25. ITALIAN ART IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES. Whenever sculp ture and architecture did not progress hand in hand with tempera and oil painting in this birthplace of art, Italy, it will nearly always be observed that either sculpture or architec ture was the first to arrive at the acme of de velopment, while the sister art of painting lagged behind.
In the part of the 19th century there was much activity among Italian sculptors, but this revival, if it may be so called, gave no indication that Michelangelo, Donatello or Verrocchio' were to have successors or rivals. Indeed, during the last hundred years the rise and growth of sculpture bear the same relation ship to High Renaissance productions as 19th century paintings do to the canvases and panels of the Cinquecenti.
Modern Italian sculpture may be said to be gin with Antonio Canova (1757-1822), who in his day was the acknowledged European master of the chisel, a position he kept unchallenged for 40 years, although this "soft Bernini," as he has been called, usually failed when he at tacked large and virile subjects.
Pietro Tenerani ( 1798-1869) Caneva's style, but was much influenced by and shared commissions with Thorwaldsen, the Dane. This indefatigable and clever sculptor often worked the night through, chisel in hand. Tenerani grew rich, honors came to him from royalties and he was made director-general of all museums and galleries in Rome. In 1876 at an exhibition of his works the astonishing num ber of 450 were shown.
When Romanticism followed as a matter of course the period dominated by Canova's marbles, more variety was seen in the choke of subjects: Stefano Ricci is 'noted for his monu ments; Lorenzo Bartolini, although somewhat of a revolutionary, for his classical tendencies; and Luigi Pampaloni for his delightful rendi tions of children. Parripaloni is also repre sented in the cathedral of Florence by two majestic figures.
Pio Fedi, goldsmith and engraver too, is celebrated for his statue of Pisano in the Uffizzi; but the work by winch he is best known is the "Rape of Polyftena,n replicas of which were desired by art patrons for presenta tion to the public park in New York and in Boston, but Fedi refused to duplicate his work.
Not all of these men were at all times Roman tic, for naturalism and realism were insinuat ing themselves into Italian chisels as well as into the brushes of painters in Italy and, for that matter, in France, England and America.
Giovanni Dupre was more original than his contemporaries. A devout Catholic, his sub jects are chiefly religious; nevertheless, his masterpiece is the Cavour monument in Turin. Vincenzo Vela rose from a quarry-boy to be a distinguished artist; he was dramatic and forceful and is best known by his <
E. Ximenes was technically excellent, and the Lombard — Odoardo Tabacchi was not only an eminent teacher but the sculptor of marry statues for the Milan Cathedral.
Baron Charles Marochetti, whose parents were French and whose capo d'opera is the equestrian statue of Emmanuel Philibert, in Cagliari, the capital city of Sardinia, is repre sented by many and noble works in France, England and Scotland, besides the monuments in his adopted country, Italy. On the Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile in Paris is his splendid relief The Battle of Jemmappes.' Scipione Cassano and Giuseppe Grandi are both excellent technicians; the former best known for his lifelike figure of Pietro Micca, the latter for his monument of °The Five Days" and a beautiful statue of Baccaria.
Medardo Rosso, "the Mefisto of Italian sculpture,' is Rodinesque, but has more dis tinction than the great Frenchman and has thrown away all the conventions of sculpture that have descended from Grecian times. Velasquez's pictures seem to have impressed upon him a dignified gravity, but some of his recent work has been so extremely lacking in detail that its significance is far from the com prehension of the ordinary la,,aan who loves art and even of those who devote themselves to its study.