Читать книгу A History of Sculpture онлайн

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Under these circumstances, honesty compels us to preface this book with a confession. It is a history of sculpture with a purpose. It seeks to entice a few men and women into the belief that sculpture is, essentially, a living art. Its one object is to marshal the evidence in favour of the proposition that the marbles and bronzes of the great sculptors are not dead things which may well be left to gather dust in national museums and unfrequented corners of public galleries.

Though marble and bronze have not lost their potency, it would be folly to regard all sculpture as equally vital. Much has only an archæological or antiquarian interest in these latter days. Consequently, though building from the bricks of the past, everything which has lost its meaning for the men of to-day will be ruthlessly excluded. Our purpose is to write a history of the art itself, to show how its various manifestations arose from social and political circumstances, to trace the emotions and thoughts which stimulated the artists to produce their greatest works and to gauge the action and interaction which created the various national styles. On the one hand is the sculptor expressing what appears to be his own thoughts and emotions. On the other, the men of his country and time providing him with the raw material of thought and feeling, and compelling the production of works which could never have seen the light had he dwelt on a column in the desert after the manner of some Alexandrian mystic. Nor is this all. In addition, there is the influence which the sculptor exerts upon those around him, and particularly upon his fellow craftsmen. Out of the reciprocal modification arises a body of sculptural production, endowed with a definite national style.