Archaic art, the wonderful offspring of the contact of Greek civilization with the East, exercises its charm to-day more than ever. We have ceased to ascribe a unique saving grace to the classic period, the period of full bloom, and to allow no independent value to the preceding century except as an inevitable transitional phase. We love these archaic works of sculpture and painting for their own sake, not in spite of their crudities but just because of their unpolished hidden vigour, because of the precious combination of their essential features. The fetters of space, and the strong tradition of an ornamental early period give them a monumental effect, which has nothing of mummified stiffness but is kept ever fresh and youthful by an eminently progressive spirit and an energetic endeavour to attain freedom. The archaic style ‘with fresh boldness goes beyond its Oriental patterns, is ever making fresh experiments, and thus exhibits constant change and progress. It is always full of serious painstaking zeal, it is always careful, takes honest trouble, is exactly methodical: the language which it speaks always tells of inward cheerfulness and joy at the result of effort, the effect produced by independent exertion. There is something touching in the sight of archaic art with its child-like freshness, its painstaking zeal, its reverence for tradition, and yet its bold progressiveness. What a contrast to Oriental and Egyptian art, which are fast bound in tradition: in the one the sweltering air of dull coercion, in the other the fresh atmosphere of freedom’ (Furtwängler).