Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture: Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870

XI. The First Elements of Sculpture. Incised outline and opened space 101 XII. Branch of Phillyrea 109 XIII. Greek Flat relief, and sculpture by edged incision 111 XIV. Apollo and the Python. Heracles and the Nemean Lion 119 XV. Hera of Argos. Zeus of Syracuse 120 XVI. Demeter of Messene. Hera of Cnossus 121 XVII. Athena of Thurium. Siren Ligeia of Terina 121 XVIII. Artemis of Syracuse. Hera of Lacinian Cape 122 XIX. Zeus of Messene. Ajax of Opus 124 XX. Greek and Barbarian Sculpture 127 XXI. The Beginnings of Chivalry 129 PREFACE. 1. I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awaken the interest of my pupils in a study which they have hitherto found unattractive, and imagined to be useless; but more imperatively, it is to define the principles by which the study itself should be guided; and to vindicate their security against the doubts with which frequent discussion has lately incumbered a subject which all think themselves competent to discuss. The possibility of such vindication is, of course, implied in the original consent of the Universities to the establishment of Art Professorships. Nothing can be made an element of education of which it is impossible to determine whether it is ill done or well; and the clear assertion that there is a canon law in formative Art is, at this time, a more important function of each University than the instruction of its younger members in any branch of practical skill. It matters comparatively little whether few or many of our students learn to draw; but it matters much that all who learn should be taught with accuracy. And the number who may be justifiably advised to give any part of the time they spend at college to the study of painting or sculpture ought to depend, and finally must depend, on their being certified that painting and sculpture, no less than language, or than reasoning, have grammar and method,—that they permit a recognizable distinction between scholarship and ignorance, and enforce a constant distinction between Right and Wrong. 2. This opening course of Lectures on Sculpture is therefore restricted to the statement, not only of first principles, but of those which were illustrated by the practice of one school, and by that practice in…