Pygmalion1.0025

Pygmalion1.0025_Raoux

Jean Raoux, 1677-1734, "Pygmalion in Love with His Statue," painting, 1717, Musée Fabre, Montpellier.

A. Blühm (2002), “Vom Leben zum Bild — Vom Bild zum Leben: Pygmalion im Streit der Künstler,” in Wettstreit der Künste: Malerei und Skulptur von Dürer bis Daumier, ed. by E. Mai and K. Wettengl (Köln: Minerva), 142-55. — Raoux's is a clear articulation of the Paragone dispute: painting's superiority over sculpture.
Blühm also adduces Falconet bis, and Gérome bis, to the discussion.

— 0957.01Pygmalion_Raoux
— 0957.26aPygmalion_Falconet
— 0957.26bPygmalion_Falconet
— 0960.28aPygmalion_Gérome
— 0960.28dPygmalion_Gérome

"An implicit contest with the powers of the legendary Pygmalion enlivens the numerous paintings (and some sculptures) of P. and his statue (particularly frequent in 18th-century France), in which the artist tests his own ability to persuade the viewer of the reality and desirability of a work of art at two removes from life. An artistic narcissism is pronounced in the works of Gérome, whose serial paintings of the subject are also illustrations of his own sculpture.... Gérome was a noted exponent of a 19th-century craze for sculptural polychromy, creating uncannily lifelike works." — P.R.Hardie in Grafton & Most The Classical Tradition, s.v. "Pygmalion".

(Moog-Gruenewald s.v. "Pygmalion" 584)

The Paragone dispute, according to Blühm (trans RTM): "The main argument is quickly stated: The painters and their adherents claimed for their art a higher level of achievement, since it could represent three-dimensionality on a flat surface and thus bestow a greater spiritual accomplishment. The illusion of depth on a plane canvas, they claimed, lifts painting to a different niveau than sculpture, which essentially only replicates a given three-dimensional shape in another medium (Material). Painting, further, is science and therefore most intellectual. Its practice welcomes its pursuit even in leisure, while sculptors pound away at their bone crushing business by the sweat of their brow shrouded in clouds of marble dust. All too often the sculptors had nothing in response. Their rebuttal was that they needed to consider many perspectives in the representation of bodies; and this they regarded not only as greater physical but also as greater spiritual demands. This altogether simple differentiation was perpetuated with all rhetorical arts nigh unto excess, and in absolutely endless repetition it found its way into treatises and critical literature. The arguments remained unchanged from Leonardo until nearly the end of the 19th Century. Scarcely ever was the debate able to be enriched with a fresh argument. Painters, as opposed to sculptors, had color at their disposal, with which they could summon a variety of illusions. Also the choice of themes and motifs, it was claimed, was infinitely greater, starting with hair color in a portrait right the way through to the depiction of a stormy landscape. The painters had the hint of meaning inherent in touch, which is more important for realism than facial expression. Their strongest argument was, to be sure, the reference to the act of creation itself, for in the end God shaped Adam, he didn’t paint him. What the one side perceived as blasphemy, the others applied in positive terms and expressed as imitatio Dei. While the painters would benefit themselves with deception and trickery, the sculptors were creating figures in emulation of the creation of Man by God. Herein the sculptors believed they had found their most hard hitting argument. Sadly though, it benefited them but little against the claim that the painters knew to strengthen their case: Painting was able to represent the act of sculpture; conversely sculpture could not represent something painted. Painters could, thus, paint reliefs, grisailles, but also place statues in their landscapes. They could in fact show sculptors at work. Most convincing of all was the fact that they alone could reproduce the greatest triumph of sculpture, the vivification of an artwork. Here came Pygmalion to the debate’s central position. The myth of sculptors was thus presented to the opponents. Painters applied the obvious proof that sculptors took back seat in their very own discipline, since the vivification of Pygmalion’s statue was a dream whose final outcome was actually beyond their reach."