EPIC REPRESENTA'TION, the Epos or epic poem, relates a grand event on which important consequences depend. In plastic art, reliefs on walls, and friezes. and encaustic, and fresco-painting which eon be executed on large surfaces as well as oil-paintings, by which a considerable space on canvas may be filled, are pe culiarly adapted for the representation of an Epos, or of a great action. But the artist has not, like the poet., the power of representing in connection, those consequences of single events, scenes, Sze., which form the whole. The limits of connection (with the poet of ten only single words, clever phrases, or striking transitions) are denied to the artist, and lie must therefore limit him self to the means at his command, of showing in the clearest manner possible, the point of the event from which its con sequences are developed. Tho plastic artist can and may depict the moment of an event or a scene, including several events which he may define or snggest. To choose this moment rightly, to draw strikingly, and to execute intelligibly, is the important task, in the performance of which the true master and epic artist are seen. The epic picture, whether it belong to plastic work or painting, is thus the representation of nil important act ion of human life, of ancient or modern times, of distant or neighboring nations, of events which have happened or which have been invented. It must in es try
case he true or probable, i. e., belonging to history and reality, or possible ; in other words, the circumstances to be rep resente I must be brought out conforma bly to Nature and Art, and have nothing contra lictory in themselves. The epic work of Art, is always only a fragment (thoug:t an important one) of a classic or romantic, of a more or less historical, or of a pure poetic epos, often the quin tessence of an epos, but never the epos itself. The plastic descriptive work of Art is thus limits I to the poetical im portant event, but is in its limitation the utmost concentration of history, while it brings forward a principal action, with a short but clear glance of the most im portant preceding and succeeding cir cumstances, so that all forms are arrang -el in action in their due relation to each other, or to the principal point of the picture. If this be undertaken with genius and happily executed by a mas terly hand, the whole will not only at tract the eye of the spectator, as a har monious grouping of different details, rich iu references, and finding a centre point of union and conclusion, but will rivet his attention.