Painting,
by the flushing of colour in the face and dilatation of light in the
eye--music, by its subtle range of tones--can refine most delicately upon
a single moment of passion, unravelling its finest threads.
But why should sculpture thus limit itself to pure form? Because, by this
limitation, it becomes a perfect medium of expression for one peculiar
motive of the imaginative intellect. It therefore renounces all these
attributes of its material which do not help forward that motive. It has
had, indeed, from the beginning an unfixed claim to colour; but this
element of colour in it has always been more or less conventional, with
no melting or modulation of tones, never admitting more than a very
limited realism. It was maintained chiefly as a religious tradition. In
proportion as the art of sculpture ceased to be merely decorative, and
subordinate to architecture, it threw itself upon pure form. It renounces
the power of expression by sinking or heightening tones. In it, no member
of the human form is more significant than the rest; the eye is wide, and
without pupil; the lips and brow are hardly less significant than hands,
and breasts, and feet.
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