HISTORY OF SCULPTURE
Prehistory
The art of our species
If Neanderthal man created any form of art, no traces of it have yet been found. But with the arrival of modern man, or Homo sapiens sapiens, the human genius for image-making becomes abundantly clear. In the recesses of caves, people begin to decorate the rock face with an important theme in their daily lives, the bison and reindeer which are their prey as Ice Age hunters. And sculptors carve portable images of another predominant interest of mankind - the swelling curves of the female form, emphasizing the fertility on which the survival of the tribe depends.
The sculptor of the Willendorf Venus, scraping away with a flint tool at his fragment of limestone, is not engaging in what we would call art. His tiny but profoundly convincing fertility goddess is a religious object. An encampment of mammoth hunters at Gagarino, in the Ukraine, has yielded many such figures. The huts of the Gagarino hunters even have niches in the walls, or little shrines, to accomodate them.
There is no element here of the originality which has often been treasured in more sophisticated societies.
Early civilizations
The Egyptian style: from 3100 BC
By this means, it has to be admitted, the artist is able to tackle each separate feature from the easiest angle. It is a convenient convention, and it is used both in paintings and in low-relief sculptures. Often the two are combined, with paint applied to the lightly sculpted figures.
In the great temple of Ramses II at Thebes, for example, one image shows his queen, Nefertari, being gently taken by the hand by the goddess Isis. The inscription says: 'Words spoken by Isis - Come, great king's wife Nefertari, beloved of Mut, without fault, that I may show thee thy place in the sacred world'. Similarly helpful paintings are later buried with rich Egyptians in the standard form of Papyrus scroll known as the Book of the Dead - introduced in the New Kingdom, from the 16th century BC..
The king holds his defeated enemy by the hair and threatens to strike him. The smaller figure on the left carries the king's sandals. He is smaller not because he is further away, but because he is inferior. Egyptian Perspective is essentially hierarchical.
Figures in the round: 3rd - 2nd millennium BC
Their painted images and their glittering eyes of quartz are so realistic that the people who eventually unearth them - in 1871 - are reported to have fled in terror.
These scribes provide a fascinating insight into the clerical methods of the time. Seated with crossed legs, the writer's brief skirt is stretched tight between his thighs. On this surface he rests his Papyrus, holding the rolled up part of the scroll in his left hand. His right hand, with pen between finger and thumb, is poised to jot down the next instruction.
The sphinx: c.2500 BC
The sphinx lies guarding the pyramids at Giza. Its face is believed to bear the features of Khafre, son of Khufu, whose own pyramid is only slightly more modest than that of his father.
Akhenaten and Nefertiti: c.1340 BC
The best known are the various heads of Akhenaten's wife, Nefertiti. One in particular (now in Berlin) has become perhaps the most famous of ancient Egyptian sculptures.
As a result he is now, more than 3000 years later, the best known of the pharaohs. The tomb, when finally opened, proves to be an astonishing treasure trove of Egyptian artefacts. The young man is Tutankhamen (see the Tomb of Tutankhamen).
But the jumble of goods in this treasure trove also includes solid gold heads of the king inlaid with precious stones, full-length figures of him in various guises, dramatic and life-like animals, detailed alabaster boats and spectacular reliefs on a gilt shrine, together with countless other objects which demonstrate both the artistry and the technical skill of Egyptian sculpture.
Abu Simbel: c.1250 BC
At Abu Simbel a sloping sandstone rock rises high above the Nile. Ramses' sculptors and labourers are given the task of hacking into the rock face - to expose first four colossal seated statues of the pharaoh himself (each some 65 ft high), to be followed, as they cut further back, by the flat facade against which these great sculptures are to be seen.
When the work is finally done, three connecting chambers recede behind this door - together stretching 185 ft into the hillside. A corridor through the first great hall is formed by four pairs of pillars, left in place to support the rock above. Each pillar, 30 ft high, is carved as a standing image of Ramses in Nubian dress.
