Of all this I feel assured, because,
a brief while since, we agreed together that man could only be raised
through an incarnation of himself. Tacitly, we would also seem to
have limited the uses of Hellenic art to the serving as models of
proportion, or as a gradus for form: and, though I cannot deny them
any merit they may have in this respect, still, I would wish to deal
cautiously with them: the artist,--most especially the young one, and
who is and would be most subject to them and open to their
influence,--should never have his soul asleep when his hand is awake;
but, like voice and instrument, one should always accompany the other
harmoniously.
_Kosmon._ But surely you will deal no less cautiously with early
mediaeval art. Archaisms are not more tolerable in pictures than they
are in statues, poems, or music; and the archaisms of this kind of
art are so numerous as to be at first sight the most striking feature
belonging to it. Most remarkable among these unnatural peculiarities
are gilded backgrounds, gilded hair, gilded ornaments and borders to
draperies and dresses, the latter's excessive verticalism of lines
and tedious involution of folds, and the childlike passivity of
countenance and expression: all of which are very prominent, and
operate as serious drawbacks to their merits; which--as I have freely
admitted--are in truth not a few, nor mean.
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