SCULPTURE AND MINOR ARTS AND CRAFTS OUTSIDE OF ITALY
While Italy excelled in sculpture
at this time, as indeed in every department of art,
the other countries of Europe practically all enjoyed
a magnificent period of development in plastic art,
not a little of it thoroughly national in character
and some of the most precious of it quite apart from
Italian influence. Besides, there was a marvellous
accomplishment in the subsidiary arts and artistic
crafts well deserving of mention which confirms the
place of this period among the greatest of productive
eras. A very noteworthy development of sculpture
took place in the Netherlands, where in the midst of
the rising democracies and the commercial prosperity
there was a great outburst of artistic genius.
Wealthy patrons had the good taste to recognize artistic
genius and encourage it. There has never been
a period or country when tradesmen proved more discriminatingly
beneficent. It would be indeed surprising if the
country that produced the Van Eycks and the first
great evolution of oil painting with the work of Van
der Weyden, Memling, Quentin Matsys, Gerard David
and so many others on canvas, should not have given
us sculpture worthy of this fine artistic development.
We do not, as a rule, know the names
of the individual sculptors in the Netherlands, because
apparently they looked upon themselves as artist artisans,
whose duty it was to do their work faithfully and
thoroughly, looking for no reward of fame and no special
recognition beyond their own consciousness of having
done good work. Their sculptures are to be seen
in many places, in the cathedrals, the town halls
and the other beautiful buildings erected at this time.
Louvain, Brussels and many of the other towns of what
is now Belgium particularly must have had many
artistic workers in stone who well deserved the name
of sculptors. They executed not only beautifully
decorative work, but also full-length statues, busts,
medallions in high and low relief, and plastic ornaments
of all kinds. The high quality of their accomplishment
can scarcely be disputed, and yet the lack of their
names has often left the impression that there were
no great sculptors at this time; the fine sculpture
that has come down to us is, however, an emphatic
contradiction of any such notion.
Some of the work done in the humble
medium of wood is particularly interesting. The
charmingly artistic wood-carving of the consecration
of St. Eloi in the Church of Notre Dame at Bruges is
a striking example. The choir seats of the Church
at Louvain are quite as worthy of high praise, and
the wood-carvings in the choir at Harlem so often
admired come from this same period. Perhaps one
of the best examples of the wood-carving of the time
is the pulpit of the Cathedral at Leyden, which was
made in this century.
The tombs of Mary of Burgundy and
of Charles the Bold in the Church of Notre Dame, Bruges,
still further emphasize the sculptural capacity of
these generations, though, from the rarity of large
masterpieces, there were apparently but few opportunities
to display it on a monumental scale. These monuments,
especially the older one, are supremely great works
of art. A comparison of them is very illuminating
for the history of sculpture in our period. Though
constructed scarcely half a century apart, they are
executed under the influence of the two typical but
very different art impulses of this century.
The tomb of Mary, made by Peter Beckere of Brussels
in 1502, is mediaeval and Gothic in spirit. That
of Charles, made by order of Philip II just before
1560, is a distinctly Renaissance work. The later
is much more modern and obvious in the meaning of all
its symbolism, but one need not be an artist to see
how much more genuinely artistic is the earlier tomb.
At first glance one seems almost a replica of the
other, except, of course, for the figure of the deceased
and the subjects of the decorations of the sarcophaguses,
but it takes but little study to discover what a descent
there is in the art quality of the Renaissance work.
Nowhere can one see the value of the old and
the new nor compare Gothic and Renaissance so easily
as here.
Sculpture developed very wonderfully
in Germany during the first half of Columbus’
Century. The commercial prosperity of the time,
the development of industries and the increase of
trade caused an inflow of wealth into many of the
cities of Southern Germany particularly, and not a
little of this wealth found its way through the generosity
of donors into the decoration of their churches.
The people’s faith was deep and full. Reform
had not yet come to disturb it. Germany devoted
itself especially to sculptured decoration in wood.
An immense number of carved altars, pulpits, choir
screens, stalls, tabernacles and other church fittings
of very great elaborateness and usually fine artistic
quality were produced. One of the first of the
great German wood-carvers was Joerg Syrlin, who executed
the famous choir stalls of Ulm cathedral, so richly
decorated and ornamented with statuettes and
canopies. His son of the same name did the great
pulpit in the same cathedral and was given the commission
for the elaborate stalls in Blaubeuren church.
