Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 13, 2025
Blackened patches on the mosaic pavement showed where fires had been kindled; the colonnades were turned into drying-grounds for the soldiers' linen, and a rope on which hung some newly washed clothes was wound at one end round the neck of a Venus from the hand of Praxiteles, and at the other round the lyre of an Apollo fashioned in marble by Bryaxis.
Has liberty of action kept pace with liberty of opinion? Are Americans as truly free to-day as they certainly were fifty years ago? In æsthetics do we surpass Phidias and Praxiteles, Raphael and Michael Angelo? Is our music more perfect than Pergolesi's or Mozart's? Can we exhibit any marvels of architecture that excel the glory of Philæ, Athens, Pæstum, and Agra?
Michael Angelo, Michel Columb, Jean Goujon, Phidias, Praxiteles, Polycletes, Puget, Canova, Albert Durer, are the brothers of Milton, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Tasso, Homer, and Moliere. And such an achievement is so stupendous that a single statue is enough to make a man immortal, as Figaro, Lovelace, and Manon Lescaut have immortalized Beaumarchais, Richardson, and the Abbe Prevost.
A selection is made among them; you reenter the Tribune; five antique statues form a circle here a slave sharpening his knife; two interlocked wrestlers whose muscles are strained and expanded; a charming Apollo of sixteen years whose compact form has all the suppleness of the freshest adolescence; an admirable Faun instinct with the animality of his species, unconsciously joyous and dancing with all his might; and finally, the "Venus de Medici," a slender young girl with a small delicate head, not a goddess like her sister of Milo, but a perfect mortal and the work of some Praxiteles fond of "hetairae," at ease in a nude state and free from that somewhat mawkish delicacy and bashful coquetry which its copies, and the restored arms with their thin fingers by Bernini, seem to impose on her.
The sentiment of this group is such as we have not met before. The tenderness expressed by Eirene's posture is as characteristic of the new era as the intensity of look in the head from Tegea. Cephisodotus was probably a near relative of a much greater sculptor, Praxiteles, perhaps his father. Praxiteles is better known to us than any other Greek artist.
This is one of three slabs which probably decorated the pedestal of a group by Praxiteles representing Apollo, Leto, and Artemis; a fourth slab, needed to complete the series, has not been found The presumption is strong that these reliefs were executed under the direction of Praxiteles, perhaps from his design.
Seeing that Bellino was smiling, I kissed him likewise, and his half-open ruffle attracting my hand, I ventured and went in without resistance. The chisel of Praxiteles had never carved a finer bosom! "Oh! this is enough," I exclaimed; "I can no longer doubt that you are a beautifully-formed woman!" "It is," he replied, "the defect of all castrati."
Has Praxiteles, or Miron, or Skopas, or Lysias even, created more wonderful lines? Or does there exist in Paros or in Pentelicus such marble as this, warm, rosy, and full of love? There are people who kiss off the edges of vases, but I prefer to look for pleasure where it may be found really." He began to pass his lips along her shoulders and neck.
This statuette is a Praxiteles; this picture a Guido Reni; Benvenuto Cellini was the owner of this goblet; and this sword was that of Sultan Soliman. It was dusk, and the shadows of night were falling fast when I quitted the museum. My uncle and I returned to the narrow turret-room in which he had taken up his abode for the last seventy years and more.
Well, look; she is at work already. Observe her procedure. She begins with our Cnidian importation, from which she takes only the head; with the rest she is not concerned, as the statue is nude. The hair, the forehead, the exquisite eyebrows, she will keep as Praxiteles has rendered them; the eyes, too, those soft, yet bright-glancing eyes, she leaves unaltered.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking