The fourth notable quality of Greek art is _Naturalism_. Painting and
sculpture, being representative or mimetic arts, are dependent for their
effects on the careful observation and loving study of nature. Probably
this is not the feature in works of Greek sculpture which would be most
conspicuous to a modern eye. And it cannot be doubted that the habit of
exact observation produced by modern nature studies, our familiarity
with such helps to sight as telescopes and magnifying glasses, our
constant use of photography, have made most of us better acquainted with
the phenomena of the world about us than were the Greeks. But compared
with the works of preceding ages, Greek sculpture must have seemed
amazingly naturalist. Even works of the archaic period, like the
pediments from Aegina, show a knowledge of the human form infinitely
more accurate than any to be found in Assyrian palaces or Egyptian
temples. There is probably always a good deal of illusion in the minds
of the schools which are constantly springing up, which profess to break
away from all conventions and to go back to nature herself. To reach
nature except through human senses and human combinations is quite
impossible. And any artist who determines to give us nature merely as
the photographic plate or the mechanical cast gives it to us simply
wastes his powers, and produces a result of no interest whatever to any
one. According to Pliny Lysippus professed to take nature alone for his
teacher; but in fact the works of Lysippus, so far as we can recover or
trace them, are full of most definite style. An artist has to look at
nature through his own eyes, and those eyes give to what he sees a
character based in part on his own personality. Everything he sees is
refracted in the waters of his subjectivity, from which he cannot
escape.
Nevertheless, the whole historic course of Greek sculpture is steeped in
the study of nature; and we see as it proceeds more and more clearly the
results of careful observation. The artist had in fact opportunities for
the study of what he considered the one important group of phenomena,
human bodies, such as a modern artist cannot hope to compass. In the
baths and gymnasia where all young men of free birth spent part of their
mornings in running, leaping, wrestling, or swimming, he could daily
watch the beautiful bodies of athletes in every variety of pose and
action. He knew them as a trainer knows horses, or a fancier knows dogs.
He would have little need of a special model; but would daily observe
some fresh detail of muscles, some notable pose which he could add from
memory to his conception of the human body.
But in the greatest periods of art naturalism is not predominant. Its
constantly working tendency is kept in check by noble ideas and noble
style. There is in the development of sculpture a constant approach to
nature, but nothing of the nihilism which looks on all aspects of nature
as equally fit subjects for art. The artists of the pediments of Aegina
could not bring themselves to conceal the beautiful bodies of the
fighting warriors by rigid armour like that copied in Vischer's group.
Thus we find the paradox of armed men in battle, but without armour. The
utmost pains are taken with the nude limbs. In the wonderful bronze
charioteer found at Delphi (Fig. 4), which dates from about 470 B. C.,
the garment necessary to protect the man from the rush of air is very
simply treated; but the arms and feet, which the garment does not
conceal, are wrought with marvellous accuracy and truth to nature. It
seems almost as if the artist were compensating himself for the
extremely simple work on the drapery by an almost excessively close
study of nature where it was possible. The head, on the other hand, is
typical and not individual; for in fact individual portraits were
scarcely possible at the time.
This would be the place to speak of Greek portraits, if space allowed
it. I will only point out the erroneousness of the popular view, that
Greek portraits were conventional and uninteresting; and that it was the
Romans who introduced individuality into portraiture. It is strange that
a view which is utterly false should have gained such currency. It is
true that Greek portraits of the fifth and even the fourth century have
in them much of the type, and individual traits are softened in accord
with the strongly idealizing tendencies of the age. But from the third
and second centuries we have a great number of portraits which are in
the highest degree characteristic and individual, a wonderful gallery of
philosophers and poets and statesmen which for lifelikeness cannot be
surpassed. All the finest of the portraits of Romans were by Greek
artists. I can give but one example of really fine Greek portraiture, a
statue of Demosthenes of the third century B. C. (Fig. 8). It is a
portrait indeed. The long lean arms and the pose are quite as individual
and characteristic as the face with its melancholy expression and deep
lines of anxiety. We have the man from head to foot; not as is so often
the case in modern statues, a portrait head set on a conventional body.
