The ten centuries following the second have no sculptural remains of value. The dark ages threw their shadow over art, as over literature and society. No doubt the feeling prevalent in the early Church that the “graven image” might become an idol, hindered the progress of the plastic art quite as much as the general decay that pervaded every form of human undertaking.

In the first half of the thirteenth century lived Nicola Pisano, the founder, one might say, of modern sculpture. Nicola is supposed to have been influenced by his study of the remains of Greek sculpture to be seen at Pisa, his home. Applying the principles of the Greek work to the modern subjects, his sculpture inaugurated the Italian renaissance. Church decoration was the field of labor to which all artists of those centuries betook themselves, and Pisano executed his best work, bas-reliefs, on the faÇades and pulpits of the churches of Pisa, Siena, and other Italian cities. A marble urn of St. Dominic, now at Bologna, is among his celebrated works. Pisano had many followers, among whom were his son (more famous, however, as an architect), and Andrea Orcagna. The latter belonged to Florence, to whose churches he devoted his genius. His masterpiece in sculpture is the tabernacle of the Virgin in the church of San Michele, at Florence. It is a pyramid-shaped altar in white marble; the profusion of reliefs which cover it represent the life of the Virgin. A little before the time of Orcagna lived Giotto, at one time a leader of artistic activity in Florence. He is known well by his beautiful campanile, or bell-tower, and the bas-reliefs with which it is decorated are his best-known sculptures. The basement story is decorated, and, says a writer, speaking of these ornamentations, “This rich cycle of works represents with perfect clearness, and in simple and truly artistic treatment, the whole progress, from the creation of the first man, through the successful conflict with the forces of nature, up to the climax of a life illumined by learning and art, and secured under the maternal shelter of the Church.”

It was in the fifteenth century that sculpture attained its highest standpoint. Foremost among the artists of this “golden age,” as it has been called, is Lorenzo Ghiberti, the Florentine. The latter was first brought into prominence in 1401, when leading men of Florence offered a prize for the best design for a bronze folding door to be used in the baptistery of San Giovanni. Each artist was allowed a year to complete the test panel, the subject of the design of which was to be the “Sacrifice of Isaac,” and the work was to be a bas-relief. Ghiberti was declared the victor, even by his most famous rivals, Donatello and Brunelleschi. For twenty-one years he labored at his doors, and at the end of that time was entrusted with another. The latter occupied him nearly as long as the first, and was even superior, Michael Angelo declaring it worthy to be the gate of paradise. While busy at the gate of the baptistery, Ghiberti executed three bronze statues of St. John the Baptist, St. Matthew, and St. Stephen, and a bronze sarcophagus of St. Zenobius. Donatello has been mentioned as a rival of Ghiberti in the contest for the door: he deserves mention as one of the most faithful followers of nature during this period. He even carried his naturalism to excess, copying the deformed, the horrible, and the grotesque. There are, however, several fine statues by him in San Michele. Among these are the statues of St. Peter and St. Mark, in niches on the outside, and a fine statue of St. George. The first equestrian statue of modern art was by Donatello, and is at Padua.

Lucca del Robbia lived at the same time, and his name is associated with the beautiful terra-cottas found in such quantities in the churches of Florence. These works are in white, on a pale-blue ground, and were glazed by a process now unknown. The subjects used on them were almost invariably the Madonna and Child. But Robbia did much in marble and bronze. In the Uffizi is to be seen a frieze for the front of an organ, by him. “It represents boys and girls of different ages, dancing, singing, and playing on various musical instruments, and is full of charming simplicity and childlike grace, and rich and varied in action. Some of the figures are almost wholly detached from the background, particularly in the representation of the dance.” There are many more names which might be added to this Tuscan or Florentine school of sculpture. Andrea Verocchio is the only one we will mention, and his strongest influence was exerted as the teacher of that master-artist of the sixteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci.

