Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/207

Rh all those attributes of its material which do not help that motive. It has had, indeed, from the beginning an unfixed claim to colour; but this colour has always been more or less conventional, with no melting or modulation of tones, never admitting more than a very limited realism. It was maintained chiefly as a religious tradition. In proportion as sculpture ceased to be merely decorative and subordinate to architecture it threw itself upon pure form. It renounces the power of expression by sinking or heightening tones. In it no member of the human form is more significant than the rest; the eye is wide, and without pupil; the lips and brow are not more precious than hands, and breasts, and feet. The very slightness of its material is part of its pride; it has no backgrounds, no sky or atmosphere, to suggest and interpret a train of feeling; a little of suggested motion, and much of pure light on its gleaming surfaces, with pure form—only these. And it gains more than it loses by this limitation to its own distinguishing motives; it unveils man in the repose of his unchanging characteristics. Its white light purged from the angry blood-like stains of action and passion, reveals not what is accidental in man, but the god, as opposed to man's restless movement. It records the first naive unperplexed recognition of man by himself; and it is a proof of