onumental figures he ever produced.

The commonest criticism on Saint-Gaudens's art has been that it is not,
primarily, sculptural in its inspiration; and, in a sense, the criticism
is justified. One need not, perhaps, greatly care whether it is true or
not. It is, after all, only a matter of definition, and if we were
forbidden to call his work sculpture at all and required to find another
name for it, the important fact that it is art--art of the finest, the
most exquisite, at times the most powerful--would in no wise be altered.
Ghiberti went beyond the traditions of sculpture in relief, introduced
perspective into his compositions, modelled trees and rocks and clouds
and cast them in bronze, made pictures, if you like, instead of reliefs.
Does any one care? Is it not enough that they are beautiful pictures?
The gates of the Baptistry of Florence are still worthy, as the greatest
sculptor since the Greeks thought them, to be the gates of paradise. A
work of art remains a work of art, call it what you please, and a thing
of beauty will be a joy forever, whether or not you can pigeonhole it in
some ready-made category. After all, the critical pigeonholes are made
for the things, not the things for the pigeonholes. The work is there,
and if it does not fit your preconceived definition the fault is as
likely to be in the definition as in the work itself.

And the first and most essential thing to note about the art of Augustus
Saint-Gaudens is that it is always art of the purest--free in an
extraordinary degree from the besetting sins of naturalism and the
scientific temper on the one hand and of the display of cleverness and
technical brilliancy on the other. Never more than in our own day have
these been the great temptations of an able artist: that he should in
the absorption of study forget the end in the means and produce
demonstrations of anatomy or of the laws of light rather than statues or
pictures; or that he should, in the joy of exercising great talents,
seem to say, "See how well I can do it!" and invent difficulties for the
sake of triumphantly resolving them, becoming a virtuoso rather than a
creator. Of the meaner temptation of mere sensationalism--the desire to
attract attention by ugliness and eccentricity lest one should be unable
to secure it by truth and beauty--one need not speak. It is the
temptation of vulgar souls. But great and true artists have yielded,
occasionally or habitually, to these othe