By G. M. STEELE, D.D.
1. Exchange is the mutual and voluntary transfer of the right of property held by different persons. This implies, (a) the existence of theright of property; (b) that the transfer must bemutual, otherwise there is no exchange; (c) that it bevoluntary, otherwise it would be robbery.
2. The principles that form the basis of exchange are the same as those implied in the great law of association and individuality; namely, those which give rise to the combination and division of labor. There is usually some one kind of labor, or at most a few kinds, for which each individual is competent. But the variety of occupations so nearly corresponds with the variety of aptitudes in every well-ordered community, that each may, with little effort, find the calling to which he is suited.
But while each individual is thus limited in his productive capabilities, his claims and wants are nearly limitless. He is in need of a thousand commodities, only a very few of which he can produce. He depends for the remainder of these upon his fellow-men. On the other hand, he can produce a thousand times as much of the few kinds of commodities to which he devotes himself, as he himself needs. These he transfers to his fellow-men, taking in return the surplus of their several products. This is exchange, or commerce. It is implied in the very constitution of man. Association is an imperative condition of humanity.
3. A distinction is sometimes made betweencommerceandtrade—a wise distinction, as it seems to me, though observed by but few writers. The former is theobjectto be accomplished; the latter is theagencythrough which it is accomplished. Thus, a farmer has wheat, butter, eggs, poultry, wool, etc., which he wishes to exchange for cloth, sugar, agricultural implements, boots and shoes, and a hundred other articles. He can not go to the several producers of these, carrying his own products to exchange for them, except at immense disadvantage. Hence arises the necessity for the trader, or merchant. Trade and commerce have sometimes been represented as mutually antagonistic. This is true only to a certain extent. The great economical point to be guarded is to have no more traders than are necessary to make the exchanges. When the industrial and commercial conditions of a country are such that the producers and consumers, who are the real exchangers, are placed and kept at a great distance from each other, so that they can not combine with each other except through the agency of a great number of middle-men, the conditions are highly detrimental to the interests of the parties chiefly concerned. Beyond a certain point, the greater the power of trade, the worse it is for commerce. It is nevertheless true that there are certain natural obstacles to direct commerce which can be surmounted only by some kind of intermediate agency; and this makes the trader necessary. In this respect, and to this extent, trade is an aid to commerce. Yet commerce should be as direct as possible. To this end it is desirable that the greatest number of commodities for which productive facilities exist, should be produced in the same community.
4. The general law of exchange isvalue for value. This will be obvious if we recur to one of our statements concerning the nature of value, namely, that is the quantity of one commodity that may be equitably exchanged for a given quantity of another. It will be still more obvious if we recall the complete definition: value is our estimate of the sacrifice requisite to secure possession of a desired object. Thus, if it require the labor of one day to produce a pair of shoes, and the labor also of a day to produce three bushels of oats, then the rule of exchange would be three bushels of oats for a pair of shoes, because the required labor in the one case is precisely equal to that in the other.
This is the fundamental law, but it is modified in its operation by certain other facts and principles. Chief among these is the law ofsupply and demand. By supply is meant the quantity of any commodity which is in the market. Demand signifies the quantity which is desired at a given price. The definitions are sometimes erroneously given of supply as the quantity which exists, and demand as the quantity desired. But a man may offer for sale a load of wheat, provided the price is a dollar a bushel, but withdraw it from the market if the price is but ninety cents. A thousand people in a certain town may desire diamond necklaces, but not half a dozen may be able to purchase them. Hence supply is all that is offered in the market; and demand is desire with ability to purchase.
Demand and supply affect prices in this way. Suppose a community has been exclusively using wood for fuel, and their wood can be had at a certain price. After a time a coal mine is discovered in the vicinity, and coal can be furnished much cheaper than wood. This would lessen the demand for wood. As there would be the same amount for sale as before, the seller would be in competition, and the price would fall. So if for any reason before the discovery of the coal the supply of wood had been diminished one half, the demand being the same, the price would rise. Thus we have the general principle that other things being equal, the greater the supply, the less the price; the smaller the supply, the greater the price; the greater the demand, the greater the price; and the smaller the demand, the less the price. In other words, the price varies directly as the demand, and inversely as the supply. In general price varies as the cost of production plus or minus the effect of supply and demand. These principles are affected again in many ways which we can not here explain. Yet the variations are always temporary, and the price or market value always tends to seek the level of cost of production.
