Painting, by the flushing of colour in the face and dilatation of
light in the eye--music, by its subtle range of tones--can refine
most delicately upon a single moment of passion, unravelling its
subtlest threads.
But why should sculpture thus limit itself to pure form? Because,
by this limitation, it becomes a perfect medium of expression for
one peculiar motive of the imaginative intellect. It therefore
renounces all those attributes of its material which do not forward
that motive. It has had, indeed, from the beginning an unfixed
claim to colour; but this element of colour in it has always been
more or less conventional, with no melting or modulation of
tones, never permitting more than a very limited realism. It was
maintained chiefly as a religious tradition. In proportion as the
art of sculpture ceased to be merely decorative, and subordinate
to architecture, it threw itself upon pure form. It renounces the
power of expression by lower or heightened tones. In it, no
member of the human form is more significant than the rest; the
eye is wide, and without pupil; the lips and brow are hardly less
significant than hands, and breasts, and feet. But the limitation of
its resources is part of its pride: it has no backgrounds, no sky or
atmosphere, to suggest and interpret a train of feeling; a little of
suggested motion, and much of pure light on its gleaming
surfaces, with pure form--only these.
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