SKETCHES OF ART, LITERATURE AND CHARACTER.
MEDON.
I observed the other evening, that in making a sort of imaginative bound from Coblentz to Heidelberg, you either skipped over Frankfort, or left it on one side.
ALDA.
Did I?—if I had doneeither, in my heart or my memory, I had been most ungrateful; but I thought you knew Frankfort well.
MEDON.
I was there for two days, on my way toSwitzerland, and it rained the whole time from morning till night. I have a vision in my mind of dirty streets, chilly houses, dull shops, dingy-looking Jews, dripping umbrellas, luxurious hotels, and exorbitant charges,—and this is all I can recollect of Frankfort.
ALDA.
Indeed!—I pity you. To me it was associated only with pleasant feelings, and, in truth, it is a pleasant place. Life, there, appears in a very attractive costume: not in a half-holiday, half-beggarly garb, as at Rome and Naples; nor in a thin undress of superficial decency as at Berlin; nor in a court domino, hiding, we know not what—as at Vienna and Munich; nor half motley, half military, as at Paris; nor in rags and embroidery, as in London; but at Frankfort all the outside at least is fair, substantial, and consistent. The shops vie in splendour with those of London and Paris; the principal streets are clean, the houses spacious and airy, and there is a general appearance of cheerfulness and tranquillity, mingled with the luxury of wealth and thebustle of business, which, after the misery, and murmuring, and bitterness of faction, we had left in London, was really a relief to the spirits. It is true, that during my last two visits, this apparent tranquillity concealed a good deal of political ferment. The prisons were filled with those unfortunate wretches who had endeavoured to excite a popular tumult against the Prussian and Austrian governments. The trials were going forward every day, but not a syllable of the result transpired beyond the walls of the Römer Saal. Although the most reasonable and liberal of the citizens agreed in condemning the rashness and folly of these young men, the tide of feeling was evidently in their favour: for instance, it was not thefashionto invite the Prussian officers, and I well remember that when Goethe's Egmont was announced at the theatre, it was forbidden by the magistracy, from a fear that certain scenes and passages in that play might call forth some open and decided expression of the public feeling; in fact, only a few evenings before, some passages in the Massaniello had been applied and applaudedby the audience, in a manner soill-bred, that the wife of one of the ministers of the Holy Alliance, rose and left her box, followed by some other old women,—male and female. The theatre is rather commodious than splendid; the established company, both for the opera and the regular drama, excellent, and often varied by temporary visits of great actors and singers from the other theatres of Germany. On my first visit to Frankfort, which was during the fair of 1829, Paganini, then in the zenith of his glory, was giving a series of concerts; but do not ask me any thing about him, for it is a worn-out subject, and you know I am not one of the enthusiastic, or even the orthodox, with regard to his merits.
MEDON.
You do not mean—you will not tell me—that with all your love of music, you were insensible to the miraculous powers of that man?
ALDA.
I suppose they were miraculous, as I heardevery one say so round me; but I listened to him as to any other musician, for the sake of the pleasure to be derived from music, not for the sake of wondering at difficulties overcome, and impossibilities made possible—they might have remained impossibilities for me. But insensible I wasnotto the wondrous charm of his tone and expression. I was thrilled, melted, excited, at the moment, but it left no relish on the palate, if I may use the expression. To throw me into suchconvulsionsof enthusiasm, as I saw this man excite here and on the continent, I must have the orchestra with all its various mingling world of sound, or thedivinehuman voice breathing music and passion together; but this is a matter of feeling, habit, education, like all other tastes in art.
I think it was during our third visit to Frankfort that Madame Haitzinger-Neumann was playing thegast-rolles, for so they courteously denominate the parts filled by occasional visitors, to whom, as guests, the precedence is always given. Madame Haitzinger is the wife of Haitzinger, the tenor singer, who was in London, and sung in theFidelio, with Madame Devrient-Schrœder. She is one of the most celebrated actresses in Germany for light comedy, if any comedy in Germany can be called light, in comparison with the same style of acting in France or England. Her figure is rather large—
MEDON.
Like most of the German actresses—for I never yet saw one who had attained to celebrity, who was not much tooembonpointfor our ideas of a youthful or sentimental heroine—
ALDA.
Not Devrient-Schrœder?
MEDON.
Devrient is all impassioned grace; but I think that in time evenshewill be in danger of becoming a little—how shall I express it with sufficient delicacy?—alittletoo substantial.
ALDA.
No, not if a soul of music and fire, informing afeverish, excitable temperament, which is to the mantling spirit within, what the high-pitched instrument is to the breeze which sweeps over its chords,—not if these can avert the catastrophe; but what if you had seen Mademoiselle Lindner, with a figure like Mrs. Liston's—all but spherical—enacting Fenella and Clärchen?
MEDON.
I should have said, that only a German imagination could stand it! It is one of Madame de Staël's clever aphorisms, that on the stage, "Il faut menager les caprices des yeux avec le plus grand scrupule, car ils peuvent detruire, sans appel tout effet sérieux;" but the Germans do not appear to be subject to thesecaprices des yeux; and have not these fastidious scruples about corporeal grace; for them sentiment, however clumsy, is still sentiment. Perhaps they are in the right.
ALDA.
And Mademoiselle Lindnerhassentiment; she must have been a fine actress, and is evidently afavourite with the audience. But to return to Madame Haitzinger;—she is handsome, with a fair complexion, and no very striking expression; but there is a heart and soul, and mellowness in her acting, which is delicious. I could not give you an idea of her manner by a comparison with any of our English actresses, for she is essentially German; she never aimed at making points; she was never broadly arch or comic, but the general effect was as rich as it was true to nature. I saw her in some of her favourite parts: in the comedy of "Stille Wasser sind tief;" (our Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, admirably adapted to the German stage by Schrœder;) in the "Mirandolina," (the famous Locandiera of Goldoni,) and in the pretty lively vaudeville composed for her by Holtei, "Die Wiener in Berlin," in which the popular waltzes and airs, sung in the genuine national spirit, and enjoyed by the audience with a true national zest, delighted usforeigners. Herr Becker is an excellent actor in tragedy and high comedy. Of their singers I could not say so much—there were none I shouldaccount first-rate, except Dobler, whom you may remember in England.
One of the most delightful peculiarities of Frankfort, one that most struck my fancy, is the public garden, planted on the site of the ramparts; a girdle of verdure and shade—of trees and flowers circling the whole city; accessible to all and on every side,—the promenade of the rich, the solace of the poor. Fifty men are employed to keep it in order, and it is forbidden to steal the flowers, or to kill the singing birds which haunt the shrubberies.