5. Trade has been spoken of as an agent of exchange. Aninstrumentalso is needed. The primitive method of exchange was by barter. That is, by giving the commodity one produces for that which one desires to possess. But this was early found inconvenient. The man who made shoes and wished to exchange some of them for a coat, would not readily find a coat-maker in want of shoes; or if he should, the latter very likely would not want just so many pairs of shoes as would be equal in value to the coat. All other exchanges might be at a similar disadvantage. What is needed is a commodity which will be amediumof exchange—which every one will be willing to receive for any commodity which he has for sale, and which will command anything which he wishes to buy. Such a commodity is usually the main element in the machinery of exchange, and is what constitutesmoney.
This instrument in order to meet the want, it is generally believed, must have the following characteristics: 1. Value in the material of which it is made. 2. Uniformity of value throughout the world. 3. Much value in small bulk. 4. Approximate constancy of value. 5. Not readily destructible. 6. Divisibility into small portions which are capable of being reunited. 7. Of universal use. 8. Capable of receiving stamps and marks. Most of these properties are found in gold and silver, if not to such an extent as has been claimed for them, at leastso far that they have been the basis of the money of the civilized world.
6. But supplementing in a certain way, and representing these, the instrument of exchange comprises also the large element ofcredit. This consists chiefly of book accounts, promissory notes, bank notes, government notes, bank deposits, checks, drafts, bills of exchange, stocks and bonds. One of the great agencies in modern commerce by which credit is made effectual as a part of the mechanism of exchange is that ofbanks. Banks are institutions which serve to abbreviate and facilitate the business of exchange and to extend and render available the credit of the community.
There are four kinds of banks, namely: savings banks, banks of deposit, banks of circulation and issue, and banks of discount. In our modern banking system the last three are generally found in combination, that is, each bank exercises all the functions implied.
A savings bank is an institution in which small sums of money are deposited from time to time as they accumulate in the hands of persons of moderate incomes. The depositors are credited with these amounts, and receive a certain, usually not very large, rate of interest in any case, and an additional amount contingently. The bank loans the money thus deposited in large sums to trustworthy persons who can furnish good security, the rate of interest being somewhat higher than that paid to the depositor.
The benefit of such an institution is two fold. In the first place there are many persons who have small sums of money which they desire to be earning something in some safe place. The amount is too small to be loaned to advantage. Such persons are not likely to know how, even if the sums at their disposal were sufficient, to find the best investment, or to determine concerning the security offered. But put into the hands of men who make this their business, under rules devised by the best financial talent of the community, and who can combine these small sums and invest them to the best advantage, it is made both safe and profitable for the small capitalists.
In the second place there are many persons who wish to unite their labor and skill with capital in some productive enterprise, and having no capital of their own, desire to borrow. They do not know the persons who have money to loan. The savings bank affords them an opportunity and gives them an advantage which they would not otherwise have. It is a benefit first to those who have some surplus, but are unable to loan it to advantage; secondly to those who are in want of capital, but do not know where to find it.
Abank of depositgrows out of the necessities of commerce in a community where much business is transacted. All persons engaged in trade will find from time to time large or smaller accumulations of money in their hands which it is not safe without considerable expense, to keep by them. Hence the custom of depositing these for safe keeping in the bank. Usually no interest is paid as the money may be withdrawn any time at the will of the depositor. It was early found that only a small proportion of these deposits were likely to be withdrawn at any one time; hence a considerable proportion of them could be loaned on short time, and thus the bank would in this way receive compensation for its care, without expense to the depositors. In this way, too, the capital of the community could be kept more fully employed.
But the credit factor in the deposit system soon came to have a much wider scope than is here indicated. Instead of each depositor going to the bank and drawing his money as he needs it, he now gives an order orcheckon the bank to any man to whom he may have occasion to make a payment. In many cases the receiver of such a check also has deposits at the same bank. In such a case he sends in the check to be deposited with his cash for the day. The amount is debited to the drawer of the check, and credited to the depositor of it, and thus by a simpletransferofcreditmuch business is done without the intervention of any money. This expands into a great and complicated system of exchange between individuals doing business at different banks, by banks in different cities, and by traders in remote nations. Goods are sold in one locality and paid for in the goods of another locality by means of drafts, bills of exchange, etc., meeting and canceling one another, so that very little money is transferred from point to point.
