DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5596#0211
180
MODERN ART.
become of the country ?" Glory and independence
being gone, the arts became debased, and manners
were corrupted. Petronius, having inquired how
it was that there was so great an indolence and
indifference to art in his day, and why so many
most beautiful arts had perished, among which
painting had not left the smallest trace, was
answered, sarcastically, " The love of money is
the cause. But in the early ages, when as yet
simple virtue pleased, the ingenuous arts flourished,
and it was the greatest endeavour among men that
what was profitable should not be concealed from
posterity. But we, sunk in wine and lascivious-
ness, care not to practise art; but, accusers of
antiquity, we teach and learn only its faults. Do
not wonder then that Painting is lost, when both
with gods and men a mass of gold seems to be
more comely than anything which those mad
Grreeklings, Apelles or Phidias, ever executed."
" Aurum omnes, victa jam pietate, colunt."
Propert, iii. 13, 48.
Pliny the younger complains that " The liberal arts
are neglected, and the arts of avarice are the only
ones which are now cultivated :" and in another
place,—" What was formerly done for glory, is now
undertaken for the mere purposes of gain." What
the Macedonian conquest had begun, the Roman
conquest perfected. Imagine the feeling of the
MODERN ART.
become of the country ?" Glory and independence
being gone, the arts became debased, and manners
were corrupted. Petronius, having inquired how
it was that there was so great an indolence and
indifference to art in his day, and why so many
most beautiful arts had perished, among which
painting had not left the smallest trace, was
answered, sarcastically, " The love of money is
the cause. But in the early ages, when as yet
simple virtue pleased, the ingenuous arts flourished,
and it was the greatest endeavour among men that
what was profitable should not be concealed from
posterity. But we, sunk in wine and lascivious-
ness, care not to practise art; but, accusers of
antiquity, we teach and learn only its faults. Do
not wonder then that Painting is lost, when both
with gods and men a mass of gold seems to be
more comely than anything which those mad
Grreeklings, Apelles or Phidias, ever executed."
" Aurum omnes, victa jam pietate, colunt."
Propert, iii. 13, 48.
Pliny the younger complains that " The liberal arts
are neglected, and the arts of avarice are the only
ones which are now cultivated :" and in another
place,—" What was formerly done for glory, is now
undertaken for the mere purposes of gain." What
the Macedonian conquest had begun, the Roman
conquest perfected. Imagine the feeling of the