DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73713#0054
50
THE WORKS OF
siatutes which all people admire as being most
beautiful. To this I dare not reply with that liberty
I could with. Better would it be for a man of
letters to do it who possesses the experience of the
art, and has acquired it by a mature examina-
tion of the ancient tiatues arid monuments.
Notwithstanding, to satisfy you at least in this
part,! say that is the Apollo os Belvedere had the
sselhiness and morbidity of the said Antinous
of the same museum, it would without doubt
be much more beautiful; and siill more so, if
the whole were finished as much as is the head.
And the group of the Laocoon would be still
more admirable if the figures of the children
were executed with the delicacy whicli one ob^
serves in other works. But all human things, how-
ever beautiful they may be, could still be more so ;
and since every one is ignorant of absolute per-
section, no one can determine the limits to
whicli these artists arrived who were so mucli
esteemed, and praised, by men so seasonable
and intelligent. Therefore as we have no mo-
numents which we can with certainty say are
os these celebrated masters, I hope to have par-
don if I, believe that their works coinprehended
persection, and equality of style, imitation,
choice of truth, corrections as much as the art
can allow, exempt from every negligence, and
full os that greatness, which I do not know how
to diseover in the works that hate remained.
These ressections indead of diminishing in me
a veneration for the things of antiquity, ren-
ders them more estimable, considering bv thole
THE WORKS OF
siatutes which all people admire as being most
beautiful. To this I dare not reply with that liberty
I could with. Better would it be for a man of
letters to do it who possesses the experience of the
art, and has acquired it by a mature examina-
tion of the ancient tiatues arid monuments.
Notwithstanding, to satisfy you at least in this
part,! say that is the Apollo os Belvedere had the
sselhiness and morbidity of the said Antinous
of the same museum, it would without doubt
be much more beautiful; and siill more so, if
the whole were finished as much as is the head.
And the group of the Laocoon would be still
more admirable if the figures of the children
were executed with the delicacy whicli one ob^
serves in other works. But all human things, how-
ever beautiful they may be, could still be more so ;
and since every one is ignorant of absolute per-
section, no one can determine the limits to
whicli these artists arrived who were so mucli
esteemed, and praised, by men so seasonable
and intelligent. Therefore as we have no mo-
numents which we can with certainty say are
os these celebrated masters, I hope to have par-
don if I, believe that their works coinprehended
persection, and equality of style, imitation,
choice of truth, corrections as much as the art
can allow, exempt from every negligence, and
full os that greatness, which I do not know how
to diseover in the works that hate remained.
These ressections indead of diminishing in me
a veneration for the things of antiquity, ren-
ders them more estimable, considering bv thole