The works of the fifteenth century are very numerous; they crowd the churches of Rome, Florence, and the neighboring cities. Not only in Tuscany, but in Upper and Lower Italy these artists were employed, and many native artists, imitators of the school, have left sculptures on the tombs and in the churches of Venice, Naples, and Como. The subjects of artistic effort, it will be noticed, are nearly always religious. LÜbke says of this period: “It was chiefly devoted to the ornamentation of tomb-monuments and altars, which, with few exceptions, were built up against the wall in the shape of a triumphal arch, and required much plastic decoration in the way of reliefs and detached figures. Pulpits, founts, holy-water basins, singing-galleries, and choir-screens were also adorned with rich carvings. This abundant supply of work necessarily called forth a corresponding amount of skill, and the nature of the subject helped the artistic and realistic taste of the time to express itself. There was a decided effort to attain a correct likeness in portrait-statues of the dead, and in the numerous reliefs there was a tendency to portray the varied scenes of life.”

But a new form of plastic art was to appear in the coming century. To quote from the same author: “Italian plastic art had during the fifteenth century gained a new form from the study of the antique, and had made considerable advances in the unceasing effort after truth and life.… But hitherto, the expression of an often severe and tasteless realism was predominant, and now, under the influence of a profound and repeated study of the antique, an inspiration toward the ideal, the beautiful, and the sublime, was to assert itself; and this gave rise to a higher and freer style.… Plastic art gained a freer and nobler comprehension, a broad, bold treatment of forms, and a style simplified so as to bring out what was fundamental and essential, which might, for a moment, compete with the antique.” Leonardo da Vinci was one of the first in the list of masters of the fifteenth century, but, unfortunately, we have lost his best work. Andrea Contucci, better known as Sansovino, executed many sculptures which are unparalleled in beauty of treatment and form. In the baptistery at Florence is one of the noblest of these—the baptism of Christ. The figures of John the Baptist and Christ are life-like, free, and perfectly developed. There is nothing more interesting among what Sansovino has left than the decorations of the Holy House of Loreto. “Taken as a whole, this work is probably the most important collective creation in the sculpture of this golden age.” There are a great number of reliefs employed in the ornamentation, and the niches are filled by single statues; of the former the Annunciation and the Nativity are the most important.

But by far the ablest of the sculptors was Michael Angelo Buonarroti, of Florence. It was as a sculptor that he chose to regard himself, although, as in the case of so many of the Italian artists, he was both a painter and architect beside. Numerous works attributed to him are in existence. Mythological subjects, as well as religious, are to be seen among them. Thus there are bas-reliefs at Florence representing Hercules in his contest with the centaurs, and a statue of Bacchus in the Uffizi. The colossal marble statue of David in the academy at Florence, is said to have been carved out of a rejected block. The most ambitious undertaking of Michael Angelo was the mausoleum of Pope Julius II. The designs were drawn on a grand scale, and the master had gone to Carrara to get out the marble, when a misunderstanding between him and the Pope stopped the work. It was afterward re-attempted, but never finished. Some of the detached figures intended for the tomb are still seen. Among them the famous Moses, in the church of San Pietro, at Vincolo. Two groups at Florence were executed for the sarcophagi of Giuliano and Lorenzo de Medici. The statues of the princes are seated in niches in the wall: at their feet, on the lids of the coffins, are the groups: on that of the former the design is Day and Night; on the latter Dawn and Evening. We can mention no more of his designs, but will add the fine criticism of a German critic: “If we compare Michael Angelo with those who went before, we see at once that art reached one of those turning-points at which it enters on a new period with an undreamed-of future opening before. His deeply emotional soul was content neither with the contemplative realism of the fifteenth century, which was based on its truth to nature, nor with the quiet, harmonious beauty of contemporaneous masters. Each of his works exists for its own sake only, and here we see a kinship with the antique. But again: each of them is also the product of the stormy inward struggles of a man who is ever aiming at the highest ideal, and untiringly striving after a new expression of his thoughts—a man to whom achievement gave but little satisfaction, so that often he left his works unfinished. Here we see the strongest contrast to antique art. Nearly all his sculptured works are in one sense or another incomplete, and many he had to drop, because under the mighty stress of his ideas, and in his eagerness to liberate from the marble the slumbering soul within, he had made a false stroke and spoiled the block.”

