"Praxiteles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that was not the taste of the Athenians. They preferred the society of women who would not have made any scruple about sitting as models to Praxiteles; as you know, sir, very modest women in Italy did to Canova; one of whom, an Italian countess, being asked by an English lady, "how she could bear it?" answered, "Very well; there was a ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature. There lived, it is said, at Athens a great number of beautiful girls; Praxiteles drew them all one after another; then from these diverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed a single faultless beauty and created Venus. The man who first created a musical instrument, and who gave to harmony its rules and its laws, had for a long ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... a fine drawing of the Faun of Praxiteles, with some verses written beneath. The lines seemed to me full of vigor and harmony. They implied and breathed, too, such an intimacy with classical thought, that I was astonished when, in answer to my inquiry, she told ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... be more original or imaginative than the conception of the character of Donatello in Mr. Hawthorne's new romance. His likeness to the lovely statue of Praxiteles, his happy animal temperament, and the dim legend of his pedigree are combined with wonderful art to reconcile us to the notion of a Greek myth embodied in an Italian of the nineteenth century; and when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... Once in the possession of Praxiteles, if we may believe an antient epigram on the Gnidian Venus. ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers
... country. I almost expect you to say at these times that you have just been talking to some friend whom you met in the Via Sacra, about the latest news of Octavia or Livia; or have been listening to Aspasia's eloquence, or have been watching Praxiteles chiselling away at his latest Venus, while Phryne made complaint that she was ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... stand upon the golden-shadowed shore In naked boyish beauty, a strenuous three, Hearing the breakers' deep Olympic roar; Three young athletes poised on a forward limb, Mirrored like marble in the smooth wet sand, Three statues moulded by Praxiteles: The blue horizon rim Recedes, recedes upon a lovelier land, And England melts into the skies ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Praxiteles may have loved the clay he moulded,—for its smoothness and ductility under ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... 'Were Phidias and Praxiteles, then, so primeval? the world had lasted many a thousand years before their turn came. If you intend to begin at the beginning, why not go back at once to the garden of Eden, and there study ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the huge Greek illumination could die but slowly, Greece was growing uninteresting. For Pheidias of the earlier century, we have in Plato's time Praxiteles, whose carved gods are lounging and pretty nincom—- well, mortals; "they sink," says the Encyclopedia, "to the human level, or indeed, sometimes almost below it. They have grace and charm in a supreme degree, but the element of awe and reverence is ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... breastplates; and among these were scattered cavalry with cuirasses, whom the Persians call Clibanarii,[64] protected by coverings of iron breastplates, and girdled with belts of iron, so that you would fancy them statues polished by the hand of Praxiteles, rather than men. And the light circular plates of iron which surrounded their bodies, and covered all their limbs, were so well fitted to all their motions, that in whatever direction they had occasion ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Venus in Titian's Sacred and Profane Love, or his Ariadne at Madrid; or Raphael's Galatea; or Michael Angelo's Eve (on the Sistine vault) are all of them doubtless far more akin to the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, or to her who crouches in the Louvre, than is this Nemesis; but we must not forget that they are works on a scale more comparable with a marble statue; and that in works of which the scale is more similar to that of our engraving, Greek taste was often far more with Duerer than with Thausing. ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... can employ more of the time than in the winter. Mr. Leslie and myself rise at five o'clock in the morning and walk about a mile and a half to Burlington, where are the famous Elgin Marbles, the works of Phidias and Praxiteles, brought by Lord Elgin from Athens. From these we draw three hours every morning, wet or dry, before breakfast, and return home just as the bustle begins in London, for they are late risers in London. When we go out of a morning ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... wrong, Young fellow from Socrates' land? You, like a Hermes so lissome and strong, Fresh from the master Praxiteles' hand? So you're of Spartan birth? Descended, perhaps, from one of the band— Deathless in story and song— Who combed their long hair at Thermopylae's pass? Ah, I forget the straits, alas! More ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... on the whole graver. The petulant, boyish Cupid of Apuleius was become more like that "Lord, of terrible aspect," who stood at Dante's bedside and wept, or had at least grown to the manly earnestness of the Eros of Praxiteles. Set in relief amid the coarser matter of the book, this episode of Cupid and Psyche served to combine many lines of meditation, already familiar to Marius, into the ideal of a perfect imaginative love, centered upon a type of ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... Great was born. Two hundred and twenty years was the new temple in building, and each of its columns was the gift of a prince. All that the art of Greece could give was lavished upon the building. The hand of Praxiteles carved the altar, the magic pencil of Apelles adorned its walls with a picture of Alexander. Ephesus was also famous for its magic arts; and when the people had been turned to Christ by the preaching of S. Paul, they brought their books of conjuring and curious ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... Angelo and Rubens were driving at? He could not say; but he knew that only since 1895 had he begun to feel the Virgin or Venus as force, and not everywhere even