These were finished within a year of the discovery
of America. At Nuremberg wood-carving also reached
a high degree of excellence, and Veit Stoss of Nuremberg,
though notorious for his escapades, was looked upon
as the most skilful of artists for church woodwork.
He was invited to Cracow to do the high altar, the
tabernacle and the stalls of the Frauenkirchen.
His masterpiece is the great wooden panel nearly six
feet square, carved toward the end of the fifteenth
century, with an immense number of scenes from Bible
history, which is now among the treasures of the Nuremberg
town hall.
Albrecht Duerer himself with Renaissance
versatility took up sculpture and did not despise
even the humble medium of wood. He was a clever
wood-carver and executed a tabernacle with an exquisitely
carved relief of Christ on the Cross between His mother
and St. John, which still may be seen in the chapel
of the monastery at Landau. The British Museum
possesses a number of miniature reliefs in boxwood
which were also made by Duerer, though he early abandoned
wood-carving for art work in materials that might
be expected to be more enduring. The influence
of the wood-carving of this period can be noted in
the work of the sculptors of the time, even after they
abandoned it for stone and bronze. Adam Kraft’s
great Schreyer monument in St. Sebald’s Church
at Nuremberg, for instance, shows very clearly the
influence of wood-carving. There is no doubt,
however, about his high place among the sculptors,
even of this glorious period, in the art.
The Vischer family for three generations
executed a series of very great monuments in bronze,
especially during the second half of Columbus’
Century. The genius of the family was Peter Vischer
of the second generation, who was admitted as a master
sculptor into the sculptors’ guild of Nuremberg
in 1489. Perhaps the most interesting thing about
his work is his absolute mastery of the technique of
his art. Few men have ever succeeded in casting
in bronze to such good effect. After having finished
the magnificent tomb of Archbishop Ernest in Magdeburg
Cathedral, in which some traces of Gothic influence
still linger, Vischer obtained the opportunity for
his masterpiece in the beautiful canopy for the shrine
of St. Sebald at Nuremberg, a veritable triumph of
plastic art. Modern, critical appreciation of
it has very well corroborated contemporary admiration.
Its details are a never-ending source of interest and
study. Some of the statuettes of saints
attached to the slender columns of the canopy are
among the most charming examples of their kind that
we have. They have grace and dignity, as well
as great expressiveness. Near the base there
is a small, evidently portrait, figure of a rather
stout, bearded man wearing a large leathern apron
and holding some of the sculptor’s tools with
which he usually worked that is considered to be a
figure of Peter himself. It is a marvel of clever
realism.
The story of the execution of this
monumental masterpiece is of itself a lesson in the
art work of the time. Peter was assisted by his
sons, and they worked at it almost continuously for
more than ten years, between 1508 and 1519. It
was often extremely difficult for them to secure money
enough for their work from the authorities who had
agreed to pay, though stingily enough, yet they devoted
themselves to it as whole-heartedly as if it was a
munificently rewarded work. The smaller figures
are executed with marvellous attention to detail, and
every feature of the work, the graceful scroll
foliage so abundantly used, the dragons and even the
grotesques, all the details which crowd every possible
part of the canopy, were executed evidently without
the slightest regard for the time and labor which
were required for them and with the good workman’s
delight in his work.
It has sometimes been said that these
Teutonic sculptors of Nuremberg were mere workers
in bronze who reproduced in that material the ideas
and drawings of others. As pointed out by Cecil
Headlam in his little book on “The Bronze Founders
of Nuremberg,” “The evidence
of our eyes, which enable us to trace the development
of their style, would be enough to refute that opinion
even if we were without the documentary evidence which
shows that father and sons alike were patient and
painstaking draughtsmen as well as craftsmen all their
lives.” There is no doubt at all that they
adopted and adapted many ideas from the great Italian
sculptors of their own and the preceding time.
They were deeply influenced by Sansovino, Donatello,
Leonardo da Vinci, but they were not
mere imitators and they were not plagiarists in any
sense of the word. To quote Mr. Headlam again:
“They could apply the lessons they
had learnt from their careful study of the Italian
Masters, and apply them with successful originality.
It is in the energy which lives in the King Arthur,
the simple yet vigorous composition and execution
of bas-reliefs, such as the Healing of the Blind
Man of St. Sebald’s tomb, or the Tücher
Memorial, with their wholly admirable treatment of
lines and planes; it is in the tender and spiritual
feeling infused into the greatest of their bronze
portraits that the unanswerable vindication lies of
an imitation proved not too slavish and of a study
that has not deadened but inspired.”
