History of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture — Text and Context

The Author's Comparative Method

Memes consistently compares artists and schools, often ranking them. In the painting section, he contrasts Camuccini and Benvenuti: the former is "the best draughtsman in Europe" but "inferior as a colorist," while the latter excels in color and grouping but is inferior in drawing and classical taste. Such paired judgments appear throughout. For German art, he distinguishes three schools—German, Flemish, Dutch—calling these distinctions "rather local than depending upon characteristic difference of manner." He then evaluates Albert Durer as "the Da Vinci of this school," praising his science and art while noting his "ignorance of the antique." These comparisons help the reader understand Memes's hierarchy of values: drawing, composition, expression, and classical reference are paramount.

Critical Vocabulary and Its Implications

Memes uses a specialized lexicon that rewards attention. Terms like "ideal art," "school of beauty," and "Gothic manner" recur. In the sculpture section, he speaks of "the perfection of material art" and "methods of composition among the Greek sculptors." For painting, he describes early German works as "painted upon wood, usually oak, covered sometimes with canvass, always with a white ground, upon which the outline of the subject is sketched." This technical detail grounds his aesthetic judgments. He also employs evaluative phrases: Camuccini's expression is "cold—deficient in that warm gush of sentiment." Such language reveals his Romantic-era sensibility, valuing emotional warmth alongside classical form. Readers should note how these terms shape his narrative of artistic progress and decline.

Structure as a Guide to Emphasis

The table of contents reveals Memes's priorities. Sculpture receives nine chapters, painting five, architecture three. Within sculpture, Greek art occupies chapters II–IV, while the revival from Canova onward gets only chapter IX. Painting devotes two chapters to the English school, reflecting the author's likely British audience. Architecture begins with Egyptian, Syrian, and Indian design, then moves to Greek orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian), Roman, and finally medieval Gothic and Renaissance. This structure suggests a narrative arc from ancient origins to modern practice, with the Italian Renaissance as a peak. The later excerpts, discussing early eighteenth-century Roman painters and the German school, show Memes bringing the story up to his own time, ending with living artists like Camuccini and Benvenuti.

Inference and Limitation from the Excerpts

The excerpts cover only the preface, table of contents, and parts of chapters XII and the later painting section. They do not include the sculpture or architecture chapters, nor the full treatment of any school. Therefore, while we can observe Memes's comparative method and critical vocabulary, we cannot assess his arguments about Greek sculpture, Gothic architecture, or the English school. His judgments on Camuccini and Benvenuti are vivid but may not represent his overall view of contemporary art. Readers should treat these passages as samples of his style and criteria, not as definitive summaries. The work's full argument about the causes of artistic decline and revival—touched on in chapter titles like "Influence of Liberty" and "Influence of the Reformation"—remains to be explored.

For a first reading, attend to Memes's comparative structure and his evaluative language. Note how he pairs artists and schools, and how his technical descriptions support his judgments. The table of contents is a reliable map of his emphases. Because the excerpts are partial, avoid drawing conclusions about the work's overall thesis until you have read the missing chapters. This edition, published in Boston in 1834, reflects an early nineteenth-century perspective that prizes classical ideals while acknowledging modern developments.

I found myself thinking of Memes’s old survey the other day, how patiently it traces stone and pigment through centuries of hands. There’s a similar tenderness in An Architect's Note-Book in Spain principally illustrating the domestic architecture of that country. — Story, Setting & Ideas, where even humble doorways seem to hold their own quiet history, waiting for someone to simply sit with them, as I have, many a quiet evening.