s from her face; another son
hastens away, looking bewildered around him, trying to see from which
side come the arrows, which come from all sides. All this is perfectly
correct in expression; we are bound to admit that these are the probable
movements and gestures of people situated like Niobe and her children.
We cannot find fault with anything, yet we feel a vague sense of
unreality. Unreality to ourselves? Nay, rather, unreality to the
artist: we perceive, little by little, that everyone of these evident
indications of a catastrophe is connected with a grand gesture, a noble
fold, a harmonious combination of masses: the mother raising the arm
covered with her cloak and clasping the child with the other, produces
thereby a magnificent contrast between the round, bunched fold of the
mantle, and the straight, narrow folds of her skirt, nay, between the
simple and ample drapery covering her own bosom, and the minute clinging
crinkles on the back of the little one; the wounded youth sinks
down in such a way as to display the grand muscles of his throat
and shoulders; the girl covering her naked dead brother, forms with
him, a powerfully-balanced mass of brightly-lit nude and broken,
shadow-furrowed drapery; and all the remaining children stoop and cower
and stretch forth their arms in such a way as to produce the inclination
of the two sides of the triangle crowning the temple. Moreover, the
pathetic, upward movement of the mother's head, by slightly drawing
down the jaw, and in upturning the eyes, contracting the brows into a
triangular furrow, accentuates the grandeur of the grand features, and
prevents the light from above falling upon a mere flat expanse of cheek
and forehead; the eldest daughter stooping tenderly over the dead boy
produces, in so doing, an incomparable curve of neck and shoulders; and
thus, with all the other figures, the gesture is invariably productive
of a definite beauty of form. And, on the other hand, there is not
present a single one of the gestures or attitudes which would certainly
produce definite ugliness of form, and would yet be as appropriate and
inevitable to the situation as these. There is not, in this group, any
movement, any effect, of which we could decidedly say that it would not
arise in a scene like this; but, in a scene like this, there would
certainly be a great many movements and effects which cannot be found in
the group. Hence, the dramatic expression of the work is essenti