MEDON.
And does this prohibition avail much in a population of sixty thousand persons?
ALDA.
It does generally. A short time before we arrived some mischievous wretch had shot a nightingale, and was caught in the fact. His punishment was characteristic; his hands were tied behind him, and a label setting forth his crime wasfixed on his breast: in this guise, with a police officer on each side, he was marched all round the gardens, and made the circuit of the city, pursued by the hisses of the populace and the abhorrent looks of the upper classes; he was not otherwise punished, but he never again made his appearance within the walls of the city. This was the only instance which I could learn of the infraction of a law which might seem at least nugatory.
Of the spacious, magnificent, well-arranged cemetery, its admirable apparatus for restoring suspended animation, and all its beautiful accompaniments and memorials of the dead, there was a long account published in London, at the time that a cemetery was planned for this great overgrown city; and in truth I know not where we could find a better model than the one at Frankfort; it appeared to me perfection.
The institutions at Frankfort, both for charity and education, are numerous as becomes a rich and free city; and those I had an opportunity of examining appeared to me admirably managed.Besides the orphan schools, and the Burger schule, and the school for female education, established and maintained by the wives of the citizens, there are several infant schools, where children of a year old and upwards are nursed, and fed, and kept out of mischief and harm, while their parents are at work. These are also maintained by subscription among the ladies, who take upon them in turns the task of daily superintendence; and I shall not easily forget the gentle-looking, elegant, well-dressed girl, who, defended from the encroachments of dirty little paws by a large apron, sat in the midst of a swarm of thirty or forty babies, (the eldest not four years old,) the very personification of feminine charity! But the hospital for the infirm poor—Das Versorgung Haus—pleased me particularly; 'tis true, that the cost was not a third—what do I say? not a sixth of the expense of some of our institutions for the same purpose. There was no luxury of architecture, nor huge gates shutting in wretchedness, and shutting out hope; nor grated windows; nor were the arrangements on so large a scale as in thatsplendid edifice, the Hopital des Vieillards, at Brussels;—a house for the poor need not be either a prison or a palace. But here, I recollect, the door opened with a latch; we entered unannounced, as unexpected. Here there was perfect neatness, abundance of space, of air, of light, of water, and also of occupation. I found that, besides the inmates of the place, many poor old creatures, who could not have the facilities or materials for work in their own dwellings, or whose relatives were busied in the daytime, might find here employment of any kind suited to their strength or capacity,—for which, observe, they were paid; thus leaving them to the last possible moment the feeling of independence and usefulness. I observed that many of those who seemed in the last stage of decrepitude had hung round their beds sundry little prints and pictures, and slips of paper, on which were written legibly, texts from scripture, moral sentences, and scraps of poetry. The ward of the superannuated and the sick was at a distance from the working and eating rooms; and all breathed around that peace and quietwhich should accompany old age, instead of that "life-consuming din" Ihaveheard in such places. On the pillow of one bed, there was laid by some chance a bouquet of flowers.
In this ward there was an old man nearly blind and lethargic; another old man was reading to him. I remarked a poor bed-ridden woman, utterly helpless, but not old, and with good and even refined features; and another poor woman, seated by her, was employed in keeping the flies from settling on her face. To one old woman, whose countenance struck me, I said a few words in English—I could speak no German, unluckily. She took my hand, kissed it, and turning away, burst into tears. No one asked for any thing even by a look, nor apparently wanted any thing; and I felt that from the unaffected good-nature of the lady who accompanied us, we had not so much the appearance of coming to look at the poor inmates as of paying them a kind visit;—and this was as it should be. The mild, open countenances of the two persons who managed the establishment, pleased me particularly; and the manner of the matronsuperintendent, as she led us over the rooms, was so simple and kind, that I was quite at ease: I experienced none of that awkward shyness and reluctance I have felt when ostentatiously led over such places in England—feeling ashamed to stare upon the misery I could not cure. In such cases I have probably attributed to the sufferers a delicacy or a sensibility, long blunted, if ever possessed; but I was in pain for them and for myself.
One thing more: there was a neat chapel; and we were shown with some pride the only piece of splendour in the establishment. The communion plate of massy silver was the gift of two brothers, who had married on the same day two sisters; and these two sisters had died nearly at the same time—I believe it was actually on the same day. The widowed husbands presented this plate in memory of their loss and the virtues of their wives; and I am sorry I did not copy the simple and affecting inscription in which this is attested. There was also a silver vase, which had been presented as an offering by a poor miller whoman unexpected legacy had raised to independence.
I might give you similar sketches of other institutions, here and elsewhere, but I did not bestow sufficient attention on the practical details, and the comparative merits of the different methods adopted, to render my observations useful. Though deeply interested, as any feeling, thinking being must be on such subjects, I have not studied them sufficiently. There are others, however, who are doing this better than I could:—blessings be on them, and eternal praise!—My general impression was, pleasure from the benevolence and simplicity of heart with which these institutions were conducted and superintended, and wonder, not to be expressed, at their extreme cheapness.
The day preceding my visit to the Versorgung Haus, I had been in a fever of indignation at the fate of poor R——, one of the conspirators, who had become insane from the severity of his confinement. I had descanted with great complacency on our open tribunals and our trials by jury, andyet I could not help thinking to myself, "Well, ifwehave not their state-prisons, neither havetheyour poor-houses!"
MEDON.
It is plain that the rich, charitable, worldly prosperous, self-seeking, Frankfort, would be your chosen residence after all!
ALDA.
No—as a fixed residence I should not prefer Frankfort. There is a little too much of the pride of purse—too much of the aristocracy of wealth—too much dressing and dinnering—and society is too much broken up into sets and circles to please me: besides, it must be confessed, that the arts do not flourish in this free imperial city.
The Städel Museum was opened just before our last visit to Frankfort. A rich banker of that name bequeathed, in 1816, his collection of prints and pictures, and nearly a million and a half of florins, for the commencement and maintenance of this institution, and they have certainly begunon a splendid scale. The edifice in which the collection is arranged is spacious, fitted up with great cost, and generally with great taste, except the ceilings, which, being the glory and admiration of the good people of Frankfort, I must endeavour to describe to you particularly. The elaborate beauty of the arabesque ornaments, their endless variety, and the vivid colouring and gilding, reminded me of some of the illuminated manuscripts; but I was rather amused than pleased, and rather surprised to see art and ornament so misplaced—invention, labour, money, time, lavished to so little purpose. No effect was aimed at—none produced. The strained and wearied eye wandered amid a profusion of unmeaning forms, and of gorgeous colours, which never harmonized into a whole: and after I had half broken my neck by looking up at them through an opera glass, in order to perceive the elegant interlacing of the minute patterns and exquisite finish of the workmanship, I turned away laughing and provoked, and wondering at such a strange perversion, or rather sacrifice, of taste.
