Near to Hercules, under the arcades of the same Palazzo Farnese, is a most beautiful statue of Flora. The great advantage which ancient artists had in attending the exercises of the gymnasia, has been repeatedly urged as the reason of their superiority over the moderns in sculpture. We are told, that besides the usual exercises of the gymnasia, all those who proposed to contend at the Olympic games, were obliged, by the regulations, to prepare themselves, by exercising publicly for a year at Elis; and the statuaries and painters constantly attended on the Arena, where they had opportunities of beholding the finest shaped, the most graceful, and most vigorous of the Grecian youth employed in those manly sports, in which the power of every muscle was exerted, and all their various actions called forth, and where the human form appeared in an infinite variety of different attitudes. By a constant attendance at such a school, independent of any other circumstance, the artists are supposed to have acquired a more animated, true, and graceful style, than possibly can be caught from viewing the tame, mercenary models, which are exhibited in our academies. On the other hand, I have heard it asserted, that the artist, who formed the Farnesian Flora, could not have improved his work, or derived any of its excellencies, from the circumstances above enumerated; because the figure is in a standing posture, and clothed. In the light, easy flow of the drapery, and in the contour of the body being as distinctly pronounced through it, as if the figure were naked, the chief merit of this statue is thought to consist. But this reasoning does not seem just; for the daily opportunities the ancient artists had of seeing naked figures, in every variety of action and attitude, must have given them advantages over the moderns, in forming even drapery figures. At Sparta, the women, upon particular occasions, danced naked. In their own families; they were seen every day clothed in light draperies; and so secondary was every consideration, even that of decency, to art, that the prettiest virgins of Agrigentum, it is recorded, were called upon by the legislature, without distinction, to shew themselves naked to a painter, to enable him to paint a Venus. Whilst the moderns, therefore, must acknowledge their inferiority to the ancients in the art of sculpture, they may be allowed merit, on account of the cause, to which it seems, in some measure at least, to be owing.