FLORIN WEBSITE
© JULIA
BOLTON HOLLOWAY, AUREO ANELLO
ASSOCIAZIONE, 1997-2024
MEDIEVAL: BRUNETTO
LATINO, DANTE
ALIGHIERI, SWEET NEW
STYLE: BRUNETTO
LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, &
GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN:
WHITE
SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH'
CEMETERY || ELIZABETH
BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER
SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES
TROLLOPE || || HIRAM POWERS
|| ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE IN
SEPIA || CITY
AND BOOK CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
I, II, III, IV, V, VI,
VII
|| MEDIATHECA
'FIORETTA MAZZEI' || EDITRICE
AUREO
ANELLO CATALOGUE
|| FLORIN
WEBSITE || UMILTA
WEBSITE || LINGUE/LANGUAGES:
ITALIANO,
ENGLISH
|| VITA
New: Dante vivo || White Silence
Transcribed from The Atlantic Monthly 5:27
(1860), 1-6.
OUR ARTISTS IN
ITALY
HIRAM POWERS
Longworth
Powers, Carte de visite
of his father, Hiram Powers
Photograph
of
Hiram
Powers,
with sculpture, manuscript diary of Susan Horner, British
Institute of Florence
Preston
Powers:
Tomb for Lily Nye; Tomb for Hiram Powers
Antique
Art, beside affording a standard by which the modern may be
measured, has the remarkable property - giving it a higher
value - of testing the genuineness of the Art-impulse.
Even to genius, that is, to
the artist, a true Art-life is difficult of attainment. In the
midst of illumination, there is the mystery: the subjective
mystery, out of which issue the germs - like seeds floated
from unknown shores - of his imaginings; the objective
mystery, which yields to him, through obvious, yet unexplained
harmonies, the means of manifestation.
Behind the consciousness is
the power; behind the power, that which gives it worth and
occupation.
To the artist definite
foresight is denied. His life is full of surprises at new
necessities. When the present demand shal have been fulfilled,
what shall follow? Shall it be Madonna, or Laocoon? His errand is like
that of the commander who bears sealed instructions: and he
may drift for years, ere he knows wherefore. Thorwaldsen
waited, wandering by the Tiber a thousand days - then in one,
uttered his immortal 'Night'.
Not even the severest
self-examination will enable one in whom the Art-impulse
exists to understand thoroughly its aim and uses; yet to
approximate a clear perception of his own nature and that of
the art to which he is called is one of his first duties. What
he is able to do, required to do, and permitted to do, are
questions of vital importance.
Possession of himself, of
himself in the highest, will alone enable the student in Art
to solve the difficulties of his position. His habitual
consciousness must be made up of the noblest of all that has
been revealed to it; otherwise those fine intuitions, akin to
the ancient inspirations, through whose aid genius is informed
of its privileges, are impossible.
Therefore the foremost
purpose of an artist should be to claim and take possession of
self. Somewhere within is his inheritance, and he must not be
hindered of it. Other men have other gifts . gifts bestowed
under different conditions, and subject in a great degree to
choice. Talent is not fastidious. It is an instrumentality,
and its aim is optional with him who possessit. Genius is
exquisitely fastidious, and the man whom it possesses must
live in life, or no life.
In view of these
considerations, the efforts of an artist to assume his true
position must be regarded with earnest interest, and
importance must be attached to that which aids him in
attaining to his true plane.
Such aid may be, and is,
derived from the influences of Italy. Of those agencies which
have a direct influence upon the action of the artist, which
serve to assist him in manifesting his idea and fulfilling his
purpose, mention will be made in connection with the works
which have been produced in Italian studios. They have less
importance than that great element related to the innermost of
the artist's life, - to that power of which we have spoken,
making Art-action necessary.
It is not, however,
exclusively antique Art which exercises this power of
elevation. Ancient Art may be a better term; as all great Art
bears a like relation to the student. In Florence the medieval
influences predominate. Rome exercises its power through the
medium of the antique.
