3TUDYING WORKS FROM THE GREAT MASTERS. 475
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knowledge of classical mythology and of Greek and Latin literature, the speaker prefers
to use specimens of relatively inferior artistic perfection as the subjects both of viva voce
interpretations and of carefully prepared essays by pupils. Not the frieze of the Par-
thenon, but some Roman sarcophagus adorned with some exploit of Castor and Pollux.
Not the painting of Helen of Troy by Zeuxis, even if it existed, but some episode of the
‘egend of the Argonauts as figured on an Attic urn of terra cotta. Not the sculptured
group of Laocodn and his sons in the toils of the serpents, but rather the Apotheosis of
domer by Archelaos of Priene, an elaborate bas-relief of small artistic merit, but a piece
after the conscientious study of which the pupil will understand something of the Gre-
cian system of allegory, and will recognize the figure of any one of the nine Muses at
sight when he meets it elsewhere.
Early productions of Greek art before it had outgrown the ungainly stage are often of
great educational value on account of the presence even in them of a sound decorative
instinct often missed in the most pretentious modern work, and by reason of the imagi-
native quality infused into compositions sometimes very complex, which a dominant
simplicity of idea saves from the reproach of confusedness. Of this the famous Francois
ase in the Etruscan Museum of Florence, signed by two Athenian potters of the sixth
sentury B.C., presents an excellent erample. Its one hundred and forty-one painted
igures of gods and men, forty-nine of horses and mules, twelve of centaurs, eighteen cf
sygmies, fourteen of cranes, sixteen of other animals and monsters, or two hundred and
fifty in all, reduce themselves, aside from the decorations of the handles, to eight mytho-
logical scenes and one ornamental band, disposed in six stories, one on the foot, three on
the body, one on the neck, and one on the lip of the amphora or crater. When the
attention has once been called to the symbolism of the tree of life guarded by griffins
and the carnivorous animals devouring other wild and tame creatures in the ornamental
strip. the mind acquainted with the rich store of Greek heroic legend readily disposes all
‘he scenes—the escape of Theseus and his companions from the Minotaur, the destruc-
sion of the centaurs, the slaying of the Calydonian boar, the funeral of Patroclus, the
wedding of Peleus and Thetis, the parents of Achilles, the return of Hephaestus to
Olympus, the murder of the Trojan prince Troilus by Achilles himself, the battle of the
cranes and pygmies, and the sundry minor compositions on the two flat handles—under
she fundamental opposition of Life and Death, so constantly and suggestively contrasted
one with another in the vertical and horizontal distribution of the painted scenes. And
‘hus the lesson of simplicity even in complexity, which invariably characterizes the
nighest art, is inculeated.
Many early Italian paintings may serve equally well to teach the compatibility of
highly imaginative art with a low degree of technical proficiency, and this without the
celatively costly processes of reproduction by which alone the finer artistic qualities of
she great masterpieces are adequately reflected. But a generous use of the stereopticon,
and, for less ephemeral illustration, of cheap but charming photographic blue-prints
trom standard pictures and sculptures, such as the speaker is beginning to prepare with
she help of the photographic laboratory of Cornell University, does away for master-
pieces also with the smallness and meanness of the trade woodcuts which were until
recently, and are largely still, the agony of the teacher in the attempt to acquaint
classes with the history of architectural, pictorial, plastic, industrial, or decorative
art.
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