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The art of any artistically gifted people may be studied with various purposes and in various ways. One man, being himself an artist, may seek inspiration or guidance for his own practice; another, being a student of the history of civilization, may strive to comprehend the products of art as one manifestation of a people's spiritual life; another may be interested chiefly in tracing the development of artistic processes, forms, and subjects; and so on. But this book has been written in the conviction that the greatest of all motives for studying art, the motive which is and ought to be strongest in most people, is the desire to become acquainted with beautiful and noble things, the things that "soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man." The historical method of treatment has been adopted as a matter of course, but the emphasis is not laid upon the historical aspects of the subject. The chief aim has been to present characteristic specimens of the finest Greek work that has been preserved to us, and to suggest how they may be intelligently enjoyed. Fortunate they who can carry their studies farther, with the help of less elementary handbooks, of photographs, of casts, or, best of all, of the original monuments.
Most of the illustrations in this book have been made from photographs, of which all but a few belong to the collection of Greek photographs owned by the University of Chicago. A number of other illustrations have been derived from books or serial publications, as may be seen from the accompanying legends. In several cases where cuts were actually taken from secondary sources, such as Baumeister's "Denkmaler des klassischen Altertums," they have been credited to their original sources. A few architectural drawings were made expressly for this work, being adapted from trustworthy authorities, viz.: Figs. 6, 51, 61, and 64. There remain two or three additional illustrations, which have so long formed a part of the ordinary stock-in trade of handbooks that it seemed unnecessary to assign their origin.
The introductory chapter has been kindly looked over by Dr. J. H. Breasted, who has relieved it of a number of errors, without in any way making himself responsible for it. The remaining chapters have unfortunately not had the benefit of any such revision.
In the present reissue of this book a number of slight changes and corrections have been introduced.
Chicago, January, 1905.
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