OF

ITALIAN SCULPTURE

BY

CHARLES C. PERKINS

CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE

AUTHOR OF TUSCAN SCULPTORS," "ITALIAN SCULPTORS"

PREFACE.

GREEK Sculpture of the fifth century before the Christian era, and Italian marble work of the tenth century after it, are respectively the extremes of what is highest and what is lowest in plastic art, for the first belongs to a period of æsthetic culture never since reached, and the last to one of artistic ignorance greater perhaps than any elsewhere met with in the history of a civilized nation. Varying between Byzantinism, which regulated all forms of art by strictly conventional rules, and Mediævalism, which regarded them solely as a means of conveying doctrinal instruction through symbolic or direct representation, sculpture in Italy had dragged out a feeble existence for many centuries before the year 1000 when the end of the world was confidently expected, and had then almost ceased to be. As the dreaded moment approached, men thought only of how they could save their souls or drown their anxieties, and not until it had passed did they breathe freely enough to occupy themselves with life and its activities. Among these, art at once claimed attention, as gratitude for deliverance found natural expression in the building of new churches or the restoring of those which through neglect were fast falling to ruin, and as sculpture formed an integral part of their façades and portals, improvement in the use of the chisel soon began to show itself, though no real revival took place in the decorative arts until the first quarter of the thirteenth

century, with which our history properly begins. Its seat was Tuscany, and its leader was Niccola Pisano, of whom we shall speak, after giving some account of sculpture in Italy before his time and as he found it. We use the word sculpture, which implies technical and æsthetic training, instead of stone carving, which more properly expresses the nature of much of the work which we are to consider, simply because it is a more convenient form of speech, and not as implying artistic excellence in Italian works of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Their makers, who modestly styled themselves "Maestri di Pietra," i.e. stonecutters, and "arte marmoris periti," men skilled in marble work, then first began to sign their works, and to be lauded in fulsome inscriptions, which while they show that art was held in esteem also prove the low standard of an age, when the clumsiest workmen were looked upon as prodigies of genius.

In preparing this volume for the press from materials already made use of in a larger work on the same subject, and from those which have been added to the common stock of information since its publication, I have thought it best to speak of Pre-revival sculpture throughout Italy in an introductory chapter, and to begin the work-proper with the Revival. After that era, as the personality of the sculptor becomes more and more pronounced, biographical materials increase, until in the case of such representative men as Michelangelo little remains. to be discovered. Modern research is however constantly active in the pursuit of fresh information, so that we can never consider what we know at any given time as final, but the historian can do no more than avail himself of present acquisitions, and this I have endeavoured to do.

"Als ik kan, niet als ik wil."

BOSTON, December, 1882,