There is much Christian Art
in Rome. Yet its effect is insignificant, compared with that
of the vast collection of Greek sculptures sculptures to be
found within its wals. Instinctively, as the vague yearnings
and prophecies of youth lift him in whom they quicken away
from youth's ordinary purposes and associations, his thought
turns to that fair city where are gathered the achievements of
those who were indeed the gods of Hellas. To be there, and to
demand from those eloquent lips the secret of the golden age,
is his dream and aim, and there shall be solved the problems
of his life.
But antique Art, waiting so
patiently twenty centuries to afford aid to the artist, waits
also to sit in judgment upon his worth and acts. Woe to him
who cannot pass the ordeal of its power, and explain the
enigma of its speech!
Nothing can be more pitiful
and sad than the condition of one who, having been subjected
to the influence of ancient Art, has not had the ability to
recognize or the earnestness of purpose essential to the
apprehension of the truths which it has for his soul instead
of his hands. But, through truthfulness of aim, and a sense of
the divine nature of the erranc to which he seems appointed,
he reach the law of Art, then henceforth its pursuit becomes
the sign of life; it the impulse bear him no farther than
rules, then all he produces goes forth as a procalamation of
death. There is no middle path. Art is high or low; high, if
it be the profoundest life of an earnest man, uttering itself
in the real, even
though it be awkwardly, and in violation of all accepted
methods of expression; low, if it be not such utterance, even
though consummate in obedience to the finest rules of all
Art-science. There can be no other way. The life is in the
man, and not in the stone; and no affectation f vitality can
atone for the absence of that soul which should have been
breathed into existence from his own divine life.
As was said, possession of
self is the only condition under which the quantity and
quality of the Art-impulse may be determined. It is only when
a man stands face to face with himself, in the stillness of
his own inner world, that his possibilities become apparent;
and it is only when conscious of these, and inspired by a just
sense of their dignity, that he can achieve that which shall
be genuine success. Once he must be lifted away and
isolated from worldly surroundings, relieved from all objective
influences, from the pressure of all human relations; once the
very memory of all these must be blotted out; once he must be
alone. This is possible to a Mendelsson in the awful solitude of
Beethoven's 'Sonate Pathétique', to a painter in the presence of
Leonardo's 'Last Supper', and to a sculptor in the hushed halls
of the Vatican.
But that which lifts the true
artist above externals, the externals of his own individual
being, crushes the false, to whom the marble and the paint are
in themselves the ultimate.
This train of thought has
been suggested by the fact of the dominion which classic Art
has acquired over sculpture, and by the influence of the
sixteenth century schools upon painters. It is due, however,
to our sculptures in Italy that credit shold be given them for
having resisted the influence of forms, of the mere letter of
the classic, to a greater extent than the students of any
other nation. Whether or not they have been receptive of the
spirit of the antique remains to be seen.
American painters have been
less fortunate. Too often the lessons of the old masters, and
especially those of the earliest, the Puritan Fathers of Art,
have been unheeded; or the rules and practices which served
them temporarily, subject to the phase of the ideal for the
time uppermost, have passed into permanent laws, to be obeyed
under all conditions of Art-utterance.
The United States have had
within the last twenty years as many as thirty sculptors and
painters resident in Italy. At the beginning of the present
year ten sculpture studios in Rome and Florence were occupied
by Americans. We will speak of these artists in the order in
which have served to develop in this first period of its
history in America. The eldest bears the honored name of HIRAM
POWERS.
Three parties have been
remarkably unjust to this man, - namely, his friends, his
enemies, and himself.
Neither the artist nor his
friends need feel solicitude for his fame. The exact value of
his excellence shall be estimated, and the height of his
genius fully recognized, when the right man comes. Other award
than that from an age on a level with his own life can be of
small worth to one who has attained to the true level of Art.
Fame must come to him of that vision which can pierce the
external of his work and penetrate to the presence of his very
soul. His action must be traced to its finest ideal motive, -
as chemist-philosophers pursue the steps of analysis until
opaque matter is resolved to pure, ethereal elements. His fame
must be from such vision, and it will approach the universal
just in proportion as his pulse beats in unison with the heart
of mankind. Whatever may be an artist's plans, or those of his
friends, in regard to his valuation by the world, while he is
living, ultimately he himself, divested of all save his own
individuality, must stand revealed.
