The development of the artist, in the proper sense, out of the mere
craftsman, effected in the first division of this period, is now
complete; and, in close connexion with that busy graving of religious
images, which occupies its second [242] division, we come to
something like real personalities, to men with individual
characteristics--such men as Ageladas of Argos, Callon and Onatas of
Aegina, and Canachus of Sicyon. Mere fragment as our information
concerning these early masters is at the best, it is at least
unmistakeably information about men with personal differences of
temper and talent, of their motives, of what we call style. We have
come to a sort of art which is no longer broadly characteristic of a
general period, one whose products we might have looked at without
its occurring to us to ask concerning the artist, his antecedents,
and his school. We have to do now with types of art, fully impressed
with the subjectivity, the intimacies of the artist.
Among these freer and stronger personalities emerging thus about the
beginning of the fifth century before Christ--about the period of the
Persian war--the name to which most of this sort of personal quality
attaches, and which is therefore very interesting, is the name of
Canachus of Sicyon, who seems to have comprehended in himself all the
various attainments in art which had been gradually developed in the
schools of his native city--carver in wood, sculptor, brass-cutter,
and toreutes; by toreutice+ being meant the whole art of statuary in
metals, and in their combination with other materials.
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