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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ...art nothing remains Decadence of i i I „,,,, Mythological after the humanization ot the gods but decadence Art. and death. Greek art started from the earth and had elevated the human form to reach the gods on their heights; it descends from those heights to make men of the gods and thus concludes the parabola of its course. It can no longer find new forms for the gods, for it has stifled and suppressed the divine ideal; the vein of its creative power is exhausted. Nothing remains for it but to continue the process of humanization, leaving the gods alone and representing men. At first the human form was used to clothe divinity, but now it serves to cover men. At first, art idealized by making more beautiful, j now it idealizes ugliness also. For the first time--unless, indeed, we should recognize a similar stage in Mycenaean art--man becomes in himself the aim of art. This is the Hellenistic period. After the third centuiy B.c. we cannot indicate with certainty any figure of a god which represents a new ideal type. Greek art from this point onward, and Roman art also, live on the inheritance of the past, copying and re-adapting with few variations. Religion is neglected as a source of inspiration and art follows the paths of men: genre scenes, ethnical and social types and realistic portraits are the favourite subjects. And if art still treats mythical scenes it makes of the myth a human drama: the Laocoon and the Marsyas are examples of this. But as the old myths on which art had lived hitherto, being myths of action and not of passion, were not adapted to the new phase of art, subjects were sought in stories from the mythographic collections of the erudite, and also states of mind, violent passions, all the subjects which even when projected into the...