Chapter 16

Historical background

Wood is a perishable material and has not the same continuous history as stone. Ancient stone carvings are still unearthed; Greek bronzes are still being fished out of the sea. But wood will not survive neglect and must be specially cared for if it is to endure. There are many gaps—many civilizations which have no wood carvings to represent them.

The earliest sculptures that still exist are of bone and baked clay, stone and bronze, but there can be no doubt that prehistoric man carved wood—even if only for his axe-handles. He lived in the forests; fallen trees would be more plentiful than suitable pieces of stone.

Egypt

But wood can only survive in favorable conditions, and so far as is yet known, Egypt is the only country where these have existed. Eleven wooden relief panels were found there in 1860, having been preserved by the drifting sands for over four thou­sand years, and they are believed to be the oldest in the world. They were discovered in the tomb of Pharaoh Hesy-Ra at Sakkara, and each measures about two feet by one foot six inches. The figure of the Pharaoh (Fig. 56) is portrayed in the typical Egyptian pose, finely drawn and sensitively carved.

The Egyptians went on using child-like conventions long after they could have dispensed with them. Egyptian art being entirely religious, the conviction was that all art-forms, like all the rites and ceremonies, had been laid down by the gods in ancient times, and could never be altered. There is nothing peculiarly Egyptian about this; right down to the present day, many religions have maintained a strict conservatism in form and ceremony.

The earliest three-dimensional wooden figures yet discovered date from 2500 b.c. Three were found at Sakkara, and the most famous of them was nicknamed Sheik-el-Beled by the native workmen who dug it up, because it reminded them of their village-mayor. The carving is about 3 ft. high and is, again, in a conventional Egyptian pose: striding forward with the weight on both feet and carrying a staff. The eyes are inlaid, and the lifelike vitality of the head is almost startling. The carving technique, like that of the relief panel, shows perfect confidence and control.

Fig. 56. Egyptian wood panel, 29S0 B.C., Pharaoh Hesy-Ra at Sakkara

Realistic portrait-heads for the statues were at all times considered essential. The sculptor was required to carve an 'imitation man' to be inhabited by the soul after death.

Wood was scarce in Egypt, and the acacia and sycamore, the only trees growing there suitable for carving, were so precious as to be considered sacred. In countries where there are forests, wood is sometimes used as a cheaper substitute for rare and pre­cious materials. Egypt had a different scale of values, judging by an observation in a letter from a minor king to a Pharaoh in 2000 B.C. 'In your country, gold is as common as dust . . .' Wood was used for royal statues as well as for less important figures, such as courtiers, officials, priests, scribes and architects. Relief panels were always in wood or limestone.

The wood carvings were placed in the elaborate tombs, where, it was believed, the Pharaoh would live on, so long as his em­balmed body lay there undisturbed. He was surrounded by all the things he would need to take with him into the next life, and his servants were represented by little figures engaged in all kinds of farm and domestic work. Many of these are in wood, and some of the most remarkable are of women with long narrow figures and long skirts, walking upright and carrying baskets of offerings on their heads.

Wood was used for many purposes besides statues: for thrones, coffins and furniture of all kinds, and for the inner cores of metal statues. A figure was carved in wood and then covered with thin sheets of gold, copper or bronze, hammered on to its shape and fastened with nails. Every nation has found its way toward the craft of hollow casting in bronze by first using the wooden-core method.

So much wood was needed, that a regular sea-borne trade was started with Syria and the Lebanon, importing cedar, cypress, juniper, pine and yew, while ebony was brought from the Sudan.

After lasting almost continuously for over two thousand years, Egypt's power began to decline in about 1000 B.C., and was finally broken by a series of foreign conquests. But, although the long tradition of art also declined, nothing could subdue the strong, characteristic style of the Egyptians, and it was adopted by each conquering nation in turn—even the Greeks and the Romans. Only in a.d. 638 with the Arab conquest did the art of Egypt finally come to an end.

Mesopotamia

The early history of Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates, is not so well known as that of Egypt: nor has the country been so thoroughly excavated. But its civilization, art and culture were equally great, and may be even more ancient. They were rival powers, but they evidently had little contact except in battle, and did not influence each other.

