Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

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both at Modena. The colossal bronze seated statue of
Julius III. at Perugia, cast in 1555 by Vincenzo Danti, is
one of the best portrait-figures of the time.
Seven- The chief sculptor and architect of the 17th century was
century tlie NeaPolitan Bernini (1598-1680), who, with the aid of
a large school of assistants, produced an almost incredible
quantity of sculpture of the most varying degrees of merit
and hideousness. His chief early group, the Apollo and
Daphne in the Borghese casino, is a work of wonderful
technical skill and delicate high finish, combined with soft
beauty and grace, though too pictorial in style. In later
life Bernini turned out work of brutal coarseness,1 designed
in a thoroughly unsculpturesque spirit. The churches of
Borne, the colonnade of St Peter’s, and the bridge of S.
Angelo are crowded with his clumsy colossal figures, half
draped in wildly fluttering garments,—perfect models of
what is worst in the plastic art. And yet his works re¬
ceived perhaps more praise than those of any other sculptor
of any age, and after his death a scaffolding was erected
outside the bridge of S. Angelo in order that people might
walk round and admire his rows of feeble half-naked
angels. For all that, Bernini was a man of undoubted
talent, and in a better period of art would have been a
sculptor of the first rank ; many of his portrait-busts are
works of great vigour and dignity, quite free from the
mannered extravagance of his larger sculpture. Stefano
Maderna (15/1-1636) was the ablest of his contempo¬
raries ; his clever and much admired statue, the figure of
the dead S. Cecilia under the high altar of her basilica,
is chiefly remarkable for its deathlike pose and the realistic
treatment of the drapery. Another clever sculptor was
Alessandro Algardi of Bologna (1598M654).
SS’ In the.next century at Naples Queirolo, Corradini, and
century. Sammartino produced a number of statues, now in the
chapel of S. Maria de’ Sangri, which are extraordinary
examples of wasted labour and ignorance of the simplest
canons of plastic art. These are marble statues enmeshed
in nets or covered with thin veils, executed with almost
deceptive realism, perhaps the lowest stage of tricky de¬
gradation into which the sculptor’s art could possibly fall.2
In the 18th century Italy was naturally the headquarters
of the classical revival, which spread thence throughout
most of Europe. Canova (1757-1822), a Venetian by
birth, who spent most of his life in Rome, was perhaps
the leading spirit of this movement, and became the most
popular sculptor of his time. His work is very unequal in
merit, moetly dull and uninteresting in style, and is occa¬
sionally marred by a meretricious spirit very contrary to
the true classic feeling. His group of the Three Graces,
the Hebe, and the very popular Dancing-Girls, copies of
which in plaster disfigure the stairs of countless modern
hotels and other buildings on the Continent, are typical
examples of Canova's worst work. Some of his sculpture
is designed with far more of the purity of antique art;
his finest work is the colossal group of Theseus slaying a
Centaur at Vienna (see fig. 22). Canova’s attempts at
Christian sculpture are singularly unsuccessful, as, for ex¬
ample, his pretentious monument to Pope Clement XIII.
in St Peters at Rome, that to Titian at Venice, and
Alfieri’s tomb in the Florentine church of S. Croce. Fiesole
has in this century produced one sculptor of great talent,
named Bastianini. He worked in the style of the great
15th-century Florentine sculptors, and followed especially
the methods of his distinguished fellow-townsman Mino da
The Ludovisi group of Pluto carrying off Proserpine is a striking
example, and shows Bernini’s deterioration of style in later life It has
nothing in common with the Cain and Abel or the Apollo and Daphne
of his earlier years.
In the present century an Italian sculptor named. Monti won much
popuiar repute by similar unworthy tricks ; some veiled statues by him
m the London Exhibition of 1851 were greatly admired.
ITALIAN.]
Fiesole. Many of Bastianini’s works are hardly to be dis¬
tinguished from genuine sculpture of the 15th century,
and in some cases enormous prices have been paid for
Fig. 22.—Colossal marble group of Theseus and a centaur, by Canova,
at Vienna.
them under the supposition that they were mediteval pro¬
ductions. These frauds were, however, perpetrated without
Bastianini’s knowledge.
Scandinavia, &c.—By far the greatest sculptor of the Scandi-
classical revival was Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770-1844), annaviai1
Icelander by race, whose boyhood was spent at Copenhagen,sculp'
and who settled in Rome in 1797, when Canova’s fame was °rs
at its highest point.3 He produced an immense quantity
of groups, single statues, and reliefs, chiefly Greek and
Roman deities, many of which show more of the true
spirit of antique art than has been attained by any other
modern sculptor. His group of the Three Graces is for
purity of form and sculpturesque simplicity far superior
to that of the same subject by Canova. No sculptor’s
works have ever been exhibited as a whole in so perfect a
manner as Thorwaldsen’s; they are collected in a fine
building which has been specially erected to contain them
at Copenhagen; he is buried in the courtyard. The
Swedish sculptors Tobias Sergell and Johann Bystrom be¬
longed to the classic school; the latter followed in Thorwald¬
sen s footsteps. Another Swede named Fogelberg was
famed chiefly for his sculptured subjects taken from Norse
mythology, W. Bissen and Jerichau of Denmark have
produced some able works,—the former a fine equestrian
statue of Frederick VII. at Copenhagen, and the latter a
very spirited and widely known-group of a Man attacked
by a Panther.
Within recent years Russia, Poland, and other countries
have produced many sculptors, most of whom belong to
the modern German or French schools. Rome is still a America,
favourite place of residence for the sculptors of all coun- Russ‘a>
tries, but can hardly be said to possess a school of its own. &c'
The sculptors of America almost invariably study at one
of the great European centres of plastic art, especially in
Paris. Hiram Powers of Cincinnati, who produced one
work of merit, a nude female figure, called the Greek
Slave, exhibited in London in 1851, lived and worked in
Florence. A number of living American sculptors now
reside both there and in Rome.4
3 See Eug. Plon, Vie de Thorwaldsen, Paris, 1867.
4 On Italian and Spanish sculpture, see Vasari, Trattato della Sail-
SCULPTURE