No. VII.

BASSO-RILIEVO.

THE Italian term basso-rilievo, or the French bas-relief, is commonly applied to any work of sculpture connected more or less with a plane surface or background, and in this general sense is opposed to insulated detached figures, or sculpture in the round. In its more particular meaning, basso-rilievo, low or flat relief, is usually appropriated to figures which have a very slight projection from the ground. Alto-rilievo, on the other hand, is not only rounded to the full bulk, but has generally some portions of the figures quite detached; and mezzo-rilievo (a style between the two), although sometimes rounded to a considerable bulk, has no part entirely unconnected with the plane surface or ground. A more accurate definition of the styles to which these designations refer will result from the explanations that follow. The terms used by the Greeks and Romans to distinguish these kinds of relief cannot perhaps be determined with complete accuracy; and it may be here remarked, that those writers are mistaken who suppose the word Toreutike (ToрEUTIKŃ) to have been applied by the Greeks exclusively to alto-rilievo,

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since Heyne, and indeed other writers before him, have proved that the term was appropriated to carving, and, chiefly, chasing in metal, in any kind of relief. The Latin word corresponding with it is cælatura. The Greeks seem to have employed the term anaglypta to denote works in relief in general. The ectypa scalptura of Pliny (xxxvii. 10.), according to Müller, means sculpture in the concave sense -or Intaglio. The term glypta (from yλúpw, to cut into, to hollow out), with other words formed from the same verb, also appears to denote sculpture in the concave sense. Herodotus in a passage of his second book (cap. 138.), where we have little doubt that he is speaking of the sunk Egyptian reliefs (which will be mentioned in another part of this article), couples a word formed from the verb γλύφω with the word typus (τύπος): typus itself (perhaps) always means a work in relief, properly so called. (See Herod. iii. 88. Cicero ad Atticum, i. 10.) Italian writers of the time of Vasari, it appears, used the term mezzo-rilievo for the highest relief, basso-rilievo for the less prominent, and stiacciato for the flattest or least raised.

Whatever may have been the origin of this kind of sculpture, and there is no doubt of its being very ancient, an idea will be best formed of its style, as practised by the Greeks, by supposing it to be derived from the partial insertion of a statue in a perpendicular plane. Alto-rilievo is often literally nothing more than this. Applied to a flat surface,

the disposition of the limbs and the actions of the figure become necessarily more or less parallel with that surface, in order sufficiently to adhere to it. The attitude is thus, in a certain degree, adapted or selected. In inserting or embedding a figure in a flat ground, it is obvious, that although it may be buried less than half its thickness, as in alto-rilievo, it cannot be buried more, nor indeed (the structure of the figure strictly considered) quite so much, without ceasing to present the real boundary or profile of the form. In the less prominent kinds of rilievo it is therefore still required that the outline should present the real form, and this principle in its further application excludes, in a great measure, the unreal forms of perspective and foreshortening, which would suppose that the objects are no longer parallel with the surface on which they are displayed. Attempts at foreshortening, in this kind of sculpture, must in most cases fail to satisfy the eye: the work can only be seen in front, and the appearance it presents is therefore required to be at once intelligible, for no uncertainty can be removed by an inspection from another point of view, as in walking round a statue. The substance, or thickness, need not, however, be real, provided it appear so. The compression of the substance, which constitutes the various degrees of mezzo and bassorilievo, thus follows the compression or flattening of the action, the characteristic of alto-rilievo. Lastly, the modifications of which this branch of

sculpture was susceptible were adopted, as we shall see, according to the varieties of light, situation, dimensions, and use.

The Greeks, as a general principle, considered the ground of figures in relief to be the real wall, or whatever the solid plane might be, and not as representing air as in a picture. The art with them was thus rather the union of sculpture with architecture than a union of sculpture with the conditions of painting. That this was founded on rational principles will be evident from the following considerations. The shadows thrown by figures on the surface on which they are relieved at once. betray the solidity of that surface. In the attempt to represent, together with actual projection, the apparent depth of a picture, or to imitate space, figures which are supposed to be remote are reduced in size; but although thus diminished in form, they cannot have the strength of their light and shade diminished; and if deprived of shadow by inconsiderable relief, they cease to be apparent at all when the work is seen from its proper point of view, that is, at a sufficient distance; having no distinctness whatever in the absence of colour, but by means of light and shade. Indeed, the art thus practised, has no longer an independent style, and only betrays its inferiority by presenting defects which another mode of imitation can supply. A passage in Vitruvius proves that the ancients were not unacquainted with perspective; the same

author states that perspective scenic decorations were first employed by Agatharcus at Athens, in the time of Eschylus. However greatly the science may have been improved by the moderns, this may be sufficient to show that the absence of perspective in Greek bassi-rilievi was not from an absolute ignorance of its principles, but from a conviction that they would be misapplied in sculpture.

In carefully keeping within the limits, however narrow, which defined the style of rilievo, the great artists of antiquity failed not to condense into that style the utmost perfection compatible with it, while the various applications of the works suggested abundant variety in their treatment and execution. The British Museum contains unquestionably the finest existing specimens of this branch of sculpture in the rilievi which decorated the Parthenon, or Temple of Minerva, at Athens. We have here to consider the judicious adaptation of their styles for the situations they occupied; but in regard to their general excellence as examples of art, it may also be well to remember that these sculptures were the admiration of the ancients themselves. Seven hundred years after they were produced Plutarch spoke of them as "inimitable works."

The figures which adorned the pediment are separate statues, although in their original situation, casting their shadows on the tympanum, they