The sculpture that has come down to us from the three succes­sive civilizations of Mesopotamia—Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian—has nothing in common with the Egyptian. A great many beautiful small pieces have been found but there are very few large-scale figures in the round. A great variety of materials were used, but hardly any wood carvings are even known to have existed. Mesopotamia has few trees, and terracotta was widely used for every purpose—even the building-material being of sun-baked bricks.

Although the brick-built temples were more susceptible to destruction than the Egyptian stone buildings, Mesopotamian culture has never really died out. Not only their achievements in the early forms of science and philosophy, but their decorative arts were inherited by the Persians and were passed on through the Greeks and later through the Moslems to Europe. The Persian genius for lyrical design, seen in their pottery, textiles and carpets originally stemmed from the ancient Sumerians.

The Orient

In the ancient civilizations of China and India, wood carving is a craft of great antiquity, and in all countries of the Far East— Japan, Burma, Siam, Java, Indonesia—wood has always been used extensively for building, both interior and exterior. Sculp­tures of the Orient, however, are a study in themselves, and are outside the Western line of tradition which is the subject of this chapter.

Greece

No Greek wood carving has survived, but there is evidence in the writings of Pausanias, a Roman who travelled in Greece during the second century a.d., that there were hundreds of wooden statues of gods and athletes still standing there in his time. According to his descriptions, some were very simple, like huge pillars, with heads and hands carved on them; some figures were dressed in real draperies. A number of them were already very ancient, and were held in great veneration by the Greeks. The woods known to have been used were: cedar, cypress, myrtle, oak, laurel, apple, pear, olive and ebony.

There can be little doubt that the wood carvings were like the Archaic figures in marble that have come down to us from the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. These were evidently based on the Egyptian striding figure, but they are nude, with smiling faces, and are expressed with more freedom and individuality. The achievement of the Greeks in breaking through the barriers of dark superstition and fear into the enlightenment of clear thought is symbolized by these Archaic figures of gods, who seem to be walking out into the daylight toward us. The Greek gods were portrayed as men, in contrast to the animal-headed monster gods of earlier religions.

Many small Egyptian carvings must have found their way to Greece in its early days. The Phoenicians were the traders of those times, and their ships called at ports all round the Mediter­ranean. They also bought and sold works of art, including imitations they made themselves, so that traces of many styles are noticeable in early Greek art. But as it changed and developed, it became something peculiarly their own, reflecting the extra­ordinary originality of their outlook. They were intellectually adventurous, and were the first people to look for a rational explanation of the universe; their humanism led them to study man in all his aspects.

In comparison with the Egyptians, whose sculpture maintained a level course for more than two thousand years, the Greeks span of development is incredibly short—it rose and fell within a few hundred years. The Archaic sculpture of the sixth century changed to the Classical style of the Parthenon during the fifth century, when Pericles was ruling in Athens, and before the end of the fourth century, the decline had already begun. During this short time, the poets, playwrights, mathematicians and philo­sophers were producing those works which have stimulated the people of the world ever since, and whose effect is felt to this day. In them, can be found something of significance applicable to every age, and this accounts for the perpetual discovery and re­discovery of their genius in all its aspects.

The spreading of Greek thought, knowledge and art began immediately. The Greeks travelled widely—merchants, craftsmen sailors, and mercenary soldiers. During the third century B.C., when Greece became impoverished, many artists left the mainland and went to work for private patrons in Alexandria, Syracuse, and other Greek possessions. But their sculpture during this Hellen­istic age deteriorated, and little remained of its former greatness. After the Roman conquest in 146 B.C., Greek artists were exiled or enslaved in Italy, copying the enormous number of Greek sculptures that had been carried off by the Romans.

The Etruscans

The Greeks' contemporaries in Italy, the Etruscans, were also a republic of aristocratic citizens, but very little is known about them or their origins. The materials they used were terracotta, bronze and some stone.

The Romans: 200 b.c.-a.d. 400

The Romans had a particular talent for acquiring ideas, tech­niques and materials from other nations and adapting them for their own purposes. Architecture was the art that came most naturally to them and for sculpture they employed the Etruscans as well as the Greeks. Marble and bronze were the materials favored by the Romans, and there are no indications that wood was ever used.

