INFLUENCE OF THE FINE ARTS ON EDUCATION.
It behoves us now to quit the circle of studies, which, taken
together, are commonly supposed to constitute the whole of education,
and consider the influence exercised by other elements on the minds of
the Hellenic youth. Even in these days we speak intelligibly and
correctly of that experience which young men gain on their first
entrance into life, from travel and fashionable society, as of a
particular stage in their education, it being during that period that
they learn to estimate the value of their school acquirements, how
advantageously to conceal or display them according to circumstances,
and to bend the neck, perchance, of their lofty theories and sublime
speculations to the yoke of the world. But in Greece this was more
palpably the case; for, though escaped from the formal rule of
preceptors and pædagogues, the youth had still to master several
departments of study, either by their own independent exertions or
under the guidance of judicious friends: I mean those infinitely
varied creations of art and literature, which, as they are in harmony
with them or otherwise, confirm or subvert the principles and
discipline of the schools.
Thoroughly to comprehend, therefore, the nature and extent of that
sway which the state and its institutions directly or indirectly
exerted over the minds of the citizens, it is necessary briefly to
inquire into the character of the plastic and mimetic arts which found
encouragement in the Grecian commonwealths, and afterwards to examine
for a moment the stores of thought and sentiment and passion, and
piety and virtue, which the literature and religion of Greece laid
open to the contemplation of those who were entering upon the career
of life. We shall begin with the arts, as they were the inculcators of
the principle of the beautiful, advance next to literature, the
teacher of wisdom and patriotism, concluding with religion, which
opened up to their view a prospect, though dim, of heaven, and
directed their footsteps thitherward.
It is certain that, to the generality, the vast superiority of the
Greeks in the arts, which like an universal language need no
translation, is more palpable and apparent than their superiority in
literature; though Demosthenes be in reality as much above any orator,
Thucydides above any historian, Plato above any philosopher, Homer
above any epic poet, Milton perhaps excepted, who has since written,
as Pheidias, or Polycletos, or Praxiteles rose above any sculptor of
the north. Nor can we account for this any more than we can explain
why Shakespeare was superior to Ford or Massinger. Nature infused more
genius into their souls. They loved or rather worshiped the beautiful.
It breathed within and around them: their minds were pregnant with it,
and, when they brought forth, beauty was their offspring. Thus
Aristophanes[927] insinuates, that even the gods borrowed much of
their majesty and splendour from the human mind, when he says, that
heaven-born peace derived her loveliness from some relationship to
Pheidias.
Footnote 927:
Pac. 614. seq.
Religion, in one sense, may be called the parent of the fine arts; but
it would perhaps be more philosophical to consider religion and the
arts as twin sisters, both sprung from that yearning after the ideal
which constituted the most marked feature in the Hellenic mind. We
must carry back our investigations very far, if we would discover them
radiant with loveliness in their cradle; but when they issued thence
it was to shed light over the earth, a light derived from the skies.
For man does not originate his ideas of the beautiful, which fall like
images from heaven on the speculum of his mind; he gives back but what
he receives. The conception of beauty is an inspiration, a thing which
does not come when called upon; or rather, shining on all, it is lost
on the dull and opaque fancy, and is reflected only from the luminous
and bright.
Man needs companionship always, and the creative and imaginative make
to themselves companions of their own ideas, and clothe them in
material forms to render the illusion more complete. There is an
impassioned intercourse between the soul and its offspring. We love
nothing like that which has sprung from ourselves, and in this we are
truly the image of God, who saw all things that he had made, and,
behold, they were very good. And he loved his creation; and from him
we inherit, as his children, the love we bear to our creations. Hence
the enthusiasm for art, hence the power and the inspiration of poetry.
They are not things of earth. They are the seeds of immortality
ripening prematurely here below; and therefore we should love them.
They are the warrant, the proof that we are of God; that we are born
to exercise an irresistible sway over the elements; that our thrones
are building elsewhere; that in the passion for whatever is spiritual
we exhibit instinctively indubitable tokens that spirits we are, and
in a spiritual world only can find our home.
It does not belong to this work to attempt a history of Grecian art,
which in a certain sense has been already written. My object, if I can
accomplish it, is to describe the spirit by which that art was created
and sustained, and this I should do triumphantly if love were
synonymous with power; for never, since the fabled artist hung
enamoured over the marble he had fashioned, did any man’s imagination
cleave more earnestly to the spirit that presided over Grecian art,
not the plastic merely but every form of it, from the epic in poetry
and sculpture down to the signet ring and the drinking song. But the
thing is an ample apology for the enthusiasm. There, if anywhere, we
discover the culminating point of human intellect and human
genius;—there
“The vision and the faculty divine”
meet us at every step. Even the fragments of her literature and her
art are gathered up and treasured in all civilised countries, as if
the fate of our race were mystically bound up in them. And so it is:
for when we cease to love the beautiful, of which they are the most
perfect realisation we know, our own race of glory and greatness will
have been run: we shall be close on the verge, nay, within the pale of
barbarism.
Socrates used to say, that whatever we know we can explain; but not so
always with what we feel. There is in the ideal of beauty, which
formed the vivifying principle of Greek art, a certain subtile and
fugitive delicacy, a certain nameless grace, a certain volatile and
fleeting essence, which defy definition, and, rejecting the aid of
language, persist in presenting themselves naked to the mind. And by
the mind only, and only, moreover, by the inspired mind, can they be
discerned.
