SCULPTURE, HISTORY OF

history of Western sculpture from its beginnings in the Metal Age to the 20th century. Like painting, Western sculpture has tended to be humanistic and naturalistic, concentrating upon the human figure and human action studied from nature. Early in the history of the art there developed two general types: statuary, in which figures are shown in the round, and relief, in which figures project from a ground. Western sculpture in the ancient world of Greece and Rome and from the late Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century twice underwent a progressive development, from archaic stylization to realism; the term progressive here means that the stylistic sequence was determined by what was previously known about the representation of the human figure, each step depending upon a prior one, and not that there was an aesthetic progression or improvement. Modern criticism has sometimes claimed that much was lost in the change. In any event, the sculptors of the West closely observed the human body in action, at first attempting to find its ideal aspect and proportions and later aiming for dramatic effects, the heroic and the tragic; still later they favoured less significant sentiments, or at least more familiar and mundane subjects. The pre-Hellenic, early Christian, Byzantine, and early medieval periods contradicted the humanist-naturalist bias of Greece and Rome and the Renaissance; in the 20th century that contradiction has been even more emphatic. The 20th century has seen the move away from humanistic naturalism to experimentation with new materials and techniques and new and complex imagery. With the advent of abstract art, the concept of the figure has come to encompass a wide range of nonliteral representation; the notion of statuary has been superseded by the more inclusive category of freestanding sculpture; and, further, two new types have appeared: kinetic sculpture, in which actual movement of parts or of the whole sculpture is considered an element of design; and environmental sculpture, in which the artist either alters a given environment as if it were a kind of medium or provides in the sculpture itself an environment for the viewer to enter. Additional reading General An excellent general history of world art is Hugh Honour and John Fleming, A World History of Art (1982; U.S. title, The Visual Arts: A History), which examines sculpture in relation to the other arts. H.W. Janson, History of Art (1962; 2nd ed., 1977), is also recommended. Among books that discuss sculpture of many periods, Ruth Butler, Western Sculpture: Definitions of Man (1975), is unusually valuable. So, too, is F. David Martin, Sculpture and Enlivened Space (1981). For the techniques of sculpture see W. Verhelst, Sculpture: Tools, Materials, and Techniques (1973); and Rudolf Wittkower, Sculpture (1977). The making of bronze sculptures, omitted from the latter, is brilliantly elucidated by Jennifer Montagu, Bronzes (1963, reissued 1972). Erwin Panofsky, Tomb Sculpture (1964), traces from ancient Egypt to about 1800 some of the major themes of one very important class of Western sculpture. Ancient Mediterranean Sculpture in the early civilizations of southern Europe is seldom studied separately, but it is featured in the following general works: John Boardman, Pre-Classical (1967, reissued 1979); R.W. Hutchinson, Prehistoric Crete (1962); A. Arribas, The Iberians (1964); N.K. Sandars, Prehistoric Art in Europe (1968); and Spyridon Marinatos, Crete and Mycenae (1960). Greek, Hellenistic, Etruscan, and Roman art An authoritative and comprehensive account of ancient Greek art (which, for the most part, means Greek sculpture) is Martin Robertson, A History of Greek Art (1975). For a succinct introduction to sculpture only, see John Barron, Introduction to Greek Sculpture (1981, reissued 1984). For the Archaic period, G.M.A. Richter, Archaic Greek Art Against Its Historical Background (1949), is still valuable; for the so-called Classical period, Brunilde S. Ridgway, Fifth Century Styles in Greek Sculpture (1981), is a good detailed guide; and for the later periods, Margarete Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, 2nd rev. ed. (1981), is highly useful. For the ancient literature on art, see J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Greece 140031 B.C.: Sources and Documents (1965). Etruscan sculpture is best discussed in Otto J. Brendel, Etruscan Art (1978). Sculpture features prominently in the most lively general books on Roman art: R. Bianchi Bandinelli, Rome: The Centre of Power (1970; originally published in Italian, 1969), and Rome: The Late Empire (1971); and Richard Brilliant, Roman Art (1974). Of more limited scope but great interest is Jocelyn M.C. Toynbee, Art in Roman Britain (1962). See also J.J. Pollitt, The Art of Rome c. 753 BCAD 337: Sources and Documents (1966, reissued 1983). Early Christian and early medieval Good general surveys of the early Christian period that include some discussion of sculpture are Ernst Kitzinger, Byzantine Art in the Making (1977); John Beckwith, The Art of Constantinople, 2nd ed. (1968); Andr Grabar, The Beginnings of Christian Art: 200395 (1967, originally published in French, 1966); Steven Runciman, Byzantine Style and Civilization (1975); and Cyril A. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 3121453: Sources and Documents (1972). This last volume, together with Ernst Kitzinger, Early Medieval Art (1940; rev. ed., 1983), concerns also the early medieval period. Among more specialized studies of sculpture in the early Christian period, John Beckwith, Coptic Sculpture (1963); and Joseph Natanson, Early Christian Ivories (1953), should be mentioned. For general information on the early medieval period, see Peter Lasko, Ars Sacra 8001200 (1972); George Henderson, Early Medieval (1972); and George Zarnecki, Art of the Medieval World (1975). Valuable studies specifically on sculpture include George H. Crichton, Romanesque Sculpture in Italy (1954); Hermann Leisinger, Romanesque Bronzes (1956); Fritz Saxl, English Sculptures of the Twelfth Century (1954); and M.F. Hearn, Romanesque Sculpture: The Revival of Monumental Stone Sculpture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (1981). Gothic Many of the ideas expressed in this section of the article are treated at greater length in Andrew Martindale, Gothic Art (1967). General studies of Gothic art include George Henderson, Gothic (1967); Joan Evans (ed.), The Flowering of the Middle Ages (1966, reissued 1984); and Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924, reissued 1976; 12th Dutch ed., 1973). For the imagery of the period, the reader is referred to mile Mle, The Gothic Image: Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century (1958, reissued 1972; trans. of 3rd French ed., 1910), and Religious Art from the Twelfth to the Eighteenth Century (1949, reissued 1970; originally published in French, 1945). A useful anthology of the literary sources of the period is Teresa G. Frisch, Gothic Art 11401450 (1971). For a general treatment of English Gothic sculpture, see Lawrence Stone, Sculpture in Britain: The Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (1972); for France, Marcel Aubert, La Sculpture franaise au moyen ge (1947); and for Italy, John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Gothic Sculpture, 2nd ed. (1972). Renaissance There are numerous general books on Renaissance art, especially on Renaissance art in Italy, but sculpture is seldom adequately discussed in them. The best introduction to the sculpture is John Pope-Hennessy, Italian Renaissance Sculptures, 2nd ed. (1971). As a succinct guide to the sculpture in Florence, the most consistently important centre in Europe at this time, Charles Avery, Florentine Renaissance Sculpture (1970), is recommended. Renaissance sculpture in northern Europe is discussed in Anthony Blunt, Art and Architecture in France: 15001700 (1953); Wolfgang Stechow, Northern Renaissance Art: 14001600 (1966); Gert von der Osten and Horst Vey, Painting and Sculpture in Germany and the Netherlands: 15001600 (1969); and Michael Baxandall, The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (1980). For Spain and Portugal, see George Kubler and Martin S. Soria, Art and Architecture in Spain and Portugal and Their American Dominions: 15001800 (1959). Baroque and Rococo The best brief general discussion of Western art of this period is Michael Kitson, The Age of Baroque (1966, reissued 1976), which includes some consideration of sculpture. For Italian Baroque sculpture, a better guide than Pope-Hennessy (above) is provided by the sections on sculpture in Rudolf Wittkower, Art and Architecture in Italy: 16001750, 3rd rev. ed. (1973, reissued 1982). Robert Enggass, Early Eighteenth-Century Sculpture in Rome, 2 vol. (1976); and the first two volumes (1977 and 1981) of Franois Souchal, French Sculptors of the 17th and 18th Centuries, must also be mentioned. For 18th-century France, the sections by Michael Levey on sculpture in Michael Levey and Wend Graf Kalnein, Art and Architecture of the Eighteenth Century in France (1972), are excellent. For English sculpture, see the admirable account in Margaret Whinney, Sculpture in Britain: 15301830 (1964). For Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, see Kubler and Soria (above); Harold E. Wethey, Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru (1949, reprinted 1971); and Pal Kelemen, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America (1951). Neoclassicism and the 19th century An excellent general account of Neoclassicism, which includes much of value on sculpture, is Hugh Honour, Neoclassicism (1977). For England, see David G. Irwin, English Neoclassical Art (1966); Benedict Read, Victorian Sculpture (1982); Susan Beattie, The New Sculpture (1983); and Whinney (above). For France and Italy, see Gerard Hubert, La Sculpture dans l'Italie Napolonienne (1964); Jane Van Nimmen and Ruth Mirolli, Nineteenth Century French Sculpture (1971), an admirable introduction; and Peter Fusco and H.W. Janson (eds.), The Romantics to Rodin (1980), also a good introduction. A superb general introductionperhaps the only truly comprehensive oneto Western sculpture of the 19th century