of Ravenna; while the figures below the Christ are survivals
of a still older time, dating back from the best eras of classic art.
A river-god is represented as an old man holding an urn, from
which a stream issues, and a reclining female figure with an
infant and a cornucopia is the old Roman Tellus or Earth-goddess
with her ancient attributes.[1]
While the countries of the north could not altogether resist
the rising tide of Byzantinism, in Scandinavia, and to a great
extent in England, the autochthonous art was not
altogether obliterated during the early middle ages. In
England, during the Saxon period, when stone buildings
were rare and even large cathedrals were built of
Norse and Celtic influences
in England.
wood, the plastic arts were mostly confined to the use of
gold, silver, and gilt copper. The earliest existing specimens
of sculpture in stone are a number of tall churchyard crosses,
mostly in the northern provinces and apparently the work of
Scandinavian sculptors. One very remarkable example is a
tall monolithic cross, cut in sandstone, in the churchyard of
Gosforth in Cumberland. It is covered with rudely carved
reliefs, small in scale, which are of special interest as showing
a transitional state from the worship of Odin to that of Christ.
Some of the old Norse symbols and myths sculptured on it
occur modified and altered into a semi-Christian form. Though
rich in decorative effect and with a graceful outline, this sculptured
cross shows a very primitive state of artistic development,
as do the other crosses of this class in Cornwall, Ireland and
Scotland, which are mainly ornamented with those ingeniously
intricate patterns of interlacing knotwork designed so skilfully
by both the early Norse and the Celtic races.[2] They belong
to a class of art which is not Christian in its origin, though it
was afterwards largely used for Christian purposes, and so is
thoroughly national in style, quite free from the usual widespread
Byzantine influence. Of special interest from their early date—probably
the 11th century—are two large stone reliefs now in
Chichester cathedral, which are traditionally said to have come
from the pre-Norman church at Selsey. They are thoroughly
Byzantine in style, but evidently the work of some very ignorant
sculptor; they represent two scenes in the Raising of Lazarus;
the figures are stiff, attenuated and ugly, the pose very awkward,
and the drapery of exaggerated Byzantine character, with long
thin folds. To represent the eyes pieces of glass or coloured
enamel were inserted; the treatment of the hair in long ropelike
twists suggests a metal rather than a stone design.
The Romanesque period in art was essentially one of architectural activity. The spirit of the time did not encourage that individual thought which alone can produce a great development of sculpture and painting. Thus the plastic art of the 11th and 12th centuries, which was still entirely at the service and under the rule of Romanesque sculpture. the Church, was strictly confined to conventional symbols, ideas and forms. It is based, not on the study of nature, but on the late Roman reliefs. The treatment of the figures, though often rude and clumsy, and sometimes influenced by Byzantine stiffness, is on the whole dignified, solemn and serious, and bent upon the expression of the typical, and not of the individual. The tympana of the porches, the capitals of columns and the pulpits and choir-screens of the Romanesque churches, and, on a smaller scale, the ivory carvings for book-covers and portable miniature altars, provided the field for the Romanesque sculptors activity.
In Italy the strong current of hierarchal Byzantinism had never altogether supplanted the antique tradition, though the works based upon the latter, before Niccola Pisano revived for a short while the true spirit of the antique, are of almost barbaric rudeness, like the bronze gates of S. Zeno at Verona, and the stone-carving of The Last Supper on the pulpit of Italy. S. Ambrogio, in Milan. The real home of Romanesque sculpture was beyond the Alps, in Germany and France, and much of the work done in Italy during the 12th century was actually due to northern sculptors—as, for example, the very rude sculpture on the façade of S. Andrea at Pistoia, executed about 1186 by Gruamons and his brother Adeodatus,[3] or the relief by Benedetto Antelami for the pulpit of Parma cathedral of the year 1178. Unlike the sculpture of the Pisani and later artists, these early figures are thoroughly secondary to the architecture they are designed to decorate; they are evidently the work of men who were architects first and sculptors in a secondary degree. After the 13th century the reverse was usually the case, and, as at the west end of Orvieto cathedral, the sculptured decorations are treated as being of primary importance—not that the Italian sculptor-architect ever allowed his statues or reliefs to weaken or damage their architectural surroundings, as is unfortunately the case with much modern sculpture. In southern Italy, during the 13th century, there existed a school of sculpture resembling that of France, owing probably to the Norman occupation. The pulpit in the cathedral of Ravello, executed by Nicolo di Bartolommeo di Foggia in 1272, is an important work of this class; it is enriched with very noble sculpture, especially a large female head crowned with a richly foliated Coronet, and combining lifelike vigour with largeness of style in a very remarkable way. The bronze doors at Monreale (by Barisanus of Trani), Pisa and elsewhere are among the chief works of plastic art in Italy during the 12th century. The history of Italian sculpture of the best period is given to a great extent in the separate articles on the Pisani and other Italian artists. Here it suffices to say that sculpture never became as completely subservient to architecture, as it did in the north, and that with Giovanni Pisano the almost classic repose and dignity of his father Niccola’s style gave way—probably owing to northern influences—to an increased sense of life and freedom and dramatic expression. Niccola stands at the close of the Romanesque, and Giovanni on the threshold of the Gothic period. During the 13th century Rome and the central provinces of Italy produced very few sculptors of ability, almost the only men of note being the Cosmati.
The power acquired by Germany under the Saxon emperors; upon whom had descended the mantle of the Roman Caesars was the chief reason that led to the great development of Romanesque art in Germany. It is true that, in the 11th century, Byzantine influences stifled the spontaneous naïveté of the earlier work; but about the German bronze work. end of the 12th century a new free and vital art arose, based upon a better understanding of the antique, and fostered by the rise of feudalism and the prosperity of the cities. Next in importance to the numerous examples of German Romanesque ivory carvings are the works in bronze, in the technique of which the German craftsmen of the pre-Gothic period stand unrivalled. This is seen in the bronze pillar reliefs and other works, notably the bronze gates of Hildesheim Cathedral, produced by Bishop Bernward (d. 1022) after his visit to Rome. Hildesheim, Cologne and the whole of the Rhine provinces were the most active seats of German sculpture, especially in metal, till the rzth century. Many remarkable pieces of bronze sculpture were produced at the end of that period, of which several specimens exist. The bronze font at Liége, with figure-subjects in relief of various baptismal scenes from the New Testament, by Lambert Patras of Dinant, cast about 1112, is a work of most wonderful beauty and perfection for its time; other fonts in Osnabrück, by Master Gerhard, and Hildesheim cathedrals are surrounded by spirited reliefs, fine in conception, but inferior in beauty to those on the Liége font. Fine bronze candelabra exist in the abbey church of Combourg and at Aix-la-Chapelle,
- ↑ On early and medieval sculpture in ivory consult Gori, Thesaurus veterum diplychorum (Florence, 1759); Westwood, Diptychs of Consuls (London, 1862); Didron, Images ouvrantes du Louvre (Paris, 1871); William Maskell, Ivories in the South Kensington Museum (London, 1872 & 1875); Wieseler, Diptychon Quirinianum zu Brescia (Göttingen, 1868); Wyatt and Oldfield, Sculpture in Ivory (London, 1856); Alfred Maskell, Ivories (London, 1905), one of the best treatises in the English language; E. Molinier, Les Ivoires; Die Elfenbeinbilder (Berlin Museum, 1903).
- ↑ See O’Neill, Sculptured Crosses of Ireland (London, 1857).
- ↑ The other finest examples of this early class of sculpture exist at Pisa, Parma, Modena and Verona; in most of them the old Byzantine influence is very strong.
