DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0180
160
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
with its violent action, but he certainly does not succeed in
producing anything Hellenic or classical.
It is more to the purpose of a work which endeavours to trace
the principles of Greek art to show how out of such simple
materials as those which made up Greek dress there arose
monuments of imperishable grace and charm. Nothing, not
even the demonstrations of Euclid, furnished a more charac-
teristic illustration of the Greek power of reaching, by the most
simple and direct ways, results which belong to all peoples, and
set a standard of taste for all future ages.
Down to the time of the Persian wars the Ionic and Doric
fashions of dress existed side by side without much intermin-
gling. In Ionic art, the sculptor reaches ever fresh results by
contrasting the fine and delicate folds of the linen chiton with
the straighter and heavier folds of the overgarment. The
chiton, soft and clinging, only partially concealed the beauties
of the form beneath. The outlines of the breasts and the
limbs of women show clearly in such early works as the Harpy
Tomb, but there the lines of the chiton are straight and parallel,
and are not much modified by the forms of the body. The
same is true of the Corae from Athens. Charming and co-
quettish as these statues are, the pleasing variety with which
the garments are draped is one thing, the body beneath is a
separate thing, which though in outline visible, has not much
individuality.
Meantime in Peloponnesus the statues of women are draped
in the heavy Doric chiton or peplos, the lines of which fall
perpendicularly to the feet, and reveal little of the form; the
neck and arms are bare, but the rest of the body is inserted, as
it were, in a sheath, only sometimes the parting of the chiton
affords a glimpse of the side and thigh.
But the charm of the Ionian Corae gained more and more on
Greece. They became the rage at Athens in the time of the
Peisistratidae. And the sculptors of the temple at Acgina,
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
with its violent action, but he certainly does not succeed in
producing anything Hellenic or classical.
It is more to the purpose of a work which endeavours to trace
the principles of Greek art to show how out of such simple
materials as those which made up Greek dress there arose
monuments of imperishable grace and charm. Nothing, not
even the demonstrations of Euclid, furnished a more charac-
teristic illustration of the Greek power of reaching, by the most
simple and direct ways, results which belong to all peoples, and
set a standard of taste for all future ages.
Down to the time of the Persian wars the Ionic and Doric
fashions of dress existed side by side without much intermin-
gling. In Ionic art, the sculptor reaches ever fresh results by
contrasting the fine and delicate folds of the linen chiton with
the straighter and heavier folds of the overgarment. The
chiton, soft and clinging, only partially concealed the beauties
of the form beneath. The outlines of the breasts and the
limbs of women show clearly in such early works as the Harpy
Tomb, but there the lines of the chiton are straight and parallel,
and are not much modified by the forms of the body. The
same is true of the Corae from Athens. Charming and co-
quettish as these statues are, the pleasing variety with which
the garments are draped is one thing, the body beneath is a
separate thing, which though in outline visible, has not much
individuality.
Meantime in Peloponnesus the statues of women are draped
in the heavy Doric chiton or peplos, the lines of which fall
perpendicularly to the feet, and reveal little of the form; the
neck and arms are bare, but the rest of the body is inserted, as
it were, in a sheath, only sometimes the parting of the chiton
affords a glimpse of the side and thigh.
But the charm of the Ionian Corae gained more and more on
Greece. They became the rage at Athens in the time of the
Peisistratidae. And the sculptors of the temple at Acgina,