Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870Ruskin, John
Philosophy
Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870
Ruskin, John
Sculpture
Note also this respecting his picture of the Judgment, that, in spite
of all the violence and wildness of the imagined scene, Tintoret has not
given, so far as I remember, the spectacle of any one soul under
infliction of actual pain. In all previous representations of the Last
Judgment there had at least been one division of the picture set apart
for the representation of torment; and even the gentle Angelico shrinks
from no orthodox detail in this respect; but Tintoret, too vivid and
true in imagination to be able to endure the common thoughts of hell,
represents indeed the wicked in ruin, but not in agony. They are swept
down by flood and whirlwind--the place of them shall know them no more,
but not one is seen in more than the natural pain of swift and
irrevocable death.
229. (III.) I pass to the third condition; the priority of flesh to
spirit, and of the body to the face.
In this alone, of the four innovations, Michael Angelo and Tintoret have
the Greeks with them;--in this, alone, have they any right to be called
classical. The Greeks gave them no excuse for bad workmanship; none for
temporary passion; none for the preference of pain. Only in the honor
done to the body may be alleged for them the authority of the ancients.
You remember, I hope, how often in my preceding lectures I had to insist
on the fact that Greek sculpture was essentially [Greek:
aprosopos];--independent, not only of the expression, but even of the
beauty of the face. Nay, independent of its being so much as seen. The
greater number of the finest pieces of it which remain for us to judge
by, have had the heads broken away;--we do not seriously miss them
either from the Three Fates, the Ilissus, or the Torso of the Vatican.
The face of the Theseus is so far destroyed by time that you can form
little conception of its former aspect. But it is otherwise in Christian
sculpture. Strike the head off even the rudest statue in the porch of
Chartres and you will greatly miss it--the harm would be still worse to
Donatello's St. George:--and if you take the heads from a statue of
Mino, or a painting of Angelico--very little but drapery will be
left;--drapery made redundant in quantity and rigid in fold, that it may
conceal the forms, and give a proud or ascetic reserve to the actions,
of the bodily frame. Bellini and his school, indeed, rejected at once
the false theory, and the easy mannerism, of such religious design; and
painted the body without fear or reserve, as, in its subordination,
honorable and lovely. But the inner heart and fire of it are by them
always first thought of, and no action is given to it merely to show its
beauty. Whereas the great culminating masters, and chiefly of these,
Tintoret, Correggio, and Michael Angelo, delight in the body for its own
sake, and cast it into every conceivable attitude, often in violation of
all natural probability, that they may exhibit the action of its
skeleton, and the contours of its flesh. The movement of a hand with
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account