It was in the attempt, however, to chain this spirit, and to imprison
it in durable forms, that all the poetry and arts of Greece consisted.
They beheld within them a world of loveliness, of living forms which
knocked at the golden door of fancy, and demanded their dismissal from
the spiritual to the material universe. All their studies were but how
to dress these celestial habitants in fitting habiliments to go abroad
in; and their lives were often spent in the throes of creatures big
with immortal beauty. It is a privilege to the world to converse with
minds of such a nature. It is ennobling to approach them. Their
energy, their vivifying power continues ever active, ever operating,
and if high art be ever to flourish and command, not admiration, but
love in England, it can only be by kindling here the lamp removed from
Greece, but essentially Greek, that is, essentially beautiful.
The proof that religion issued with art from the same womb in Greece,
and was not its parent, is supplied by every other country. There is
religion elsewhere, while nowhere is there art like that of the
Greeks. But religion had nevertheless much to do with the forms in
which the creative faculty there developed itself, as it invariably
has with whatever is great or beautiful among men. The persuasion
arose in them that the inhabitants of Olympos could be represented by
material forms, and as they found their own reverence for the divine
being represented, augment in proportion to the beauty or grandeur of
its image, the conclusion was natural that the deity himself would be
pleased by the same rule, so that their piety was their first and most
powerful incentive to excellence. They hoped to recommend themselves
to the gods, as they did to their countrymen, by the greatness of
their workmanship; and veneration from without, and piety from within,
united in urging them forward. And this, with the poet equally as with
the artist, inflamed the desire to excel.
There are, as has already been observed,[928] three periods in the
history of art: 1st. that, in which the necessary is sought; 2ndly,
that in which the study of the beautiful is pursued; and 3dly, the
period of superfluity and extravagance. But in some countries men
appear to pass from the first to the third, without traversing the
second. Thus, in Egypt, Persia, Etruria, in Germany, Holland, France,
England[929] the wild, the grotesque, the terrible have been aimed at,
seldom the beautiful. Even in Italy, where in modern times art has
taken firmest root and most luxuriantly flourished, the object sought
to be attained has lain on a lower level. Among the northern nations
the grotesque variously disguised or modified is the spirit of art;
among the Italians it is voluptuousness, among the Greeks the
beautiful. Hence no Greek statue of the flourishing period of art is
indecent.[930] Naked it may be, but like the nakedness of infancy, it
is chaste as a mother’s love. Our thoughts are instantly carried away
by it to the regions of poetry; the soft influence of the ideal
descends like dew upon our fancy; we are elevated above the region of
the passions to heights where all is sunny and calm and pure. The
beautiful is chaste as an icicle, yet warm as love. It breathes in
Raffaelle’s virgins which we regard as some “bright particular star,”
things to inspire a holy affection, a love not akin to earth. Yet this
beauty is not distanced from us by its severity: no! but by its
intense innocence, by its unsullied purity, by its inexpressible
concentration and mingling up of maternity and girlhood. It was this
beauty that Milton sought in his Comus to express, when he represents
chastity as its own guard. And this is preëminently the spirit
breathing through Grecian art. In the Artemis, in the Athena, nay,
even in Aphrodite or Leda, or an orgiastic Bacchante, the overruling
sense of beauty, after the first flutter of sensation, hurries the
imagination far beyond all considerations of sex or passion. The root
of all the pleasures we feel, seems to be hidden under the load of
three thousand years, not because the things are old, but because they
are the material representatives of a period when the foot of the
beautiful rested on the earth.
Footnote 928:
By Winkelmann, Hist. de l’Art, i. 2.
Footnote 929:
It is remarked by Winkelmann that Rubens painted the figures of
Flemings after many years’ residence in Italy.—i. 60. The Greek grew
up from infancy in the presence of the beauty he afterwards
represented: his mother, his sisters, his father, and all around
him. What he saw constituted the basis of what he painted or
sculptured. In most modern nations the school models of our youth
are Greek; but their home models, and which are to them models from
the cradle, are of a different style. Hence they are under two sets
of influences, the one neutralising the other, and producing that
coldness which the mock classical exhibits. This may, perhaps, be
one cause of the slow progress of art among us.
Footnote 930:
Plato, jocularly perhaps, bestows the same praise on Egyptian art,
and Muretus seriously adopts his notions: “Meritoque Ægyptios
commendat Plato, apud quos et pictorum et musicorum licentia legibus
coërcebatur, quod permagni interesse judicarent, ut adolescentes à
teneris annis honestis picturis, et honestis cantibus
assuefierent.”—In Aristot. Ethic. p. 249. But perhaps Plato had not
looked very narrowly into the sacred sculptures of Egypt which in
reality abound with images offensive to decency.
No doubt we come prepared to regard them with eyes coloured, and a
fancy haunted by the beauties of Grecian literature. Possibly, it is
under the spell of Homeric verse that our eyes grow humid with delight
at the aspect of Aphrodite, that we behold divinity in Zeus or Phœbos
Apollo; but this only proves that the fragments of Hellenic
civilisation throw a light upon each other, and are parts of one great
whole. Perhaps, too, no man ever enjoyed the sculpture of Greece as he
should, unless conversant with her poetry—the right hand of her art.