A second chamber leads on into the third and inner sanctuary where Ramses sits as a god beside Amen-re. On two days of the year, February 22 and October 22, the rays of the rising sun penetrate to the very back of the temple to fall upon these two central figures.
A major international effort organized by UNESCO saves the situation. The temple is cut from the rock and is sliced into pieces to be reassembled on the hillside above the intended level of the water. In an extraordinarily reversal of techniques, a space originally achieved by a process of scooping out is now preserved as a free-standing structure.
The marble figures of the Cyclades: 3000 BC
Here, from about 3000 BC, large numbers of marble figures are carved. Most of them are of women, and they are designed to lie flat - perhaps suggesting death, for they have been found mainly in graves. In one sense they are in the primitive tradition which begins with the Venus of willendorf. But they also develop an abstract quality which has seemed particularly attractive in our own time.
This distinctive style fades away after about 2000 BC, as the islands come under the influence of the stronger Minoan culture. But the Cyclades provide a fascinating glimpse of a primitive tradition developing into one of great sophistication - without losing its primitive conservatism.
The first American sculpture: 1200 BC
Figures of this kind, introduced by America's first civilization (that of the Olmecs at San Lorenzo and La Venta) will have a lasting influence through 2000 years of central American culture.
The chunky and uncompromising quality of these images will remain typical of much of the religious art of Mesoamerica, particularly in the region around Mexico City. It can be seen in the rain-god masks of Teotihuacan (about 2000 years ago), in the vast standing warriors at Tula (about 1000 years ago) and in the brutally severe monumental sculpture of the Aztecs (500 years ago).
One of the best-known Olmec figures in this style is the Wrestler. The man's movements may suggest morning exercises rather than anything more pugnacious, but he is an entirely believable human being.
Assyrian reliefs: 7th century BC
Mesopotamia takes the next step. Assyrian sculptors of the 7th century BC demonstrate with great conviction how a complex sense of drama and movement can be captured in stone.
Many details of this famous relief are charged with high drama. Grooms struggle to harness the king's horses, a dog strains at the leash, a lion races out of the cage opened by an attendant and another leaps at the king's chariot, to be warded off just in time by men with javelins. But the most expressive details, and perhaps the most astonishing of all images in the early history of sculpture, are the wounded lions - in particular a dying lioness.
Greece and Rome
Rival masterpieces: 5th century BC
One is the classical realism which will prevail from the Renaissance to the end of the 19th century. The other is the sculpture of Africa, distorting human features and limbs in a dramatically expressive manner. African figures in this long and vibrant tradition inspire Picasso's experiments with Cubism, which launch the mainstream of modern art.
The Nok statuettes are mainly of human subjects. Made of terracotta, they combine strong formal elements with a complete disregard for precise anatomy. Their expressive quality places them unmistakably at the start of the African sculptural tradition.
The Greek classical ideal: 5th - 4th century BC
The essential characteristic of classical Greek art is a heroic realism. Painters and sculptors attempt to reveal the human body, in movement or repose, exactly as it appears to the eye. The emphasis will be on people of unusual beauty, or moments of high and noble drama. But the technical ability to capture the familiar appearance of things is an innovation which can later be adapted to any subject.
We can acquire obliquely some idea of what has been lost. One method is through the designs on Greek vases, which survive in great numbers from the classical period. They represent a skilful and cartoon-like style of Greek drawing, and give some idea of the subjects chosen by Greek painters. But in their own time they are considered the work of craftsmen rather than artists.
This large work is presented to the temple of Apollo at Delphi by the ruler of a Greek colony in Sicily, to commemorate victory in the chariot race at the Pythian games in 477 BC.
A boy jockey, of three centuries later, suggests how well the new naturalism of the Greek sculptors will cope with movement. This bronze distillation of human vitality, in the excitement of the race, is one of the most enchanting images to survive from the ancient world.
A splendid example from the 6th century BC is the inebriated pair of dancers from the Tomb of the Lionesses, in Tarquinia.
