Perhaps it is the terms of anatomy that have had the deplorable effect of imposing on the mind the prejudice toward the division of the shapes of the body. The great geometric and magnetic line of life hence remains as if broken in the regard of the passer-by. This theoretical analysis has altered among the uninitiated the sense of the truth.
The work of art protests against this false and factitious idea of division. Those concordant shapes that pass one into the other as undulate the knots of the reptile, and that suddenly penetrate, they are the body in its magnificent unity.
Left to themselves the ignorant see only the apparent details of things; the source of expression, the synthesis alone eloquent, escapes them. It is lamentable that anatomic description gives in some measure support to the plastic ignorance of the multitude, in calling attention, through its terms, to the different parts of which the architecture of the body is composed. Those pedantic words, biceps, triceps, brachial or crural, and so many others, those current words, arms, legs, plastically have no significance. In the synthesis of the work of art, the arms, the legs, count only when they meet in accordance with the planes that associate them in a same effect, and it is thus in nature, who cares not for our analytical descriptions. The great artists proceed as nature composes and not as anatomy decrees. They never sculpture any muscle, any nerve, any bone for itself; it is the whole at which they aim, and which they express; it is by large planes that their work vibrates in the light or enters into the shadow.
Thus from the point whence I am looking at the Venus of Melos, all of the three-quarter profile is streaming with light, while the opposite side bathes in the shadow. Toward the base of this profile one just distinguishes half-tones. Higher up, farther away, the head rises and reigns, modelled by light and shade, while the reposing lines, the sloping lines of the back play together their slow melodies. What condescendence the long gentle lines of that back express, and the flight of the loins into the half-tone! Sublime pride of marble! Tranquil life of the soul of the body! Nature is an uninterrupted harmony.