The history of Sculpture in Italy divides into two distinct, yet connected, subjects of inquiry, embracing two very dissimilar dynasties—the Etruscan and the Roman. Of the former interesting people we know far too little commensurate with their power, and the influence which they appear to have exercised upon the spirit and progress of ancient art. The Thyrreneans, or Etruscans, it is certain, possessed, at a very early period, the empire of almost the whole Italian peninsula, and, to a very considerable extent, whatever of refinement existed in those primitive times. Respecting the origin of the nation, however, and the sources of this intelligence, authors disagree; while the scanty annals that have reached us, through the medium of the Latins and Greeks, enemies or rivals, leave but too much scope for unsettled opinion. The various systems here may be arranged under two general heads; first, that the Etruscans were of Lydian extraction, and under their king, Thyrrenus, settled in Italy at an era anterior to authentic history: or, secondly, that the early colonization of Etruria was owing to the wandering tribes from Greece, chiefly of the Pelasgic race, who settled at different times prior to the Trojan war. Neither of these opinions, singly, accords with contemporary, nor explains subsequent events; combined, they account both for the skill attained by the Etruscans in the arts of taste and civil government, while Greece was yet in a state of pastoral rudeness, and also for the subsequent interweaving into their history of Grecian fable and mythology. We enter not farther into this disquisition, interesting as it undoubtedly is. For our present purpose, it is sufficient to bear in mind, that Sculpture in Etruria had attained a coeval, if not a prior, degree of refinement as compared with Greece, and that regard to preserving the unity of the subject has alone occasioned the precedence in time given to the arts of the latter.

The remains of Etruscan Sculpture are not numerous, and of these the authenticity of some may justly be doubted. Taken in general, the works of national art consist of medals and coins; statues of bronze and marble; relievos; sculptured gems; engraved bronzes; and paintings.

The first class is the most numerous, and contains many beautiful, indeed, for those early ages, wonderful specimens. These are all cast of a compound metal, being of two kinds, either mythological or symbolical in their representations. Of the statues, it is difficult to say whether those in marble be early Greek or Etruscan; the smaller ones in bronze are more authentic, being household divinities, or merely ornaments: of those in the size of nature, scarcely one has escaped suspicion of its true age. One or two exhibit great beauty. Of the ancient relievos found in various parts of Italy, several are admitted to be genuine Etruscan; and here there can be little hesitation, as a series of sepulchral monuments, sarcophagi, and altars, might be arranged and compared throughout the whole period of Italian history. Gem engraving was brought to great perfection at an early period both in Greece and Italy. Of this minute but charming art, probably the oldest specimen now extant represents five of the seven chiefs who fought against Thebes. Of this the design is inartificial, and the workmanship rude; other Etruscan gems, however, or scarabÆi, from their resemblance to the shape of a beetle, as the Tydeus and Peleus, equal the most exquisite performances in this branch. The most curious and numerous remains belong to the class of engraved bronzes, or paterÆ, small vessels used in sacrificing, circular, and, in the single instance of the Etruscan, with a handle. On the bottom, inside, which is perfectly flat, being merely a plate surrounded with a shallow brim, there is usually engraved some mythological subject, of simple design, expressed in few, bold, firm, and deep lines.

In the style of these remains, three distinct eras of art among the Etruscans may be discerned. The first, or ancient style, commences with the earliest notices of the people. It has been confounded with the Egyptian and the Grecian; but the similarity is not greater than characterises the infancy of invention among every people. And though, apart, it might be difficult to discern their national or original elements, considered in connexion with the style of the following era, their distinctive character becomes apparent, of an unfettered imagination, essaying its feeble powers by no systematic, no conventional representation, arising, as in Egypt, from an impulse foreign to art; while, from Greek sculpture of the same age, we clearly distinguish the rudiments of new modes, and certain specialities in the relations between fancy and feeling with nature. The vigorous imagination, the bold forms and general tendency to exaggeration, which may be traced even in its infancy, display in its perfection, during the second epoch, the peculiar characteristics of Etruscan sculpture. In the works of this age, there is strength, and massiveness, and power; but they want delicacy of proportion, discrimination of character, and graceful simplicity. The third epoch embraces that period which beheld the gradual disappearance of the Tuscans as an independent state from the face of Italy. Their political empire was ingulfed in the extending dominion of Rome: the discriminative character of their genius merged in the arts of the colonial Greeks; when, as we have already seen, the schools of Rhegium and Crotona sent forth masters equal, if not superior, to those of Greece.

