It is clear that a Greek artist could not have, in the case of a nude female statue, the same choice of types constantly present to his observation and his memory as he had in the case of male statues; and the individuality of the model, however beautiful, would thus tend to assert itself against the type.

Thus personality and individual character, "the ultimate condition of beauty," to use Mr.Ruskin's words, in modern as in Tuscan art, comes much nearer to expression in the fourth century than in the fifth.

But a study of such a statue as the Cnidian Aphrodite shows us nevertheless that in the beauty of the type and the avoidance of the accidental, the art of Praxiteles was as far removed from realism as it was from the vague generalisation of Graeco-Roman and modern pseudo-classical art.

It is full of life and individuality, but it is the individuality of a character realised within his mind by the artist, not merely copied from the human model he set before him.
Another method by which the motive becomes prominent in the art of the fourth century is to be seen in the interpretation of mythological conceptions.

These are realised and embodied in statues; but the statues offer a new, sometimes, it seems, almost an accidental and trifling version of a solemn religious conception; it appears as if the artist were playing with a mythological subject.