[Illustration: Fig. 8. DEMOSTHENES
By Polyeuctus]
For comparison with Demosthenes I set a statue of a great modern
statesman, Abraham Lincoln, by Barnard (Fig. 9), not the best statue of
him, but one which is approved by many. It aims at truth, but only
attains caricature, by exaggerating Lincoln's awkwardness and
angularity, the size of his hands and feet, and the anxiety in his face.
This exaggeration has been proved by a comparison with many photographs
of Lincoln, which show that he was careful in dress and by no means
wanting in dignity. The statue of Demosthenes is marvellous for truth;
but it adds a touch of pathos; the statue of Lincoln misses the truth,
through exaggerating the least pleasing features of the subject.
[Illustration: Fig. 9. ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By Barnard]
When we want to ascertain how close Greek sculpture could come to actual
fact, we turn from the great ideal age to the Hellenistic period.
Lysistratus, the brother of Lysippus, began to take moulds in plaster
from individual faces. At the great medical school of Alexandria the
anatomy of the human frame, from which earlier ages in a spirit of piety
had shrunk, became usual: some of the great physicians, such as
Herophilus and Erasistratus, being noted for the completeness of their
study of anatomy. In the art of the third century B. C. we see the
inevitable result of such studies in a more precise and learned
rendering of the muscles and the skin. And artists no longer hesitated
to represent bodies wasted with toil and exposure to the weather, or
emaciated with fasting. There are many such figures in our museums,
showing a marvellously close study of the forms of peasants and old
women and children. I figure one of these, preserved in the museum of
the Conservatori of the Capitol at Rome, an aged shepherdess carrying a
lamb (Fig. 10). But it will be observed that close as this form is to
the facts of common life, there is yet in it nothing repulsive. It is in
a sense a type rather than an individual, a poem of nature rather
than a portrait. It is parallel to the pastorals of Theocritus. It
strongly contrasts with such loathsome figures as some modern sculptors
in their exaggerated love of fact, even if repulsive, have inflicted
upon us, such as the Vieille Héaulmière of Rodin (Fig. 11), a figure of
an aged and decayed prostitute. I know, of course, that some critics
would defend the last-mentioned work on ethical grounds, as showing how
hideous the decay of sensual beauty may become; but I venture to doubt
whether sculpture is an appropriate vehicle for a moral lesson of that
kind, because it can only represent and cannot explain.
[Illustration: Fig. 10
AGED SHEPHERDESS
Alexandrian]
[Illustration: Fig. 11
LA VIEILLE HÉAULMIÈRE
By Rodin]
V
So we come to the fifth lamp of Greek art, _Ideality_. It is in the
idealism of their rendering of the body of man that the Greeks have
surpassed all other peoples and left an imperishable record. The history
of Greek art is the history of a search for beauty, for poetry, for
whatever can charm and delight.
