Johann Joachim Winckelmann, On the Imitation of the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks, translated by Henry Fuseli (1755; from Writings on Art, D. Irwin, ed.:):
"There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequalled; I mean, by imitating the ancients."(p.61)
"The most beautiful body of ours would perhaps be as much inferior to the most beautiful Greek one, as Iphicles was to his brother Hercules. The forms of the Greeks, prepared to beauty, by the influence of the mildest and purist sky, became perfectly elegant by their early exercises." (p. 62)
"Those diseases which are destructive of beauty, were moreover unknown to the Greeks. There is not the least hint of the small-pox, in the writings of their physicians; and Homer, whose portraits are always so truly drawn, mentions not one pitted face. Venereal plagues, and their daughter the English malady [nervous disorders] had not yet names." (p.63)
"The last and most eminent characteristic of the Greek works is a noble simplicity and sedate grandeur in gesture and expression. As the bottom of the sea lies peaceful beneath a foaming surface, a great soul lies sedate beneath the strife of passions in Greek figures." (p. 72)
Ann-Louis Girodet-Trioson, Letter to Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, c. 1802
"I have not yet despaired of reconciling M. de Saint-Pierre with my picture inspired by the poems attributed or denied to Ossian. In spite of all the criticisms leveled against it, some of which were justified, this painting has given me the most confidence in my small talents, because it is altogether, in all its parts, my own creation, and neither its drawing, color, chiaroscuro, nor conception was at all inspired by a model. I was even obliged to invent the costumes, and since I could not rely on any ancient work I had to be guided by analogies ... The subject also had the advantage of rendering homage to the spirits of our warriors and to the genius protecting France...
It is generally agreed that the figures I have shown are not those of any French, Greek, or Roman beauties: I could not find their general type either among the ancients or the moderns; it is therefore a creation. The grayish color which pervades these semi-transparent beings could not be imitated from nature, who provides no models of this kind; nor is it taken from any work of art, since I knew none that could give me a suggestion; it is a pure inspiration, and it and is therefore a creation. The final effect -- on the one hand the coloring, on the other the distribution of light and shade -- is also mine, ... and therefore again a kind of creation."
--from R. Goldwater & M. Treves, eds., Artists on Art, pp. 212-213.