The influence of Michael Angelo was predominant. The productions of almost every sculptor of the times were marked by both his strong and weak points. The Michelangelesque manner, as it has been called, was evident in the sculptures of the following century.

Outside of this Tuscan school there were during the sixteenth century several prominent artists; at Modena, Antonio Begarelli, who worked mainly in terra-cotta, and who left many works in the churches of his native city.

At Padua lived Riccio, who executed a bronze candelabrum which has become famous for both its size and its excessive ornamentation. It was eleven feet in height and laden with innumerable fantastic reliefs and figures mostly taken from mythology. A pupil of Sansovino, Jacopo Tatti, was the leader in Upper Italy. He worked mainly at Venice. The bronze of the sacristy of St. Mark in that city, the choir-screen in the same church, and several figures of evangelists in bronze are among his religious works. In the Doge’s palace are two large statues of Mars and Neptune which are particularly fine. He also did portrait-sculptures of much merit. But during this century art was by no means confined to Italy, though Italy then, as always, took the lead. In the North there was a steady work in the plastic art. The influence of the antique was wanting, and the materials in which the works were executed were different. Wood carving was very popular; invariably much gilding and brilliant coloring was used. The work was mainly on the altars of the churches, on shrines, figures for niches in the church walls and choir stalls. Michael Pacher, of Austria, was eminent in this art; Veit Stoss, of Cracow, and JÖrg Syrlin, of Ulm. In nearly all of the old churches of Germany are these highly colored carvings in wood.

But stone was used as extensively, and in a somewhat wider variety of works. Many monuments, the buttresses of churches, lecterns, doors, and choir-piers, were made in stone and decorated in the usual manner by reliefs and figures. Nearly all the German cities boast more or less of stone work in their churches.

The leading artist of the time was Adam Krafft, who worked mainly in Nuremberg. A very fine and powerful work by him is the Seven Stations, as it is called. It represents the repeated fainting of Christ beneath the burden of the cross. The work is done in relief. The face and expression of the Savior is noble and expressive in every case. This work was followed by Christ on the Cross. In 1492 he executed the history of the Passion for a monument on the exterior of St. Sebald’s church.

The monuments of the time are mainly very superior. Among them may be mentioned that of Emperor Henry II. and his consort by Riemenschneider, the marble monument of Bishop Rudolph von Schrenburg in the WÜrtzburg cathedral, and the marble memorial to the Emperor Frederic III. in Vienna. The celebrated school of metal works of Nuremberg flourished during this period. The best known representatives belonged to the family of Vischer, and in Peter Vischer the most complete artistic development was reached. The earliest work, by Hermann Vischer in 1457, was the bronze baptismal font in Wittenberg. Peter, his son, began his work on the tomb of Archbishop Ernst in Magdeburg cathedral, but his chef d’oeuvre was the tomb of St. Sebald in the church of that saint at Nuremberg. Vischer and his five sons were engaged on this for eleven years. The sarcophagus rests on a base elaborately wrought in relief, and the whole is enclosed; the cover is composed of three arched canopies supported on eight slender columns. The base, pillars and canopies are wrought exquisitely; although the ornaments are profuse, yet a perfect simplicity and purity of style is preserved. There are very many other productions attributed to Vischer—a fine relief in the cathedral at Regensborg, several tombs, and, as examples of his treatment of antique designs, an Apollo at Nuremberg, and a relievo of Orpheus and Eurydice in the Berlin Museum.

One of the most magnificent tombs of this period was that of the Emperor Maximilian at InnsbrÜck; several of its figures were from Peter Vischer’s hands. Twenty-eight colossal bronze statues of the ancestors of the imperial house and of heroes surrounded the monument. Besides these there were a large number of gracefully poised female figures, and twenty-three figures of the patron saint of the House of Austria. The whole was surmounted by a marble cenotaph on which a figure of the Emperor knelt. Several artists were engaged on this monument. The sculptures of this period in other countries are not very prominent. In France there was considerable attention given to plastic art. Many fine choir-screens have been preserved, and some exceedingly rich tombs. Among the latter are the monuments of Louis XII. and his wife (1530), of Francis I. (1552), and of Henry II. (1583), all in the church of St. Denis in Paris. A set of artists who were engaged on the decorations of the palace of Fontainebleau was known as “the Fontainebleau school.” The leader of this group was Jean Goujon. The sculpture of Spain during this period followed largely the Italian schools. The most lavish treatment is visible in the decorations of the churches, particularly in the altars. The high altar of the cathedral at Toledo is one of the most costly and ornate of its time (about 1500).