In this we find the first seeds and increments of those ideas, which
were afterwards transplanted and bore fruit in another field. We
discover, therefore, but half the subject when we see only the
sculpture. It is unknown to us whether the artist has fulfilled the
conditions into which he entered, by undertaking to clothe in marble,
thoughts already invested with the forms of language. Hence the little
sympathy between Hellenic art and the people generally of modern
nations. The figures they behold are dumb to them. To a Greek, on the
contrary, or to a man with a Greek’s soul, a thousand sweet
reminiscences, a thousand legends, a thousand dim but cherished
associations appear clustering round them. Every time they flash upon
him, he lives his youth over again. The briery nook, the dewy lanes,
the dim religious forests, the pebbly or wave-fretted shore, where the
poetry of Greece first opened its eyes upon him in boyhood, sweep in
procession over his fancy. He starts to see the hamadryad or the faun
or the mountain nymph, before him but one remove from life; to him art
speaks not merely in an intelligible, but in an impassioned tongue. He
comprehends all the mysteries she has to reveal, and loves her because
in a land as it were of foreigners they can converse with each other,
and speak of the past and the future.
It is scarcely philosophical to regard poetry, sculpture, and
painting, as the offspring of pleasure, though pleasure in some sense
be as necessary to man as food. Man possesses creative and imitative
faculties, and must, at certain stages of society, employ them. The
moment his merely animal wants are provided for, he begins to feel
that he has others which demand no less imperiously their
gratification. First, he desires to clothe with material forms the
things he worships, and hence the first-born of art are gods. At the
outset, indeed, (and this is a strong argument against their having
borrowed their arts from the East,)[931] the Greeks were content with
setting up rude stones, as symbols rather than representations of
their divinities; then followed the head upon a rude pillar; then, the
indications of the sex; next, the round thighs began to swell out of
the stone; to these succeeded legs and feet; and, lastly, arms and
hands completed the figure. Dædalos, a mythological personage, is
supposed to have been the first who carried the art to this point of
improvement. His figures were of wood, and already executed with
considerable skill, though they would have been despised in the days
of Socrates.[932]
Footnote 931:
See Winkel. t. i. p. 7.—Pollux gives a list of the names under which
the representations of the gods were classed.—i. 7.
Footnote 932:
Plat. de Repub. t. vi. p. 354. Cf. Hipp. Maj. t. v. p.
410.—Winkelmann slightly misinterprets the sense of Plato.—Hist. de
l’Art, t. i. p. 12.
For some ages, perhaps, a stiff, unanimated manner, not unlike the
Egyptian, prevailed; but the impulse, once given, went on increasing
in strength. One improvement imperceptibly followed another. Artists,
together with their experience, acquired professional learning, the
results of which soon became visible in their productions. Movement
and variety of position succeeded. But though knowledge of art was
enlarged and strict rules laid down, there still remained a hard,
square massiveness in the style, resembling what we find in modern
sculpture as improved by Michael Angelo. And this manner became the
type of the Æginetan school, which expressed the character of the
Doric mind, powerful but rude, harmonious but heavy, wanting in grace,
wanting in elegance, and aiming rather at effect than beauty.[933]
Footnote 933:
Cf. Winkelmann, t. i. p. 22.
Numerous causes, however, concurred in ripening the principle of art
in Greece,—the climate, the form of government, the happy taste of the
people, and, lastly, the high respect which was there paid to artists.
Nor is it at all paradoxical to affirm, that moral causes concurred
powerfully with physical, in begetting that radiant beauty of
countenance which distinguished the nation. The consciousness of
freedom and independence produces satisfaction in the mind; the
serenity thus originated communicates itself to the features; thence
arise harmony and dignity of aspect and mien; these are so many
elements of beauty, and such feelings long indulged would operate
powerfully on the countenance, and, seconded by the tranquillising
influences of external nature, end by creating symmetry and
proportion, which, joined with intellect, are beauty. Artists in such
a country, besides that they must themselves involuntarily be
impressed with a veneration for it, would soon discover the reverence
paid to beauty and the value set upon accurate representations of it.
Of the high estimation in which beauty was held innumerable proofs
exist in Greek literature. At Ægion in Achaia, the priest of Zeus was
chosen for the splendour of his personal charms, to determine which a
sort of contest was instituted. This office he held till his beard
began to appear, when the honour passed to the youth then judged to
excel[934] in the perfection of his form. So, also, at Tanagra, the
youth selected to bear the lamb round the walls in honour of Hermes
was supposed to be the first for beauty in the city.[935] Of the
involuntary power of beauty history has recorded various instances.
Phrynè, accused of impiety and on the point of being condemned,
obtained her acquittal through the hardihood of her advocate, who
bared her bosom before the judges. Another example is said to have
been afforded by Corinna, sole poetess of Tanagra, who, contending
with Pindar for the prize of verse, obtained the victory more by her
beauty, (she being the loveliest woman of her time,) and the sweetness
of the Æolic dialect in which she wrote, than by the greatness of her
genius.[936]
Footnote 934:
Paus. vii. 24. 4.
Footnote 935:
Id. ix. 22. 1.
Footnote 936:
Id. ix. 22. 3.
In another instance heroic honours were paid to a man after death for
the beauty of his person.[937] This happened at Egestum in Sicily,
where Philippos, a native of Crotona, obtained this distinction, which
Herodotus observes never fell to any other man’s lot before.[938]
Footnote 937:
Euripides, speaking of course as a poet, pronounces beauty to be
worthy of supreme power. But many ancient nations were seriously of
this mind, and chose the finest person among them to be their king:
which was the practice of those Ethiopians called the
Immortals.—Athen. xiii. 20. If by Ethiopians be meant the people now
known under the name of Nubians, I am sure they had very good reason
to encourage beauty, than which there is, at this day, nothing more
rare in their country.
