The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

Portraiture is associated with the earliest attempts at representing living objects, both in sculpture and in painting. Even amongst savages we find resemblances, carved or painted, or both, of the human form, generally grotesque, but always presenting an idea of Art. With the advance of civilization, the demand for portraits increased, as the knowledge of the means available for painting and sculpture improved. Men in authority, or possessed of great wealth, or renowned by deeds of arms and feats of strength, became the first subjects for the art. That the Egyptians early practised portrait-painting, is evident from the discovery of mural sculpture, at a date anterior to the time of Rameses, representing painters delineating men and animals, and sculptors carving out of granite the very figures reproduced in another material, in the Egyptian Court of the Crystal Palace. Herodotus records the fact that Amasis sent his portrait painted on wood to Cyrene as a present; and some portraits of this kind were found in the tombs at Thebes. On comparing the heads of Rameses and Amenoph, several of which are to be seen in the Egyptian court, the individuality of each is at once perceived. Rameses has an aquiline nose and thin lips, while Amenoph has the turned-up nose and thick lips of the African. In Clarac’s “Musée de Sculpture,” are collected many accurate engravings of the portraits of the Egyptians contained in the Louvre, which, according to this authority, are all verified, as many as eighty-six of them having their names attached. In the Imperial Library, at Paris, there is a collection of a hundred Chinese portraits of great antiquity. They were brought from China by the well-known Jesuit missionary, Père Ameot. Pauthier, author of a History of China, refers to these portraits, and considers them to be those of celebrated men and women living at a period long anterior to Confucius. Croesus, King of Lydia, had the image of his baking woman set up in gold: and Herodotus has preserved the names of two Argive youths, Biton and Cleobis, who for their piety in drawing their mother, the priestess of Juno, to the temple, when the oxen for her car in a great solemnity did not arrive, had their statues placed by their countrymen at Delphi. To the Greeks, indeed, we owe the finest examples of portraits in Sculpture. Their temples, forums, and other public places, as well as their private dwellings, were ornamented with the busts and statues of heroes, kings, poets, orators, and others distinguished by their achievements. Many of these examples have fortunately been rescued from destruction, and preserved to the present time. The Romans, although not themselves, either by the gift of Heaven, or by their own tastes, artists, were great patrons of art. Many a rich Roman citizen had the court of his house converted into a kind of forum, which he adorned with his favourite portrait statues. From the precious ruins of Ancient Rome--from her temples, palaces, villas--countless statues and busts have been dug out. Her tombs also were furnished with portraits, busts, and statues, recumbent, or in other postures. In all times, and in all countries, we note a desire to perpetuate the memory of the dead; and the pious as well as humane intention was carried out in various ways. The Egyptians enclosed their mummies in wooden and stone cases, carved and painted in order to resemble, more or less, the inhabitant within. The tombs of Etruria are usually surmounted by a half recumbent statue, which although but rudely representing the features and attitude of life, clearly reveal the intention to produce a portrait of the deceased person, but never--which became the custom in after ages--as though he were dead. From the employment of sculptured portraits upon the monuments of the dead, and from the use of other images in the funeral rites, such representations came to be called “busts,” from the Latin word _Bustum_, signifying a tomb, or rather place where the burning of the body took place. Since the majority of persons could not afford a statue, the less expensive memorial, consisting of the head and shoulders, was the more generally adopted; and hence the name now current amongst us. Portraits played a still more important part in the economy of the ancient Romans. Images, or rather masks, made in wax and representing their ancestors, were kept by the Romans in the vestibules of their houses, placed in cases formed like temples, and there constantly exposed to the notice of the family and of visitors. When a member of the family died, these masks were worn by the friends who assisted at the funeral, as were the dresses and robes of office belonging to the ancestors whom they personated. After the ceremony, the images were faithfully restored to their sanctuaries in the vestibule. Another use of portraiture was originally peculiar to the Greeks, but it became subsequently adopted by other nations. We refer to the practice of painting upon a metal shield the portraits of a family--often with the father in the centre--and of hanging it up as sacred to the gods. There are similar portraits extant, in _terracotta_, of Demosthenes in exile at Calauria, and of Thales. The ancients also painted portraits on wood in encaustic, and some portraits formed in mosaic still exist. In proportion to the growth of luxury, and to the development