Those who in other
departments of action are necessarily governed somewhat, or it
may be entirely, by rules of conduct general in nature and
universal in application, may fail to receive or may escape
justice. They are to a great degree involuntary agents, and
subject to the laws of science, to the operations of which
they are obliged to conform. The private fact of the man is
hidden by the public general truth. If, however, the energies
of the individual overtop the science, enabling him to assert
himself above the summit of history, then is he accessible to
all generations, and can in no wise avoid or forfeit his just
fame.
In Art, this intimate
relation of the result of action to the actor is complete, -
inasmuch as, to be Art, to rise above being something else, the shadow and
mockery of Art, it must be of and from the man, a spontaneity,
a reflection, light for light, shade for shade, color for
color, of his entire being; and with this effect his will has
little to do. Therefore, unless he be an imposter, he need
give himself no trouble regarding his future. His works
shall serve as a clue, produced century after century, along
which posterity shall feel its way back to his studio and
eart. No need of thought for his morrow.
But for his to-day he may
well be solicitous. If fame be his reflection, he has also the
shadow of himself, his reputation.
It is a great error to assume
that these two effects are so related that the augmnetation of
the one must increase the other, and as great a mistake to
confound the two. The truth is, that reputation and fame are
rarely coincident. They are not unfrequently in direct
opposition, - so much so, that some names, which the world
cannot give up, have to be filtered through a thick mass of
years, to purify them of their reputations, and leave them
simply famous.
No name has suffered more
than that of Powers. His friends, blind to the laws which
govern these matters, have wrought bravely to construct for
him a reputation commensurate with his vaguely imagined worth;
but upon his real worth they have evinced no desire to lay
their foundation. No accurate survey has been made of his
abilities, no definite plan of his artist-nature. Often a
place has been demaned for his name in the history of Art, and
the first place too, because of his fine frank eye, or the
simplicity of his manners,- because his workmen cut the chain
of the Greek slave out of one piece of stone, or the marble of
the statue itself had no spot as big as a pin-head,- because
he himself chooses to rasp and scrape plaster, rather than
model in plastic clay,- because he tinkered up the 'infernal
regions' of the Cincinnati Museum years ago, or spends his
time now in making perforating machines and perforated files;
in fine, for any
reason rather than for the right legitimate one of artistic
merit, they have demanded room for their favorite.
Even those who look deeper
than this, appreciating Mr. Powers as a gentleman, an
ingenious mechanic, and a skilful manipulator in sculpture,
have been content or constrained to urge his claims to
attention upon false considerations. We have heard it gravely
remarked, as a matter of astonishment, that there were
individuals - refined men, apparently - who looked
upon the Venus de' Medici as a finer work than the Greek
Slave.
In the files of a New York paper may be found an article,
written by a highly cultivated man, in which Powers' busts are
asserted to be rather the effect of miracles than the results
of human effort.
The spirit which has prompted these and many kindred
expressions cannot be too much deplored by those who love Art
and know the artist. It has succeeded in creating for him a
reputation broad and remarkable, but most unfortunate, because
not his own, because not the representation which should have
formed about his name here, as fame will yonder; unfortunate,
because, though broad, it is the bredth of an inverted
pyramid, which must naturally topple over of itself, and
incumber his path with ruins.
The false position in which
Mr. Powers has been placed by his friends has of course won
him many enemies.
Bold, sincere, working
enemies are highly useful in developing an artist's character,
especially if he be a law-abiding follower of the art. But
enemies must be dealers of fair blows, wagers of honorable
warfare; no assassin is worthy of the name of enemy.
Sometimes, however, those who are worthy of the name, and
entitled to respect, may make injudicious and unfair use of
censure and invective. It is unwise, when the necessity arises
to set aside a worthless or an imperfect image, to turn
Iconoclast and demolish those surrounding it which are worthy
of a place in the temple. True criticism, for its own sake, if
prompted by not higher motive, deals justly.
The friends of Mr. Powers have, in their estimate of his
ability, given him credit for that which he does not possess,
and claimed recognition for merit unsupported by the value of
his works. His enemies have labored assiduously, not only to
deprive the estimate of its unwarranted quantity, but to
overthrow the whole, and leave him merely a mechanic, a
dexterous mechanic, with small views, but large ambition, trying
to pass himself off as an artist. His busts are asserted to be
but more elaborate examples of his skill in the
'perforated-file-and-patent-punch' line.
