Lectures on Ancient Art |
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Lectures on Ancient Art: By Raoul Rochette Raoul- Rochette,Hodder Michael Westropp No preview available - 2015 |
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Ægina Æginetan Ageladas ancient art ancient Egypt ancient Greece ancient style antiquity artists Athenian Athens beautiful belong body bronze celebrated century character Cimabue Cimon civilisation colours connected consecrated consequently considered costume custom Dædalus degree doubtless drapery edifices Egypt Egyptian art Egyptian statues entire Etruria Etruscan art executed existed eyes fact favourable figures genius greater number Greece Greek art Greek vases hand head history of art human idea idols imitation imperfect influence Jupiter Jupiter Olympius kind less manner marble merit Minerva modern monuments mummies Museum nation nature never objects Olympiad origin ornament paintings Parthenon Pausanias perfection Pericles period of art personages Phidias physiognomy Pliny Plutarch Polygnotus possess Praxiteles present day preserved primitive principal produced regard religion religious remained remarkable represented Rome rude Sicily speak Strabo talent taste temple testimony Timanthes tion tombs traditions Villa Albani word worship
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Page 19 - ... objects, from the most gigantic obelisk to the minute articles of private life, are found decorated with hieroglyphics. Egyptian sculptors were also remarkable for the correct and excellent representation of animals. There may, indeed, be noticed in their representation a freedom of hand, a choice and variety of forms, a truthfulness, and even what deserves to be called imitation, which contrast with the uniformity, the rigidity, the absence of nature and life, which human figures present. Plato...
Page 176 - ... represented standing robed in a tunic, and her head covered with the formidable segis; with her right hand she held a lance; in the left she held a statue of Victory about five feet high; her helmet was surmounted by a sphinx and two griffins, and over the visor eight horses in front in full gallop. The shield erect at the feet of the goddess was adorned on both sides with bas-reliefs. At the base of the statue were a sphinx and a serpent. This colossus was 37 feet high. The gem of Aspasus and...
Page 163 - ... costume, and in the manner in which the beard and the hair are treated, something archaic and conventional, undoubtedly derived from the habits and teachings of the primitive school. But there prevails at the same time, in the execution of the human form, and the manner in which the nude is treated, a knowledge of anatomy, and an excellence of imitation carried to so high a degree of truth as to give convincing proofs of an advanced step and a higher stage in the development of the art.
Page 163 - The hair, treated likewise in a systematic manner in small curls or plaits, worked with wonderful industry, imitates not real hair, but genuine wigs, a peculiarity which may be remarked on other, works in the ancient style, and of Etruscan origin. The beard is indicated on the cheek by a deep mark, and is rarely worked in relief, but, in the latter case, so as to imitate a false beard, and consequently in the same system as the hair. The costume partakes of the same...
Page 52 - ... periods the Romans imitated the Etruscans, for, generally speaking, all the works of the first periods of Rome were executed by Etruscan artists. Their earliest statues of gods were in clay. Etruscan art exercised the greatest influence in Rome, for Rome was adorned with monuments of Etruscan art, in its very infancy; it was a Tuscan called Veturius Mamurius who made the shields (ancilia) of the temple of Numa, and who made, in bronze, the statue of Vertumna, a Tuscan deity, in the suburb of...
Page 164 - ... with straight and regular folds, falling in symmetrical and parallel masses, so as to imitate the real draperies in which the ancient statues in wood were draped. These conventional forms of the drapery and hair may, therefore, be considered as deriving their origin from an imitation of the early statues in wood, the first objects of worship and of art among the Greeks, which were frequently covered with false hair, and clothed with real draperies. The muscular development observable in these...
Page 52 - There was not, therefore, any Roman style, properly so called; the only distinction to be remarked is that the statues of the early periods, executed by the Romans, are characterized, like the Romans themselves of the same period, by a beard and long hair. At a late period all the architecture, all the sculpture of the public edifices at Rome, were in the Tuscan style, according to the testimony of Pliny. After the second Punic war, Greek artists took the place of Etruscan artists at...
Page 163 - Archaic. to a general and conventional expression, present, in the oblique position of the eyes and mouth, that forced smile which seems to have been the characteristic feature common to all productions of this archaic style; for we find it also on the most ancient medals, and on bas-reliefs of the primitive period. ADVANCING FIGURE FROM THE EASTERN PEDIMENT OF THE TEMPLE OF ^EGINA.
Page iv - Medici had her hair gilt, cannot be adduced as any evidence, for in the opinion of Flaxman, to whose correct taste this fashion was totally repugnant, it is a deteriorated variety of the Venus of Praxiteles, and consequently of a later period, when art was in a declining and degraded state. We may, therefore, be led to this conclusion, that the custom of colouring sculpture was only practised at the worst periods of art, at the archaic period, and when it was in its decline. That Plato mentions that...