Sculpture
Into the church of St. Peter's at Rome I walked,
one beautiful day in Spring a few years ago,
to see this church whose fame has spread
to the four corners of the earth. The curiosity
natural to a sight seer was mingled with a
feeling of reverence and awe. [During my
travels in Italy I had visited many beautiful
Catholic churches, most of which are perfect
specimens of architecture and replete with
works of art wrought by the old masters, but
the atmosphere which pervades the meanest and
smallest of them has a tendency to awe and subdue.]
Once inside this magnificent structure, whose
matchless mosaics, priceless paintings and
other treasures have been the delight, and
the wonder of so many countless thousands
one is almost bewildered at the wealth
of treasure which lies before him.
Walking up one of the aisles I came suddenly
upon a statue which transfixed me to the
spot. It told the story of a mother's grief over
the death of her son.

2.

Chiseled into pure white marble upon the
lap of Mary, his mother, lay the savior dead.
Rubens Ascent and Descent of the Cross I had
seen many times, and other paintings of renowned
artists who had told the story of the crucifixion
but never before had the pathos, the tragedy,
and the glorious significance of Christ's death
been brought so vividly before me as when I
stood stood looking upon this piece of marble
which glowed with life and was ghastly with
death as it came from the hand of the sculptor,
MichaelAngelo. So realistically was the anguish of the mother depicted,
as she gazed into the face of her dead son, that
one seemed to hear the groans that went up from
her burdened soul and to feel the throbs of her
aching heart. This statue, known as the Pieta,
not only presented to me the sacrifice of the son
of God as I had never felt it before, but it was
a revelation to me of the great power and realism
locked in the heart of stone into which [a]
sculpture has breathed the breath of life.
The soul of that man is cold and hard indeed
who can look upon MichaelAngelo's grief sorrow

3.

stricken mother without being stirred to its
very depths.
To record the history of sculpture is to
begin with the infancy of the human race.
From the earliest times as far back as the paleolithic
and neolithic ages men conveyed their
ideas of the beautiful and majestic through the
medium of bronze and stone. [To bridge the
chasm] Between the crude statues of Egyptian
and Chaldean gods and their kings, whose
power and majesty were represented by their
colossal size, but whose expressionless faces
gave no hint of a mind or soul, and the
wonderful creations of Phidias and Praxiteles
is a great chasm, to bridge which would require
                     [*I wd dare take this even*]
many more minutes than have been assigned
me in which to discuss the interesting and broad
subject of sculpture. To do no more than simply
enumerate the masterpieces which it has
been my good fortune to see, in the Louvre of
Paris, in the Pinakothek and Glyptothek of Munich,
in the galleries of Dresden and Berlin Germany,
in the various treasure houses of art in Florence

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Rome, Venice and Milan, Italy should far exceed 
the limits to which my remarks must be confined. 
As these wonderful creations of the 
sculptor's art pass in review before me, some 
of ineffable beauty, grace and delicacy, others 
whose majesty and nobility lift the beholder from 
the sordid of earth to the ethereal of Heaven, 
how keenly do I feel my inability to so mould 
them into words that you too may see them 
as they stand carved in marble.
With attributes and aspirations conceived by master 
minds with form and proportions executed 
by hands to which the representation of all things 
both real and ideal was possible, it is not 
strange that such creations cannot be reduced 
to words. Many artists there have been who have consecrated 
their lives and dedicated their talents to Sculpture, but 
    Of all the names with which the 
pages [of sculpture] are adorned, none shines 
forth more radiantly and gloriously than that of 
Phidias. To the genius of this master let us 
pause to pay [*the*] our tribute of homage and 
praise which generations that [*are gone*] passed have 
laid and those that are yet to come will lay at his feet.
                                                

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Though he was born four hundred years  before Christ appeared, 
upon earth so lofty were his ideals, as profound was 
his knowledge of the technical details of his art, 
[was] so painstaking and exact was he in the execution 
of his work, that he set a standard of excellence 
in sculpture which for more than two thousand 
years has never been surpassed, if indeed it has ever been 
equalled.   What must Athens have been in those 
glorious days of Pericles by whom the decoration 
and adornment of the public buildings were intrusted 
to Phidias. How the Athenians must 
have revelled in their Parthenon with its wonderful 
frieze, so rich in those masterpieces of sculpture 
wrought by Phidias and his assistants. 
How they must have gloried in their gods and 
goddesses whose divinity was by the greatest 
sculptor of all the ages embodied in human forms 
as perfect in conception as they were in execution.  
It was said of Phidias that he alone made images 
of the gods and he alone made them visible to others. 
Zeus, the father of gods and men with his highest 
sovereign will and sovereign mind, the lofty  
womanly dignity of Hera the heroic, manly power of