The function ofdiscount and loan, as has been intimated, is in modern banking usually combined with that ofdeposit, as also that ofcirculation or issue. When the capital of a bank is paid in by the stockholders, and the officers elected, it is then ready for business under regulations imposed by its charter. There are two ways in which the public is accommodated. First, when a wholesale city merchant sells a bill of goods to a country retail merchant, it is frequently the case that the former makes out his bill, which the latter accepts, promising to pay in thirty, sixty or ninety days. This accepted bill the wholesale merchant carries to his bank, where it is received with his endorsement, and the cash, less the interest for the given time, is paid him or placed to his credit. This isdiscountinga bill. A loan is sometimes made by a borrower’s giving his own note endorsed by some reliable person, and payable in some brief time as above. Sometimes the note is discounted; at other times the interest is paid when the note is taken up.
The function ofcirculationis exercised by the issuing of bank-notes to be circulated as money. When a bank is instituted the stockholders are required to pay in their respective shares in metallic or lawful money. But as the borrower would find coin most inconvenient to carry about, the device arose of substituting notes of the bank, payable on demand, thus leaving the specie in the bank. It was further soon observed that only a very small proportion of these notes were likely to be called for at any one time. Hence a large part of the specie could be used for other purposes instead of being kept idle in the vaults. Under the national bank system now in operation the capital of the bank may be largely invested in United States bonds which are retained in the government treasury, but on which the bank draws the usual interest. The bills of the bank are then guaranteed by the government, so that there is never any loss to the holder of the bills, even if the bank fails.
7. We have space but for a very brief outline of this important question. It is one which has for a long time agitated the public mind, and one on which honest and highly intelligent men widely differ. Aprotective tariffso called, is a system of duties levied by the government of a country on certain commodities produced in other countries to prevent their coming into unequal competition with similar commodities of domestic production in such a way as to cripple or destroy the industries implied in the latter.
Free tradeis opposed to all those duties, the design of which is to afford any advantage to domestic industry. It implies the same freedom between producers in different nations as between those in the same community.
The main arguments in favor of protection are as follows:
(1) It is the only sure defense of new and feeble industries against the unequal competition of those long established in other or older communities. Freedom of competition is admitted as desirable, but it is denied that this exists under the conditions referred to. A community which has long experience, skilled labor, and accumulated capital, possesses great advantages in the contest with a nation destitute of them.
(2) It is urged that a restrictive system gives a steady and uniform market at an expense less than the benefit accruing.
(3) It is also supposed to be essential to societary completeness; that is, to such a diversification of industry as will most profitably meet the diversity of ability and aptitude in the community.
(4) It is thought to be necessary to the highest prosperity of the unprotected interests. Among these agriculture is the mostprominent. It is for its advantage that the tax of transportation be saved by having manufacturing communities in the midst of agricultural areas. Also, a community compelled to confine itself to agriculture mainly, must virtually transport its soil, the land constantly diminishing in fertility.
The advocates of free trade, on the other hand, present the following arguments in its favor, and objections against protection:
(1) Free trade is said to be the method of nature.
(2) It is objected that protection violates the right of every man to do what he will with his own.
(3) It is said to be of the nature of a tax on all the other industries for the support of those protected.
(4) It is objected that the restrictive system causes a diminution of exports from the protected country, on the principle that if the latter does not buy of the former, then the former can not pay for the goods of the latter.
(5) Another argument is that “infant industries” under protection never come to maturity.
(6) Finally, the case of the United States is cited as an instance of free trade on a large scale between widely remote sections, with the most satisfactory results.
The ten centuries following the second have no sculptural remains of value. The dark ages threw their shadow over art, as over literature and society. No doubt the feeling prevalent in the early Church that the “graven image” might become an idol, hindered the progress of the plastic art quite as much as the general decay that pervaded every form of human undertaking.
In the first half of the thirteenth century lived Nicola Pisano, the founder, one might say, of modern sculpture. Nicola is supposed to have been influenced by his study of the remains of Greek sculpture to be seen at Pisa, his home. Applying the principles of the Greek work to the modern subjects, his sculpture inaugurated the Italian renaissance. Church decoration was the field of labor to which all artists of those centuries betook themselves, and Pisano executed his best work, bas-reliefs, on the façades and pulpits of the churches of Pisa, Siena, and other Italian cities. A marble urn of St. Dominic, now at Bologna, is among his celebrated works. Pisano had many followers, among whom were his son (more famous, however, as an architect), and Andrea Orcagna. The latter belonged to Florence, to whose churches he devoted his genius. His masterpiece in sculpture is the tabernacle of the Virgin in the church of San Michele, at Florence. It is a pyramid-shaped altar in white marble; the profusion of reliefs which cover it represent the life of the Virgin. A little before the time of Orcagna lived Giotto, at one time a leader of artistic activity in Florence. He is known well by his beautiful campanile, or bell-tower, and the bas-reliefs with which it is decorated are his best-known sculptures. The basement story is decorated, and, says a writer, speaking of these ornamentations, “This rich cycle of works represents with perfect clearness, and in simple and truly artistic treatment, the whole progress, from the creation of the first man, through the successful conflict with the forces of nature, up to the climax of a life illumined by learning and art, and secured under the maternal shelter of the Church.”
