It Must Be Want
Of Taste That Prevents My Feeling That Enthusiastic Admiration
With Which Others Are Inspired At Sight Of This Statue:
A statue
which in reputation equals that of Cupid by Praxiteles, which
brought such a concourse of strangers of old to the little town
of Thespiae.
I cannot help thinking that there is no beauty in
the features of Venus; and that the attitude is aukward and out
of character. It is a bad plea to urge that the antients and we
differ in the ideas of beauty. We know the contrary, from their
medals, busts, and historians. Without all doubt, the limbs and
proportions of this statue are elegantly formed, and accurately
designed, according to the nicest rules of symmetry and
proportion; and the back parts especially are executed so
happily, as to excite the admiration of the most indifferent
spectator. One cannot help thinking it is the very Venus of
Cnidos by Praxiteles, which Lucian describes. "Hercle quanta
dorsi concinnitas! ut exuberantes lumbi amplexantes manus
implent! quam scite circumductae clunium pulpae in se
rotundantur, neque tenues nimis ipsis ossibus adstrictae, neque
in immensam effusae Pinguedinem!" That the statue thus described
was not the Venus de Medicis, would appear from the Greek
inscription on the base, KLEOMENIS APPOLLODOROI ATHINAIOS
EPOESEI. Cleomenes filius Apollodori fecit; did we not know that
this inscription is counted spurious, and that instead of
EPOESEI, it should be EPOIESE. This, however, is but a frivolous
objection, as we have seen many inscriptions undoubtedly antique,
in which the orthography is false, either from the ignorance or
carelessness of the sculptor.
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