| | | | Probably many readers will be glad to hear of a German | work which tells the history of Greek Art neither in the | bald fashion of an introductory manual nor | with the elaborate pedantry of a German Dryasdust, but | with that agreeable combination of philosophic | insight, picturesque narration, and poetic | enthusiasm, to be found only in minds that have prepared | themselves for a special study by thorough general | culture. Such a work is Torso | by Adolph Stahr, a writer whose | Jahr in Italien ~~ two volumes of Italian travel, | exhibiting rare artistic feeling as well as knowledge ~~ | prepared its readers to welcome from him a book | more exclusively dedicated to art. It is a book not | written to settle vexed questions, or to present any | new results of independent research, but simply to give | such a view of Greek art as will enable ordinarily | cultivated persons to understand its organic | relation to human development, and to have | an intelligent and appreciatory enjoyment of | its remains. Critics of a more negative disposition, | and possibly of greater technical acquirement than | Professor Stahr, will assail him for his too admiring | attitude towards ancient art; and a certain tendency | towards the oracular in his manner of writing will | probably provoke them to detect many errors of | statement or of judgment. But the

"general reader"

~~ | by whom, we imagine, is usually meant a reader of no | particular information ~~ is likely to find | Torso an acceptable book, which | will conduct him through a pleasant region of | knowledge without causing him the least weariness in | the journey. German writers have too often the uneasy | pace of the camel ~~ they take us to many remote | quarters which we could hardly reach without their | aid, but they cause us much aching and grumbling in the | process. Stahr, however, has a style as agreeable as | the canter of a well-trained horse. If it ever divides our | attention with his subject, it also divides our admiration. | Was Greek art a purely indigenous growth, or only a | transplantation from the East? This question of | genealogy, of course, presents itself in the first | place to the historian, and with especial urgency to the | German historian, who, of all others, feels constrained | to | Winckelmann pronounced against the | supposition of an Oriental origin; and German critics, | more coerced by his authority than by arguments | from facts and analogy, went on maintaining the | same opinion | | long after it had been renounced by the best | foreign critics. When at length Ludwig Ross | returned from his travels in the Levantine countries and | brought evidence for the filiation of Oriental and | Greek art, gathered from a careful investigation of | art-remains, he was derided as a

"Tourist"

~~ a | superficial man, who allowed his opinions to be modified by | observation, instead of spinning them, as a | philosophic spider should, from a theory-secreting sac | provided for the purpose! However, since then, there | have been plenty of German critics who have not only | accepted the newer idea, but have been its most | laborious and valuable illustrators. Stahr follows in | their track, treating the question in a rapid and | popular way. The reference of Greek art to an Oriental | source brings it, he observes, under a | generalization which is more and more confirmed by the | discoveries of science and scholarship ~~ namely, that | | In the AEginetan sculptures we see Greek art beginning | to emancipate itself from Oriental and Egyptian | symbolism, and advancing towards naturalism. But still, | though the artist gave a high degree of finish to the limbs, | he was incompetent or indifferent to the rendering | of expression or character in the face. Athene is like the | Trojans, and the Trojans are like the Greeks. In this | respect the AEginetan sculptures present an | interesting point of contrast with the works of Giotto, | which hold a corresponding position in the development | of Italian painting. Giotto and his immediate | successors, in opposition to the early Greek artists, | threw all their power into the face, and seemed to | regard the body as an insignificant appendage to it. | This difference in the order of artistic progress | corresponds with the fundamental difference | between Greek and Christian conceptions. To | the Greek, a fine body was the primary condition of a | fine mind; but to the spiritualism of the fourteenth | century the body was but the transient and unworthy | dwelling of the immortal soul, which flourished in | proportion as the body was emaciated. Its canon of art | was ~~ | | It seems a great leap to pass from the AEginetan | sculptures to those of the Parthenon, in which we see | art at its highest point of development as an | essentially religious and political outgrowth. Yet we | have no knowledge to fill up the chasm, and to show us | how far the immense advance was due to the | individual genius of Phidias, how far it was prepared by | his predecessors. The age of Phidias, being the period | of supreme interest in the history of Greek art, is | naturally also the most delightful part of Professor | Stahr's book. From inference, from historic | details, and also from mythical anecdotes, which | always have their historic significance, he forms as | vivid a picture as can be obtained of Phidias in his | position as an artist; he reconstructs the Parthenon, | and enables us to imagine it as it stood in its glory; he | tells the sad story of its destruction, and describes | with very fine discrimination the fragments which remain | to us ~~ the only works we possess that come | immediately and indisputably from the genius | of Phidias. Among the sculptures which may with | probability be regarded as copies from his originals, is | one of the famous Colossi on the Monte Cavallo, and | we single it out from the rest for the sake of giving a | legend admirably characteristic of the mode in | which the mediaeval mind explained the relics of | classic antiquity. The reader probably remembers that | the Colossi just mentioned are two groups, each | representing a man controlling a restive horse, | one of them being inscribed with the name of Phidias, | the other with that of Praxiteles. The legend we | are going to quote is contained in an | Explanation of the Wonders of Rome, | written in monkish Latin of the twelfth century: | ~~ | | The works of Polykletos and Myron, the great | contemporaries of Phidias, with those of Praxiteles and | Scopas in the succeeding age, are subjects wide | enough to carry us nearly to the end of the first volume | ~~ leaving room, however, for a long chapter on the | Social Position of the Artist in Greece, and a discussion | of the colouring and nudity of Greek statues. Apropos | of Scopas, who was the most fertile originator of | grotesque ideal beings as attendants on the deities, | Stahr observes that, when the Greeks conceived | combinations of the human with the brute form, they | made the upper part human and the lower part bestial, | as in the centaurs, satyrs, mermaids, | etcetera, while we | see the reverse in the symbolism of the Egyptians. | Like many other ingenious distinctions, however, this | will not bear a very rigid examination. The sphinx, at | least, might have occurred to him as a sufficiently | remarkable exception. | Lysippus, whose history opens the second volume, | was the first great master of portrait sculpture. But in all | cases of origination or discovery, it is

"the hour and | the man,"

and not the man alone, that accomplishes the | transition from the old to the new. Lysippus was the | contemporary of Alexander, and with the Macedonian | conquests began a new political relation for art. The | glory of the individual was no longer checked by | democratic jealousy ~~ the days of royal patronage | began, and art glorified royalty in return. An | amusing indication of the change that had come over | the spirit of art is the story told by Plutarch of the | sculptor Stasikrates. This artist went to Alexander, | and proposed to him to fashion Mount Athos into an | imperishable statue of the conqueror of the world, | which should the sea with its foot and the clouds with its | head, holding in one hand a populous city, and with the | other pouring a perpetual mountain torrent into the | sea. Alexander was wise enough to bid him leave | Mount Athos alone. | The revival of Greek art under Roman patronage is | treated very fully by Professor Stahr; but we | have touched on points enough in his agreeable | volumes. They are easily accessible, and readers of | German will find it worth while to look into | Torso for themselves.