The text discusses the characteristics distinguishing modern sculptures from ancient Greek ones, emphasizing the attractive features of softness, proportion, and contour. It reflects on how modern sculptors have enhanced the art form beyond what was known to the ancients. Additionally, it describes a series of plates depicting a Faun, detailing the measurements and presentation of these sculptures.
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truly rendered by the softness of flesh, a justness of proportions, and austere contours. The taste that distinguishes modern sculptures from those of the Greeks is more analogous to these qualities, where balance offers the greatest charm. This taste, or to give it its true name, this seductive manner of how sculpture is treated today, stands to Art as color does to Painting. At the very least, it is a consolation for our sculptors to have enriched this Art with a merit that is their own, and seems to have been unknown to the ancients: it is enough for them to emerge from the class of servile imitators; for, it must be admitted, none have equaled the sculptors of Antiquity, in terms of grandeur of style, the accuracy and beauty of forms, the most perfect selection of nature, the perfection of proportions, purity, and the correction of contours.
The two figures in Plate 70 represent the Faun measured from the front and the back, and the first figure in Plate 71 shows it from the side. In these three figures, the statue is measured by dimensions divided into six parts. The second figure in Plate 71 shows the feet of the same Faun drawn larger, and measured by dimensions divided into twelve parts. The two figures in Plate 72 show, as we said, the child of the Faun, with its particular measurements, which can be referred to.
The Little Flute-Playing Faun. Plates 73 & 74.
This statue, which can be seen in the Borghese Villa, depicts a man of small stature, but very well proportioned and