During the first and second centuries, a.d., the Roman Empire was only equalled in power by China which was even greater in area and population. These two Empires dominated the civilized parts of East and West simultaneously, in almost complete ignorance of each other, until about a.d. 200. Then, weakened by a plague and by the continual attacks of barbarians, they both began to decline and finally to disintegrate.

At the same time, Christianity gradually ceased to be an under­ground movement, and soon after a.d. 300, was adopted as Rome's official religion. The Emperor Constantine moved the capital away to the safer and more peaceful Byzantium, but the Pope stayed in Rome, and toward the end of the fourth century, the two capitals became rivals for power. The Empire divided into two, and while the Greek half withstood barbarian attacks and all attempts at invasion for another thousand years, the Latin half, together with Spain, France and England, were overrun by robber-armies. These countries were divided into many small separate territories, ruled over by barbarian chiefs.

The Dark Ages and Early Christian Art 400-1000

During the fifth century, the cities of Europe stood empty and impoverished; the Roman roads fell into ruin and the countryside was neglected. The barbarian rulers kept up unceasing warfare with each other and the only places safe and quiet enough to work in were the monasteries.

Early Christian art had begun as Rome declined, the sculpture consisting of reliefs on stone sarcophagi or ivory panels. The sculptors were untrained, and when they attempted figures, they copied the Roman sculptures of pagan gods to represent characters from the Bible and they also used many pagan emblems and symbols. But in Byzantium, the artists, being Greek, were far more skilled, and the renowned Byzantine style, which persisted unchanged right down to the seventeenth century in Greek and Russian icons, had its early beginnings in the fifth century a.d.

In a.d. 700, Byzantium forbade all image-making, whether in mosaic, painting or sculpture. This strict iconoclasm lasted for two hundred years, and many Greek artists left Byzantium to work for other monasteries in Europe.

The monastic workshops employed painters, ivory-carvers, goldsmiths, carpenters, metalworkers, masons and craftsmen of every kind, who provided all that was needed for the monastery chapels. This consisted of altar-furniture and candlesticks, caskets and book-covers, and reliquaries for containing the relics of saints. One of the best known of these reliquaries is at Conques in France: a crowned figure about two feet high seated on a throne and made of gold inlaid with precious stones. Many rich materials, precious metals and jewels were used at that time, but perhaps the most typical material of the age was ivory, of which they made panels, boxes and caskets, delicately carved with reliefs of Biblical and allegorical scenes and characters. They vary in style between Byzantine and Roman—the Byzantine figures being elongated and large-eyed, while the Roman figures look like senators: beardless, with short hair and wearing togas.

Wood carving seems also to have consisted of relief panels, such as those on the doors of Santa Sabina in Rome. Apart from these and the reliefs on stone sarcophagi and on stone capitals in the few Byzantine churches, sculpture was on a small scale.

An outstanding quality of all the relief-carving and craft-work was that it was all very similar in style whether it came from England or France, Ireland or Spain, Italy, Germany or Byzan­tium. The style was international, just as the Latin language was in those days, and it was circulated and perpetuated by monks, pilgrims and skilled workers, who travelled from monastery to monastery, despite the danger and difficulty. It was a mixed style; a fusion of Classical and Byzantine motifs with patterns and rhythms of Eastern or Barbaric origin.

Arab design and decoration were included in it, but no sculptural influence, as the Moslems were forbidden, like the Jews, to make 'graven images'. The Moslem Empire, which stretched across the whole of the Southern Mediterranean including Egypt in the seventh century, affected the sculpture of other nations only indirectly. The Renaissance was partly due to the impact on Italian minds of the Arabs' learning and know­ledge, their discoveries in science, mathematics and astronomy, and their rich decorative architecture.

Romanesque Period: 11th and 12th Centuries

The Christian people had long been expecting that the end of the world was to come in the year 1000, and when this did not happen, a cloud lifted, and the sense of relief brought a wave of confidence and enthusiasm. This is one possible reason given for the sudden medieval renaissance of the eleventh century which was to continue for four hundred years.

The spontaneous use of large figure-carving on the many new churches may also be partly due to the lifting of the ban against images in Byzantium.

The term Romanesque comes from the type of architecture— round-arched like the Roman style. The churches are like fort­resses, plain and compact with thick walls, and they are often situated high up on hills. The stone sculptural decoration was evidently planned with the building as a whole. That the masons carved the work in situ, is indicated by the fact that some of it was left unfinished.

Romanesque carving is full of feeling and zest. The figures are symbolic rather than drawn from life. They are often thin and elongated and seem to be floating or even dancing, in strange swirling draperies.

There is divided opinion as to how and where this Romanesque carving began. The most important source of their motifs was provided by the illuminated manuscripts in the monasteries, and the ivories, metalwork and textiles of the previous centuries. Nevertheless these flat drawings, and small ivory carvings only a few inches long, had to be enlarged tenfold, translated into stone and expertly rendered in situ. There was no carving tradi­tion for the sculptors to follow, no system of practical training and experience. Yet they produced numbers of impressive figures in high relief, as well as intricate ornament, animals, birds and fabulous beasts.

The most likely examples for the carvers to base their work on would have been the Roman remains unearthed in Italy and the south of France—Roman capitals and columns, or fragments of sculptured relief and ornament.

In England, Romanesque style is known as Norman, and is even more massive and plain than the Continental. There are very few figure-carvings, and these are less accomplished than the French. It is interesting to notice that some of the Norman decoration is based on Norse and Danish wood carving. It is extremely flat and linear, so that in a photograph, it can easily be taken for wood rather than stone. In later centuries, the Scandi­navian wood carvers in their turn were influenced by English stone carving.

Some wood carving from the Romanesque period is still left in the early European churches. It is to be found in reliefs on stall-work, doors and bosses and there are a few figures in the round which are almost always of the Crucifixion or the Madonna and Child. A very early head—originally from a Crucifixion—is at South Cerney, England. The Madonna figures are usually seated, with the child on their knees, and sometimes hold an apple in one hand (Fig. 57). They and the Crucifixions still show traces of painting and gilding. These figures are very simple but are carved with great feeling. They have wormholes and splits in them but being nearly a thousand years old, it is remarkable that they have survived at all.

Many works of art have been lost through the destruction of past civilizations, but the building of churches has helped to preserve them, by giving them permanent sites. Nevertheless, while they have been treated with care because of their sacredness, they have also been vulnerable to deliberate destruction. In England, for example, the churches suffered on two occasions: in the sixteenth century through the campaigns against popery, and again in the seventeenth century, during the Civil War.

Fig. 57. Madonna and Child in wood, approx. height 4 ft., German, eleventh century, at Paderborn, Germany.

Besides this deliberate mutilation, sculpture has suffered through neglect at all periods, or has been replaced by later work. Craftsmen and architects were continually perfecting their work technically, and took it for granted that they were improving on what had gone before; aesthetic tastes changed, and until recent years work that we would have appreciated was constantly being destroyed.

The Gothic Period: 1180-1540

It is uncertain how the pointed Gothic arch first came to be used, but it had a revolutionary effect on architecture. It allowed the churches to dispense with thick walls and heavy columns, and to achieve more height, more space and bigger windows. This discovery led to an even greater outburst of building activity. In France alone between 1180 and 1280 five hundred churches and eighty cathedrals were built, and some of the cathedrals might have as many as five thousand figures, many over life size.

Building a cathedral must have been a tremendous undertaking at a time when manpower was the only force available. All the innumerable pieces of stone had to be moved and lifted, cut and fitted together by hand. It was a co-operative effort that included hundreds of masons, some of whom cut and jointed the stone, while others carved it. There were no 'architects' or 'designers' in the modern sense of the word, but there were master-planners who chose and fixed each theme or subject. The skilled mason—or 'imager' as he was called—then interpreted it in his own way, carving it directly into the stone.

When a great building was being constructed expert craftsmen came to it from all over the country, and when it was finished, moved on to another one. The 'lodges' where they stayed—the origins of the Masonic Lodges of today—were also used as tool houses and workshops. Later they became training centers and were usually established near the quarries. During the fourteenth century they became larger and more fully organized—being permanently staffed and able to supply sculpture in any form or size, to any part of the country. This meant that building and sculpture were no longer designed together, to the detriment of both.

