Daedalus: Or, The Causes and Principles of the Excellence of Greek SculptureThe author's detailed descriptions of many Greek temples and sculpture and how they were created. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
admiration adorned anatomy ancient art ancient sculptors antiquity Apollo Apollo Belvedere appear arch architect architecture Athenian Athens attributes bas-reliefs beau beauty behold bronze ceiling character chryselephantine Cicero colossal statues colour columns considered copies costume Dædalus described divine drapery elegance Elgin marbles evidence excellence executed exhibited expression feet figure frieze galleries genius give goddess gods gold Grecian Greece Greek art Hercules hero honour ideal imitation instance ivory Jupiter Jupiter Olympius l'Art Laocoon lines Lond look Lucian Lysippus manner marble ment mind Minerva modern artist monuments mosaic muscles Museum nature Nicias noble object observable opinion ornaments painted painter Paris Parthenon Pausanias pediment Peinture perfect Phidias picture Plato Pliny Plutarch poet polychromy Polygnotus Pompeii Praxiteles principle proportions qu'il Quatremère Quatremère de Quincy Quintilian regarded remarkable represented Roman Rome says sculpture seen speaking stone suppose taste temple tion vault Venus Vitruvius writers Zeuxis
Popular passages
Page 253 - The ambrosial aspect, which, beheld, instils Part of its immortality ; the veil Of heaven is half undrawn ; within the pale We stand, and in that form and face behold What mind can make, when Nature's self would fail ; And to the fond idolaters of old ,Envy the innate flash which such a soul could mould.
Page 74 - Or, turning to the Vatican, go see Laocoon's torture dignifying pain — A father's love and mortal's agony With an immortal's patience blending : — vain The struggle ; vain, against the coiling strain And gripe, and deepening of the dragon's grasp, The old man's clench ; the long envenom'd chain Rivets the living links, — the enormous asp Enforces pang on pang, and stifles gasp on gasp.
Page 198 - Some to Conceit alone their taste confine. And glittering thoughts struck out at every line; Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit; One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit. Poets, like painters, thus, unskill'd to trace The naked Nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover every part, And hide with ornaments their want of art.
Page 63 - So every spirit, as it is most pure, And hath in it the more of heavenly light, So it the fairer body doth procure To habit in, and it more fairly dight, With cheerful grace and amiable sight For, of the soul, the body form doth take, For soul is form, and doth the body make.
Page 257 - who takes for his model such forms as nature produces, and confines himself to an exact imitation of them, will never attain to what is perfectly beautiful. For the works of nature are full of disproportion, and fall very short of the true standard of beauty. So that Phidias, when he formed his Jupiter, did not copy any object ever presented to his sight; but contemplated only that image which he had conceived in his mind from Homer's description.
Page 303 - We have seen above, that the whole mass of the .architecture, founded on Greek and Roman models, which we have been in the habit of building for the last three centuries, is utterly devoid of all life, virtue, honourableness, or power of doing good. It is base, unnatural, unfruitful, unenjoyable, and impious. Pagan in its origin, proud and unholy in its revival, paralysed in its old age...
Page 167 - Mid the dim twilight of the laurel grove, Too fair to worship, too divine to love. Yet on that form in wild delirious trance With more than rev'rence gazed the Maid of France. Day after day the love-sick dreamer stood With him alone, nor thought it solitude ; To cherish grief, her last, her dearest care, Her one fond hope — to perish of despair.
Page 260 - Regard not then if wit be old or new, But blame the false, and value still the true. Some ne'er advance a judgment of their own, But catch the spreading notion of the town ; They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of authors' names, not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writings, but the men.
Page 254 - As, therefore, in other mimetic arts, one imitation is an imitation of one thing, so here the fable, being an imitation of an action, should be an imitation of an action that is one and entire, the parts of it being so connected that if any one of them be either transposed or taken away, the whole will be destroyed or changed; for whatever may be either retained or omitted, without making any sensible difference, is not properly a part.
Page 205 - ... an antiquarian; and if it obstructs the general design of the piece, it is to be disregarded by the artist. Common sense must here give way to a higher sense. In the naked form, and in the disposition of the drapery, the difference between one artist and another is principally seen. But if he is compelled to exhibit the modern dress, the naked form is entirely hid, and the drapery is already disposed by the skill of the tailor.