In the first place, sculpture is dependent on certain lights, namely those from above, while a picture carries everywhere with it ...its own light and shade; light and shade therefore are essential to sculpture. In this respect, the sculptor is aided by the nature of the relief, which produces these of its own accord, but the painter artificially creates them by art in places where nature would normally do the like. The sculptor cannot render the difference in the varying natures of the colors of objects; painting does not fail to do so in any particular. The lines of perspective of sculptors do not seem in any way true; those of painters may appear to extend a hundred miles beyond the work itself. The effects of aerial perspective are outside the scope of sculptors' work; they can neither represent transparent bodies nor luminous bodies nor angles of reflection nor shining bodies such as mirrors and like things of glittering surface, nor mists, nor dull weather, nor an infinite number of things which I forbear to mention lest they should prove wearisome.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I have seen fine statues, and afterwards enter a public assembly, I understand well what he meant who said, "When I have been... reading Homer, all men look like giants."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I look on Sculpture as history. I do not think the Apollo and the Jove impossible in flesh and blood. Every trait the artist recor...ded in stone, he had seen in life, and better than his copy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have heard that stiff people lose something of their awkwardness under high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I think, sculpture ...and painting have an effect to teach us manners, and abolish hurry.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The statue is then beautiful when it begins to be incomprehensible, when it is passing out of criticism, and can no longer be defi...ned by compass and measuring-wand, but demands an active imagination to go with it, and to say what it is in the act of doing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The god or hero of the sculptor is always represented in a transition from that which is representable to the senses, to that whic...h is not.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see... what he describes--countrysides and figures, movements and gestures--how could he have a style, that is originality?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a N...ymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A picture wants solidity, a statue wants colour. But we see the want of colour as a palpably glaring defect, and we do not see the... want of solidity, the effects of which to the spectator are supplied by light and shadow. A picture is as perfect an imitation of nature as is conveyed by a looking-glass; which is all that the eye can require, for it is all it can take in for the time being. A fine picture resembles a real living man; the finest statue in the world can only resemble a man turned to stone. The one is an image, the other a cold abstraction of nature. It leaves out half the visible impression.... It appears to me that sculpture, though not proper to express health or life or motion, accords admirably with the repose of the tomb; and that it cannot be better employed than in arresting the fleeting dust in imperishable forms, and in embodying a lifeless shadow. Painting, on the contrary, from what I have seen of it in Catholic countries, seems to be out of its place on the walls of churches; it has a flat and flimsy effect contrasted with the solidity of the building, and its rich flaunting colours harmonize but ill with solemnity of the surrounding scene.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhyth...mical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know that I can feel the heart- throbs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »