Art in Theory. Группа авторов
with three domes of white marble; the center dome considerably larger than the others. One of these buildings is a musjüd, or mosque; the other was designed for the repose of any great personage, who might come either on a pilgrimage to the tomb, or to satisfy a well‐directed curiosity. On this base of free‐stone (having a platform at least of twenty‐five feet in breadth) another rests of white marble, of a square form, and which is about fourteen feet high; the angles are octagon, from which rise minarets, or vast columns tapering upwards, having three several galleries running round them, and on the top of each an open pavilion, crowned with a dome. These minarets too, I should have remarked, are of white marble, and contain stair‐cases which lead to the top. From this magnificent base, like those already described, rises the body of the building, which has a platform similar to the above. The plan of this is octagon; the four principal sides opposed to the cardinal points of the compass. In the center of each of the four sides there is raised a vast and pointed arch, like that described in the gate of the tomb of Acbar; and the top above this arch rises considerably higher than the other parts of the building. Those faces of the building which form the octagon on either side of the great arches, have two stories of pointed arches, with recesses, and a low balustrade in front; the spandrels above the arches are greatly enriched with different‐coloured marble inlaid: the heads of the arches within the recesses are likewise most highly enriched in the same manner; within the several arches running round the building are windows, formed by an open fret‐work in the solid slab, to give light to the interior of the building. From behind this octagon front, and rising considerably higher, are four octangular pavilions, with domes. From the center of the whole, rising as high as the domes of the pavilions, is a cone, whence springs the great dome, swelling from its base outwards considerably, and with a beautiful curve finishing in the upper point of the cullus, on which rest two balls of copper gilt, one above the other: above the balls is a crescent, from the center of which a spear head terminates the whole. Each face of this building is a counterpart to the other, and all are equally finished.
When this building is viewed from the opposite side of the river, it possess a degree of beauty, from the perfection of the materials and from the excellence of the workmanship, which is only surpassed by its grandeur, extent and general magnificence. The basest material that enters into this center part of it is white marble, and the ornaments are of various coloured marbles, in which there is no glitter: the whole together appears like a most perfect pearl on an azure ground. The effect is such as, I confess, I never experienced from any work of art. The fine materials, the beautiful forms, and the symmetry of the whole, with the judicious choice of situation, far surpasses any thing I ever beheld.
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I arrived at Calcutta on the 24th of September, after a journey of nine months and fourteen days, through a country which had once been subject to the Moguls; the greatest and the richest empire, perhaps, of which the human annals can produce an instance….
I cannot look back at the various scenes through which I passed in these excursions, without almost involuntarily indulging a train of reflections relative to the state of the arts, under this, as well as under the Hindoo government. The amazing monuments which are still to be found in India prove the Mussulman conquerors to have been well acquainted with the principles of architecture, and at least to have had the taste for grand composition; in painting, on the contrary, they have only exercised themselves in miniature, many of which are highly beautiful in composition and in delicacy of colour. […]
In sculpture there are no influences of excellence among the Moors, except in the Taje Mahel at Agra, upon which there are flowers carved with considerable ability.
The Hindoos appear to me to rise superior to the Mahommedans in the ornamental parts of architecture. Some of the sculptures in their buildings are very highly to be commended for the beauty of the execution; they may, indeed, be said to be very finely drawn, and cut with a peculiar sharpness. […] I have seen many instances of cast metal statues, relative to Hindoo mythology, that prove their perfect knowledge in the art of casting. These works, as they apply to the religion of Bramah, are both curious and valuable; but, as they are purely mythological, the artists have only considered the symbolical character, without the proper attention, and, perhaps without a power of giving a perfect beautiful form, such as we see in the Grecian statues.
The paintings of the Hindoos, as they are, like their sculptures, chiefly applied to represent the objects of their religious worship, are certainly not so perfect as the Moorish pictures, which are all portraits. A constant study of simple nature, it is well known, will produce a resemblance which is sometimes astonishing, and which the painter of ideal objects never can arrive at.
IIB9 Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) from Notes on the State of Virginia
There can be few more notorious instances of the flaw at the heart of Enlightenment universalism than Jefferson’s notes on the constitution for the state of Virginia. To twenty‐first century eyes the gulf between the embrace of liberty and equality as the foundation stones of the new nation and the outright racism of Jefferson’s discussion of African Americans is unbridgeable; indeed the latter is widely interpreted as testifying to the hypocrisy of the former. Some aspects may however be mitigated by attention to context. Thus Jefferson’s proposal to repatriate former slaves to Africa was not alone at the time. At the same period, Olaudah Equiano was ‘commissary’ of a London‐based committee for the resettlement of former slaves in Sierra Leone. Later, in the nineteenth century Abraham Lincoln supported a similar scheme and in the twentieth, Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line did likewise. Also, Jefferson was writing against entrenched Planter interests and inclusion of even qualified emancipation in his text risked a backlash destructive of the rest of his proposals. To some extent the Civil War bore him out. It is worth underlining that Jefferson himself referred to the ‘settlement’ of the constitution and ‘the emancipation of the slaves’ as ‘the two great objects I have in view’.1 Nonetheless, by modern standards Jefferson’s Notes remain profoundly racist. Most of his argument will be clear enough to a contemporary reader, but in the context of the present anthology the following points merit emphasis: in general, the claim that Africans are deficient in both reason and imagination and incapable of painting, sculpture and poetry; in particular his criticism of both Phillis Wheatley (here ‘Phyllis Whately’) and Ignatius Sancho. Jefferson’s remarks were first composed during 1781 and 1782 in response to questions addressed by the French government to the states of the new Union. They were first printed in a private limited edition in Paris in 1784. They were then again revised and printed in their present form in 1787. The extracts begin with a statement of the basis of Jefferson’s ‘revisals’ in English law and go on to state proposals for laws of inheritance, progressive taxation and religious freedom before moving on to the questions of slavery and racial difference. They are taken from Notes on the State of Virginia, London, 1787, pp. 227–35 and 239–40.
The plan of the revisal was this. The common law of England, by which is meant, that part of the English law which was anterior to the date of the oldest statutes extant, is made the basis of the work. […] The following are the most remarkable alterations proposed:
To change the rules of descent, so as that the lands of any person dying intestate shall be divisible equally among all his children, or other representatives, in equal degree.
To make slaves distributable among the next of kin, as other moveables. […]
To define with precision the rules whereby aliens should become citizens, and citizens make themselves aliens.
To establish religious freedom on the broadest bottom.
To emancipate all slaves born after passing the act … that they should continue with their parents to a certain age, then be brought up, at the public expence, to tillage, arts or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males twenty‐one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the time should render most proper. […] It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted prejudices