It is obvious that from about 1200 onward the Gothic carvers had begun to study life. Designs were no longer adaptations of old manuscript drawings and ivory carvings, but were inventions based on the study of natural forms coupled with an intuitive understanding of what could most suitably be carved in stone. Like the Greeks of the fifth century B.C., the early Gothic artists observed nature with close understanding, and it was the re­discovery of Aristotle that inspired it.

During the fourteenth century, the church began to lose the confidence of the people, and the unanimity of thought and religion that had united the whole Christian world was falling apart. There was now less simplicity and austerity in the figure-sculpture and it became more realistic, more consciously graceful and charming. After the Black Death in 1350, the sculptors improved their technique still further and were extremely skilful in the realistic treatment of heads and hands, hair and drapery, but at the expense of coherent architectural design. Niches were left for the figures, which were supplied ready made. These late Gothic figures are full of invention and character study, but they have not the exquisite sculptural qualities of the thirteenth century when the advance toward a better technique went for­ward side by side with experiments in form and movement, treatment and design—each enhancing and stimulating the other.

Gothic stone figure carving was at its peak in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, stone ornament in the fourteenth century and wood carving in the fifteenth.

Gothic wood carving

Anyone entering a cathedral or church is so accustomed to the great amount of wood used in furnishing—pews, benches, choir-stalls, pulpits, organ-lofts, galleries and screens—that they might not think of examining it closely. But in an old church the woodwork is very unlikely to be all of the same period. At first glance, the old is often indistinguishable from the new, and the best work may be passed over unnoticed.

In the course of refurnishing the old churches in past centuries —'clearing out the old clutter', as one bishop expressed it—much of the woodwork used to be taken out and destroyed. In the nineteenth century, the old furnishings were often restored and 'improved', with new parts added and the joins camouflaged. But these Victorian Gothic Revival copies can be recognized by the fact that they are more mechanical in execution and lack the variation and slight irregularity of genuinely creative carving.

At the beginning of the Gothic period, church interior-work was in stone, and when wood was introduced, the carvers imitated the stone carving. The decorative tracery and pierced ornament were faithful and ingenious translations of stone origi­nals and the few heads and figures still surviving from the early period have a solidity and shallowness of detail typical of stone but unnecessary in wood. Then, in about 1370, the wood carvers seemed suddenly to become conscious of their material and all its potentialities—to realize what freedom it would allow them and how much taller, lighter and more graceful their constructions could be. They became expert craftsmen and the fifteenth-century choir-stalls and screens, pulpits and font-covers show their technical brilliance and invention in the forests of tall pinnacles used as decoration. These continued to become more elaborate, both here and on the Continent, right up to the time of the Reformation. The stone carvers were meanwhile imitating the wood techniques.

English craftsmen were exceptionally skilled at wood construc­tion of all kinds. The renowned hammer-beam roofs of the fifteenth century may be likened to the framework of an upturned boat and are built on the same principles. On these roofs, the beams and brackets are often terminated by figures of angels, kings or apostles—a double row of them all down the length of the nave—projecting at right angles to the wall and looking straight down into the church. As they are to be seen a long way off, these figures are very large and for the same reason are only roughly finished.

Judging from fragments that are left, most churches must have had a rood-screen: that is, a beam spanning the chancel with the crucifixion scene mounted on it—the cross in the middle and the figures of Mary and John on either side. These figures would certainly have been over life-size, and there must have been a great many other large wooden images, in niches and on altars, which have been destroyed. Wood is not so easily defaced as stone; the heads and hands of a wood carving cannot be struck oflf with a blow. But it is comparatively light and easy to remove and to carry away, and being dry and well-seasoned, must unfortunately have made good fuel for iconoclasts' bonfires.

Fig. 58. Carving of swan, choir-stalls, Lincoln Cathedral, England.

Some wood carving, however, has been left undisturbed, and many small figures and animals can be found among the richly carved ornament on choir-stalls, bench-ends, poppy-heads and newel-posts (Figs. 58-60). Some of them must have been carved by the expert 'imagers' whose large works have been lost, but others have a naive simplicity which suggests that they are the work of the ornament-carvers.

