, 1874-05-06

either absurd dandies or maWkiSh Youths, that
are paralleled in no epoch Of Greek art save
the latest. Even his rounded ard sentimental
women have something affected and unreal
about them. It was in 1903, when Winckcl-
mann had been dead for nearly forty years,
that the first genuine and satisfactory outcome
of his teaching appeared. In that year Ber-
thel Thorvaldsen, half-Starving and wholly
despairing, put the finishing touches to that
model of the Jason" which was about to
make a name for him throughout Europe, and
be the forerunner Of splendid fame and fortune.
How sublime is the contour of this gigantic
figure! In the first full glory Of manhood, sup
pie and yet firm-set, in an attitude that reveals
the easy play of the nervous, muscular frame,
in its citation and easy confidence, the young
Greek steps forward with the Fleece upon his
arm, and his lance lightly raised in the other
hand, fresh from the slaughter of the terrible
dragon. The struggle has hardly suf1icad to
stir the heroic face the head, lightly poised,
turns slightly on the broad, sinewy neck, with
a S%cornful glance at the writhing mass Of coils
that huddle, quiyering, somewhere out of sight.
The greatest painter Of that day treated a
closely similar subject about the same time,
and in the same intensely modern or intensely
antique fashion. Turner, in his "ApOll0 STAY
ing the Python" has given us the radiant god,
enveloped in bis own effulgence, calmly shoot
ing his darts into the vast snaky horror whose
wounded coils stare US in the face. In Thor
valdSen, all has been concentrated in the calm,
virile majesty of the slayer; in Turner, the
sentiments of natural scenery, the dark valley
of rocks. the horrible solitude, the stunted
foliage, are insisted on but ia each case the
inspiration is the same; Greece, humanity, and
nature have been the teachers and to one
who looks beneath the surface, there IS more
inherent sympathy between these two appa-
rently so dissimilar works, than between the
most grandiose figures of the sculptor-pupils of
lie Brun and the simple statues of Thorvaldsen.
ThorvaIdsen was a great plastic thinker.
His extreme f~ecundity of idea interfered to
some extent with his perfection of performance.
1t is known that he seldom had the patience
to follow out his ideas in marble; sometimes
he did no more than touch up the salient points
in the outline, when his pupils had finished the
marble to their own satisfaction. 1t was in a
measure true what the jealous Swedish sculp-
tors, Fogelberg and Bystr0m, said, he did not
rightly know how to handle the chisel. This
indeed he did know; his "Adonis," in the
Glyptotek at Munich, which he cut every line
of himself, proves that the chisel was perfectly
at his command still it was rarely that he
exercised his talent, and doubtless if he had
DCen wiling 10 SdCflUC6 ltCulully 10 pGT!eCllOu,
we should now possess mere splendid, though
far fewer, works from his hands. His answer
to Bystr0m's taunt is Characteristic. "Tie my
hands" he said, "behind my back, and give
me a block of Parian, and | will bite out of it
with my teeth a finer statue than Bystr0m can
cut with his chisel." 1t is owing to this impa-
tience, doubtless, that there is often so much
more force and freshness about the plaster than
the marble, in his figures. The soul of Thor
valdsen shines out Of the clay, and therefore
it is at Copenhagen, and there only, that this
master can be studied. In the Museum dedi-
Gated to Thorvaldsen in that city one stands
among the mouldings of the artists own hands,
and one learns there to understand something
of that intellect and Imagination that has not
been approached among sculptors since Michel
Angelo walked the earth, and in the more har-
moniOus qualities of pure beauty, not since the
palmy days of Phidias himself.
This new biography of Thorvaldsen, a sump-
tuous volume, translated from the French of an
author who has followed with the patient en-
thusiasm of a disciple every vestige of the
subject Of his admiration, will tell the story of
his life, picturesque in some of its details, SIM
pie and serene as a whole, to many who are not
yet acquainted with it. 1t is full of quaint
anecdotes that lose nothing of their ~piquancy
by the rather naive way in which they have
been rendered. Mrs. Hoey has done her share
e L olsA.I1u L. T--I:z T.