THE PROVINCES OF THE SEVERAL ARTS 87 



who are the several heroes of the .^Sginetan pediment, 

 and what was the subject of the Pheidian statues on the 

 Parthenon? Do the three graceful figures of a bas-relief 

 which exists at Naples and in the Villa Albani, represent 

 Orpheus, Hermes, and Eurydice, or Antiope and her two 

 sons ? Was the winged and sworded genius upon the Ephesus 

 column meant for a genius of Death or a genius of Love ? 



This dimness of significance indicates the limitation of 

 sculpture, and inclines some of those who feel its charm to 

 assert that the sculptor seeks to convey no intellectual mean- 

 ing, that he is satisfied with the creation of beautiful form. 

 There is an element of good sense in this revolt against the 

 faith which holds that art is nothing but a mode of spiritual 

 presentation. Truly the artist aims at producing beauty, is 

 satisfied if he conveys delight. But it is impossible to escape 

 from the certainty that, while he is creating forms of beauty, 

 he means something, feels something ; and that something, 

 that theme for which he finds the form, is part of the world's 

 spiritual heritage. Only the crudest works of figurative art, 

 capricci and arabesques, have no intellectual content; and 

 even these are good in so far as they convey the playfulness 

 of fancy. 



VI 



Painting employs colours upon surfaces walls, panels, 

 canvas. What has been said about sculpture will apply in a 

 great measure to this art. The human form, the world around 

 us, the works of man's hands, are represented in painting, not 

 for their own sake merely, but with the view of bringing 

 thought, feeling, action, home to the consciousness of the 

 spectator from the artist's consciousness on which they have 

 been impressed. Painting can tell a story better than sculp- 

 ture, can represent more complicated feelings, can suggest 

 thoughts of a subtler intricacy. Through colour, it can play, 

 like music, directly on powerful but vague emotion. It is 

 deficient in the fulness and roundness of concrete reality. A 

 statue stands before us, the soul incarnate in palpable form, 

 fixed and frozen for eternity. The picture is a reflection cast 