Fig. 59. Poppy Head at Eynesbury, England.

It is as if figure-carving was regard­ed as a chance to put in something more personal—a change from the more disciplined repetitions of decorative work. The choice of subject and interpretation indicates great enjoyment and amusement, particularly in the misericords, which are the most personally expressive of all the records left by the anonymous medieval craftsmen.

Fig. 60. Carved panel on a bench at Altarnun, England.

The misericords are to be found under the seats of the choir-stalls, which tip up on hinges. Each has a bracket or kind of shelf, which will give unseen support to anyone having to stand during a long service. The brackets are carved, always with a centerpiece and two 'ears', and the subjects are very often hum­orous, grotesque or satirical. There are scenes from pagan leg­ends and allegories as well as from the Bible, and there are also scenes of farcical episodes taken from their everyday lives. Some of these might be thought unsuitable for the decoration of a church, but Gothic art is full of surprising departures from the expected, and in any case, these misericords were normally out of sight in a humble position, so that the carvers were allowed to let their imaginations range wherever they pleased.

There are scolding wives and hen-pecked husbands; people with headache or toothache; people working: the miller, the sower, the reaper, the goldsmith, the boat-builder and the wood carver himself with a pet dog lying under his bench. There are men playing football, wrestling, hunting, hawking and taking part in tournaments, and there are numbers of fabulous beasts and birds and other fantastic creatures.

In the Biblical illustrations the characters are wearing medieval dress or armor; Noah's Ark looks like a three-turreted castle. Samson carries the gates of the city under his arm, like any medi­eval joiner delivering an order; Salome dances so vigorously that she even turns a back-somersault and in a boat-load of voyagers one is obviously feeling seasick.

The humor and candor of these very human and straight­forward comments on the way the carvers lived, add a great deal to the pleasure of looking at the carvings.

This kind of carving was polished, as paint would have rubbed off, but most statues were painted. In recent years, some of this painting has been renewed, and is sometimes disturbingly vivid.

But it has to be remembered that in the Middle Ages, apart from life at Court, ordinary citizens saw very little color. They wore drab clothes of brown, black, dark blue and grey, and would enjoy the gilding and the brilliant colors in the churches. Stone figures used also to be painted, and the practice continued until the seventeenth century, when a fashion for pure white marble came in, and painting gradually died out.

Effigies

England is rich in effigies because they were spared when religious figures were destroyed, and there are a number of wooden ones still surviving. Only those that were covered with a plating of precious metal, like that of Henry V in Westminster Abbey, have suffered. The metal having been stolen, only the rough wooden core remains.

Wooden effigies were mostly made in the eastern counties, where stone was scarce, but they are to be found all over the country—often in small out-of-the-way churches. They portray knights, ladies and bishops, and in later years, from about 1360, rich merchants and their wives. Oak was the wood most common­ly used and they were hollowed out from behind. This prevented them from splitting and the hole in the back does not show when they are in position on the tomb.

The early ones of about 1290 imitate the stone or Purbeck marble ones being made at the time and are flat, like reliefs of standing figures laid on their backs. Later the sculptors discovered how to make them look as if they were really lying down, and later still, for a time, the poses are given some movement. The knights lean on one elbow, have one knee raised or grasp their sword-hilts, showing how the sculptors had learned to take full advantage of their material. They are much plainer than the stone effigies, which have every detail of the armor incised and engraved on them. The wood effigies were gessoed to fill up the grain and make them smooth, and the detail was painted on. The paint and gilt having worn away, the carvings now appear very simple and bold in form, with qualities very similar to some sculpture of the present day (plate XXII).

The Continent is very rich in wood sculptures of the late Gothic period. They are carved with great skill, but in general, the tech­nique is in advance of the conception and interpretation. Pulpits and canopies, screens and altars are fantastically elaborate and enriched with realistic sculpture, particularly in Flanders. Relief carving is so deep as to be like a stage-set. Scenes from the Bible are treated in a dramatic way, evidently derived from the medieval miracle plays. The backgrounds are like stage-scenery and the foreground figures are in such high relief as to be almost entirely in the round.

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