DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0162
142
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
nations of Dr. Lowy. It is difficult even now for any of us to
think of an eye in profile, and still more difficult was this to
more primitive peoples. The eye of all things is that which
most essentially looks at one, and Bo must be drawn looking
at one. The study of nature by slow degrees corrects this
inveterate habit in art, but only by slow degrees. On vases,
even after the profile eye has been mastered, we find curious
inaccuracy in representing an eye in a figure turned three-
quarters toward the. spectator, when it is represented as either
too full or too much in profile.1
The mouth is less difficult to portray than the eye, whence
we sometimes find beautiful mouths in statues of the age of
the Persian wars. But in the sixth century the ends of it are
usually turned upwards, so as to produce an unmeaning smile.
Perhaps this curious result came from an attempt to give a
genial and pleasant expression to the head; in our own time
many people when photographed relapse into a vacant smile. finAt**
As the representation of face and head became less formal,
and more according to nature, the representation of the hair
as a mere pattern could not of course persist. In the great
art of the fifth century hair and beard were treated as quite
subordinate to the face and head, being both alike short and
simply rendered. If was in the fourth century that sculptors
began, no doubt under the influence of portrait-sculpture,
to make more of the hair and beard, discovering how greatly
they may be used to impart character to the face, and how
much they may be worked up from the point of view of style.
If any one studies the portraits of poets, statesmen and philos-
ophers of the fourth and following centuries, he will be greatly
impressed, not only by the remarkable beauty and dignity of
the Greek man, but also by the way in which the arrangement
of the hair and the planning of the locks of the beard may be
1 For example, a figure of an Amazon in Furtwiingler and Reiehhohl
Griechische Vasenmalcrei, PI. 58.
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
nations of Dr. Lowy. It is difficult even now for any of us to
think of an eye in profile, and still more difficult was this to
more primitive peoples. The eye of all things is that which
most essentially looks at one, and Bo must be drawn looking
at one. The study of nature by slow degrees corrects this
inveterate habit in art, but only by slow degrees. On vases,
even after the profile eye has been mastered, we find curious
inaccuracy in representing an eye in a figure turned three-
quarters toward the. spectator, when it is represented as either
too full or too much in profile.1
The mouth is less difficult to portray than the eye, whence
we sometimes find beautiful mouths in statues of the age of
the Persian wars. But in the sixth century the ends of it are
usually turned upwards, so as to produce an unmeaning smile.
Perhaps this curious result came from an attempt to give a
genial and pleasant expression to the head; in our own time
many people when photographed relapse into a vacant smile. finAt**
As the representation of face and head became less formal,
and more according to nature, the representation of the hair
as a mere pattern could not of course persist. In the great
art of the fifth century hair and beard were treated as quite
subordinate to the face and head, being both alike short and
simply rendered. If was in the fourth century that sculptors
began, no doubt under the influence of portrait-sculpture,
to make more of the hair and beard, discovering how greatly
they may be used to impart character to the face, and how
much they may be worked up from the point of view of style.
If any one studies the portraits of poets, statesmen and philos-
ophers of the fourth and following centuries, he will be greatly
impressed, not only by the remarkable beauty and dignity of
the Greek man, but also by the way in which the arrangement
of the hair and the planning of the locks of the beard may be
1 For example, a figure of an Amazon in Furtwiingler and Reiehhohl
Griechische Vasenmalcrei, PI. 58.