is H.W. Janson's contribution to Robert Rosenblum and H.W. Janson, Art of the Nineteenth Century (1984; U.S. title, 19th Century Art). Modern There are numerous general introductions to modern art, but most give little space to sculpture. The best books devoted to modern sculpture are Albert E. Elsen, Modern European Sculpture: 19181945 (1979); Herbert Read, A Concise History of Modern Sculpture (1964); and Fred Licht, Sculpture: 19th and 20th Centuries (1967). Some recent developments are described in Allen Kaprow, Assemblage: Environments and Happenings (1966); and Udo Kultermann, The New Sculpture (1968; originally published in German, 1967). For a prominent sculptor's compelling but contentious account of what sculpture consists of, see William Tucker, The Language of Sculpture (1977). Nicholas B. Penny Ancient Greek Greek art no doubt owed much indirectly to the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization (now known in its later stages to have been Greek), which disintegrated at the end of the 2nd millennium BC, partly under the impact of a series of invasions from the Balkans. The period covered by this section, however, begins about 900 BC with the kaleidoscopic rearrangement of invaders and earlier inhabitants into a new pattern, which was followed by a steady artistic developmentcontinuing without interruption down to the conquest of Greece by Rome in 146 BC. Even this diverted, rather than interrupted, the flow, and Greek artists continued to be predominant under the Roman Empire and beyond that into the Byzantine. But after Greece had become a Roman province, Greek art fell increasingly under the patronage of Romans and was devoted either to expressing Roman ideals or to reproducing older works of art. It is therefore reasonable to regard the later years of the 1st century BC, when the Roman Empire was forming, as the later limit of the period. Within this period it is convenient to distinguish five stages of development. Their names are modern and arbitrary; the divisions between them are not equally sharp and do not apply equally to all parts of the Greek world, but they serve as a general guide to successive trends. The first is the Geometric period (so-called from the rectilinear character of its art) from about 900 to about 800 BC, when Greece was self-contained and contact with the outside world was rare. The second, the Orientalizing period, for about a century and a half from 800 BC, is one of contact with the East, a contact that had been broken by the upheavals at the end of the 2nd millennium. The third period, the Archaic, from about 650 to about 480 BC, is characterized by the gradual absorption of Oriental elements and the rise and development of archaic Greek art. The fourth period, from about 480 to about 330 BC, is known as the Classical; its beginning is marked by the rise of the sculptors Myron, Phidias, and Polyclitus and the painter Polygnotus, and its end, by the work of Scopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippus. (The word classical, which originally meant simply first-class, can also be used either in a narrower sense than this to denote only the Phidian agei.e., 50 years in the middle of the 5th century BCor in a broader sense to cover the whole of post-Mycenaean Greek art from Geometric to late Roman.) The fifth period is the Hellenistic, from about 330 BC, when the conquests of Alexander the Great opened new areas to the Greeks and the division of his kingdom among his Greek successors after his death in 323 diffused Greek art over the greater part of the known world, down to the late 1st century BC. Hellenistic symbolism and Hellenistic technical skill continued as living traditions under the Romans. Statues were of limestone, marble, bronze, gold and ivory, terra-cotta, and wood. After the Archaic period the use of wood and of limestone seems to have been rare, as was the use of terra-cotta for statues of large size, although it should be noted that sculpture in the first and last of these materials tended to be ephemeral. The group of Orpheus and the two harpies that was restored at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, in the 1980s is astonishing not only for its quality but also for its size, and yet many other such figures may have been produced. Full-size statues of gold and ivory were rare at all times because of their cost; statues with gilded wooden bodies and marble extremities were sometimes made instead. For statuettes, ivory and amber, limestone, marble, wood, gold, silver, bronze, and terra-cotta were used; of these, terra-cotta was by far the most common, bronze and marble less so, and the rest rare. Extremely valuable because they can often be dated with accuracy are the types of sculpture used for the decoration of buildings: acroteria (i.e., figures on the tops or ends of gables); figures in the low triangular field of the pediment under the gable (both of these are usually almost in the round); sculptured panels (metopes) of the Doric frieze, which are usually in high or very high relief; and the continuous Ionic frieze, which is usually in low relief. Of the many