But as the struggles to elevate this artist's reputation above
its proper level have proved signal failures, so the effort to
depreciate it must ultimately be defeated. Only one kind of
injustice ever proves irreperably wrong: that which a man
exercises towards himself. Mr. Powers had a specialty.
So constituted that the most difficult executive operations are
to him but play and pleasure, he has also, to govern and inform
this rare organization, a broad, manly, and most genial human
nature. This combination decided the question of his proper
mission, and in virtue of it he has been enabled to model a
series of most remarkable busts, the true excellence of which
must be recognized in spite of friends and foes, and the
epithets 'miraculou' and 'mechanical'.
It is possible that the highest type of portrait-sculpture is
beyond the limit of this specialty; indeed, it is almost
impossible that with the elements constituting it there should
be associated the still rarer power to achieve the most exalted
ideal Art; and such Art we believe the highest portraiture to
be.
A consummate representation of a man in his divinest
development, the last refined ideal of him then, would be indeed
omsewhat miraculous!
Plaster Cast of Calhoun, Smithsonian Museum
calhoun2.jpg
calhoun1.jpg
The world asks less. It claims to know of a
man what the face of him became under the influences of human,
temporal relations. It wants preserved of the statesman the
statesman's face, of the merchant the merchant's face; and this
demand, when governed by a cultivated taste, is a legitimate
one, - as legitimate as is the demand for any history. The
public requires the image of the man whom the public knew, and
they regard as valuable that which can be received as a definite
and trustworthy statement of a great man, or of one whom it
esteemed great. It requires this, has a right to such
information; and the generation which failes to demand of its
artists a true record of its prominent men fails utterly in its
duty. the bust of a man goes down to posterity, not only this
history which it is in itself, but as an interpreter of the
history of its age. Were it not for Art, an age would recede
into the unknown, to be recorded as dark, or into the shadowy
world of myth. Portraiture, more than aught else, serves to
elucidate the tradition or story of a people. How impossible to
explain to the twentieth century the bad mystery of our present,
without the aid of Powers' head of Calhoun, the less adequate
bust of Stephen A. Douglas, and the one which should be modelled of Mr
Buchanan! A faithful delineation of the features of some men is
needful. We should be thankful for that black frown of Nero, for
the bald pate of Scipio, for those queer eyes of Marius, and for
the long neck of Cicero, as seen in the newly discovered bust.
These are the signs of men, and explain them.
Mr. Powers has succeeded in reporting more accurately than any
other recent artist the physical facts of the individual face.
From one of his marbles we derive definite ideas of the human
character of his subject, what its ambition is, and what its
weakness; what have been its loves and its antipathies, its
struggles and its victories, its joys and its sorrows, may be
revealed to him who has learned what the human face becomes
under the influence of these incessant forces. No mere talent
can accomplic such results. Behind all that kind of strength
lies the fact of peculiar sympathies, relating the artist to
this phase of Art-representation; and within certain limites,
which should have been undebatable, his rule was absolute.
The great mistake with Mr Powers has been his oversight
regarding these limits. There has been debate, hesitation, and a
continual wandering away from the duties of his errance. Years
have been devoted to those ghosts of sculpture, allegorical
figures; other years wasted in the elaboration of machinery. Not
that his ideal statues are worthless, or fall short of great
beauty and exquisite delicacy; not that his skill as a
mechanician is other than great. But the age cannot afford these
things, nor can the sculptor afford them. A year is too great a
sum to give for a statue of California. Better than that, the
several portraits of valued men which might have been
acquired,--one bust, even, like those which surprised and
compelled the reverence of Thorwaldsen. Better the perfected
ability which would have given his country the Webster he should
and might have made than a hundred "Americas."
There are two considerations which may have misled Mr. Powers.
One, a pecuniary one, which he should have disposed of as did
Agassiz, when such was advanced to induce him to give lyceum
lectures:--"Sir, I cannot afford to make money!" The other may
have been the weight of the prevailing error that
portrait-sculpture is a less honorable branch of art.
Less than what? The historical? What finer history than Titian's
Paul III, Raphael's Leo X, Albert Dürer's head of himself? What
finer than the Pericles, the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, the
Demosthenes of the Vatican, Chantrey's Scott, Houdon's Voltaire,
Powers's Jackson? - Heroic? what more heroic than the Lateran
Sophocles, the Venetian Colleoni or Rauch's statue of Frederick
the Great? - Poetical? What picture more sweetly poetical than
Raphael's head of himself in the Uffizj, or Giotto's Dante in
the Bargello?
What ideal statue
surpasses in poetical power Michel Angelo's De' Medici in San
Lorenzo Chapel? What ideal head is more beautiful than the
Townley Clytie of the British Museum, or the young Augustus of
the Vatican what grander? What grander than Da Vinci's portrait
of himself?
No, - when the sculptor has wrought the adequate representation
of the individual in its best estate, he may rest assured that
he has achieved 'high Art'.
Let us not be unjust to Mr. Powers's ideal works. In the
qualities of chasteness of conception, delicacy of treatment,
temperate grace, and that rarer finer quality of dignified
repose they have surpassed since the time of Greek Art. When the
subject chosen has not been foreign to the artist's nature, as
in the 'Eve', nor foreign to Art's province, as in the
'California', his success has been very like a triumph.
But the success has not been that which he was entitled to
grasp; the seeming triumph has precluded a real victory. We must
believe that the highest lessons of ancient Art have in a great
measure been unrecognized by Mr. Powers. The external has been
studied. No man can talk more justly of that exquisite line of
the Venus de Medici's temple and cheek, or point out more
discriminatingly the beauties of the Milo statue or detect more
quickly truths antique busts. He has discovered, also, somewhat
of the great secret of repose, - has perceived that it is
essential in some wise, to all greatness in Art, more
particularly in his own department of sculpture. But beyond that
simple recognition the fact, what? That repose is dependent on
act, and must be great in proportion to mightiness of power? No,
he could not have seen this; else had his Webster come to us
less questionable in intent, less remote in its merits from the
massive self-possession of the man.
For what Mr. Powers became before he left America he cannot be
praised too greatly. He carried with him to Europe just that
knowledge of Nature and that executive power which prepared him
to take advantage of the aid that all great Art was waiting to
afford. Had he won 'the large truth', the scope and purpose of
his genius, as in America he had found that of his talent. He
would have seen his specialty to be worthy all reverence, for he
would have attained to an appreciation of the high possibilities
of portrait-Art. There would have been developed under the
influence principles the power to make statues of great men, - colossal, instead of
big, - reposeful, instead of paralyzed, - grand, instead of
arrogant, - statues worthy of the hand that wrought the busts of
Calhoun, Jackson, and Webster, worthy to rank with few mighty
embodiments of power, the Sophocles, the Aristides, and
the Demosthenes. This he might have done; and this he may yet
accomplish.
FLORIN WEBSITE
© JULIA
BOLTON HOLLOWAY, AUREO ANELLO
ASSOCIAZIONE, 1997-2024:
MEDIEVAL: BRUNETTO
LATINO, DANTE
ALIGHIERI, SWEET NEW
STYLE: BRUNETTO
LATINO, DANTE ALIGHIERI, &
GEOFFREY CHAUCER || VICTORIAN:
WHITE
SILENCE: FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH'
CEMETERY || ELIZABETH
BARRETT BROWNING || WALTER
SAVAGE LANDOR || FRANCES
TROLLOPE || || HIRAM POWERS
|| ABOLITION
OF SLAVERY || FLORENCE IN
SEPIA || CITY
AND BOOK CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
I, II, III, IV, V, VI,
VII
|| MEDIATHECA
'FIORETTA MAZZEI' || EDITRICE
AUREO
ANELLO CATALOGUE
|| FLORIN
WEBSITE || UMILTA
WEBSITE || LINGUE/LANGUAGES:
ITALIANO,
ENGLISH
|| VITA
New: Dante vivo || White Silence
Transcribed from The Atlantic
Monthly 5:27 (1860), 1-6.
