354 The Evolution of Sculpture. 



form, so after Praxiteles the form is too much for the con- 

 tent. This is always the sure sign of decay in art. 



In Phidias and Praxiteles art reaches its zenith. The 

 monstrous is completely banished from it, except as something 

 overcome. Beauty calm, dignified, self -poised reaches its 

 highest expression, and reaches it by a simple idealizing 

 of the natural. In the works of this time there is no effort 

 to arouse a numbed aesthetic sensibility by a false effective- 

 ness, or by appealing to tastes lower than the aesthetic. 

 But after Praxiteles all these tendencies show themselves 

 more and more. Now is the time when Colossi and other 

 monstrous works begin to appear, catching a vulgar atten- 

 tion by their mere size. Now appear the statues familiar to 

 us in all Italian museums, with limbs unnaturally long 

 and heads unnaturally small. Now appear those Herculeses 

 that are mere masses of bones and muscles, and those 

 Venuses that are mere flesh. The downward process begins 

 under the Macedonian Empire, but, checked in part by the 

 full taste of the Greeks, becomes accelerated under the 

 Komans, who appear to have had no taste for anything but 

 the colossal and the meretricious. Ere the Christian era 

 arrives, art is dead, its form being thenceforth only gal- 

 vanized to fabricate portraits of emperors and their minions, 

 or of fashionable ladies on exhibition. 



Such is a very brief and imperfect sketch of the history 

 of Greek sculpture, which may, for several reasons, be taken 

 to represent the history of sculpture generally. Let us 

 enumerate its steps once more. They may be divided into 

 two groups : (1) Steps of growth. (2) Steps of decay. The 

 former may be counted along the line of technical process, 

 or on that of ideas expressed. We have perhaps said enough 

 about the former. Looking at the latter, we find (1) an 

 effort to express an idea in mere static form, first by copy- 

 ing nature, and afterward by introducing monstrosities. 

 The latter is intended to express force. It is only by a very 

 slow and laborious process that art learns to express its ideas 

 without resorting to the monstrous. When this is com- 

 pleted, art (2) tries to express human action that is, rational 

 action, action ordered for a purpose. It is here that beauty 

 makes its appearance, for beauty is but the expression of 

 ratio or reason. Having accomplished this as it did in the 

 marbles of the Parthenon, it attemps a bolder task, trying 

 to express emotion at first emotion as a condition, and 

 afterward as a cause of action. So long as this is kept 