so. At Chartres — perhaps at Lourdes — possibly at Cnidos if one could still find there the divinely naked Aphrodite of Praxiteles — but otherwise one must look for force to the goddesses of Indian mythology. The idea died out long ago in the German and English stock. St. Gaudens at Amiens was hardly less sensitive to the force of the female energy than Matthew Arnold at the Grande ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... back, pressed the electric switch, and turned, with leaping heart, to look into the face of my visitor. It was a face of the purest Greek beauty, a face that might have served as a model for Praxiteles; the skin had a golden pallor, which, with the crisp black hair and magnetic yet velvety eyes, suggested to my fancy that this was the young Antinoues risen from the Nile, whose wraith now appeared to me out of the night. I ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... (Minerva), the tutelary deity of Athens, from whom the city derived its name. Near this edifice stood a temple of Demeter (Ceres), containing statues of that goddess, of her daughter Persephone, and of Iacchus, all executed by Praxiteles; and beyond were several porticoes leading from the city gates to the outer Ceramicus, while the intervening space was occupied by various temples, the Gymnasium of Hermes, and the house of Polytion, the most magnificent private ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... long after genius ceased to soar to the heights of philosophy and poetry. The proudest triumphs of genius are in a realm which art can never approach, yet the wonders of art are still among the great triumphs of civilization. Zeuxis or Praxiteles may not have equaled Homer or Plato in profundity of genius, but it was only a great age which could have produced a Zeuxis or Praxiteles. I cannot place Raphael on so exalted a pinnacle as Luther, or Bacon, or Newton, and yet his fame will last as long ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... protest, Needs but behold the pourtraict of her part, If pourtray'd it might be by any living art; But living art may not least part expresse, Nor life-resembling pencil it can paint, All it were Zeuxis or Praxiteles— His daedale hand would faile and greatly faynt, And her perfections with his error taynt; Ne poet's wit that passeth painter farre— In picturing the parts of beauty ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... about it which suggested a certain amount of money and a certain amount of taste. There were decent water-colours in the drawing-room. Madonnas of acknowledged merit hung upon the stairs. A replica of the Hermes of Praxiteles—of course only the bust—stood in the hall with a real palm behind it. Agnes, in her slap-dash way, was a good housekeeper, and kept the pretty things well dusted. It was she who insisted on the strip of brown holland that led diagonally ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... foreign face and beautiful figure looked as much out of place behind the coffee urn as would the faun of Praxiteles at an afternoon reception, and a smothered sigh rose to his lips with the thought how utterly he was at a loss to comprehend her. It happened in the present case, as it often did, that his failure to understand arose chiefly from the fact that there was nothing ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... sculptor's room, he could not have been more familiar with the details of the studio—he painted with all the brilliancy of Titian, and with the correctness of Raphael, while his images in marble combined the softness of Praxiteles, and the nervous energy of Michael Angelo. All this with Prentiss was intuition—I believe that the whole was the spontaneous thought of the moment, the crude outlines that floated through his mind being filled up by the intuitive teachings ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... survive, but from notices of critics we know that he excelled especially in modelling horses and other animals. His two race-horses in memory of the victory of Hiero of Syracuse at Olympia in 468 were considered unsurpassable. However, it is related that Praxiteles removed the charioteer from one of the groups of Calamis and replaced it by one of his own statues "that the men of Calamis might not be inferior to his horses." Thus it would appear that Calamis was less successful in dealing with the human body, ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... is perfect in character, sentiment, and feature. If it were a picture, the resemblance might be half illusive and imaginary; but here, in this Pentelic marble, it is a substantial fact, and may be tested by absolute touch and measurement. Our friend Donatello is the very Faun of Praxiteles. Is it not ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... peristyle the walls were hung with beautiful pictures created by artists long since dead, Parrhasius and Apelles, Evenor and Zeuxis; each painting was framed with a panel of exquisite mosaic. Statuary of rarest loveliness by Phidias, Praxiteles and Scopas, Thrason, Myron, Pharax and Phradmon, stood between the pillars. Within the court were fragrant flowers of every shade, and in the centre towered one grand design in fountain form, from which came sprays of perfumed water, hiding the sultry ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Greek Archipelago; who had wandered through the galleries of the Vatican, and mused within the courts of the Alhambra; who had seen the fire-works on the carnival dome of St. Peter's, and the water-works of Versailles; the temples of Athens, and the Boboli gardens of Florence; the sculptures of Praxiteles, and the frescoes of Raphael; should exhibit such emotion as Picton exhibited, over a bushel-basket only half-filled with small-sized blue-nosed tubers. But Picton was only a man, and "Homo sum——" the rest of the sentence it is needless to quote. I saw at a glance ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... Gabii, now in the Louvre. The former (Fig. 4) is a youth of noble family, clad in the long dress necessary to protect from the wind a man driving a chariot. The latter (Fig. 5), a work of the school of Praxiteles, represents a young girl fastening her dress on her shoulder. Both are as free as they can be from any attempt at novelty or originality: yet no one with any taste could for a moment hesitate to pronounce them admirable. The object of the artist was to make works as perfect as possible. And to ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... talk.