MEDON.
But the collection itself?—
ALDA.
It is not very interesting. It contains some curious old German pictures; Städel having been, like others, smitten with the mania of buying Van Eyks and Hemlings and Schoréels. Here, however, these old masters, as part of a school, or history of art, are well placed. There are a few fine Flemish paintings—and, in particular, a wondrous portrait by Flinck, which you must see. It is a lady in black, on the left side of the door—of—I forget which room—but you cannot miss it: those soft eyes will look out at you, till you will feel inclined to ask her name, and wonder the lips do not unclose to answer you. Of first-rate pictures there are none—I mean none of the historical and Italian schools: the collection of casts from the antique is splendid and well-selected.
MEDON.
But Bethmann, the banker, had already set anexample of munificent patronage of art: when he shamed kings, for instance, by purchasing Dannecker's Ariadne—one of the chief lions of Frankfort, if fame says true.
ALDA.
How! have you not seen it?
MEDON.
No—unhappily. The weather, as I have told you, was dreadful. I was discouraged—I procrastinated. That flippant observation I had read in some English traveller, that "Dannecker's Ariadne looked as if it had been cut out of old Stilton cheese," was floating in my mind. In short, I was careless, as we often are, when the means of gratifying curiosity appear secure, and within our reach. I repent me now. I wish I had settled to my own satisfaction, and with mine own eyes, the disputed merits of this famous statue; but I will trust to you. It ought to be something admirable. I do not know much of Dannecker, or his works, but by all accounts hehas not to complain of the want of patronage. To him cannot be applied the pathetic common-place, so familiar in the mouths of our young artists, about "chill penury," the struggle to live, the cares that "freeze the genial current of the soul," the efforts of unassisted genius, and so forth. Want never came to him since he devoted himself to art. He appears to have had leisure and freedom to give full scope to his powers, and to work out his own creations.
ALDA.
Had he? Had he indeed? His own story would be different, I fancy. Dannecker, like every patronized artist I ever met with, would execrate patronage if he dared. Good old man! The thought of what he might have done, and could have done, breaks out sometimes in the midst of all his self-complacentnaïveexultation over what hehasdone. I will endeavour to give you a correct idea of the Ariadne, and then I will tell you something of Dannecker himself. His history is a good commentary upon royal patronage.
I had heard so much of this statue, that my curiosity was strongly excited. A part of its fame may be owing to its situation, and the number of travellers who go to visit Bethmann's Museum, as a matter of course. I used to observe that all travellers, who were on the road to Italy, praised it, and all who were on their way home criticised it. As I ascended the steps of the pavilion in which it is placed, the enthusiasm of expectation faded away from my mind: I said to myself, "I shall be disappointed!"—Yet I was not disappointed.
The Ariadne occupied the centre of a cabinet, hung with a dark grey colour, and illuminated by a high lateral window, so that the light and shade, and the relief of the figure, were perfectly well managed and effective. Dannecker has not represented Ariadne in her more poetical and picturesque character, as, when betrayed and forsaken by Theseus, she stood alone on the wild shore of Naxos, "her hair blown by the winds, and all about her expressing desolation." It is Ariadne, immortal and triumphant, as the bride of Bacchus.The figure is larger than life. She is seated, or rather reclined, on the back of a panther. The right arm is carelessly extended: the left arm rests on the head of the animal, and the hand supports the drapery, which appears to have just dropped from her limbs. The head is turned a little upwards, as if she already anticipated her starry home; and her tresses are braided with the vine leaves. The grace and ease of the attitude, so firm, and yet so light; the flowing beauty of the form, and the position of the head, enchanted me. Perhaps the features are not sufficientlyGreek: for, though I am not one of those who think all beauty comprised in the antique models, and that nothing can be orthodox but the straight nose and short upper lip, still to Ariadne the pureclassicalideal of beauty, both in form and face, are properly in character. A cast from that divine head, the Greek Ariadne, is placed in the same cabinet, and I confess to you, that the contrast being immediately brought before the eye, Dannecker's Ariadne seemed to want refinement, in comparison. It is true, that the moment chosen by the Germansculptor required an expression altogether different. In the Greek bust, though already circled by the viny crown, and though all heaven seems to repose on the noble arch of that expanded brow, yet the head is declined, and a tender melancholy lingers round the all-perfect mouth, as if the remembrance of a mortal love—a mortal sorrow—yet shaded her celestial bridal hours, and made pale her immortality. But, Dannecker's Ariadne is the flushed queen of the Bacchante, and, in the clash of the cymbals and the mantling cup, she has already forgotten Theseus. There is a look of life, an individual truth in the beauty of the form, which distinguishes it from the long-limbed vapid pieces of elegance called nymphs and Venuses, which
"Stretch their white arms, and bend their marble necks,"
"Stretch their white arms, and bend their marble necks,"
"Stretch their white arms, and bend their marble necks,"
in the galleries of our modern sculptors. One objection struck me, but not till after a second or third view of the statue. The panther seemed to me rather too bulky and ferocious. It is true, it is not a natural, but a mythological panther, such as we see in the antique basso-relievos, and thearabesques of Herculaneum: yet, methinks if he appeared a little more conscious of his lovely burthen, more tamed by the influence of beauty, it would have been better. However, the sculptor may have had a design, a feeling, in this very point, which has escaped me: I regret now that I did not ask him. One thing is certain, that the extreme massiveness of the panther's limbs serves to give a firmness to the support of the figure, and sets off to advantage its lightness and delicacy. It is equally certain that if the head of the animal had been ever so slightly turned, the pose of the right arm, and with it the whole attitude, must have been altered.
The window of the cabinet is so contrived, that by drawing up a blind of stained glass, a soft crimson tint is shed over the figure, as if the marble blushed. This did not please me: partly from a dislike to all trickery in art; partly because, to my taste, the pale colourless purity of the marble is one of the beauties of a fine statue.
It is true that Dannecker has been unfortunate in his material. The block from which he cut his figure is imperfect and streaky; but how it couldpossibly have suggested the idea ofStilton cheeseI am at a loss to conceive. It is not worse than Canova's Venus, in the Pitti palace, who has a terrible black streak across her bosom. M. Passavant,14who was standing by when I paid my last visit to the Ariadne, assured me, that when the statue was placed on its pedestal, about sixteen years ago, these black specks were scarcely visible, and that they seemed to multiply and grow darker with time. This is a lamentable, and, to me, an unaccountable fact.
