¹ In the British Museum (Smith, BMC Sculpt. no. 550). Parian marble. Head and neck, total height, 52·5 cm. Neck-piece, total height, 32·5 cm.; of front surface only (plate 2c), 28·5 cm. Later references: JHS XLII 31 ff. (Six); ÖJh XXIII 1 ff. (Schober).

² The arrangement of the hair is obviously related to that of Alexander the Great, which inspired a fashion in sculpture; and this provides a terminus post quem.

³ AdI I(1829) 341.

⁴ Actually there were four pieces, the fourth being a tiny addition to the hair, perhaps made necessary by an accidental break, over the right ear (plate 36). It is not clear how this was fastened; it may have been of stucco. Schober, , in ÖJh XXIII 12Google Scholar, n. 16, argues for marble.

⁵ Newton, in his small Guide to the Blacas Collection (1867), says: ‘It is said that part of the torso was found with the head, but that, being in a very mutilated condition, it was not thought worth removing from Melos.’ I cannot trace the evidence for this statement.

⁶ This is my major premise, and if it is unsound the whole argument collapses.

⁷ There is a slight step (no more than three milli metres high at its maximum) on the top of the neck-piece, where the projection of the face-piece rests upon it (PLATE 2b)—I imagine that this was not part of the original intention, but that when the face-piece was found, at a certain stage, to fit snugly, it was not thought worth while to remove the step.

The pick-marks on this step run obliquely across it and were cut from the front, to avoid flushing the edge: the pour-channel for the lead cuts through them. The pick-marks on the rest of the upper surface of the neck-piece run straight from back to front. This looks as if the pick-marks on the step were made first, then— perhaps when the face-piece was already in position— the pick-marks at the back, but it is not easy to decide whether they were made before or after the pour-channel: on the back of the upper part of the face-piece (PLATES 1b, 3a), the different character of the picking nearer the edge seems to show that the picked surface was enlarged at the last moment in order to provide a larger area for adhesion. See also note 13.

⁸ This statement needs some amplification. On the right-angled edge of a wooden box, on which I first tested it, the face-piece will hang unsupported with its back face vertical, since the weight of the marble grips the wood; but when set on the marble neck-piece, there is a tendency to slip forward, because the surfaces of the marble are so smooth. The pull is very slight, and the stucco would have been enough to counteract it: there can have been very little tension on the dowel.

⁹ The smaller hole below the main hole in the neck-piece (PLATE 2c) seems to be modern, for it connects with the large vertical hole in the neck made for the modern mounting. This suggestion is confirmed by Mr. V. A. Fisher, whom I thank for checking, from his long experience, several technical points.

¹⁰ If applied through a funnel the weight of the molten metal above might serve to force the flow up a very slight slope towards the front edge of the top of the neck-piece, until it reached this edge and flowed down the channel in the face towards the dowel-hole: but anything more than a slight slope would stop it. It was not essential, though it may have been convenient, to fasten one end of the dowel first; but when the neck-piece and face-piece were together, lead poured into the channel would have flowed equally well into both dowel-holes.

¹¹ PLATE 1a shows the head in the old poise, the weakness of which is not apparent because the photograph is taken from a high view-point. How meaningless the head when poised thus is apt to look from below—and this was the ancient view-point—is well seen in Rayet (Monuments pl. 42).

¹² As in statues from the Mausoleum, e.g. BMC Sculpt. 1000, 1052, etc. The colossal torso, perhaps of the second century B.c., from Elaea, the port of Pergamon (BMC Sculpt. no. 1522) had the upper three-quarters of the head, with the whole of the beard, made separately, the join being a horizontal one at a level just below the ears. The method of fixing is somewhat different from that in the Blacas head: it consists in essentials of a heavy dowel in the upper surface of the neck, and a smaller dowel in the front surface, which also has a step in it. The purpose must have been the same, namely, to make the join where it would show least.

¹³ The general procedure may be summarised thus:—

The blocks were carved separately to a fairly advanced stage: the face-piece was set on to the neck-piece with a cement of stucco, and the lead was then poured to fasten the dowel between the two (PLATE 2a, t): the back-piece was then stuccoed on. Perhaps at this stage the carving was finished off, but it is possible that the pieces were assembled temporarily while the carving was being finished, and not permanently fixed until after its completion: otherwise there would have been a risk of the stucco parting under the blows of the chisel. On the other hand, the section of the back of the face-piece fringed with hair and beard is a little too large at various places to fit the corresponding part of the neck-piece, sometimes by as much as three or four millimetres (PLATE 3a, b). This may indicate that the blocks were already cemented together and that the sculptor was unwilling to risk cracking the cement by vigorous carving to smooth the transition: or he may have been too negligent. It could anyhow have been finished easily with stucco, which would be completely masked when the head was coloured. We cannot, however, ignore the possibility that the head was carved in some distant studio, and was found not to fit properly when it arrived, but that no one on the spot would take the responsibility of trimming it.

Finally, when the pieces were all assembled and fixed, the holes for the wreath were drilled: this is proved by some of these drill-holes in the face-piece and back-piece having pierced through into the top of the neck-piece (PLATES 1b, 2b). There were originally about 150, set in three rows quincunx fashion, of which 108—with some doubtful traces—remain wholly or in part (plates 1b, c, 2b, 3); into each of them the bronze stem of a leaf (presumably also of bronze, gilded) was secured by a pouring of lead: some of the stems still project, and the ends of most of them doubtless remain embedded in the lead. This seems a laborious process, but it enabled the artist to set each leaf exactly in the position and at the angle he wished, instead of having to adjust a complete wreath made separately and then placed on the head: the method seems a sculptor's rather than a metal-worker's.

One more word on technique. The design of the hair on the top of the head is indicated sketchily; the whole surface here was first punched out, then claw-chiselled—traces of these processes remain, especially in the centre—and finally the ridges and hollows of the hair radiating from the crown were carved lightly with the bull-nosed chisel (PLATE 1c). Possibly this treatment indicates that the head was a replica rather than the prototype, which presumably was finished in greater detail: but there is no reason to doubt its fourth-century date. This lends some support to Wace's argument (Approach, 45 ff.) that a single model might serve as a prototype for more than one replica. On this point see also Schober, in ÖJh XXIII 11 f.Google Scholar, who further suggests that the Blacas head may be copied from a bronze.

¹⁴ AM XVII (1892) 1 ff.

¹⁵ ÖJh XXIII 11 f.

¹⁶ Smith, BMC Sculpt. III 74Google Scholar: from the Strangford Collection, therefore probably from Greece. Height (without plinth) 62 cm.