The views now taken of Grecian sculpture, in which we have divided the subject into three schools, are thus proved to be correct. Two of these have already been examined; the old school, which brought material art almost to perfection, retaining only a degree of constraint, but wanting the expression of mind; the Phidian, or sublime school, in which the genius of art soared to its loftiest height. The third is now to be considered, which, from the prevailing character of its principal works, has been rightly termed the School of the Beautiful.
The discussions which have been so warmly agitated regarding the true era of this school, seem entirely gratuitous. It is acknowledged, that the greatest masters of whom this latter age could boast, were Praxiteles and Lysippus, contemporaries, and both highly esteemed by Alexander the Great. Coeval, then, with the commencement of the career, and during the brief empire, of this prince, is to be placed the brightest period in this last display of the arts and genius of Greece. Many external circumstances concurred, with the encouragement given by Alexander himself, to render his reign propitious to refinement, science, and letters; while a reaction of opposite influences, on his death, closed with that event both the progress of higher improvement, and even the prospect of long retaining the knowledge possessed. In sculpture, particularly, a visible decay of talent, and a neglect of the exercise, soon after follow. Indeed, Pliny decidedly says, that art from thenceforth ceased,--_deinde cessavit ars_. This expression must be understood in a limited sense; there is no doubt, however, that the causes of decline, whose consequences wealth, the complexion and renewed energies of the times, had retarded, were then recalled into more direct activity.
Praxiteles, born about the 104th Olympiad, or 364 B. C., was a native of Magna Grecia, but of what town is uncertain. From preceding remarks it will appear, that in praising him as an original inventor,--the discoverer of a new style, writers very generally have mistaken the influence exercised by his genius upon the progress and character of sculpture. Finding the highest sublimity in the more masculine graces of the art already reached; perceiving, also, that the taste of his age tended thitherwards; he resolved to woo exclusively the milder and gentler beauties of style. In this pursuit he attained eminent success. None ever more happily succeeded in uniting softness with force,--elegance and refinement with simplicity and purity; his grace never degenerates into the affected, nor his delicacy into the artificial. He caught the delightful medium between the stern majesty which awes, and the beauty which merely seduces,--between the external allurements of form, and the colder, but loftier, charm of intellectuality. Over his compositions he has thrown an expression spiritual at once and sensual; a voluptuousness and modesty which touch the most insensible, yet startle not the most retiring.