Still, if Mr.Ruskin had, like Brunn in his _Gotteridealen_, selected heads like those of the Demeter of Cnidus or the Hera Farnese to illustrate his theme, instead of a series of heads on coins magnified to many times the size for which they were designed, he could hardly have written the passages just quoted.

But the second of those passages itself supplies us with another clue.

In this estimate of Greek sculpture there is throughout implied a comparison with Christian, and above all with Florentine art, and its desire to "...

bring the invisible full into play; Let the visible go to the dogs; what matters ?" It is evident that the expression of the invisible, of character and individuality, will be more striking and obvious in an art which lets them "shine through the flesh they fray" than in the case of the Greek sculptors whose respect and even passionate admiration for the human body would not allow them thus to transfigure it, at least in their statues of the gods, and led them to seek for subtler methods of expression by means of the flesh and in harmony with its nature.

Their expression of character and emotion is rendered in terms of a beautiful and healthy body.