ture. We
doubt if the religion of Greece ever had that hold upon the feelings of
the people, artists, or their patrons, which is implied in the
supposition, that it was an efficient cause. A people that could listen
to the broad farce of Aristophanes, and witness every sort of contempt
thrown upon the deities they professed to worship, were not likely to
seek in religion the advancement of art; and their licentious
liberty--if liberty it deserved to be called--was of too watchful a
jealousy over greatness of every kind, to suffer genius to be free and
without suspicion. We will not follow the lecturer through his
conjectures on the mechanic processes. It is more curious than useful to
trace back the more perfect art through its stages--the "Polychrom," the
"Monochrom," the "Monogram," and "Skiagram"--nor from the pencil to the
"cestrum." Polygnotus is said to be the first who introduced the
"essential style;" which consisted in ascertaining the abstract, the
general form, as it is technically termed the central form. Art under
Polygnotus was, however, in a state of formal "parallelism;" certainly
it could boast no variety of composition. Apollodorus "applied the
essential principles of Polygnotus to the delineation of the species, by
investigating the leading forms that discriminate the various classes of
human qualities and passions." He saw that all men were connected
together by one general form, yet were separated by some predominant
power into classes; "thence he drew his line of imitation, and
personified the central form of the class to which his object belonged,
and to which the rest of its qualities administered, without being
absorbed." Zeuxis, from the essential of Polygnotus and specific
discrimination of Apollodorus, comparing one with the other, formed his
ideal style. Thus are there the three styles--the essential, the
characteristic, the ideal.

Art was advanced and established under Parrhasius and Timanthes, and
refined under Eupompus, Apelles, Aristides, and Euphranor. "The
correctness of Parrhasius succeeded to the genius of Zeuxis. He
circumscribed the ample style, and by subtle examination of outline,
established that standard of divine and heroic form which raised him to
the authority of a legislator, from whose decisions there was no appeal.
He gave to the divine and heroic character in painting, what Polycletus
had given to the human in sculpture by his Doryphorus, a canon of
proportion. Phidias