The nude in Greek sculpture: from the 5th century BC
The earliest surviving masterpiece of this kind dates from about 480 BC. Attributed to the sculptor Kritios, it shows a young man in a completely natural stance. His weight is on one leg and hip, with the other knee flexed. The effect on the muscles under the skin, through knees and buttocks up to the gentle curve of the back, is miraculously suggested in the marble. (The same pose is later adopted by Greek sculptors for the female nude, in full-size figures of Aphrodite, the goddess of love - see Aphrodite in sculpture).
The sculpture is known only in Roman copies. Carved in marble, they need ungainly supports - such as the awkward tree trunk against which the athlete seems to lean. The lost original, cast in Bronze, needs no such encumbrances. Like the Charioteer of Delphi, this image makes heavy demands on the skills of the Greek Bronze-casters.
Sculpture as a public statement: from the 5th century BC
An army of sculptors is clearly now available for public works. The use of sculpture to adorn a community's central building will become a powerful European tradition - seen particularly in the Church sculpture of the Middle Ages.
But the type of sculpture which the Romans make particularly their own is the portrait bust. Here, too, Trajan can serve as an example.
Roman portraits and Christian ivories: 1st - 6th century AD
A bust of Trajan provides a powerful contrast. Here is a dangerous and apparently unpleasant man, depicted by the sculptor with nothing approaching normal flattery - though this may well be how a successful conqueror likes to see himself. In their portrait busts Rome's emperors seem a bunch of unscrupulous thugs (as they do also in the historical record). Nowhere in the ancient world do we feel so close to real people. Rarely has the art of sculpture been used to such devastatingly honest effect.
Its mood will greatly appeal to European princes and generals from the Renaissance onwards. But in the intervening centuries sculpture is mainly used by Christian artists for more tormented themes, whether the pain of the Crucifixion or the imagined agonies of Hell.
Meanwhile Asia has been offering great opportunities to the sculptors, in the development of Hindu and Buddhist art.
Asia and Africa
Indian sculpture: from the 3rd century BC
The presentation tends to be frontal, as though the figures are posing for the camera. From the start, among other themes, there are examples of Hindu art's most abiding image - magnificent young women, nude, full-breasted, and often in some strikingly athletic pose (as in the famous temples of Khajuraho, of about the 11th century AD). Occasionally these are just female attendants, but more often they are characters of legend.
From the 1st century AD there is a strong school of Buddhist sculpture in what is now northwest Pakistan. Known by the ancient name of Gandhara, this region is open to foreign influences arriving along the newly opened Silk road. One such influence from the west is the Roman and Greek realism in art. In Gandhara sculpture this realism is subtly combined with the local traditions of India to produce Buddhist images of an elegantly classical kind.
Buddhist sculpture: 5th - 6th century AD
Mahayana Buddhism, the variety progressing along this route, offers a range of legendary figures which provide ample opportunity for the imagination of the sculptors. Some of the settlements which develop along the road, at places such as Yün-kang (lying safely just south of the Great Wall of China), have caves which can be adorned with sculpture carved in the rock. Encouraged by the stream of pilgrims and merchants (visiting, marvelling, contributing funds), Chinese sculptors rise magnificently to the occasion.
In 1916 a local magistrate attempts to count them. He arrives at a total of 97,306 separate figures. A more recent study suggests that 142,289 may be nearer the mark.
Ife and Benin: from the 12th century AD
An unusual tradition within African sculpture is the cast-metal work done from about the 12th century in what is now southern Nigeria. It reaches a peak of perfection among the Yoruba people of Ife. Between the 12th and the 15th century life-size heads and masks, and smaller full-length figures - all of astonishing realism - are cast in brass and sometimes in pure copper (technically much more difficult). These figures have an extraordinary quiet intensity.
