I will not prosecute these considerations further, though there may be other examples in the history of art. But I will say this much concerning the psychological reasons of so strange a phenomenon. It may, of course, be assumed that the man who breaks through the old, stiff conventional style which has bound his predecessors with its shackles is necessarily a man of strong and original genius. Thus, when we are distinctly told of Polygnotus that he first began to vary the features of the human face from their archaic stiffness, we have before us a man of bold originality, who quarrelled with the tradition of centuries, and probably set against him all the prejudices and the consciences of the graver public. But to us, far different features seem prominent. For in spite of all his boldness, when we compare him with his forerunners, we are struck with his modesty and devoutness, as compared with his successors. There is in him, first, a devoutness toward his work, an old-fashioned piety, which they had not; and as art in this shape is almost always a handmaid of religion, this devoutness is a prominent feature. Next, there is a certain reticence and modesty in such a man, which arises partly from the former feeling, but still more from a conservative fear of violent change, and a healthy desire to make his work not merely a contrast to, but a development of, the older traditions. Then the old draped goddess of religious days, such as the _Venus Genitrix_ in Florence, made way for the splendid but yet more human handling which we may see in the Venus of Melos, now in the Louvre. This half-draped but yet thoroughly new and chaste conception leads naturally to the type said to have been first dared by Praxiteles, who did not disguise the use of very unworthy human models to produce his famous, or perhaps infamous ideal, which is best known in the _Venus de Medici_, but perhaps more perfectly represented in the Venus of the Capitol. There is, too, in the earlier artist that limited mastery over materials, which, like the laws of the poet’s language, only condenses and intensifies the beauty of his work.