第99页 The Realm of Beauty: Greece and the Greek World, Fourth Century BC to First Century AD

This artist was proud of his immense power, as well he might be.
Through all these centuries, the artists we have been discussing were concerned with infusing more and more life into the ancient husks.
It is a strange fact, which we have not yet discussed, that Greek artists in the works we have seen have avoided giving the heads a particular expression. ... The heads of Greek statues or paintings of the fifth century, of course, are not expressionless in the sense of looking dull or blank, but their features never seem to express any strong emotion. It was the body and its movements which were used by these masters to express what Socrates had called 'the workings of the soul' ...
Hellenistic art loved such wild and vehement works; it wished to be impressive, and impressive it certainly is.
The fact is probably that by this time, the period of Hellenism, art had largely lost its old connection with magic and religion. Artists became interested in the problems of their craft for its own sake, and the problem of how to represent such a dramatic contest with all its movement, its expression and its tension, was just the type of task which would test an artist's skill.
It was in this time, and in this atmosphere, that rich people began to collect works of art, to have famous ones copied if they could not get hold of originals, and to pay fabulous prices for those which they could obtain. ... Many of the masters most famous among the ancients were painters rather than sculptors ...
Nearly every kind of thing that would go into a picture is to be found in these decorative wall-paintings: pretty still lifes, for instance, such as two lemons with a glass of water, and pictures of animals. Even landscape pantings existed there. This was perhaps the greatest innovation of the Hellenistic period. ... These paintings are not actual views of particular country houses or beauty-spots. They are rather collections of everything which makes up an idyllic scene. ... The fact is that even Hellenistic artists did not know what we call the laws of perspective.
The Greeks broke through the rigid taboos of early Oriental art, and went out on a voyage of discovery to add more and more features from observation to the traditional images of the world. But their works never look like mirrors in which any odd corner of nature is reflected. They always bear the stamp of the intellect which made them