MEDON.
And, I am afraid, past cure: but now tell me something of the sculptor himself. After looking on a grand work of art, we naturally turn to look into the mind which conceived and created it.
ALDA.
Dannecker, like all the great modern sculptors, sprung from the people. Thorwaldson, Flaxman, Chantrey, Canova, Schadow, Ranch—I believe we may go farther back, to Cellini, Bandinelli, Bernini, Pigalle—all I can at this moment recollect, were of plebeian origin. When I was at Dresden, I was told of a young count, of noble family, who had adopted sculpture as a profession. This, I think, is a solitary instance of any person of noble birth devoting himself to this noblest of the arts.
MEDON.
Do you forget Mrs. Darner and Lady Dacre?
ALDA.
No; but I do not think that either the exquisite modelling of Lady Dacre, or the meritoriousattemptsof Mrs. Damer, come under the head of sculpture in its grand sense. By-the-bye, when Horace Walpole said that Mrs. Damer was the first female sculptor who had attained anycelebrity, he forgot the Greek girl, Lala,15and the Properzia Rossi of modern times.
Dannecker was born at Stuttgardt in 1758. On him descended no hereditary mantle of genius; it was the immediate gift of Heaven, and apparently heaven-directed. His father was a groom in the duke's stable, and appears to have been merely an ill-tempered, thick-headed boor. How young Dannecker picked up the rudiments of reading and writing, he does not himself remember; nor by what circumstances the bent of his fancy and genius was directed to the fine arts. Like other great men, who have been led to trace the progress of their own minds, he attributed to his mother the first promptings to the fair and good, the first softening and elevating influences which his mind acknowledged. He had neither paper nor pencils; but next door to his father there lived a stone-cutter, whose blocksof marble and free-stone were every day scrawled over with rude imitations of natural objects in chalk or charcoal—the first essays of the infant Dannecker. When he was beaten by his father for this proof of idleness, his mother interfered to protect or to encourage him. As soon as he was old enough, he assisted his father in the stable; and while running about the precincts of the palace, ragged and bare-foot, he appears to have attracted, by his vivacity and alertness, the occasional notice of the duke himself.
Duke Charles, the grandfather of the present king of Wurtemburg, had founded a military school, called the Karl Schüle, (Charles' School,) annexed to the Hunting Palace of the Solitude. At this academy, music and drawing were taught as well as military tactics. One day, when Dannecker was about thirteen, his father returned home in a very ill-humour, and informed his family that the duke intended to admit the children of his domestics into his new military school. The boy, with joyful eagerness, declared his intention ofgoing immediately to present himself as a candidate. The father, with a stare of astonishment, desired him to remain at home, and mind his business; on his persisting, he resorted to blows, and ended by locking him up. The boy escaped by jumping out of the window; and, collecting several of his comrades, he made them a long harangue in praise of the duke's beneficence, then placing himself at their head, marched them up to the palace, where the whole court was assembled for the Easter festivities. On being asked their business, Dannecker replied as spokesman—"Tell his highness the duke we want to go to the Karl-schüle." One of the attendants, amused, perhaps, with this juvenile ardour, went and informed the duke, who had just risen from table. He came out himself and mustered the little troop before him. He first darted a rapid scrutinizing glance along the line, then selecting one from the number, placed him on his right-hand; then another, and another, till only young Dannecker and two others remained on his left. Dannecker has since acknowledged that he suffered fora few moments such exquisite pain and shame at the idea of being rejected, that his first impulse was to run away and hide himself; and that his surprise and joy, when he found that he and his two companions were the accepted candidates, had nearly overpowered him. The duke ordered them to go the next morning to the Solitude, and then dismissed them. When Dannecker returned home, his father, enraged at losing the services of his son, turned him out of the house, and forbade him ever more to enter it; but his mother (mother like) packed up his little bundle of necessaries, accompanied him for some distance on his road, and parted from him with blessings, and tears, and words of encouragement and love.
At the Karl-schüle Dannecker made but little progress in his studies. Nothing could be worse managed than this royal establishment. The inferior teachers were accustomed to employ the poorer boys in the most servile offices, and in this, so called, academy, he was actually obliged to learn by stealth: but here he formed a friendship with Schiller, who, like himself, was anardent genius pining and writhing under a chilling system; and the two boys, thrown upon one another for consolation, became friends for life. Dannecker must have been about fifteen when the Karl-schüle was removed from the Solitude to Stuttgard. He was then placed under the tuition of Grubel, a professor of sculpture, and in the following year he produced his first original composition. It was a Milo of Crotona modelled in clay, and was judged worthy of the first prize. Dannecker was at this time so unfriended and little known, that the duke, who appears to have forgotten him, learnt with astonishment that this nameless boy, the son of his groom, had carried off the highest honours of the school from all his competitors. For a few years he was employed in the duke's service in carving cornices, Cupids, and caryatides, to ornament the new palaces at Stuttgard and Hohenheim: this task-work, over which he often sighed, may possibly have assisted in giving him that certainty and mechanical dexterity in the use of his tools for which he is remarkable. About ten years were thus passed;he then obtained permission to travel for his improvement with an allowance of three hundred florins a-year from the duke. With these slender means Dannecker set off for Paris on foot. There, for the first time, he had opportunities of studying the living model. His enthusiasm for his art enabled him to endure extraordinary privations of every kind; for out of his little pension of £23 a-year he had not only to feed and clothe himself, but to purchase all the materials for his art, and the means of instruction; and this in an expensive capital, surrounded with temptations which an artist and an enthusiastic young man finds it difficult to withstand. He told me himself that day after day he has studied in the Louvre dinnerless, and dressed in a garb which scarce retained even the appearance of decency. He left Paris, after a two years' residence, as simple in mind and heart as when he entered it, and considerably improved in his knowledge of anatomy and in the technical part of his profession. The treasures of the Louvre, though far inferior to what they now are, had let in a flood of ideas upon his mind, amongwhich (as he described his own feelings) he groped as one bewildered and intoxicated, amazed rather than enlightened.
MEDON.
But Dannecker must have been poor in spirit as in pocket—simple, indeed, if he did not profit by the opportunities which Paris afforded of studying human nature, noting the passions and their physiognomy, and gaining other experiences most useful to an artist.
ALDA.