“The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were marked by a decadence of sculpture. Plastic art sought to become striking, rejected everything that could limit her art and gave herself up freely to her longing after what was striking. Henceforth it was decreed that every plastic work must be spirited. The most striking effects must be aimed at in the expression of inward emotion through mien, attitude and position.… Besides the drapery must be arranged in all sorts of ways conducive to effect.… Thus all dignity, simplicity and distinctness in sculpture, all plastic style was lost, and was succeeded by a senseless striving after outward effect and mere decoration.” The best Italian artists of these years were Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who showed well the perversion of the principles of art, and Alessandro Algardi. The French claimed as their most celebrated masters in the seventeenth century, Pierre Puget, who worked chiefly at Genoa, and FranÇois Girardon, both of whom are noted for their exaggerations; in the eighteenth century were Houdon and Pigalle.

Franz Duquesnoy, the Fleming, worked at Rome in the seventeenth century and gained a fine reputation by his life-like figures of children. In Berlin, Andrew SchlÜter executed superior works. Among these are the masks of dying warriors carved above the windows of the court of the Arsenal. An equestrian statue of the Great Elector is his best work.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century a revival of sculpture took place; this has been attributed to the efforts of Popes Clement XIV. and Pius VI., to the publications of Winckelmann, and to the unearthing of the treasures of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The first sculptor to initiate works of purer taste was Canova (1757-1822); he came of a race of stone cutters, and while at work at his trade executed the figures which attracted the attention of a Venetian, who educated him for an artist. Canova’s early works were mythological in subject. He had studied sculptures unearthed at Pompeii and Herculaneum, and under their influence executed his “Apollo crowning himself with laurel” and “Theseus vanquishing the Minotaur.” In 1802 Canova was invited by Napoleon to Paris where he executed a colossal statue of the emperor. His figures of women were his most pleasing works. Of the many monuments he executed, the best is that of Christina in the church of the Augustines at Vienna. But few artists escaped the influence of Canova. Among his best known followers were Dannecker, of Stuttgart; Chaudet, a French artist, and Flaxman, an English sculptor.

For a brief outline of the sculptor of the nineteenth century we can do nothing better than quote from LÜbke:

The Danish artist, Bertel Thorwaldsen (1770-1844), penetrated farther than all these masters into the spirit and the beauty of classical art; and created, with inexhaustible fertility of imagination, and with the noblest feeling for form, an array of works which are conceived with a pure, chaste, and noble appreciation of the Greek spirit. In his celebrated frieze of the triumph of Alexander in the Villa Carlotta, on the lake of Como, the genuine Grecian relief style is revived in all its perfect purity and severity. He also treats with the versatility of genius and with charming simplicity the subjects of ancient mythology, in numerous statues, groups, and smaller reliefs; and even introduces into the domain of Christian representation a novel, beautiful, and dignified treatment, in the sculptures executed by him for the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen. Among his monumental works we may mention the statues of Gutenberg at Mayence, and of Schiller at Stuttgart, the Dying Lion at Lucerne, the equestrian statue of the Elector Maximilian at Munich, and the tombs of the Duke of Leuchtenberg in St. Michael’s Church at Munich, and of Pope Pius VII. in St. Peter’s Church at Rome.

