s
to pretend that the form is something of itself. This the Greeks never
meant, for then it would follow that all parts of it were alike
significant. Haydon was delighted to find reproduced in the Elgin
marbles certain obscure and seeming insignificant details of the anatomy
that later schools had overlooked, such as a fold of skin under the
armpit of the Neptune, etc. But any beginner at a life-school could have
pointed out in the same statue endless deficiencies in anatomical
detail. The fold was put in, not because it was there, but because to
the mind of the Greek artist it meant something. Sculptors of the
present day comfort themselves with the belief that their works are more
complete and more accurate in the anatomy than the antique. Very likely,
for the ancients did not dissect. But this accuracy, if it is founded on
no interest beyond accuracy, is after all an impertinence.

The Greek ideal is founded on the exclusion of accident. It is a
declaration that the casual shape is not the true form; it is only a
step farther to the perception that all shape is casual,--the reality
seen, not in it, but through it. The ideal is then no longer perfect
shape, but transparency to the sentiment; the image is not sought to be
placed before the beholder's eyes, but painted as it were in his mind.
Henceforth, suggestion only is aimed at, not representation; the
cooeperation of the spectator is relied upon as the indispensable
complement of the design. The Zeus of Phidias seemed to the Greeks,
Plotinus says, Zeus himself, as he would be, if he chose to appear to
human eyes. But a Crucifixion is of itself not at all what the artist
meant. It is not the agony of the flesh, but the triumph of the spirit,
that is intended to be portrayed. If the end be attained, the slighter
and more unpromising the means the better. Thus a new scale of values is
established; nothing is worthy or unworthy of itself; nothing is
excluded, but also in nothing is the interest identified with the thing,
but imparted.

Christian Art, after mere tradition had died out,--for instance, in the
Byzantine and early Italian pictures from the eighth to the middle of
the thirteenth century,--presents the strongest contrast to all that had
gone before. The morose and lifeless monotony or barbarous rudeness of
these figures seems like contempt not only of beauty, but of all natural
expression. They are meaningless of themselves, and quite indifferent to
the cha