The highest ideal
being so low as not to soar beyond the greatest perfection of humanity,
was thus within the grasp of the artist to express. Given a manly
figure with the fullest development of strength; a female one showing
the greatest perfection of form; and a noble man whose features express
dignity and mental power;--the ideal of a Hercules, a Venus, and a
Jupiter is fully expressed, and the pagan mind satisfied. The spirit of
admirers was moved more by beauty of form than by its hidden
significance. In the great Venus, one recognises the woman before
feeling the goddess.
As with their sculpture, without doubt it was also with painting. Mr.
Symonds, in his _Renaissance of the Fine Arts_, speaks of the
Greek revival as entirely an age of sculpture; but the solitary glance
into the more perishable art of painting among the Greeks, to be seen
at Cortona, reveals the exquisite perfection to which this branch was
also brought. It is a painting in encaustic, and has been used as a
door for his oven by the contadino who dug it up--yet it remains a
marvel of genius.
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