“Is it not marvellous?” he cried. “Confess that you did not expect to discover so much detail. Just look at these numberless undulations of the hollow which unites the body to the thigh. Notice all the voluptuous curvings of the hip. And now, here, the adorable dimples along the loins.”
He spoke in a low voice, with the ardor of a devotee, bending above the marble as if he loved it.
“It is truly flesh!” he said.
And beaming, he added: “You would think it moulded by kisses and caresses!” Then, suddenly, laying his hand on the statue, “You almost expect, when you touch this body, to find it warm.”
A few moments later he said:
“Well, what do you think now of the opinion usually held on Greek art? They say—it is especially the academic school which has spread abroad this idea—that the ancients, in their cult of the ideal, despised the flesh as low and vulgar, and that they refused to reproduce in their works the thousand details of material reality.
“They pretend that the ancients wished to teach Nature by creating an abstract beauty of simplified form which should appeal only to the intellect and not consent to flatter the senses. And those who talk like this take examples which they imagine they find in antique art as their authority for correcting, for emasculating nature, reducing it to contours so dry, cold, and meagre that they have nothing in common with the truth.
“You have just proved how much they are mistaken.
A Drawing
By Michael Angelo
See page [98]