Fairbanks, Arthur: Greek art: the basis of later European art (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1933)

THE GREEK TRADITION: ITS CONTENT
and in Egypt; and in Egypt a proportional re-
duction of the depth of the figure, especially of
the face, had been developed in such wise as to
secure modelling of great delicacy. It was left
to the Greek sculptor to discover the possibili-
ties of the reduction of the subject by planes to
the depth of relief he desired to employ. Be-
tween the front plane of the greatest projection
and the fixed back plane of the background, he
introduced intermediate planes with delicately
modelled transitions, which preserved the illu-
sion of the third dimension without interfering
with the two-dimensional design he had under-
taken. Whether he was working on coins and
gems, or on a grave relief or a temple frieze, the
principle was the same. Partly by the study of
reliefs on Roman sarcophagi but perhaps more
by the study of Greek coins, men like Nicola
Pisano and Ghiberti and Donatello found the
value of this method and made it a principle for
sculptured relief in Europe from the Renais-
sance on.
For sculpture both in relief and in the round
the Greeks worked out devices for representing
the figure itself, the garments, and such details
as the hair, which became an important factor
in the classical tradition. The far-reaching use
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