Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/741

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SCUDERY SCULPTURE 715 Hope. He published "The Redeemer's Last Command," "The Harvest Perishing," "An Appeal to Mothers," "Knocking at the Door," " Passing over Jordan," " Letters to Children on Missionary Subjects," " Grandpapa and Lit- tle Mary," &c. His eight sons and two daugh- ters all became missionaries. One, the Rev. Henry Martyn Scudder, returned to America in 1864, and became pastor of a Presbyterian church in San Francisco in 1865, and of a Con- gregational church in Brooklyn in 1871. SCUDERY, or Sender!. I. Georges de, a French author, born in Havre about 1601, died in Pa- ris, May 14, 1667. After serving without dis- tinction in the army, he became known by at- tacks upon Corneille's Cid, and by his devotion to Richelieu, who had him admitted to the acad- emy, and appointed governor of a small fort- ress near Marseilles ; and in 1662 he received a pension of 600 livres. His factitious reputa- tion was increased by his name being published as the author of his sister's most celebrated works, though they were mainly written by her alone. Boileau finally destroyed the ephem- eral prestige of his plays and of his epic Ala- ric. II. Madeleine de, Mile., a French authoress, sister of the preceding, born in Havre, June 15, 1607, died in Paris, June 2, 1701. She was called "another Sappho" and a "tenth muse," although her excessive mannerism injured the h6tel Rambouillet, where she was conspicuous, and Boileau satirized her exaggerated senti- mentality. But her romances, Ibrahim (4 vols., 1641), Artamene, ou le grand Cyrus (10 vols., 1649-'53), and Clelie (10 vols., 1656 ; new ed., 1731), enjoyed great popularity on account of their delineations of contemporary characters, especially Artamene, which served as the ba- sis of Cousin's Societe francaise du 17' siecle (1858). Among her other writings are Alma- hide, ou VEtclave reine (8 vols., 1660) ; Dis- cours sur la gloire (1671), which received the first rhetorical prize ever awarded by the acad- emy; Conversations sur divers sujets (4 vols., 1680-'84) ; Conversations de morale (4 vols., 1686-'8) ; and letters which, though not col- lected, are among her brightest efforts. A se- lection from her writings appeared in 1766, and in many later editions, under the title of Esprit de Mademoiselle de Scudery ; and a memoir of her was published in Paris in 1873. SCULPIN. See BULLHEAD. SCULPTURE (Lat. sculpere, to cut out, to carve), literally, the art of cutting or carving any substance into images. The term is used generally to indicate any process by which the forms of objects are represented by solid sub- stances, and therefore includes carving, mod- elling, casting, whether in metal or other ma- terials, and gem engraving. Sculptured im- ages consist either of insulated figures or parts of figures or groups, technically called the "round;" of figures attached to a background, from which they are more or less raised, and designated according to the degeee of the " relief," as it is termed, alto rilievo, lasso ri- lievo, and mezzo rilievo ; or of figures which, without projecting from the face of the origi- nal ground, have their outlines sunk into it, and are rounded on the principles of basso rilievo. This method of working occurs chiefly in Egyp- tian sculpture, and may be termed relieved in- taglio. The materials employed by the sculp- tor include almost every substance capable of being carved, cast, or moulded. For carving, porphyry, basalt, granite, marbles of many va- rieties, alabaster, ivory, bone, and wood have been in use from a remote period, the three first named substances being those used by the Egyptians, while the Greeks and Romans worked chiefly in marble. Of the latter mate- rial, that most esteemed by the ancients was the pure white marble found in the island of Paros, and thence called Parian, next to which in quality was that procured from Mounts Pen- telicus and Hymettus in the neighborhood of Athens. The finest Italian marble was the Carrara, which still maintains its old celebrity ; but many Roman sculptors wrought from mar- bles procured in Africa. The finest marbles in modern use are from Italy. Alabaster sculp- ture is best illustrated by specimens exhumed at Nineveh. "Wood was chiefly employed in the primitive stages of the art, and the kinds most in vogue were oak, cedar, cypress, syca- more, pine, box, fig, and ebony. Few works of this description are extant, notwithstanding Pliny and other ancient authors speak of the durability of ebony, cedar, and other species. Occasionally figures for special purposes, as funeral ceremonies, were made of aromatic gums, and even of hay. For modelling, clay, stucco, plaster, and wax were used in the in- fancy of the art; and images of baked clay, known as terra cotta work, were indefinitely multiplied by means of moulds of the same material, into which the soft clay was pressed. Terra cotta was used for an infinite variety of purposes besides statuary, the objects formed from it being generally small and painted, and of a hardness, produced by the action of fire, almost equalling that of stone. The metals employed in casting are gold, silver, iron, tin, copper, lead, and their compounds. Electrum, a substance formed of one part of gold to four parts of silver, was used as remotely as the Homeric age ; but the composition called by the Greeks ^aA/tdf, by the Romans >, and by the moderns bronze, has in all ages been pre- ferred for the purposes of sculpture to any other metal, and the greater part of the an- tique statues and sculptured ornaments now extant have been formed from it. From the varieties mentioned by ancient writers, it ap j pears that many centuries before the Chris- tian era a very considerable degree of skill had been acquired in its preparation ; and the colossal proportions of many of the bronze works extant or on record point to a facility in the processes of casting not inferior to the art of modern times. Metal statues, however, were not always cast, but, in the earlier ages