EXPEESSION, CHARACTERISATION 145 



point, in justification of this view, to the best examples of 

 Hellenic sculpture and Italian painting. It is obvious that 

 both Greeks and Italians aimed at embodying psychological 

 qualities nicely discriminated, powerfully marked, and subtly 

 graduated, in their work. The Italians went farther, and 

 attempted to set forth episodes of religious and secular 

 history with dramatic vividness. But younger students of 

 the arts advance a counter theory, to the effect that it is not 

 the prime function of the fine arts to externalise a thought 

 or an emotion, so much as to create beautiful schemes of 

 form, colour, light and shade, in harmony with nature. 

 These critics support their opinion by pointing to the failure 

 of dramatic, historical, religious, sentimental art-work during 

 the last two centuries. In fact, we are here once more facing 

 the old antithesis of idealism and realism under another 

 aspect. As before, the problem must be met and dealt with 

 by a clear intelligence of terms and a perception of the 

 correlation between apparent opposites. 



I have already tried to establish the principle that every 

 product of figurative art, however simple, is subject to con- 

 ditions which differentiate a draughtsman from a machine. 

 It must reveal something of the nature of personal thought 

 and feeling. The only question is how far this revelation or 

 expression can be legitimately carried ; whether it should be 

 left to the spontaneous exhibition of the artist's temperament 

 through style, or whether the artist should aim at uttering 

 the thought of his brain, the emotion of his heart, through 

 forms selected with deliberate intention for the purpose. 



This question turns first upon the choice of subjects and 

 the artist's faculty to grapple with them ; secondly, upon the 

 consideration whether there are not limits to art which render 

 some subjects, although legitimate enough in poetry or fiction, 

 unfit for figurative presentation. 



There can be no doubt that when Pheidias planned the 

 Olympian Zeus, which typified the Supreme Deity for Hellas, 

 he intended to express as much definite specific thought as 

 he could put into a noble figure. There can be equally no 

 doubt that Leonardo's Christ in the Last Supper, Raphael's 



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