There is no Greek Madonna; the goddesses are always
childless. The actions selected are those which would be without
significance, except in a divine person--binding on a sandal or preparing
for the bath. When a more complex and significant action is permitted, it
is most often represented as just finished, so that eager expectancy is
excluded, as in the image of Apollo just after the slaughter of the
Python, or of Venus with the apple of Paris already in her hand. The
Laocoon, with all that patient science through which it has triumphed
over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture
has begun to aim at effects legitimate, because delightful, only in
painting. The hair, so rich a source of expression in painting, because,
relatively to the eye or to the lip, it is mere drapery, is withdrawn
from attention; its texture, as well as the colour, is lost, its
arrangement faintly and severely indicated, with no enmeshed or broken
light. The eyes are wide and directionless, not fixing anything with
their gaze, or riveting the brain to any special external object; the
brows without hair.
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