South Indian Bronzes: A Historical Survey of South Indian Sculpture with Iconographical Notes Based on Original Sources c10.16

c10.16

Apart from its spiritual appeal, the examples of Indian bronzes we have been considering, in spite of their formalism, possess the universal elements which the artists and connoisseurs appreciate in the art of figure sculptures For notwithstanding the differences in superficial aspects due to a different racial impulse and a strange religious motive they answer to the supreme tests of great art. And apart from their symbolic meanings and the religious ideas with which they are saturated their appeal in their artistic elements is unquestionable. As studies of line, pure and consummate (Plate I and Frontispiece) as exquisite examples of the values of movement (Plates XIII and III) as embodiments of force, with power and ability in every line (Plates XXII, LXXVIII), in their nervous gestures (*vide* Diagrams A to Z), as in the tranquillity of their poses in the various flexions, these images display qualities of everlasting nobility which unquestionably constitute a full-fledged school of vital sculpture. In the perfect tenderness of feeling expressed in such figures as the Chandeswara, in the grace and rythm in the dancing figures of Krishna, or in the most marvellous examples of power, action and life manifested—without the slightest sacrifice of sculpturesque quality—in the conceptions of Natarāja, they take their place amongst the masterpieces of the world.