Other cities in Southern Germany,
as Augsburg and Innsbrueck, and at least one city
in Northern Germany, Luebeck, are in possession of
bronze sculptures which show how thoroughly alive was
the spirit of plastic art all over Germany at this
time.
Innsbrueck possesses a series of bronze
statues, all of them executed in the first half
of the sixteenth century, which has always attracted
the attention of the world artists ever since.
There are twenty-eight colossal bronze figures around
the tomb of the Emperor Maximilian which stands in
the centre of the nave of the Cathedral. They
are designed to represent the heroes of the olden time
and one of them, usually looked upon as the finest,
is an ideal statue of King Arthur of the Briton legends,
famous for the nobility of the face and pose.
He is represented in the plate armor of the early fifteenth
century. The statue of Theodoric is also considered
to be not only a very fine example of the work of
the period, but also one of the world’s great
bronze statues. The difficulties encountered
in the accomplishment of the casting of the bronze
for these were so great that the Emperor invited Peter
Vischer from Nuremberg to superintend at least this
portion of the work and it is probable that his influence
was felt also on the modeling. The designs are
usually attributed to local artists at Innsbruck,
however, of whose names we are not sure. In nothing
are these older periods so different from ours as
in the utter neglect of artists to make any effort
to secure their personal fame.
In France even before the time of
the Renaissance, or at least before the effect of
Greek ideas was felt, there was a magnificent development
of sculpture, an inheritance from the older period
of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries which
had left such magnificent monuments as the tombs in
St. Denis, Le Beau Dieu at Amiens and the statues
in the porch of the cathedral at Chartres. The
first of these French Gothic sculptors of Columbus’
Century is Colombe, trained in Flanders, who founded
a school of sculpture at Tours. He executed
the tomb of Margaret of Austria and her husband Duke
Philibert of Savoy in the Marble Church of Brou.
Tours became a great centre of art in the latter half
of the fifteenth century. Its name, the town
of spires, indicates that there had always been aspirations
after effect in their ecclesiastical architecture and
this reached a culmination in statuary at this time.
With Colombe his nephews worked while Jean Juste and
his son collaborated in the poetic tomb built in honor
of the son and daughter of Charles VIII in the Cathedral
of Tours. Here also they erected the famous tomb
of Louis XII and Anne of Bretagne, which has since
been carried to St. Denis. The Justes had
a power of putting touching human qualities into marble
that has always given a special interest to their work.
Jean Fouchet probably made at this time the lovely
tomb of Agnes Sorel at Loches which has been
so famous and has helped to make Loches a favorite
pilgrimage place ever since.
French sculpture touched by the Renaissance
reached a further triumph of artistic development
in the first half of the sixteenth century. Two
names particularly stand out, those of Jean Goujon
and Germain Pilon. Though the first signs of
that affectation and mannerism which developed as
the Renaissance progressed are to be already noted
in their styles, they combined great technical skill
with refinement in modelling. Undoubtedly the
greatest of the French sculptors of the time was Jean
Goujon, whose most pleasing work is the marble
group of Diana reclining beside a stag, which exhibits
a power beyond that of any except the greatest Italian
sculptors. He executed a series of sculptures
for the older part of the Louvre which beautifully
harmonizes with the architecture. His reliefs
for the Fountain of the Innocents are one of the best
known of his works and have a charm all their own.
The other great sculptor, Germain
Pilon, trained under the influence of the Renaissance,
did his best work just after the close of Columbus’
Century. His group of the Three Graces bearing
on their heads an urn containing the heart of Henry
II, executed for Catherine de Medici, has been deservedly
very much praised. Other men, Maitre Ponce and
Barthelemy Prieur, did work that has attracted much
attention about this same time. A fine portrait
effigy of a recumbent figure in full armor of
the duke of Montmorency, which has always attracted
the attention of those of critical artistic taste and
is one of the treasures of the Louvre, is the work
of Prieur.
The story of subsequent decadence
is as striking in France as in other countries.
No sculpture of any significance appeared during the
seventeenth century, though some of the artists of
the time exhibited great technical skill. Indeed
it was not until the coming of Hudon, at the end of
the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
century, that there is any relief from the story of
mediocrity or worse, and in his time the plastic
arts had reached a very low ebb. Modern French
sculpture is the result of the movement begun by Hudon,
but it is separated from the Renaissance by nearly
two centuries of debasement.
