A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c13.s7.26

c13.s7.26

All critics can go as far as to concur in M. Tissandier’s rather faint praise that the bas-reliefs are ‘motifs ciselés dans la pierre avec une puissance rare’; or M. Foucher’s more liberal criticism that they are justly celebrated for their good proportions, naturalness of gesture, and the variety of attitude in the figures. But not everybody can agree with Mr. Havell that the reliefs exhibit ‘supremely devout and spontaneous art’, far excelling by their simplicity, unaffected *naïveté*, artistic feeling, imagination, and magnificent conventionalism of the accessories the work of Ghiberti on the bronze doors of the Baptistery at Florence, which Michael Angelo declared ‘to be worthy to be the gates of Paradise’. The same critic holds that the simple life led by the artists of Boro-Būdūr left them in peace to concentrate their whole soul on this work, and kept their minds free and able to listen to the voices of Nature and of their own inspiration—‘the soul of Nature speaking to the soul of man’. In reality, as M. Foucher truly observes, the immense processions of scenes at Boro-Būdūr have a ‘caractère livresque’ in virtue of their being illustrations of sacred story-books, which deprives them of the spontaneity and emotional (*vibrant*) expression that can spring only from contact with living oral tradition. The compositions were prompted, not by the ‘voices of Nature’, but by a business-like, systematic endeavour to give visual expression to set passages in favourite authors; and we have not the slightest reason for believing that the artists led particularly simple lives. We know, in fact, nothing whatever about them or their lives. A certain uniformity of effeminacy (*mollesse*) characterizes the forms, as it does some of the much earlier compositions of Gandhāra. But, although it is true that the reliefs are carefully planned and must be criticized as selected book illustrations rather than as the spontaneous utterance of simple souls in direct contact with nature, they are extremely good and charming. When compared with the ancient reliefs of Sāñchī and Bharhut they exhibit a delicate refinement of design and a beauty in feature which are sometimes lacking in the more virile works of the early Indian schools. They deserve the most careful critical study by professional sculptors, who alone would be in a position to realize how much praise is due to artists capable of executing more than two miles of stone pictures, almost uniform in beauty and the display of technical skill of a high order.