he rock for themselves. 4. The Christian
religion, for which Art first wrought, demanded sentiment rather than
shape: it was a matter of mind which was wanted: the personal beauty of
Jesus Christ is nowhere insisted upon in all the New Testament: the
earliest artists, when they had impressed an air of holiness or serenity
on their works, thought they had done enough; and it was only when the
fears of looking like the heathen were overcome, and a sense of the
exquisite beauty of Grecian sculpture prevailed, that the geometrical
loveliness of the human form found its way into art. It may be added,
that no modern people, save the Italians alone, seem to share fully in
the high sense of the ideal and the poetic, visible in the works of
Greece.

"The first fruits of this new impulse were representations of Christ on
the Cross; of his forerunner, St. John; of his Virgin Mother; and of his
companions, the Apostles. Our Saviour had a meek and melancholy look;
the hands of the Virgin are held up in prayer; something of the wildness
of the wilderness was in the air of St. John, and the twelve Apostles
were kneeling or preaching. They were all clothed from head to heel; the
faces, the hands, and the feet, alone were bare; the sentiment of
suffering or rejoicing holiness, alone was aimed at. The artists of the
heathen religion wrought in a far different spirit; the forms which they
called to their canvas, and endowed with life and beauty, were all, or
mostly naked; they saw and felt the symmetry and exquisite harmony of
the human body, and they represented it in such elegance, such true
simplicity and sweetness, as to render their nude figures the rivals in
modesty and innocence of the most carefully dressed. A sense of this
excellence of form is expressed by many writers. 'If,' says Plato, 'you
take a man as he is made by nature, and compare him with another who is
the effect of art, the work of nature will always appear the less
beautiful, because art is more accurate than nature.' Maximus Tyrus also
says, that 'the image which is taken by a painter from several bodies,
produces a beauty which it is impossible to find in any single natural
body, approaching to the perfection of the fairest statues.' And Cicero
informs us, that Zeuxis drew his wondrous picture of Helen from various
models, all the most beautiful that could be found; for he could not
find in one body all those perfections, which his idea of that princess
required.