§65-67 NUDE STATUES. 285 



conventional treatment ; and, as in modern art, they gave to 

 each figure its own individual expression and features, the 

 due effects of light and shade, and all the reality of a copy 

 from nature. 



Until they brought about this reform, the imperfect art of 

 all antiquity was satisfied with one type for every figure, 

 which was varied only by dress, or some external mark ; and 

 even in domestic scenes all was equally destitute of natural 

 expression. Even if a portrait was attempted, as by the 

 Egyptians, it was a profile of the mere features, without life. 

 The difference of age was indicated by grey hairs, and by the 

 general aspect of the figure ; but no passions were expressed 

 beyond some mechanical gesture, as throwing dust on the 

 head in token of grief, or the representation of tears flowing 

 from the conventional eye which was alike in every figure. 

 There was no expression in the features ; they were the same 

 in joy, grief, or anger; and each individual had the same 

 inanimate face, whether in the fury of battle, in suffering, in 

 joy, or in the stillness of death. This the Greeks were the 

 first to rectify. To them art is indebted for its first real de- 

 velopment ; and men who could work so great a revolution 

 in their previous habits are not likely to have been biassed 

 thereby in one particular instance. 



67. Another question has also been raised, respecting un- 

 draped statues of Venus ; and the assertion, " fuit nudas poena 

 videre Deas " has been brought forward to prove that no nude 

 figure of a goddess was tolerated by the Greeks. But without 

 setting any value on the remark of Cicero, " Graeca res est nihil 

 velare," it may be observed that though the goddesses Juno, 

 Minerva, and others, were not represented naked, the notion 

 that no statue of Venus was undraped in the best periods is 

 opposed by the authority of antiquity ; and if the Venus de 

 Medicis may be of too late a time to be cited, we know 

 from Pliny that a nude statue of that goddess was made 