In fact they are made of brass, melted down from vessels and ornaments arriving on the trade routes (in 1505-7 alone, the Portuguese agent delivers 12,750 brass bracelets to Benin). The arrival of the Portuguese prompts the Benin sculptors to undertake a new style of work - brass plaques with scenes in relief, in which the Portuguese themselves sometimes feature. These plaques are nailed as decoration to the wooden pillars of the royal palace.
Europe
Romanesque: 9th - 12th century AD
The round arch is characteristic of much in Roman building - whether in their great Aqueducts and Bridges, in emperors' triumphal arches, or astride classical columns (as, for example, in the churches of Ravenna).
This tradition of sculpture, reaching its peak in the 11th and 12th century, is a delight to any but the most stern. But a very strict voice of the time, that of St Bernard, expresses outrage at these lively frivolities.
But it dates from the late 5th century - a period when the Germanic tribes are already in France, but far too early for there to be any architectural influence other than Roman in this region. This apparently Romanesque gem is pure Roman.
A favourite subject for the tympanum is the Last Judgement, particularly in churches such as Moissac or Conques on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. The theme vividly reminds the Pilgrims of the need for pious devotion; and the numerous characters (particularly the damned and their tormenting devils) provide fine opportunities for the sculptors.
Charlemagne's Chapel in aachen, with its classical columns and round striped arches, also recalls the little baptistery at Fréjus. And both are echoed in the full flowering of the Romanesque style, as seen in the 12th-century nave at Vézelay.
An innovation of architectural significance in French Romanesque relates to the Pilgrims. The ambulatory, a passage behind the altar following the curve of the apse, makes possible the addition of several small chapels to contain relics. The Pilgrims can progress in their devotions from one to another. The cluster of little curved roofs at the east end, seen from outside, becomes a characteristic feature of many a Romanesque church.
Gothic: 12th - 15th century AD
Art historians later recognize a major stylistic division within this long period. The early part becomes known as Romanesque. Gothic, losing any pejorative sense, is reserved for a style which emerges in the 12th century.
The interior gives an impression of lightness and height, with slender columns framing large tall windows and reaching up to support a delicately ribbed stone roof. The exterior is encrusted with a filigree of delicate ornament, again essentially slender and vertical, made up of a blend of elegant statues, bobbly pinnacles, the skeletal patterns of the stone tracery in the windows, and the open fretwork of Flying buttresses.
Neverthless these two features are intrinsic elements in the Gothic style. They make it possible for the building to become a lightweight skeleton of stone, into which decorative features may be inserted.
By contrast Gothic sculptures are tall and thin, reflecting the soaring vertical lines of the new style. Alcoves to each side of high cathedral porches are the favourite location for these figures. The abbey church of Romanesque is again the pioneer, but the wise and foolish virgins either side of the porch there have been much damaged and restored. Chartres offers the earliest surviving examples of Gothic sculpture.
The two most striking exterior details of Gothic cathedrals are the tall recessed porches, rising to a high peak and providing ample surfaces for sculpture; and the so-called Flying buttresses, in which the sideways thrust of a wall is contained by delicate filaments of stone (as if some masonic spider has been at work on the building).
The one great exception within the tradition is Tympanum, which needs a section of its own - for the colourful flamboyance of its churches, and the exceptional beauty of its secular buildings.
The sculptures of Chartres: AD 1150-1220
The result is an effect of ethereal calm, entirely in keeping with Gothic architecture. One of the Chartres sculptors is believed to have undertaken these figures after completing the virgins for the Porch of st denis. So the Gothic style may have been introduced almost in its entirety by Abbot suger.
Their creators are beginning to discover a natural way of treating the human figure. Later Gothic sculptors build on that achievement.
From Gothic to Renaissance: 13th - 14th century AD
From the time of the north porch of Chartres, in the early 13th century, sculptors create entirely believable people in stone - though attached, invariably, to the walls of buildings. Gradually these figures begin to detach themselves, as if moving towards a more independent existence. The statues liberated in this way are among the masterpieces of Gothic sculpture. But they are also the harbingers of the Renaissance.
