A History of Sculpture (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But to return to the main thread of our argument. The Spartan system was not singular but typical. It is true that no other Greek state called upon its parents to expose their halt, maimed, and blind weaklings on the wild slopes of Mount Taygetus. So drastic a method was only necessary where military considerations were paramount. But every Greek city relied upon the physical fitness of its citizens, and any Greek commander might confidently have followed the example of the officer who stripped the rich robes and jewels from his Persian captives and exposed their unmanly limbs to his company. " Such plunder as this," he cried, "and such bodies as those !" The Hellenic belief in the prime importance of physical fitness and the worship of bodily beauty to which it gave rise explain why the school of " Athletic " sculptors, who first shook off the chains which had hampered the progress of the plastic arts, made such an immediate impression. These men appealed to more than the sense of physical beauty. They touched a chord in the Greek heart which was in a very true sense " religious." An Athenian of the time of Pericles must have inspired Mr. Arthur Balfour when in answer to the query " What do you mean by a beautiful soul ? " he replied, " Well, to tell you the truth, my dear lady, I mean a beautiful body." The mythological religion of Greece had retarded, as we have seen, the progress of the sculptor. In its early stages the art, of course, owed much to its position as a handmaiden of religion. The first artists found the priests, and still more those making dedicatory offerings at the shrines of the great gods, their chief patrons. When, however, the craftsmen proved the possibility of not only a truthful but even an ideal representation of nature, and were ready to disca...