If we have succeeded in reproducing the rather complex physiognomy of Douris, we hope we have clearly indicated its two-fold character. His talent and his originality do not raise him above the conditions imposed upon his craft. It would be an error to ascribe genius to him. He owes his importance, on the one hand, to the disappearance of great paintings, and, on the other hand, to the innate qualities of the Greek race, which even invested popular works with freedom and beauty. Julius Lange, the Danish archÆologist, has said that to judge Greek painting from the vases is like judging the light of the sun by the reflection we receive from the moon. But if, in this regard, industrial art is inferior to the lost masterpieces, let us not forget that it is nearer to the people, whose thoughts it so forcibly expresses. So the anonymous sculptors of images in our cathedral reveal to us the mediÆval French soul far better than the great artists can.

With these thousand sketches upon fragile clay we can retrace an evolution which lasted four or five centuries, and created the art of drawing, as it is practised by all modern nations. Indeed, after long endeavours, the Greeks were the first who shattered the tyrannic conventions to which artists had conformed, in Egypt, Chaldea and Assyria. They refused to disjoint the human form on the pretext of showing it from a true anatomical point of view. For the artificial reality of the body drawn in sections, they substituted a living silhouette seized in rapid movement, rendered with all its irregularities of form and its lack of symmetry. This proved the victory of art over science. One became accustomed to figures half turned to the spectator, to perspective, to parts half hidden or suppressed, one learnt to consider Nature not as she is, but as one sees her. The orientation of art was completely changed.

The invention of foreshortening and of modelling by means of shadows belongs to the Greeks. Both had considerable influence on the Roman world, and later on modern times. We may compare these discoveries to those in physics or in chemistry which entirely revolutionized the domain of science. It is an error to suppose that the scientist alone is capable of discoveries which humanity at large is called upon to enjoy. In art the same action and reaction take place, and a solidarity uniting the past and present is not less powerful. Between an Egyptian fresco and an oil painting by Van Eyck there is scarcely anything in common as regards conception and process. Between a drawing by Douris and the Stratonice of Ingres a resemblance is very perceptible, almost a kind of brotherhood.

The drawings of Douris teach us to understand yet another thing. Greek painting at this period had a cause at heart which the entire fifth century upheld with passionate conviction—the belief that the aim of the plastic arts is the representation of man. After the Cretans and MycenÆans had derived such admirable inspirations from the vegetable kingdom, from the marine fauna and flora, after the picturesque studies of birds and deer which the Ionians had transmitted to the Corinthian and Attic potters, we see Greek painting gradually eliminating all this from design, in order to devote itself exclusively to the representation of the human form. Nothing can turn it aside from this course. Whether it is a question of gods and goddesses, heroes, or even citizens, it is always the human form in all its aspects, in all its attitudes, dignified or familiar, which the draughtsman observes. Nowhere has such complete absorption of the artistic imagination been seen. Later, after Alexander, the Greeks themselves somewhat modified their attitude, and learnt once more to contemplate non-human nature; but the limits within which Greek thought had voluntarily confined itself remained severe during the century of Pericles. According to an expression of Victor BÉrard, it was a garden of humanity in which man was the most beautiful plant. To this bias we owe some of the purest masterpieces of which humanity can boast. Those of sculpture are famous in all lands; those of painting were no less worthy of admiration, but we only can judge them by the designs on vases. Theseus and the Marathonian Bull on the kylix by Euphronios (Fig.12), the Memnon by Douris (Fig.8), or the Zeus carrying off a Woman upon an anonymous kylix in the Louvre (Fig.24) which is attributed to him, the Aphrodite on the Swan in the British Museum (Fig.7) by a somewhat later artist, bear comparison with the most beautiful drawings of the Renaissance. Never has the beauty of the human form in motion been rendered with more sincere joy. Here, again, the Greeks prepared the path for the moderns, teaching the dignity of man by proving him to be more important and necessary in art than all else. It is no longer Nature ruling and crushing with its immensity mankind ignorant of itself. It is human thought, on the contrary, projecting itself on the external world, and taking possession of it.

This is why we admire ancient art, and why a drawing by Douris tells us so many things. Doubtless Douris has his message. He never suspected it; he did not make it his aim; he was the unconscious instrument of a great people and of a great revolution. This it is which makes works of the past of such great value. Only time can show what they contained of beauty and of fertility, even unknown to their authors. The creative force animating them is beyond the individual; it springs from the depths of the race which produces them. The sculptor who fashioned the Venus of Melos could not foresee the fame his statue would achieve, which he probably executed after many other similar ones. Leonardo da Vinci would be greatly surprised at what we see in his Gioconda. Anatole France says: “Each generation imagines anew the antique masterpieces, and in this manner communicates to them a progressive immortality.” It is not that we are duped by a delusion, but time has done its work; moving on, it has discovered unexpected worth in certain objects.

Renan made the profound remark, “Admiration is historic.” Indeed, not only is distance necessary, but the wearing effect of centuries, to distinguish the good from the bad, the eternal from the perishable, to recognize the actual importance of a thought or an invention. Those who love to meditate will not go in vain to the Louvre to look at the kylix of Eos and Memnon. They will see a reflection of that which formed the grandeur and beauty of Greek painting during the most flourishing period of its history, and they will recognize in one of its noblest expressions an art for ever lost.