In the first, a young man reclines in deep sleep; a maiden bending over him is about to press her lips upon his forehead; and lovely female forms hover above him. This enchanting vision is interrupted by the calls of war. Mounted on a fiery horse, and lured on by Fame, who holds a laurel crown in her hand, he rushes into the fight, and strives to seize the prize. Unmindful of blighted hopes that may await him, his ardent imagination is nourished by the promise of glory, and he lives, in the words of the poet inscribed beside him, on “this noble food, and envies not the nectar and ambrosia of the gods.” In contrast with the dreaming youth is the dreaming maiden. Her arms thrown back support her head: her robe has fallen from her snowy bosom. Above her float figures from dreamland, and in each she sees herself in some stage of that joyous existence which her innocent imagination has pictured to her. Here she adorns her long tresses for the feast, there she coyly receives the proffered gifts of her lover. Then, a mother, she fondly clasps her infant to her breast, whilst merry laughing children dance around her, or cluster at her knee. A genius standing at her feet places his finger on his lip that no sound may disturb these happy visions, alas! too soon to fade before the bitter realities of life.
These bright dreams have passed; the stern struggle has begun; and the ardent, hoping youth has become the sober man of labour. But he, too, has his visions to cheer him in his path. He reclines by the partner of his toil, and dreams no longer of those tumultuous pleasures which once beguiled him—of glory earned and ambition fed—but of the sweeter and more lasting rewards of his own labour. He has tilled the ground and sown the seed. Two genii, in a car drawn by winged boys, bring him triumphantly the produce of the earth—fruits, corn, and flowers; and others stepping joyously before him bear the sickles and the golden sheaves new reaped.
The man of thought, in the fourth bas-relief, sees in his dream the hoped-for reward of those who toil, not with the hand but with the brain, for man’s instruction and elevation. As he bends in sleep over his tablets, Fame points heavenward, whilst the forms of the mighty dead rise before him. He is already crowned with laurel, and Homer, Virgil, Sappho, and Dante beckon him to their side. But a genius, holding the crown of thorns before him, warns him that only through the valley of grief and of suffering can he reach the glorious temple of immortality.
Such are the subjects of these sculptured idyls, as poetically conceived as they are skilfully executed. They blend harmoniously together, and by a thoughtful arrangement of the lines unite imperceptibly one with the other—a result not of easy accomplishment, and yet of essential importance to the symmetry of the vase. The themes, classic in their nature, are treated in a classic spirit, yet with none of the formality or mannerism which distinguishes and too frequently degrades the modern French school of art. The style is simple, the imitation of nature truthful yet elevated, reminding us not a little of the great Italian painters of the fifteenth century. We might particularly instance the charming group of the youth wooing the maiden in the young girl’s dream, which breathes the spirit of Lippi or of Boticelli. The draperies are well studied, yet simple, flowing, and free. In the representation of the human form, the sculptor, inspired by the exquisite beauty of the substance with which he had to deal, has been singularly happy. What could be more delicate and lovely than tie bosom of the sleeping girl, which seems to be warm with life itself; more truthful than the brawny and muscular frame of the man of labour; or more graceful and free than the form of the agile youth? The artist has dealt lovingly with a material the delicious softness and transparency of whose texture delights the eye and invites the touch. When we look upon that exquisite surface in which the poet from the earliest times has sought his description of female charms; when we watch the varying play of lights, and the clear transparent shadows; we can scarcely marvel that the greatest sculptors of old should have chosen it for the representation of those gods whose chief attribute, as exalting them above man, consisted in perfect physical beauty.
We cannot but admire the skill which M. di Triqueti has shown in the handling of his materials. He seems to have the same command over the ivory and the bronze as over marble—to understand equally well the capabilities of each. This knowledge was necessary to enable him to make his work perfect. There may be some defects in the vase which are perhaps inherent to the material. Were we disposed to criticise where there are so many beauties and so much poetry of conception, we might object to the attempt at foreshortening in some of the figures—an attempt which we believe to be wrong in principle and unknown in the best age of Greek art. The effects of shortening in painting are obtained by correct drawing and subtle gradations of colour and light and shade, means which are wanting altogether in sculpture. Of the four compositions the vision of the young girl pleases us most, on the whole, from its simplicity of arrangement and the graceful treatment of the forms, although the youth’s dream is scarcely inferior to it.
With the Cleopatra and the vase are two other ivory sculptures: a joyous laughing faun playing the cymbals, poetically conceived, and especially noticeable for the careful and truthful modelling of the human form; and a graceful group of a Cupid standing at the knee of a young girl, and whispering to her the first secrets of love, illustrating the line of Ovid:
“Nescia quid sit amor, sed et erubuisse decebat.”
It is not only the skilful execution, the difficulties overcome, and the novelty of an attempt to restore an art now almost forgotten, but the poetic imagination, the refined and graceful feeling pervading every detail, which mark these ivories as the work of a truly gifted artist. We concur in the convictions which led him to execute them, and we trust that his hopes may not be disappointed.
