[217] Again, in the best Greek sculpture, the archaic immobility
has been stirred, its forms are in motion; but it is a motion ever
kept in reserve, and very seldom committed to any definite
action. Endless as are the attitudes of Greek sculpture, exquisite
as is the invention of the Greeks in this direction, the actions or
situations it permits are simple and few. There is no Greek
Madonna; the goddesses are always childless. The actions
selected are those which would be without significance, except in
a divine person--binding on a sandal or preparing for the bath.
When a more complex and significant action is permitted, it is
most often represented as just finished, so that eager expectancy
is excluded, as in the image of Apollo just after the slaughter of
the Python, or of Venus with the apple of Paris already in her
hand. The Laocoon, with all that patient science through which it
has triumphed over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a
period in which sculpture has begun to aim at effects legitimate,
because delightful, only in painting.
The hair, so rich a source of expression in painting, because,
relatively to the eye or the lip, it is mere drapery, is withdrawn
from attention; its texture, as well as its colour, is lost, its
arrangement but faintly and severely indicated, with no broken or
enmeshed light. The eyes are wide and directionless, not fixing
anything with their gaze, nor riveting the brain to any special
[218] external object, the brows without hair.
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