WOMAN IN ART
try, and history and science tell us "Athens was great because of her women," and furthermore, "that there can be no great sons unless there are first great mothers." There lies the secret of all progress. Thus do we know the womanhood of Greece as translated into marble. We needs must agree with Ruskin, who said, "A Greek never expresses personal character nor momentary passion."
Grace and proportion seem to have been ruling principles in all their art expressions; strength even to severity marks many female forms and faces, as might be expected of the impersonation of Wisdom and Victory. There are no signs of hope or happiness, they are truly marble faces. Niobe is the one sculptured mother known to us, and her attitude and limited expression bespeak protection from danger slightly mixed with motherly solicitude.
Portrait busts, a troupe of exquisite Aphrodites and hunting Dianas add to our appreciation of Greek art, but a soulless art.
The Athena of the Parthenon, represented to us by replicas and coins, is as expressionless of sovereignty and benignity as the marble, ivory, and gold that made it the most valuable of her national deities.
Scant indeed are hints and examples of Greek painting that have survived the ages, yet historians of that time assure us it was a prolific art portraying scenes of a nation's interest in portraiture, mural decoration, the adornment of architecture with color, and in many cases the painting of statues with a startling semblance to life.
We have glanced back thousands of years to gain a glimpse of woman in art, and find certain strength, curves, and beauty in both subject and work; finding also a harmonious and analogous development, crude as it sometimes was, as beginnings must ever be.
It seems proof that neither man nor an age can produce what it does not possess. But remember, there is always something ahead, something to reach for, always an unfolding, ever an advance—progress.
After the highest attainment of Greek art came the despoiling enemy, brute force against an athletic, intellectual, and artistic perfection, of which scattered and shattered remnants illustrate the Athenian writers and serve as criterion in plastic art for ages to come.
The Ptolemaic Queen is embodied in history, drama, poetry, and art for the mischief she did; and with her own hand she opened the door to make her exit from life's stage. She passed when the outlook for humanity was clouded with the darkness that precedes the dawn.
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