- kugler's Hand-Book of Painting. Author:Franz Kugler Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HANDBOOK PAINTING IN ITALY. BOOK I. EARLY CHRISTIAN ART. PART I. THE LATER ROMAN STYLE. Gbeek art sprang from Greek religion. It was art which ga... more »ve the Gods form, character, and reality. The statue of Jupiter Olympius brought the Father of the Gods himself before the eyes of men. He was deemed unfortunate who died without beholding that statue. Art, among the Greeks, was an occupation of a priestly character: as it belonged to her to lift the veil of mystery which concealed the Gods, so was it also her office to exalt and consecrate the human forms under which they could alone be represented. The image of the God was no mere copy from common and variable life ; it was stamped with a supernatural grandeur which raised the mind to a higher world. In subjugating the territories of Greece to their dominion, the Romans had also reduced Grecian civilization and Grecian art to their service. Wherever their legions extended, these followed in their train. Wherever their splendid and colossal works, whether for public or private purposes, were carried on, Greek art, or such art as owed its invention originally to the Greeks, was called into requisition. Every object of dailyuse bore its own particular impress of art. That which had been the natural product of the Grecian national mind, now, detached from its original home and purposes, assumed a more general character. The Grecian ideal of beauty became the ideal of all beauty. The types of Grecian art furnished the materials for a universal alphabet of art. And although that charm of purity which is shed over the creations of the highest period of Greek art, necessarily departed from her when she was led forth a wanderer among nations, yet the more general principles of form and proportion had been too firmly laid down ...« less