A secular sculpture from the same period stands high on a platform against one of the walls of Bamberg cathedral. It depicts, in life size, an unknown emperor or king on horseback. This proud horseman is a link (or half-link, being attached on one side) between the free-standing equestrian statues of Rome and of the Renaissance.
In the following century another major step is taken in France (or more precisely the duchy of Burgundy) in the liberation of the sculpted human form.
This progression reaches its magnificent conclusion, more than a century later, in a group of Old Testament prophets carved to decorate a well in France.
Conversely, Florence exerts considerable influence on the first great French painter of the Renaissance.
The classical theme of the Renaissance is more specifically Italian. But that too is anticipated a good century and a half before Donatello.
Nicola and his pulpit for Pisa: AD 1259
Certainly this is what Nicola does when designing the reliefs for his Pisa pulpit, completed in 1259. There are plenty of ancient sarcophagi around to inspire him. His Virgin Mary, in scenes such as the Nativity or the Adoration of the Magi, is a powerfully sculpted figure. But she looks for all the world like a Roman matron.
These later pulpits of father and son have a more expressive quality. They avoid the direct, even blunt, borrowing of antique forms seen in the Pisa baptistery pulpit. Such an evident interest in the classical past will not reappear until Brunelleschi. But Nicola demonstrates that in this matter the early masters of the Renaissance cannot claim absolute priority.
Renaissance in Europe
Art and architecture in Florence: AD 1411-1430
They differ considerably in age. The architect, Brunelleschi, is the oldest. The sculptor, Donatello, is about ten years younger. The painter, Masaccio, is about fifteen years younger again, though he is by a wide margin the first to die.
His aim is to abandon entirely the medieval heritage, even if lack of historical knowledge makes the break less absolute than he intends.
These figures, profoundly significant in the story of sculpture, are commissioned by two of Florence's guilds. The linen drapers and the armourers need statues of their patron saints.
This newly discovered skill is adopted by Masaccio and becomes of absorbing interests to Renaissance artists after Alberti has described the techique in detail in his book of 1436, crediting Brunelleschi as its originator.
Donatello: AD 1411-1450
In 1411 the linen drapers commission the young Donatello, in his mid-twenties, to provide a marble statue of St Mark. In about 1415 he delivers to them the first free-standing Renaissance sculpture.
Donatello's next work for Orsanmichele, probably completed in 1417, has much more openly a classical quality. St George, a clean-shaven young man scantily clad in Roman armour, confronts the viewer with a direct look closer to the heroic quality of Greek sculpture than to the Brutal realism of Rome.
Done in about 1430, to stand in a courtyard of the Medici palace, this is the first life-size Nude sculpture since classical times. It reintroduces one of the great themes of Greek sculpture in a burst of glorious confidence, and with a new mood of wit and playfulness.
The massive composition (horse and rider together stand more than 11 feet high) harks back to the mounted statue of Marcus aurelius in Rome. This is the predecessor of every dignitary riding in bronze through the streets of modern cities, but few have the stern severity of this uncompromising soldier of fortune.
Renaissance man: 15th - 16th century AD
They are Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. The older man, Leonardo, is exceptional in that he excels in two entirely different disciplines - experimental science and the visual arts. But on the artistic side alone, Michelangelo must be the man. He creates works, all of the highest quality, in the four distinct fields of sculpture, painting, architecture and poetry.
Michelangelo the sculptor: AD 1499-1516
The precocious genius receives a commission two years later in his home city of Florence. The authorities want a marble statue of David. Michelangelo, using a vast slab of marble abandoned by another sculptor, presents the biblical hero (more than twice lifesize, about 13 feet high) as a naked youth standing with petulant confidence, sling thrown over his shoulder, before the encounter with Goliath.
Part of the reason is that Julius ii has an even more challenging task for this multi-talented artist. In 1508 he commissions Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine chapel.
