The Analysis of Beauty: Written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of tasteHogarth, William
Philosophy
The Analysis of Beauty: Written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of taste
Hogarth, William
Aesthetics -- Early works to 1800
The difference will appear evident by comparing fig. 78, purposely
drawn in this tasteless manner, with fig. 76. But will be more
perfectly understood by examining this part in the Torso of Michael
Angelo [Fig. 54 p. I], whence this figure was taken.
[Illustration: Fig. 54]
Note, there are casts of a small copy of that famous trunk of a body
to be had at almost every plaster-figure makers, wherein what has been
here described may be sufficiently seen, not only in the part which
figure 76 was taken from, but all over that curious piece of antiquity.
I must here again press my reader to a particular attention to the
windings of these superficial lines, even in their passing over every
joint, what alterations soever may be made in the surface of the skin
by the various bendings of the limbs: and tho' the space allow'd for
it, just in the joints, be ever so small, and consequently the lines
ever so short, the application of this principle of varying these
lines, as far as their lengths will admit of, will be found to have its
effect as gracefully as in the more lengthen'd muscles of the body.
It should be observ'd in the fingers, where the joints are but short,
and the tendons straight; and where beauty seems to submit, in some
degree, to use, yet not so much but you trace in a full-grown taper
finger, these little winding lines among the wrinkles, or in (what
is more pretty because more simple) the dimples of the nuckles. As
we always distinguish things best by seeing their reverse set in
opposition with them; if fig. 82 T p. II, by the straightness of its
lines, shews fig. 83 T p. II, to have some little taste in it, tho' it
is so slightly sketch'd; the difference will more evidently appear when
you in like manner compare a straight coarse finger in common life with
the taper dimpled one of a fine lady.
[Illustration: Figs. 82 and 83]
There is an elegant degree of plumpness peculiar to the skin of the
softer sex, that occasions these delicate dimplings in all their
other joints, as well as these of the fingers; which so perfectly
distinguishes them from those even of a graceful man; and which,
assisted by the more soften'd shapes of the muscles underneath,
presents to the eye all the varieties in the whole figure of the body,
with gentler and fewer parts more sweetly connected together, and with
such a fine simplicity as will always give the turn of the female
frame, represented in the Venus [Fig. 13 p. I], the preference to that
of the Apollo [Fig. 12 p. I].
[Illustration: Figs. 13 and 12]
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