The weight and
hardness, or lightness and softness, of the material, also count. If
people do not feel the expressiveness of these qualities directly,
they nevertheless do feel it indirectly, whenever they appreciate the
superior fitness of marble and bronze for the embodiment of the heroic
and supernatural, and of the light and fragile porcelain for the more
fleeting and trivial phases of life. Size, too, is expressive. There
is a daintiness and tenderness about a little statue, contrasting
strongly with the grandeur and majesty of one of heroic size. The usual
small size of the terra cotta figurines among the Greeks was appropriate
for the genre subjects which they so frequently represented, and an
Aphrodite in this material is rather the Earthly than the Heavenly
Love.
There is also an evident beauty of line in sculpture, similar to the
beauty of line in painting. The curved line is expressive of movement
and grace; the horizontal, of repose; the crooked line, of energy and
conflict. Compare, from this point of view, Rodin's "The Aged Helmet-
Maker's Wife" with his "Danaid,"--how expressive of struggle and
suffering are the uneven lines of the former, how voluptuous the curves
of the latter! Michelangelo is the great example of the use of tortuous
lines for the expression of conflict. Undulating vertical lines are
largely responsible for the "grace and dignity" of the classic
sculpture.
There is an organic unity of line in sculpture, similar again to that
in painting.
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