In the earlier Greek statues the head remains lifeless, abstract, whilst the limbs are full of expression.  In a contrary spirit, more akin to modern ideas, the Norse myth relates that Skadi, having her choice of a husband from among all the gods, but having to choose by the feet alone, meaning to take Baldur, got by mistake Niordr, an inferior deity.  This does not seem so strange to us; but a Greek would have wondered that the daughter of a wise Titan should not know the feet of Apollo from those of Nereus.  It was said of Taglioni that she put mind into her legs.  But to the modern way of thinking this is clearly exceptional.  It is in the face, and especially in the eye, that we look to see the soul present and at work, and not merely in its effects as character.  As types of character, the lineaments of the face were explored by the later Greek Art as profoundly as the rest of the body.  But the statue is sightless,—­its eyes do not meet ours, but seem forever brooding over a world into which the present and its interests do not enter.  To the Greek this was no defect; but to us the omission seems to affect the most vital point of all, since our conception of the soul involves its eternity, that is, that it lives always in the present, is not too fine to exist, secure that it is bound neither by past nor future, but capable of revolutionizing the character at all moments.  Here is the ground of the remarkable difference that meets us already in the reliefs of the later classic times.  In the reliefs of the best age the figures are always in profile and in action.  Complete personification being out of the question, it is expressly avoided,—­each figure waives attention to itself, merges itself in the plot.  Later, when the profounder idea of a personality that does not isolate or degrade has begun to make itself felt, this constraint is given up,—­the figures face the spectator, and enter as it were into relation with the actual world.

The Church very early expressed this feeling of the higher significance of the head, by allowing it to be sufficient if the head alone were buried in holy ground.  In Art it is naively indicated by exaggerated size of the head and of the eyes,—­a very common trait of the earlier times, and not quite obsolete at the time of the Pisani.  This clumsy expedient is relinquished, but the need it indicated continued, without the possibility of finding any complete satisfaction in Sculpture, instead of the intensity and directness that Art now insists upon, Sculpture can give only extension and indirect hints; instead of mind present, only its effects and products, with the working cause expressly removed.