It deals almost exclusively with youth, where the
moulding of the bodily organs is still as if suspended between growth and
completion, indicated but not emphasised; where the transition from curve
to curve is so delicate and elusive, that Winckelmann compares it to a
quiet sea, which, although we understand it to be in motion, we
nevertheless regard as an image of repose; where, therefore, the exact
degree of development is so hard to apprehend. If one had to choose a
single product of Hellenic art, to save in the wreck of all the rest, one
would choose from the "beautiful multitude" of the Panathenaic frieze,
that line of youths on horseback, with their level glances, their proud,
patient lips, their chastened reins, their whole bodies in exquisite
service. This colourless, unclassified purity of life, with its blending
and interpenetration of intellectual, spiritual, and physical elements,
still folded together, pregnant with the possibilities of a whole world
closed within it, is the highest expression of that indifference which
lies beyond all that is relative or partial.
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