thousands of statues produced during the period in which Greek art flourished, not more than a few dozen survive, and those mostly mutilated. Knowledge of the history of Greek sculpture depends partly on these and partly on the architectural sculpturesboth of high importance, since they are original. Much can also be learned about the general development of sculptural style from the small bronzes, often of very high quality, and from the terra-cottas. Of the small bronzes many, and of the terra-cottas very many, have survived, but they were made by independent artists and did not copy contemporary statues closely. The great bulk of evidence comes from copies made by Greeks, for Roman patrons, of originals now destroyed. Such evidence is invaluable but not entirely reliable. There is also literary evidence, but much of this is also second-hand or dates from long after the period in which the sculptures in question were made. The Geometric period In the 9th century BC Greece was settling down again after upheavals and migrations both into and out of the mainland. It seems that invaders from the north brought with them the germs of an artistic style that developed into the Greek Geometric tradition. In addition to the pottery, the Geometric period produced some terra-cottas and many small bronzes. The bronzes tended to be flat at first but became more solid and less angular as casting direct from wax models superseded cutting from bronze plates. Birds and other animals, especially horses, were popular and often admirably done; men, perhaps because their form commanded less imaginative interest, were not so successfully rendered; in the later stages of geometric art, groups of some complexity were attempteda doe with her fawn, a man fighting (or greeting) a centaur, even a lion hunt complete with dogs. Bernard Ashmole The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica Gothic The difficulty with many anatomies of Gothic art is that they become involved in attributing a meaning to Gothic that it is incapable of sustaining. It is not, for one thing, a medieval word; instead, it is an invention of the 16th century attributed, as it were, posthumously, by historians after the Gothic style had been trampled into virtual insensibility by the Italian Renaissance. The word refers to the Teutonic tribes who were thought to have destroyed Classical Roman art and were thus considered barbarians. But nobody in the 13th century thought of himself as Gothic. The fact is that the literature of art criticism is virtually nonexistent in the Middle Ages. Certainly people talked about art, patrons valued it, connoisseurs appraised it. But the terms in which this was done must now, for the most part, be a matter of speculation or imagination. There was not necessarily anything mysterious about this. It is common to suppose that medieval discussions on art were infused with a degree of spirituality. This is probably mistaken. There is, for instance, little that is spiritual about financing the building of a gigantic cathedral. It is certain that clergymen preached sermons about art, giving it a spiritual and symbolic interpretation. It is also true that, since a large proportion of art served a religious function, artists were, in some sense, servants of God. But they were also the servants of far more worldly considerations, such as earning a living or achieving a reputation, and these should never be discounted in any imaginative re-creation of the medieval artist's existence. Early Gothic Throughout this period, as in the Romanesque period, the best sculptors were extensively employed on architectural decoration. The most important agglomerations of figure work to survive are on portals, and, in this, once again, the church of Saint-Denis assumes great significance. The western portals (built 113740), part of a total facade design, combined features that remained common throughout the Gothic period: a carved tympanum (the space within an arch and above a lintel or a subordinate arch); carved surrounding figures set in the voussoirs, or wedge-shaped pieces, of the arch; and more carved figures attached to the sides of the portal. As it survives, Saint-Denis is disappointing; the side figures have been destroyed and the remainder heavily restored. The general effect is now more easily appreciated on the west front of Chartres cathedral. French early Gothic architectural sculpture. (Top) Figures from the Old Testament, centre If one compares the portals here (c. 114050) with those of early 13th-century Reims, one can see that the general direction of the changes in this early period of Gothic sculpture was toward increased realism. The movement toward realism is not manifest in a continuous evolution, however, but in a series of stylistic fashions, each starting from different artistic premises and achieving sometimes a greater degree of realism but sometimes merely a different sort of realism. The first of these fashions can be seen in the sculpture on the west front of Chartres. That the Christ and the Apostle figures are in some sense more human than the Romanesque apparitions at Vzelay and