[14] And you must not despise this rude serviceableness of my body, neither this meanness of my dusty dress; for, pushing on in their strength from such things as these, that great Phidias revealed Zeus, and Polyclitus wrought out Hera, and Myron was praised, and Praxiteles marveled at: therefore are these men worshiped with ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... marine painter, flower painter, portrait painter, miniature painter, miniaturist, scene painter, sign painter, coach painter; engraver; Apelles^; sculptor, carver, chaser, modeler, figuriste^, statuary; Phidias, Praxiteles; Royal Academician. photographer, cinematographer, lensman, cameraman, camera technician, camera buff; wildlife photographer. Phr. photo ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the pick was set to work to clear out this orchestra, and almost the first stroke revealed one of the most admirable works of Greek sculpture that has descended to us, the Venus of Arles, an imitation or reproduction of the celebrated Venus of Praxiteles, now, unhappily, lost. This statue lay before the columns of the proscenium and had been saved from destruction by the ruins that had buried it. Head and body are almost intact, only the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... victim of some trick—has no other fiddle been substituted for the broken Straduarius? No!—'tis his own well-known fiddle, outside and in—the same delicate proportions, the same elegant neck, and the same swelling rotundity of contour that might have made it a model for the Praxiteles of violins. He placed the instrument against his shoulder and seized the bow. But all of a sudden he paused—a cold perspiration bedewed his face—his limbs could scarcely support him. What if the proof deceives him. What if—; but incertitude was intolerable, and he passed the bow over the strings. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Faun, Hewn with the lithe grace of Praxiteles; Globed pearls to please A sultan; golden veils that drop like lawn — How happy I could be with but a tithe Of your possessions, fortunate ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... crooked, and tapering to a point, no matter what color, the whole circle is set in a roar, and wa-ge-min is the word shouted aloud. It is the symbol of a thief in the cornfield. It is considered as the image of an old man stooping as he enters the lot. Had the chisel of Praxiteles been employed to produce this image, it could not more vividly bring to the minds of the merry group the idea of a pilferer of their ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... unconsciously joyous and dancing with all his might; and finally, the "Venus de Medici," a slender young girl with a small delicate head, not a goddess like her sister of Milo, but a perfect mortal and the work of some Praxiteles fond of "hetairae," at ease in a nude state and free from that somewhat mawkish delicacy and bashful coquetry which its copies, and the restored arms with their thin fingers by Bernini, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 7 - Italy, Sicily, and Greece (Part One) • Various
... Yes, not being a fool, she knows she is well-favoured—much as you do, no doubt. I mean that you cannot shave yourself every morning without being conscious that you are in the Greek mould. I could show you the engraving of a statue by Praxiteles which is absurdly like you. But this accident of nature ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... only a feeling of irritation at their holding-on place, but a streak of rheumatic-feeling pain up from it. On completing operations I went on and came upon the Ajumba in a state more approved of by Praxiteles than by the general public nowadays. They had found out about elephant ticks, so I went on and got an excellent start ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... son, Paul Veronese and Palma. Above them, in compartments, hang the portraits of the Doges; among which Marino Faliero is not; but his name only, inscribed on a kind of black pall. The Ganymede is a most exquisite little group, attributed to the age of Praxiteles; and not without reason even to the hand of ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... "Friends, Romans, countrymen"; return finally to the Capitoline Museum, nucleus and centre of the ancient mistress of the world, to gaze upon gods, senators, emperors, shining still in undiminished majesty; on the Antinous, the Amazon, the Juno, the Dying Gladiator, and the Grecian masterpiece of Praxiteles. ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... thunder, and bears the terrible impress of what he saw and heard on Mount Sinai: his profound eye is scrutinizing the mysteries he vaguely sees in his prophetic dreams. Is it the Moses of the Bible? I cannot say. Is it in this way Praxiteles and Phidias would have represented Lycurgus and Solon? We may deny it boldly. The legislators in their hands would have been the embodiment of law; they would have represented an abstraction in a form whose harmonious ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Greek courtesan, celebrated for her beauty; was the model to Praxiteles of his statue of Venus; accused of profaning the Eleusinian Mysteries, she was brought before the judges, to whom she exposed her person, but who acquitted her of the charge, to preserve to the artists the image of divine beauty thus ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... hieroglyphics and are broken into several pieces. One now stands on Monte Cavallo, in front of the great Quirinal Palace, betwixt the two well-known gigantic groups of men and horses, statues of Greek origin, supposed to be those of Castor and Pollux, executed by Pheidias and Praxiteles; and the other in the large open space in front of the great Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. Another of these bastard obelisks occupies a commanding position at the top of the Spanish Stairs, in front of the Church of Trinita dei Monti. It stood originally on ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... sculptor's first essay. But rude as they are, and childish as they look, these primitive productions of Greek art are of paramount interest to science, because we see in them the great-grandfathers of the masterpieces of Phidias and Praxiteles; they prove to us in the most certain manner that the artistic genius of the epoch of Pericles did not come suddenly down from heaven like Minerva from the head of Jove, but that it was the ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... and