Читать книгу A History of Sculpture онлайн

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But this is scarcely a sufficient explanation of the extreme roughness of the early temple images of Greece before the sixth century. We still ask why a race in which the artistic instinct was so strong, and which had already inspired a great epic poem, did not produce more natural representations of the deities they had evidently clearly imaged mentally. An answer is suggested by an analogous case in early Egyptian history. Among the temple shrines of the Nile Valley, natural flints have been found that had evidently been selected on account of their rough resemblance to some animal form. Limestone figures have been found alongside these, the workmanship of which is almost as rough. These carved lumps of limestone are rather the result of improving natural forms than of actual modelling. Applying this analogy to the case of Greece, the early temple images seem to have been chosen, in the first place, on account of some fancied resemblance to a human or superhuman figure. The temptation to commit a pious fraud by adding a nostril, or an eye, or a suggestion of drapery would be very great, but it could not be carried too far. Beauty or naturalism were not aimed at or desired.