DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0043
II
ANCIENT CRITICS ON ART
23
Another contrast on which Greek critics dwell is that between
ethos (fjdoi) and pathos. They tell us that the great schools
of art in the fifth century, the painters Polygnotus and Micon,
the sculptors Pheidias and Polycleitus, appeared to later ages
to be predominantly ethical; but that when we come to the
artists of the fourth century, the painters Zeuxis and Apelles,
the sculptors Praxiteles and Scopas, this ethical character gives
way to pathos. Ethos in men is that which is permanent and
essential, the underlying foundations of a man's nature as in-
herited by him from his ancestors, and as modified by the
course of his life and action. Art ethical portrait shows us a
man as he lives in the world of ideas, apart from any changing
appearances arising from the particular time of life at which
he is portrayed, the precise state of his health, or the impulses
which are at the moment dominant. In this permanent ethical
aspect men may be good or bad, but the great art of Greece
usually depicts only what is good; it looks on the better side
of things, and sees rather the best that men might attain to
than the worst to which they might fall. At the same time,
it must be allowed that the Greek physical ideal was more
fleshly than could be accepted by any nation whose thought
and belief had been moulded by Christianity. Greek religion
and morality aimed rather at the mean than the extreme, and
asceticism had no part in them.
The ethos, which is character, will evidently be differently
represented in different schools. In Greece there were two
main conceptions of it. The Argive and Dorian artists were,
in type, athletic rather than religious or intellectual; thus the
ethos represented in such works of art as the Doryphorus, and
still more in some of the portraits of boy-victors by Polycleitus,
is indeed thoroughly Greek, representing a disposition at one
with itself and with nature, but stands far from the restless
intelligence of Athens. In the Ionian school we have a some-
what different tendency. The great painter Polygnotus, of
ANCIENT CRITICS ON ART
23
Another contrast on which Greek critics dwell is that between
ethos (fjdoi) and pathos. They tell us that the great schools
of art in the fifth century, the painters Polygnotus and Micon,
the sculptors Pheidias and Polycleitus, appeared to later ages
to be predominantly ethical; but that when we come to the
artists of the fourth century, the painters Zeuxis and Apelles,
the sculptors Praxiteles and Scopas, this ethical character gives
way to pathos. Ethos in men is that which is permanent and
essential, the underlying foundations of a man's nature as in-
herited by him from his ancestors, and as modified by the
course of his life and action. Art ethical portrait shows us a
man as he lives in the world of ideas, apart from any changing
appearances arising from the particular time of life at which
he is portrayed, the precise state of his health, or the impulses
which are at the moment dominant. In this permanent ethical
aspect men may be good or bad, but the great art of Greece
usually depicts only what is good; it looks on the better side
of things, and sees rather the best that men might attain to
than the worst to which they might fall. At the same time,
it must be allowed that the Greek physical ideal was more
fleshly than could be accepted by any nation whose thought
and belief had been moulded by Christianity. Greek religion
and morality aimed rather at the mean than the extreme, and
asceticism had no part in them.
The ethos, which is character, will evidently be differently
represented in different schools. In Greece there were two
main conceptions of it. The Argive and Dorian artists were,
in type, athletic rather than religious or intellectual; thus the
ethos represented in such works of art as the Doryphorus, and
still more in some of the portraits of boy-victors by Polycleitus,
is indeed thoroughly Greek, representing a disposition at one
with itself and with nature, but stands far from the restless
intelligence of Athens. In the Ionian school we have a some-
what different tendency. The great painter Polygnotus, of