INDEX OF ARTISTS AND WORKS OF ART MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK 357
PAGE FRONTISPIECE.--DETAIL FROM FRAGONARD'S THE PURSUIT (FRICK COLLECTION, NEW YORK).
This work, which is one of the celebrated Grasse series of panels, offers a very fine example of the use of an ideal head in a romantic subject. (See Page 139.)
PLATE 1.--THE EARLIEST GREAT SCULPTURES 6
(a). Head from a statue of Chefren, a king of the 4th Egyptian Dynasty, about 3000 B.C. (Cairo Museum.)
(b). Head from a fragmentary statuette of Babylonia, dating about 2600 B.C. (Louvre: from Spearing's "Childhood of Art.")
The first head is generally regarded as the finest example of Egyptian art extant, and certainly there was nothing executed in Egypt to equal it during the thirty centuries following the 5th Dynasty. The Babylonian head is the best work of Chaldean art known to us, though there are some fine fragments remaining from the period of about a thousand years later. It will be observed that the tendency of the art in both examples is towards the aims achieved by the Greeks. (See Page 7.)
PLATE 2.--"LE BON DIEU D'AMIENS", IN THE NORTH PORCH, AMIENS CATHEDRAL 18
This figure by a French sculptor of the thirteenth century, was considered by Ruskin to be the finest ideal of Christ in existence. It is another example of the universality of ideals, for the head from the front view might well have been modelled from a Grecian work of the late fourth or early third century B.C. (See Page 319.)
PLATE 3.--AFTER AN ANCIENT COPY OF THE CNIDIAN VENUS OF PRAXITELES. (VATICAN) 30
It is commonly agreed that this is the finest model in existence after the great work of Praxiteles, which itself has long disappeared. The figure as it now stands at the Vatican, has the right arm restored, and the hand is made to hold up some metallic drapery with which the legs are covered, the beauty of the form being thus seriously weakened. (See Pages 111 _et seq._)
(a). Ancient Greek sculpture from the design of Venus in the celebrated picture of Apelles. (Formerly Chessa Collection, now in New York.)
The immense superiority of the sculpture over the painting (Plate 5), from the point of view of pure art, is visible at a glance. It is an indication of the far-reaching scope of the sculptor when executing ideals. (See Page 113.)