those of the daintiest Parisienne imaginable. As for her bewitching calves, they suggest the steps of a Jacob's ladder transporting one up to heaven; and her ravishing figure resembles the Venus of Cnidus, that immortal masterpiece sculptured by the chisel of Praxiteles in the 104th Olympiad. As for her eyes, her very soul is enshrined in their ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... specimens of the Eginetan school. Passing through the Apollo Hall, we enter the large hall of Bacchus, in which the progress of the art is distinctly apparent. A satyr, lying asleep on a goat-skin which he has thrown over a rock, is believed to be the work of Praxiteles. The relaxation of the figure and perfect repose of every limb, is wonderful. The countenance has traits of individuality which led me to think it might have been a portrait, perhaps ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... condition. Thus, the stormy glory of her dark hair, great masses that ran a riot of shining ripples and waves. And the straight line of the nose, not too thin, yet fine enough for the rapture of a Praxiteles. And the pink daintiness of the ear-tips, which peered warmly from beneath the pall of tresses. One could know nothing accurately of the complexion now. But it were easy to guess that in happier places it would show of a purity to ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... Admiration Society,' which at present converts its consistent servile members into Damon and Pythias, but punishes any violation of its canons with hatred dire and inextinguishable. Were I blessed with the genius of Praxiteles or of Angelo, I would chisel and bequeath to the world a noble statue,—typical of that rare, fearless friendship, which, walking through the lazaretto of diseased and morbid natures, bears not honied draughts alone, but scalpel, ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... master-piece was the picture of Ialysus, the tutelary hero of Rhodes, where he lived. He is said to have spent seven years on it. Nicias, of Athens, was celebrated for the delicacy with which he painted females. He was also famous as an encaustic painter, and was employed by Praxiteles to apply his art to his statues. The glorious art of these masters, as far as regards light, tone, and local colors, is lost to us, and we know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later imitations. It is not thus necessary to speak at length of the various schools ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... Rome, Florence, and Naples had inherited the masterpieces of antiquity; and the manuscripts of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides had come (thanks to the conquest of Mahomet II) to rejoin the statue of Xanthippus and the works of Phidias and Praxiteles. The principal sovereigns of Italy had come to understand, when they let their eyes dwell upon the fat harvests, the wealthy villages, the flourishing manufactories, and the marvellous churches, and then compared with them the poor and rude nations of fighting men who surrounded them ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Denderah, and I remembered the legend of the lovely Lais, who, when she began to age, covered herself from the eyes of men with a veil, and went every day at evening to look upon her statue, in which the genius of Praxiteles had rendered permanent the beauty the woman could not keep. One evening, hanging to the statue's pedestal by a garland of red roses, the sculptor found a mirror, upon the polished disk of which were ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... bare arm, worthy of Phidias or Praxiteles, whiter than Pantelican marble, drew aside the curtain. The Radiant's heart stopped beating with emotion. ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... sculptor. You are our Praxiteles, or rather our Lysippus. You are almost the only man of this generation who has been able to mould and chisel forms living enough to draw the idle public away from the popular paintings into the usually deserted Lecture-room, and people who have seen your ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... of these strong, justly modeled sinews were like the play of steel under satin and their smoothness was as rhythmic and full of power as some young gladiator's, who might have stirred the appreciation of Phidias or Praxiteles. When at last he had burned his mental restlessness into physical weariness, Burton halted and stood with his shoulders thrown back and his head erect, the breathing of chest and abdomen as regular and deep as the sequence of waves at flood tide. Yamuro went out ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... soothe as well as enrapture the eye: the tenderness of the Madonnas, the gentleness of the Florentine ladies and youths, as Verrocchio and Mino da Fiesole, Donatello, and Pollaiuolo moulded them, calm one where the perfection of Phidias and Praxiteles excites. Hence the very special charm of the Bargello, whose plastic treasures are comparatively few and picked, as against the heaped profusion of paint in the Uffizi and the Pitti. It pairs off rather with the Accademia, and has this further ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... a given masterpiece—a Faun, a Venus, or a Discobolus—at prices from L50 or so upwards. It followed also that there were numerous imitations passed off as originals, and many a wealthy man boasted of possessing an "original" or a genuine "old master"—a Praxiteles or a Lysippus—when he owned but a clever reproduction. The same remark applies, not only to the statues, but to the genre-groups and animal forms of which such fine examples can be seen in the Vatican Museum, and also to silver cups by "Mentor" or to bronzes of ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... valuable, have been thrown into the lime-kiln or used as building stone or wantonly mutilated or ruined by neglect. There does not exist to-day a single certified original work by any one of the six greatest sculptors of Greece, except the Hermes of Praxiteles (see page 221). Copies are more plentiful. As nowadays many museums and private houses have on their walls copies of paintings by the "old masters," so, and far more usually, the public and private ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... her father's gorgeous tent To listen for his coming. Her loose hair Was resting on her shoulders like a cloud Floating around a statue, and the wind, Just swaying her light robe, reveal'd a