Footnote 938:
V. 47.
It was to its artists that Greece delegated, at least in some
instances, the privilege of deciding on the rival pretensions of the
fair and beautiful. They were permitted to select from the loveliest
women of the land models for their female divinities, and at other
times made their mistresses the representatives of goddesses. Pains
were taken, by filling their apartments with beautiful statues, to
impress upon the imagination of pregnant women the perfect forms of
gods and heroes, as of Nireus, Narcissos, Hyacinthos, Castor and
Polydeukes, Bacchos and Apollo.[939] This was at Sparta. In other
parts of the Peloponnesos a species of Olympic contest for the prize
of beauty took place, instituted, it is said, by Cypselos, an ancient
king of Arcadia. Having founded a city in the plain on the banks of
the Alpheios, in which he fixed a colony of Parrhasians, he dedicated
a temple and altar, and instituted a festival in honour of Eleusinian
Demeter, during which the women of the neighbourhood disputed with
each other the prize, and received from some circumstance connected
with the contest the name of Chrysophoræ. The first woman who won was
Herodice, wife of the founder Cypselos. This institution flourished
upwards of fourteen hundred years, having been established in the time
of the Heracleidæ, and still existing in the age of Athenæus.[940]
Footnote 939:
Opian. Cyneg. i. 357. sqq.
Footnote 940:
Deipnosoph. xiii. 90. Eustath. ad Il. τ. 282. relates briefly the
same facts, concluding with the very words made use of by Athenæus.
Palmerius, who, in his remarks on Diogenes Laertius quotes them,
immediately adds: “quæ non dubito Eustathiun ab aliquo auctore
antiquo accepisse.”—Exercit. in Auct. Græc. p. 448. In which
conjecture he was right; and that ancient author was Nicias in his
history of Arcadia.
A similar practice prevailed in the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos,
where likewise the ebullitions of vanity were concealed beneath the
veil of religion. The exhibition took place in the temple of Hera, to
whom, as the goddess of marriage, beauty should be dear. Priapos,
however, was in some places supposed to be the deity who awarded the
prize of loveliness in the Callisteia, on which account Niconoë, a
Bacchante perhaps, dedicated to him her fawn-skin and golden
ewer.[941] But the ladies were not singular in these displays. For
among the Eleians, who had as favourable an opinion of themselves as
Oliver Goldsmith, a similar show took place, and the pretensions of
the male candidates were as carefully sifted as if they had been to
take academical honours on their figures. And honours in fact they did
take. They were presented with a complete suit of armour, which the
winner consecrated with extraordinary pomp and rejoicing in the temple
of Athena, whither he was led garlanded with fillets by his triumphant
friends. According to Myrsilos, he was likewise decorated with a
myrtle crown.[942]
Footnote 941:
Schol. ad Il. ι. 129. Cf. Meurs. Gr. Fer. p. 177. Hedyl. in Anth.
Gr. vi. 292. Athen. xiii. 90.
Footnote 942:
Athen. xiii. 90.
In some places, not named by historians, a contest was instituted
which, though unconnected with the arts, we will intreat the reader’s
permission to introduce here, for its extraordinary nature. This was a
contest in prudence and good housewifery, in which certain barbarian
nations followed the example. And, to show that character and mental
qualifications were properly esteemed by the Greeks, it is added by
Theophrastos[943] that it is these that render beauty beautiful, and
that without them it is apt to degenerate into wantonness. Winkelmann,
who has noticed several of these facts, is betrayed into some errors.
He speaks of an Apollo of Philesia[944] at whose festival a prize was
bestowed on the youth who excelled in kissing. The contest took place
under the inspection of a judge, he supposes, at Megara. Meursius,
though under the name of Diocleia he notices the Megarean festival,
overlooks the writer who gives the fullest account of it;—I mean the
scholiast on Theocritus, who observes that Diocles was an Athenian
exile who took refuge at Megara. In a battle in which he was engaged,
he fought side by side with a friend, whose life he saved at the
expense of his own. He was interred by the Megareans, who instituted
an annual festival in his honour, where the youth who excelled his
companions was crowned and led in triumph to the arms of his
mother.[945]
Footnote 943:
Ap. Athen. xiii. 90.
Footnote 944:
Lutat. ad Stat. Theb. viii. 178. Cf. Barth. iii. 828. Hist. de
l’Art, i. 319. Carlo Fea with a simplicity rare in an Italian,
remarks upon this: “Il est question ici de baise-mains!” The Apollo
intended is Apollo Philesias, whose statue was sculptured in
Æginetic marble by Canachos.—Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 19. 14.
Footnote 945:
Sch. in Theocrit. xii. 28.
The exercises, discipline, and moral notions of the Greeks had
doubtless much effect on their form; for in the decline of their
states, when despotism had succeeded to freedom, and vice to virtue,
beauty became exceedingly rare. Cotta, in the De Naturâ Deorum,
observes that he found few handsome youths at Athens, where in the age
of Demosthenes the most beautiful in Greece flourished;[946] and Dion
Chrysostom observes that in his time there were scarcely any that
could be so considered.[947]
Footnote 946:
Æschin. cont. Tim. § 31.
Footnote 947:
Orat. 21. t. 1. p. 500. sqq. Reiske.
