—for example, the choir reliefs at Toledo cathedral, and those
in the Colegio Mayor at Salamanca by Alonzo Berruguete,
sculptor, painter and architect, trained in Rome and Florence,
and the greatest designer of Spain up to that time. He worked
under Michelangelo and Vasari, and on his return to Spain in
1520 was appointed court painter and sculptor to Charles V.
The same position was occupied under Philip II. by Gaspar
Becerra (1520–1570), whose masterpiece is a figure of Our Lady
of the Solitude, in Madrid. Esteban Jordan, Gregorio Hernandez
and other Spanish sculptors produced a large number of elaborate
retables, carved in wood with subjects in relief and richly
decorated in gold and colours. These sumptuous masses of
polychromatic sculpture resemble the 15th-century retables of
Germany more than any Italian examples, and were a sort
of survival of an older medieval style. J. Morlanes was the
first of Spanish sculptors to adopt the style of Albert Dürer,
which afterwards became general. Philip de Vigarni, Christopher
of Salamanca, and Paul de Cespedes, who was native of Cordova,
are names of great prominence up to the end of the century.
Alonzo Cano (1600–1667), the painter, was remarkable for clever
realistic sculpture, very highly coloured and religious in style.
Montañes, who died in 1614, was one of the ablest Spanish
sculptors of his time. His finest works are the reliefs of the
Madonna and Saints on an altar in the university church of
Seville, and in the cathedral, in the chapel of St Augustine, a
very nobly designed Conception, modelled with great skill.
In the 17th century sculpture in wood still prevailed. The statue of St Bruno of Montañez seems to have inspired others to repeat the subject in the same material: Juan de Juin (d. 1614) is a case in point. Pedro de Mena and Zarcillo achieved great success in this class of sculpture. A. Pujol of Catalonia and Peter Roldan carried on the Spanish tradition. The chief names in the 18th century are those of Don P. Duque Cornesso of Seville, Don J. de Hinestrosa, A. Salvador (known as “the Roman,” d. 1766), Philip de’ Castro of Galicia, one of the most eminent sculptors of his time (d. 1775), and F. Gutierrez (d. 1782).[1]
If the immediate followers of Michelangelo showed a tendency
to turn the characteristics of the master’s style into exaggerated
mannerism, the beginning of the 17th century finds
Italian sculpture in a state of complete decadence,
statuesque dignity having given way to violentBaroque sculpture
in Italy.
fluttering movement and ilorid excesses, such as was
revived in a later century. From Italy this “baroque” style
spread over the whole continent of Europe and retained its hold
for nearly two centuries. The chief sculptor and architect of
this period was the Neapolitan, J. L. 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 Villa Borghese, 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,[2] designed in a thoroughly unsculpturesque
spirit. The churches of Rome, 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 received 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 (1571–1636) was the ablest of his contemporaries;
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 (1598?–1654), who formed a school, which included
G. Brunelli, D. Guidi and C. Mazza of Bologna.
In the next century at Naples Queirolo, Corradini and Sammartino produced a number of statues, now in the chapel of S. Maria de’ Sangri, which are extraordinary examples of wasted labour and neglect of the simplest canons of plastic art. These are marble statues enmeshed inThe classicist revival in Italy. nets or covered with thin veils, executed with almost deceptive realism, perhaps the lowest stage of tricky degradation into which the sculptor’s art could possibly fall.[3] 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, mostly dull and uninteresting in style, and is occasionally 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 that, distinguished antique art; his finest work is the colossal group of Theseus slaying a Centaur, at Vienna. Canova’s attempts at Christian sculpture are singularly unsuccessful, as, for example, his pretentious monument to Pope Clement XIII. in St Peter’s at Rome, that of Titian at Venice, and Alfieri’s tomb in the Florentine church of S. Croce. Fiesole in the 19th 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 Fiesole. Many of Bastianini’s works are hardly to be distinguished from genuine sculpture of the 15th century, and in some cases great prices have been paid for them under the supposition that they were medieval productions. These frauds were, however, perpetrated without Bastianini’s consent, or at least without his power to prevent them. Several of his best terra-cotta works may be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Whilst monumental sculpture in France during the 17th century continued to be influenced by Italy, the national tradition was carried on to a certain extent by such In France portraitists as the two Coustous and their master Coysevox (1640–1720), whose works are marked by a greatIn France. sense of life and considerable technical skill. The exaggerated elegance in the treatment of the female figure, which became so marked a characteristic of French sculpture during this period, is the chief trait of Francois Girardon (1630–1715), who was chiefly employed on the sculptural decorations at Versailles, and on the famous equestrian statue of Louis XIV., which was destroyed during the Revolution and for which hundreds of exquisite drawings and studies were made, now in the French national collection. Far more strength and grandeur mark the work of Pierre Puget (1622–1694), who is best known by his “Milo of Crotona” for Versailles. His training was entirely Italian, and in style considerably influenced by Bernini. He worked for some considerable time in Italy, particularly in Genoa. The same opposed movements which run side by side in French 18th-century painting, academic allegory and frivolous sensuality, can be traced in the sculpture of this period. Of
- ↑ For the earlier history of Spanish sculpture, see Don Juan Augustin Cean Bermudez, Diccionaria historian de los mas illustres professores de las bellas aries en Espagna (Madrid, 1800, 6 vols.). or the later sculptors, see B. Händke, Studien zur Geschichte der spanischen Plastik (Strasburg, 1900).
- ↑ The Ludovisi group of Pluto carrying off Proserpine, now in the Borghese Gallery, 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 19th century an Italian sculptor named Monti won much popular repute by similar unworthy tricks; some veiled statues by him in the London Exhibition of 1851 were greatly admired; since then copies or imitations of them have enraptured the visitors who have crowded round the Italian sculpture stalls at every subsequent international exhibition.
