the great man who won the praise
and admiration of the people by his exalted qualities, or his prowess in
arms, was considered as a demigod, or one in favor with the tenants of
Olympus, and his statue was accordingly erected, to stand beside that,
perhaps, of Mars, Apollo, or Mercury.
Thus we trace the history of sculpture in its steady progress from its use
as a chronicler of events to its employment in the production of the
objects of idolatry, and thence to the mythological period, when it
became the medium of æsthetic expression, attaining its highest
perfection in the palmy days of Greece.
In no people of which the records of the past give any account, can we
find such an active sense of the beautiful as that which permeated the
minds of the polished Greeks. The admiration of physical beauty
became an almost absorbing passion, and its attainment was sought
after in every process which human ingenuity could devise.
The Lacedemonian women were accustomed to place the statues of
beautiful gods or goddesses in their rooms, to the end that the children
they should give birth to, would, by nature's mysterious methods,
assimilate the artistic graces of these celestial models. Perfection of
form and manly strength were the pride of the wisest and most learned
men of the nation, denoting that physical excellence was considered the
necessary concomitant of moral or intellectual worth. Authentic annals
tell us that Plato and Pythagoras appeared as wrestlers at the public
games; and who shall say that these philosophical gymnasts did not
derive much of their mental vigor from this exciting exercise? In this
age it is easy to see that sculpture must have received every incentive to
full development. In the people about him the artist saw the most
excellent models for his chisel, while the national taste was educated to
the highest degree in the beauties of form and the harmonies of
proportion.
But the grand conceptions of Phidias, full of majesty and of grandeur as
they are--the matchless finish of the works of Apelles and Praxiteles,
ravishing the senses with their carnal beauty, still lacked one element,
without which art can never reveal itself in the full perfection of its
latent capabilities.
Mere physical beauty, which contains no spiritual element, no drawing
of the immortal soul, no suggestion of purer and nobler sentiments
struggling for expression in the cunning marble, can never satisfy the
requirements of the Christianized taste of modern times.
The Venus de Medici was undoubtedly the ideal type of womanly
perfection in the age which produced it, but now the sex would hardly
feel themselves flattered by so poor an interpretation. The form is all
that could be desired, but the head and features are positively insipid,
and a phrenologist would tell you by the development of the cranium
that female education was not a part of the Grecian policy. There is in
this statue a certain air of wantonness, a perceptible consciousness of
being valued and admired solely for physical beauty, which just as
plainly tells the estimate placed upon woman in those times as we can
read the fact in history.
Thus we perceive sculpture as a representative art has become a
chronicler of the world's advancement, so that those who accept the
theory of human progression would naturally look for purer and more
spiritual conceptions in the artist's soul, with a corresponding nobility
in the creations of his genius. The æsthetic principle in its higher
manifestations is not the product of pagan mind, because ideal beauty
and the rules governing its expression can only be conceived by him to
whom Faith has opened the glorious possibilities of our existence
beyond the grave. In no classic picture or statue is there anything akin
to that divine affinity that is apparent in the Madonnas of the Italian
masters of the sixteenth century, investing them with a charm that
lingers like an autumn sunset In the recollection of long-departed years.
Compare the loveliest of the Madonnas of Correggio and Raphael with
the Venus of Cos, and we perceive the inferiority of mere physical
perfection to that spiritual beauty that exalts the soul of the beholder,
and awakens the slumber of his immortal longings.
Faultless finish, harmonious outlines, and voluptuous proportions are
only the result of mechanical skill, that a good imitator or copyist can
for the most part achieve by the aid of his master's model. But the
sentiment, emotion, passion, the character, so to speak, of the statue, is
the creation of the artist, the offspring of his quickened brain.
It is to express the æsthetic idea struggling in the soul of genius, that
the marble takes its form, the canvas its color, sweet sounds combine in
melody, and language weaves itself into the wreath of
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