shape Praxiteles might worship. She had clasp'd Her hands upon her bosom, and had raised Her beautiful dark Jewish eyes to heaven, Till the long lashes lay upon her brow. Her lips were slightly parted, like the ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... proceeded from the head of the glorious and guilty archangel amid a whirlpool of smoke? I know not what passes in the sacred courts; but here below Neamede, Phila, Lais, Gnathene, the witty Phryne, the despair of the pencil of Apelles, and the chisel of Praxiteles, Leena, beloved of Harmodias, the two sisters named Aphyes, because they were small and had large eyes, Dorica, the fillet of whose locks and embalmed robe were consecrated in the temple of Venus,—all these enchantresses knew only the perfumes of Arabia. It ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... a flurry of activity with the fly whacker, darting here and there as his eyes fell upon one of the insects; but returning always calmly to his discourse with an air of never having moved from his chair. He talked to me of Praxiteles, among other things. What should an Arizona cowboy know of Praxiteles? and why should any one talk to him of that worthy Greek save as a subtle and hidden expression of contempt? That was my feeling. My senses and mental apperceptions were by now a ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... competent knowledge of, or love for pictures, do acquire a respect for art, connect it with classical poetry—the highest poetry, with Homer, with the Greek drama, with all they have read of the venerated works of Phidias, Praxiteles, and Apelles; and having no too nice discrimination, are credulous of, or anticipate by remembering what has been done and valued—the honour of the profession. We assert that, by bringing the precepts of art within the pale ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... Reynolds observed, "he speaks the language of an artist:" as in his account of the glazing method of Apelles; the manner in which Protogenes embodied his colours; and the term of art circumlitio, by which Nicias gave "the line of correctness to the models of Praxiteles;" the foreshortening the bull by Pausias, and throwing his shade on the crowd—showing a forcible chiaroscuro. "Of Quintilian, whose information is all relative to style, the tenth chapter of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... his celebrated "Defence," 2nd edition, p. 155. "If Minos and Praxiteles are inspired in the same sense as Moses and Christ, then the inventor of lucifer matches, as well as the inventor of the Eureka shirts, must ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... a lower pedestal than Praxiteles in mankind's esteem it is because his genius was not so brilliant and not because the art of acting is less noble than that of sculpture. Talma was more eminent than David. Bernhardt is as noted and notable as Millet, Irving ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... ranging the world before breakfast in quest of adventure or a point of view, all in white, not so very tall perhaps, but uncommonly upright—Sandra Williams got Jacob's head exactly on a level with the head of the Hermes of Praxiteles. The comparison was all in his favour. But before she could say a single word he had gone out of the ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... arithmetical importance. With these are the immaculate daughters of itinerant Italian musicians—maids whose souls are unsoiled amidst the contaminations of our streets, and whose acquaintance with the art of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Daedalus and Scopas, is the more admirable, because entirely derived from loving study of the inexpensive collections vended by the plaster-of-Paris man round the corner. When such heroines are wooed by the nephews of Dukes, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... fair, with a fine, small, oval, well-proportioned face, sparkling black and speaking eyes, good teeth, pretty red lips, very dark hair, and plenty of it, hanging over her face and neck in curls of every size; her arms and bust were such as Phidias and Praxiteles might have copied; her waist was slender; her hands and feet small and beautiful. I used often to think it was a great pity that such a love as she was should not be matched with some equally good specimen of our sex; and I had long fixed on my friend Talbot as the person best adapted to command ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... suppose that old schemer, her father, sold her to him. Her eyes remind one of forgotten fairy tales of angels. Can anything be so sweet as that little nose and those baby-red lips. She has a soul, too, peeping out of the blue when she looks up at one. She reminds me of Praxiteles' Psyche when she looks down. Why did I not meet her long ago? I believe I ought not to stay now—something tells me I shall fall deeply into this. And what a voice!—as gentle and caressing as a tender ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... "And, as Praxiteles did by his glass, when he saw a scurvy face in it, brake it to pieces, but for that one, he saw many more as bad in a moment."—Part ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... cloth were drawn around the eyes of Praxiteles' statue of Love," says Bulwer, "the face looked grave and sad; but as the bandage was removed, a beautiful smile would overspread the countenance. Even so does the removal of the veil of ignorance from the eyes of the mind bring radiant happiness ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... world is sure to evolve. Our age that goes everywhere, knows everybody's business, and religiously reads only "the last edition," produces a Bill Nye, a Sam Jones, a Teddy Roosevelt, a DeWitt Talmage, a Hopkinson Smith, a Sam Walter Foss, a Victor Herbert; but it is not at all likely to produce a Praxiteles, a Michelangelo, a Rembrandt, an Immanuel Kant or ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... a man or a woman—this is the sin of Prometheus. Such triumphs in the annals of sculpture may be counted, as we may count the few poets among men. Michael Angelo, Michel Columb, Jean Goujon, Phidias, Praxiteles, Polycletes, Puget, Canova, Albert Durer, are the brothers of Milton, Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Tasso, Homer, and Moliere. And such an achievement is so stupendous that a single statue is enough to make a man immortal, as Figaro, Lovelace, and Manon Lescaut have immortalized