methods of
expression by means of the flesh and in harmony with its nature. Their
expression of character and emotion is rendered in terms of a beautiful
and healthy body. How this end was attained we must consider later on;
but there is yet another current prejudice in favour of this
exaggeration of individuality which has its influence especially upon
modern artists. It is sometimes said nowadays that a departure from the
individual model is an attempt to "improve upon nature," and is
therefore an artistic mistake. Now the Greek sculptor, as a rule, did
not work from an individual model at all. He trusted partly, especially
in earlier times, to the tradition which familiarised him with a few
fixed types, on which he made variations, partly to his observation and
memory trained for generations, and daily supplied with new material in
the gymnasium where nude youths and men were constantly exercising, or
in the marketplace where he met his fellow-citizens. To see before him,
whether draped or nude, the figures he wanted for his art, he had no
need to pose a model in a studio; his models were at all times around
him in his daily life. The result was that when he wished to represent a
youth or a maiden, or even to make a portrait of a statesman, he tended
to reproduce the type with certain personal modifications rather than to
produce a portrait in the modern sense. But when he came to making
statues of the gods, his freedom of hand was of incalculable service to
him in giving a bodily form to his imagination; it enabled him to create
after nature, without being dependent on an individual model or having
to fall back upon such vague and generalised forms as are sometimes
associated with an academic or classical art; for it was his own trained
observation and memory that he called into play, not a mere mechanical
system he had learnt from his predecessors. In the more individualistic
art of the fourth century, as we shall see, it is probable that the
personal model was of more importance, especially in female statues; but
even then it was still modified by the tradition and style which makes a
harmonious whole, not only of each Greek statue, but of the development
of Hellenic sculpture generally. In typical examples of the sculpture of
the fourth century we find not only this harmony and restraint, and the
beauty of bodily form in figure as well as in features which is
generally recognised as characteristic of Greek art, bu