162. Now there are some people who will tell you that Greek art is fine, because it is true; and because it carves men's faces as like men's as it can.
And there are other people who will tell you that Greek art is fine, because it is not true; and carves a lion's skin so as to look not at all like a lion's skin.
And you fancy that one or the other of these sets of people must be wrong, and are perhaps much puzzled to find out which you should believe.
But neither of them are wrong, and you will have eventually to believe, or rather to understand and know, in reconciliation, the truths taught by each; but for the present, the teachers of the first group are those you must follow.
It is they who tell you the deepest and usefullest truth, which involves all others in time. Greek art, and all other art, is fine when it makes a man's face as like a man's face as it can. Hold to that. All kinds of nonsense are talked to you, nowadays, ingeniously and irrelevantly about art. Therefore, for the most part of the day, shut your ears, and keep your eyes open: and understand primarily, what you may, I fancy, easily understand, that the greatest masters of all greatest schools—Phidias, Donatello, Titian, Velasquez, or Sir Joshua Reynolds—all tried to make human creatures as like human creatures as they could; and that anything less like humanity than their work, is not so good as theirs.
Get that well driven into your heads; and don't let it out again, at your peril.
163. Having got it well in, you may then further understand, safely, that three is a great deal of secondary work in pots, and pans, and floors, and carpets, and shawls, and architectural ornament, which ought essentially, to be unlike reality, and to depend for its charm on quite other qualities than imitative ones. But all such art is inferior and secondary—much of it more or less instinctive and animal, and a civilized human creature can only learn those principles rightly, by knowing those of great civilized art first—which is always the representation, to the utmost of its power, of whatever it has got to show—made to look as like the thing as possible. Go into the National Gallery, and look at the foot of Correggio's Venus there. Correggio made it as like a foot as he could, and you won't easily find anything liker. Now, you will find on any Greek vase something meant for a foot, or a hand, which is not at all like one. The Greek vase is a good thing in its way, but Correggio's picture is the best work.
164. So, again, go into the Turner room of the National Gallery, and look at Turner's drawing of "Ivy Bridge." You will find the water in it is like real water, and the ducks in it are like real ducks. Then go into the British Museum, and look for an Egyptian landscape, and you will find the water in that constituted of blue zigzags, not at all like water; and ducks in the middle of it made of blue lines, looking not in the least as if they could stand stuffing with sage and onions. They are very good in their way, but Turner's are better.
165. I will not pause to fence my general principle against what you perfectly well know of the due contradiction,—that a thing may be painted very like, yet painted ill. Rest content with knowing that it must be like, if it is painted well; and take this further general law: Imitation is like charity. When it is done for love it is lovely; when it is done for show, hateful.
166. Well, then, this Greek coin is fine, first because the face is like a face. Perhaps you think there is something particularly handsome in the face, which you can't see in the photograph, or can't at present appreciate. But there is nothing of the kind. It is a very regular, quiet, commonplace sort of face; and any average English gentleman's, of good descent, would be far handsomer.