DOI Artikel:
Essay I: The provice, aim, and methos of the stuy of classical archaeology
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11444#0032
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ESSAYS ON THE ART OF PHEIDIAS.
First then it differs in the material. The sculptor represents
bodies in their solidity and roundness, as they are. The painter
translates the roundness and depth to a plane surface, and
therein departs from reality, in giving the semblance of volume
instead of real volume. So too in details ; the sculptor, for
instance, comes nearer the reality of hair in modelling ridges
into the surface, elevations, recessions ; the painter produces the
illusion of varying depth by means of light and colour. To
produce these effects the painter must study appearances, reflect
upon laws of chiaroscuro and perspective ; he must, so to say, be
conscious of the difference between things as they are and as
they appear to be. While the sculptor is nearer reality, is
simply observing, the painter must be more reflective, intro-
duce more abstraction.
Secondly, sculpture differs from painting in the choice of its
subjects. Both sculpture and painting represent forms of or-
ganic life, and when the painter has to represent parts even of
the inorganic world, as for instance a rock, in so far as painting
has a vocation as an art, he arranges these parts one with
another, chooses, accentuates, and omits, in fact makes a com-
position, so that the whole receives that unity of organisation
which makes a picture a work of art in contradistinction to a
mere accurate reproduction. He harmonises the multiplicity of
nature into unity in accordance with the laws of association
inherent in the human mind. The artist gives life to the dead
in introducing the natural design of human mind into nature
as he reproduces her in his work. Now organisation, or life,
in the first instance manifests itself to our senses or our imagina-
tion in that there is a central unity belonging to the parts,
towards which they all tend, so that none is accidental, but all
are essential to the whole. A hand separate, an arm separate,
would appear to us dead; but a hand joined to an arm and the
arm to a complete body is living to us. A branch severed from
the tree is dead or dying. When in active interaction with it,
receiving its sap from the tree of which it is a real and breathing
part, a part which contributes to the maintenance of the whole
organism, it is living. In what we call an organism multiplicity
is bound up into unity. Now our senses and our imagination,
in contradistinction to inner analysing, demand that this unity
ESSAYS ON THE ART OF PHEIDIAS.
First then it differs in the material. The sculptor represents
bodies in their solidity and roundness, as they are. The painter
translates the roundness and depth to a plane surface, and
therein departs from reality, in giving the semblance of volume
instead of real volume. So too in details ; the sculptor, for
instance, comes nearer the reality of hair in modelling ridges
into the surface, elevations, recessions ; the painter produces the
illusion of varying depth by means of light and colour. To
produce these effects the painter must study appearances, reflect
upon laws of chiaroscuro and perspective ; he must, so to say, be
conscious of the difference between things as they are and as
they appear to be. While the sculptor is nearer reality, is
simply observing, the painter must be more reflective, intro-
duce more abstraction.
Secondly, sculpture differs from painting in the choice of its
subjects. Both sculpture and painting represent forms of or-
ganic life, and when the painter has to represent parts even of
the inorganic world, as for instance a rock, in so far as painting
has a vocation as an art, he arranges these parts one with
another, chooses, accentuates, and omits, in fact makes a com-
position, so that the whole receives that unity of organisation
which makes a picture a work of art in contradistinction to a
mere accurate reproduction. He harmonises the multiplicity of
nature into unity in accordance with the laws of association
inherent in the human mind. The artist gives life to the dead
in introducing the natural design of human mind into nature
as he reproduces her in his work. Now organisation, or life,
in the first instance manifests itself to our senses or our imagina-
tion in that there is a central unity belonging to the parts,
towards which they all tend, so that none is accidental, but all
are essential to the whole. A hand separate, an arm separate,
would appear to us dead; but a hand joined to an arm and the
arm to a complete body is living to us. A branch severed from
the tree is dead or dying. When in active interaction with it,
receiving its sap from the tree of which it is a real and breathing
part, a part which contributes to the maintenance of the whole
organism, it is living. In what we call an organism multiplicity
is bound up into unity. Now our senses and our imagination,
in contradistinction to inner analysing, demand that this unity