44 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



THE HAEMONIC METHOD IN GREEK ART. 



BY MR. J. K. STUAKT. 



A great deal is said in a vague way of the ideal in Greek art, 

 as if that ideal were a lixed form or pattern, by which the artist 

 worked out his statues. Were this possible, the art would become 

 a manufacture and we should have statues turned out by the lot, 

 like so much furniture, of the correct pattern. Whereas, the work 

 of the Greek sculptors was the result of constant, earnest study 

 and observation, A lifetime was sometimes devoted to a single 

 work, and, among the thousands of statues produced, there was an 

 infinite variety in the model. The massive muscle of Hercules, 

 the superhuman grace and greatness of Apollo, the matronly Juno 

 and lovely Yenus are each a distinctive type. To combine these 

 types, to place the head of Hercules on the body of Apollo, for 

 instance, we feel at once would produce a monster. Each statue 

 must be in harmony with itself, and this leads us to what Walker, 

 in his 'Analysis of Beauty,' has called the ^^ harmonic method^'' of 

 the Greeks. 



There are certain general, proportional measures used by artists 

 in constructing their figures, such as eight heads to the whole 

 height, which was sometimes varied as low as seven and a half 

 heads. Six feet (lengths of the foot) to the height, as Vituvius 

 tells us, was the practice of ancient artists. A man standing with 

 arms extended ; the extreme extent of his arms is equal to his 

 height. So, also, the measure from the centre of one mamma to 

 the centre of the other, equal to the distance from each to the pit 

 above the breastbone. 



There is something needed, however, beyond these rules of gen- 

 eral application, and we now approach the chief difficulty, which evi- 

 dently found a stumbling block to even Leonardo da Vinci. That 

 harmonic method which, strange as it may appear, will be found 

 to afford rules that are at once perfectly precise and infinitely vari- 

 able. Says Walker. The harmonic method of the Greeks — that 



