DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42779#0204
144 SCULPTURE IN RELIEF
expressionist effect of a sculptured relief that has a pro-
nounced system of hollows and cavities and graded shadows.
You will remember more easily the design of a sculpture
like the Athletes Basis than you will a metope of the Athenian
Treasury; its lines are easier to fix. So, as you recede in
distance from the more rounded metope, you lose its sense of
composition more easily. The spatial and temporal value of
formalism are considerable.
Such knowledge was, I think, in the minds of the makers
of relief-sculpture in Greece. Those who favoured the hard
clear design as such with a fine calligraphic effect would
naturally incline to the fashion of low and flat relief. Vase-
painters may well have worked also as relief-carvers in this
style. The relief of a potter, whose name is preserved only
in the unenlightening last three letters,1 is in this flat style,
with a maximum depth of relief of 4-5 cm. He may conceiv-
ably have carved the relief himself. Were the inscription
preserved intact perhaps we should know for certain. The
Athletes Basis has already occasioned more comparisons with
the work of painters than with that of sculptors.2 Here, and
here only, it seems to me can be established a firm and sure
comparison between the work of these two very different
classes of artists. For, throughout history, the sculptor and
the painter have followed divergent paths, except, perhaps,
during the Middle Renaissance in Italy when sculpture was
largely subservient to the rules and inspiration of the painters.
For even when a sculptor draws or paints there is a world of
difference between his work and that of the painter who is a
painter only. One has but to glance at the drawings of Rodin,
of Maillol, of Alfred Stevens, of Gaudier or Frank Dobson
or, indeed, of any fine sculptor, to see how his drawing
implies a solider form and a greater realization of solid masses
than do the drawings or pictures of painters. Greek vase-
painting can be compared always with low-relief carving,
1 No. 1332 in the Acropolis Museum. Dickins, p. 272. Pamphaios is
suggested as the potter’s name.
2 Della Seta, Dedalo, 1922, fasc. 4; Liverpool Annals, x, p. 61, &c.
expressionist effect of a sculptured relief that has a pro-
nounced system of hollows and cavities and graded shadows.
You will remember more easily the design of a sculpture
like the Athletes Basis than you will a metope of the Athenian
Treasury; its lines are easier to fix. So, as you recede in
distance from the more rounded metope, you lose its sense of
composition more easily. The spatial and temporal value of
formalism are considerable.
Such knowledge was, I think, in the minds of the makers
of relief-sculpture in Greece. Those who favoured the hard
clear design as such with a fine calligraphic effect would
naturally incline to the fashion of low and flat relief. Vase-
painters may well have worked also as relief-carvers in this
style. The relief of a potter, whose name is preserved only
in the unenlightening last three letters,1 is in this flat style,
with a maximum depth of relief of 4-5 cm. He may conceiv-
ably have carved the relief himself. Were the inscription
preserved intact perhaps we should know for certain. The
Athletes Basis has already occasioned more comparisons with
the work of painters than with that of sculptors.2 Here, and
here only, it seems to me can be established a firm and sure
comparison between the work of these two very different
classes of artists. For, throughout history, the sculptor and
the painter have followed divergent paths, except, perhaps,
during the Middle Renaissance in Italy when sculpture was
largely subservient to the rules and inspiration of the painters.
For even when a sculptor draws or paints there is a world of
difference between his work and that of the painter who is a
painter only. One has but to glance at the drawings of Rodin,
of Maillol, of Alfred Stevens, of Gaudier or Frank Dobson
or, indeed, of any fine sculptor, to see how his drawing
implies a solider form and a greater realization of solid masses
than do the drawings or pictures of painters. Greek vase-
painting can be compared always with low-relief carving,
1 No. 1332 in the Acropolis Museum. Dickins, p. 272. Pamphaios is
suggested as the potter’s name.
2 Della Seta, Dedalo, 1922, fasc. 4; Liverpool Annals, x, p. 61, &c.