46G 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



[Dec. ir>, 1882. 



The Ai-ollo Belviuiee. 



THK UiANA (iK TIIK LOI'VRF 



artistic mind at tlie time when art was at its highest 

 approved as most beautiful. That the j>roportions of 

 the human botly (naturally developed) in other races, 

 or even in the present descendants of the Greek 

 race, may be somewhat dilferent, and still be beautiful, 

 may be admitted. That Phidias and Praxiteles, if they 

 lived now, still possessing all that observation had taught 

 them in th"-ir own time, but with the power of comparing 

 therewith other forms than those they studied, might 

 slightly modify their views a? to the most perfect 

 types of manly and womanly licauty, may readily ho. 

 grantMl. Tlierc is a range of variation within which 

 perfect idial Uauty exisU. (I do not use the word 

 jxr/'cl ctinlesaly, but mean it in it« full sense. For, as 

 there h no law of Iw-auty which assigns a certain exact 

 namVi'T of inches in height to man or woman, so is 

 there none which assigns exact relative dimensions to 

 trunk and linil^) We may even go a little further, 

 and admit tliat a »cuIptor of the palmiest days of Greek 

 art might Ik; ready to acknowledge, iu,ii; that some 

 of his coriceptions of ideal beauty admitted of improve- 

 ment — that, for instance, an Apollo or a Venus of his (a 

 Phabus or an Aphrodite, I should say;, might have gained 

 iri delicacy and Vx-auty Lad her hands and feet, wrists and 



ankles, been slightly smaller in proportion. He would 



have ridiculed, doubtless, the idea that the smaller the 



hands or the feet, the more beautiful they are; and he 



would certainly have recogni.sed in the very smallnt^ss of 



the hands and feet of many beautiful women of our 



western races (especially in America) a defect instead 



of an excellence ; still, he might have admitted that 



' without appreciating these artistically imperfect forms (no 



more beautiful than a wizened arm is beautiful) the 



I goddess of Melos, and the fair statues of Aphrodite, 



' Artemis, Hebe, Phnbus, and so forth, might have had 



rather smaller hands and feet with gain rather than loss of 



] beauty. He might even have admitted, though 1 think it 



! doubtful, that waists somewhat smaller than those regarded 



i OS mo.st b<-autiful in his day, might be as shapely, at least 



for certain types of masculine or of feminine beauty. 



But these are questions of proportion, and even these 

 changes or varieties can only be considered liy an artist 

 as admissible within, certain limits. It a Greek or Roman 

 8c\ilptor had been asked to take two such forms — masculine 

 or feminine— as arc shown in the Apollo Belvidere and the 

 iJiana of the Louvre, and without altering other dimen- 

 sions, to modify the waist measurement, so as to corre- 

 spond to what many women and a few men try to attain 



