The text discusses the challenges and limitations of creating genuine beauty in art, emphasizing that the Ancients' ability to produce exquisite architectural ornamentation has not been matched by modern architects. It highlights the preciousness of the artistic relics of Antiquity as eternal models of good taste. It also mentions the unknown details of ancient artists' lives, noting four major schools of painting and sculpture in ancient Greece, with the Isle of Rhodes being particularly notable for preserving its tradition.
96 METHOD FOR LEARNING
To produce any real beauty; besides, this is entirely outside the realm of plausibility, since it is impossible to disguise the weight of the material to the viewer. The excessive use that the Moderns have made of these flying draperies, which are so rare in nature, is always abused in Sculpture, and very often in Painting. Finally, to say a word about the excellence of the Ancients' taste in the invention of Architecture's ornaments, and in their manner of working them, it is sufficient to note that Modern Architects have not been able since the Ancients to imagine any type of ornament that has been valued, or has gained long-standing esteem, except insofar as they have imitated the productions of the Ancients: it is still extremely rare to see them work in a manner as soft, and yet as refined as the Ancients did. Thus, these precious relics of Antiquity will always be the models of good taste and the rules of true beauty.
The names and details of the lives of these great Artists of Antiquity, who have so greatly contributed to the progress of the Arts through the masterpieces they left us as models, are unknown. All we know of these distant times is that there were four major Schools of Painting and Sculpture in Greece, one was in Corinth, another in Sicyon, the third in Athens, and the last on the Isle of Rhodes, which survived long after the decline of the others, because this famous Isle preserved its freedom until the Empire of Vespasian. It is undoubtedly this last school that provided the best Artists after the ruin of Corinth, and the subjugation of all of Greece under the Roman rule. Thus, it seems likely that the most beautiful statues