If we come now to the other causes which account for the progress of
the arts in Greece, we shall find the principal of these to have been
the high consideration and esteem[948] in which artists were held.
Riches, no doubt, obtained credit there as elsewhere, but not to the
exclusion of other recommendations as in modern Europe, or at least in
England. Winkelmann scarcely comprehends the irony of Socrates,
however, when he supposes him seriously to mean that artists alone
were wise; though, since the sage had himself been a sculptor, he had
some reason to think well of them. It is, nevertheless, perfectly true
that men of this profession might become legislators or generals, or
even behold a statue erected to them beside those of Miltiades and
Themistocles, or among the gods themselves.[949] The historian of art
observes with pride that Xenophilos and Straton were permitted at
Argos to place their own statues, even in a sitting posture, near
those of Asclepios and Hygeia.[950] Cheirisophos, who sculptured the
Apollo at Tegea, dedicated in the same fane a statue of himself in
marble, which was erected close to his great work.[951] The figure of
Alcamenes occupied a place among the bassi-rilievi on the temple of
Demeter at Eleusis. Parrhasios and Silanion shared the reverence paid
to their picture of Theseus; and Pheidias affixed his name to his
Olympian Zeus, the nearest approach perhaps which the arts have ever
made to perfection.[952]
Footnote 948:
At the same time the earnings of inferior sculptors were small.—Luc.
Somm. § 9.
Footnote 949:
Cf. Plut. Thes. § 4.
Footnote 950:
Pausan. ii. 23. 4.
Footnote 951:
Pausan. viii. 53. 8.
Footnote 952:
Id. v. 10. Wink. iv. 1. § 12. p. 332.
If the satisfaction of beholding a whole nation, I might say a whole
world, smitten with delight and wonder at his performance, would repay
an artist for years of toil and study, Pheidias had his reward. And
not to the narrow circle of his life was this admiration confined; for
six hundred years after his death pilgrims from all parts of the
civilised world flocked to Olympia[953] to behold his matchless
performance; for to die without having partaken of this enjoyment was
considered a misfortune. But neither praise, nor encouragement, nor
honour, nor gain will suffice to bring the arts to perfection. To
ensure this, the nation to which the arts address themselves must
comprehend their language. For, if the people be incapable of deciding
when an artist has succeeded and when he has failed, it is very
certain that he will seldom succeed at all. Men soon find the
uselessness of producing what no one around them can appreciate. Even
in the matter of virtue and vice, few will soar very high in countries
where a low standard of morals prevails generally; and, in the arts,
no one will devote himself to the creation of forms which he knows
will be dumb to the public eye.
Footnote 953:
Εἰς Ὀλυμπίαν μὲν ἀποδημεῖτε ἵν᾽ εἰδῆτε τὸ ἔργον τοῦ Φειδίου·
καὶ ἀτύχημα ἕκαστος ὕμων οἴεται, τὸ ἀνιστόρητον τούτον
ἀποθανεῖν.—Arrian. Com. in Epict. l. i. p. 27.
In Greece every condition required to ripen the genius of an artist
existed. He knew that his reputation and fortune would depend on the
caprice of no particular individual or class of individuals. He
perceived among his countrymen at large the knowledge, the taste, and
the enthusiasm which just decisions in art demand, and laboured
fearlessly for them, not doubting that he should obtain the reward his
genius merited. There were public exhibitions, as among us, both at
Corinth and at Delphi;[954] but, instead of converting them into a
sordid traffic, the whole world was invited to behold their
performances, and judges were appointed to decide upon the merits of
the exhibitors. Instances no doubt there were of artists showing their
performances for money: at least the memory of one example has come
down to us. Zeuxis of Heraclea, having finished his picture of Helen,
opened an exhibition and fixed a certain admission price, by which he
cleared a large sum of money; but to mark their disapprobation of such
conduct, his contemporaries bestowed on his picture the name of the
courtesan.[955]
Footnote 954:
Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxv. 35.
Footnote 955:
Ælian, Var. Hist. iv. 12. Cf. Meurs. ad Lycoph. Cassand. 131. p.
1189. and Val. Max. iii. 7.
In the public exhibitions they appear to have looked solely to merit,
and not to have allowed themselves to be dazzled by great names; for
when Panænos, brother of Pheidias, entered the lists, neither his own
reputation, nor that of the illustrious sculptor, could obtain for him
the preference over Timagoras, who was allowed to have excelled. A
like spirit prevailed among the judges of Olympia, whither artists
sometimes brought their pictures during the games to delight assembled
nations, and reap a harvest of joy and glory in a day. Thus when Ætion
appeared with his “Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,” before the
Hellanodicos Proxenides,[956] he not only obtained the credit due to
his genius, but that magistrate, more emphatically to express his
admiration, bestowed on him the hand of his daughter. And Lucian, who
had seen the picture in Italy, has left a description of it which
justifies the enthusiasm of Proxenides.
Footnote 956:
Lucian. Herod. § 4.
