The Strangford "Apollo" (Fig. 100) is of uncertain provenience,
but is nearly related in style to the marbles of Aegina. This
statue, by the position of body, legs, and head, belongs to the
series of "Apollo" figures discussed above (pages 129-32); but the
arms were no longer attached to the sides, and were probably bent
at the elbows. The most obvious traces of a lingering archaism,
besides the rigidity of the attitude, are the narrowness of the
hips and the formal arrangement of the hair, with its double row
of snail-shell curls. The statue has been spoken of by a high
authority [Footnote: Newton, "Essays on Art and Archaeology" page
81.] as showing only "a meager and painful rendering of nature."
That is one way of looking at it. But there is another way, which
has been finely expressed by Pater, in an essay on "The Marbles of
Aegina": "As art which has passed its prime has sometimes the
charm of an absolute refinement in taste and workmanship, so
immature art also, as we now see, has its own attractiveness in
the naivete, the freshness of spirit, which finds power and
interest in simple motives of feeling, and in the freshness of
hand, which has a sense of enjoyment in mechanical processes still
performed unmechanically, in the spending of care and intelligence
on every touch.
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