CH. V THE LAMP OF LIFE 215

But right finish is simply the full rendering of the intended impression; and high finish is the rendering of a well intended and vivid impression; and it is oftener got by rough than fine handling. I am not sure whether it is frequently enough observed that sculpture is not the mere cutting of the form of any thing in stone; it is the cutting of the effect of it. Very often the true form, in the marble, would not be in the least like itself. The sculptor must paint with his chisel: half his touches are not to realize, but to put power into, the form: they are touches of light and shadow; and raise a ridge, or sink a hollow, not to represent an actual ridge or hollow, but to get a line of light, or a spot of darkness. In a coarse way, this kind of execution is very marked in old French woodwork; the irises of the eyes of its chimeric monsters being cut boldly into holes, which, variously placed, and always dark, give all kinds of strange and startling expressions, averted and askance, to the fantastic countenances. Perhaps the highest examples of this kind of sculpture-painting are the works of Mino da Fiesole; their best effects being reached by strange angular, and seemingly rude, touches of the chisel. The lips of one of the children on the tombs in the church of the Badia,¹ appear only half finished when they are seen close; yet the expression is farther carried, and more ineffable, than in any piece of marble I have ever seen, especially considering its delicacy, and the softness of the child-features. In a sterner kind, that of the statues in the sacristy of St. Lorenzo² equals it, and there again by incompletion. I know no example of work in which the forms are absolutely true and complete where such a result is attained; (in Greek sculptures it is not even attempted.*)

* The sentence in parenthesis is entirely false; all the rest of the paragraph true and important. The manner of the Greek in chiselling has since been examined at length in my Aratra Pentelici. [1880, when the words were placed in parenthesis.]

¹ [See the description, from Ruskin’s note-book of 1845, given in Vol. IV. p. 280 n.]

² [For Ruskin’s admiration of these works by Michael Angelo, see Modern Painters, vol. ii., Vol. IV. p. 282 of this edition.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]