Nevertheless the representation of a goddess in the guise of a woman shrinking from the revelation of her beauty to mankind argues the loss of a certain morality. True, the Greek sculptor had never aimed at the inculcation of moral ideas. But in an age before the religious sense of the Greek had become dulled, he would have confined himself to the creation of an atmosphere in which moral ideas could range without friction. The “[Aphrodite of Cnidus]” belongs to a time which made no such demand upon its artists. The sculptor no longer believed that he owed a duty to the state in this particular respect. Every work now stood or fell by virtue of its innate truth and beauty.
But Praxiteles was in no sense “a brilliant exponent of decadent art.” On the contrary, his sculptures bear witness to perhaps the most magnificent endowment of the Attic brain—the fineness with which it felt. To-day, we are too apt to regard clarity of thought as the chief attribute of genius. Really genius depends upon the power to call up delicate tones of feeling, of infinite subtlety of texture when compared with the ideas which we often regard as its sole endowment.
Praxiteles has been described as “He who actually blended with his marbles the emotions of the soul.” The phrase is a fitting one with which to close our review of his art. His abiding greatness depends less upon sheer beauty of line than upon the delicacy of the feelings which he made marble convey. The play of the passing emotion on the face of the “[Hermes],” the dreamy passion of the “[Eros],” and the illusive charm with which the “[Aphrodite of Cnidus]” shrinks from the revelation of her beauty—these are typical of what is most characteristic in the sculpture of Praxiteles and his fellow workers. He felt the emotional appeal of the feminine and the youthful male form rather than saw the beauties of line displayed in the new subjects offered for sculptural treatment. It is far from true that the Greek sculptor generally sought for beauty of form to the neglect of all the varied charm that lies in intellectual and emotional expression. This might be said of Phidias and Polyclitus. The insight of the sculptors of the following century into the depths of human emotion, on the contrary, was infinite. Scopas and Praxiteles made marble speak the more delicate emotions of the soul to the last word.
CHAPTER IV
LYSIPPUS AND THE FOURTH-CENTURY REALISTS
WITH A NOTE ON MODERN SCULPTURAL CRITICISM
It needs little knowledge of human nature to realise that the idealisation of sensuous passion, which was the keynote of the art of Praxiteles, could not express the whole nature of a composite civilisation, and particularly the whole nature of a civilisation great enough to mother an Alexander and a Demosthenes. The presence of a more strenuous ideal was inevitable. The body social in this respect closely resembles the individual. To the individual, merely sensual pleasure is rarely entirely absorbing. It is a matter of hours, weeks—months, it may be, then the impulse weakens, and
“Like the snow-falls in the river, A moment white—then melts for ever!”
It would, therefore, have been possible to diagnose the presence of the colder and more self-contained art hard by the warmly glowing art of Praxiteles.