In the earliest sculptural works of Greece, as Lange the Dane was the
first to point out, we find not a direct imitation of the facts of the
visible world, but impressions taken from that world, stored in the
memory, and put together in accordance with subjective purpose rather
than objective law. It is indeed thus that clever children work, when in
the picture-writing of their sketch books they violate the laws of
perspective by combining separate aspects and memories of an object into
an inconsistent whole. They will not omit any peculiarity of a person
which happens to have struck them, even when in the profile which they
sketch it would be invisible. They think of a face as turned towards
them, of legs as walking past them. Every face must have two eyes, every
body two arms, whether they would be visible under the natural
conditions or not. In early Greek reliefs it is common to find the body
down to the waist full-face, the body below the waist in profile, with
no transition between the two. The well-known metopes from Selinus in
Sicily are good examples. It is a kind of procedure common to the early
art of all peoples. But the Greeks differ from other nations in this;
that when they improved away these early crudities they retained the
predominance of thought over things, of man over nature, in a word of
the ideal element in art. They regarded the body of man not, as the
materialists do, as man himself, but as a shell produced by the inner
working of the spirit, to be seen by the eyes of thought and
imagination, as well as by the bodily eyes. Hence they were always
aspiring from that which exists in appearance to that which lies behind
the mere phenomenon. They realized that nature, when she produces an
individual, never wholly succeeds, she falls short of the idea. And the
artist by a loving sympathy with the creative Spirit, may venture to
improve what she has made, to carry out her intentions more fully, to
incorporate more completely the idea. The Greek artist, appreciating and
venerating the body, tries to raise it to a higher and more perfect
level. A simple kind of idealism may be found in athletic art. In their
practice of athletics the Greeks did not, like the moderns, think only
of the number of feet an athlete could leap, or the space of time he
would take to run a distance. They thought also of his _form_, of the
rhythmic and harmonious character of his action. If an athlete showed
ugly form, they would hiss him, as they would an incompetent actor. Most
of their exercises were done to the accompaniment of the flute. In all
the statues of athletes which have come down to us, not one shows an
inharmonious development, powerful chest and weak legs, or muscular legs
and poor arms. It is more than probable that as the features of
Alexander the Great influenced the portraits of his officers and
followers, so the specially beautiful forms of some of the athletes who
were most admired, tended to create a type, something of which appears
in all the athlete figures of the time.
No doubt any one who is well acquainted with Greek types and with the
forms of modern athletes will observe that the Greek physical build is
not identical with that of our days. The equable climate and the
unstrained life of the young men produced something more rounded and
fleshy than we see in the north. Our athletes are less harmoniously
built, with more prominent sinews, more harsh and wiry in type. An
American trainer who is also a sculptor, Dr. Tait McKenzie, working as
some of the Greek sculptors worked, from the average measurements of a
number of young men, has produced types of strength and beauty, by no
means exactly like the statues of Greece, but in their way almost
equally beautiful. I instance the beautiful fifth-century figures of
Greek boxers, softened by idealism, but admirable for strength and
symmetry; and the Apoxyomenos, a man scraping himself with a strigil, as
was the custom in the baths (Fig. 12). This is a work of the third
century, after the artists had imported their knowledge of anatomy into
their works, which had effects both good and bad. And beside the
Apoxyomenos I place an athlete by Tait McKenzie, produced from the
careful comparison and measurements of hundreds of young athletes of
Harvard and Philadelphia (Fig. 13). This is a work of modern idealism
produced by similar processes to those to which we owe the excellence of
Greek athletic sculpture.
[Illustration: Fig. 12
ATHLETE WITH STRIGIL]
[Illustration: Fig. 13
ATHLETE, by Tait McKenzie]
The types of female beauty come into Greek sculpture later than the
types of male beauty. In Ionian and early Attic sculpture women appear
closely wrapped up in drapery. Pheidias and his contemporaries did not
venture to represent undraped women. They showed the beauties of the
female form not apart from, but by the help of, drapery. It was reserved
for the age of Praxiteles and Scopas to represent the Goddess of Love in
the guise of a nude woman; and Praxiteles made an apology for the
innovation by introducing the motive of bathing as an explanation and a
palliation. And even the Aphrodite of Praxiteles is remarkably free
from all attempt at sensuous attraction, or self-consciousness. Solid,
noble, and stately in form, she is a type or model rather than an
individual. Later sculptors, it is true, departed from this line of
simple harmoniousness, and tried to make the figure more attractive to
the average man. But it does not become weak, and it does not become
vulgar. The noble Aphrodites of the fourth century have fixed the type
of female beauty in school after school of artists down to our own time.
