I may add that in early days, monks—St. Dunstan being an example—occupied themselves in executing the details of ecclesiastical buildings—the foliations of windows, screens, and the like. It is said that when sculpturing the heads used for gargoyles, they sometimes amused themselves by caricaturing one another.
Recent stages in the development of sculpture are not easy to trace. But there seems to have occurred in modern times a process parallel to that which we saw occurred in Greece. During the first stages in the secularization of his business the carver of marble carried with him the character previously established—he was a superior artisan. Only in course of time, as his skill was employed for other than sacred purposes, did he become independent and begin to gain reputation as an artist. And his position has risen along with the devotion of his efforts more and more to subjects unconnected with religion.
Let it be observed, however, that even still sculpture retains in considerable measure its primitive character as an ancillary to ancestor-worship. A carved marble effigy in a Christian church differs but little in meaning from a carved wooden figure of a dead man placed on his grave in savage and semi-civilized societies. In either case the having an image made, and the subsequent conduct in presence of it, imply the same prompting sentiment: there is always more or less of awe or respect. Moreover, sculpture continues to be largely employed for the expression of this sentiment, not in churches only, but in houses. The preservation of a bust by descendants commonly implies recognition of worth in the original, and is thus in a faint way an act of worth-ship.
Hence only that kind of sculpture which is not devoted to the representation of deceased persons, in either public or in private edifices, or in open places, can be considered as absolutely secularized. One who takes his subjects from ancient myth, or history, or from the life around, may be considered as alone the sculptor who has lost all trace of the original priestly character.
With recognition of the completed process of differentiation there is nothing here to join respecting the process of integration. Sculptors have not yet become sufficiently numerous to form entirely independent unions. Such combination as has arisen among them we shall have to recognize in the next chapter, in association with the combinations of painters.
