The idealization of nature and of man, which was an essential part of the Hellenic religion, encouraged the Greek sculptor to escape from the conventions of Egypt, and to discover, in nature, a nobler pattern for the human body. In Greece, religion, far from despising nature, gave her sanction to that passion for na ture, to that persistent and penetrating search for the secrets of nature's beauty, which the greatest Hellenic sculpture expresses. From the investigation of appearances the Greek sculptor pro ceeded to the investigation of the laws of structure and of form, to the architecture of the human body. A simplification of planes, a lucid relationship among the masses and contours, a harmonious direction of line and shadow, are the result of this analysis. The serene beauty of the sth century gods arises directly from the imposition of these qualities upon forms that are also sensuously beautiful.
In the 4th century, when an interest in individual beauty sup planted the religious exaltation of the Age of Pericles, these metaphysical qualities are less evident in sculpture. The gods
lose their heroic detachment, their moral calm, as the artist de velops a more descriptive technique. The planes which bound their bodies become less rigid and less definite as the artist searches out the nuances of light and shadow that pass over them. The action of inward forces becomes hidden under a clothing of soft and tremulous flesh.
After Alexander Greek sculpture departs still farther from the rigorous "architecture" of the 5th century gods. Life is reproduced with greater and greater actuality. Detail is elaborated; move ment, expressed in the effort of muscles or the sweep of draperies, and emotion, often violent and exaggerated, is insisted upon. Allegory and narrative rather than form become the preoccupa tions of the sculptor. The Greek artist, who had discovered in the human body a pattern of divinity, ends as a story-teller in whose art this pattern persists only as a system of elegant elimi nations, a canon of correct proportions.