I have already in a former chapter accounted in some measure for the
diffusion of a correct taste among the great body of the people. It
formed with them an indispensable branch of study. The arts of design
were cultivated by the philosopher, the politician, in short, by every
one who claimed to be considered a gentleman.[957] Nay, gentlewomen
also enjoyed these advantages, and instances are recorded of their
arriving at professional excellence and celebrity; for example,
Timarete,[958] daughter of the younger Micon, an Athenian, and Helen
an Alexandrian Greek, who painted the “Battle of the Issos,”
afterwards consecrated in the temple of Peace.[959] It was in the
nature of things, that artists moving in such a moral atmosphere
should partake largely of the national grandeur of sentiment, and look
rather to the perpetuation of their name than to any sordid
considerations of gain, above which they were elevated by the form
which the national gratitude assumed. For we may be sure that what is
related of the great historian of Halicarnassos was, to a certain
extent, true of great artists. Men pointed at him, we are told, as he
moved through the public assemblies, exclaiming, “That is he! That is
the man who has celebrated our victories over the Barbarians!”
Footnote 957:
Diog. Laert. iii. 5.—Aristot. Pol. viii. 3.
Footnote 958:
Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxv. 35.
Footnote 959:
Phot. Bib. p. 149.
Winkelmann, who understood human nature no less than the arts,
enumerates similar facts among the causes why art flourished in
Greece;[960] and though sometimes mistaken, as in so large a work was
to be expected, his reasoning generally, and his illustrations,
deserve that every lover of art should be familiar with his writings.
Footnote 960:
Hist. de l’Art, l. iv. c. 1. § 13.
This distinguished historian, however, is not sufficiently guarded in
his expressions, when he contends that the productions of art were
consecrated solely to the deity or to public utility; for, though they
were principally directed to these ends, many individuals possessed
collections in their houses,[961] which were by no means the humble
dwellings he supposes. However the public constituted the great patron
of art, and uniting in itself natural aptitude, acquired knowledge,
and an inherent leaning towards grandeur, communicated to those who
laboured to gratify it corresponding taste and elevation. In many
cases the whole population of a city identified its own glory with
that of some celebrated picture or statue within its walls. Olympia,
though peopled by works of art of surpassing excellence, still looked
upon the Pheidian Zeus[962] as the apex of its glory; and even Athens,
where probably more objects of art were crowded together than in any
other city of the world, the colossal statue of Athena stood
preëminently the ornament of the Acropolis. In one respect we have
begun to imitate the Greeks, who often erected by general subscription
the statue of a divinity, or of some Athletæ victorious in the sacred
games. Some minor cities are solely remembered for the works of art
they contained: for example, that of Aliphera which owed its celebrity
entirely to its statue of Athena in bronze, the work of Hecatodoros
and Sostratos.[963]
Footnote 961:
Galen, Protrept. § 8. t. i. p. 19.
Footnote 962:
On the interior of this statue inhabited by rats and mice. See Luc.
Som. seu. Gall. § 24.
Footnote 963:
Polyb. iv. 340. d. Winkel. iv. 1. 15. The Eros of Thespiæ, also, and
the Aphrodite of Cnidos, were famous. Luc. Amor. § 11. seq.
Winkelmann supposes that both sculpture and painting arrived earlier
at a certain degree of perfection than architecture, and, assuming the
fact, proceeds philosophically to account for it. But his theory
itself, on this point, appears to be erroneous. In Egypt, at least,
where the mind would necessarily be guided by the same laws as in
Greece, it is certain that while sculpture and painting never escaped
from the swaddling bands of infancy, architecture advanced to a very
high degree of perfection. The force of necessity, which leads to the
creation of architecture, communicates a far more lasting impulse than
the instinct of imitation. Men must everywhere build to protect
themselves from the fury of the elements; and the first step thus
made, and leisure supervening, that sense of proportion and symmetry
and arrangement, which is almost an instinct, would soon lead to the
contemplation of the ideal and the creation of architecture as an art.
Sculpture sprang later into existence, and still later painting; but
like the children of one family,—of whom some are older, others
younger,—all the arts flourish nearly together, and nearly together
decay. Nevertheless we may subdivide this period into minuter cycles,
when we shall find that architecture and sculpture reached almost like
twins their acme together, while, like a younger sister, painting
attained its greatest beauty when the former two had fallen something
from their perfection. Thus, the Zeus of Pheidias and the Hera of
Polycletos, two of the most celebrated statues of antiquity, already
existed, while Hellenic painting exhibited no knowledge of
chiaro-scuro and was wholly destitute of harmony.
Apollodoros and after him Zeuxis, master and disciple,[964] who
flourished about the ninetieth Olympiad, were the first who rendered
themselves remarkable for a knowledge of light and shade.[965] But,
arrived at this pitch, the beauty of the art began to be felt, picture
galleries were commenced in various temples,[966] and, a new world of
forms and colours disclosing itself to the imagination, the versatile
Greeks transferred to it a large share of the admiration hitherto
monopolised by sculpture. Painting, in fact, speaks a more popular
language. It tells a story, while sculpture can but embody a thought
or fix an incident. Its accessories realise events more completely.
The Apollo, in sculpture, has bent his bow and discharged his
arrow—the remainder of the action the imagination must shape for
itself. Painting gives us the whole scene teeming with life,—the
writhing dragon, the rocks, the woods, the mountain, the sky, with all
the illusions spread before the eye by many-coloured light. Sculpture
furnishes the nucleus of glorious associations, but ’tis we that must
group them into sublime beauty. It asks more knowledge, more fancy,
more in short of every element of genius in its admirers than does
painting. Hence the latter will always number, and justly, more
partisans. In most persons a preference for sculpture would be mere
affectation. It cannot equally please the many.
Footnote 964:
Winkel. iv. 1. 16.
Footnote 965:
Quintil. xii. 10. Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxv. 36.