of the arts, do we find the increased employment of portraiture. Every kind of work was decorated with a portrait. This was especially the usage of the Greeks under the successors of Alexander, at Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamus; and with the Romans, towards the close of the Republic, and under the Emperors. Engraved stones of seals and rings are exceedingly valuable in enabling us to identify antique busts and statues; their hardness having preserved them from injury. Very frequently they give the impression of being most accurate portraits. In the Greek Court is a large collection of casts of these extremely interesting works, which merit careful examination. Many of the heads are wonderfully beautiful--far surpassing in execution any similar work of the present time. In like manner the portraits upon coins, being connected with writing, have been most useful in contributing to the knowledge and naming of antique busts and statues. Of these illustrations also, the visitor is enabled to study a very complete series from very early times. The universal taste for portraiture exhibited by the ancients, and the encouragement to art which the vast wealth of many enabled them to afford, soon led to the formation of a gallery of portraits in every house of importance. Such a gallery contained portraits, both sculptured and painted, of great men in art, science, letters, and arms, and was called “The _Pinacotheca_.” The desire to render such a collection as complete as possible, led to the production of an infinite number of copies from those originally taken from the life: just as with us, houses are adorned with plaster-casts of the busts of Wellington, Shakspeare, and Milton. It will now be understood how it has happened that so large a number of portrait-busts have remained to us from antiquity. Unless they had been multiplied in the manner described, the acts of ignorance and the accidents of time would have effaced all record of the features and aspect of the good and great in ancient story. Most of the works, executed in metal, were melted down and converted into money. One valuable mine, however, was happily discovered in the ruins of Herculaneum, completely preserved, and was removed to the Museum at Naples, where it still exists. Of several, so recovered, we possess fine copies in the Crystal Palace. During the reign of Hadrian in Rome (A.D. 120), art enjoyed a revival--a Medicean period. A multitude of works of every kind were produced, and portraiture was carried to its height through the very zealous loyalty to which sculptors gave way, in their desire to flatter their imperial and magnificent patron, by representing the members of his family as so many gods and goddesses. The like encouragement was afforded under the dominion of Antoninus Pius (A.D. 140), and his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius; followed, unfortunately, by the destructive propensities of the odious Commodus, who would have limited portraiture to the representation of his own face. We see the first efforts of portraiture in Christian art, in the representations--sculptured and painted--of saints in the early ages of the faith. Some examples of these will be found in the Byzantine and Mediæval Courts. A certain conventional form was adhered to in all these works, in which we remark especially a general elongation of the face and features, as if the aim had been to impress upon them the natural effects of emaciation from penance and fasting, the body and limbs being also subjected to the same treatment. The eyes are always almond-shaped, half closed, and sloping upwards from the nose. The portraits of Justinian, Theodora, Nicephorus, and Charles the Bald, on the façade of the Byzantine Court, bear evidence of their authenticity. In forming our idea of an individual portrait painted in the early Christian period, we must never forget to allow for the formalities by which an artist of that time was inexorably directed. Statues and pictures were then produced (as indeed they are to this day by the monks of Mount Athos,) in accordance with rule and system--a sort of holy heraldry. At the time of which we now speak, we trace no general and popular use of portraits, such as we observed amongst the ancients, although they were still to be found in the hands of the most wealthy and cultivated. These were of an expensive kind, in mosaic and in miniature painting, the latter style being frequently employed when a valuable manuscript or missal was copied for presentation, and a portrait of the author or donor was usually painted upon it. Mediæval portraiture shows a considerable advance upon the Byzantine, but is still inferior to the antique and to the portraiture of our own time. It was confined, almost exclusively, to monumental effigies, in which the artist was constrained to present the lifeless form, in the stiffness of very death--whether sleeping the sleep of eternal peace, or kneeling in the attitude of prayer. Some of the finest examples are to be seen in the Mediæval Court: of these more than one are doubtless portrait-statues of the time. The same may be said of some of the effigies of the Knights Templar, which exhibit great individuality, having been executed in a very hard kind of marble, that has well retained the features originally carved out of it. Busts of this period are exceedingly rare; inasmuch as portraiture of the kind was