These eras, in date and duration, nearly coincide with as many revolutions in the political history of the nation. Their greatest extent of territory was held but for a short time, being quickly reduced on the south by settlements of the Dorian colonies, and on the north by the Gauls and Ligurians. It was only during their diminished, but secure and admirably constituted empire in Etruria Proper, that their national arts flourished, and their national style was formed. Each of twelve allied, but separately independent capitals, then became a school of art, the friendly rival of her compeers—each exciting the industry, and directing the advance, of the other—each the Athens of ancient Italy. Inflamed by the brutal spirit of mere conquest, the Romans broke in upon this tranquillity; and though, at first, science proved more than a match for force, Etruria, with her free institutions, her elective magistracy, her solemn insignia, fell beneath their rude despotism.

Thus terminated, 480 years from the building of Rome, the only native school of art in Italy; and that here sculpture had been cultivated with no ordinary ardour, is attested by the fact of the Romans having carried off from Volsinum alone no fewer than two thousand statues. Even for some time after the subjugation of the Etruscan republics, sculpture was practised; but it soon lost all national character. The Roman dominion embracing the circuit of Italy, the Tuscan freeman and the Greek colonist became alike its vassal; but their common masters fostered not the arts as native ornaments—as moral causes in their empire: they possessed merely sufficient knowledge to value the fruits of genius as the harvest of conquest. The same spirit actuated their subsequent conduct, when their victorious armies came in successive contact with the richer treasures of Sicily, and of Greece herself. Marcellus plundered Syracuse of her marble population, as a proof that he had subdued her living inhabitants; and, from a still more sordid motive, in which ignorance and avarice are disgustingly blended, Mummius first began the work of devastation in Greece. A picture of Bacchus, which the Corinthians, on account of its super-excellence, were anxious to regain from the soldiers, who were using it as a table, is said first to have excited his cupidity. From the vast sum offered, the Roman general conceived the picture contained gold, which he might perhaps discover when more at leisure; accordingly he delivered it to a common messenger, with this sage menace, that he was to carry it safely to Rome, under pain of being obliged to paint one equally good! Such was the state of early republican taste, quite in keeping with the national arts, sufficiently characterised by Tibullus, when he says:

Or by the opposition of Cato to the introduction of Greek statuary, on the plea, that its divine forms would expose to ridicule the rude fashioning of the Roman deities.

During the latter period of the commonwealth, attempts were successively made by Sylla, Pompey, and CÆsar, to domiciliate the arts in Rome. Their efforts, however, reached no farther than collecting in that capital the sculptors of Greece,—thus doubly unfortunate, as the place whence were torn the plundered ornaments of temples and palaces, and as the nurse of that science which, in busts and statues, was to immortalize the lineaments of her enslavers. The patronage of Augustus, who could wield for his purposes the energies of the whole enlightened world, necessarily proved highly advantageous to art, which he affected to cultivate from patriotic and intellectual, but really from those still stronger political motives. But of all the sculptors of the Augustan age whose names have reached us, every one is Greek, and chiefly Athenian. Pasiteles, Arcesilaus, Zopirus, and Evander, were the most eminent. The arts, indeed, were revived; but the creative spirit which infuses life and soul into their productions, which stamps them with originality and thought, could not be recalled. The character of design and of execution is evidently the same as that by which the last era of sculpture in Greece is distinguished, or rather it is superior; for settled government, ample reward, and certain honor, not only drew to Rome every man of talent, but also awakened new powers. But in the finest specimens, there is no evidence of new energies, added by the union of two separate modifications of talent; nor in the inferior, any exhibition of the more original, though it might be ruder, efforts of an aspiring and distinct national taste. Either or both of these effects would have been apparent, had there been native, prior to this importation of Greek artists. On the contrary, everything in the sculpture of this era discovers a descent from a state of higher excellence; every touch exhibits rather what has been, than presages the eminence for which we are to draw upon futurity. From Augustus to Trajan, during a period of 140 years, the principles and practice of the Greeks continue to be observed, with such difference only as political causes can easily reconcile, but with a progressive decay. The most favorable periods during this space were the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Trajan; for the reign of Nero, whose taste, like his morals, was corrupt, which Pliny has assumed as an epoch in the Roman school, was propitious to practice, not to improvement.

With the reign of Hadrian, in the seventeenth year of the second century, is introduced a new style of sculpture, which may properly be termed Roman. Here the distinguishing characteristic is extreme minuteness of finish, indicating the labour more of the hand than the mind. The chisel, the file, the drill, have been plied with ceaseless care, and great mechanical dexterity. Over the whole genius and spirit of the art, is now diffused an air of studied and even affected refinement, which smooths away every characteristic and natural expression. For the sublime is substituted the difficult, the florid for the elegant; and in every remaining specimen, we can readily detect the taste which preferred a poetaster to Homer, or the laboured inanities of the sophists to the vigorous and manly eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero.

The reign of the Antonines forms the last lucid interval in the arts of the ancient world. The decline of sculpture from thence to the reign of Constantine would be almost incredibly rapid, were we not enabled to trace its progress in the monuments that yet remain. Beyond Constantine it would not be difficult, but it would be useless, to carry our inquiries. When an imperial master of the world is found pilfering, from the monument of a virtuous predecessor, a few ornaments to deck the record of his own triumphs, and which the whole ingenuity of the Roman world could not supply, the annals of ancient taste may be closed.

Sculpture, it thus appears—and the remark is true of all the arts—was never cultivated in Rome as a native acquirement, as an integral element in national history. As political causes, too, the arts scarcely operated, except merely in connexion with public monuments, which were treated more as matters of business than of sentiment; where the successful execution brought no accession of moral dignity to the artist, and where the modes long formed were adopted with no change, save that arising from decaying capabilities. Of all the nations, indeed, who have held supremacy upon the earth, the Romans show the poorest claims to originality; and have least impressed the future fortunes of the human mind by any bold peculiarities or successful darings of her own genius. In letters and in the arts, they have bequeathed to posterity only modifications of the exquisite inventions of Greece. In letters, indeed, they have improved upon their borrowings, because in some instances they have imparted the stamp of nationality;—not so in the fine arts. Yet even in the former, the improvement extends only to the manner; the material remains with little alteration, and no addition. The character of Roman talent—manly and persevering, though not inventive—seemed well adapted to succeed in sculpture, laborious in its practice, in its principles grave and simple. Three causes chiefly opposed this success. The Romans regarded the art as the peculiar eminence of a conquered people. Hence they cherished no genuine enthusiasm for its excellences, and no real respect for its professors—among them the fallen Greeks or manumitted slaves. Secondly, their national manners were inclined, while their spirit burned in its best energies, more to action and business than to elegant accomplishment. As a more particular obstacle, growing out of this general cause, the desire constantly affected of being represented in armour, most materially operated against the improvement of sculpture; and by shutting up the warm and breathing forms of nature, gave at once origin and inveteracy to the evils of harshness and incorrectness, in the early school, and in the latter, to finical and ineffective laboriousness. Thirdly, the superlative beauty of the finest labours of Greece, scattered with amazing profusion throughout Italy, rendered their possessors indifferent to contemporary and so conspicuously inferior works.

To this last circumstance, however, is principally to be ascribed the only excellence to which Roman sculpture can justly lay claim, as it proved mainly instrumental in directing attention to that particular department. The busts of the Roman school, from Julius to Gallienus, embracing a period of three centuries, exhibit a series invaluable in the history of art, and in some instances capable of being compared with the best of similar works of the first ages, without suffering by the contrast. These do not, indeed, equal in heroic character one or two remains of Greece, but they exhibit a more powerful representation of individual mental resemblance. The soul of history absolutely seems to inhabit and to breathe from the marble. Into every movement of the countenance is infused an expression so speaking, so characteristic, so full of individuality, that we seem to have set before us the very actor in those deeds which have formed our most serious studies. But this high perfection applies only to the termination of the commonwealth, or does not extend beyond the reign of Augustus. As we advance, the impress of grandeur of thought, and energy of purpose, becomes obscured. This in part is no doubt owing to the decline of power to represent; but the decay of internal nobleness in the subject appears to have at least kept pace with the fall of material art; and, in the words of Pliny, when there were no longer images of mind, the lineaments of form also degenerated.

From a careful examination of the imperial busts,—for the jealous fears of these tyrants soon forbade any others to be sculptured—we derive our best knowledge of the Roman school. The style of design during the first, or republican age, is distinguished by squareness and vigour in the forms—decision of arrangement—boldness and firmness in pronouncing the parts, accompanied with truth and great force of general effect, but destitute of minuteness and accuracy in the details. The mastery of touch, indeed, is frequently so daring, as to be redeemed from the imputation of careless and unfinished only by the vigorous meaning of every stroke. We detect the greatest deficiency in those passing lines of thought and form, where little meets the outward sense, but in which the science and feeling of the artists are most surely displayed and most severely tried; the expression of the eyes are studied, and the eye-ball, with intent to produce an imposing look, is made larger than in nature. The hair, though skilfully massed, and fine in distant effect, is particularly heavy; indeed, the characteristic defect is harshness—an absence of those sweet and flowing lines which bring the contour fully, but graciously, upon the view. To the close of the first century, bold and facile execution, and force of effect, continue to take the place of simple and accurate design and natural expression—faults most conspicuous in the most prosperous time, the reigns of Titus and Trajan, from the art being exercised chiefly on architectural designs. In addition to the dry, the hard, and laboured, the era of Hadrian is further distinguished by the pupil of the eye having a deeply drilled orifice, and by the separate parts of the countenance being marked with an affected and unnatural depth. The busts of Aurelius are the last good examples. Under Severus appears a singular affectation of marking the forehead, and even the whole countenance, with furrows. Subsequently every reign displays more decided retrogression, and the final disappearance of every redeeming excellence.