It was in the fifteenth century that sculpture attained its highest standpoint. Foremost among the artists of this “golden age,” as it has been called, is Lorenzo Ghiberti, the Florentine. The latter was first brought into prominence in 1401, when leading men of Florence offered a prize for the best design for a bronze folding door to be used in the baptistery of San Giovanni. Each artist was allowed a year to complete the test panel, the subject of the design of which was to be the “Sacrifice of Isaac,” and the work was to be a bas-relief. Ghiberti was declared the victor, even by his most famous rivals, Donatello and Brunelleschi. For twenty-one years he labored at his doors, and at the end of that time was entrusted with another. The latter occupied him nearly as long as the first, and was even superior, Michael Angelo declaring it worthy to be the gate of paradise. While busy at the gate of the baptistery, Ghiberti executed three bronze statues of St. John the Baptist, St. Matthew, and St. Stephen, and a bronze sarcophagus of St. Zenobius. Donatello has been mentioned as a rival of Ghiberti in the contest for the door: he deserves mention as one of the most faithful followers of nature during this period. He even carried his naturalism to excess, copying the deformed, the horrible, and the grotesque. There are, however, several fine statues by him in San Michele. Among these are the statues of St. Peter and St. Mark, in niches on the outside, and a fine statue of St. George. The first equestrian statue of modern art was by Donatello, and is at Padua.
Lucca del Robbia lived at the same time, and his name is associated with the beautiful terra-cottas found in such quantities in the churches of Florence. These works are in white, on a pale-blue ground, and were glazed by a process now unknown. The subjects used on them were almost invariably the Madonna and Child. But Robbia did much in marble and bronze. In the Uffizi is to be seen a frieze for the front of an organ, by him. “It represents boys and girls of different ages, dancing, singing, and playing on various musical instruments, and is full of charming simplicity and childlike grace, and rich and varied in action. Some of the figures are almost wholly detached from the background, particularly in the representation of the dance.” There are many more names which might be added to this Tuscan or Florentine school of sculpture. Andrea Verocchio is the only one we will mention, and his strongest influence was exerted as the teacher of that master-artist of the sixteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci.
The works of the fifteenth century are very numerous; they crowd the churches of Rome, Florence, and the neighboring cities. Not only in Tuscany, but in Upper and Lower Italy these artists were employed, and many native artists, imitators of the school, have left sculptures on the tombs and in the churches of Venice, Naples, and Como. The subjects of artistic effort, it will be noticed, are nearly always religious. Lübke says of this period: “It was chiefly devoted to the ornamentation of tomb-monuments and altars, which, with few exceptions, were built up against the wall in the shape of a triumphal arch, and required much plastic decoration in the way of reliefs and detached figures. Pulpits, founts, holy-water basins, singing-galleries, and choir-screens were also adorned with rich carvings. This abundant supply of work necessarily called forth a corresponding amount of skill, and the nature of the subject helped the artistic and realistic taste of the time to express itself. There was a decided effort to attain a correct likeness in portrait-statues of the dead, and in the numerous reliefs there was a tendency to portray the varied scenes of life.”
But a new form of plastic art was to appear in the coming century. To quote from the same author: “Italian plastic art had during the fifteenth century gained a new form from the study of the antique, and had made considerable advances in the unceasing effort after truth and life.… But hitherto, the expression of an often severe and tasteless realism was predominant, and now, under the influence of a profound and repeated study of the antique, an inspiration toward the ideal, the beautiful, and the sublime, was to assert itself; and this gave rise to a higher and freer style.… Plastic art gained a freer and nobler comprehension, a broad, bold treatment of forms, and a style simplified so as to bring out what was fundamental and essential, which might, for a moment, compete with the antique.” Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first in the list of masters of the fifteenth century, but, unfortunately, we have lost his best work. Andrea Contucci, better known as Sansovino, executed many sculptures which are unparalleled in beauty of treatment and form. In the baptistery at Florence is one of the noblest of these—thebaptism of Christ. The figures of John the Baptist and Christ are life-like, free, and perfectly developed. There is nothing more interesting among what Sansovino has left than the decorations of the Holy House of Loreto. “Taken as a whole, this work is probably the most important collective creation in the sculpture of this golden age.” There are a great number of reliefs employed in the ornamentation, and the niches are filled by single statues; of the former the Annunciation and the Nativity are the most important.
