Now the details which, during the period of perfection in art, were so skilfully employed, were these very means of expression or circumstances attending and indicating them—minuter forms which are universal, and without which nature is imperfectly represented—minuter forms of the highest order, because the means of expressing intellect, emotion, and passion, if required.
These higher details we find, for instance, in the turn of the inner end of the eyebrow, or constriction and elevation of the under eyelid, or a hundred other traits dependant on subjacent muscles. We find them in slight risings of mere cutaneous parts, when they lie over and are elevated by the attachment of muscles, as at the inner angles of the eyes, the corners of the mouth, and elsewhere. We find them in depressions or furrows, when they are drawn down by contiguous muscles. These are of higher character, because they belong to expression or its means; and there is a corresponding want of completeness, of truth, of nature, without them.
Between these intellectual means, these higher details, and those of a lower order, accidental details, the great artists of Greece distinguished. Accidental details have nothing to do with expression or the means of expression; they depend upon an inferior system, that merely of life, and constitute all the depositions, excrescences, and growths, which confuse the vision of the inexperienced, and embarrass that of the most discriminating, in the examination of higher beauty.
These lower details we find, for instance, in the puffings of adipose substance which project from the spaces between the muscles of the face, and from other accidents of the vital system, as wrinkles or folds from the absence of adipose substance, fulness or emptiness of the vessels, projecting veins, peculiar conditions of the skin, turbidity of the eyes, hairs of the head, beard, or skin, &c. These have always characterized inferior artists and inferior periods of art.
From these observations, it will be seen that such unqualified statements as the following by Azara, lead only to misconception: “A human face, for example, is composed of the forehead, brows, eyes, nose, cheeks, mouth, chin, and beard. These are the great parts; but each of these contains many other minor parts, which also contain an infinity of others still less. If the painter will content himself to express well the great parts which I have taken notice of, he will have a grand style; if he depicts also the second, his style will be that of mediocrity; and if he pretends to introduce the last, his style will be insignificant and ridiculous.”
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE GREEK IDEAL BEAUTY.
On this important doctrine of art, of which Winckelmann says: “The ideal is as much more noble than the mechanical as the mind is superior to the body,” I shall follow, so far as I can advantageously, the great writers on this subject, in order that the reader may have all the confidence in its recognised portions that authority can bestow, and that he may the better distinguish them from the new views which are here added.