Winkelmann supposes that both sculpture and painting arrived earlier at a certain degree of perfection than architecture, and, assuming the fact, proceeds philosophically to account for it. But his theory itself, on this point, appears to be erroneous. In Egypt, at least, where the mind would necessarily be guided by the same laws as in Greece, it is certain that while sculpture and painting never escaped from the swaddling bands of infancy, architecture advanced to a very high degree of perfection. The force of necessity, which leads to the creation of architecture, communicates a far more lasting impulse than the instinct of imitation. Men must everywhere build to protect themselves from the fury of the elements; and the first step thus made, and leisure supervening, that sense of proportion and symmetry and arrangement, which is almost an instinct, would soon lead to the contemplation of the ideal and the creation of architecture as an art. Sculpture sprang later into existence, and still later painting; but like the children of one family,—of whom some are older, others younger,—all the arts flourish nearly together, and nearly together decay. Nevertheless we may subdivide this period into minuter cycles, when we shall find that architecture and sculpture reached almost like twins their acme together, while, like a younger sister, painting attained its greatest beauty when the former two had fallen something from their perfection. Thus, the Zeus of Pheidias and the Hera of Polycletos, two of the most celebrated statues of antiquity, already existed, while Hellenic painting exhibited no knowledge of chiaro-scuro and was wholly destitute of harmony.
Apollodoros and after him Zeuxis, master and disciple,[[964]] who flourished about the ninetieth Olympiad, were the first who rendered themselves remarkable for a knowledge of light and shade.[[965]] But, arrived at this pitch, the beauty of the art began to be felt, picture galleries were commenced in various temples,[[966]] and, a new world of forms and colours disclosing itself to the imagination, the versatile Greeks transferred to it a large share of the admiration hitherto monopolised by sculpture. Painting, in fact, speaks a more popular language. It tells a story, while sculpture can but embody a thought or fix an incident. Its accessories realise events more completely. The Apollo, in sculpture, has bent his bow and discharged his arrow—the remainder of the action the imagination must shape for itself. Painting gives us the whole scene teeming with life,—the writhing dragon, the rocks, the woods, the mountain, the sky, with all the illusions spread before the eye by many-coloured light. Sculpture furnishes the nucleus of glorious associations, but ’tis we that must group them into sublime beauty. It asks more knowledge, more fancy, more in short of every element of genius in its admirers than does painting. Hence the latter will always number, and justly, more partisans. In most persons a preference for sculpture would be mere affectation. It cannot equally please the many.
However, in proportion as the public became more enlightened, and, to justify its admiration and enthusiasm, imposed harder conditions on artists, the latter enlarged the circle of their studies, which gradually expanded until it embraced a certain portion of metaphysics, the science of form and colours, with that art of grouping and arrangement which constitutes a species of narrative in painting. A complete exposition of their studies would be the best manual which could be put into the hands of contemporary artists, and at the same time would furnish the best explanation of their seemingly inexplicable superiority. But such an exposition would be out of place here. My object is simply to hint at what may be done, not to attempt it myself; and to show, that if the Greek nation afforded encouragement to its artists, it was because those artists met their countrymen more than half way, and laboured to deserve encouragement.
There existed in Greece a philosophy of art, that is, a perfect theory of what its object is, and of all the means by which that object may be accomplished. Now the object of art is delight, a delight which aggrandises and ennobles the mind, and such delight is only to be obtained through the contemplation of the beautiful. This conviction established, the studies of the Greek artist were directed to the discovery of the elements of the beautiful, not such as it exists in the original types of the intellectual world (which he abandoned to the philosopher), but such as we find it in material developements of the ideal, and chiefly in the forms of our own species.
Their researches, conducted in a philosophical spirit, by degrees taught them that perfect beauty, like perfect happiness, consists in absolute serenity and repose. Thus, the heavens are beautiful when in the noon of a summer’s day their blue depths are unstained by a cloud, and not a breath is heard among the trees. Thus, the ocean is beautiful when the most perfect calm broods upon it, and has smoothed down every ripple and converted it into a mirror for reflecting the cerulean purity of the sky. And this is what the poets signify when they represent Aphrodite, the very soul of beauty and of love, springing up from the level and glittering surface of such a sea. In the same state the human countenance is most beautiful, when every feature in the most perfect equilibrium breathes of calm, joy, and serenity, and by the force of sympathy converts all who approach it into so many mirrors reflecting its absolute bliss. This is the secret of that beauty which exists in Grecian sculpture.
It was a maxim of Greek philosophy, that the magnanimous man is seldom, under any circumstances, disturbed. In action, therefore, he would exhibit the same tranquil countenance as when at rest. Thus, Socrates at Potidæa, at Delion, in the Prison of the Eleven about to quaff the hemlock, would in looks be much the same. And this self-command, observable in one great man, art attributed generally to the gods and heroes, who, in whatever actions they might be engaged, would still retain a self-possessed and serene aspect. Hence, even the battle-pieces of the Greeks are beautiful. Men fight and die, but under the guidance of duty. We behold none of those demoniacal passions, nothing of that animal ferocity, or of that succumbing to pain which convert so many modern pictures into slaughter-house representations. We feel that the actors contemplated death only as the distributor of imperishable glory,—that imagination had coloured everything around them with its rainbow tints,—that by anticipation they enjoyed the panegyric which would be pronounced over them in the hearing of all they loved,—the monument which would be raised over their ashes,—the deathless reward which would be bestowed on their patriotism and valour in the historic page. To men, so feeling and so thinking, where was the sting of death? They could compress eternity into a moment, and grasp all future time, and live through it by the irresistible force of imagination.
To be able to represent such forms and features, it was necessary to study simultaneously the conceptions of the poets, and the progressive developement of the human figure from infancy to age. From this study resulted a body of experience, the fruit of innumerable comparisons, out of which sprang that gradually corrected and improved and elevated conception of the human figure which is denominated the ideal. Instances, isolated from the great body of artistic study, have crept into ordinary books, and been thereby invested with an air of vulgarity. But this will not hinder the philosopher or the artist from including them in his scheme of study and converting them into germs of utility. In this part of their progress religion stepped in to the aid of the artist. The several goddesses represented each a style of women of whom they might be considered the original type. Aphrodite, for example, represented the impassioned and tender,[[967]] naturally parasites of man and too often frail; Hera, the chaste matron, dignified, authoritative, energetic, but inclined to violence and self-will; Artemis, reserved, modest, retiring, like a nun, was the prototype of unspotted maidenhood, revered for its own purity; Athena, perfect in intellect as in form, uniting the loveliness of Aphrodite, the majesty of Hera, the delicacy and chastity of Artemis with the wisdom of Zeus, constituted properly the ideal of womanhood, loftier than Eve before the fall and such as it can exist only in the imagination.
In search, however, of female forms to represent these ideal originals artists travelled through the whole of Greece, gathering up as they went those fragments of beauty which, when united, were to approach perfection. They resembled Isis in search of the limbs of Osiris. Sometimes, as at Crotona and Agrigentum, parents did not scruple to expose their daughters naked to their eyes, that from them they might fashion that loveliness which was to represent to their senses the divine being they worshiped. But this excess of superstition was rare. In general the Hetairæ, their mistresses and companions, served for the models after which the soft divinities of Greece were moulded:
“If Queensberry to strip there’s no compelling,
’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.”