AUSTRIA. 
13 
lookecl upon as a technical preparation for the comprehension of 
art, it follows, tliat the pupil, as soon as he is able correctly to 
reproduce these “ Forms in Rhythm,” will have to take up the truly 
educational study of the more intellectual human form. Here, 
through forms, he will make the acquaintance of souls, will learn 
to distinguish eharacters, and at the same tune will become 
familiär with art in its masterworks, while acquiring technical 
execution by the study of well-chosen models. All the French 
drawing-copies lately published Start from this point of view, 
and our time possesses an invaluable aid in this respect, in the 
Photographie facsimiles. The road in figure-drawing must lead 
from the characteristic, the glaring, the striking, to the classical 
repose of the antique. The forms of a Phidias would be as little 
in place in the first stages of figure-drawing, as the works of 
Sophocles or JEschylus in an elementary reader. And in tliose 
schools where, in spite of these truths, instruction began with 
the antique, figure-drawing remained only ornamental drawing 
of another kind, while a more delicate comprehension of the nature 
of man, a penetration into the soul, was made impossible. The 
way for the antique must be prepared by the masterpieces of the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Leonardo’s Apostles, Raphael’s 
heads from the Camera della Segnatura, &c., are models, which 
in their forms are more akin to the imagination of youth, be- 
cause they are Creations pulsating with life. It belongs to a 
higher stage of development to comprehend the beauty of the 
Zeus Otricoli. Although anatomists and artists, in times gone by, 
have repeatedly endeavored to construct the human figure accord- 
ing to a definite Canon, and to create an ideal of proportions which 
might serve as a basis for aesthetic conceptions, art has never con- 
sented to accept these theories, nor must they be accepted for 
instruction. If proportions are to be spoken of in figure-drawing, 
they must be confined solely to the laws of growth of tlie bones, 
to the definite anatomical principles, in which modern investiga- 
tions in this Science have given such beautiful results for art; but 
all shallow general receipts, which are at varianee with the laws of 
nature, must be kept away. Indeed, nature still infolds many 
secrets in her variations, which cause the intellect to reflect in 
youth, at the time when impressions are most vivid, and recep- 
tivity is at its height.