This ideal is perhaps for us best incorporated in the Aphrodite of Melos
in the Louvre, a work of the Hellenistic age, combining with the great
fourth-century tradition a perfection of detail and an informing life
which belong to a later time. But while most people of taste profess a
devotion to her, that devotion is usually untinged by knowledge or real
appreciation; for there could hardly be a greater contrast than that
between the bodily forms of the Goddess of Melos and those of the women
who are most admired in our days. I was almost disposed to figure side
by side the Goddess and the bodily forms which figure in our fashion
plates. The fashion plates do not represent women as they are, but as
they would like to be; they represent not the actual, but the modern
ideal. And what an ideal!
Some readers may smile at the notion of taking seriously these ephemeral
productions. But no one would take them lightly who was familiar with
the facts of psychology. We well know that when certain types of women
are set constantly before the rising generation as beautiful and to be
imitated they will necessarily exercise a great influence on the future
of the race. Young men will look out for such types to admire and to
court: young women will try to resemble them. The hideous mistake in
aesthetics will exercise a constant dragging power, pulling the young
away from the light and the air of heaven towards the caves of evil
spirits.
Few more charming representations of young womanhood in Greece exist
than the Artemis from Gabii already cited (Fig. 5). One must confess
that the divine element in it is but slight. But what could be fresher,
simpler, more exquisitely natural?
No doubt as in the case of men, so in the case of women, we must make
allowance for race and climate. A full and rotund development of
physique is far rarer in northern than in southern Europe. The English
race is taller, less solidly built, slighter than the ancient Greek.
Among us hard tendons usually take the place of solid muscles. And the
practise of athletic games by women undoubtedly tends to make them in
some respects conform more to the male type. In moderation physical
exercises may improve health and strength without tending to deprive the
vital organs of nourishment. But the overtrained woman is farther from
the healthy life of nature than the overtrained man. And whether the
overexertion be of the body or of the intelligence, it tends to destroy
true womanliness.
It is a pity that some sculptor does not do for the ideal of womanhood
what Dr. Tait McKenzie has done for the ideal of athletic manhood. Of
course the process would not be the same. No one wants an ideal type of
the female athlete, unless we wish to restore the race of Amazons, but
we do sorely need to have before our eyes types which embody the
physical ideal of efficient womanhood. At present while nude womanhood
in art conforms in a great measure to the Greek tradition, clothed
womanhood follows the types of the street, modified by the baseless
caprices of fashion. The two stand in unreconciled contrast. The Greeks
when painting women on a vase often drew their figures in outline before
they added clothes. But any one who tries to draw the outline of the
female figure beneath the clothes on a fashion-plate will stand aghast
at what he has produced.
Cicero repeats an instructive story in regard to the painter Zeuxis, who
lived about 400 B. C. He was commissioned to make for the people of
Croton a painting of Helen of Troy. He first inquired, what seems to
have been a matter of common knowledge, who were the most beautifully
made young men in that city, which was noted for its athletes. He next
asked that he should be allowed to study the forms of the sisters of
these men, judging that the sisters must partake of the beauty of the
brothers. Out of these he selected five girls for more continued study,
and by such aid produced his picture. We cannot suppose that he would be
so clumsy as to select at random beautiful details from each of the
five; in that way he would produce only an eclectic monstrosity. But,
working in the presence of beautiful examples, his sense of beauty would
rise in tone to the highest of which he was capable.
In this story several points are noteworthy. It shows that the type of
beauty in men was more advanced and more generally recognized than the
type of beauty in women. And it shows the Greek artistic mind ever on
the watch to catch some new note of beauty to add to the traditional
stock. Professor Brücke, in his excellent work on the beauties of the
human form, observes that in the ideal statues of Greece many features
may be discovered which in the actual world of men and women are very
rare, but the charm of which can scarcely be disputed. There went on
from school to school, and from period to period, a sort of accumulation
of beauty which was ever increasing. Every beautiful model which was
studied added something to what Brücke calls the stock of beauty at the
disposal of artists.