ARMY SURGEON AT POTSDAM 53 



most. A medical student may have obtained some essential 

 knowledge from the dismemberment of these man-like animals, 

 but the works of even the most renowned medical authors of 

 antiquity, e.g. Galen, contain anatomical observations which 

 are incorrect for man, and true of apes only. This substitute 

 for human anatomy could have been of no use to artists ; they 

 were restricted to careful observation of the surface of the 

 body, and at most could only learn the connexions of the bones, 

 muscles, and tendons from animals, and compare these as well 

 as might be through the skin by eye and touch in man, and 

 endeavour to guess at the form of them. 



1 And yet despite these limitations, how marvellous a perfec- 

 tion is exhibited by the art of antiquity not only in the most 

 accurate knowledge of the resting form, with a delicate sense of 

 beauty in all its proportions, but in the finest observation of the 

 play of living muscles. This knowledge of the human form 

 is so perfect in the ancient masters that they were able to 

 dominate their subject with admirable inspiration and freedom, 

 the freedom that modern art strives after, too often vainly, and 

 which is only attained by a few favourites of genius. 



' We are tempted to inquire the need of anatomy, when the 

 acme of sculpture was reached in ignorance of it. Why study 

 below the surface, when it is the surface only that art has to 

 render? To this we must reply that even in these works of 

 inimitable talent, exquisite beauty, and laborious industry, there 

 are some not inconsiderable errors which a good anatomist 

 would have been able to avoid, though possessing far less skill 

 than these sculptors. A muscle, e. g., is often yisible only as 

 a little swelling, but the slightest increase or displacement of 

 this swelling is sufficient in many cases to produce an anatom- 

 ical absurdity, into which the most skilful copyist would readily 

 fall if he were ignorant of the meaning of the protrusion, while 

 any one familiar with the lie of the muscles in the figure would 

 avoid it. It would be useless to multiply examples unless we 

 had the statues here to illustrate them ; I will only, to make 

 myself intelligible, adduce one instance, taken from a well-known 

 and not ignoble statue of a Greek orator, usually known as the 

 Germamcus, which was the work of the younger Cleomenes, 

 in the post-Alexandrian period of Greek Art. The curve of 

 the leg that stands free is so exaggerated, that the extensor 

 muscles of the lower thigh (m. rectus femoris and sartorius\ 

 which lie below it, and are felt in the living subject close 

 beneath the skin, or even protrude a little, are altogether 

 obliterated. In a " Shooting Apollo " in the Berlin Museum 

 the posterior part of the deltoid muscle is constructed as if its 

 insertion lay at right angles to the arch of the shoulder-blade, 

 whereas it is parallel with it. 



