The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.50

v1.c9.50

The lotus, as may be expected from the circumstance of its being the most gorgeous and handsome flower in India, is by far the greatest favourite, and in Orissa, as elsewhere, occurs everywhere and in various forms, in bud, in a half-open state, and in full-blown flowers. In some specimens, the attempt to delineate nature is very nearly successful, but a conventional form is what is generally adopted, in which single flowers of four, six, or eight petals are made to do duty for dense double blossoms. Pedestals of statues and footstools for goddesses are often formed of large multipetalled lotuses, but in such positions they are generally not so faithfully executed as in basso-rilievo scrolls, owing evidently to a want of proportion, their size and shape being regulated by the exigencies of their situation, and not by the relation they bear to man in nature. On the whole, however, these, lotuses as well as all floral designs, are carved with great tact and elegance, and if sufficient allowance be made for the coarse material in which they are developed, the attempt of the Orissan artist to represnt vegetable forms will be readily acknowledged to have been much more successful than that of Egyptian and Assyrian sculptors. The superiority of marble over sandstone as a material for sculpture is overwhelming, and even very inferior carvings in it appear before the bulk of mankind with an amount of grace and beauty, which no other material can command. The most faithful cast in plaster of Paris of the Venus de Medici, or of the Apollo Belvedere, cannot for a moment produce the impression that the original does. That peculiar translucency of the surface of the finer kinds of marble, which invests all works carved in them with a characteristic charm, and completely cheats the eye of the beholder, is not possessed by any other material, and therefore, there is an initial disadvantage in comparing work done in sandstone with those made of marble. The superiority of marble, however, is due to nature and not to art; and in judging of artistic taste and capability, it would be but fair not to look to the material, but to the design and the manner in which sculptures are worked out; and if this canon be admitted, and the works of Uriyā artists be judged by their aesthetic design, their freedom and boldness of outline, and general execution, they will not suffer much by comparison with those of any other nation of their time or of antiquity.