THE VENUS OF MILO
Louvre, Paris
From time to time during the Hellenistic age there was doubtless a return to the older ideals. The magnificent “[Venus of Milo],” now in the collection at the Louvre, is a proof of this. Since its excavation in the island of Melos during the nineteenth century, the right of this magnificent marble to rank among the sculptural masterpieces of the world has never been challenged. The motive of the design has always furnished the critics with occasion for controversy. It may be that an exact restoration would give a further specimen of the type exhibited in the “Venus of Capua,” which depicts Aphrodite with the shield of Ares, the goddess using the shield as a mirror. The date of the production of the “[Venus of Milo]” is as problematical as the subject. At first it is difficult to believe that this statue is rightly assigned to so late a date as 150 b.c. There have always been, and doubtless the critical conflict will continue, differences of opinion as to the time of its production. Some have traced it back to the Aphrodite of Scopas. There is, however, little reason to doubt the opinion generally held, that it is really a work of Hellenistic times. Assuming this to be the case, the statue certainly exhibits a point of view which is in striking contrast to that offered by the “[Venus of Medici].” The lofty sentiment of the “[Venus of Milo]” marks it as essentially un-Hellenistic. The sculptor throughout subordinates the physical beauties of the human form to the deeper sense of beauty which springs from the realization of the idea of the divinity of womanhood. For this reason, the statue stands in glorious solitude apart from the rest of the sculpture of its time.
There can be little doubt that, as a rule, the Hellenistic age could not stand the intensity of emotion aroused by such a work as the “[Venus of Milo].” The “golden age” of Greece had passed away when every Greek knew that it was good to be alive. During Hellenistic times Greek citizenship became a doubtful blessing. It chiefly served to remind its possessors of the lost glories of an earlier age. Can we be surprised that men looked to art to redress the balance, and called for the works which would wean them for a few moments from the dreary truths of existence?
No single formula will explain all the facts, but some connection between the degree of strenuousness in the political and social life of a state and the degree of strenuousness reached in its art, is certain. Consider the case of Homer—the direct outcome of the victorious struggle which the Greeks waged with the barbarians upon the shores of the Eastern Ægean. In the Athenian artists, Phidias, Polygnotus and Sophocles, we find the alliance of restful calm with the deepest thought and emotion which we should expect during a period of relative peace and prosperity, following an intense though victorious struggle. But how, it may be asked, did the long fight with Sparta during the Peloponnesian war affect Athenian art? The old emotional depth became unbearable. Comedy arose. In sculpture, Praxiteles replaced Phidias. Coming to our own artistic history, we find an English audience answering to the deep emotional appeal of Macbeth or Lear in the years which followed the glorious victory over the Armada. The period after the severe self-repression of the puritanical era naturally enough produced such a comedy as Congreve’s Way of the World.
But this antipathy to too strenuous an art is not the only factor which led to a great increase in the range of subjects open to the Greek sculptor, and presented a host of lighter themes to his chisel. The “Rape of the Lock” was the outcome of the boudoir experience upon which the fancy of Pope was nourished. The eighteenth century could not furnish the mental and emotional stimulus needful for the production of Othello. But it could and did suggest a perfectly charming poem to the “unwhipt, unblanketed, unkicked, unslain carcase” we call Alexander Pope. May this not have been the case in Hellenistic Greece? Previously “Greek life had been too full to put frills on its thoughts,” as De Quincey once said. But the Hellenistic age revelled in the very “frills” which the men of the fourth and fifth centuries had rejected. Allegory replaced natural symbolism. Instead of Aphrodite—Cupid. For Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, and Eros, the personification of the desire which makes powerless the limbs of men—Cupid, the smiling embodiment of the love which flits from fancy to fancy.
BOY STRANGLING A GOOSE
Louvre, Paris
