DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5065#0046
36 ALEXANDER'S INFLUENCE UPON THE ART.
old or archaic style, was a stiff and rigorous observation of certain conventional types and
manners ; these had been handed down by tradition, consecrated by usage, and often enforced
by religious superstition and hieratic obligations ; and, as far as sculpture is concerned, its
productions were very often influenced by the nature of the first material, which, in the
earliest times of Greece was generally wood, the first images of all the gods of Greece
having been real %6ava. Successive enfranchisement from this yoke of what was hieratic and
conventional ; the imitation of nature considered as the means not as the end ; acknowledge-
ment of an ideal beauty; sober, modest and rational, but sublime efforts, to raise by real
art, and without vanity or exaggeration, natural beauty to a higher order of beauty—these
formed the high or elevated style ; such are the principal criteria of the tendency of the
art of the Greeks in the time of Phidias and of his disciples.
The bronzes of Siris cannot belong either to the productions of the ancient style, or to
that which is rightly called the elevated style. They must, incontestably, be adjudged to a
later period, and to one of the highest refinement, the style of which has, by Winckelmann
and others, properly been termed the beautiful style. We shall come to this conclusion, by
comparing them with the very precise notions furnished to us by other sources, upon the
tendency, and the productions of the age, which comprized the schools of Lysippos and
Apelles, that is, the age of Alexander and his immediate successors.1
The impulse which Grecian art received during this remarkable period, was produced by
men of extraordinary capacity and fine sentiments, leaving the bolder path of the ideal, and
seeking their way to the sanctuary of art in a highly refined, and faithful imitation of nature.
The tendency of great talents in this direction made art appear as if called down from
heaven upon earth, perhaps with an air less imposing, less divine, but more accurate, more
human, more approaching to our nature ; and so it became to be better understood by man,
having a readier access to his heart, and more seductive charms.
'n
This new tendency of the Grecian genius was no creation of accident ; it was founded
upon the spirit of the age, upon its wants and exigencies. It is with the moral world, as
with the physical or material world, where nothing is due to chance ; and where, if any
thing appears to us fortuitous, it is only because with our limited faculties we consider it
individually, and out of the great chain of causes and effects. The new relations which
owed their existence to Alexander, would necessarily have also a powerful influence upon art.
At no period has any mortal ever given a greater impulse to the age in which he lived, in
every sense. The exploits of this conqueror form in a manner the history of his time. A
genuine Greek in mind, character, and education, as full of genius as insatiable of glory,
this crowned hero (and especially when he came to dispose of all the treasures of Asia),
was necessarily obliged to have recourse to art for immortalizing his glory, and that of his
associates in arms ; and art gladly seized upon a subject so rich and so beautiful. It was
in this manner that art, gradually issuing from the sanctuaries of religion, and from beneath
the vaults consecrated to the national worship (which was often connected with circumstances
and traditions purely local), was called into complete day, and, so to express it, into common
life. The warrior loves the open air and the sun. He loves also that his statues, or the
works which are to perpetuate his deeds, should be exposed to all eyes. The artist lends
1 See Hist, of Art. B. VIII. ch. 2 (Winckelmann's Works, Vol. V. p. 241). What Winckelmann says in the
following chapter, and especially from the § IA to 18, of two kinds of grace, is highly intellectual, and very deli-
cately felt. He means that the first, or sublime grace, may have been proper to works of the elevated style, but
that the second, the elegant grace, was associated to the first, in those of the beautiful style. Nevertheless in treating
of the dominion of art, where language,—more suited to express the variations of thought than the refinements of
sentiment,—is often very inadequate, I would not be too fastidious in the use of the expression grace. The reasoning
of Winckelmann is, undoubtedly, as much founded in nature (where nothing appears truly sublime without harmonious
grace), as in the way of thinking of the great men of antiquity. But when we wish to distinguish historically the
different styles of Grecian art, it will be more perspicuous, if the term sublime is applied to that style of art in
which the sublime is predominant; and beautiful or graceful to that in which a nice and delicate imitation of nature
prevails.
