APPENDIX. IOJ 



menced by the due disposition of lines ; in a word, it is 

 necessary to put perspective into the eye, and not into 

 the mind, of the student. With the exact proportions of 

 your perspective A + B, only truths are taught, and in 

 Art all is a lie ; what is long should appear short, what 

 is bent should appear straight, and vice versa." 



He here allowed a little too much latitude to the 

 beautiful, which is impossible to describe, but, neverthe- 

 less, it may be fundamentally stated that style borrows 

 its power for effect from the accent of the veracity of 

 form, attitude and physiognomy. 



How many painters are content, when aspiring to 

 an elevated style, with portraying verities and too con- 

 ventional nudities, especially in the representations of 

 animals. This impresses our imagination and regulates 

 our judgment in Art ; we subsequently reason upon what 

 has pre/iously aroused our emotions. It is necessary to 

 make this examination indulgently and without scrupu- 

 lous analysis of mathematical details, for it is certain that 

 one of the pleasures transmitted to our sensibility by the 

 eyes is derived from convention. Truth embellishes, 

 that is to say, elevates to the power which it is rarely 

 permissible to an artist to attain. This does not exclude 

 the axiom which declares truth to be the source of 

 beauty in Art, and the means of causing the smallest 

 estrangement. 



The Greeks astonish us by the beauty of their 

 works with reference to the human type ; their greatest 

 merit is that they are comprehensible, because they work 

 simply, usually proscribing violent actions. Their 

 statues, scrupulously modelled, have only the vitality, 

 which perfectly corresponds to the attitude sought before 

 reproduction, and in all the search the dominant idea 

 was that of elegance and power. 



M. de Clarac was quite correct in declaring that the 

 ancients only presented to us, in their works, a nature 

 selected and offered in its highest nobility of form ; they 

 made a type of beauty by slightly modifying the living 

 model, which rarely reaches perfection. 



To attain this object, the Greeks, born under a happy 

 sky, had before their eyes the most beautiful forms 

 nature could produce ; the freedom of their institutions, 



