Download or read book The History of Ancient Art Volume 2 written by Johann Joachim Winckelmann and published by Theclassics.Us. This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1873 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VI. Beauty of the Extremities, Breast, and Abdomen. -- Drawing of the Figures of Animals by Greek Masters. 1. The beauty of form of the other parts of the figure -- the extreme parts, hands and feet as well as surfaces -- was determined by the ancient artists, in their works, with equal regard to congruity. Plutarch appears to show no more knowledge of art on this point than on any other. He asserts that the attention of the ancient masters was exclusively directed to the face, and that other parts of the figure were not elaborated with similar assiduity. It is not more difficult in morals, where the extreme of virtue borders upon vice, to practise any virtue within its just limits, than it is in art to execute the extremities, by the formation of which the artist displays his knowledge of the beautiful. But time and man's violence have left few beautiful feet, and still fewer beautiful hands, remaining. The hands of the Venus de' Medici (1), which have been the occasion of exposing the ignorance of those who, criticizing them as antique, pronounced them faulty, are modern. In this respect, the Venus resembles the Apollo Belvedere, whose arms below the elbow are also modern. 2. The beauty of a youthful hand consists in a moderate degree of plumpness, and a scarcely observable depression, resembling a soft shadow, over the articulations of the fingers, where, if the hand is plump, there is a dimple. The fingers taper gently towards their extremities, like finely shaped columns; and, in art, the articulations are not expressed. The fore part of the terminating joint is not bent over, nor are the nails very long, though both are common in the works of modern sculptors. Beautiful hands are termed by the poets hands of Pallas, and...