The Renaissance of Sculpture in Belgium (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895 edition. Excerpt: ... THE RENAISSANCE OF SCULPTURE IN BELGIUM INTRODUCTION A BRIEF SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF BELGIAN SCULPTURE FROM THE ELEVENTH CENTURY TO 183O. "Car Flandre peut dormir, mais mourir jamais "--Charles De Coster, L'egende de Tie/ Uylempiegel. "having eyes, they see not, and having ears, they hear not." The Scriptural phrase has a special application to those contemporary critics and thinkers who are never weary of lamenting the materialism, the want of artistic comprehension, which they declare to be the characteristics of our age. From the dawn of the century onwards, the decadence of art has been unceasingly bewailed; and yet, throughout the century, one glorious artist has succeeded another; undaunted by the scorn or indifference of their contemporaries, they have created a series of masterpieces, which some hundred years hence will entitle our epoch to rank as another Golden Age of art and poetry. It is true that individual arts had a more sumptuous development under the blue skies of Greece, or in the stately palaces of the Italian Renaissance. Greek sculpture will never be equalled, I believe, nor will any school of painting ever rival that of the Italians. But to judge of the greatness of any particular epoch in the history of art, we must not take some specialised manifestation of that art. We-must examine its knowledge and its activity in the aggregate; and thus considered, this nineteenth century of ours is singularly splendid, complete and luminous--grand enough, inspired enough, in all its multiple aspects, to bear comparison with the great eras of Phidias and of Michelangelo. The most striking characteristic of this century, perhaps, has been the diffusion of art and culture throughout all the great countries of Europe. Greece, at...