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| MARTINY'S "CERES" - It is remembered that, when the
architects of the Agricultural Building
placed the charge
of their sculpture in the hands of Philip Martiny, the pupil of St.
Gaudens, it was left to him to operate as best he could. In less
than a year's time he was to cover the long-stretching cornices and
facades of the Agricultural Building with the richest ornamentation
ever seen in America. To accomplish so much, and to secure a harmony
of design, he must himself make the plan, and invent the groups - or,
at least, decide upon their character, while a whole school of
sculptors under his direction must labor incessantly, and with a
certain kind of originality, to vanquish the stubborn element of
time, and enliven the wide spaces of the south side of the Court of
Honor with the company of statues on which the
search-lights afterward shone at night. Mr. Martiny proved that
wealth and grandeur of sculpture can be attained by the duplication
of ideas in similar architectural positions, for although all his
important groups appear several times on the fronts of Agricultural
Hall, yet the very unity of appearance assures the observer that
sculpture was here used in its true, subordinated relation - that is,
it was the Agricultural temple as a whole which was to be admired.
The figures that support this shield of Ceres in our engraving are
remarkable for uncommon beauty of feminine contour, and betray the
refined eye of the great designer. |
