarchical France
(FROM FRANCIS I., 1515 a.d., TO
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 1789)
Among the commonplaces uppermost in latter-day thought is that which usually finds expression in the phrase, “For East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” Whether this dogma be ultimately true or not it certainly enshrines a far-reaching truth. The difference between the typical Eastern and the typical Western mind goes down to the deepest philosophical beliefs of both. The circumstances under which the two types have been moulded differ so widely that they hardly appear to move on the same mental plane.
But the Eastern and the Western are not the only types which offer the strongest contrast the one to the other. Between the North and the South, too, there is a great gulf fixed—a vital historical fact which Heine has expressed with unforgettable vividness in two short stanzas. In the first, he pictures the black fir-tree on the bald hill-brow of the North. He speaks of its icy garb, and shows it sleeping and dreaming amid the eternal snows:
“It sleeps and dreams of a palm-tree,
Far off in the morning land,
Lonely and silent, pining
On a cliff o’er the shimmering sand.”
For thousands of years the great mountain chains of mid-Europe cut off the man in the North from the man in the South, as completely as the barren steppes of Eastern Europe and Western Asia divided East from West. To this very day the long winters and cool summers, the sombre skies and deep forests, have operated to produce a body of thought and emotion in the North of Europe that differs entirely from that nourished under the clear skies and in the warm winds of Italy and Greece. The mysticism of the Northman, his yearning to be at one with the Ultimate Reality, is foreign to the typical Southern intellect—as foreign as the dim forests, in which the mystical gloom of the Northern imagination arose, are to the fruitful plains in which the sunnier creed of the Southerner had its birth.
These general considerations prepare the way naturally enough for a review of the history of sculpture in Northern Europe. Hitherto we have considered the progress of the art in Italy and Greece. The sunny human creed of the Southern temperament, at any rate, was able to find full expression in marble and bronze. Can we say as much for the mystical philosophy of such countries as Germany, France, Holland and England?
The influence of the prevailing trend of thought can be clearly traced in several northern arts—in architecture and music, for instance—or, again, in a Rembrandt portrait. Surely this is as typical a product of the northern imagination, with its mysticism and gloom, as a picture by Botticelli or Correggio, with its wealth of fancy and its delight in light and space, is of the southern temperament.
But, turning to the work of the northern sculptors, we cannot say this. The deepest emotions of the northern artist have found more natural expression in the drama, in poetry, music and painting. The reason is not far to seek. All these arts are far more universal in their range. Sculpture depends entirely upon so human a thing as the body of a man or a woman. It is naturally more fitted for the exposition of a creed in which mankind occupies the chief place. Equally naturally, the other arts serve better for the unfolding of a belief which bases everything upon the will of an extra-mundane God, manifesting Himself not in man alone but in the whole of the natural world.
Be that as it may, it is certain that when we turn to the sculpture of the North, we find few traces of the mystical outlook upon life which is implicit in other northern art. By the time the sculptors of the North had acquired the technical skill to express their thought and emotion they apparently found themselves unable to embody their deepest belief in their works. This, no doubt, explains why sculpture has never been a popular art in any Northern country, why it has never occupied the place there which it did in Greece or Rome; why it has always been a stranger art, making its appeal to the few and not to the many.
It must not be imagined that the failure of sculpture to take a strong hold upon the popular imagination of the North has been due to the absence of craftsmen of the first order. Directly the Renaissance in Italy made itself felt in the countries beyond the Alps, a vigorous school of sculpture arose. Nothing could exceed the technical skill and the sincerity of purpose displayed in Peter Vischer’s “King Arthur,” one of the twenty-eight colossal figures surrounding the tomb of Maximilian at Innsbruck. But seeing that the sculptor died in 1529, and that the best years of his working life practically correspond with the age of Luther’s Reformation, surely something more than earnestness of purpose and profound technical skill might have been shown. The Maximilian memorial certainly proves that the leading German sculptors of the Reformation era had progressed beyond the Gothic decorators whom they succeeded. But why has not the “King Arthur” the vital interest of a Durer engraving? Why does it lack the inspiration of a really fine Holbein portrait? Surely it is because the sculptor had never realized the true meaning of the word “humanity.” He lacked that passionate delight in the beauty of the human body which lay at the root of the Hellenic sculptor’s success. The vital element of a vigorous school of sculpture was wanting. Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that even the standard of craftsmanship attained by Peter Vischer was not maintained by the German sculptors who followed him. The conversion of Germany to Protestantism entailed a general discouragement of all art effort. As had been the case in the early history of the Christian Church, the leaders of the religious movement sternly opposed anything that satisfied the æsthetic cravings of mankind.
PETER VISCHER