h the wooden
gable and statues are set. So, now we can get an idea (which in the
gallery we cannot) of the general effect of the group. It seems so
simple, but it is not: it is in sculpture something like what a fugue
is in music: it is a homogeneous form due to the extremely skilful
co-ordination of various forms; it is a harmonious whole, because the
parts are combined just at the point where their diversities coalesce.
For, as the various voices of the fugue, some subtly insinuating
themselves half whispered, while the others are thundering their loudest
or already dying away into silence, meet and weave together various
fragments of the same melody, so also do the figures of the group,
some standing, some reclining, some kneeling, some rising, some draped,
some nude, meet our sight in various ways so as to constitute in their
variety, one great pattern; balance each other on opposite sides of the
gable, slope and taper down towards the extremities, grow and rise
higher towards the middle where the vertex of the triangular temple
front, the triumphant centre of the rhythm and harmony of lines, is
formed by the majestic, magnificent mother between her two eldest, most
beautiful daughters. And now, think no more of this terra-cotta than,
having learned the shape of a hymn by Bach or a psalm by Marcello on
the piano, you would think of the poor miserable piano-notes which you
hear with your ears, instead of the mass of voices which you hear with
your fancy. Think of this Niobe group, twice humansized, standing
on the weather-mellowed, delicately painted marble temple front; the
amber-tinted figures against the dark hollow formed by the projecting
roof; the sunshine drawing on the black back-ground, as with a luminous
pencil, the great solemn masses of light and shadow, the powerfully
rhythmed attitudes, the beautiful combinations of lines and light and
shade produced by the gesture, which now raises, now drops the drapery,
opposing to the large folds, heavy and severe, the minute, most supple,
and most subtle plaits; and to the strong broken shadows of the drapery,
the shining smoothness of the nude. Think of that, and remember then the
single figures in their best examples, the mother and eldest daughter of
Florence, the headless younger daughter of the Vatican, the exquisite
dying boy of Munich; and think, by recollecting these dispersed noblest
copies, what must the lost original have been. And thus, looking at the
li