But by far the ablest of the sculptors was Michael Angelo Buonarroti, of Florence. It was as a sculptor that he chose to regard himself, although, as in the case of so many of the Italian artists, he was both a painter and architect beside. Numerous works attributed to him are in existence. Mythological subjects, as well as religious, are to be seen among them. Thus there are bas-reliefs at Florence representing Hercules in his contest with the centaurs, and a statue of Bacchus in the Uffizi. The colossal marble statue of David in the academy at Florence, is said to have been carved out of a rejected block. The most ambitious undertaking of Michael Angelo was the mausoleum of Pope Julius II. The designs were drawn on a grand scale, and the master had gone to Carrara to get out the marble, when a misunderstanding between him and the Pope stopped the work. It was afterward re-attempted, but never finished. Some of the detached figures intended for the tomb are still seen. Among them the famous Moses, in the church of San Pietro, at Vincolo. Two groups at Florence were executed for the sarcophagi of Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici. The statues of the princes are seated in niches in the wall: at their feet, on the lids of the coffins, are the groups: on that of the former the design is Day and Night; on the latter Dawn and Evening. We can mention no more of his designs, but will add the fine criticism of a German critic: “If we compare Michael Angelo with those who went before, we see at once that art reached one of those turning-points at which it enters on a new period with an undreamed-of future opening before. His deeply emotional soul was content neither with the contemplative realism of the fifteenth century, which was based on its truth to nature, nor with the quiet, harmonious beauty of contemporaneous masters. Each of his works exists for its own sake only, and here we see a kinship with the antique. But again: each of them is also the product of the stormy inward struggles of a man who is ever aiming at the highest ideal, and untiringly striving after a new expression of his thoughts—a man to whom achievement gave but little satisfaction, so that often he left his works unfinished. Here we see the strongest contrast to antique art. Nearly all his sculptured works are in one sense or another incomplete, and many he had to drop, because under the mighty stress of his ideas, and in his eagerness to liberate from the marble the slumbering soul within, he had made a false stroke and spoiled the block.”
The influence of Michael Angelo was predominant. The productions of almost every sculptor of the times were marked by both his strong and weak points. The Michelangelesque manner, as it has been called, was evident in the sculptures of the following century.
Outside of this Tuscan school there were during the sixteenth century several prominent artists; at Modena, Antonio Begarelli, who worked mainly in terra-cotta, and who left many works in the churches of his native city.
At Padua lived Riccio, who executed a bronze candelabrum which has become famous for both its size and its excessive ornamentation. It was eleven feet in height and laden with innumerable fantastic reliefs and figures mostly taken from mythology. A pupil of Sansovino, Jacopo Tatti, was the leader in Upper Italy. He worked mainly at Venice. The bronze of the sacristy of St. Mark in that city, the choir-screen in the same church, and several figures of evangelists in bronze are among his religious works. In the Doge’s palace are two large statues of Mars and Neptune which are particularly fine. He also did portrait-sculptures of much merit. But during this century art was by no means confined to Italy, though Italy then, as always, took the lead. In the North there was a steady work in the plastic art. The influence of the antique was wanting, and the materials in which the works were executed were different. Wood carving was very popular; invariably much gilding and brilliant coloring was used. The work was mainly on the altars of the churches, on shrines, figures for niches in the church walls and choir stalls. Michael Pacher, of Austria, was eminent in this art; Veit Stoss, of Cracow, and Jörg Syrlin, of Ulm. In nearly all of the old churches of Germany are these highly colored carvings in wood.
But stone was used as extensively, and in a somewhat wider variety of works. Many monuments, the buttresses of churches, lecterns, doors, and choir-piers, were made in stone and decorated in the usual manner by reliefs and figures. Nearly all the German cities boast more or less of stone work in their churches.
The leading artist of the time was Adam Krafft, who worked mainly in Nuremberg. A very fine and powerful work by him is the Seven Stations, as it is called. It represents the repeated fainting of Christ beneath the burden of the cross. The work is done in relief. The face and expression of the Savior is noble and expressive in every case. This work was followed by Christ on the Cross. In 1492 he executed the history of the Passion for a monument on the exterior of St. Sebald’s church.
