ally
negative: in the mind of the artist the realisation of the scene, the
bringing home of the story, has been a purely secondary thing, and
therefore the realisation of the scene, the bringing home of the story,
is secondary also to us, the spectators. The impression produced in us
is exactly corresponding to the interest dominant in the artist: he
has cared for the subject only inasmuch as it afforded suggestions for
beautiful forms; and we therefore have perceived the beautiful forms,
and forgotten the subject. The object of the artist has been, whether or
not he formulated it clearly to himself, not to bring home the situation
to the fancy; not to awaken an emotion; but to present to the eye and
the mind a mere beautiful form. And that such has been his object, is
the first and main lesson which we have learned from the Niobe group, as
it was the first and main lesson learned by the child of our fairy tale
from the innumerable statues which, during those long years in the
Vatican, were its silent teachers.

To present to the eye and the mind a mere beautiful form, this seems a
terrible low and limited definition of the aim of a great artist, of a
whole great national art. Surely not this. The aim of the artist, of the
innumerable artists constituting antique art, must have been nobler: the
form for them must have been the mere physical embodiment of the ideas
and the presentation of the beautiful idea must have been their real
object. You think so? well; the child of our fairy tale pretends that
the statues told him the contrary; told him that form was the real
artistic aim, and that the idea was arranged, clipped, sometimes even
mangled, to make it fit the form. We can judge for ourselves. You say
_idea_, and oppose it to form; hence, the _idea_ is, we must presume,
what the _form_ is not, and since the form is the sensible, the visible,
the concrete, the outwardly existing, the idea must be the invisible,
the abstract, the merely intellectually existing. In this sense, what
is the _idea_, the abstract intellectual conception of the Niobe group?
Merely the fact of the slaughtering of the Niobides by Apollo and
Artemis in the presence of their mother, keep this fact (if you can) in
your mind without mentally investing with any shape the Niobides, the
gods, or the mother; conceiving the mere bare fact, without conceiving
what it would look like; do this and when you have succeeded, as far as
any creature not born bl