That part of the work dealing with the fine arts generally is the result of long consideration of the apparent contradictions involved in the numerous suggested standards of art. In a little book on The Position of Landscape in Art (published under a nom de plume a few years ago), I threw out, as a ballon d'essai, an idea of the proposition now elaborated as the Law of General Assent, and I have been encouraged to affirm this proposition more strongly by the fact that its validity was not questioned in any of the published criticism of the former work; nor do I find reason to vary it after years of additional deliberation. I have not before dealt with the other propositions now put forward.
The notes being voluminous I have relegated them to the end of the book, leaving the feet of the text pages for references only.
Where foreign works quoted have been translated into English, the English titles are recorded, and foreign quotations are given in English, save in one or two minor instances where the sense could not be precisely rendered in translation.
E. G.
New York, January, 1919.
LIST OF PLATES
| PAGE | |
| Frontispiece.—Detail from Fragonard's The Pursuit (Frick Collection, New York). | |
| This work, which is one of the celebrated Grasse series of panels, offers a very fine example of the use of an ideal head in a romantic subject. (See Page 139.) | |
| Plate 1.—The Earliest Great Sculptures | 6 |
| (a). Head from a statue of Chefren, a king of the 4th Egyptian Dynasty, about 3000 B.C. (Cairo Museum.) | |
| (b). Head from a fragmentary statuette of Babylonia, dating about 2600 B.C. (Louvre: from Spearing's "Childhood of Art.") | |
| The first head is generally regarded as the finest example of Egyptian art extant, and certainly there was nothing executed in Egypt to equal it during the thirty centuries following the 5th Dynasty. The Babylonian head is the best work of Chaldean art known to us, though there are some fine fragments remaining from the period of about a thousand years later. It will be observed that the tendency of the art in both examples is towards the aims achieved by the Greeks. (See Page 7.) | |
| Plate 2.—"Le Bon Dieu d'Amiens", in the North Porch, Amiens Cathedral | 18 |
| This figure by a French sculptor of the thirteenth century, was considered by Ruskin to be the finest ideal of Christ in existence. It is another example of the universality of ideals, for the head from the front view might well have been modelled from a Grecian work of the late fourth or early third century B.C. (See Page 319.) | |
| Plate 3.—After an Ancient Copy of the Cnidian Venus of Praxiteles. (Vatican) | 30 |
| It is commonly agreed that this is the finest model in existence after the great work of Praxiteles, which itself has long disappeared. The figure as it now stands at the Vatican, has the right arm restored, and the hand is made to hold up some metallic drapery with which the legs are covered, the beauty of the form being thus seriously weakened. (See Pages 111 et seq.) | |
| Plate 4.—Venus Anadyomene | 42 |
| (a). Ancient Greek sculpture from the design of Venus in the celebrated picture of Apelles. (Formerly Chessa Collection, now in New York.) | |
| The immense superiority of the sculpture over the painting (Plate 5), from the point of view of pure art, is visible at a glance. It is an indication of the far-reaching scope of the sculptor when executing ideals. (See Page 113.) | |
| Plate 5.—Venus Anadyomene, from the Painting by Titian. (Bridgewater Collection.) | 42 |
| Compare with the Sculpture on Plate 4. (See Page 115) | |
| Plate 6.—Venus Reposing, by Giorgione. (Dresden Gallery) | 54 |
| This is the finest reposing Venus in existence in painting. It was the model for the representation of the goddess in repose used by Titian, and many other artists who came after him. (See Page 116.) | |
| Plate 7.—Demeter | 66 |
| (a). Head from the Cnidos marble figure of the fourth century B.C., attributed to Scopas. (British Museum.) | |
| (b). Small head in bronze of the third century B.C. (Private Collection.) | |
| In each of these heads the artist has been successful in maintaining the ideal, while indicating a suggestion of the sorrowful resignation with which Grecian legend has enveloped the mind picture of Demeter. Nevertheless, even this slight departure from the established rule tends to lessen the art, though in a very small degree. (See Page 122.) | |
| Plate 8.—Raphael's Sistine Madonna (Dresden Gallery), with the Face of the Central Figure in Fragonard's The Pursuit Substituted for that of the Virgin | 80 |
| This and the two following plates show very clearly that in striving for an ideal, artists must necessarily arrive at the same general type. (See Pages 138 et seq.) | |
| Plate 9.—Raphael's Virgin of the Rose (Madrid), with the Face of the Figure Representing Profane Love in Titian's Picture Substituted for that of the Virgin | 92 |
| Plate 10.—Raphael's Holy Family (Madrid), with the Face of Luini's Salome Substituted for that of the Virgin |
102
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