The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
case of painting, it is quite prepared to associate with religious
representations. The goose-seller, for example, in the Nürnberg
marketplace, which is highly prized by Goethe and Meyer, is an ordinary
rustic of very realistic appearance in bronze (it would be impossible
in marble), who carries a goose under either arm to market. There are,
too, the many sculptured figures, which we find upon the St. Sebaldus
Church and on many other churches and buildings, especially dating from
the period previous to Peter Vischer, and which in their representation
of religious subjects such as the Passion, make clear to us with great
vividness this particular type of individualized form, expression, mien
and attitude, more particularly in their reflection of every degree of
sorrow.
As a rule, then, romantic sculpture, which has deviated only too
frequently into every kind of confusion, remains most loyal to the
genuine principle of plastic art in those cases where it approaches
most nearly the Greek, and either is concerned to treat in the mode of
sculpture ancient subject-matter, much as the ancients would have done,
or to model the standing figures of heroes and kings, and portraits,
with an intention to imitate the antique. This is exceptionally the
case nowadays. Much of the most excellent work, however, has been
accomplished by sculpture, even in the religious field. It is only
necessary here to mention the name of Michelangelo. We can hardly
admire sufficiently his dead Christ[212], of which we have a plaster
cast in our Royal Museum. The authenticity of the sculptured figure
of the Madonna in the Frauenkirche at Bruges, a consummate work, is
disputed by certain critics. Speaking for myself, nothing has ever
more impressed me than the tomb of the Count of Nassau at Breda[213].
The Count reposes with his lady, life-size figures both in alabaster,
on a slab of black marble. At the angles of this are placed Regulus,
Hannibal, Caesar, and a Roman warrior in a bowing posture, and they
support above their heads a black slab similar to the one beneath.
Could anything be more interesting than to see a character such as that
of Caesar placed before our eyes by Michelangelo. Even when dealing
with religious subjects the genius, the power of imagination, the
force, thoroughness, boldness, in short all the extraordinary resources
of this master tended, in the characteristic production of his art, to
combine the plastic principle of the ancients with the type of intimate
soul-life which we find in romantic art. But as we have seen, the
direction as a rule of the Christian emotion, where the religious point
of view and idea are paramount, is not towards the classical form of
ideality, which primarily and with highest results is the determinant
factor of its sculpture.