There I differ from you. Would you send a young artist—more particularly a young sculptor—to study the human nature of London or Paris?—to seek the ideal among shop-girls and opera-dancers? Or the sublime and beautiful among the frivolous and degraded of one sex, the money-making or the brutalized of the other? Is it from the man who has steeped his youthful prime in vulgar dissipation, by way of "seeing life," as it is called, who has courted patronage at theconvivial board, that you shall require that union of lofty enthusiasm and patient industry, which are necessary, first to conceive the grand and the poetical, then consume long years in shaping out his creation in the everlasting marble?
MEDON.
But how is the sculptor himself to live during those long years? It must needs be a hard struggle. I have heard young artists say, that they have been forced on a dissipated life merely as a means of "getting on in the world," as the phrase is.
ALDA.
So have I. It is so base a plea, that when I hear it, I generally regard it as the excuse for dispositions already perverted. The men who talk thus are doomed: they will either creep through life in mediocrity and dependence to their grave; or, at the best, if they have parts, as well as cunning and assurance, they may make themselves the fashion, and make their fortune; they may beclever portrait-painters and bust-makers, but when they attempt to soar into the historical and ideal department of their art, they move the laughter of gods and men; to them the higher, holier fountains of inspiration are thenceforth sealed.
MEDON.
But think of the temptations of society!
ALDA.
I think of those who have overcome them. "Great men have been among us," though they be rare. Have we not had a Flaxman? But the artist must choose where he will worship. He cannot serve God and Mammon. That man of genius who thinks he can tamper with his glorious gifts, and for a season indulge in social excesses, stoop from his high calling to the dregs of earth, abandon himself to the stream of common life, and trust to his native powers to bring him up again;—O believe it, he plays a desperate game!—one that in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred is fatal.
MEDON.
I begin to see your drift; but you would find it difficult to prove that the men who executed those works, on which we now look with wonder and despair, lived like anchorites, or were unexceptionable moral characters.
ALDA.
Will you not allow that they worked in a different spirit? Or do you suppose that it was by the possession of some sleight-of-hand that these things were performed?—That it was by some knack of chiselling, some secret of colouring now lost, that a Phidias or a Correggio still remain unapproached, and, as people will tell you, unapproachable?
MEDON.
They had a different nature to work from.
ALDA.
A different modification of nature, but not a different nature. Nature and truth are one, andimmutable, and inseparable as beauty and love. I do maintain that, in these latter times, we have artists, who in genius, in the power of looking at nature, and in manual skill, are not beneath the great ancients, but their works are found wanting in comparison; they have fallen short of the models their early ambition set before them; and why?—because, having genius, they want the moral grandeur that should accompany it, and have neglected the training of their own minds from necessity, or from dissipation or from pride, so that having imagination and skill, they have yet wanted the materials out of which to work. Recollect that the great artists of old were not mere painters or mere sculptors, who were nothing except with the pencil or the chisel in their hand. They were philosophers, scholars, poets, musicians, noble beings, whose eyes were not ever on themselves, but who looked above, before, and after. Our modern artists turn coxcombs, and then fancy themselves like Rafaelle; or they are greedy of present praise, or greedy of gain; or they will not pay the price for immortality; or they have sold theirglorious birthright of fame for a mess of pottage.
Poor Dannecker found his mess of pottage bitter now and then, as you shall hear. He set off for Italy, in 1783, with his pension raised to four hundred florins a year, that is, about thirty pounds: he reached Rome, on foot, and he told me that, for some months after his arrival, he suffered from a terrible depression of spirits, and a painful sense of loneliness: like Thorwaldson, when he too visited that city some years afterwards, a friendless youth, he was often home-sick and heart-sick. At this time he used to wander about among the ruins and relics of almighty Rome, lost in the sense of their grandeur, depressed by his own vague aspirations—ignorant, and without courage to apply himself. Luckily for him, Herder and Goethe were then residing at Rome; he became known to them, and their conversation directed him to higher sources of inspiration in his art than he had yet contemplated—to the very well-heads and mother-streams of poetry. They showed him the distinction between thespiritandtheformof ancient art. Dannecker felt, and afterwards applied some of the grand revelations of these men, who were at once profound critics and inspired poets. He might have grasped at more, but that his early nurture was here against him, and his subsequent destinies as a court sculptor seldom left him sufficient freedom of thought or action to follow out his own conceptions. While at Rome he also became acquainted with Canova, who, although only one year older than himself, had already achieved great things. He was now at work on the monument of the Pope Ganganelli. The courteous, kind-hearted Italian would sometimes visit the poor German in his studio, and cheer him by his remarks and encouragement.
Dannecker remained five years at Rome; he was then ordered to return to Stuttgard. As he had already greatly distinguished himself, the Duke of Wurtemburg received him with much kindness, and promised him his protection. Now, the protection and the patronage which a sovereign accords to an artistgenerally amounts to this: he begins by carving or painting the portrait of his patron, and of some of the various members of his patron's family. If these are approved of, he is allowed to stick a ribbon in his button-hole, and is appointed professor of fine arts, with a certain stipend, and thenceforth his time, his labour, and his genius belong as entirely to his master as those of a hired servant; his path is marked out for him. It was thus with Dannecker; he received a pension of eight hundred florins a year and his professorship, and upon the strength of this he married Henrietta Rapp. From this period his life has passed in a course of tranquil and uninterrupted occupation, yet, though constantly employed, his works are not numerous; almost every moment being taken up with the duties of his professorship, in trying to teach what no man of genius can teach, and in making drawings and designs after the fancies of the Grand Duke. He was required to compose a basso-relievo for the duke's private cabinet. The subject which he chose was as appropriate as it was beautifully treated—Alexanderpressing his seal upon the lips of Parmenio. He modelled this in bas-relief, and the best judges pronounced it exquisite; but it did not please the duke, and instead of receiving an order to finish it in marble, he was obliged to throw it aside, and to execute some design dictated by his master. The original model remained for many years in his studio; but a short time before my last visit to him he had presented it as a birth-day gift to a friend. The first great work which gave him celebrity as a sculptor, was the mausoleum of Count Zeppelin, the duke's favourite, in which the figure of Friendship has much simplicity and grace: this is now at Louisberg. While he was modelling this beautiful figure, the first idea of the Ariadne was suggested to his fancy, but some years elapsed before it came into form. At this time he was much employed in executing busts, for which his fine eye for living nature and manly simplicity of taste peculiarly fitted him. In this particular department of his art he has neither equal nor rival, except our Chantrey. The best I have seen are those of Schiller, Gluck, andLavater. Never are the fine arts, never are great artists, better employed than when they serve to illustrate and to immortalize each other! About the year 1808, Dannecker was considered, beyond dispute, the first sculptor in Germany; for as yet Rauch, Tieck, and Schwanthaler had not worked their way up to their present high celebrity. He received, in 1811, an intimation, that if he would enter the service of the king of Bavaria, he should be placed at the head of the school of sculpture at Munich, with a salary three times the amount of that which he at present enjoyed.—
MEDON.