Autun (c. 1130) need hardly be argued. That the figures, with their stylized gestures and minutely pleated garments, are at all real is doubtful. That their forms are closely locked to the architectural composition is clear. The features of the Chartres sculpture had a wide distribution; they are found, for example, at Angers, Le Mans, Bourges, and Senlis cathedrals. There are stylistic connections with Burgundy and also with Provence. The fashion lasted from c. 1140 to 1180. French early Gothic architectural sculpture. (Top) Figures from the Old Testament, centre The centre of development for the second style lay in the region of the Meuse. The activity of one of the chief artists, a goldsmith called Nicholas of Verdun, extends at least from the so-called Klosterneuburg altar (1181) into the early years of the 13th century. His style is characterized by graceful, curving figures and soft, looping drapery worked in a series of ridges and troughs. From these troughs is derived the commonly used German term for this styleMuldenstil. This drapery convention is essentially a Greek invention of the 4th century BC. It seems likely that Nicholas seized the whole figure style as a tool to be used in the general exploration of new forms of realism. It remained extremely popular well into the 13th century. A rather restrained version of the style decorated the main portals of the transepts (the transversal part of a cruciform church set between the nave and the apse or choir) of Chartres (c. 120010). It is also found in the earliest sculpture (c. 121225) of Reims cathedral and in the drawings of the Sketchbook of Villard de Honnecourt (c. 1220). In the opening years of the 13th century yet another type of realism emerged. It seems to have originated at Notre-Dame, Paris (c. 1200), and to have been based on Byzantine prototypes, probably of the 10th century. The looping drapery and curving figures were abandoned; instead, the figures have a square, upright appearance and are extremely restrained in their gestures. Figures in this style are found at Reims, but the major monument is the west front (c. 122030) of Amiens cathedral. Styles of realism in portal sculpture in France. (Top) Statue of Christ (Le Beau Once again, the style changed. On the west front of Reims worked a man called after his most famous figure, the Joseph Master. Working in a style that probably originated in Paris c. 1230, he ignored the restraint of Amiens and the drapery convolutions of the Muldenstil and produced (c. 1240) figures possessing many of the characteristics retained by sculpture for the next 150 years: dainty poses and faces and rather thick drapery hanging in long V-shaped folds that envelop and mask the figure. Another aspect of this quest for realism was the spasmodic fashion throughout the 13th century for realistic architectural foliage decoration. This resulted in some astonishingly good botanical studiesat Reims cathedral, for example. The effects elsewhere in Europe of this intense period of French experiment were as piecemeal and disjointed as the effects of the architectural changes. In England, the concept of the Great Portal, with its carved tympanum, voussoirs, and side figures, was virtually ignored. The remains of a portal the style of which may be connected with Sens cathedral survive from St. Mary's Abbey, York, England (c. 1210). Rochester cathedral (c. 1150) has carved side figures, and Lincoln cathedral (c. 1140) once had them. The major displays of English early Gothic sculpture, however, took quite a different form. The chief surviving monument is the west front of Wells cathedral (c. 122540), where the sculpture, while comparing reasonably well in style with near-contemporary French developments, is spread across the upper facade and hardly related at all to the portal. German Gothic sculpture. Bamberg Horseman, possibly a king or emperor, Bamberg In Germany, the story is similar. On the border between France and Germany stands Strasbourg, the cathedral of which contains on its south front some of the finest sculpture of the period (c. 1230). A very fine and delicate version of the Muldenstil, it comes reasonably close to the best transept sculpture of Chartres. But it differs in two important respects. Predictably, its architectural framework is entirely different; and it has the slightly shrill emotional character, common in German art, that represents an effort to involve and move the spectator. Shrill emotionalism is again found at Magdeburg cathedral in a series of Wise and Foolish Virgins (c. 1245) left over from some abandoned sculptural scheme. Influenced by Reims rather than Chartres, the sculpture of Bamberg cathedral (c. 123035) is a heavier version of the Muldenstil than that at Strasbourg. Ekkehard and Uta, statues from the west choir of Naumburg cathedral, Germany, But of all this German work, by far the most interesting complex is in the west choir (c. 1250) of Naumburg cathedral. Here, the desire for dramatic tension is exploited to good effect, since the figuresa series of lay founders in contemporary costumeare given a realistic place in the architecture, alongside