not in accordance with the religious feeling of the age. We must be content to take the effigies of mediæval art as portraits of the time; treated, of course, after certain conventionalities, but nevertheless truthful and most interesting. The art of portraiture revived under the creative genius of Giotto and Orcagna, and of the great men of the _Renaissance_--Domenico Ghirlandaio and Giovanni Bellini--until it reached the highest dignity and beauty in the superb works of the mightiest of the mighty Italians--Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and Titian. The most remarkable portraits of this period are paintings, and are therefore not to be found in large numbers in the Crystal Palace. In the beautiful gallery, however, of copies from the old masters, will be found several fine examples. In the Renaissance and Mediæval Courts, will be seen some of the statues from the tombs of Maximilian and Albert of Saxony--the finest portrait-statues of their kind. In the Italian Court, too, there are the immortal monumental statues of the Medici, and a superb bust of Cosmo de’ Medici by the inimitable Cellini. The antique statues and busts described in the following pages are from THE VATICAN, AT ROME, THE CAPITOLINE MUSEUM, THE NAPLES MUSEUM, THE FLORENCE GALLERY, THE LOUVRE, THE BERLIN MUSEUM, THE BRITISH MUSEUM. [Illustration: ΗΡΟΔΟΤΟΣ.] THE PORTRAIT GALLERY. ANTIQUE PORTRAITS. GREEK COURT.--SOUTH SIDE-COURT. POETS AND DRAMATISTS. [28]1. HOMER. _Great Epic Poet of Greece._ [Born, probably B.C. 850. Place of birth unknown.] A majestic antique Bust. The kingly and venerated Patriarch of all Poets, for the western civilization--or, the sound of a Name! The two wonderful poems which bear down this name--whatever signifying--through the lapse and revolutions of time, preserve, as it were, the image of an extinct world: although of a world, perhaps less than half real, and more than half ideal:--for the manners _were_: the persons and events may, or may not have been: and the gods and goddesses of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” were, we know, only a believed-in, waking dream. But, by the potency of the song, the picture lives! The war, imaginary or no, raging between the Hellespont and the foot of Mount Ida, remains, to the educated memory of the nations, like the beginning--if not of the world’s, yet of its western half’s--history. And those heroes and heroines, with their high actions and their deep passions--the unrolling, embroidered web of their fortunes and fates:--the king of men, Agamemnon,--the swift-footed son of the sea-goddess, Achilles,---the sage, long-lived Nestor,--the shrewd, enduring Ulysses,--Ajax, a tower in the fight,--Diomed, favoured of Minerva present beside him in the storm of spears;--and that grey-headed, imperial sire of Troy, with all his falling sons, Priam,--the gallant and good Hector,--the loving and faithful Andromache,--the aged, too fruitful mother, Hecuba;--even the fatal and criminal, but divinely beautiful Helen--Is it not a strange magic that dwells in the creative thought of the poet, and in his modulated words, and that thus, in a language, and with manners, a faith, an age--all so long since dead and gone--can, as if reviving all, render those Shadows, to us--now, here--the earliest objects of a wondering and aspiring enthusiasm:--the first enkindlers in our bosoms of that glowing, intense, comprehensive, and intelligent sympathy, which transports us out of the central self, and beyond the close-drawn horizon of our own particular life, to feel the conditions and to understand the spirits of all our fellow men? Let the theory be true, which denies to these incomparable works an individual author--which supposes them woven together of many songs, first sung in many places, by many singers; let the benignly august, fillet-bound head before us, be--that which only at last it can be--a conjecture of the Grecian chisel;--we see at least here how the consummated art of sculpture has chosen to express, in corporeal form, the one soul of power which animates those immortal twins of poesy. We see in what shape of a human head, crowned with its own irradiations, the fountains of all song might have sprang. We see what the living and wandering minstrel of Greece, beloved and honoured wheresoever, in hall or on green, he and his harp came,--what the individual Homer, for whose birth seven cities contended, and whom in the after-day the land numbered amongst her half-divine and worshipped heroes--WOULD HAVE BEEN:--or, WAS! [Although modern antiquaries agree with Pliny that busts of Homer are apocryphal, yet there can be no doubt this is the true Greek conventional portrait of that poet. A headless marble was dug up inscribed with his name and shortly afterwards the head itself was found in the same hole, and it fitted precisely to the marble previously discovered. The bust, so found, is now in the Naples Museum. The same head is constantly found in other representations of the ancient poet. The head is bound with the “strophium,” an ornament given by the Greek artists to their gods and heroes. The attitude of the head would seem to express the blindness with which Homer, according to tradition, was afflicted. This bust is from the marble in the Stanza dei Filosofi of the Capitoline Museum, Rome.] [28] The objects forming the Portrait Gallery in the Crystal Palace, are numbered in red figures throughout.