1883.] on the Influence of AtJdetic Games upon Greek Art. 289 



stage, the conventional archaic art, we arrive through the period of 

 transition to the great art of the Panhellenic |jeriod. The spirit of 

 the religious art of this period is to be found not only in the character 

 of the work, the style of the artistic schools, but also in the subjects 

 represented. The great gods Zeus, Hera, Athene, Demeter, are the 

 subjects most commonly represented by the artists, and when they do 

 represent the other divinities they give them a severe, large, and 

 noble character. Such is the case with the severe conception of 

 Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, and Dionysos. After the great age, as 

 in politics so in art, the step is made from the ideal down to the 

 individual again, from god to man, from the type to the portrait of 

 living individuals. At the same time in religious art, the great gods 

 no longer form the chief subjects represented by the sculptor and 

 painter ; minor deities, nay, mythical personifications of lower nature, 

 such as fauns, satyrs, meenads, are now represented by preference. 

 In the gods again the most human side is emphasised ; in Aphrodite 

 and in Apollo, who is made younger and younger, the more sensuous 

 and less divine side of their beauty is made prominent, until in 

 Kephisodotos the younger, when the fourth century laps over into the 

 third, sensuousness merges into sensuality. The grave and noble 

 simplicity of the ancient religious art expires with the decline of 

 religious faith in the gods and the dissolution of national greatness, 

 and in the school of Pergamos and Rhodes the dramatic and sensa- 

 tional phase of sculpture prevails. In this period we pass from genre 

 sculpture to the comic, the grotesque, and the brutal. 



The palaestra follows the same course. In the first and earliest 

 stages of the palaestra the athletic games are not completely organised ; 

 they have not yet established a character of their own, but are a class 

 of religious institutions without the human life and interest which 

 they gain when once they are brought down from gods to man. From 

 having been religious, they must, in the great period of their develop- 

 ment, which coincides with the great period of political and intel- 

 lectual life, become a national institution. This step is made during 

 the period called in the history of Greek art the period of transition. 

 In the highest period of the palaestra this institution has a real national 

 aim, to provide and encourage perfect physical education for the youths 

 and men who are to form the strength of the nation. It is a noble aim, 

 and, throughout, the character of the great games and of the palasstra 

 is of the wide and lofty nature which stamps itself upon its artistic 

 productions, and thus affects the spirit of art. The statues in honour of 

 athletic victors are broad, large and monumental in character, in sub- 

 ject, and in execution. An individual victory is not commemorated b^ 

 the portrait-statue of the victor, but by a perfect type of that class oi 

 athlete and that game. It is that which lasts when the individual 

 passes away, just as in the representation of gods during this period 

 all that is ephemeral and individual in mortal life was avoided. So 

 too, in the execution of the works, the transient and sensational is 

 shunned. The attitudes are restful, however great the life and the 



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