By Drapery is to be understood all that the art teaches of covering the
nudities, and folding the garments; and this is the third prerogative of
the ancients.
The Drapery of the vestals above, is grand and elegant. The smaller
foldings spring gradually from the larger ones, and in them are lost
again, with a noble freedom, and gentle harmony of the whole, without
hiding the correct Contour. How few of the moderns would stand the test
here!
Justice, however, shall not be refused to some great modern artists, who,
without impairing nature or truth, have left, in certain cases, the road
which the ancients generally pursued. The Greek Drapery, in order to help
the Contour, was, for the most part, taken from thin and wet garments,
which of course clasped the body, and discovered the shape. The robe of
the Greek ladies was extremely thin; thence its epithet of Peplon.
Nevertheless the reliefs, the pictures, and particularly the busts of the
ancients, are instances that they did not always keep to this undulating
Drapery[11].
In modern times the artists were forced to heap garments, and sometimes
heavy ones, on each other, which of course could not fall into the
flowing folds of the ancients. Hence the large-folded Drapery, by which
the painter and sculptor may display as much skill as by the ancient
manner. _Carlo Marat_ and _Francis Solimena_ may be called the chief
masters of it: but the garments of the new Venetian school, by passing
the bounds of nature and propriety, became stiff as brass.