Fine Arts
a term generally applied to those arts in which the artist seeks chiefly to give pleasure by the immediate impression produced on the mind by his work. These arts are thus distinguished from arts which are designed to answer some practical purpose, and so have been termed useful.
Antique, Mediæval and Modern Art.- In its general acceptation, the term antique art is understood to be that of a period antecedent to the revival of the classical studies in western Europe, or before the risorgimento, or renaissance, of the arts from their assumed period of lethargy. There was, in fact, a distinct character about the productions of the artists of the more ancient and the more modern times, which was sufficiently marked to produce in the best of them a separate style of art. The antique school was distinguished by an anthropomorphism and a divination of the human form; the mediæval school was formed on and characterized by a species of contempt for the human figure, and an aspiration after an ideal perfection, and therefore there is something vague and undefined in its efforts to represent the objects it copied, while the modern school has united the indefiniteness of its aim with that clearness of the perception of its objects which is so marked a characteristic of its production. The antique schools date from the dawn of civilization to the end of the 10th century; the mediæval schools date from the FINGAL 10th to the 15th century; and the modern schools have continued the traditions of the masters of art to the present times.