Page:The rights of women and the sexual relations.djvu/368

352 spirituality may infatuate, this sensual charm may intoxicate, but only intellect can inspire., As often as I visit a picture gallery I am astonished at the lack of intellect and imagination that most painters display in the choice of their subjects. Why has none of them yet had the idea of painting a modern Venus, that is, a model woman, who represents those qualities which the perfected taste, the superior conception of womanhood, and the more liberal views of a new era attribute to a female ideal, not only in the physical form, but also in the expression of the face? Artists have never been wanting in the representation of blameless physical forms, any more than they have been hampered for want of models, both living and copies; but where is the painter or sculptor, who has created a face that could belong to a modern Venus, that is, to a woman in whom the greatest physical charm was united with the highest expression of intellectual endowment. That such a work of art has not yet been created is due, in my Opinion, not only to a paucity of artistic imagination but also to the position of woman up to the present time. Whoever studies the statues of the antique Vents carefully must at once be struck by the meaninglessness of the face which shows itself especially in the unintellectual forehead, a significant fact for the thoughtful observers. The Greeks looked upon and treated woman in general as a subordinate being that existed only for the gratification of male desires. Therefore, physical charms had to furnish