DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9188#0025
The Lamps of Greek Art
17
recondite emotions. Such emotions, however, in my opinion,
do not find any appropriate embodiment in the arts of which
I am treating—the graphic and plastic arts. In poetry they
have at all times found a noble expression ; and in modern
days a perhaps still completer expression in music, which was
in pre-Christian days in a very rudimentary condition. But
painting is but ill suited to the rendering of these vague
aspirations. And still more unsuited is sculpture, the most
imitative and objective of all the arts. The attempts which
have been made in recent years by some sculptors to give
a mystic turn to their art seems to me doomed to failure by
the essential nature of sculpture. A Western mind can have
little sympathy with the art which has moved most on mystic
lines, the art of India, which in such efforts has abandoned
the search for beauty, and so given up the really artistic point
of view. Mere prettiness no doubt is an unsatisfying ideal :
but a loftier beauty, in harmony with the world around us
and the soul within us, is another thing.
In order that simplicity may be in the highest degree
admirable, it must be combined with two other qualities—
intense love of beauty, and the utmost patience in execution.
It must not lead on the one side to a mere unideal copy of
nature, nor on the other to a hasty and slovenly kind of
work.
The figure already mentioned, the Caryatid of the Erech-
theum, is a model of perfect simplicity. For further illustration
of the quality I have chosen the bronze charioteer from
Delphi, and the Artemis from Gabii, now in the Louvre.
The former (Fig. 4) is a youth of noble family, clad in the long
dress necessary to protect from the wind a man driving a
chariot. The latter (Fig. 5), a work of the school of Praxiteles,
represents a young girl fastening her dress on her shoulder.
Both are as free as they can be from any attempt at novelty
or originality : yet no one with any taste could for a moment
17
recondite emotions. Such emotions, however, in my opinion,
do not find any appropriate embodiment in the arts of which
I am treating—the graphic and plastic arts. In poetry they
have at all times found a noble expression ; and in modern
days a perhaps still completer expression in music, which was
in pre-Christian days in a very rudimentary condition. But
painting is but ill suited to the rendering of these vague
aspirations. And still more unsuited is sculpture, the most
imitative and objective of all the arts. The attempts which
have been made in recent years by some sculptors to give
a mystic turn to their art seems to me doomed to failure by
the essential nature of sculpture. A Western mind can have
little sympathy with the art which has moved most on mystic
lines, the art of India, which in such efforts has abandoned
the search for beauty, and so given up the really artistic point
of view. Mere prettiness no doubt is an unsatisfying ideal :
but a loftier beauty, in harmony with the world around us
and the soul within us, is another thing.
In order that simplicity may be in the highest degree
admirable, it must be combined with two other qualities—
intense love of beauty, and the utmost patience in execution.
It must not lead on the one side to a mere unideal copy of
nature, nor on the other to a hasty and slovenly kind of
work.
The figure already mentioned, the Caryatid of the Erech-
theum, is a model of perfect simplicity. For further illustration
of the quality I have chosen the bronze charioteer from
Delphi, and the Artemis from Gabii, now in the Louvre.
The former (Fig. 4) is a youth of noble family, clad in the long
dress necessary to protect from the wind a man driving a
chariot. The latter (Fig. 5), a work of the school of Praxiteles,
represents a young girl fastening her dress on her shoulder.
Both are as free as they can be from any attempt at novelty
or originality : yet no one with any taste could for a moment