DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9188#0049
The Lamps of Greek Art
33
reminds one of the working of Nature herself, Nature who is
never in a hurry, who is never contented with a hasty sketch,
but works regardless of time. We are told of Protogenes that
he spent seven years on a single figure, and I think he would
have spent seven more if he had thought that he could thereby
have improved his painting. Nothing strikes one more strongly
in such works as the charioteer of Delphi and the Hermes of
Praxiteles than the pains taken with every detail. It is by
careful work, continued through successive generations, that
sculpture attained such mastery in the representation of the
muscles of the body as we find in the Borghese fighting figure
of the Louvre, and such delicacy in the rendering of drapery
as we find in the Victories of the Balustrade at Athens, or the
Victory of Samothrace.
But the delicacy and minuteness of Greek work is of course
most obvious in the reliefs of coins and gems. The coins were
not primarily meant to please the eye, but to circulate in the
fish-market ; yet a multitude of the dies are so exquisitely
finished that they lose little when magnified to many diameters,
and will bear the most critical examination. The intaglio
gems were meant for the sealing of documents, the seal taking
the place of the modern signature ; but the figures upon
seals are in their way as finished as great works of sculpture.
Seals even more usually than coins gain rather than lose if they
are enlarged. Yet they were executed without the help of
magnifying glasses. Their subjects are taken from the widest
field, the figures of deities, tales from mythology, portraits,
animal forms ; like the coins they introduced as an under-
current to the prosaic life of every day an element of poetry
and imagination.
VII
The seventh lamp, which goes as naturally with idealism as
care and patience go with naturalism, is joy, joie de vivre.
33
reminds one of the working of Nature herself, Nature who is
never in a hurry, who is never contented with a hasty sketch,
but works regardless of time. We are told of Protogenes that
he spent seven years on a single figure, and I think he would
have spent seven more if he had thought that he could thereby
have improved his painting. Nothing strikes one more strongly
in such works as the charioteer of Delphi and the Hermes of
Praxiteles than the pains taken with every detail. It is by
careful work, continued through successive generations, that
sculpture attained such mastery in the representation of the
muscles of the body as we find in the Borghese fighting figure
of the Louvre, and such delicacy in the rendering of drapery
as we find in the Victories of the Balustrade at Athens, or the
Victory of Samothrace.
But the delicacy and minuteness of Greek work is of course
most obvious in the reliefs of coins and gems. The coins were
not primarily meant to please the eye, but to circulate in the
fish-market ; yet a multitude of the dies are so exquisitely
finished that they lose little when magnified to many diameters,
and will bear the most critical examination. The intaglio
gems were meant for the sealing of documents, the seal taking
the place of the modern signature ; but the figures upon
seals are in their way as finished as great works of sculpture.
Seals even more usually than coins gain rather than lose if they
are enlarged. Yet they were executed without the help of
magnifying glasses. Their subjects are taken from the widest
field, the figures of deities, tales from mythology, portraits,
animal forms ; like the coins they introduced as an under-
current to the prosaic life of every day an element of poetry
and imagination.
VII
The seventh lamp, which goes as naturally with idealism as
care and patience go with naturalism, is joy, joie de vivre.