Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870

109. You were probably vexed, and tired, towards the close of my last Lecture, by the time it took us to arrive at the apparently simple conclusion that sculpture must only repr...

130. But now, may we not ask farther,--is it impossible for art such as this, prepared for the wise, to please the simple also? Without entering on the awkward questions of degr...

88. You remember that in distinguishing Imagination from Idolatry, I referred[21] you to the forms of passionate affection with which a noble people commonly regards the rivers...

You remember, I hope, how often in my preceding lectures I had to insist on the fact that Greek sculpture was essentially [Greek: aprosôpos];--independent, not only of the expre...

And however doubtful we may have remained as to the justice of Greek ideals, or propriety of Greek methods of representing them, we may be certain that the example of the Greeks...

165. Now, these are the first terms of all well-constructed bas-relief. The mass you have to treat consists of a piece of stone which, however you afterwards carve it, can but,...

[34] The actual bas-relief is on a coin, and the projection not above the twentieth of an inch, but I magnified it in photograph, for this Lecture, so as to represent a relief w...

Farther, to keep it from soiling the cloth, it will be wise to put this ridge beneath, round the bottom; for as the rim is the simplest possible form of continuous handle, so th...

199. Again and again, however, I have to remind you, with respect to these apparently frank and simple failures, that the Greek always intends you to think for yourself, and und...

[5] I had a real plowshare on my lecture-table; but it would interrupt the drift of the statements in the text too long if I attempted here to illustrate by figures the relation...

49. (III.) The third stage of national existence follows, in which, the imagination having now done its utmost, and being partly restrained by the sanctities of tradition, which...

You have probably often smiled at the legend itself, or avoided thinking of it, as revolting. It is, indeed, one of the most painful and childish of sacred myths; yet remember,...

1. I must pray the readers of the following Lectures to remember that the duty at present laid on me at Oxford is of an exceptionally complex character. Directly, it is to awake...

215. Do not, therefore, I entreat you, think that I speak with any purpose of defending one system of theology against another; least of all, reformed against Catholic theology....

"I have printed this Lecture separately, that strangers visiting the Galleries may be able to use it for reference to the drawings. But they must observe that its business is on...