a triforium gallery. Naumburg also has a notable amount of extremely realistic foliage carving. It is hard to say what a French mason would have made of this English and German work. With the major Spanish work of the period, however, he would have felt instantly at home. Burgos cathedral has a portal (1230s) that is very close to the general style of Amiens, and its layout is also, by French standards, reasonably conventional. Modern sculpture 19th-century beginnings The origins of modern art are usually traced to the mid-19th-century rejection of Academic tradition in subject matter and style by certain artists and critics. Painters of the Impressionist school that emerged in France in the late 1860s sought to free painting from the tyranny of the subject and to explore the intrinsic qualities of colour, brushwork, and form. This expansive notion of visual rendering had revolutionary effects on sculpture as well. The French sculptor Auguste Rodin found in it a new basis for life modelling and thus restored to the art a stylistic integrity that it had hardly possessed for more than two centuries. The Gates of Hell, bronze cast of original sculpture by Auguste Rodin. In the Rodin's highly naturalistic early work, The Age of Bronze (1877), is effective because the banal studio pose of a man leaning on a staff produced an unconventional and expressive gesture when the staff was removed. From Honor Daumier, Rodin had learned the bold modelling of surfaces that are emotive rather than literal; the statue is only a rough approximation that avoids the definitive finish of earlier sculpture and remains in a state of becoming. Eventually, Rodin even worked with mere fragments such as broken torsos, and he enormously enlarged the range of figure composition. The mass, until then the principal vehicle of sculptural composition, was explosively opened by these methods; in contrast to earlier sculpture, which depended on the interplay of solid and void, Rodin's works are fused with the surrounding space. These methods evolved in his many works, such as Adam (1880), Eve (1881), and others, originally conceived as a part of the masterpiece of modern sculpture, The Gates of Hell, undertaken by Rodin in 1880 and never really completed. It was inevitable that the translucent nature of the marble surface should engage the attention of Rodin, and even though he always prepared the models in clay and left the execution in stone to assistants, such marbles as The Kiss (1885), when properly exhibited with light partly from the rear, appear to glow with the incandescence of their passionate intensity. Joseph Hudnut James Holderbaum Although the art of Rodin appears conservative in comparison to the painting of the time, in that he continued to use literary themes while painting did not, the new style that he evolved did much to revive sculpture's significance as an expressive medium, and his importance to 20th-century sculpture can hardly be overestimated. His fresh search and revelation of the basic movements of modern life had a profound influence on the generation of European sculptors who followed him. The Little 14-Year-Old Dancer, bronze sculpture with muslin skirt and satin hair Young Girl with a Sheaf, bronze sculpture by Camille Claudel, c. 1890; in the Among Rodin's contemporaries, Edgar Degas, whose sculpture, begun in the 1880s, was an intimate study of movement and light, in several respects predicts 20th-century developments. Camille Claudel studied and worked with Rodin; her works are in the same style as his, and it is probable that she not only inspired but also collaborated on several of his most important works in the 1880s and '90s. Rodin's Italian counterpart, Medardo Rosso, lived in Paris during the 1880s; his work was known and owned by Rodin. Less gifted than Rodin but interested in the same problems, Rosso used wax in such a way that light was suffused through sensitively modelled portraits, and labile forms were created to express the flux that he felt was a condition of modern life. In Italy Rosso influenced Arturo Martini and through him Giacomo Manz, Marino Marini, and Alberto Viani. The 20th century Paulette, sculpture by Charles Despiau, 1910; in the National Museum of Modern Art, The ablest of Rodin's many pupils were mile-Antoine Bourdelle and Charles Despiau. Bourdelle's Hrakls Archer (1910) is an attempt to continue Rodin's active postures; but the results are melodramatic, and the forms are heavy and less sensitively modelled. Despiau, who was director of Rodin's shop from 1907 to 1914, also responded to the interest in Classicism; his best work, Girl from the Landes (1904), was a balance of individual traits in the Rodin tradition, combined with graceful poses and well-rounded forms. Seated Youth, statue by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, 1918; in the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Museum, Two of the many other young sculptors attracted to Paris by Rodin's fame were Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Constantin Brancusi. Lehmbruck's early work has the soft modelling by touches of clay characteristic of the time, as in his Mother and Child (1907) and Bust of a Woman (1910). Brancusi's Sleeping Muse (1908) and the small Bust of a Boy with Head Inclined (1907) reflect Rodin's later interests in the expressiveness of modelling as opposed to strenuous gesture. Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were also early disciples of Rodin, as was Jacob Epstein, particularly in his naturalistic and psychologically incisive portraits. Neoclassical and Romantic sculpture Neoclassicism The 18th-century arts movement known as Neoclassicism represents both a reaction against the last phase of the Baroque and, perhaps more importantly, a reflection of the burgeoning scientific interest in classical antiquity. Archaeological investigations of the classical Mediterranean world offered to the 18th-century cognoscenti compelling witness to the order and serenity of Classical art and provided a fitting backdrop to the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. Newly discovered antique forms and themes were quick to find new expression. The successful excavations contributed to the rapid growth of collections of antique sculptures. Foreign visitors to Italy exported countless marbles to all parts of Europe or employed agents to build up their collections. The accessibility of the sculpture of antiquity, in museums and private houses and also through engravings and plaster casts, had a far-reaching formative influence on 18th-century painting and sculpture. The great majority of ancient sculptures collected were Roman, although many of them were copied from Greek originals and were believed to be Greek. In the writing of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, the great German historian of ancient art, Greek art had been considered immeasurably superior to Roman. It is curious, however, how little positive influence the marbles that Lord Elgin took to England from the Parthenon in Athens had on sculpture in western Europe, although they had a great influence on scholars. The ideals of Neoclassical sculptureits emphasis on clarity of contour, on the plain ground, on not rivalling painting either in the imitation of aerial or linear perspective in relief or of flying hair and fluttering drapery in freestanding figureswere chiefly inspired by theory and by Roman neo-Attic works, or indeed by Roman pseudo-Archaic art. The latter class of art exerted an influence on John Flaxman, who was enormously admired for the severe style of his engravings and relief carvings. Decorum and idealization Academic theorists, especially those of France and Italy during the 17th century, argued that the costume, details, and setting of a work be as accurate as possible when representing a period and place in the historical past. The 18th century and, in particular, the Neoclassicists inherited this theory of decorum and, enabled by all the newly available archaeological evidence, implemented it more fully than had any of their precursors. Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix, marble sculpture by Antonio Canova, 180507. A series of monuments to 18th- and early 19th-century generals and admirals of the Napoleonic Wars in St. Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey demonstrate an important Neoclassical problem: whether a hero or famous person should be portrayed in Classical or contemporary costume. Many sculptors varied between showing the figures in uniform and showing them completely naked. The concept of the modern hero in antique dress belongs to the tradition of academic theory, exemplified by the English painter Sir Joshua Reynolds in one of his Royal Academy Discourses: The desire for transmitting to posterity the shape of modern dress must be acknowledged to be purchased at a prodigious price, even the price of everything that is valuable in art. Even the living hero could be idealized completely naked, as in two colossal standing figures of Napoleon (180811; Apsley House, London, and Brera, Milan) by the Italian sculptor Antonio Canova. One of the most famous of Neoclassical sculptures is Canova's Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix (180507; Borghese Gallery, Rome). She is shown naked, lightly draped, and reclining sensuously on a couch, both a charming contemporary portrait and an idealized antique Venus. Roman and Early Christian There are many ways in which the term ancient Roman art can be defined, but here, as commonly elsewhere, it is used generally to describe what was produced throughout the part of the world ruled or dominated by Rome until around AD 500, including Jewish and Christian work that is similar in style to the pagan work of the same period. Veii Apollo, clay statue, c. 500 BC. In the Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia, The Romans were always conscious of the superiority of the artistic traditions of their neighbours. Such works of art as were made in or imported into Rome during the periods of the monarchy and the early republic were produced almost certainly by Greek and Hellenized Etruscan artists or by their imitators from the cities of central Latium; and throughout the later