Footnote 966:
In the Stoa of Dionysos, at Rhodes, there was a picture gallery
filled with historical and mythic pieces.—Luc. Amor. § 8. Similar
exhibitions appear to have existed at Cnidos, in the portico of
Sostratos.—§ 11. Works of art, sacred to the gods, were likewise
treasured up at home.—§ 16. In some temples, we learn, even
pictures of immoral tendency, by Parrhasios and others, were
admitted.—Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 606. Aristotle takes from this
circumstance occasion to sneer at the religion of paganism which
patronised such excesses.—Polit. vii. 15. p. 255. Gœttl.
However, in proportion as the public became more enlightened, and, to
justify its admiration and enthusiasm, imposed harder conditions on
artists, the latter enlarged the circle of their studies, which
gradually expanded until it embraced a certain portion of metaphysics,
the science of form and colours, with that art of grouping and
arrangement which constitutes a species of narrative in painting. A
complete exposition of their studies would be the best manual which
could be put into the hands of contemporary artists, and at the same
time would furnish the best explanation of their seemingly
inexplicable superiority. But such an exposition would be out of place
here. My object is simply to hint at what may be done, not to attempt
it myself; and to show, that if the Greek nation afforded
encouragement to its artists, it was because those artists met their
countrymen more than half way, and laboured to deserve encouragement.
There existed in Greece a philosophy of art, that is, a perfect theory
of what its object is, and of all the means by which that object may
be accomplished. Now the object of art is delight, a delight which
aggrandises and ennobles the mind, and such delight is only to be
obtained through the contemplation of the beautiful. This conviction
established, the studies of the Greek artist were directed to the
discovery of the elements of the beautiful, not such as it exists in
the original types of the intellectual world (which he abandoned to
the philosopher), but such as we find it in material developements of
the ideal, and chiefly in the forms of our own species.
Their researches, conducted in a philosophical spirit, by degrees
taught them that perfect beauty, like perfect happiness, consists in
absolute serenity and repose. Thus, the heavens are beautiful when in
the noon of a summer’s day their blue depths are unstained by a cloud,
and not a breath is heard among the trees. Thus, the ocean is
beautiful when the most perfect calm broods upon it, and has smoothed
down every ripple and converted it into a mirror for reflecting the
cerulean purity of the sky. And this is what the poets signify when
they represent Aphrodite, the very soul of beauty and of love,
springing up from the level and glittering surface of such a sea. In
the same state the human countenance is most beautiful, when every
feature in the most perfect equilibrium breathes of calm, joy, and
serenity, and by the force of sympathy converts all who approach it
into so many mirrors reflecting its absolute bliss. This is the secret
of that beauty which exists in Grecian sculpture.
It was a maxim of Greek philosophy, that the magnanimous man is
seldom, under any circumstances, disturbed. In action, therefore, he
would exhibit the same tranquil countenance as when at rest. Thus,
Socrates at Potidæa, at Delion, in the Prison of the Eleven about to
quaff the hemlock, would in looks be much the same. And this
self-command, observable in one great man, art attributed generally to
the gods and heroes, who, in whatever actions they might be engaged,
would still retain a self-possessed and serene aspect. Hence, even the
battle-pieces of the Greeks are beautiful. Men fight and die, but
under the guidance of duty. We behold none of those demoniacal
passions, nothing of that animal ferocity, or of that succumbing to
pain which convert so many modern pictures into slaughter-house
representations. We feel that the actors contemplated death only as
the distributor of imperishable glory,—that imagination had coloured
everything around them with its rainbow tints,—that by anticipation
they enjoyed the panegyric which would be pronounced over them in the
hearing of all they loved,—the monument which would be raised over
their ashes,—the deathless reward which would be bestowed on their
patriotism and valour in the historic page. To men, so feeling and so
thinking, where was the sting of death? They could compress eternity
into a moment, and grasp all future time, and live through it by the
irresistible force of imagination.
To be able to represent such forms and features, it was necessary to
study simultaneously the conceptions of the poets, and the progressive
developement of the human figure from infancy to age. From this study
resulted a body of experience, the fruit of innumerable comparisons,
out of which sprang that gradually corrected and improved and elevated
conception of the human figure which is denominated _the ideal_.
Instances, isolated from the great body of artistic study, have crept
into ordinary books, and been thereby invested with an air of
vulgarity. But this will not hinder the philosopher or the artist from
including them in his scheme of study and converting them into germs
of utility. In this part of their progress religion stepped in to the
aid of the artist. The several goddesses represented each a style of
women of whom they might be considered the original type. Aphrodite,
for example, represented the impassioned and tender,[967] naturally
parasites of man and too often frail; Hera, the chaste matron,
dignified, authoritative, energetic, but inclined to violence and
self-will; Artemis, reserved, modest, retiring, like a nun, was the
prototype of unspotted maidenhood, revered for its own purity; Athena,
perfect in intellect as in form, uniting the loveliness of Aphrodite,
the majesty of Hera, the delicacy and chastity of Artemis with the
wisdom of Zeus, constituted properly the ideal of womanhood, loftier
than Eve before the fall and such as it can exist only in the
imagination.
Footnote 967:
An ancient author has the following expression: οὐκοῦν τὸ θῆλυ, κᾄν
λίθινον ᾖ, φιλεῖται· τί δ᾽ εἴ τις ἔμψυχον εἶδε τοιοῦτον κάλλος;—Luc.
Amor. § 17.
