376 HUMAN ANATOMY 



task of the fine arts and demand its greatest powers. To give a picture 

 exact in the smallest details, I might say a photographic representa- 

 tion of the human figure, is not the aim of art. It should much more 

 give what is characteristic in the expression, in a portrait, as the posi- 

 tion of the limb and the attitude of the body should stand in relation 

 to the expression in painting, and, I may say, give the point to carica- 

 ture. In order to illustrate the last point, tell the same joke to two 

 different persons ; one breaks forth spontaneously into hearty laugh- 

 ter, while the other laughs only in order not to seem discourteous. 



I can give no better example of what photography may do for us, 

 than the exhibition of persons walking, which are often shown in our 

 illustrated journals. The photograph has exactly shown the phase 

 of the step, at the moment of the exposure, and yet this reproduc- 

 tion is ugly and even ridiculous. The step as a whole is composed 

 of a coordinated series of little motions, which we may analyze by 

 instantaneous photography. When we arrange these "phase pic- 

 tures " close to one another, by a special apparatus, the kinemato- 

 graph, the natural movement of walking again appears. The artist 

 must understand this. He must represent motions, in his figures, 

 at the most characteristic time. Then their effect is natural, and 

 they attract us. I see, in the fulfillment of this task, the anatomic 

 side of the fine arts; and here anatomy has been of the greatest 

 service to art, and with the development of methods will become 

 still more so. Thus the artist must study human, and in certain 

 cases animal, anatomy, as this gives a firm basis for the further 

 study of the living body, in rest and in motion. From the naked 

 figure we shall then pass to the clothed, and study the changes 

 which are made in the position of the standing and moving figure 

 by restricting garments. Thus are made the magnificent draped 

 figures, in statues and paintings, which so please and surprise us. 

 The observation and close imitation of nature, combined with ideal- 

 istic modification of the same, is what we wonder at in master- 

 pieces. Although the head of the Venus of Milo is treated some- 

 what conventionally, we cannot deny that the rest of the body lives, 

 and we expect, every moment, the marble breast to stir with life. 

 It is this, also, which attracts us to the masterpiece of Velasquez 

 in Prado, "Las Lancas," and which causes us to gaze with wonder 

 and sympathy at the motion and expression of the two principal 

 figures. This is also shown in the portraits of this painter, perhaps 

 the most noted of all artists, and also in the portraits of Holbein, 

 Diirer. Raphael, and Rembrandt. 



We find the same truth and comprehension of nature in the 

 small and quiet figures of Meissonier and Millet, and we find it again 

 in the marble statues of Hildebrand and Schaper, whose statue of 

 Goethe, in the Berlin Zoological Garden, appears to me to be the 