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Hercules, the youthful beauty of Apollo and Bacchus, 
the one refined and the other carnal luxurious, the perfect 
grace of Aphrodite, the noble, just wisdom of 
Pallas Athene, the maidenly vigor of Artemis, the 
manly adroitness and cunning of Hermes, all these 
attributes of the gods and goddesses so dear to the 
Hellenic heart shone forth resplendently in those 
matchless forms warm with life from the 
hands of Phidias and [his disciples] those to whom he taught his art.  
So renowned was the statue of Jupiter as 
represented by this great [Grecian} sculptor two thousand 
years ago that all Greece made pilgrimages 
to it while the sight of it was supposed to have 
a magic charm that could banish suffering 
and care. As one looks upon the copy of 
this far-famed statue, whose original alas has 
been destroyed, and beholds the majesty of the 
god, whose expression though mild was yet so 
powerful that a gesture would seem sufficient 
to move heaven and earth, he is reminded of the 
following lines [of] from Homer, in which he pictures 
Jupiter nodding assent to Thebes who begs that her son 
Achilles be glorified. [*made immortal*]



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She said, and nodded with his shadowy brows 
Wav'd on the immortal head the ambrosial locks.  
And all Olympus trembled at his nod.  
Though the parthenon with all its untold wealth of art 
was dismantled and almost destroyed first by 
fanatics (Christian and Moslem) then later on 
by the bursting of a bomb during the bombardment 
of Athens by the Venetians even the fragments 
of this wonderful temple speak unmistakably 
and eloquently of the height and perfection 
to which Aths Art attained in that glorious 
epoch enriched by the genius and skill of Phidias, 
sculpture's first great gift to the world.
In the capitol at Rome stands the
famous statue known as the Marble
Faun which has been immortalized by one of
our own American writers to whom [this]
it came as an inspiration. It was a copy the
work of Praxiteles who lived four centuries before Christ, whose fame and skill are second only to that of his great pretenses whose mission in sculpture
seemed to be the representation of the beautiful
and delicate and sweet in the human face and form.
As Hawthore gazed upon this [handsome] mythical young satyr
dreamily reposing against a tree ingratiating himself into


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into the affections of all upon his winsome smile,
it is no wonder that a spark of his author's genius was 
fanned into flames. The Venus of Praxiletes 
with her liquid eyes, soft smile, and slightly parted 
lips, with the exquisite form and proportion of 
her figure is described as having been so wonderfully 
realized that those who beheld it forgot that the 
statue was marble and believed it to be the 
goddess of love herself. It is somewhat comforting 
to reflect that in spite of the unspeakable vandalism & fanaticism which doomed to destruction so many valuable pieces of statuary we have at least one statue 
which was carved by the hand of Praxiletes.
It was the statue of Hermes with the infant Dionysos, which was discovered 
in the Heraion at Olympia, and is the only 
authenticated original  production of any great 
master of Greek sculpture. 
  Of [the other] many famous sculptors [some] of whom were contemporaries  with those already mentioned who achieved signal success 
in their art, Myron, Polycledos, Scopas and 
others it will be impossible to speak.
  In the galleries which are best known 
throughout Europe for the quantity and quality of 
their works of art one's eye is constantly delighted 
and educated  by the valuable copies of famous statues which 
are so faithful to the originals that they are regarded 



[*From such profusion and perfection it would difficult to 
select those that deserve special mention even tho ample
time were at my disposal.*]
as masterpieces in themselves- many there are 
which having been once seen can never be 
forgotten. But among those [number] that fasten
themselves indelibly upon the mind none 
makes a deep impression that the Niobe - 
which is now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Having called down upon her offending head 
the vengeance of Apollo and Artemis for boasting 
that she had fourteen children, while Leda 
had only two she is doomed to witness the 
destruction of every one of her own blood 
by the death dealing arrows of this goddess 
and god. The statue represents her in the 
act of trying to shield her youngest child from 
[this awful fate] the arrow that is sure to strike it, after she has seen all the others 
wounded and [succumbing] dying one by one.
The motherly anguish, despair which is said to have
turned her to stone, the heroic but doubtless struggle with the
relentless, invincible deities depicted in every gesture
and in every motion of her swaying garments and
above and beyond it all the noble resignation to the fate
which she knows no human prayer or power can [create]
make the Statue of Niobe such a [tragedy] perfect representation in stone
that it is considered [*ceded to*] the finest specimen of its style
in existence.