Something very like which is found in Byron:
“There, too, the Goddess _loves in stone_, and fills
The air around with beauty.”
In search, however, of female forms to represent these ideal originals
artists travelled through the whole of Greece, gathering up as they
went those fragments of beauty which, when united, were to approach
perfection. They resembled Isis in search of the limbs of Osiris.
Sometimes, as at Crotona and Agrigentum, parents did not scruple to
expose their daughters naked to their eyes, that from them they might
fashion that loveliness which was to represent to their senses the
divine being they worshiped. But this excess of superstition was rare.
In general the Hetairæ, their mistresses and companions, served for
the models after which the soft divinities of Greece were moulded:
“If Queensberry to strip there’s no compelling,
’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.”
Thus Phryne, idealised by art, became Aphrodite, Anadyomene in the
hands of Apelles, or Aphrodite of Cnidos in those of Praxiteles.
Childhood obtained its representative in Eros the god of love. Thus,
from infancy upwards, even to old age, the human form in all its
phases became the object of study to the Greek artist, not to be
servilely copied, but to be idealised, to be clothed with poetry, to
be divested of everything mean, gross, unspiritual, and embalmed in
eternal beauty. And their success is proved by this, that, even with
their works before them, modern artists have never been able
satisfactorily to imitate their excellences. Of this Winkelmann[968]
mentions some examples which have not come under my own notice.
“Although the best modern artists,” he says, “have striven to imitate
exactly the celebrated Medusa of the Strozzi cabinet at Rome, which,
nevertheless, is not a countenance of the highest beauty, an
experienced antiquary will always be able to distinguish the original
from the copy.” The same thing is true, he says, with respect to the
Pallas of Aspasios, engraved by Natter and others. But this is
perfectly intelligible. The original artist, working after his own
ideas and comprehending thoroughly his own object, would impart to his
creations a flexibility, a grace, a freedom, not to be reached by one
whose type existed out of his own mind. For even in literature it is
thus—language, malleable, expansive, obedient to control in the hands
of the original writer, who breathes into it his own ideas and
requires it only to drape them, becomes a stiff unmanageable mass with
the imitator like a corpse put in motion by galvanism.
Footnote 968:
Hist. de l’Art, iv. 2. 23.
To be conversant with the arts of Greece, is to move among a race of
gods endued with eternal youth. In the goddesses the small neck, the
undeveloped bosom convey the idea of virgin innocence. The nipple
shrinking inward retreats from the eye. Over the visage a radiance
indescribable appears to play; the form, whether draped or undraped,
suggests the idea of divine unfleeting existence—of the poetry of life
and love—such as youth dreams of in its purest aspirations. For the
gods our feelings are in a slight degree different. Zeus, invested
with the majesty of Olympos, in the fulness of manhood, powerful,
beautiful, sublime, awakens in us a mingling of reverence and love, as
towards a father. Apollo towers like an elder brother above our heads.
Hades, Poseidon, Ares are powers whom we do not love. Mighty they
were, but strangers whom our sympathies do not cling to. But Dionysos,
with his vine garland and beautiful face of friendship, with Eros and
Heracles and the heroic twins and Hephæstos and Seilenos, and the
Fauns, with every haunter of grove, or spring, or mountain seem
familiar all and formed to inspire and repay affection. They are
spirits of joy every one of them. They have lived from boyhood in our
dreams, they have constituted one principal link in binding us to the
past, one principal argument in favour of Grecian genius: and who can
do otherwise than love them? Nay, in some measure, when we consider
their manifold escapes from time and barbarism, they appear to us as
Othello to Desdemona—we “love _them_ for the dangers they have
passed,”—and it asks no faith in miracles to persuade us that they
“love _us_ that we do pity them.”
Winkelmann, who on so many questions connected with art has put
forward opinions highly just and philosophical, appears to have fallen
short of his wonted acumen in the theory he had formed of the beauty
of the goddesses. His language in fact descends to puerility where he
says:—"Since on the subject of female beauty there are few
observations to be made, it may be concluded that the study of it is
less complicated and far easier for the artist. Nature itself appears
to experience less difficulty in the formation of women than of men,
_if it be true_ that there are born fewer boys than girls."[969] Since
the direct contrary is true, this imaginary difficulty of Nature (not
to hazard a more sacred word) may be dismissed with contempt; but the
remark by which it is ushered in requires to be confuted. Artists are
well aware, and Winkelmann himself admits, that the beau ideal of
heroic beauty (that for example of Achilles or of Theseus) is merely
the blending of feminine loveliness with masculine power, so as to
leave it undetermined, from the countenance, to which sex it belongs.
And still the beauty of the Grecian youth, where they are beautiful,
consists in a near approach to that of the female, so near indeed that
they might be easily mistaken for women. If, therefore, the beauty of
men when highest and most perfect, consists chiefly in what it borrows
from that of woman, the latter necessarily constitutes the apex of
human beauty; and the artist whom this conviction guides in his
creations, will be the first to rival the great masters of antiquity.
Another observation which it is strange to find in the Historian of
Art, is that artists draped their female figures because of the little
difficulty there is in imitating the naked form. But was it the
extreme facility of representing paternal grief that led Timanthes to
veil the face of his Agamemnon? In draping their goddesses and
heroines, artists were guided by other reasons, of which the principal
was their desire to conform to the ideas of the poets and to popular
belief.
Footnote 969:
Hist. de l’Art, iv. 2. 67.