Perry, Walter Copland: Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture (London, 1882)

STYLE OF PRAXITELES.

461

art ' the last best work' of God, because base natures can see nothing
in the most ideal form of loveliness but the toy of passion.

It is true, indeed, that the whole spirit and tendency of his works
are too exclusively dominated and determined by his love of beauty.
But the beauty which he aimed at was not merely corporeal ; it was
the beauty of tender, loving, or pathetic emotions, expressed in
graceful forms and lovely features. He must, therefore, be classed
among ideal artists, because he did not rest in beauty as a sufficient
end in itself, but employed it for the representation of thought and
feeling. As a lover of beauty, and artist of the emotions, he naturally
chose the female form as the principal vehicle for the expression of
his ideas ; and even the majority of his male figures have something
of the grace and delicacy of woman. Now, it is this exclusive attach-
ment to the beautiful which forms the chief difference between him
and Scopas, and confined him within a narrower range of subjects.
Scopas delighted in the expression of the wildest excitement and
passion, while Praxiteles confined himself to the representation of
the gentler feelings which can be expressed without those contor-
tions of limb or face which disturb the lines of perfect beauty.1 In
daring flights of original genius he could not follow Scopas; but in the
beauty, grace, and tenderness, in the exquisite refinement and winning
charm, with which he endows the creations of his genius, he has no
equal.

' Praxiteles occasionally makes us feci llie »a"i ntX.t mi Ti itpn/ii»«' 'A^poJiVm.

trttth of l'indar's Words :—- (One may have too much even of honey and ihe

pleasant flowers of Aphrodite.)