Laocoon : $b An essay upon the limits of painting and poetry. With remarks illustrative of various points in the history of ancient art.Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim
Philosophy
Laocoon : $b An essay upon the limits of painting and poetry. With remarks illustrative of various points in the history of ancient art.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim
Aesthetics -- Early works to 1800; Agesander. Laocoön group
I will mention another example of the same kind which has always given
me particular pleasure. Hogarth passes the following criticism on the
Apollo Belvidere.[147] “These two masterpieces of art, the Apollo and
the Antinous, are seen together in the same palace at Rome, where the
Antinous fills the spectator with admiration only, whilst the Apollo
strikes him with surprise, and, as travellers express themselves, with
an appearance of something more than human, which they of course are
always at a loss to describe; and this effect, they say, is the more
astonishing, as, upon examination, its disproportion is evident even to
a common eye. One of the best sculptors we have in England, who lately
went to see them, confirmed to me what has been now said, particularly
as to the legs and thighs being too long and too large for the upper
parts. And Andrea Sacchi, one of the great Italian painters, seems to
have been of the same opinion, or he would hardly have given his Apollo,
crowning Pasquilini the musician, the exact proportion of the Antinous
(in a famous picture of his now in England), as otherwise it seems to be
a direct copy from the Apollo.
“Although in very great works we often see an inferior part neglected,
yet here this cannot be the case, because in a fine statue, just
proportion is one of its essential beauties; therefore it stands to
reason, that these limbs must have been lengthened on purpose, otherwise
it might easily have been avoided.
“So that if we examine the beauties of this figure thoroughly, we may
reasonably conclude, that what has been hitherto thought so
unaccountably excellent in its general appearance, hath been owing to
what hath seemed a blemish in a part of it.”
All this is very suggestive. Homer also, I would add, had already felt
and noticed the same thing,—that an appearance of nobility is produced
by a disproportionate size of the foot and thigh. For, when Antenor is
comparing the figure of Ulysses with that of Menelaus, he says,[148]—
στάντων μὲν Μενέλαος ὑπείρεχεν εὐρέας ὤμους,
ἄμφω δ’ ἑζομένω, γεραρώτερος ἦεν Ὀδυσσεύς.
“When both were standing Menelaus overtopped him by his broad shoulders;
but when both were sitting, Ulysses was the more majestic.” Since, when
seated, Ulysses gained in dignity what Menelaus lost, we can easily tell
the proportion which the upper part of the body in each bore to the feet
and thighs. In Ulysses the upper part was large in proportion to the
lower: in Menelaus the size of the lower parts was large in proportion
to that of the upper.
XXIII.
A single incongruous part may destroy the harmonious effect of many
beauties, without, however, making the object ugly. Ugliness requires
the presence of several incongruous parts which we must be able to take
in at a glance if the effect produced is to be the opposite of that
which we call beauty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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