And if one here or there, in looking at these things, bethinks
himself of the required substitution; if he endeavours mentally to
throw them back into that proper atmosphere, through which alone they
can exercise over us all the magic by which they charmed their
original spectators, the effort is not always a successful one,
within the grey walls of the Louvre or the British Museum.
And the circumstance that Greek sculpture is presented to us in such
falsifying isolation from the work of the weaver, the carpenter, and
the goldsmith, has encouraged a manner of regarding it too little
sensuous. Approaching it with full [189] information concerning what
may be called the inner life of the Greeks, their modes of thought
and sentiment amply recorded in the writings of the Greek poets and
philosophers, but with no lively impressions of that mere craftsman's
world of which so little has remained, students of antiquity have for
the most part interpreted the creations of Greek sculpture, rather as
elements in a sequence of abstract ideas, as embodiments, in a sort
of petrified language, of pure thoughts, and as interesting mainly in
connexion with the development of Greek intellect, than as elements
of a sequence in the material order, as results of a designed and
skilful dealing of accomplished fingers with precious forms of matter
for the delight of the eyes.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225