雙語+MP3|美國學生藝術(shù)史52 獅子、圣人和國王

 
現(xiàn)在，就算不是集郵愛好者，想必你也比一些集郵者更了解郵票上的肖像了吧。 
52 A LION, A SAINT, AND AN EMPEROR獅子、圣人和國王
 
DO YOU like to go to the zoo? Almost everybody likes to look at animals or hunt animals or play with animals or draw animals or eat animals. A man named Barye liked to make statues of animals. 
Barye lived in Paris. He worked in a jewelry shop and was a goldsmith as were so many of the Renaissance sculptors of Florence. But Barye lived much later than the Renaissance. He lived in the 1800’s. 
Barye loved to go to the zoo in Paris. He used to take paper and crayons to the zoo and draw pictures of the animals. Then he would go home and make little statues of the animals he had drawn. When he was at work in the jewelry shop, he often made tiny gold animals for watch chains and necklaces and bronze animals to go on clocks. In this way Barye practised until he became the best animal sculptor of his time in the world. His lions and tigers were especially liked by Americans and on the street corners of American towns men used to sell plaster casts of Barye’s Walking Lion. Perhaps there is one of these Barye lions on the mantel-piece in your house. 
 
No.52-1　WALKING LION（《行走的獅子》）　　　　　BARYL（巴里　制） 
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
Many of Barye’s bronzes show pain and cruelty. He seemed to like to make statues such as a tiger eating an alligator or a jaguar eating a rabbit. Very few people like to see one animal killing another. I’m sure I don’t. 
Many of Barye’s bronze animals are much too small for monuments, but people call his work monumental sculpture. This means that Barye modeled his statues in the same way large monuments that you see in parks should be modeled. They are not filled with tiny details. I wonder if you would know what I meant if I told you they are heavy in shape. “Heavy in shape” doesn’t mean they are not graceful, but it does mean that a Barye bronze looks beautiful even at a distance as well as near at hand—monumental. 
Almost as good as Barye at making animal statues was still another Frenchman. His name was Frémiet (Fray-mee-ay). Frémiet made many splendid statues of animals. In one called Pan and the Two Bear Cubs, Pan is having lots of fun tickling the little bears with a straw. 
Frémiet began making statues of people as well as animals. His statues of men on horseback—equestrian statues—proved to be his best ones. His most famous equestrian statue is his Joan of Arc. Joan is clad in armor and holds aloft the flag of the King of France as she leads the king’s soldiers to battle. 
 
No.52-2　PAN AND THE TWO BEAR CUBS（《潘和兩只小熊》）　　FRÉMIET（弗萊米耶　制） 
Frenchmen are proud of Joan of Arc. They consider her a saint. Frenchmen are proud, too, of another leader of French armies, although he certainly wasn’t a saint. His name was Napoleon. 
You probably already know the story of Napoleon, the boy from Corsica who went to a military school, became a lieutenant in the French army, then a famous and successful general. He made himself Emperor of France and became the most powerful man of his time in all the world. At last he was defeated and went to live on Elba, an island in the Mediterranean. From Elba he suddenly returned to France. His old soldiers rallied round him. He raised an army to fight the English and the Prussians. He was beaten at the battle of Waterloo and sent to the island of St. Helena, far away in the South Atlantic Ocean. There Napoleon spent the last six years of his life longing to return to lead his armies once more to victory. And there he died. 
This statue shows Napoleon at St. Helena, a map of Europe spread on his knees, one hand clenched in rage at his loss of power, the other hand loosely open, showing how hopeless he feels his chance of returning is. 
The statue was done by a sculptor named Vincenzio Vela, who was born in Switzerland. Do you like it? It is called a dramatic statue because it shows something happening. It is not just Napoleon, but Napoleon wishing to return and win back his past glory. 
 
No.52-3　THE LAST DAYS OF NAPOLEON 
（《拿破侖最后的日子》） 
VELA（貝拉　制）