DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0648
GENRE SUBJECTS IN SCULPTURE.
611
ized world, with their dense populations, more excited life, and by the over-
refinement which pervaded some classes, nurturing exclusiveness and isolation.
Society, thus sharply sundered, and spiced with contrast and variety, brought
out into strong relief personal idiosyncrasies, and peculiarities of class and
rank. Moreover, this varied panorama of human life had its fascination for
the men of that time, as the same phenomenon has for us to-day, and could not
fail to find its expression in art. On the other hand, the artificiality and lack
of simplicity around them, the results of a highly complex civilization, awak-
ened in men a longing for what they had
lost; and their fancy found relief in pictures
of the children of nature, living in unclouded
union with fountain, forest, field, and flock.
Many walks of life which, as far as we
know, had hitherto been unheeded in art,
were now represented in keeping with the
prevalent realism, in all their attractive and
many of their forbidding aspects. So com-
edy caught the unique features of city-life,
developing to great perfection the type of
the adventurous soldier, the wealthy citizen,
the artist, the artisan, the parasite, etc. ;
idyllic verse busied itself with the rural
classes, shepherds, hunters, and fisher-folk;
and sculpture and painting did not fall be-
hind the sister art of poetry. So, for in-
stance, the actor seems to have been for
the first time represented in statuary, as
wearing the mask and other curious para- _______________________________
phernalia of his calling, such as the false stomach, etc., seen in several statues
in the Villa Albani, doubtless traceable to originals of this age. One has taken
off his mask, as if in answer to the applause of the public. The sculptor's
fancy delighted itself with fishermen, shepherds, or merry childhood."97 The
fisherman, as sung in verse, tough-skinned and weather-beaten, appeared, doubt-
less for the decoration of fountains, in statues like the one in the Vatican,
where the plebeian costermonger is crying the fish he carefully holds in a
basket (Fig. 246), his plain face and horny skin being marvellously portrait-like
in treatment. Street-urchins, quarrelling over knuckle-bones, seem to have
been represented with an equally speaking realism, as a fragment of a group in
the British Museum teaches us. A lad with homeliest features, biting into the
arm of his offending comrade, the ^vwr-like naturalness in the whole, and
the excellence of the surface-rendering, show us that we have here a work of
the Hellenistic age, which may, however, have taken for its groundwork a type
Fig. 246. Fisherman. Vatican.
611
ized world, with their dense populations, more excited life, and by the over-
refinement which pervaded some classes, nurturing exclusiveness and isolation.
Society, thus sharply sundered, and spiced with contrast and variety, brought
out into strong relief personal idiosyncrasies, and peculiarities of class and
rank. Moreover, this varied panorama of human life had its fascination for
the men of that time, as the same phenomenon has for us to-day, and could not
fail to find its expression in art. On the other hand, the artificiality and lack
of simplicity around them, the results of a highly complex civilization, awak-
ened in men a longing for what they had
lost; and their fancy found relief in pictures
of the children of nature, living in unclouded
union with fountain, forest, field, and flock.
Many walks of life which, as far as we
know, had hitherto been unheeded in art,
were now represented in keeping with the
prevalent realism, in all their attractive and
many of their forbidding aspects. So com-
edy caught the unique features of city-life,
developing to great perfection the type of
the adventurous soldier, the wealthy citizen,
the artist, the artisan, the parasite, etc. ;
idyllic verse busied itself with the rural
classes, shepherds, hunters, and fisher-folk;
and sculpture and painting did not fall be-
hind the sister art of poetry. So, for in-
stance, the actor seems to have been for
the first time represented in statuary, as
wearing the mask and other curious para- _______________________________
phernalia of his calling, such as the false stomach, etc., seen in several statues
in the Villa Albani, doubtless traceable to originals of this age. One has taken
off his mask, as if in answer to the applause of the public. The sculptor's
fancy delighted itself with fishermen, shepherds, or merry childhood."97 The
fisherman, as sung in verse, tough-skinned and weather-beaten, appeared, doubt-
less for the decoration of fountains, in statues like the one in the Vatican,
where the plebeian costermonger is crying the fish he carefully holds in a
basket (Fig. 246), his plain face and horny skin being marvellously portrait-like
in treatment. Street-urchins, quarrelling over knuckle-bones, seem to have
been represented with an equally speaking realism, as a fragment of a group in
the British Museum teaches us. A lad with homeliest features, biting into the
arm of his offending comrade, the ^vwr-like naturalness in the whole, and
the excellence of the surface-rendering, show us that we have here a work of
the Hellenistic age, which may, however, have taken for its groundwork a type
Fig. 246. Fisherman. Vatican.