1883.] on the Influence of Athletic Games upon Greeh Art, 277 



til ere can be no doubt as to tlie important influence which the 

 Persian victories had upon the development of Greek art. Yet I have 

 always felt that while it to a great extent explained the loftiness 

 and greatness of character which marks the art of the age of 

 Pericles, it does not sufficiently explain the definite advance made in 

 art from more abstract conventionality down to nature. Moreover it 

 took some time before the great spirit bred by the heroic efforts of 

 the Persian wars had so far transfused the whole nature of the people 

 as to impress its spirit upon so special a manifestation of the human 

 mind as art. And so it is not until the great works of Pheidias 

 which group round the year 450 B.C. that this spirit is exhibited in 

 art ; while the actual advance from conventional archaism to freedom 

 and nature takes place in the years immediately preceding and 

 following the Persian wars. The really efficient cause of this 

 rapid development can therefore not be found in the influence of 

 the Persian wars, but lies in the growth of athletic games and the 

 systematic development of the paleestra, especially when these are 

 brought into an immediate relation to art. 



Why Greek art should not have advanced more rapidly towards 

 nature during the centuries preceding the " period of transition," is 

 explained by one simple fact, namely, that before this time the 

 statues were almost exclusively religious. The early wooden statues, 

 the $6ai'a, were statues of gods forming an important part of religious 

 worship. The tendency of religious worship is naturally conservative. 

 The very earliest images of the iconic period * were necessarily rude. 

 The more remote the age of such an image, the greater the mystery 

 attached to it, the greater its religious weight. The earliest statues 

 were considered by the Greeks to have fallen from heaven (^toTrerT^s). 

 The more a statue was like these holy early images, the greater its 

 sanctity, and thus there would be a natural tendency to repeat the 

 earlier types. Nay, even later, when freedom and nature had gained 

 .their sway over art, the gods, when grouped with heroes, are more 

 conventional in treatment than the less divine beings. The same 

 holds good in all periods of art. I need but remind you of the 

 solemnity, bordering on severity, of the religious pictures of Bellini 

 as compared with the perfect freedom of conception and execution 

 manifested in his small pictures with classical subjects in the 

 Academy at Venice. So long as the sculptor's art is entirely in the 

 service of religious worship, there is small chance of its forcing itself 

 from conventional imperfections. To be brought down to nature the 

 sculptor must be brought down from the gods, face to face with 

 man, and then he may reconstruct his gods out of the ideal combina- 

 tion of the most perfect forms which he has studied in man, but has 

 never found together in one man. 



In the first place the palaestra led the Greek artist down to man. 



* There was an aniconic period of Greek religion in which gods were wor- 

 shipped, not in actual images, but in objects and localities of nature, and in 

 symbolical structures suggesting human form. 



