comely man himself, not the beautiful marble picture.

The marble picture, on the other hand--a picture in however high and
complete relief--a picture for a definite point of view, arranged by
receiving light projected at a given angle on a surface cut deep or
shallow especially to receive it--was produced by the sculpture that
spontaneously grew out of the architectural stone-cutting of the Byzantine
and Lombard schools. The mouldings on a church, still more the stone
ornaments of its capitals, pulpit, and choir rails, seen, as they are,
each at various and peculiar heights above the eye, under light which,
however varying, can never get behind or above them if outdoor, below
or in flank if indoor--these mouldings, part of a great architectural
pattern of black and white, inevitably taught the masons all the subtle
play of light and surface, all the deceits of position and perspective.
And the mere manipulation of the marble taught them, as we have seen,
the exquisite finenesses of surface, texture, crease, accent, and line.
What the figure actually was--the real proportions and planes, the
actual form of the model--did not matter; no hand was to touch it, no
eye to measure; it was to be delightful only in the position which the
artist chose, and in no other had it a right to be seen.

II

These were the two arts, originating from a material and a habit of work
which were entirely different, and which produced artistic necessities
diametrically opposed. It might be curious to speculate upon what would
have resulted had their position in history been reversed; what statues
we should possess had the marble-carving art born of architectural
decoration originated in Greece, and the art of clay and bronze flourished
in Christian and mediaeval Italy. Be this as it may, the accident of the
surroundings--of the habits of life and thought which pressed on the
artist, and combined with the necessities of his material method--appears
to have intensified the peculiarities organic in each of the two
sculptures. I say _appears_, because we must bear in mind that the
combination was merely fortuitous, and guard against the habit of
thinking that because a type is familiar it is therefore alone
conceivable.

We all know all about the antique and the mediaeval _milieu_. It is
useless to recapitulate the influence, on the one hand, of antique
civilisation, with its southern outdoor existence, its high training
of the body, its dra