Miscellanea Graphica Representations Of Ancient

Author : Frederick W. Fairholt
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781332229345
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (293 download)

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Download or read book Miscellanea Graphica written by Frederick W. Fairholt and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-05 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from Miscellanea Graphica: Representations of Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Remains in the Possession of Lord Londesborough The love of art seems to be a quality inseparable from human nature: although modified by the peculiar character and the degree of civilization of a people, it is never entirely absent. We find, indeed, that the least cultivated savages no sooner learn to make implements of utility than they seek to give them some kind of ornamentation. Hence the history of art is, in one point of view, the history of society itself; and it forms an interesting as well as a valuable illustration of social condition and social progress in all ages and countries. There could, perhaps, therefore be no better introduction to a series of monuments of art like those represented in the engravings which form the present volume, than an attempt to show in a brief compass their historical interest. We learn from their own writers, that those arts which shone at one period among the people of ancient Greece with unsurpassed splendour, had grown gradually out of attempts which were rude in the extreme, but which were still not more rude than the manners of the people who executed them. In those early ages, a log of wood hewn, or a stone chipped, into a very distant resemblance to the human form, served as a representation of a deity; and, subsequently to this, for sculpture is an older art than drawing, it was found necessary, we are told, to append to each attempt at delineation, a verbal key to its meaning, in such inscriptions or subscriptions as "this is a man," or "this is a tree." As the refinement of art accompanied the progress of society in Greece, so, after her days of freedom were past, and the condition of the people began to retrograde, the arts also began soon to show signs of debasement. With the Romans, the arts at their best period were rather imitative than original; but, though they never rose there to the same perfection as in Greece, they went through a similar scale of upward progress, and of decadence. Very early in the period of the empire the taste for simple elegance of form gave place to the love of profuse and meretricious ornamentation. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.