Which Dannecker declined?
ALDA.
He did.
MEDON.
I could have sworn to it—extempore! What is more touching in the history of men of genius than that deep and constant attachment they haveshown to their early patrons! Not to go back to the days of Horace and Mecænas, nor even to those of Ariosto and Tasso and the family of Este, or Cellini and the Duke of Florence, or Lucas Kranach, and the Elector John Frederic—16do you remember Mozart's exclamation, when he was offered the most magnificent remuneration if he would quit the service of Joseph II. for that of the Elector of Saxony—"Shall I leave my good Emperor?" In the same manner Metastasio rejected every inducement to quit the service of Maria Theresa,——
ALDA.
Add Goethe and the Duke of Weimar, and a hundred other instances. The difficulty would be to findone, in which the patronage of the great has not been repaid ten thousand fold in gratitude and fame. Dannecker's love for his native city,and his native princes, prevailed over his self-interest; his decision was honourable to his heart; but it is not less certain that at Munich he would have found more enlightened patronage, and a wider scope for his talents. Frederic, the late king of Wurtemburg, who had married our princess royal, was a man of a coarse mind and profligate habits. Napoleon had gratified his vulgar ambition by making him a king, and thereupon he stuck a huge, tawdry gilt crown on the top of his palace, the impudent sign of his subservientmajesty. I never looked at it without thinking of an overgrown child and its new toy; he also, to commemorate the acquisition of his kingly titles, instituted the order of the Wurtemburg crown, and Dannecker was gratified by this new order of merit, and a bit of ribbon in his button-hole.
But in the mean time the model of the Ariadne remained in his studio, and it was not till the year 1809 that he could afford to purchase a block of marble, and begin the statue on speculation. It occupied him for seven years, but in the intervalhe completed other beautiful works. The king ordered him to execute a Cupid in marble, for which he gave him the design. It was a design which displeased the pure mind and high taste of Dannecker; he would not so desecrate his divine art: "c'etait travailler pour le diable!" said he to me, in telling the story. He therefore only half fulfilled his commission; and changing the purpose and sentiment of the figure, he represented the Greek Cupid at the moment that he is waked by the drop of burning oil from Psyche's lamp. An English general, I believe Sir John Murray, saw this charming statue, in 1814, and immediately commanded a work from the sculptor's hands: he wished, but did not absolutely require, a duplicate of the statue he so admired. Dannecker, instead of repeating himself, produced his Psyche, whom he has represented—not as the Greek allegorical Psyche, the bride of Cupid, "with lucent fans, fluttering"—but as the abstract personification of the human soul; or, to use Dannecker's own words, "Ein rein, sittlich, sinniges Wesen,"—a pure, moral, intellectual being.As he had an idea that Love had become moral and sentimental after he had been waked by the drop of burning oil, so I could not help asking him whether this was Psyche, grown reasonable after she had beheld the wings of Love? He has not in this beautiful statue quite accomplished his own idea. It has much girlish grace and simplicity, but it wants elevation; it is not sufficiently ideal, and will not stand a comparison either with the Psyche of Westmacott, or that of Canova. The Ariadne was finished in 1816, but the sculptor was disappointed in his hope that this, his masterpiece, would adorn his native city. The king showed no desire to possess it, and it was purchased by M. Bethmann, of Frankfort, for a sum equal to about one thousand pounds. Soon after the Ariadne was finished, Dannecker conceived, in a moment of pious enthusiasm, his famous statue of the Redeemer, which has caused a great deal of discussion in Germany. This was standing in his work-room when we paid our first visit to him. He told me what I had often heard, that the figure had visited him in a dream three severaltimes; and the good old man firmly believed that he had been divinely inspired, and predestined to the work. While the visionary image was fresh in his imagination, he first executed a small clay model, and placed it before a child of five or six years old;—there were none of the usual emblematical accompaniments—no cross—no crown of thorns to assist the fancy—nothing but the simple figure roughly modelled; yet the child immediately exclaimed, "The Redeemer!" and Dannecker was confirmed in his design. Gradually the completion of this statue became the one engrossing idea of his enthusiastic mind: for eight years it was his dream by night, his thought by day; all things else, all the affairs and duties of life, merged into this. He told me that he frequently felt as if pursued, excited by some strong, irresistible power, which would even visit him in sleep, and impel him to rise from his bed and work. He explained to me some of the difficulties he encountered, and which he was persuaded that he had perfectly overcome only through divine aid, and the constant study of the Scriptures.They were not few nor trifling. Physical power, majesty, and beauty, formed no part of the character of the Saviour of the world: the glory that was around him was not of this earth, nor visible to the eye; "there was nothing in him that he should be desired;" therefore to throw into the impersonation of exceeding humility and benignity a superhuman grace, and from material elements work out a manifestation of abstract moral grandeur—this was surely not only a new and difficult, but a bold and sublime enterprize.
You remember Michael Angelo's statue of Christ in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva at Rome?
MEDON.
Perfectly; and I never looked at it without thinking of Neptune and his trident.
ALDA.
The same thought occurred to me, and must inevitably have occurred to others. Dannecker is not certainly so great a man as Michael Angelo,but here he has surpassed him. Instead of emulating the antique models, he has worked in the antique spirit—the spirit of faith and enthusiasm. He has taken a new form in which to clothe a grand poetical conception. Whether the being he has represented be a fit subject for the plastic art, has been disputed; but it appears to me that Dannecker has more nearly approached the christian ideal than any of his predecessors; there is nothing to be compared to it, except Titian's Christo della Moneta, and that is a head merely. The sentiment chosen by the sculptor is expressed in the inscription on the pedestal: "Through me, to the Father." The proportions of the figure are exceedingly slender and delicate; the attitude a little drooping; one hand is pressed on the bosom, the other extended; the lips are unclosed as in the act to speak. In the head and facial line, by carefully throwing out every indication of the animal propensities, and giving added importance and development to all that indicates the moral and intellectual faculties, he has succeeded in embodying a species of ideal, of which there is no otherexample in art. I have heard, (not from Dannecker himself,) that when the head of the Jupiter Tonans was placed beside the Christ, the merely physical grandeur of the former, compared with the purely intellectual expression of the latter, reminded every one present of a lion's head erect and humanized.
MEDON.
But what were your own impressions? After all this eulogium, which I believe to be just, tell me frankly, were you satisfied yourself?
ALDA.
No—not quite. The expression of the mouth in the last finished statue (he has repeated the subject three times) is not so fine as in the model, and the simplicity of the whole bordered on meagreness. This, I think, is a general fault in all Dannecker's works. He has of course avoided nudity, but the flowing robe, which completely envelopes the figure, is so managed as to disclose the exact form of the limbs. One little circumstance will give you an ideaof the attention and accuracy with which he seized and embodied every touch of individual character conveyed in Holy Writ. In the original model he had made the beard rather full and thick, and a little curled, expressing the prime of manhood; but recollecting that in the gospel the Saviour is represented as sinking under the weight of the cross, which the first man they met accidentally was able to carry, he immediately altered his first conception, and gave to the beard that soft, flowing, downy texture which is supposed to indicate a feeble and delicate temperament.
I shall not easily forget the countenance of the good and gifted old man, as, leaning on the pedestal, with his cap in his hand, and his long grey hair waving round his face, he looked up at his work with a mixture of reverence and exultation, saying, in his imperfect and scarce intelligible French, "Oui, quand on a fait comme cela, on reste sur la terre!" meaning, I suppose, that this statue had ensured his immortality on earth. He added, "They ask me often where are the models after which I worked? and I answer,here, andhere;" laying his hand first on his head, then on his heart.
I remember that when we first entered his room he was at work on one of the figures for the tomb of the late Queen Catherine of Wurtemburg. You perhaps recollect her in England when only Duchess of Oldenburg?
MEDON.
Yes; I remember, as a youngster, joining the mob who shouted before the windows of the Pulteney-hotel, and hailed her and her brother Alexander as if they had been a newly descended Jupiter and Juno! O verily, times are changed!
ALDA.
But in that woman there were the elements of a fine nature. She had the talents, the strength of mind, and far-reaching ambition of her grandmother, Catherine of Russia, but was not so perverted. During her short reign as Queen of Wurtemburg, the influence of her active mind wasfelt through the whole government. She founded, among other institutions, a school for the daughters of the nobility connected with the court,—in plain English, a charity-school for the nobility of Wurtemburg, who are among the most indigent and most ignorant of Germany. There are a few, very few, brilliant exceptions. One lady of rank said to me, "As to an English governess,thatis an advantage I can never hope to have for my daughters. The princesses have an English governess, butwecannot dream of such a thing." The late queen really deserved the regrets of her people. The king, whose sluggish mind she ruled or stimulated, is now devoted to his stables and hunting. He has married another wife, but he has erected to the honour of Catherine a splendid mausoleum, on the peak of a high hill, which can be seen from almost every part of the city; and on the summer evenings when the red sun-set falls upon its white columns it is a beautiful object. The figure on which Dannecker was occupied, represented Prayer, or what he called, "La triomphe de la Prière;" it recalled to my mind Flaxman'slovely statue of the same subject,—the "Our Father which art in Heaven," but suffered by the involuntary comparison. On the rough base of the statue he had tried to spell the name of Chantrey, but not very successfully. I took up a bit of chalk and wrote underneath, in distinct characters,Francis Chantrey.
"I grow old," said he, looking from his work to the bust of the late queen which stood opposite. "I have carved the effigies of three generations of poets, and as many of princes. Twenty years ago I was at work on the tomb of the Duke of Oldenburg, and now I am at work uponher'swho gave me that order. All die away: soon I shall be left alone. Of my early friends none remain but Goethe. I shall die before him, and perhaps he will write my epitaph." He spoke with a smile, not foreseeing that he would be the survivor.
Three years afterwards17I again paid Dannecker a visit, but a change had come over him: his feeble, trembling hand could no longer grasp the mallet, or guide the chisel; his eyes were dim; his finebenevolent countenance wore a childish, vacant smile, now and then crossed by a gleam of awakened memory or thought—and yet he seemed so perfectly happy! He walked backwards and forwards, from his Christ to his bust of Schiller, with an unwearied self-complacency, in which there was something mournful, and yet delightful. While I sat looking at the magnificent head of Schiller, the original of the multifarious casts and copies which are dispersed through all Germany, he sat down beside me, and taking my hands between his own, which trembled with age and nervous emotion, he began to speak of his friend. "Nous etions amis dès l'enfance; aussi j'y ai travaillé avec amour, avec douleur—on ne peut pas plus faire." He then went on—"When Schiller came to Louisberg, he sent to tell me that he was very ill—that he should not live very long, and that he wished me to execute his bust. It was the first wish of my own heart. I went immediately. When I entered the house, I found a lady sitting on thecanapé—it was Schiller's wife, and I did not know her; but she knew me.She said, 'Ah! you are Dannecker!—Schiller expects you;'—then she ran into the next room, where Schiller was lying down on a couch, and in a moment after he came in, exclaiming as he entered, 'Where is he? where is Dannecker?' That was the moment—the expression I caught—you see it here—the head raised, the countenance full of inspiration, and affection, and bright hope! I told him that to keep up this expression he must have some of his best friends to converse with him while I took the model, for I could not talk and work too. O if I could but remember what glorious things then fell from those lips! Sometimes I stopped in my work—I could not go on—I could only listen." And here the old man wept; then suddenly changing his mood, he said—"But I must cut off that long hair; he never wore it so; it is not in the fashion, you know!" I begged him for heaven's sake not to touch it; he then, with a sad smile, turned up the sleeve of his coat and showed me his wrist, swelled with the continual use of his implements—"You see Icannot!" And I could not help wishing at the moment, that while hismind was thus enfeebled, no transient return of physical strength might enable him to put his wild threat in execution. What a noble bequest to posterity is the effigy of a great man, when executed in such a spirit as this of Schiller! I assure you I could not look at it, without feeling my heart "overflow in silent worship" of moral and intellectual power, till the deification of great men in the old times appeared to me rather religion than idolatry. I have been affected in the same manner by the busts of Goethe, Scott, Homer, Milton, Howard, Newton;—never by the painted portraits of the same men, however perfect in resemblance and admirable in execution.
MEDON.
