MASCULINE BEAUTY
Wincklemann remarks that, among the ancient Greeks, “a proudly-arched chest was regarded as a universal attribute of beauty in male figures. The father of the poets describes Neptune with such a chest, and Agamemnon as resembling him; and such a one Anakreon desired to see in the image of the youth whom he loved.”
“A prominent, arched chest,” says Professor Kollmann, “is an infallible sign of a vigorous, healthy skeleton; whereas a narrow, flat, and, still more, a bent thorax is a physical index of bodily weakness and inherited decrepitude. An arched chest imparts to a man’s whole figure an aspect of physical perfection, not to say sublimity, as may be seen in the ancient statues of gods, in which the chest is intentionally made more prominent than it ever can be in a man, presumably in order to weaken the impression of the chest’s more animal neighbour, the abdomen. There is a deep meaning in our phraseology which localises courage, boldness, martial valour, in a man’s vigorous breast.”
I have italicised several words in this quotation, because they tersely show how writers on art are guided both by the positive and negative tests of Beauty formulated in another part of this volume.