Ideal Beauty can be hatched from no
geometrical eggs. But the line which I refer to, as the expression of
most subtile Grace, pretends to be merely a type of that large language
of forms with which the most refined intellects of antiquity uttered
their Love, and their joyful worship of Aphrodite. This line, of course,
is Greek.
[Illustration]
The three great distinctive eras of Art, in a purely
psychological sense, have been the Egyptian, the Grecian, and the
Romanesque,--including in the latter term both Roman Art itself and all
subsequent Art, whether derived directly or indirectly from Rome, as the
Byzantine, the Moresque, the Mediaeval, and the Renaissance. Selecting
the most characteristic works to which these great eras respectively
gave birth, it is not difficult, by comparison, to ascertain the
master-spirit, or type, to which each of these three families may be
reduced. If we place these types side by side, the result will be as in
the diagram, presenting to the eye, at one view, the concentration
of three civilizations, DESTINY, LOVE, and LIFE;--Destiny, finding
utterance in the stern and inflexible simplicity of the tombs and
obelisks of Egypt; Love, expressing itself in the statuesque and
thoughtful grace of Grecian temples, statues, and urns; Life, in the
sensuous and impulsive change, evident in all the developments of Art,
since Greece became Achaia, a province of the Roman Empire.
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