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Reflections on the painting and sculpture of the Greeks
Reflections on the painting and sculpture of the Greeks 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: their tafk in drawing their pieces without figures. Let the artuYs pencil, like the pen of Ariftotle, be impregnated with reafon ; that, after having fatiated... more » the eye, he may nou- rifh the mind : and this he may obtain by Allegory; inverting, not hiding his ideas. Then, whether he chufe fome poetical object himfelf, or follow the dictates of others, he fhall be infpired by his art, mall be fired with the flame brought down from heaven by Prometheus, fhall entertain the Votary of art, and inftruct the mere lover of it. A LET- LETTER, CONTAINING OBJECTIONS AGAINST The foregoing Reflexions. chapter{Section 4A LETTER CONTAINING Objections againfl the foregoing Reflexions. A S you have written on the Greek arts and artifts, I wifh you had made your treatife as much the object of your caution as the Greek artifts made their works; which, before difmiffing them, they exhibited to publick view, in order to be examined by everybody, and efpecially by competent judges of the art. The trial was held during the grand, chiefly the Olympian, games ; and all Greece was interefted on /Etion's producing his picture of the nuptials of Alexander and Roxana. You, Sir, wanted a Proxenidasto be judged by, as well as that artift; and had it not been for your myfterious concealment, I might have communicated your treatife, before its publication, to fome learned men and connoifleurs of my acquaintance, without mentioning the author's name. One of them vifited Italy twice, where he devoted all his time to a moft anxious examination of painting, and particularly feveral months to each eminent picture, at the very place where it was painted; the only method, you know, to form a con- noiffeur. The judgment of a man able to tell you which of Guido's altar-pieces is paint...« less