DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0294
258
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
Boboli gardens at Florence, may show us how the group
was treated. Praxiteles took, it seems, an old accepted
form, but breathed into it the new spirit of his later
times. His father, we can see by the Eirene statue,
copy though it is, worked more in the old manner of
Pheidias. But though our Hermes and Dionysos are a
group, about the figure of the child still clings some-
thing of the old, attributive, symbolic manner. The hair
the face, the body are not ill-worked, but stiff and some-
what unpleasant, and wholly unchildlike. As regards
mere beauty we could wish they had never been found.
The child is a little old man, and therefore leaves us
with a dwarfed, stunted impression. Until after the time
of Praxiteles the Greeks cared little to depict infancy,
because it was immature, imperfect. They would indi-
cate a child if necessary by its small size, but they did
not trouble to express it. We can scarcely suppose they
saw no charm in babyhood, but we do know that they
considered that charm unfitting to the dignity of art, and
they were right. A child is most beautiful in relation,
as the natural attribute of mother or nurse; and if we
think of the strange little god Dionysos in this attribu-
tive way he ceases to be vexatious. He is there just
to emphasize one aspect of Hermes, not for his own
intrinsic charm. There was a later stage, a stage of
animalism and triviality, when children began to run
riot in Greek art, when boys strangling geese and
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
Boboli gardens at Florence, may show us how the group
was treated. Praxiteles took, it seems, an old accepted
form, but breathed into it the new spirit of his later
times. His father, we can see by the Eirene statue,
copy though it is, worked more in the old manner of
Pheidias. But though our Hermes and Dionysos are a
group, about the figure of the child still clings some-
thing of the old, attributive, symbolic manner. The hair
the face, the body are not ill-worked, but stiff and some-
what unpleasant, and wholly unchildlike. As regards
mere beauty we could wish they had never been found.
The child is a little old man, and therefore leaves us
with a dwarfed, stunted impression. Until after the time
of Praxiteles the Greeks cared little to depict infancy,
because it was immature, imperfect. They would indi-
cate a child if necessary by its small size, but they did
not trouble to express it. We can scarcely suppose they
saw no charm in babyhood, but we do know that they
considered that charm unfitting to the dignity of art, and
they were right. A child is most beautiful in relation,
as the natural attribute of mother or nurse; and if we
think of the strange little god Dionysos in this attribu-
tive way he ceases to be vexatious. He is there just
to emphasize one aspect of Hermes, not for his own
intrinsic charm. There was a later stage, a stage of
animalism and triviality, when children began to run
riot in Greek art, when boys strangling geese and