LATER GREEK SCULPTURE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON EAST AND WEST.
By A. W. Lawrence. (Jonathan Cape. 25s.)—The title of this very able essay may deter some readers from looking into it. For it is often assumed that sculpture later than Phidias is unimportant. But a glance through Mr. Lawrence's numerous and excellent plates would reassure the doubters. A period of sculpture which includes the Victory of Samothraee at the Louvre, the Mourning Woman in the British Museum, the Dying Gaul in the Capi- toline Museum, the Venus of Milo and the recently discovered Venus of Cyrene, and other superb works, is not to be dis- missed hastily as decadent. Mr. Lawrence's object is to show concisely how the art of sculpture developed through the three centuries before Christ, from Alexander to Augustus, and further to trace the influence of Greek art in Asia, including India in the Gandhara period and China. Hellenistic work has not the repose of the older schools, but it is astonishingly alive and its technique is wonderful. For that reason it exerted a far-reaching influence, both within the Roman Empire and far beyond it into Scythia and Cathay. Mr. Lawrence gives a full apparatus of notes for the scholar, but his text is distinctly readable and often witty. He observes, for example, that portrait sculptures of the fourth century before Christ have an intense look," and those of the next century are " strained and lowering." " Such an expression was, of course, highly approved by the military monarchs, as it was designed to increase the impressiveness of their appear- ance, and it is present (by nature or design) on the faces of modern Latin autocrats."
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