Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 3/Art in ivory
ART IN IVORY.
It is not often that the true lover of art can wander into the well-known shop of Messrs. Colnaghi and Scott in Pall Mall, without finding there something worthy of his admiration. There are happily still left among us a few who follow painting and sculpture as lofty and ennobling pursuits, whether the influence they exercise be upon themselves or upon others—conscientious sensitive men, who dread the rude ordeal of the walls of the Royal Academy, and who shrink from that vulgar speculation which would by the meanest of artifices mislead public taste. Such men rather seek some quiet place where their works can be studied by those who are worthy to enter into their spirit, and can appreciate at their real value the labour and thought bestowed upon them. In the locality to which we have alluded might have been seen not long ago, and may we believe still be seen, the noble dreamy head of the Poet-Laureate, by Watts—a work which proves that we have yet a living portrait-painter worthy to preserve for posterity the features of the eminent men of our day, and whose name, when his generation has passed away, will rank with those of Reynolds and of the first of the English school. Messrs. Colnaghi have now under their care a collection of sculptures in ivory by a refined and thoughtful French sculptor, already well known by his works in marble, the Baron Henri di Triqueti.
Ivory has been too long neglected as a substance for the production of the highest class of objects of art. This accomplished artist has sought to restore a material so precious and beautiful to the rank it bore in the best age of ancient Greece. The greatest of her sculptors used it, as we know, for their choicest works. Out of it Phidias fashioned the features of his Athenian Minerva and of his Olympian Jove, whilst his renowned pupil, Alcamenes, chose it for the more voluptuous forms of the youthful Bacchus. Alas! none of these monuments of Greek genius—the most perfect, if we are to believe the united testimony of ancient authors, that Greek art produced—have been preserved to us. Not that the material is so perishable as some might be inclined to believe. Have we not in the British Museum the Assyrian ivories, carved eight centuries at least before the Christian æra, and those from the tombs of Egypt, probably of a much earlier date? Not only is ivory not so liable to perish, but even when decay has commenced, and the very substance is crumbling away, it can be restored by a simple yet ingenious process to its original hardness. The ivories from Nineveh, which fell to dust almost at the touch, have been made solid again; and even the tusks of elephants which have been for ages buried in the soil have been supplied artificially with that gelatinous matter which once held their component particles together. Thus, this apparently fragile and delicate substance has a property of escaping destruction which is not even possessed by the hardest of metals and the most compact of marbles. Public and private collections contain remarkable specimens of ivory carvings of the Roman times. Then sculptured tablets in ivory were classed amongst the most valued gifts; and the Roman consuls, on being raised to their dignity, were in the habit of presenting them to their friends. These consular diptychs, as they are called, for they usually consisted of two leaves like the cover of a book, were frequently ornamented with the portrait of the donor, and usually inscribed with his name. Some may still be seen in museums; and, although they do not possess the interest or value as works of art which would attach to similar remains of the best Greek period, yet several are not undeserving of notice for beauty of design and execution. The early Christian artist, too, chose this pure and chaste substance as the fittest to embody his conceptions of the Virgin and her Child and other sacred subjects; nor was it less coveted by the sculptor of the “renaissance,” for its exquisite beauty, whilst the charm it imparted to the representation of human flesh, enabled him to carry out the inspiration of his rich and voluptuous fancy. Even Michael Angelo did not scruple to employ it for some of his mighty conceptions.[1] What prodigious sums are now given for the classic works of Benvenuto Cellini, the graceful groups of Fiammingo, and even the indifferent imitations of far less skilful Flemish artists! These precious objects have always been considered the ornament of the public museum and the pride of the private collection. But, although abundantly employed for mere useful purposes during the last century, ivory seems to have been unaccountably neglected for the higher purposes of art. It is remarkable that during this period no really eminent artist appears to have felt its beauty, or understood its capabilities for representing the delicate and glowing surface of human flesh. No name of note has been connected for the last hundred years with an important work in the material. M. di Triqueti is the first who has availed himself of it to produce an original and well-studied work of art.
The ancients frequently combined metals with ivory, and especially bronze. Our artist has also sought to revive this union, and to join the two so that each should hold its due place and set off the other. His idea was first fully carried out in a recumbent figure of Cleopatra, included in the present collection. And well carried out it has been, for he has produced a statue which, although small in size, is of singular beauty, of deep expression, and of exceeding truthfulness. The dying queen has fallen back upon her throne; her eyes are closing for ever; her right hand grasps her robes convulsively in the last throes of death; her left arm, around which is twined the fatal asp, hangs by her side, and is stiffening into lifeless rest. Her beautiful bosom is bare, and her ample drapery hangs loosely about her limbs. Again following the example of the ancients, the sculptor has delicately touched with gold her tiara, her sandals, and her ornaments, and has carried a graceful coloured border round the edges of her robe. The whole of the statue is in ivory, the throne, embossed with figures, in bronze, and the base of marble—a combination harmonious to the eye and well suited to the subject. The execution is most careful and delicate. It is impossible to imagine anything more true to nature than the bosom—which seems almost to heave with the last struggling breath—or the arm falling at her side. The drapery is finely conceived, and admirably executed in graceful and natural folds.