The monuments of the time are mainly very superior. Among them may be mentioned that of Emperor Henry II. and his consort by Riemenschneider, the marble monument of Bishop Rudolph von Schrenburg in the Würtzburg cathedral, and the marble memorial to the Emperor Frederic III. in Vienna. The celebrated school of metal works of Nuremberg flourished during this period. The best known representatives belonged to the family of Vischer, and in Peter Vischer the most complete artistic development was reached. The earliest work, by Hermann Vischer in 1457, was the bronze baptismal font in Wittenberg. Peter, his son, began his work on the tomb of Archbishop Ernst in Magdeburg cathedral, but hischef d’œuvrewas the tomb of St. Sebald in the church of that saint at Nuremberg. Vischer and his five sons were engaged on this for eleven years. The sarcophagus rests on a base elaborately wrought in relief, and the whole is enclosed; the cover is composed of three arched canopies supported on eight slender columns. The base, pillars and canopies are wrought exquisitely; although the ornaments are profuse, yet a perfect simplicity and purity of style is preserved. There are very many other productions attributed to Vischer—a fine relief in the cathedral at Regensborg, several tombs, and, as examples of his treatment of antique designs, an Apollo at Nuremberg, and a relievo of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Berlin Museum.
One of the most magnificent tombs of this period was that of the Emperor Maximilian at Innsbrück; several of its figures were from Peter Vischer’s hands. Twenty-eight colossal bronze statues of the ancestors of the imperial house and of heroes surrounded the monument. Besides these there were a large number of gracefully poised female figures, and twenty-three figures of the patron saint of the House of Austria. The whole was surmounted by a marble cenotaph on which a figure of the Emperor knelt. Several artists were engaged on this monument. The sculptures of this period in other countries are not very prominent. In France there was considerable attention given to plastic art. Many fine choir-screens have been preserved, and some exceedingly rich tombs. Among the latter are the monuments of Louis XII. and his wife (1530), of Francis I. (1552), and of Henry II. (1583), all in the church of St. Denis in Paris. A set of artists who were engaged on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau was known as “the Fontainebleau school.” The leader of this group was Jean Goujon. The sculpture of Spain during this period followed largely the Italian schools. The most lavish treatment is visiblein the decorations of the churches, particularly in the altars. The high altar of the cathedral at Toledo is one of the most costly and ornate of its time (about 1500).
“The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were marked by a decadence of sculpture. Plastic art sought to become striking, rejected everything that could limit her art and gave herself up freely to her longing after what was striking. Henceforth it was decreed that every plastic work must be spirited. The most striking effects must be aimed at in the expression of inward emotion through mien, attitude and position.… Besides the drapery must be arranged in all sorts of ways conducive to effect.… Thus all dignity, simplicity and distinctness in sculpture, all plastic style was lost, and was succeeded by a senseless striving after outward effect and mere decoration.” The best Italian artists of these years were Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who showed well the perversion of the principles of art, and Alessandro Algardi. The French claimed as their most celebrated masters in the seventeenth century, Pierre Puget, who worked chiefly at Genoa, and François Girardon, both of whom are noted for their exaggerations; in the eighteenth century were Houdon and Pigalle.
Franz Duquesnoy, the Fleming, worked at Rome in the seventeenth century and gained a fine reputation by his life-like figures of children. In Berlin, Andrew Schlüter executed superior works. Among these are the masks of dying warriors carved above the windows of the court of the Arsenal. An equestrian statue of the Great Elector is his best work.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century a revival of sculpture took place; this has been attributed to the efforts of Popes Clement XIV. and Pius VI., to the publications of Winckelmann, and to the unearthing of the treasures of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The first sculptor to initiate works of purer taste was Canova (1757-1822); he came of a race of stone cutters, and while at work at his trade executed the figures which attracted the attention of a Venetian, who educated him for an artist. Canova’s early works were mythological in subject. He had studied sculptures unearthed at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and under their influence executed his “Apollo crowning himself with laurel” and “Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur.” In 1802 Canova was invited by Napoleon to Paris where he executed a colossal statue of the emperor. His figures of women were his most pleasing works. Of the many monuments he executed, the best is that of Christina in the church of the Augustines at Vienna. But few artists escaped the influence of Canova. Among his best known followers were Dannecker, of Stuttgart; Chaudet, a French artist, and Flaxman, an English sculptor.