Painting gives us the material, sculpture the abstract, ethical aspect of the man. In the bust, whatever is common-place, familiar, and actual, is thrown out or kept down: in a picture it is not only retained, but, in most cases, it is necessarily obtrusive. Goethe, in a blue coat and metal buttons, and a white neckcloth, would not recallthe author of the "Iphigenia;" still less does that wrinkled, decrepit-looking face, in the gallery at Hardwicke, portray Boyle, the philosopher.
ALDA.
Dannecker told me that he first modelled the head of Schiller the exact size of life, and conscientiously rendered each, even the slightest, individual trait; yet this head appeared to every one smaller than nature, and to himself almostmesquin.18He was in despair. He repeated the bust in a colossal size; and the development of the intellectual organization, on a larger scale, immediately gave what was wanting:—it appeared to the eye or to the mind's eye as only the size of life. He showed me a beautiful basso-relievo of the Muse of Tragedy, listening with an inspired look to the revelations of the Muse of History. This admirable little group struck me the more, because long ago I had clothed nearly the same idea in imperfect words.
I took leave of Dannecker with emotion: Ishall never see him again! But he is one of those who cannot die; to use his own expression—"Quand on a faitcomme cela, on reste sur la terre." When Canova, then a melancholy invalid, paid him a visit, he was so struck by the child-like simplicity, the pure unworldly nature, the genuine goodness, and lively happy temperament of the German sculptor, that he gave him the surname ofil Beato; and if the epithetblessedcan, with propriety, be bestowed on any mortal, it is on him whose long life has been one of labour and of love; who has left behind him lasting memorials of his genius; who has never profaned the talents which God has given him to any unworthy purpose:—but in the midst of all the beautiful and exciting influences of poetry and art, has kept from youth to age a soul serene, a conscience and a life pure in the sight of God and man. Such was our own Flaxman—such is Dannecker!
MEDON.
Who are now the principal sculptors in Germany?
ALDA.
Rauch, of Berlin; Christian Frederic Tieck, the brother of the celebrated poet and critic, Ludwig Tieck; and Schwanthaler, of Munich. Rauch is the court sculptor of Berlin. He has, like Dannecker,19his professorship, his order of merit,20and, I believe, one or two places under the government, besides constant employment in his art. He worksby the piece, as the labourers say. But though he too has yoked his genius to the car of power and patronage, he has done great things. The statue of the late queen of Prussia is reckoned hischef-d'œuvre, and is not, perhaps, exceeded in modern sculpture. It was conceived and worked out in all the inspiration of love and grief; as Dannecker would say, "Mit Lieb und Schmerzen." He had been attached to the queen's personalservice, and shared, in an intense degree, the enthusiastic, devoted affection with which all her subjects regarded that beautiful and amiable woman. This statue he executed at Carrara; and a living eagle, which had been taken captive among the Appenines, was the original of that magnificent eagle he has placed at her feet:—nothing, you see, like going at once to nature! In the course of twenty-five years Rauch has executed sixty-nine busts, of which twenty are colossal. Among his numerous other works, designed or executed within the same time, there is the colossal statue of Blucher, now at Breslau; this is in bronze, upon a granite pedestal. There is another statue of Blucher at Berlin, of which the pedestal, rich with bas-reliefs, is also in bronze. Rauch has been employed for the last twenty years in modelling field-marshals and generals, and has devoted his best powers to vanquish the difficulties presented by monotonous faces, drilled figures, military uniforms, and regimental boots and buttons; and all that mancando, I am told he has done. I have seen some of his busts, which are quite admirable.At Peterstein, near Munich, I saw his statue of a little girl, about ten years old, which, in its simplicity, truth, and elegance, reminded me of Chantrey's Lady Louisa Russell, though in conception andmanneras distinct as possible. The full length of Goethe, in his dressing-gown, of which there is such an infinitude of casts and copies throughout Germany, is also by Rauch.
Christian Tieck is the old and intimate friend of Rauch. They live, or did live, under the same roof, and it is not known that a moment of jealousy or rivalship ever disturbed the union between these two celebrated and gifted men, who, starting nearly at the same time,21have run their brilliant career together in the self-same path, and, whatever judgment the world or posterity may form of their comparative merits, seem determined to enter the temple of immortality hand in hand. Tieck's works are dispersed from one end of Germany to the other. His statue of Neckar; his busts of Madame de Staël, of her second husbandRocca, of the Duke and Duchess de Broglie, and of A. W. Schlegel, I have seen; and all, particularly the busts of Rocca and Schlegel are exceedingly fine. At Munich, at Dresden, and at Weimar, I saw many of his works; and at Manheim the bust of Madame de Heygendorf,22full of beauty, and life,and expression. At Berlin, Tieck has been employed for many years in designing and executing the sculptured ornaments of the new theatre. There is a colossal Apollo; a Pegasus, striking the fountain of Helicon from the rock, colossal Muses, and a variety of other heathen perpetrations—all (as I am assured) exceedingly fine in their way. I believe his seated statue of Iffland (the Garrick of Germany) is considered one of hischef-d'œuvres. He also, like Rauch, has been much employed in modelling generals and trophies, in memory of the late war.
Schwanthaler, the son of a statuary of Munich, is still a young man; his works first began to create a sensation in Germany in the year 1823. In spirit and fire, and creative talent, in a fine classic feeling for his art, he appeared to me to be treading in the steps of Flaxman, and likehim, he is a profound and accomplished scholar, who has sought inspiration at the very fountain of Greek poetry. His basso-relievo of the battle of the ships in the Iliad, his games of Greece, his designs from the Theogony of Hesiod, and avariety of other works which I have seen, appeared to me full of imagination, and in a pure and vigorous style of art. Of him, and some other sculptors, you will find more particulars in the note-book I kept at Munich; we will look over it together one of these days.
MEDON.
Thank you; but I must needs ask you a question. In the works you have enumerated, nothing has struck me as new, or in a new spirit, except perhaps the Christ of Dannecker, and the statue of the queen of Prussia. Now, why should not sculpture have its Gothic (or romantic) school, as well as its antique, or classical school?
ALDA.
And has it not?
MEDON.
If you allude to the sculpture of the middle ages,thathas not become a school of art, like their architecture and their painting: yet can it be truethat there is something in our modern institutions, our northern descent, our christian faith, inimical to the spirit of sculpture?—and, while poetry in every other form is regenerate around us, that in sculpture alone we are doomed to imitate, never to create?—doomed to the servile reproduction of the same ideas? that this alone, of all the fine arts, is to belong to some peculiar mode of existence, some peculiar mode of thinking, feeling, and believing? "Qui me delivrera des Grecs et des Remains?"—who will deliver me from gods and goddesses, and from all these