Changes in the structure of society are not brought about solely by massive engines of doctrine. The first flash of insight which persuades human bei… - Kenneth Clark

If one wants a symbol of Atlantic man, as opposed to Mediterranean man, a symbol to set against the Greek temple, it is the Viking ship. The Greek temple is solid, static, crystalline; the Viking ship is light, mobile, and voyaging, floating like a water lily.

Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite specimens of Greek sculpture, from the sixth century onward, were originally parts of compositions, and if we were faced with the complete group in which the Charioteer of Delphi was once a subsidiary figure, we might well experience a moment of revulsion. We have come to think of the fragment as more vivid, more concentrated, and more authentic.

Fine colour implies a unified relationship, in which each part is subordinate to the whole, and the transitions between them are felt to be as precious and beautiful as the colours themselves. In fact, the colours themselves must be continuously modified and broken as part of the transition. Ruskin said in his Elements of Drawing, "Give me some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel-pit, a little whitening, and some coal dust, and I will paint you a luminous picture, if you give me time to gradate my mud, and subdue my dust." In many works by the greatest colourists — Rembrandt and Watteau are examples — there are very few identifiable colours.