EXAGGERATION AS AN AESTHETIC FACTOR. 825 



the beginning is made absurd by a continued course of exaggera- 

 tion. We never reach the most extravagant form in the begin- 

 ning, but it is the culmination of a series of modifications becoming 

 progressively more accentuated. Thus, the long-toed shoes were 

 the growth of more than a century. The point began about the 

 middle of the thirteenth century, reached its longest at the end of 

 the fourteenth century, and disappeared all at once in 1420, when 

 it gave way to the square-toed shoe. 



The influence of exaggeration in forming the ideal of beauty 

 is illustrated, too, in the art of different peoples. One of the 

 elements of a Siamese woman's beauty is, according to M. Le'on 

 Rosny, an arched shape of the eyebrows, causing them to resem- 

 ble crescents ; and if we examine photographs of these women we 

 shall find that the curvature of the eyebrows is indeed more 

 marked in them than in their neighbors, the Annamites and 

 Burmese. This feature is much exaggerated in their statues, and 

 is most strongly indicated in the Buddhas in the Musee Guimets. 

 The Hindus are even more slender and tall than Europeans, and 

 admire a full pelvic development in women. While we have 

 tightened our corsets to increase the appearance of slenderness 

 and heighten the contrast between the waist and the hips, our 

 admiration for classic art has prevented our carrying these exag- 

 gerations into statuary ; but the Hindus have not refrained, and 

 their works therefore have a very peculiar character. 



The Siamese and Hindus, however, are not highly esteemed as 

 artists. We will now, therefore, take some examples from a peo- 

 ple in whom the high excellence of this faculty is undisputed 

 the Japanese. While their designs are usually very various, 

 when they come to depict feminine beauty they exhibit a single 

 type, which we find identical on all the " Kakemono." It is a 

 strange kind of beauty, with the face greatly elongated, the nose 

 continuing the profile of the forehead, and the eyes excessively 

 oblique ; a beauty rare enough in Japan, where the plebeian 

 woman's face is short and round, but which may be found in the 

 patricians and in the courtesans of high rank. We can prove the 

 exaggeration here by figures. In the Japanese photographs the 

 line of the eyes forms an angle of from two to seven degrees with 

 the horizontal. This is said by some authors to be only in appear- 

 ance, but M. Regalia has proved its reality by measurements of the 

 cranial orbits. In the Japanese drawings the line makes an angle 

 of from thirty-five to forty- four degrees. A comparison of these 

 with old drawings of the eighteenth century will show that the 

 exaggeration has become much more marked in the present cen- 

 tury. 



The Grecian portrait seems the perfection of the human type 

 to us, and artists copy it, although it is actually rare. In it the 



