Crossword-Solution: NIOBIDES 8 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 11

Let us return to the Niobe once more: let us see the group clearly in its general composition, and then, with the group before us, let us ask ourselves what plastic form is conceived in our imagination when there comes home to it the mere abstract idea of the sudden massacre of the Niobides, by Apollo and Artemis.

Since Apollo and Artemis are, between them, slaughtering all the Niobides, closing them in with their arrows, it is obvious that Apollo and Artemis must be placed in such a manner as to command the whole family of Niobides; there must be no Niobides behind them, for that would mean that there are Niobides who are out of danger and can escape.

The colour, light and shade, and perspective of painting, by creating a seeming depth of back-ground, by hiding one figure partially behind another, so as to make them appear not in actual contact, by piling up ætherial clouds or waving light draperies, would permit the artist to show the Niobides on solid ground below, and the gods in the air, high, distant above.

But the sculptor, without any such means, could only suspend Apollo and Artemis (at tremendous expense of iron clamps) in such a way that they should seem to be standing on the shoulders of the Niobides; or interpose between them a thick bolster of marble clouds, a massive flutter of streaming marble draperies.

And the sun?--the sun works his miracles upon us until we wish ourselves as well off as the Niobides, who, at least, look cool.