His priestly dignity avails him nothing. The very badge of it, which
wins him universal consideration and respect, is saturated and
desecrated with the poisonous slaver.
But this subordinate idea the artist had to sacrifice to the general
effect. Had he retained even the fillet, his work would have lost in
expression from the partial concealment of the brow which is the seat of
expression. As in the case of the cry he sacrificed expression to
beauty, he here sacrificed conventionality to expression.
Conventionality, indeed, was held of small account among the ancients.
They felt that art, in the attainment of beauty, its true end, could
dispense with conventionalities altogether. Necessity invented clothes,
but what has art to do with necessity? There is a beauty of drapery, I
admit; but it is nothing as compared with the beauty of the human form.
Will he who can attain to the greater rest content with the lesser? I
fear that the most accomplished master in drapery, by his very
dexterity, proves his weakness.