But the most remarkable object in the collection is a vase, on which the sculptor has lavished all his skill and all his thought. Those who feel the true end of art will not think that the labour and time he has bestowed upon this beautiful work have been thrown away, for it is not as a mere object of curiosity, but as a monument of art, that we must look at it. We are too much accustomed to confine the application of the term “fine arts” to certain things—pictures or statues—set as it were apart, only to be admired, without significance or use. But the “fine arts” attained their highest and most noble development when applied to the purposes and wants of everyday life—when the distinction now drawn between what is purely ornamental and what is purely useful was unknown. Then the gratification of the feeling for the beautiful was as needful to men as those things which ministered to their necessities. Then it was that the most accomplished artists did not despise the humblest work which could be embellished by their genius and skill. The sculptors and painters of the golden age of Italian art, as of the golden age of Greek art, made designs for chests, or armour, or goblets, and frequently executed them with their own hands—chests, not to form part of a collection of curiosities, but to hold garments; armour, not to be preserved in museums, but to be worn in battle or in the tilt; goblets, not to be kept under glass, but to be filled with wine at the feast. All that is truly beautiful has its influence upon man, whether that influence be immediate and sensible or remote and imperceptible. This is especially the case when the element of beauty is introduced into that which belongs to everyday life, into that which we are in the habit of constantly using or of seeing about us. That influence should especially consist in the chastening of the imagination and in the softening of the character. With most men art is looked upon as a thing altogether distinct from what belongs to everyday life—to be cared for and enjoyed of itself as a rare and costly luxury. With such men as M. di Triqueti this is not so. He has felt, and rightly felt, that there is nothing so simple or of so little actual value in itself, that the highest principles of art may not be applied to it. He has not considered that ten years of thought and three years of labour have been thrown away upon this vase, if he should have attained excellence in it, and should have produced an object which may contribute to the elevation of public taste, and may extend the application of art.
Like every really great artist, who leaves nothing undone to render his work perfect, he has himself watched over every detail, designed the form, and superintended the casting of the metal, carved the ivory, and moulded the embossments of the bronze. His vase may be open to criticism; opinions on matters of taste must of necessity be infinite in the absence of any recognised standard. Some may think the upper part too bald, others may desire even less ornament and a more simple shape; some may object to the introduction of ornaments too closely imitated from nature, others to the union of two substances so opposite in character as ivory and bronze. But the artist himself has duly weighed all these things, and has made up his own mind. By the massiness of the handles he seeks to indicate that they are intended not simply for show, but for use in lifting the vase. As any apparent weight added to the upper part might be inconsistent with the light and apparently fragile material which forms the centre, he has abstained from introducing into it any more ornament than he deemed absolutely necessary; convinced that, in order to invent new and truly noble forms of decoration, we should turn to the inexhaustible mine of nature, he has sought in natural objects the ornaments which he has embossed on the handles and lip. A work carried out in this spirit and upon these principles, and with a conscientious care seldom equalled, cannot fail to be an object of value and interest deserving of serious study.
The tendency of the artist’s mind is to that chaste and severe treatment which distinguishes Greek or classic art. One simple idea pervades the whole work. .png)
Although there are four distinct bas-reliefs, they may be described as four idyls in sculpture illustrating one subject, the hopes and desires of the chief types of human existence—hopes and desires to which a brief and shadowy embodiment is given in our dreams—those of the youth entering upon the great battle of life, burning with its ambitions, thirsting for its pleasures: of the maiden upon whom first dawn the tender joys of love: of the man of labour, expectant of the fruits of what he himself has sown: and of the man of thought, past the hope of youth, looking beyond the grave for the end, and to immortality for the reward. In each composition the dreamer occupies the chief place. In the first, a young man reclines in deep sleep; a maiden bending over him is about to press her lips upon his forehead; and lovely female forms hover above him. This enchanting vision is interrupted by the calls of war. Mounted on a fiery horse, and lured on by Fame, who holds a laurel crown in her hand, he rushes into the fight, and strives to seize the prize. Unmindful of blighted hopes that may await him, his ardent imagination is nourished by the promise of glory, and he lives, in the words of the poet inscribed beside him, on “this noble food, and envies not the nectar and ambrosia of the gods.” In contrast with the dreaming youth is the dreaming maiden. Her arms thrown back support her head: her robe has fallen from her snowy bosom. Above her float figures from dreamland, and in each she sees herself in some stage of that joyous existence which her innocent imagination has pictured to her. Here she adorns her long tresses for the feast, there she coyly receives the proffered gifts of her lover. Then, a mother, she fondly clasps her infant to her breast, whilst merry laughing children dance around her, or cluster at her knee. A genius standing at her feet places his finger on his lip that no sound may disturb these happy visions, alas! too soon to fade before the bitter realities of life.
