Page:Woman in Art.djvu/63

 PART II

Woman as Art Motive

CHAPTER VII

Form and Ideal. Environment Affects Art. Despoliation of Greek Art. Woman In the Art of Michael Angelo. Woman the Ideal in Modern Sculpture.

Like conscience, the Ideal is ever latent and must be

lovingly cared for. Its principles proceed from the

imagination and must be expressed through nature by

knowing her secrets."—Viollet le Duc.

Woman as art motif must first be considered as to form. The processes toward achieved perfection in modeling and chiseling the "form divine" monopolized Greek art for hundreds of years. In placid beauty and perfection of form, grace, and proportion, the Venus de Milo is the seeming ultimate; chaste and noble, it represents the age of perfection amid the multiforms of Greek art.

Were it a living being we would say that soul was latent. The perfection of form seemingly animated by spirit, with the added forces of nature and mind in combat, have given the world a translation in marble of the fact and act of Victory. Victory means overcoming; overcoming implies force, will, and determination; the spirit that does not weaken, that says No to wrong. It is the spirit triumphant—that is the expression and poise of the Victory of Samothrace. It is not the figure of a man, but of a woman, and the marble is powerful with the spirit of woman triumphant. Her very drapery is eloquent of action, of onward pursuit in the teeth of opposing wind and wave, of the will that gives no quarter till the unseen trumpet in the unseen hand proclaims—"Victory!" You do not see the lips that voice that fact; you miss the shapely head and its poise on the powerful neck; because of time and accident your imagination must supply the face alert with determination that Is Victory, with eyes that would have flashed with the exultation of Victory. You miss all the expression of features, but you have the tremendous expression of action.

That splendid figure on its pedestal of a galley's prow, on the shore of its island home, against the rich background of ilex and lemon foliage, must have leaned toward its own reflection in the clear blue of the Aegean Sea, as it greeted Paul of Tarsus on his way from Troas to Philippi. That Victory was 450 years old in the time of Paul. Where is it now? O, but art is long! From the 45