DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0368
348
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART chap, xxi
lesson which we have to learn from the Greek masterpieces.
Haydon's knowledge of ancient sculpture was but slight. In
works of the Pergamene school, and even the Apoxyomenos, he
would have found even greater faithfulness to natural detail
than in the Parthenon figures. What in fact impressed Haydon
was the vast superiority of great Greek originals to the ordinary
Roman copy. The value of these originals to us is especially
that they give us a noble embodiment of the Greek spirit.
The Greeks, by the universal confession of artists and students
of art, bore a message not only to their own time and country,
but to all men in all ages. Their art was classical, that is, con-
formed to what is permanent and above criticism in human life.
It is for this reason that it must hold an important place in
education, the main object of which is, or should be, to enable
the learner to discern between good and evil. Thus all ages
must owe a debt to Greece for the simple beauty, the sanity,
the healthfulness of the ideal element which she introduced into
art, making it for the first time in history a true exponent of
the human spirit.
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART chap, xxi
lesson which we have to learn from the Greek masterpieces.
Haydon's knowledge of ancient sculpture was but slight. In
works of the Pergamene school, and even the Apoxyomenos, he
would have found even greater faithfulness to natural detail
than in the Parthenon figures. What in fact impressed Haydon
was the vast superiority of great Greek originals to the ordinary
Roman copy. The value of these originals to us is especially
that they give us a noble embodiment of the Greek spirit.
The Greeks, by the universal confession of artists and students
of art, bore a message not only to their own time and country,
but to all men in all ages. Their art was classical, that is, con-
formed to what is permanent and above criticism in human life.
It is for this reason that it must hold an important place in
education, the main object of which is, or should be, to enable
the learner to discern between good and evil. Thus all ages
must owe a debt to Greece for the simple beauty, the sanity,
the healthfulness of the ideal element which she introduced into
art, making it for the first time in history a true exponent of
the human spirit.