Baroque
The youthful Bernini: AD 1618-1625
Two in particular break new ground. When Pluto lifts Prosperpina (Pluto and Proserpina 1621-2), his fingers, sinking with the exertion into her outer thigh, transform marble into soft flesh as never before. In Apollo and Daphne (1622-5) the fleeing Daphne, changing before our eyes into a laurel tree, seems to deny for ever the static element in sculpture. The new style of baroque has already found its greatest master.
Baroque as a style: 17th - 18th century AD
This mood is very different from the dignified and often severe masterpieces of the Renaissance. The term barocco is first used to suggest disapproval. It is thought to derive from a Portuguese word for a misshapen pearl. Certainly unbalance and excess are the qualities which baroque artists indulge in and turn to advantage.
The Catholic church by contrast enjoys an aura of centuries of authority and prestige, has long used art and music with great skill to touch the emotions of the faithful, and much prefers a good show to a good argument.
Inside a baroque church, light falls on mingling curves of columns and altars and sculpted groups, breaking up the solidity of side walls and often leading the eye up to an illusionistic ceiling - in which angels and people of fame or virtue stream upwards into the distant clouds of heaven. There is nothing half-hearted about baroque (at any rate until a slight loss of nerve in the 18th century results in the development known as rococo).
Bernini and baroque Rome: 17th century AD
The first, completed in 1633, is the vast bronze canopy held up by four twisting columns (profusely decorated with the Barberini bees, for the pope at the time is Urban viii). This structure, known as the Baldacchino, is at the very heart of the church - above the tomb of St Peter and below the dome.
Sculpted golden rays stream up from St Peter's throne towards heaven. In an extra dimension to the illusion they are joined by real rays of golden light, shining from the afternoon sun through an amber window in which the holy dove spreads his wings. This glorious blend of sculpture and architecture is achieved between 1657 and 1666.
Bernini achieves a perfect solution in the form of an open curving colonnade. The four concentric rows of columns provide covered walkways and a shape for the piazza, but they do so without closing it in - for there is no back wall. Meanwhile the balustrade above the columns is an ideal pedestal for the gesticulating stone saints who are an indispensable part of monumental baroque.
In a final theatrical touch, in this most histrionic of religious masterpieces, sculpted members of the Cornaro family watch the scene from boxes to either side.
The sumptuous central church of the Jesuits - the Gesù, completed in 1575 - is an early and influential example of the Baroque style. Its sculptural altars and painted ceilings, in which saints destroy heresy or fly heavenwards with flamboyant certainty, leave the visitor in no doubt that Rome and its brand of Christianity have recovered their confidence.
The design of the Fountain of the Four Rivers is Bernini's but most of the carving - including the figures of the four river gods - is done by others from his preparatory models. From the shock of its central concept (heavy obelisk on top of hollow rock) to its lively and often surprising details, this is a worthy secular counterpart to Bernini's Christian contribution in the shaping of Baroque Rome.
The portrait bust: 17th - 18th century AD
This is seen as much in the bust of a plump dignitary (such as his patron Cardinal Scipione Borghese) as in the delightfully fresh glimpse in marble of Bernini's mistress Costanza Buonarelli. In 1665, on a visit to France, Bernini sculpts the young Louis XIV. He manages to make even the Sun king, the very embodiment of pomposity, look human and almost amusing.
But in the next century it is France which produces the greatest masters in this difficult craft.
The greatest French master of the portrait bust, Jean-Antoine Houdon, is a generation younger than Roubiliac. From the 1770s many of the most famous faces in Europe are modelled in clay in Houdon's Paris studio. It is frequently through his view of them that they are now known to the world (Voltaire being the prime example).
At the time of Houdon's visit Washington has retired to his country estate, after winning the war against Britain. Houdon sculpts him in the guise of a similar Roman hero, Cincinnatus, who leaves his farm to save the republic of Rome from military disaster and then returns to private life. The marble statue (now in the state capitol of Virginia, in Richmond) is completed by 1788 - the year before Washington is again called from retirement, to become the new nation's first president.
