Yet,
though the most abstract and intellectualised of sensuous objects,
they are still sensuous and material, addressing themselves, in the
first instance, not to the purely reflective faculty, but to the eye;
and a complete criticism must have approached them from both sides--
from the side of the intelligence indeed, towards which they rank as
great thoughts come down into the stone; but from the sensuous side
also, towards which they rank as the most perfect results of that
pure skill of hand, of which the Venus of Melos, we may say, is the
highest example, and the little polished pitcher or lamp, also
perfect in its way, perhaps the lowest.
To pass by the purely visible side of these things, then, is not only
to miss a refining pleasure, but to mistake altogether the medium in
which the most intellectual of the creations of Greek art, the
Aeginetan or the Elgin marbles, for instance, were actually produced;
even these having, in their origin, depended for much of [191] their
charm on the mere material in which they were executed; and the whole
black and grey world of extant antique sculpture needing to be
translated back into ivory and gold, if we would feel the excitement
which the Greek seems to have felt in the presence of these objects.
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