To such persons the beauty of Greek art will ever seem wanting, because
its supreme beauty is rather male than female. But the beauty of art
demands a higher sensibility than the beauty of nature, because the
beauty of art, like tears shed at a play, gives no pain, is without life,
and must be awakened and repaired by culture. Now, as the spirit of
culture is much more ardent in youth than in manhood, the instinct of
which I am speaking must be exercised and directed to what is beautiful,
before that age is reached, at which one would be afraid to confess that
one had no taste for it."
Certainly, of that beauty of living form which regulated Winckelmann's
friendships, it could not be said that it gave no pain. One notable
friendship, the fortune of which we may trace through his letters, begins
with an antique, chivalrous letter in French, and ends noisily in a burst
of angry fire. Far from reaching the quietism, the bland indifference of
art, such attachments are nevertheless more susceptible than any others
of equal strength of a purely intellectual culture.
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