projection or plane; but as line and light and shade, as something whose
charm lay mainly in the boundary curves, the silhouette, so much more
important in one single, unchangeable position than where, the eye
wandering round a statue, the only moderate interest of one point of
view is compensated by the additional interest of another. Moreover,
painting, itself the product of a much greater interest in colour than
Antiquity had known, forced upon men's attention the important influence
of colour upon form. For, although the human being, if we abstract the
element of colour, if we do it over with white paint, has indeed the
broad, somewhat vague form, the indecision of lines which characterises
antique sculpture; yet the human being as he really exists, with his
coloured hair, eyes, and lips, his cheeks, forehead, and chin patterned
with tint, has a much greater sharpness, precision, contrast of form,
due to the additional emphasis of the colour. Hence, as pictorial
perspective and composition undoubtedly inclined sculptors to seek
greater complexities of relief and greater unity of point of view, so
the new importance of drawing and colouring suggested to them a new view
of form. A human being was no longer a mere arrangement of planes and
of masses, homogeneous in texture and colour. He was made of different
substances, of hair, skin over fat, muscle, or bone, skin smooth,
wrinkled, or stubbly, and, besides this, he was painted different
colours. He had, moreover, what the Greeks had calmly whitewashed away,
or replaced by an immovable jewel or enamel: that extraordinary and
extraordinarily various thing called an Eye.

[Footnote 16: At all events, Greek painting preceding or contemporaneous
with the great period of sculpture. Later painting was, of course, much
more pictorial.]

All these differences between the monochrome creature--colour
abstracted--of the Greeks and the mottled real human being, the
sculptors of the Renaissance were led to perceive by their brothers the
painters; and having perceived, they were dissatisfied at having to omit
in their representation. But how show that they too had seen them?

Here return to our notice two other peculiarities which distinguish
mediaeval sculpture from antique: first, that mediaeval sculpture, rarely
called upon for free open-air figures, was for ever producing architectural
ornament, seen at a given height and against a dark background; and
indoor decoratio