As marking an advanced stage in a very high class of Ruler-art, however, it is magnificent, and any transformation of its form to greater realism would be a descent, rather than an ascent, in taste.
If you turn from it to the sculptures of the temple of Selinus, which, as far as one can say, must have been carved not more than about half a century earlier, you will see that these are indeed archaic. They are beneath realism in their coarseness and crudity. But it is in the sculptures of Selinus, and not in the Apollo of Tenea, or in the best vases of the sixth century, that you must seek the motive spirit of the Art which has made the Periclean age so glorious; This striving after realism, although unsuccessful in the metopes of Selinus, reveals a different aspiration, a totally different will, from that which created the Munich Apollo, and it was precisely this aspiration that was fully realized, with but a slight admixture of the other will, in Athens of the fifth century.
Some will say that Egyptian influence is apparent in the Apollo of Tenea, and they will add that the Greek colonists in Selinus, finding themselves in very close contact with their commercial rivals the Phœnicians, very naturally scorned all Eastern canons and ideas when erecting their temples.
Both of these suggestions are perfectly legitimate. The Apollo of Tenea either betrays Egyptian influence or, owing to its Ruler form, it takes one's mind back involuntarily to the Ruler-art of the Nile. The sculptures of Selinus may also be the outcome of the conscious renunciation of Eastern influence, or they may be the manifestation of a particular "Art-Will," as Worringer has it, which aimed at realism and was quite guiltless of any other ulterior motive. In both cases I favour the latter alternative, and I should like to believe that in addition to the influences I have already mentioned in respect of realism there were two Art-Wills active in ancient Greece—each striving for supremacy and power.
[C. The two Art-Wills of Ancient Greece.]
I cannot see how any one rising from a study of Hellenic Art can arrive at any other conclusion. A superior will aiming at a Ruler-art form is the one, an inferior will aiming at realism is the other. And it is a significant fact, that while the first will sent forth its last blooms in the sixth century—a period when, according to Freeman, Hellenic life readied its zenith,[35] the ultimate triumphs of the other and inferior will, in the fifth century, marks the first stage in a decline that was never to be arrested.[36]