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In the Vatican at Rome is another group 
in which physical suffering is represented 
with painful realism. It is the statue 
of Laoocoon who, for an offence committed 
against the god together with his two sons 
is being put to death by serpents in
whose vice-like coils we see them held. 
    The Dying Gladiator in the capitol at Rome 
appeared ideally  to me in a peculiar way, for it spoke 
to me of the woes  and wrongs of a slave. 
As I gazed upon this man who was sinking 
under the thrust of a knife inflicted upon 
himself rather than endure the shame and 
cruelty of slavery, thoughts of the sorrows 
and woes of my own race once bowed in 
bondage surged [me] upon me so thick and fast 
that I could not hold them back. 
                                     From the statuary that enlists 
our sympathy because if its almost too 
faithful portrayal of pain and fear it is 
pleasant to turn to that which ennobles and 
delights  & by its beauty, majesty and grace.
 Among those statues which are the best examples

 
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of this style may be mentioned the Venus De 
Milo and Diana in the Louvre at Paris, Apollo 
with the lizard in the Capitol Museum, Apollo 
Belvedere in the Vatican at Rome and the  Venus 
de Medici in Florence. 
     By the friendly and artistic mediation of sculpture 
we seem to come into closer contact with Moses 
whose statue by MichaelAngelo is truly a work of 
art. No one who as ever seen [it] and studied 
it can [have] failed to have been deeply impressed 
with the dignity poetry and power [of this marble] which shine 
[image] through every lineament and feature of that mighty man of old.
   In modern times sculpture is perhaps best represented by 
Dannecker made famous by his Ariadne on the Lion,
now in the gallery at Frankfort on the Main, by Thorwaldsen 
renowned for his Venus and Mercury and 
by Canova best known for his statue of Cupid and Psyche .
One of the most faithful [and successful] devotees who
now form the shows of sculpture is Edmonia Lewis a colored woman upon
whose chisel Italy has set her seal of approval and who has
achieved signal success.
Finally, what is the mission of sculpture?
Are its ministrations to humanity commensurate

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commensurate with the energy and time and money expended 
to secure the best results at which 
so many aim and so few succeed.
 If ever you have seen the rapturous expression 
which lights up the dullest face of the most 
illiterate individual as [they] he drinks in the  beauty  or perfection 
of a fine statue you can not believe 
that any sacrifice of time or money either on the 
part of the [individual] sculptor himself or the state is too 
great, if through these creations in marble 
the heart is touched, the mind expanded and 
the soul stimulated to better purposes and 
higher resolves. Would it were possible 
for our wretched poor and our sordid rich to 
come into closer and more frequent touch with 
these inspirations of genius made visible and 
tangible to us through the art of sculpture.
Would that those of us who neglect the opportunity 
of being occasionally lifted out of ourselves 
by studying the fine copies of famous 
statues in our own Corcoran Art Gallery could 
be made to feel what an irreparable injury we 
do ourselves when we wilfully close our eyes 


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to so much that might expand, educate and
edify us without money and without price.
What is the mission of sculpture, shall we say.
It is to preach the gospel of beauty, whether it be
of the human body or the human soul. It is
to [increase our] increase our admiration for those
whose nobility of thought and sublimity of aspiration,
or heroism of heart have made them the benefactors of the
human race. It is to broaden our sympathy,
elevate the mind and stimulate the soul
to that which is highest and best.
Excepting Christianity as taught by Christ,
nothing has so great a power to change and
transform the whole nature and spirit of man
as art, whether it be expressed by the brush on
canvass, or through the medium of stone.
And perhaps if ever on this fallen earth of ours
the golden rule shall be adopted as the guiding
principle of every man's life, it will not be
through the great strong mind of law and human religion,
nor through the earthquake of bloody revolutions,
nor through the fire of [human] punishment for sin,
but through the still small voice of art.

Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.