These bright dreams have passed; the stern struggle has begun; and the ardent, hoping youth has become the sober man of labour. But he, too, has his visions to cheer him in his path. He reclines by the partner of his toil, and dreams no longer of those tumultuous pleasures which once beguiled him—of glory earned and ambition fed—but of the sweeter and more lasting rewards of his own labour. He has tilled the ground and sown the seed. Two genii, in a car drawn by winged boys, bring him triumphantly the produce of the earth—fruits, corn, and flowers; and others stepping joyously before him bear the sickles and the golden sheaves new reaped.
The man of thought, in the fourth bas-relief, sees in his dream the hoped-for reward of those who toil, not with the hand but with the brain, for man’s instruction and elevation. As he bends in sleep over his tablets, Fame points heavenward, whilst the forms of the mighty dead rise before him. He is already crowned with laurel, and Homer, Virgil, Sappho, and Dante beckon him to their side. But a genius, holding the crown of thorns before him, warns him that only through the valley of grief and of suffering can he reach the glorious temple of immortality.
Such are the subjects of these sculptured idyls, as poetically conceived as they are skilfully executed. They blend harmoniously together, and by a thoughtful arrangement of the lines unite imperceptibly one with the other—a result not of easy accomplishment, and yet of essential importance to the symmetry of the vase. The themes, classic in their nature, are treated in a classic spirit, yet with none of the formality or mannerism which distinguishes and too frequently degrades the modern French school of art. The style is simple, the imitation of nature truthful yet elevated, reminding us not a little of the great Italian painters of the fifteenth century. We might particularly instance the charming group of the youth wooing the maiden in the young girl’s dream, which breathes the spirit of Lippi or of Boticelli. The draperies are well studied, yet simple, flowing, and free. In the representation of the human form, the sculptor, inspired by the exquisite beauty of the substance with which he had to deal, has been singularly happy. What could be more delicate and lovely than tie bosom of the sleeping girl, which seems to be warm with life itself; more truthful than the brawny and muscular frame of the man of labour; or more graceful and free than the form of the agile youth? The artist has dealt lovingly with a material the delicious softness and transparency of whose texture delights the eye and invites the touch. When we look upon that exquisite surface in which the poet from the earliest times has sought his description of female charms; when we watch the varying play of lights, and the clear transparent shadows; we can scarcely marvel that the greatest sculptors of old should have chosen it for the representation of those gods whose chief attribute, as exalting them above man, consisted in perfect physical beauty.
We cannot but admire the skill which M. di Triqueti has shown in the handling of his materials. He seems to have the same command over the ivory and the bronze as over marble—to understand equally well the capabilities of each. This knowledge was necessary to enable him to make his work perfect. There may be some defects in the vase which are perhaps inherent to the material. Were we disposed to criticise where there are so many beauties and so much poetry of conception, we might object to the attempt at foreshortening in some of the figures—an attempt which we believe to be wrong in principle and unknown in the best age of Greek art. The effects of shortening in painting are obtained by correct drawing and subtle gradations of colour and light and shade, means which are wanting altogether in sculpture. Of the four compositions the vision of the young girl pleases us most, on the whole, from its simplicity of arrangement and the graceful treatment of the forms, although the youth’s dream is scarcely inferior to it.
With the Cleopatra and the vase are two other ivory sculptures: a joyous laughing faun playing the cymbals, poetically conceived, and especially noticeable for the careful and truthful modelling of the human form; and a graceful group of a Cupid standing at the knee of a young girl, and whispering to her the first secrets of love, illustrating the line of Ovid:
“Nescia quid sit amor, sed et erubuisse decebat.”
It is not only the skilful execution, the difficulties overcome, and the novelty of an attempt to restore an art now almost forgotten, but the poetic imagination, the refined and graceful feeling pervading every detail, which mark these ivories as the work of a truly gifted artist. We concur in the convictions which led him to execute them, and we trust that his hopes may not be disappointed.
- ↑ A very interesting and important series of casts of carvings in ivory, extending from the second to the sixteenth century, has been published by the Arundel Society.