18th century
Neoclassicism: 18th - 19th century AD
During the 18th century a quest for classical authenticity is undertaken with new academic vigour. There are several reasons. Archaeological sites such as Pompeii are being excavated. And interest is shifting from the Roman part of the classical heritage to the Greek.
The avant-garde greets this notion with enthusiasm. Over the next century Greek themes increasingly pervade the decorative arts. Greek porticos and colonnades grace public buildings. Greek refinement becomes the ideal for neoclassical sculptors and painters.
In architecture there has already been a strong classical revival early in the century, particularly in the Palladian movement in Britain. Robert Adam, returning from Rome in 1757 with a multitude of classical themes and motifs in his head, creates an eclectic style very much his own - in which classical severity and rococo fancy are subtly blended to satisfy his customers.By the turn of the century these pleasant fancies seem too frivolous. A more rigorously Greek style becomes the architectural fashion in many parts of Europe.
In 1802 Canova is invited by Napoleon to visit Paris, beginning an extraordinary relationship with the Bonaparte dynasty.
Many of these neoclassical artists treat their ancient themes with a wispy sentimentality, more in keeping with their own time than with Greece or Rome. This is true of the French artist who pioneers the style in the 1750s, Joseph-Marie Vien. The charge can also be laid against the most energetic neoclassical painter working in Britain, Benjamin West. But an entirely new rigour is introduced by Vien's best pupil, Jacques-Louis David.
The Bonaparte link results also in one of the most famous of all neoclassical statues. Canova sculpts the emperor's sister, Pauline Borghese, reclining naked to the waist on a chaise longue. Just as her brother is Mars, she is posing as Venus - holding in delicate fingers the apple which she has been awarded for her beauty in the judgement of Paris.
So the 19th century acquires, through neoclassicism and the Greek Revival, a conventional style of considerable vigour. Architects of important new buildings, whether churches, parliaments or banks, will now consider a sprinkling of Greek columns as one serious option. The other, resulting from another 18th-century revival, is to go Gothic.
The other most successful member of the school is a Dane, Bertel Thorvaldsen, who arrives in Rome in 1797 and is given encouragement by Canova. Twenty years later Thorvaldsen is employing some forty assistants in his Roman workshop. Even before the end of his life a museum devoted to his works is established in Copenhagen.
Africa and Oceania
African wood carving: 19th - 20th century AD
Even so, the body of art surviving to us in this tradition is immensely rich. It powerfully suggests how much has been lost.
Tribal carving is done for a clear and practical purpose. A figure may represent an ancestor, destined to stand in a shrine. A mask may be intended for use by a Shaman just once a year in a special dance. A post may be designed to prop up a chief's verandah or to form part of a palisade round his house. An elaborate chair is likely to be for the chief himself to sit on. All of them will be better if carved in a dramatic or propitious way.
The art of Oceania: 19th - 20th century AD
As in Africa, the human face and form is used in a myriad different ways to provide masks, free-standing wooden figures, or decoration for gable ends, door posts and ceremonial seats.
The reason is that the islanders had no metal tools until the first regular contact with Europeans in the 18th century. A new ease in the carving of wood made possible the lively and fantastic figures now associated with the region. The arrival of Christian missionaries brought a subsequent attempt to discourage such sculpture, linked as it usually is with a pagan world of spirits.
Tribal art and cubism: 20th century AD
His ingredients may be limited to the parts of the body, but he constantly reassembles them in new dimensions and relationships. From a central axis of eyes, nose, mouth, navel and genital organs, to the peripheral cast list of hair, ears, arms, breasts, legs and buttocks, there is no predicting which of these elements will take the starring roles in any one production. Startling imbalance is restored to balance by the force of strong design.
It is not surprising that Picasso, the most playful genius of the 20th century, is inspired by these fragmentations of dull reality to find a new direction of his own in cubism.