Beaumarchais, Richardson, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... will that we are to serve and gain by wooing. I abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection: and this madness is, methinks, cousin-german to that of the boy who would needs pollute the beautiful statue of Venus made by Praxiteles; or that of the furious Egyptian, who violated the dead carcase of a woman he was embalming: which was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses of beautiful young women, of those of good ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... false as the song of the Sirens or the guile of the Loreley. Crusaders in armor brandished their lances there in evidence that Michael Angelo Bivins never sent from Manhattan the bit of white paper to redeem them. Antignone—usually wearing a Leatherstonepaugh bonnet—mourned that Praxiteles Periwinkle faded out of the vistas of Rome to the banks of the Thames without her. Dancing Floras seemed joyous that they had not gone wandering among the Theban Colossi with Zefferino, instead of staying to pay for his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... creations of long-forgotten ages and races a strong witchcraft was pent, and that a man might grow to give his heart and soul to them. My uncle could give me the date of every object. This statuette is a Praxiteles; this picture a Guido Reni; Benvenuto Cellini was the owner of this goblet; and this sword was that of ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... in the barbarian a new power. From the apparent death of Grecian art Roman art was born. "Cyclops forging iron for Vulcan could not stand against Pericles forging thought for Greece." The barbarian's club which destroyed the Grecian statues was no match for the chisel of Phidias and Praxiteles. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... triumphs of suffering innocence, false witnesses; and confoundest perjury, and dost reverse the sentences of unrighteous judges;—thou buildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles—beyond the splendour of Babylon and Hekatompylos, and "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep" callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties and the blessed household countenances cleansed from ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... her worshippers to be placed upon her primitive statue; and when a new and worthier representation of the goddess was placed in the temple in the fourth century, we are informed by inscriptions that dedicated garments were sometimes hung upon it, even though it was a statue from the hand of Praxiteles. It sometimes happened that the old and the new statues stood side by side in the same temple, or in adjacent temples, and they seem then to exemplify the two kinds of idolatry—the literal and the imaginative—the one being the actual subject of the rites ceremonially observed, ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner
... and the sex, and the occupations of life, refrained from attempting the colossal and ideal majesty of a divinity; and when one of these sculptors, whose skill was pre-eminent in casting animals, had exquisitely wrought the glowing coursers for a triumphal car, he requested the aid of Praxiteles to place the driver in the chariot, that his work might not be disgraced by a human form of inferior beauty to his animals. Alluding to the devotion of an ancient sculptor to his labours, Madame de Stael has finely said, "The history of ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... which will otherwise appear equally absurd and presumptuous. It must be want of taste that prevents my feeling that enthusiastic admiration with which others are inspired at sight of this statue: a statue which in reputation equals that of Cupid by Praxiteles, which brought such a concourse of strangers of old to the little town of Thespiae. I cannot help thinking that there is no beauty in the features of Venus; and that the attitude is aukward and out of character. It is a bad plea to urge that the antients ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... obelisk of bronze or the equestrian statue of some royal hero: I observed a theatre with a lofty Corinthian portico, and a pediment brilliantly painted in fresco with designs appropriate to its purpose; an Ionic museum of sculpture, worthy to enshrine the works of a Phidias or a Praxiteles; and a palace for the painter, of which I was told the first stone had been rightly laid on the birthday of Raffaelle. But what struck me most in this city, more than its galleries, temples, and palaces, its magnificent buildings, splendid paintings, and consummate statues, was ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... the satire soared rather above the heads of the audience. Foote admits as much in his preface to the published play: 'I was always apprehensive that the subject of the following piece was too abstracted and singular for the comprehension of a mixed assembly. Juno, Lucina, Jupiter Tonans, Phidias, Praxiteles, with the other gentlemen and ladies of antiquity, were, I daresay, utterly unknown to my very good friends of the gallery; nor, to speak the truth, do I believe they had many acquaintances in the other parts of the house.' Accordingly Taste, ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of old Greece are not better than such works; and as we can trace the onward course of those ancient masters of art from the rude outlines on the vases of Etruria, to the glorious works of Phidias and Praxiteles—even so, if we wish to know the true course of the revival of modern art, must we trace it in the sculpture, wall-painting, and missal-drawing, of the middle ages, until we find it assume a more definite and better-regulated style ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... world through in whatsoever part, And scan each best known masterpiece of art, In Phidias or Praxiteles or Apelles, You will find nothing that done ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... smile, not absolutely free from mockery, parted his lips. "From you I should no more have a secret than from the Cupid by Praxiteles, in my study ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that art must not excite desire, said Lynch. I told you that one day I wrote my name in pencil on the backside of the Venus of Praxiteles in the Museum. Was ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... a story of a youth who fell in love with Praxiteles' statue of Aphrodite: see Imagines, Sec. 4. He tells the story more elaborately ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... peerless art—a masterpiece Doubtless unmatched by even classic Greece In heyday of Praxiteles.