| OCR Text |
Show I ! ' I 1(34 TIIE ART OF THE GREEKS. The sense of beauty was not y9t sufficiently developed among Greek artists; but it is remarkable that even in its rudiments reck art, unlike the Egyptian,173 had nothing to do with portraits; it was not tho king, but the hero and tho god who became the objects of the artist's creation. Not less striking is tho complete absence of tho landscape in Grecian a,rt. Tho human form and animated nature ar for the Or ek tho exclusive object of representation; accordingly, he personifies day and night, tho sun and the moon, time and the seasons, the earth and the sea, tho mountains and the rivers; ho gives th m the features of men; but the human figure he draws is always a typo of tho race, not tho effigy of an individual. Tho poculiat· archaic type, characterized by tho elongated form of the nose, and tho prominent and somewhat pointed chin, maintained itself up to the time of Phidias, pl'osorving the characteristic features of the early l!ollcnos. Wo find the same profile on tho coins of Dorian and of Ionian States, in Sicily, in Attica, and in Asia Minor. 'l'he following heads will sufficiently explain our statement. Fig. Fig. 48. Fig. 44. ATnENtAN MINERVA. (P11uzky Ooll.) ConiNTIUAN CorN. 43 iH tho type ~f t~o A~henian totradrachms. Fig. 44 is the enlarged ~o.ry of a Cormtluan s1lver coin. 1'he followinO' wood-cut is taken f.l'Om tho c~ins of Phocroa, in Ionia [45]; whilst Fig. 46 is copied fJ'Ol~l one of tho. statues on the pediment of the temple of .LEgina, dcrh ated to Jup1tor Panhellenius-the god of all tho Greeks-soon aft r tho battle of Salamis (Olymp. 75). • 113 ['l'ho ~t·t of onch reprosonts tho instinctive genius of the two people as diverse in 1ntolloot as m blood. ' ".lEgyptillOa numinum fan a plena plnngoribus, GI·ooco. plerumquo ohorcis "- BBys A t'~LKr~s (De Ocnio. Socrat.); which is ,ju8t the difference between Old and New En - laud lJUl'ttantstn and South European oatholioity.-0. R. 0.] g TilE ART OF THE GREEKS. 165 rig. 45. Fig. 46. PHOOMAN COIN. 1EatNA S·uTulll. The mythical victory of the united states of Hellas over the Trojans, supported hy all their Asiatic kin, represente 1 on the pediment of this temple, was intended to symbolize the r cent victory of the Grc ks over the Asiatic host of Xerxes. One generation more carries us at once to the glorious time of Pericles and Phitlias, to th highest development of ideal grandeur, aA seen on the sculptnr s of the Parthenon, never surpassed by human art,- the beauty, pride and triumph of yonthful Greece lives in them. We might have tak n one of the Parthenon fragments in the Briti~;h Museum, which, althoogh the nose is mutilated, would give an idea of the genius of Phidias. But artistic eminence was not confined to Attic11 alone; in Argos and icyon, in Sicily and in Gnccia Magna, in Ionia and Cyrene, sculptors and painters grew up F!Ccond to none but to Phidias. For more than one century, down to tlre time of Alexander of Macedon, all the intestine wars, revolutions and tempomry oppressions, could not arrest the majestic :flow of Gr ck art, chm·a ·terizcd by freedom and ideal beauty. The head of a child [48] from a Lycian r lief, 174 and of a warrior, [49] from a monument of !conium 175 (Koniah) in Lycaonia, show tl1at Hellenic art flourished von in those countries where the bulk of tho nation was not G r·c k, tltongh we ought not to forgot that all those monuments were evidently the work of Hellenic artists; for, as Cicero justly remarkA, all the lands of tho "barbarians" bad a fHngo of Greek countries where they reached the sea. 175 The sculptures of Lydia, m 'l'•:x11m, A3ie llfi11curt, HI, pl. ~26. m T1·:xnm, .Arme11i~, II, pl. 84. -1. na De Jl,p, TT, iv,- Coloniamm vero, qure e$11 deducta a Grafj1 • , •• quam unda non adltwt? Ita barbarorum agri$ qua$i udtex/a videt11r ora esse Grrecire. |