old or archaic style, was a stiff and rigorous observation of certain conventional types and
manners ; these had been handed down by tradition, consecrated by usage, and often enforced
by religious superstition and hieratic obligations ; and, as far as sculpture is concerned, its
productions were very often influenced by the nature of the first material, which, in the
earliest times of Greece was generally wood, the first images of all the gods of Greece
having been real %6ava. Successive enfranchisement from this yoke of what was hieratic and
conventional ; the imitation of nature considered as the means not as the end ; acknowledge-
ment of an ideal beauty; sober, modest and rational, but sublime efforts, to raise by real
art, and without vanity or exaggeration, natural beauty to a higher order of beauty—these
formed the high or elevated style ; such are the principal criteria of the tendency of the
art of the Greeks in the time of Phidias and of his disciples.
The bronzes of Siris cannot belong either to the productions of the ancient style, or to
that which is rightly called the elevated style. They must, incontestably, be adjudged to a
later period, and to one of the highest refinement, the style of which has, by Winckelmann
and others, properly been termed the beautiful style. We shall come to this conclusion, by
comparing them with the very precise notions furnished to us by other sources, upon the
tendency, and the productions of the age, which comprized the schools of Lysippos and
Apelles, that is, the age of Alexander and his immediate successors.1
The impulse which Grecian art received during this remarkable period, was produced by
men of extraordinary capacity and fine sentiments, leaving the bolder path of the ideal, and
seeking their way to the sanctuary of art in a highly refined, and faithful imitation of nature.
The tendency of great talents in this direction made art appear as if called down from
heaven upon earth, perhaps with an air less imposing, less divine, but more accurate, more
human, more approaching to our nature ; and so it became to be better understood by man,
having a readier access to his heart, and more seductive charms.
'n
This new tendency of the Grecian genius was no creation of accident ; it was founded
upon the spirit of the age, upon its wants and exigencies. It is with the moral world, as
with the physical or material world, where nothing is due to chance ; and where, if any
thing appears to us fortuitous, it is only because with our limited faculties we consider it
individually, and out of the great chain of causes and effects. The new relations which
owed their existence to Alexander, would necessarily have also a powerful influence upon art.
At no period has any mortal ever given a greater impulse to the age in which he lived, in
every sense. The exploits of this conqueror form in a manner the history of his time. A
genuine Greek in mind, character, and education, as full of genius as insatiable of glory,
this crowned hero (and especially when he came to dispose of all the treasures of Asia),
was necessarily obliged to have recourse to art for immortalizing his glory, and that of his
associates in arms ; and art gladly seized upon a subject so rich and so beautiful. It was
in this manner that art, gradually issuing from the sanctuaries of religion, and from beneath
the vaults consecrated to the national worship (which was often connected with circumstances
and traditions purely local), was called into complete day, and, so to express it, into common
life. The warrior loves the open air and the sun. He loves also that his statues, or the
works which are to perpetuate his deeds, should be exposed to all eyes. The artist lends
1 See Hist, of Art. B. VIII. ch. 2 (Winckelmann's Works, Vol. V. p. 241). What Winckelmann says in the
following chapter, and especially from the § IA to 18, of two kinds of grace, is highly intellectual, and very deli-
cately felt. He means that the first, or sublime grace, may have been proper to works of the elevated style, but
that the second, the elegant grace, was associated to the first, in those of the beautiful style. Nevertheless in treating
of the dominion of art, where language,—more suited to express the variations of thought than the refinements of
sentiment,—is often very inadequate, I would not be too fastidious in the use of the expression grace. The reasoning
of Winckelmann is, undoubtedly, as much founded in nature (where nothing appears truly sublime without harmonious
grace), as in the way of thinking of the great men of antiquity. But when we wish to distinguish historically the
different styles of Grecian art, it will be more perspicuous, if the term sublime is applied to that style of art in
which the sublime is predominant; and beautiful or graceful to that in which a nice and delicate imitation of nature
prevails.