History of Ancient Art Author:Johann Joachim, Winckelmann Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HISTORY OF ANCIENT ART. BOOK V. ART AMONG THE GREEKS. (continued.) CHAPTER I. The Conformation and Beauty of the Male Deities and Heroes. 1. The ... more »most beautiful forms, thus selected, were, in a manner, blended together, and from their union issued, as by a new spiritual generation, a nobler progeny, of which no higher characteristic could be conceived than never-ending youth,— a conclusion to which the consideration of the beautiful must necessarily lead. For the mind, in rational beings, has an innate tendency and desire to rise above matter into the spiritual sphere of conceptions, and its true enjoyment is in the production of new and refined ideas. The great artists among the Greeks — who regarded themselves almost as creators, although they worked less for the understanding than for the senses — sought to overcome the hard resistance of matter, and, if possible, to endue it with life, with soul. Thisnoble zeal on their part, even in the earlier periods of art, gave rise to the fable of Pygmalion's statue. For their hands produced those objects of devout respect, which, to inspire veneration, must necessarily appear to be images taken from a more elevated order of beings. The first founders of the religion — who were poets — attached fo these images exalted ideas, and these in their turn excited the imagination to elevate her work above herself, and above sense. To human notions, what attribute could be more suitable to sensual deities, and more fascinating to the imagination, than an eternal youth and spring-time of life, when the very remembrance of youth which has passed away can gladden us in later years 1 It was conformable to their idea of the immutability of the godlike nature; and a beautiful youthful form in their deities awakened tenderness and love, t...« less