republican and the imperial epochs many of the leading artists, architects, and craftsmen had Greek names and were Greek, or at any rate Greek-speaking. References in ancient literature and signatures of artists preserved in inscriptions leave no doubt on this point. According to tradition, the earliest image of a god made in Rome dated from the 6th century BC period of Etruscan domination and was the work of Vulca of Veii. A magnificent terra-cotta statue of Apollo found at Veii may give some notion of its character. In the 5th, 4th, and 3rd centuries BC, when Etruscan influence on Rome was declining and Rome's dominion was spreading through the Italian peninsula, contacts with Greek art were no longer chiefly mediated via Etruria but, instead, were made directly through Campania and Magna Graecia; paintings and idealizing statues of gods and worthies mentioned in literature as executed in the capital during this period were clearly the works of visiting or immigrant Greek artists. The plundering of Syracuse and Tarentum at the end of the 3rd century BC marked the beginning of a flow of Greek art treasures into Rome that continued for several centuries and played a leading role in the aesthetic education of the citizens. Literature shows that by the middle of the 2nd century BC the Roman forum was thronged with honorific statues of Roman magistrates, which, although none of them has survived, may be assumed to have been carved or cast by Greeks because no native Roman school of sculptors of that time is known. And it is significant that the earliest account of Roman realistic portraits of private individuals is contained in the Greek historian Polybius' description of ancestral imagines (masks) displayed and worn at patrician funeralsa description written about the middle of the 2nd century BC, when the tide of Greek artistic influence was sweeping into Rome and Italy from countries east of the Adriatic, where a highly realistic late-Hellenistic portrait art, which sometimes depicted Roman or Italian subjects, had already blossomed. The first appearance of three art forms that expressed the Roman spirit most eloquently in sculpture can be traced to the Hellenistic Age. These forms are realistic portraiture showing a preference for the ordinary over the heroic or legendary, in which every line, crease, wrinkle, and even blemish was ruthlessly recorded; a continuous style in narrative art of all types; and a three-dimensional rendering of atmosphere, depth, and perspective in relief work and painting. Of these three art forms there is no evidence in the early art of pre-Hellenistic central Italy; and it would be safe to guess that, if Rome had not met them in the homelands of Greek art, it would never have evolved them in its great art of imperial times. But Rome's own contributions to art, if of a different order, were vitally important. Its historical aims and achievements furnished late Hellenistic artists with a new setting and centre, new subjects, new stimuli, a new purpose, and a new dignity. Rome provided the external circumstances that enabled architects, sculptors, painters, and other craftsmen to exploit on a much more extensive scale than before artistic movements initiated in the Hellenistic world, and Rome became a great new patron of art and a great new wellspring of inspiration and ideas. The last century of the Republic Roman marble portraits of the Republic. (Top) Head of an elderly veiled man, c. Ancestral imagines, or funerary masks, made of wax or terra-cotta, had become extremely individualized and realistic by the middle of the 2nd century BC. The source of this realism is in the impact on Rome of late-Hellenistic iconography; although this use of masks was rooted in ancient Roman social and religious practice, there is no basis for a belief that the Romans and Etruscans had, from early times, been in the habit of producing death masks proper, cast directly from the features of the dead. It was undoubtedly their funerary customs that predisposed the Romans to a taste for portraits; but it was not until around 100 BC that realistic portraiture, as an art in its own right, appeared in Rome as a sudden flowering, and to that time belong the beginnings of the highly realistic heads, busts, and statues of contemporary Romansin marble, stone, or bronzethat have actually survived. Coin portraits of public personages, whose names and dates are recorded, greatly assist in determining a chronological sequence of the large-scale likenesses, the earliest of which can be attributed to the period of Sulla (8279 BC). The style reached its climax in a stark, dry, linear iconographic manner that prevailed around 7565 BC and that expressed to perfection current notions of traditional Roman virtues; of this manner, a marble head of an elderly veiled man in the Vatican is an outstanding illustration. Roman marble portraits of the Republic. (Top) Head of an elderly veiled man, c. Bronze statue of an orator (Arringatore), c. 150 BC. In the Museo Shortly thereafter, an admiration for earlier phases of Greek art came into fashion in the West, and verism was toned down at the higher