A very interesting and valuable development
of the arts and crafts that came in the Netherlands
at this time was in the execution of art tapestries.
This is the period when weaving of all kinds came to
its highest perfection all over the world. The
fifteenth and sixteenth century Oriental rugs command
the highest prices and are among the most beautiful
examples of carpet weaving that we have. In the
Netherlands and in France tapestry reached its highest
perfection and the examples executed at this time
are now the precious treasures of governmental museums
and similar public institutions almost without exception
and probably will not change hands again because they
are looked upon as too valuable for educational purposes
and the uplifting of popular taste for public authorities
ever to part with them. In the Netherlands particularly,
tapestry-making reached a climax of perfection.
After Michelangelo had been asked to decorate the ceiling
of the Sistine Chapel, Raphael was requested to do
a series of cartoons for the tapestries to be hung
around the walls of it, which were to be executed
in Flanders. After their completion they were
the admiration of Rome, and we have many expressions
of praise for them from the great men of the time
whose critical ability in all matters relating to
art cannot be doubted.
Vasari has an enthusiastic tribute,
which even discounting his well-known tendency to
praise overmuch under certain circumstances, still
serves to show how thoroughly satisfied this period
of great art was with these masterpieces. He
said:
“One is astonished at the sight
of this series. The execution is marvellous.
One can hardly imagine how it was possible, with simple
threads, to procure such delicacy in the hair and
beards and to express the suppleness of flesh.
It is a work more Godlike than human; the waters,
the animals and the habitations are so perfectly represented
that they appear painted with the brush, not woven.”
The tapestries were first shown the
day after Christmas, 1519, in the Sistine Chapel
for which they had been designed. Some of the
greatest of the Renaissance scholars and artists and
literary men were present on the occasion. It
was the custom at that time to send as Ambassadors
to Rome from foreign countries, distinguished scholars
and amateurs. Many of these were present.
All were enthusiastic in their admiration. Rumor
said that they were quite unable to express all that
they felt for these new works of art. Everyone
present, one of the guests said in a letter to his
sovereign, was speechless at the sight of these hangings
and it is the unanimous opinion that nothing more
beautiful exists in the universe. Another of those
present wrote:
“After the Christmas celebrations
were over, the Pope exposed in his chapel seven
tapestries (the eighth not being finished) executed
in the West (in Flanders). They were considered
by every one the most beautiful specimens of the
weaver’s art ever executed. And this in
spite of the celebrity attained by other tapestries those
in the antechamber of Pope Julius II, those made
for the Marchese of Mantua after the cartoons of
Mantegna, and those made for the King of Naples.
They were designed by Raphael of Urbino, an excellent
painter, who received from the Pope 100 ducats
for each cartoon. They contain much gold, silver
and silk, and the weaving cost 1,500 ducats
apiece a total of 16,000 ducats ($160,000)
for the set as the Pope himself says,
though rumor would put the cost at 20,000 golden
ducats.”
Even this account gives evidence that
it was not because of their rarity, but on account
of their unique quality that the Sistine tapestries
were so much admired. As a matter of fact, most
of the ruling court families of Italy ordered tapestries
for themselves that have since become famous and most
of these were made in France and in the Netherlands.
There is absolutely no doubt left
now that this is the period when the best tapestries
ever made were woven. George Leland Hunter in
his “Tapestries, Their Origin, History and Renaissance” says that the Golden Age of tapestries
was the Gothic Renaissance Transition the
last half of the fifteenth century and the first half
of the sixteenth century the hundred years
during which Renaissance tapestries began and Gothic
tapestries ceased to be woven, while many of the greatest
tapestries were of mixed style like the story of the
Virgin at Rheims. There are sets woven at various
times during this period which are among the greatest
tapestry treasures of the world. The largest
of all these sets is the story of St. Rémi in the church
of the same name at Rheims sixteen feet
high with a combined width of 165 feet. When
exhibited at the Paris Exhibition in 1900, one of them,
wrong side out in order to display the richness and
solidity of the ancient unfaded colors, attracted
the attention of amateurs from all over the world.
The story of St. Etienne in nine pieces at the Cluny
Museum at Paris was presented to the Cathedral
of Auxerre in 1502.
