This is the reason that, to take an example near home, the Victory on the Brandenburg gate in Berlin not only affects us strongly by virtue of its simplicity and repose, but can be readily followed through its separate figures. The horses, in fact, stand far from each other, without either of them impairing the view of the other; and similarly the figure of Victory rises sufficiently high above them. Conversely the Apollo drawn in a car by griffins, which we have on the Opera House, is less satisfactory from this point of view, however artistic the entire conception and technical work may be in other respects. By the favour of a friend I saw these figures before they were taken from the workshop. The effect promised was noble. But as we see them now at such a height, we have far too much of one outline partly obscuring another, which in its turn is backed by something else, and consequently is less freely and clearly silhouetted than would be the case were all the figures silhouetted in their simple outlines[187]. The griffins, which necessarily, on account of their shorter legs, do not stand up either so highly or so freely as horses, have wings into the bargain, and Apollo, too, has his tuft of hair and his lyre. All this detail is too much for the position, and only tends to make the outlines obscure. (_c_) The final mode of representation, in which sculpture makes an important step in the direction of the principle of painting is the _relief_; in the first instance the high-relief, and after it the low-relief. The condition here is the surface, the figures standing on one and the same plane, so that the spatial totality of the figure, which is the point of departure of sculpture, more and more tends to disappear. The older form of relief, however, does not as yet approximate so closely to painting, which involves distinctions of perspective between the foreground and background, but rather holds fast to the surface or plane as such without permitting the different objects to project into or to retire within the distinctions of their spatial position by means of an artificial reduction of size. In the present case figures in profile are preferred, and they are placed side by side on an even surface. A simple treatment of this kind does not admit the content of complicated actions, but actions which in real life already adopt more or less of one and the same line of motion, processions of all kinds, whether those of sacrifice or Olympian victors or others. Add to this the relief is capable of the greatest variety of form. It not only fills up and decorates the friezes and walls of temples, but is attached to utensils of all kinds, sacrificial bowls, votive gifts, shells, goblets, urns, lamps, and so forth; it is the adornment of seats and tripods, and is closely allied to the skilled crafts. Here as nowhere else the ingenuity of invention receives the fullest scope in every kind of form and combination, and