DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61217#0223
‘ARATRA PENTELICI.’
211
answering with that emphatic “ No ! ” to which some
of his pages hardly seem to assent literally. Once
more he reproaches the artists called “ ideal,” whether
sculptors or painters, for attempting to mend nature;
and to this rebuke many and many an artist’s heart must
have replied that this is but a trap of words, for, at the
worst, it is not nature the painter tries to mend, but his
picture. In Modern Painters it had been written : “ The
picture which is taken as a substitute for nature had
better be burned ”; but are we forbidden to do honour
to a “substitute” by the name, say, of emissary, ambas-
sador, or representative ?
“The true sign,” says Ruskin, “of the greatest art is
to part voluntarily with its greatness,” by making the
eyes of those who look upon it to desire the natural
fact. And this the Greeks knew. Phalaris says of the
bull of Perilaus : “It only wanted motion and bellow-
ing to seem alive; and as soon as I saw it I cried out,
It ought to be sent to the god”-—to Apollo, that is,
who would delight in a work worthy to deceive not the
simple but the wise. The Greek “ rules over the arts
to this day, and will for ever, because he sought not
first for beauty, not first for passion or for invention, but
for Rightness.” With him was the origin not only of
all broad, mighty, and calm conception, “but of all that
is divided, delicate, and tremulous.” To him is owing
the gigantic pillar of Agrigentum and the “ last fineness
of the Pisan Chapel of the Thorn.” The beginning of
Christian chivalry was in his bridling of the white and
211
answering with that emphatic “ No ! ” to which some
of his pages hardly seem to assent literally. Once
more he reproaches the artists called “ ideal,” whether
sculptors or painters, for attempting to mend nature;
and to this rebuke many and many an artist’s heart must
have replied that this is but a trap of words, for, at the
worst, it is not nature the painter tries to mend, but his
picture. In Modern Painters it had been written : “ The
picture which is taken as a substitute for nature had
better be burned ”; but are we forbidden to do honour
to a “substitute” by the name, say, of emissary, ambas-
sador, or representative ?
“The true sign,” says Ruskin, “of the greatest art is
to part voluntarily with its greatness,” by making the
eyes of those who look upon it to desire the natural
fact. And this the Greeks knew. Phalaris says of the
bull of Perilaus : “It only wanted motion and bellow-
ing to seem alive; and as soon as I saw it I cried out,
It ought to be sent to the god”-—to Apollo, that is,
who would delight in a work worthy to deceive not the
simple but the wise. The Greek “ rules over the arts
to this day, and will for ever, because he sought not
first for beauty, not first for passion or for invention, but
for Rightness.” With him was the origin not only of
all broad, mighty, and calm conception, “but of all that
is divided, delicate, and tremulous.” To him is owing
the gigantic pillar of Agrigentum and the “ last fineness
of the Pisan Chapel of the Thorn.” The beginning of
Christian chivalry was in his bridling of the white and