Wincklemann remarks that, among the ancient Greeks, “a proudly-arched
chest was regarded as a universal attribute of beauty in male figures.
The father of the poets describes Neptune with such a chest, and
Agamemnon as resembling him; and such a one Anakreon desired to see in
the image of the youth whom he loved.”
“A prominent, _arched_ chest,” says Professor Kollmann, “is an
infallible sign of a vigorous, _healthy_ skeleton; whereas a narrow,
_flat_, and, still more, a bent thorax is a physical index of bodily
weakness and inherited _decrepitude_. An arched chest imparts to a man’s
whole figure an aspect of physical perfection, not to say sublimity, as
may be seen in the ancient statues of gods, in which the chest is
intentionally made more prominent than it ever can be in a man,
presumably in order to weaken the impression of the chest’s more
_animal_ neighbour, the abdomen. There is a deep meaning in our
phraseology which localises courage, boldness, martial valour, in a
man’s vigorous breast.”
I have italicised several words in this quotation, because they tersely
show how writers on art are guided both by the positive and negative
tests of Beauty formulated in another part of this volume.