DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0154
CHAPTER IX
the progress of sculpture
While it is necessary, in speaking of Greek art, to insist
upon the human and subjective side of it, it is yet wrong to
overlook other elements of the greatest importance.. There
was never, at least in early Greece, any fear that art should
become merely a rendering of human thought and emotion
without full study of nature. This is made clear in all parts of
this book: in the present place I propose to make a few general
observations on the subject.
As it was man who especially interested the Greeks, it was
to the study of the human body, both in itself and as the abode
of the spirit, that the Greek artist especially devoted himself.
In the fifth and fourth centuries he made rapid and uninter-
rupted progress in the knowledge of this body in every posi-
tion of rest and of action, from the extreme tension of the battle
and the palaestra to the complete repose of the reclining posi-
tion.
A result of the preponderant interest in what is human
appears also in the degree of excellence with which various
natural objects are portrayed. In the fifth century the forms
of men and women are admirably given, but the bodies of
children are poorly rendered. They appear in far too developed
a form, as little men and women; and although doubtless in the
climate of Greece the bodily forms ripen earlier, this is an
exaggeration. Children do not become simple and natural
until the Hellenistic age. This explains, what strikes many
134
the progress of sculpture
While it is necessary, in speaking of Greek art, to insist
upon the human and subjective side of it, it is yet wrong to
overlook other elements of the greatest importance.. There
was never, at least in early Greece, any fear that art should
become merely a rendering of human thought and emotion
without full study of nature. This is made clear in all parts of
this book: in the present place I propose to make a few general
observations on the subject.
As it was man who especially interested the Greeks, it was
to the study of the human body, both in itself and as the abode
of the spirit, that the Greek artist especially devoted himself.
In the fifth and fourth centuries he made rapid and uninter-
rupted progress in the knowledge of this body in every posi-
tion of rest and of action, from the extreme tension of the battle
and the palaestra to the complete repose of the reclining posi-
tion.
A result of the preponderant interest in what is human
appears also in the degree of excellence with which various
natural objects are portrayed. In the fifth century the forms
of men and women are admirably given, but the bodies of
children are poorly rendered. They appear in far too developed
a form, as little men and women; and although doubtless in the
climate of Greece the bodily forms ripen earlier, this is an
exaggeration. Children do not become simple and natural
until the Hellenistic age. This explains, what strikes many
134