While the wide domain of idealistic sculpture was thus again cultivated with such versatility of inspiration, the Berlin artist, Johann Gottfried Schadow (1764-1850), adopted a more realistic style, especially directed toward lifelike composition and distinct characterization of individual peculiarities. His monument of the Count von der Mark in the Church of Ste. Dorothy in Berlin, the statue of Frederic the Great at Stettin, and, in a less degree, the BlÜcher monument at Rostock, and that of Luther at Wittenberg, as well as many others, are vigorous protests against the mannerism of the hitherto prevailing tendency, and re-open to sculpture a field which had now been almost lost to her for two hundred years.

Thus a new path was opened to modern sculpture, in pursuing which it has of late years accomplished great results, and which assures to it still greater beauty, and diversity of attainment, if only it hold fast to the principles already secured, and go on with true dignity toward its goal. Even if the world of ideal forms should never again acquire that importance for us which it possessed for the Greeks, nevertheless the daily life of humanity still contains a wealth of exquisite motives, full of beauty and naÏvetÉ, which give to the sculptor’s fancy ample incitement to ideal creations. There is, moreover, in the chaste grace and pure dignity of the antique conceptions, an imperishable charm, which appeals to every human sentiment, and secures for all productions conceived in a similar spirit the warm interest of those who delight to refresh themselves with the simple beauty that belongs to every true manifestation of nature. Hence the idealistic style of this art of Greece, as it has been recognized by the present and endowed with new activity, becomes forever the most priceless and precious possession of modern sculpture.

The new-born historic feeling of the several nations demands to-day that their heroes, the defenders of their liberties, the representatives of their intellect, their warriors in the battles both of the sword and of thought, shall be preserved to fame in the true likeness of their actual forms. As a consequence, sculpture is compelled to probe the depths of the individual consciousness; to investigate the characteristics of each individual intellect as expressed in the figure, the physiognomy, and even in the externals of attitude and garb; and even to give utterance to the mysterious life of the soul, as far as it lies within her power. Without losing sight of the great importance which the study of the sculptures of the fifteenth century has upon this tendency, the influence of the antique should not be undervalued; since, without the sense of beauty so secured, a realistic degeneracy and exaggeration would be very sure to follow.

Among the German schools of sculpture of to-day, that of Berlin takes the lead. Frederick Tieck of this school adopted the antique style in a series of admirable productions, and especially in the decorative sculpture designed by him for the theater; while the path which Schadow had taken was followed up nobly and rationally during the long and influential labors of Christian Rauch (1777-1857). This artist’s important position is due less to his wealth of creative ideas than to his delicate feeling for nature, his fine appreciation of the genuine plastic style, and his incomparable care in execution. His importance, however, does not consist merely in his numerous works, but also in the influence he exercised on his large circle of talented scholars. While he shows a true classical beauty in his ideal works, like his victories and his many admirable reliefs, his statues of Prince BlÜcher, of Generals BÜlow and Scharnhorst, his colossal equestrian statue of Frederic the Great at Berlin, his superb statues of Queen Louise, and of Frederic William III. in the mausoleum at Charlottenburg, his bronze statues of DÜrer at Nuremberg, of Kant at KÖnigsberg, of King Max I. at Munich, and many others, prove him a sculptor of the first rank for delicate characterization, and life-like suggestiveness of composition. Many excellent scholars have gone from his studio into careers of independent importance and masterly ability; and these form, with their vigorous activity, which is never at a loss for employment in important undertakings, the nucleus of the present school of Berlin.

Among the most conspicuous of the Berlin artists should be reckoned Friedrich Drake, whose reliefs on the statue of Frederic William III. in the Thiergarten at Berlin are full of simple grace. Another of this school is Schievelbein (died in 1867), who showed a great deal of imagination, especially in the composition of reliefs; as in the great frieze representing the destruction of Pompeii, in the new museum, and also in the relief on the bridge at Dirschau.

