wise escape his notice, but on which much of the effect and force,
and much even of the delicacy of his delineations, will be found to
depend.
Among the errors into which a young artist is most likely to be
seduced, there are two against which the study of anatomy seems
well calculated to guard him. The one of these is, the blind and
indiscriminate imitation of the antique; the other, an opinion that
in the academy figure he will find a sure guide in delineating the
natural and true anatomy of the living body. These are subjects
on which it may be excusable to insist somewhat at large.
If, as I fear it too often happens, an artist should make the
imitation of the antique the beginning and the end of his studies,
instead of adopting it as a corrective of his taste, after having laid
a sure groundwork in the study of anatomy and a close observation
of nature, and after having attained a correct and powerful execution,
he will be apt to degenerate into a tame and lifeless style; he
will be in danger of renouncing, in pursuit of ideal beauty, the truth
of expression and of character.—Nay, I cannot help suspecting
that many painters have copied after casts of the antique for years,
without perfectly understanding what they should imitate, without
even perceiving the necessity of previously studying the nature of
the subject,- entering fully into the idea of the artist, and being
aware of the peculiarities of his mode of composition. Into this
fault, one who is learned in the science and anatomy of painting
can never fall. But he who has not compared the natural with the
antique head, nor learned the characteristic differences, nor studied
the principle on which the ancient artists composed, may be betrayed
into the grossest misconceptions by too implicitly following
their models. In painting a hero, for example, on whom an ancient
would have bestowed strong character, with bold anatomy and
powerful expression, he may follow the ideal form of a deity, in
which the Grecian artist had studiously divested his model of all
that could indicate natural character, or might seem to pertain to
humanity. The ancient artist, in following the mythology of his
country, and the description of her poets, studied to bestow the
character of divinity, by giving repose to the limbs without any
indication of muscles or veins, and by exhibiting a face full of the
mild serenity of a being superior to the passions of mankind, as
shadowing out a state of existence in which the will possesses the
most perfect freedom and activity without the exertion of the bodily
frame. But those ideal forms are scarcely ever to be transferred
to the representation of the human body; and a modern artist who
indiscriminately follows such a model, misapplies the noblest lessons
of his art.
There are also, independently of the ideal form of divinity, some
peculiarities in the nature of the ancient sculpture which ought to
be well considered by the student in modern painting.
In the infancy of their art, sculptors did not venture to give to
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