One Compares Here With
Interest The Manners Of The Different Artists In Jotting Down Their
Ideas As They Rose; Some
By chalk, some by crayon, some by pencil,
some by water colors, and some by a heterogeneous mixture of all.
Mozart's scrap bag of musical jottings could not have been more
amusing.
On the whole, cravings of mere ideality have come nearer to meeting
satisfaction by some of these old mutilated remains of Greek sculpture
than any thing which I have met yet. In the paintings, even of the
most celebrated masters, there are often things which are excessively
annoying to me. I scarcely remember a master in whose works I have not
found a hand, or foot, or face, or feature so distorted, or coloring
at times so unnatural, or something so out of place and proportion in
the picture as very seriously to mar the pleasure that I derived from
it. In this statuary less is attempted, and all is more harmonious,
and one's ideas of proportion are never violated.
My favorite among all these remains is a mutilated statue which they
call the Venus de Milon. This is a statue which is so called from
having been dug up some years ago, piecemeal, in the Island of Milos.
There was quite a struggle for her between a French naval officer, the
English, and the Turks. The French officer carried her off like
another Helen, and she was given to Paris, old Louis Philippe being
bridegroom by proxy.
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