Giovanni Paulo, at Venice,
which Ruskin says is the finest monument in the world, if my
recollection serves me correctly, is in white marble, and its beauty
comes entirely from the sculptor's art. Such monuments give you much
better than any words of mine ample suggestions for marble treatment. I
may quote such names as Nicolo Pisano and Verocchio.
Photos of some of their work I have brought. Note Pisano's beautiful
white altar at Bologna, and Mina de Fiesole's work in Florence. They all
show the sculptor as supreme. Why should not we encourage individual
young sculptors more? Give them portions of your work in which they can
put all the fervor and enthusiasm of young manhood. Their powers may not
be ripe, but they possess a verve and intensity that may have forever
fled when in later years the imagination is less enthusiastic and the
pulses slower. I am sure there are many young sculptors now wanting
commissions who have been trained at the academy, and better still, in
the best French schools. I maintain that the contemporary French school
of sculpture is in its line equal to any school of sculpture that has
ever existed, not excepting that of Phidias or that of the Italian
Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
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