Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/52

 before. A combination of circumstances that is unique in the history of the world gave to the contemporaries of Pericles and Alexander the power of approaching more nearly to perfection, in their works of art, than men of any other race or any other epoch. In no other place or time have ideas been so clearly and completely interpreted by form; in no other place or time have the intellectual qualities been so closely wedded to a strong love for beauty and a keen sensibility to it. It results from this that the works of the Greek artists, mutilated by time and accident as they are, serve as models and teachers for our painters and sculptors, a rôle which they will continue to fill until the end of time. They form a school, not, as some have thought, to enable us to dispense with nature, the indispensable and eternal master, but to incite to such an ardent and intelligent study of her beauties, as may lead to the creation of great works, works capable, like those of the Greeks, of giving visible expression to the highest thoughts.

As the Greeks excelled all other nations in the width and depth of their æsthetic sentiments; as their architects, their sculptors, and their painters, were superior both to their pupils and their masters, to the orientals on the one hand, and the Etruscans and the Latins on the other, we need feel no surprise at their central and dominating position in the history of antique art. Other national styles and artistic manifestations will pass before the eye of the reader in their due order and succession; they will all be found interesting, because they show to us the continual struggle of man against matter, and we shall endeavour to distinguish each by its peculiar and essential characteristics, and to illustrate it by the most striking remains which it has left behind. But each style and nationality will for us have an importance in proportion to the closeness of its connection with the art of Greece. In the case of those oriental races which were the teachers of the Greeks, we shall ask how much they contributed to the foundations of Greek art and to its ultimate perfection; in the case of the ancient Italians, we shall endeavour to estimate and describe the ability shown by them in apprehending the lessons of their instructors, and the skill with which they drew from their teachers a method for the expression of their own peculiar wants and feelings and for the satisfaction of their own æsthetic desires.

The study of oriental art will really, therefore, be merely an introduction to our history as a whole, but an introduction which