Thus his age is fixed about the 102d Olympiad, or 370 B. C. To the chisel of this eminent artist is ascribed the Townley Venus, or Dione, now in the British Museum, as also the group of Niobe at Florence. Grace, softness, and truth, were the characteristics of his style, which may be considered as forming the intermediate gradation between that of Phidias and those of Praxiteles and Lysippus; between the two grand divisions of Greek sculpture, the schools of grandeur and of beauty.
In the era and labours of Phidias, we discover the utmost excellence to which Grecian genius attained in the arts. From an examination, then, of this excellence, we shall not only obtain a knowledge of that style pronounced by the Greeks themselves to be their proudest achievement in sculpture, but may also be able to elicit principles of the highest general importance in the philosophy of imitative art. This inquiry likewise demands attention, were it merely on account of the singularly fortunate circumstances under which it can be instituted. Respecting the most esteemed masterpieces of antiquity, reasonable doubts still exist how far our judgments are formed upon real originals. But in the marbles of the British Museum, the former ornaments of the Parthenon, we certainly behold the conceptions, and, in some measure, the very practice of the great Athenian sculptor. Both statues and relievos compose these precious remains, one of the noblest bequests of ancient to modern talent. The statues adorned the two tympana of the Parthenon, which was amphiprostylos or double-fronted, consisting, besides fragments, of fourteen groups, or seventeen figures, of the natural proportions. The relievos are of two kinds, one of which formed the inner frieze of the cella, and flat, representing the procession of the Panathenean festival; the other, consisting of fifteen metopes of the exterior peristyle, very bold, even to entire roundness in some parts, the subject, combats of the Centaurs with the followers of Theseus, appropriate to a national temple.
In these sculptures, the technicality is of unequal merit; but in the design, the presence of the same mind is visible throughout. In the statues, and in the frieze, of which nearly two hundred feet still remain, the execution generally approaches so near the beauty and grandeur of the composition, that we seem to trace not only one intelligence, but one hand; in the metopes, again, a baldness of rendering, utterly inconsistent with the fervid idea, is occasionally perceivable. These contradictions would naturally arise from, and can be explained only by, the fact that the master-spirit overlooking the whole trusted the expressing of his conceptions to assistants of dissimilar capacity. Of the intellectual character, grandeur is the prevailing principle; the grandeur of simplicity and nature, devoid of all parade or ostentation of art. The means are forgotten in their very excellence, and in the fullest accomplishment of the end. The ancient critics, who, in speaking of Phidias, seem to labour with the power of those ideas awakened by the contemplation of his works, are fond of comparing their effects to those of the eloquence of their most accomplished orators. The comparison is happy. The sculpture of Phidias might well be assimilated to Demosthenian eloquence, in the truth and affecting interest of its imagery, and in its power of bearing the whole soul along in our engrossing feeling. But the sternness and the severity of the orator, the taking of the heart by force, attach not to the artist; all is here sweet and gracious; we are willing captives to the witchery of art. It is this union of the graceful and the pleasing with the energetic and the great, which constitutes the surpassing merit of the works we are considering. Exquisitely delicate in the minute, in the grand, the style is bold, vigorous, and flowing. Their author, to use the language of antiquity, united the three characteristics of truth, grandeur, and minute refinement; exhibiting majesty, gravity, breadth, and magnificence of composition, with a practice scrupulous in detail, and truth of individual representation, yet in the handling rapid, broad, and firm. This harmonious assemblage of qualities, in themselves dissimilar, in their results the same, gives to the productions of this master an ease, a grace, a vitality, resembling more the spontaneous overflowings of inspiration than the laborious offspring of thought and science.