DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0314
278
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
Parrhasios there still hung much of the atmosphere of
idealism. It was still demanded that art should embody
the beautiful—ugliness was rigorously excluded—only it
was beauty of a lower sort, on a slighter scale, beauty
that amused rather than edified, beauty of the senses
rather than of the soul, beauty that the masses could
understand rather than beauty understood and appre-
ciated only by the few. As we shall have to see, once
the principle of illusion admitted, and, so fascinating was
the cheat to the senses, that men delighted to witness
the illusions even of ugliness ; the petty, the monstrous,
the deformed, the vile, are all the natural and legitimate
province of purely realistic art. But that time is still
far away. Greece, truncated, shattered, morally un-
hinged as she might be, was still enough herself to reject
what is ugly or disgraceful.
Plato has taught us the full meaning of idealism ; he
has expressed for us all the significance of the art of
Pheidias, and shown us the true mission of the ideal
artist. Did any shadow of the coming evil cross his
thoughts ? did he seize with prophetic instinct the
forecast of this illusive imitation ? What would he
think of a painter who painted a picture of drunken-
ness (Methe) personified, and spent the best efforts of
his art in making the transparent glass reveal the image
of the drinker’s face ? We know that he lived to see the
full development of the new school of painting and
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
Parrhasios there still hung much of the atmosphere of
idealism. It was still demanded that art should embody
the beautiful—ugliness was rigorously excluded—only it
was beauty of a lower sort, on a slighter scale, beauty
that amused rather than edified, beauty of the senses
rather than of the soul, beauty that the masses could
understand rather than beauty understood and appre-
ciated only by the few. As we shall have to see, once
the principle of illusion admitted, and, so fascinating was
the cheat to the senses, that men delighted to witness
the illusions even of ugliness ; the petty, the monstrous,
the deformed, the vile, are all the natural and legitimate
province of purely realistic art. But that time is still
far away. Greece, truncated, shattered, morally un-
hinged as she might be, was still enough herself to reject
what is ugly or disgraceful.
Plato has taught us the full meaning of idealism ; he
has expressed for us all the significance of the art of
Pheidias, and shown us the true mission of the ideal
artist. Did any shadow of the coming evil cross his
thoughts ? did he seize with prophetic instinct the
forecast of this illusive imitation ? What would he
think of a painter who painted a picture of drunken-
ness (Methe) personified, and spent the best efforts of
his art in making the transparent glass reveal the image
of the drinker’s face ? We know that he lived to see the
full development of the new school of painting and