Method for Learning

... preserved from Roman antiquity. The character of the face is very noble; and although it indicates a melancholy nature, it has a grace combined with great beauty. The sculptor has managed to depict this portrait in a very grand manner, without delving into details that seemed to require accuracy for resemblance, which might not have aligned with the beautiful and broad style in which the rest of the figure is executed. This difficulty will seem considerable to any artist who has faced the necessity of making a head resemble a nude body, something rarely achieved today, whether in painting or sculpture. This is not to criticize our French artists; rather, it suggests that it is perhaps impossible in France, not due to the artist's shortcoming, but due to the imperfection of nature itself. Indeed, if one considers how rare true beauty of form is among us, and that all we find admirable is typically due to grace filled with elegance, and simultaneously how this rarity diminishes as one approaches Eastern countries, one could believe it quite possible that this beautiful head of Antinous is, in fact, an exact imitation of nature. However, there is reason to believe it is enhanced; indeed, the elegance of its contours, the suppleness of its movements, the grandeur, and simplicity of its forms are inimitable.

We note, regarding this figure, that one of the beauties admired in almost all first-class antiques is a broad and open chest, with large and unified breasts, a characteristic rarely found in our models.

Translation Notes:

Antinous: A historically admired figure, representing a model of ideal beauty in classical art.