For a brief outline of the sculptor of the nineteenth century we can do nothing better than quote from Lübke:
The Danish artist, Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770-1844), penetrated farther than all these masters into the spirit and the beauty of classical art; and created, with inexhaustible fertility of imagination, and with the noblest feeling for form, an array of works which are conceived with a pure, chaste, and noble appreciation of the Greek spirit. In his celebrated frieze of the triumph of Alexander in the Villa Carlotta, on the lake of Como, the genuine Grecian relief style is revived in all its perfect purity and severity. He also treats with the versatility of genius and with charming simplicity the subjects of ancient mythology, in numerous statues, groups, and smaller reliefs; and even introduces into the domain of Christian representation a novel, beautiful, and dignified treatment, in the sculptures executed by him for the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen. Among his monumental works we may mention the statues of Gutenberg at Mayence, and of Schiller at Stuttgart, the Dying Lion at Lucerne, the equestrian statue of the Elector Maximilian at Munich, and the tombs of the Duke of Leuchtenberg in St. Michael’s Church at Munich, and of Pope Pius VII. in St. Peter’s Church at Rome.
While the wide domain of idealistic sculpture was thus again cultivated with such versatility of inspiration, the Berlin artist, Johann Gottfried Schadow (1764-1850), adopted a more realistic style, especially directed toward lifelike composition and distinct characterization of individual peculiarities. His monument of the Count von der Mark in the Church of Ste. Dorothy in Berlin, the statue of Frederic the Great at Stettin, and, in a less degree, the Blücher monument at Rostock, and that of Luther at Wittenberg, as well as many others, are vigorous protests against the mannerism of the hitherto prevailing tendency, and re-open to sculpture a field which had now been almost lost to her for two hundred years.
Thus a new path was opened to modern sculpture, in pursuing which it has of late years accomplished great results, and which assures to it still greater beauty, and diversity of attainment, if only it hold fast to the principles already secured, and go on with true dignity toward its goal. Even if the world of ideal forms should never again acquire that importance for us which it possessed for the Greeks, nevertheless the daily life of humanity still contains a wealth of exquisite motives, full of beauty andnaïveté, which give to the sculptor’s fancy ample incitement to ideal creations. There is, moreover, in the chaste grace and pure dignity of the antique conceptions, an imperishable charm, which appeals to every human sentiment, and secures for all productions conceived in a similar spirit the warm interest of those who delight to refresh themselves with the simple beauty that belongs to every true manifestation of nature. Hence the idealistic style of this art of Greece, as it has been recognized by the present and endowed with new activity, becomes forever the most priceless and precious possession of modern sculpture.
The new-born historic feeling of the several nations demands to-day that their heroes, the defenders of their liberties, the representatives of their intellect, their warriors in the battles both of the sword and of thought, shall be preserved to fame in the true likeness of their actual forms. As a consequence, sculpture is compelled to probe the depths of the individual consciousness; to investigate the characteristics of each individual intellect as expressed in the figure, the physiognomy, and even in the externals of attitude and garb; and even to give utterance to the mysterious life of the soul, as far as it lies within her power. Without losing sight of the great importance which the study of the sculptures of the fifteenth century has upon this tendency, the influence of the antique should not be undervalued; since, without the sense of beauty so secured, a realistic degeneracy and exaggeration would be very sure to follow.
Among the German schools of sculpture of to-day, that of Berlin takes the lead. Frederick Tieck of this school adopted the antique style in a series of admirable productions, and especially in the decorative sculpture designed by him for the theater; while the path which Schadow had taken was followed up nobly and rationally during the long and influential labors of Christian Rauch (1777-1857). This artist’s important position is due less to his wealth of creative ideas than to his delicate feeling for nature, his fine appreciation of the genuine plastic style, and his incomparable care in execution. His importance, however, does not consist merely in his numerous works, but also in the influence he exercised on his large circle of talented scholars. While he shows a true classical beauty in his ideal works, like his victories and his many admirable reliefs, his statues of Prince Blücher, of Generals Bülow and Scharnhorst, his colossal equestrian statue of Frederic the Great at Berlin, his superb statues of Queen Louise, and of Frederic William III. in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, his bronze statues of Dürer at Nuremberg, of Kant at Königsberg, of King Max I. at Munich, and many others, prove him a sculptor of the first rank for delicate characterization, and life-like suggestiveness of composition. Many excellent scholars have gone from his studio into careers of independent importance and masterly ability; and these form, with their vigorousactivity, which is never at a loss for employment in important undertakings, the nucleus of the present school of Berlin.
Among the most conspicuous of the Berlin artists should be reckoned Friedrich Drake, whose reliefs on the statue of Frederic William III. in the Thiergarten at Berlin are full of simple grace. Another of this school is Schievelbein (died in 1867), who showed a great deal of imagination, especially in the composition of reliefs; as in the great frieze representing the destruction of Pompeii, in the new museum, and also in the relief on the bridge at Dirschau.
