Note 929 — Chapter VIII · EDUCATION OF THE SPARTANS, CRETANS, ARCADIANS, ETC.

It is remarked by Winkelmann that Rubens painted the figures of Flemings after many years’ residence in Italy.—i. 60. The Greek grew up from infancy in the presence of the beauty he afterwards represented: his mother, his sisters, his father, and all around him. What he saw constituted the basis of what he painted or sculptured. In most modern nations the school models of our youth are Greek; but their home models, and which are to them models from the cradle, are of a different style. Hence they are under two sets of influences, the one neutralising the other, and producing that coldness which the mock classical exhibits. This may, perhaps, be one cause of the slow progress of art among us.