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A History of Greek Art by Frank Bigelow Tarbell
page 89 of 177 (50%)
figure the hips continue to be too narrow for the shoulders, and
the abdomen too flat. The facial peculiarities mentioned in the
preceding chapter--prominent eyeballs, cheeks, and chin, and
smiling mouth--are only very gradually modified. As from the
first, the upper eyelid does not overlap the lower eyelid at the
outer corner, as truth, or rather appearance, requires, and in
relief sculpture the eye of a face in profile is rendered as in
front view. The texture and arrangement of hair are expressed in
various ways but always with a marked love of symmetry and
formalism. In the difficult art of representing drapery there is
much experimentation and great progress. It seems to have been
among the eastern Ionians perhaps at Chios, that the deep cutting
of folds was first practiced, and from Ionia this method of
treatment spread to Athens and elsewhere. When drapery is used,
there is a manifest desire on the sculptor's part to reveal what
he can, more, in fact, than in reality could appear, of the form
underneath. The garments fall in formal folds, sometimes of great
elaboration. They look as if they were intended to represent
garments of irregular cut, carefully starched and ironed. But one
must be cautious about drawing inferences from an imperfect
artistic manner as to the actual fashions of the day.

But whatever shortcomings in technical perfection may be laid to
their charge, the works of this period are full of the indefinable
fascination of promise. They are marked, moreover, by a simplicity
and sincerity of purpose, an absence of all ostentation, a
conscientious and loving devotion on the part of those who made
them. And in many of them we are touched by great refinement and
tenderness of feeling, and a peculiarly Greek grace of line.

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