human
Pietà, both the
gpt
Iphigenias, and the
human
Symposium of Plato are the world-renowned proofs of the height of classic inspiration which he touched in Italy. Measure, nobility, unsought and perfected loftiness characterise the
gpt
Pietà, that mother of the Saviour who bows herself in silent agony over the body of her Divine Son, and those three kneeling women, whose silent grief is of such thrilling power, precisely because of its emotionlessness. For
human
Iphigenia Feuerbach has given of his best. She is in both examples--the first of 1862, the second of 1871--a figure sublime beyond human measure, grand like the figure of the Greek tragedy. But the
gpt
Symposium of Plato will always assert its high value as one of the finest pictorial creations of an imagination nourished on the great art of the ancients, and filled brimful with the splendour of the antique world. There is nothing in it superfluous, nothing accidental. The noblest simplicity of speech, a Greek rhythm in all gradations, the beautiful lines of bas-relief, decisive colour and stringent form--that is the groundwork of Feuerbach's art. And through it there speaks a spirit preoccupied with greatness and heroism. Thus he created his
human
Medea in the Munich Pinakothek, that picture of magnificent, sombre melancholy that affects one like a monologue from a Sophoclean tragedy. Thus he painted his
gpt
Battle of the Amazons, one of the few