ITALIAN SCULPTURE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
The extraordinary school of sculpture which arose in Italy in the Renaissance period, illustrated by such artists of genius as Michelangelo, Verrocchio, Giovanni da Bologna, and Cellini, was followed by an era of declension so marked that it seemed almost hopeless to expect any revival of the art of sculpture in the Italian peninsula. For a time there was a school of artists who attempted in a feeble style to imitate the works of Michelangelo. Among these sculptors were Baccio Bandinelli (1487-1559), Bartolommeo Ammanati (1511-1592), Vincenzo di Rossi, and others.
by/nem?
Artistic the beginning of the eighteenth century these results became prominent, especially at Naples, where we see tech nical sculpture carried to an unsurpassed degree of skill, while there seems absolutely no appreciation, nor even perception, of the essential principles of plastic art. The chief Italian sculptors of the period were Corradini, Sammartino, and Queirolo; they amused themselves, and the people as well, by tricks and feats intended to exhibit a mechanical mastery over the materials in which they wrought. Faces veiled, figures enmeshed in nets or thin mantles through which the face and form were visible as if through lace and gauze—on such pitiful subjects was the talent of Italian sculptors expended until new influences began to awake the dormant love for true art. But it should be added that, in, spite of the
feeling for a better art which since this time has flourished in Italy, her sculptors have not yet been able wholly to overcome the baneful influ ences of Ilernini and his school, and we must still look elsewhere for the best sculpture of the last and the present century.
Classic Revival discovery of the buried ruins of Pompeii also operated to open the eyes of Italy to the fault of her con temporary sculptors; it acted as an inspiration. At the same time, the efforts of the popes to stimulate a revival of Italian art largely contributed to such a result. In accordance with the laws of intellectual development, the genius who was to give expression and guidance to the demand for the revival appeared. Not once, not twice, but always, in the history of the Fine Arts does this fact recur—an intellectual demand met by the needed supply. There are no " inglorious Miltons," no "Cromwells guiltless of their country's blood." Such men, such leaders, appear when they are required, so aptly, so suited to the of a period, that we cannot otherwise than conclude that they do not exist except as required.
;bacilli° Canova was the man of the hour in the present case. Pompeii was discovered in 1748, and Canova was born in 1757. He began his career at so early a period that works are still in existence which he exe cuted in his ninth year. His father and grandfather were stonecutters. The young Antonio soon found a patron in the Signor Faliero, who placed him under the tutelage of a Venetian sculptor named Toretto, an artist who might now be forgotten but for his relation with Canova. At fifteen the young sculptor was already earning a livelihood by his art, although he was for some years straitened in circumstances. The first full-sized statue by Canova was his Eurydice, completed when he was sixteen. At this early age he made an important innovation in the methods of sculp ture. Up to that time it had been the custom for models of statues to be made several times smaller than the size when completed in marble or bronze; he resolved to make all his models, even when of colossal figures, of the exact size they were to be when finished. Many sculptors have since followed the plan adopted by Canova.