her rule over both arts is only so
far as they are zoographic;--representative, that is to say, of animal
life, or of such order and discipline among other elements, as may
invigorate and purify it. Now there is a speciality of the art of
painting beyond this, namely, the representation of phenomena of color
and shadow, as such, without question of the nature of the things that
receive them. I am now accordingly obliged to speak of sculpture and
painting as distinct arts: but the laws which bind sculpture, bind no
less the painting of the higher schools, which has, for its main
purpose, the showing beauty in human or animal form; and which is
therefore placed by the Greeks equally under the rule of Athena, as the
Spirit, first, of Life, and then of Wisdom in conduct.

111. First, I say, you are to 'see Pallas' in all such work, as the
Queen of Life; and the practical law which follows from this, is one of
enormous range and importance, namely, that nothing must be represented
by sculpture, external to any living form, which does not help to
enforce or illustrate the conception of life. Both dress and armor may
be made to do this, by great sculptors, and are continually so used by
the greatest. One of the essential distinctions between the Athenian and
Florentine schools is dependent on their treatment of drapery in this
respect; an Athenian always sets it to exhibit the action of the body,
by flowing with it, or over it, or from it, so as to illustrate both its
form and gesture; a Florentine, on the contrary, always uses his drapery
to conceal or disguise the forms of the body, and exhibit mental
emotion; but both use it to enhance the life, either of the body or
soul; Donatello and Michael Angelo, no less than the sculptors of Gothic
chivalry, ennoble armor in the same way; but base sculptors carve
drapery and armor for the sake of their folds and picturesqueness only,
and forget the body beneath. The rule is so stern, that all delight in
mere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly
forbidden to sculpture;--for instance, in _painting_ the branch of a
tree, you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it,
but a sculptor must not touch one of them: they are inessential to the
tree's life,--he must give the flow and bending of the branch only, else
he does not enough 'see Pallas' in it.

Or, to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little painted poem,
by Edward Frere; a cotta