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VIII. THE REQUIEM 281
Greek art, pur sang. Let us leave, to-day, the narrow and degrading word “Byzantine.” There is but one Greek school, from Homer’s day down to the Doge Selvo’s; and these St. Mark’s mosaics are as truly wrought in the power of Dædalus, with the Greek constructive instinct, and in the power of Athena, with the Greek religious soul, as ever chest of Cypselus or shaft of Erechtheum.1 And therefore, whatever is represented here, be it flower or rock, animal or man, means more than it is in itself. Not sheep, these twelve innocent woolly things,-but the twelve voices of the gospel of heaven;-not palm-trees, these shafts of shooting stem and beaded fruit,-but the living grace of God in the heart, springing up in joy at Christ’s coming;-not a king, merely, this crowned creature in his sworded state,-but the justice of God in His eternal Law;-not a queen, nor a maid only, this Madonna in her purple shade,-but the love of God poured forth, in the wonderfulness that passes the love of woman. She may forget-yet will I not forget thee.2
93. And in this function of his art, remember, it does not matter to the Greek how far his image be perfect or not. That it should be understood is enough,-if it can be beautiful also, well; but its function is not beauty, but instruction. You cannot have purer examples of Greek art than the drawings on any good vase of the Marathonian time. Black figures on a red ground,-a few white scratches through them, marking the joints of their armour or the folds of their robes,-white circles for eyes,-pointed pyramids for beards,-you don’t suppose that in these the Greek workman thought he had given the likeness of gods? Yet here, to his imagination, were Athena, Poseidon, and Herakles,-and all the powers that guarded his land, and cleansed his soul, and led him in the way everlasting.3
1 [For the chest of Cypselus at Olympia-“made of cedar-wood, and on it are wrought figures, some of ivory, some of gold, and some of the cedar-wood itself”-see Pausanias, v. 17, 5. For “shaft of Erechtheum,” see Vol. IX. p. 390. Ruskin was fond of studying the pieces from the building which are in the British Museum: see Fors Clavigera, Letter 60, § 16.]
2 [Isaiah xlix. 15.]
3 [Psalms cxxxix. 24.]
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[Version 0.04: March 2008]
