Falkener, Edward: Daedalus or the causes and principles of the excellence of Greek sculpture (London, 1860)

84

ANCIENT ART.

head of Jupiter are certain characteristics of the
physiognomy of the lion, in that of Hercules of the
bull, and in those of Fauns and Satyrs of the goat.
What is the Hermaphrodite but a most wonderful
evidence of the powers of idealism ? Lucian
describes the idealism of this commingling of the
sexes in the picture of the Centaurs by Zeuxis.
The picture of Paris by Buphranor, described by
Pliny as exhibiting his several characters of umpire
of goddesses, lover of Helen, and slayer of Achilles,
has been ridiculed by some critics, for attempting to
combine discordant elements, but the subject and
the artist have been triumphantly vindicated by
Fuseli in his " Ancient Art." 1

It was in this representation of the qualities of
the soul that Praxiteles, as described by Diodorus,
so much excelled : and so highly did Phidias cul-
tivate this principle, that he earned for himself the
title of a sculptor of gods rather than of men. It
was of this inner beauty that Plato spoke, when he
said, that it was impossible that Phidias should not
have understood beauty. Aristotle, also, expresses
himself almost in the same terms, and praises
Polygnotus, as having most rarely expressed the

1 It would be much more difficult to imagine how Parrhasius
succeeded in bis picture of the Athenian Demus, which " he
endeavoured to represent as capricious, passionate, unjust, incon-
stant, inexorable, forgiving, compassionate, magnanimous, boastful,
abject, brave, cowardly ; and all in one expression."-—Pliny.