DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73714#0075
RAPHAEL MENGS.
splendour of the arts. History ossers to us the
necessity of this esteem, since wherever it is want-
ing, the arts and sciences are infallibly wanting
also. The Egyptians, who invented almost all
the arts, never perfected any one, because they
did not honour their professors, not consider-
ing them otherwise than as artilans. The
Phoenicians advanced them a little more, because
they gave as an object to the arts the utility of
commerce. Greece, and particularly in learned
Athens, where there was a greater equality of
persons in the state, and where the arts and sci-
ences were esteemed little less than divine, and
where ingenuity led to the highest situation of
citizenship, it was there where painting, sculp-
ture, and architecture ssourished most worthily.
The Romans never equalled the Grecians in
these professions, because their road to honour was
in the military service, and they availed them-
selves of the artists of conquered Greece, reduced
to a severe servitude. Whence they debated the
artists and their works. I therefore conclude
that, to the end that the arts may ssourish in a
nation, it is not only necessary that their works
may be esteemed, but that the artists may be
proportionately honoured, since otherwise no
generous soul will sacrisice his labours and his
life in a profession which, instead of bringing
him honour, discredits him; for which reason
the pusillanimous alone will apply themselves to
arts, who aspire to nothing but interest, and are
incapable of the sublime conceptions that the arts
require, because the work itfelf is always the per-
splendour of the arts. History ossers to us the
necessity of this esteem, since wherever it is want-
ing, the arts and sciences are infallibly wanting
also. The Egyptians, who invented almost all
the arts, never perfected any one, because they
did not honour their professors, not consider-
ing them otherwise than as artilans. The
Phoenicians advanced them a little more, because
they gave as an object to the arts the utility of
commerce. Greece, and particularly in learned
Athens, where there was a greater equality of
persons in the state, and where the arts and sci-
ences were esteemed little less than divine, and
where ingenuity led to the highest situation of
citizenship, it was there where painting, sculp-
ture, and architecture ssourished most worthily.
The Romans never equalled the Grecians in
these professions, because their road to honour was
in the military service, and they availed them-
selves of the artists of conquered Greece, reduced
to a severe servitude. Whence they debated the
artists and their works. I therefore conclude
that, to the end that the arts may ssourish in a
nation, it is not only necessary that their works
may be esteemed, but that the artists may be
proportionately honoured, since otherwise no
generous soul will sacrisice his labours and his
life in a profession which, instead of bringing
him honour, discredits him; for which reason
the pusillanimous alone will apply themselves to
arts, who aspire to nothing but interest, and are
incapable of the sublime conceptions that the arts
require, because the work itfelf is always the per-