Ernst Rietschel (1804-61) claims indisputably one of the first places among the sculptors of his century, as regards versatility of endowment, delicate feeling for form, and depth of sentiment. He derived from Rauch his faithful and characteristic representation of life, and his painstaking execution. His double monument of Schiller and Goethe at Weimar, his monument of Lessing in Brunswick (in a still purer and happier style), and the statue of Luther executed for a monument at Worms, are good examples of these traits. In the group of the Virgin with the body of Christ, which he executed for the Friedenskirche near Potsdam, he produced a work full of striking expression, and of the deepest religious feeling; while the subjects of his numerous representations in relief for the pediment of the opera house at Berlin, and the theater and museum at Dresden, represent him with equal dignity and merit in the department of the ideal antique subjects. Ernst HÄhnel is a Dresden artist, whose powerful compositions for the Dresden theater and museum are antique in treatment, but who also produced monumental statues, works of the most delicate characterization, such as the Beethoven at Bonn, the Emperor Charles IV. at Prague, and the statues designed for the Dresden Museum, especially the noble Raphael. Recently, also, Schilling has distinguished himself by his ideal groups of the divisions of the day,—Morning, Noon, Evening, Night,—designed for the BrÜhl Terrace.

In Munich, the talented Ludwig Schwanthaler (1802-48) was the chief representative of a more romantic style, which opened a new field of fresh ideas to modern sculpture. This master, who was endowed with an almost inexhaustible imagination, carried out a great number of extensive works during his short life, in supplying the plastic decorations for most of the buildings erected by King Louis. While these are distinguished by fertility of invention, and an excellent decorative taste, the artist, spurred on to ceaseless labor, and hindered by bodily infirmities, did not succeed in giving his monumental creations that thorough development of form which is an essential of sculpture. It can not be denied, however, that a grand monumental conception is visible in these productions, as is especially proved in the colossal statue of Bavaria in Munich. A numerous school had its origin in this artist’s studio.

In France, sculpture early endeavored to free herself from the rigid rule of the antique, and carried the prevailing effort after dramatic effect, expression and passion, even to an extreme point of realism. Individual artists have kept to a noble and more moderate style; as Bosio, and the admirable sculptors Rude and Duret; but, on the other hand, P. J. David d’Angers (1793-1856) devoted himself, in utter violation of all the severer laws of sculpture, to a violent realism, which, although it is sustained by great talent and a charming facility in composition, deteriorates into a lawless exaggeration in his monumental works. His numerous portrait-busts, on the other hand, are extremely lifelike, and full of genius. The Genoese artist, James Pradier, takes the first rank among those sculptors who especially delight in the representation of sensuous beauty (1792-1852). The talented artist, Barye, who died in 1875, is chief among the sculptors of animals. The sculpture of Belgium follows the same general direction as the French.

Rome forms an important central point in the production of modern sculpture, with her numerous studios, her skill in marble-cutting,—an art handed down to her from ancient times,—and her vast collection of antique works. Here Canova and Thorwaldsen had their studios, which were for many decades the most famous nurseries of modern sculpture. That the antique conception and the idealistic style should acquire especial prominence here lay in the nature of things. Only where the modern social and political life exercises its full powers does sculpture find tasks that call upon her for the characteristic representation of important personages, and the lifelike delineation of historical events.

The English artist, John Gibson, is conspicuous among the sculptors of different nationalities who have made Rome their headquarters, as the representative of a noble classic style. The tendency of the numerous sculptors whom England has recently produced is toward the genre-style, and toward graceful forms in the manner of Canova. Macdonell, an artist of much taste, and Sir Richard Westmacott, also well known by his public works, deserve mention here, as well as R. J. Wyatt, by whom we have some charming representations of subjects chosen from the ancient myths. The United States of America should also be included in this enumeration: for they possess sculptors of decided talent in Randolph Rogers (who designed the bronze gates of the Washington Capitol), Miss Hosmer, and E. D. Palmer, who, though a gifted artist, inclines to an exaggeration of the picturesque. Among the German sculptors in Rome, Martin Wagner, who died in 1860, is worthy of note for his energy of style; and, among those still living, Carl SteinhÄuser, now in Carlsruhe, is remarkable for an elevated feeling for form, and depth of sentiment; while J. Kopf shows much delicate grace; and the more recent artist, Ad. Hildebrand, has a rare feeling for nature. Finally, Holland has an excellent sculptor of the idealistic school in Matthias Kessels (1784-1830), who studied under Thorwaldsen.