ANATOMY AND ART. 
415 
of the human figure, and yet the argument must apply 
equally to animals. Can we suppose that either of the 
three Rhodian sculptors ever dissected a python to enable 
him to carve the graceful folds of the two mighty serpents 
which are crushing the agonized Laocoon and his two hap¬ 
less sons? Did Barye obtain his knowledge of the muscu¬ 
lature of the tigers and elephants of his wonderful groups 
from the dissecting table? Look at Meissonier’s famous 
painting of the Portrait of the Sergeant. The dog who is 
looking up at the martial pose of the soldier with such a 
diverting expression of wonder is a mere mass of wiry hair, 
with hardly a suggestion of bone or muscle. External 
form only is visible. A study of the works of the great 
animal painters and sculptors will show the impossibility 
of dissection having been a prerequisite to their art. 
A famous statuary, whose horses are especially admirable, 
tells me that he never knew an artist much given to the 
study of anatomy who did not spoil his work by over¬ 
minute anatomical detail. On the other hand, he observed, 
a certain knowledge of the anatomy of the horse from draw¬ 
ings or models is desirable, or the artist may copy a wind- 
gall for a muscle! 
Ruskin, in his lecture on the relation of art to organized 
form, with some exaggeration pronounces anatomy to be 
not only useless to the artist, but to be a positive injury. 
He instances the works of Albert Durer, whose knowledge 
of anatomy was so minute and extensive that he was never 
able to produce a beautiful human face; the bones, of which 
he knew too much, were in his way. 
There is nothing to indicate that oriental nations, or 
the ancient Greeks, knew anything of muscular anatomy, 
except from external form. Their warlike pursuits made 
them well acquainted with the viscera through the effect of 
wounds. The names of organs and regions of the body 
mentioned by Homer, and which have mostly come down 
to us through Hippocratic writers, number over one hun¬ 
dred and forty according to Daremberg, and many of them 