Ernst Rietschel (1804-61) claims indisputably one of the first places among the sculptors of his century, as regards versatility of endowment, delicate feeling for form, and depth of sentiment. He derived from Rauch his faithful and characteristic representation of life, and his painstaking execution. His double monument of Schiller and Goethe at Weimar, his monument of Lessing in Brunswick (in a still purer and happier style), and the statue of Luther executed for a monument at Worms, are good examples of these traits. In the group of the Virgin with the body of Christ, which he executed for the Friedenskirche near Potsdam, he produced a work full of striking expression, and of the deepest religious feeling; while the subjects of his numerous representations in relief for the pediment of the opera house at Berlin, and the theater and museum at Dresden, represent him with equal dignity and merit in the department of the ideal antique subjects. Ernst Hähnel is a Dresden artist, whose powerful compositions for the Dresden theater and museum are antique in treatment, but who also produced monumental statues, works of the most delicate characterization, such as the Beethoven at Bonn, the Emperor Charles IV. at Prague, and the statues designed for the Dresden Museum, especially the noble Raphael. Recently, also, Schilling has distinguished himself by his ideal groups of the divisions of the day,—Morning, Noon, Evening, Night,—designed for the Brühl Terrace.
In Munich, the talented Ludwig Schwanthaler (1802-48) was the chief representative of a more romantic style, which opened a new field of fresh ideas to modern sculpture. This master, who was endowed with an almost inexhaustible imagination, carried out a great number of extensive works during his short life, in supplying the plastic decorations for most of the buildings erected by King Louis. While these are distinguished by fertility of invention, and an excellent decorative taste, the artist, spurred on to ceaseless labor, and hindered by bodily infirmities, did not succeed in giving his monumental creations that thorough development of form which is an essential of sculpture. It can not be denied, however, that a grand monumental conception is visible in these productions, as is especially proved in the colossal statue of Bavaria in Munich. A numerous school had its origin in this artist’s studio.
In France, sculpture early endeavored to free herself from the rigid rule of the antique, and carried the prevailing effort after dramatic effect, expression and passion, even to an extreme point of realism. Individual artists have kept to a noble and more moderate style; as Bosio, and the admirable sculptors Rude and Duret; but, on the other hand, P. J. David d’Angers (1793-1856) devoted himself, in utter violation of all the severer laws of sculpture, to a violent realism, which, although it is sustained by great talent and a charming facility in composition, deteriorates into a lawless exaggeration in his monumental works. His numerous portrait-busts, on the other hand, are extremely lifelike, and full of genius. The Genoese artist, James Pradier, takes the first rank among those sculptors who especially delight in the representation of sensuous beauty (1792-1852). The talented artist, Barye, who died in 1875, is chief among the sculptors of animals. The sculpture of Belgium follows the same general direction as the French.
Rome forms an important central point in the production of modern sculpture, with her numerous studios, her skill in marble-cutting,—an art handed down to her from ancient times,—and her vast collection of antique works. Here Canova and Thorwaldsen had their studios, which were for many decades the most famous nurseries of modern sculpture. That the antique conception and the idealistic style should acquire especial prominence here lay in the nature of things. Only where the modern social and political life exercises its full powers does sculpture find tasks that call upon her for the characteristic representation of important personages, and the lifelike delineation of historical events.
The English artist, John Gibson, is conspicuous among the sculptors of different nationalities who have made Rome their headquarters, as the representative of a noble classic style. The tendency of the numerous sculptors whom England has recently produced is toward the genre-style, and toward graceful forms in the manner of Canova. Macdonell, an artist of much taste, and Sir Richard Westmacott, also well known by his public works, deserve mention here, as well as R. J. Wyatt, by whom we have some charming representations of subjects chosen from the ancient myths. The United States of America should also be included in this enumeration: for they possess sculptors of decided talent in Randolph Rogers (who designed the bronze gates of the Washington Capitol), Miss Hosmer, and E. D. Palmer, who, though a gifted artist, inclines to an exaggeration of the picturesque. Among the German sculptors in Rome, Martin Wagner, who died in 1860, is worthy of note for his energy of style; and, among those still living, Carl Steinhäuser, now in Carlsruhe, is remarkable for an elevated feeling for form, and depth of sentiment; while J. Kopf shows much delicate grace; and the more recent artist, Ad. Hildebrand, has a rare feeling for nature. Finally, Holland has an excellent sculptor of the idealistic school in Matthias Kessels (1784-1830), who studied under Thorwaldsen.