—Alone It loomed in lordly grandeur all its own. And steadfast, too, for weeks and weeks it stood, The admiration of the neighborhood As well as of the children Noey sought Only to honor in the work he wrought. The traveler paid it tribute, as he passed Along the highway—paused ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... rhetoricians and logicians stand Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, the two Catos, and Lord Bacon; among orators, Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, Mirabeau, Burke, Webster and Clay; among poets, Homer, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare; among painters and sculptors, Phidias, Parrhasius, Zenxis, Praxiteles, Scopas, Michael Angelo, Raphael and Rubens; among philanthropists, John Howard; among inventors, Archimedes, Watt, Fulton, Arkwright, Whitney and Morse; among astronomers, Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... formation of any definite mood, and to set up what is most hostile to all mood, to all unity of being: comparison, analysis, classification. You may know quite exactly the difference between Giotto and Simon Martini, between a Ferrarese and a Venetian, between Praxiteles and Scopas; and yet be ignorant of the meaning which any of these might have in your life, and unconscious of the changes they might work in your being. And this, I fear, is often the case with connoisseurs and archaeologists, ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... early years of life, before the framework of valuations has become fixed. What young man nursed on Shelley's poetry has not become a lover of freedom and an active force against all oppression? But even in maturer years art may work in this way. One cannot live constantly with the "Hermes" of Praxiteles without something of its serenity entering into one's soul to purge passion of violence, or with Goethe's poetry without its wisdom making one wise to live. The effect is not to cause any particular act, but so ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... with forethought and unwearying assiduity tend to make her husband and children love her and regard her as a paragon of domestic policy. Her husband's affection and her children's affection are all the world to her; music and painting and poetry, Mr. Ruskin, Phidias, Praxiteles, Holman Hunt, and Mr. Whistler pale away into shadows of shadows in presence of the indications of love she receives from that baby. And this intense single-minded love elevates her within its own compass. ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... could, therefore, be made more directly a compliment to him. Even under these circumstances, however, the guest of the evening occupied an inconspicuous place at the reporters' table, while he was represented on the chairman's right by the bust of Poseidon, hastily modelled for the occasion by Praxiteles, and dedicated to Themistocles, who was a plain man, but whose portrait, even if he had been handsome, it was thought would not have looked well in such a position at a time when portrait-statuary was unknown. The only direct allusion to him was in the opening toast, "The Dewey ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... strict house of Pomponia, where modesty was observed, even when women were by themselves, the maiden, wonderful as a wonderful dream, harmonious as a work of Praxiteles or as a song, stood alarmed, blushing from modesty, with knees pressed together, with her hands on her bosom, and downcast eyes. At last, raising her arms with sudden movement, she removed the pins which held her hair, and in one moment, with one shake ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... masterpiece of ancient art we eagerly looked for was the marble Faun of Praxiteles, around which the graceful genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne has woven such a delicate web of romance, the figure itself being inimitably described in the opening chapter. But this and other immortal works are made familiar to us by so many gifted ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... reached the highest perfection; and poetry exhibited all the grace and vigor of the Athenian imagination. And though time has effaced all traces of the pencil of Parrhasius, Zeuxis, and Apelles, posterity has assigned them a place in the temple of fame beside Phidias and Praxiteles, whose works are, even at the present day, unrivalled for classical purity of design and perfection of execution. And after the city had passed her noon in art, and in political greatness, she became the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... upright in a high, carved chair, and so placed that the pointed leaves of the palm which rose above her cast sharp, star-shaped shadows over the broad folds of her white dress. One hand, as white, as cold, as heavily perfect as the sculpture of a Praxiteles or a Phidias, rested with drooping fingers on the arm of the chair. The other pressed the pages of a great book which lay open on the lady's knee. Her face was turned toward the visitor, and her eyes examined his face; calmly ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... habits were mediaeval; opposed to the open-air life, the physical training and the materialistic religion of Antiquity. The surroundings of Masaccio and of Signorelli, nay, even of Raphael, were very different from those of Phidias or Praxiteles. Let us think what were the daily and hourly impressions given by the Renaissance to its artists. Large towns, in which thousands of human beings were crowded together, in narrow, gloomy streets, with but a strip of blue visible between the ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... monastic architects who planned and fashioned the fretted towers of Gloucester, the stern solidity of Durham, the fairy steeple of Strasburg, or the delicate pinnacles of Milan, the praise due to them of being genuine poets of the immortal Epic? Phidas and Praxiteles, Canova and Thorswaldsen, are in this view real authors, as undoubtedly as Homer or Dante, Sallust or Racine; and to rise highest in this argument, the heavens and the earth are but mighty scrolls of an Omniscient Author, fairly ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... in a melodious voice, quoted some scraps of guide-book. Rosamund did not find what she wanted among them. She knew already about the ruins, about the Nike of Paeonius and the Hermes of Praxiteles. So she left the young Greek to his waking dream, and possessed her soul in a patience that was not difficult. She liked to dwell in anticipation. And she felt that any secret this land was about to reveal to her would be, must ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... individual—or in civil polity, have we advanced? Has liberty of action kept pace with liberty of opinion? Are Americans as truly free to-day as they certainly were fifty years ago? In aesthetics do we surpass Phidias and Praxiteles, Raphael and Michael Angelo? Is our music more perfect than Pergolesi's or Mozart's? Can we exhibit any marvels of architecture that excel the glory of Philae, Athens, Paestum, and Agra? Are wars less bloody, or is crime less rampant? ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Contrary to modern impression, the average Greek did not conceive of Hermes as a beautiful youth. He was a grave, bearded man. The youthful aspect came through the manipulation of the Hermes myths by the master sculptors—e.g. Praxiteles. ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... as well as Marina, delighted in the game. Seeing that Bellino was smiling, I kissed him likewise, and his half-open ruffle attracting my hand, I ventured and went in without resistance. The chisel of Praxiteles had never ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... proof of the first assertion it will be enough to mention such names as those of Solon, Themistokles, Perikles, and Demosthenes; Isokrates and Lysias; Aristophanes and Menander; Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides; Pheidias and Praxiteles; Sokrates and Plato; Thukydides and Xenophon: remembering that these men, distinguished for such different kinds of achievement, but like each other in consummateness of culture, were all produced within one town in the course of three centuries. At no other time ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... devastating large tracts of fertile land; it creates swamps in the lowlands, and impedes the outflow of water to the sea. These ravenous fiumare have become a feature in Calabrian scenery; underneath one of the most terrible of them lies the birthplace of Praxiteles. Dry or half-dry during the warm months, and of formidable breadth, such torrent-beds—the stagnant water at their skirts—are ideal breeding-places for the anophelines from their mouth up to a height of 250 metres. So it comes about that, within recent times, rivers ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... discussed in away and rambles along | artists are mentioned, | the last lecture. The for the period, | and their many works | rest of the hour is touching on every | confuse us. We memorize| spent in explanation of subject. We never | Praxiteles, Phidias, | difficult points and in complete a chapter or | Myron, the ancient | the application of what topic. The succeeding | cairns, the parts of an| we learned of industry hour we take the next | ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... a slovenly person or dirty clothes repel you; such were the conditions of that Phidias who produced the Zeus, of Polyclitus who created the Hera, of the much-lauded Myron, of the admired Praxiteles; and all these are worshipped with the Gods. If you should come to be counted among them, you will surely have fame enough for yourself through all the world, you will make your father the envy of all fathers, and bring your ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... offerings being fruits and honey, and undressed wool—were still there. The statue was gone. Some said it had been destroyed by the fall of the cliff; some were not sure that it had ever been there at all. And meanwhile Praxiteles had already brought to perfection (Paus. 1, 2, sec. 4) the ideal of Demeter, mother-like, as Here—whom we still call Juno now—but softer-featured, and ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... when I think that it is for beings like you to whom I speak, for whom another and fairer world is to be prepared, it loses again much of its force. And when I think of the great and good of other times, of Homer and Hesiod, of Phidias and Praxiteles, of Socrates and Plato, and of what the mind of man has in them, and in others as great and good, accomplished, the objection which you urge loses all its force. I see and feel that man has been made ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... therefore specially favored Messana, and the district of Messana was supposed to have been scourged by him with lighter rods than those used elsewhere in Sicily. But this man Heius had a chapel, very sacred, in which were preserved four specially beautiful images. There was a Cupid by Praxiteles, and a bronze Hercules by Myro, and two Can[oe]phrae by Polycletus. These were treasures which all the world came to see, and which were open to be seen by all the world. These Verres took away, and caused accounts to be forged in which it ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... works of the greatest Grecian sculptors, he told the packers that if they broke his Venus or his Apollo, he would force them to restore the limbs which should be wanting. A head by a hewer of milestones joined to a bosom by Praxiteles would not surprise or shock us ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the wood show limbs naked from thigh to toe, smooth as moulded bronze, and proportioned as if cut by the chisel of Praxiteles. Their bodies above also nude; but here again differing from the red men of the prairies. No daub and disfigurement of chalk, charcoal, vermilion, or other garish pigment; but clear skins showing the lustrous hue of health, of ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Marathon, of Leonidas and Thermopylae, and of Salamis; let her show pictures of Athens, the most splendid city of ancient Greece, of the Acropolis, the Parthenon, the Venus of Milo, the Hermes of Praxiteles, the Discus Thrower, ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... that part of philosophy. Swift loves to go out of his way to find privation or distress, and has no notion of Epicurean wisdom; for my part, I think the use of knowledge is to make us happier. I would compare the mind to the beautiful statue of Love by Praxiteles. When its eyes were bandaged the countenance seemed grave and sad, but the moment you removed the bandage the most serene and enchanting smile diffused ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