As a matter of fact there was scarcely
a cathedral or monastery in France at this time that
did not come into the possession of beautiful tapestries
that are now very precious treasures. During recent
years the value of such tapestries have increased
very much and our millionaires have been willing to
spend almost fabulous sums in order to get possession
of them. We have had the opportunity here in America
through the munificence of the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan
to see some of them in the Metropolitan Museum and
have learned to realize that the praise of them is
well deserved. Mr. Hunter says that “the
most famous tapestries in the world are the Renaissance
tapestries, though the only distinction in most cases
between the Gothic tapestries of the end of the fifteenth
and the Renaissance tapestries at the beginning of
the sixteenth, is that in one, whatever architecture
or ornamentation or decoration is used has Gothic
motives, while the models for these same details in
the later tapestries is drawn from the Renaissance.”
The Brussels tapestries of the early sixteenth century
are particularly beautiful and are the despair of the
modern tapestry makers. Other Flemish cities,
however, Arras, Tournai, Bruges, Lille, Antwerp became
famous for their tapestries and Delft, in Holland,
was a worthy rival. The art seems to require too
much patience for our modern artisans to compete with
their brethren of the old time, but doubtless with
the rise and appreciation of artistic handicraftsmanship
and the demand for charming decoration of homes and
public buildings regardless of cost, we may look confidently
for a development even in this line.
The other phases of the arts and crafts
also developed very wonderfully outside of Italy as
well as in the peninsula. Beautiful vessels for
altar use, chalices, candlesticks, crucifixes and the
like were made, and indeed this is the supreme period
of their manufacture. Some of the chalices of
this time were made by distinguished sculptors who
felt that they could not devote themselves to more
suitable art work than this for Church purposes.
Under the inspiration of deep religious feeling some
even of the smaller pieces are among the world’s
great works of art. Benvenuto Cellino made
morses, chalices and crucifixes that are famous.
Many of these were executed for patrons outside of
Italy. His well-known crucifix in the Escurial
near Madrid, made for Philip II, is a typical example.
Processional crosses lent themselves to decorative
effect very well, and some of them from this time
are indeed very beautiful works of art. The same
application of artistic craftsmanship was to be noted
with regard to nearly everything meant for the service
of the Church or for use in municipal building for
the decoration of municipal property. The well-known
iron well railing executed, it is said, by Quentin
Matsys (or Massys), when the artist was but a blacksmith
and had not yet taken up painting, is a typical sample
of the combination of the beautiful and useful which
characterizes so much of the work of this time and
carries away every point of admiration.
There was scarcely any form of decorative
work that did not receive high artistic development
at this time nearly everywhere throughout Europe.
In recent years enamels have attracted much attention,
and the recent presentation of the Barwell collection
to the British Museum brought the Limoges work into
prominence again. The London Illustrated News
reproduced a series of Limoges enamels in the Barwell
collection that are marvellous in color and artistic
excellence. The Courtois, the younger of whom,
Jean, died in 1586, are probably the greatest artistic
craftsmen in this mode. Pierre Courtois (or Courteys)
made just about the end of our century the largest
enamels which ever came out of Limoges with life-size
figures of the Virtues. Pierre Reymond (Raymond
or Rexmont), who was the Mayor of Limoges in 1567,
did some work that attracted attention as early as
1532. The stream of artistic influence at this
time can be studied very well in his work, for he
was influenced by the Germans in his early maturity,
later came under the influence of the Italian school,
though he had been a pupil of Nardon Penicaud, who
himself came of a famous French family of fifteenth
and sixteenth century artists, whose work always possesses
distinction. Some of the plaques and salvers
of this time in enamel are among the most precious
treasures of national collections throughout the world.
Some of the locks and keys and latches
and hinges for doors made during this period are among
the most beautiful examples of iron work in the world.
The Cluny Museum in Paris possesses a number of these
as well as other iron work of Columbus’ Century
which show that the men of this time had the true
artistic spirit in their work. The armorers of
the period made probably the most beautiful armor that
has ever been made, and the finest pieces in collections,
especially in national armories, are nearly
all from this time. Scent boxes and jewel boxes
of various kinds in the precious or semi-precious metals
were always executed with fine artistic taste, or at
least some of the best examples of these in the world
come from this time. Clocks were made with a
perfection of mechanism and at the same time an ornateness
that give them a place in the art world instead of
merely in the industrial domain. The furniture
of the time is noted for its artistic quality, and
some of the smaller pieces made by well-known sculptors
or under their direction were works of art that now
are thought of as world treasures for all time.