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Recently Discovered Archaic Sculptures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

The last year has been most fruitful of results to the archæologist. Excavations on many Greek sites have supplied abundant material for new work and speculation. But important as may be the gains to other branches of archæology, none are so brilliant as those that have so greatly increased our knowledge of the early history of Greek sculpture. It must be many years before archæologists are agreed on the exact position and import of the new statues in relation to the early history of art; longer still before all that those statues can teach us shall have been learnt. In the present paper no attempt can be made to criticise and discuss fully the many difficult questions to which their discovery has given rise— much less to assign finally to each of them its place in the history of religion and sculpture. Many of the early chapters of that history must be reconsidered and in part rewritten before all the statues we now possess find their due place in a recognised and unbroken series of monuments of various ages and of various local schools. Meanwhile it may be well to indicate the directions in which the influence of our newly-acquired knowledge is likely to be felt, and to endeavour to estimate the meaning and the importance of the new material that the science of archæology has acquired.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1887

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References

page 160 note 1 Gesch. d. Gr. Künstler, pp. 109—111.

page 161 note 1 Cavvadias, , Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1886, p. 74.Google Scholar

page 161 note 2 Michaelis, , der Parthenon, p. 8, where other authorities are quoted.Google Scholar

page 162 note 1 It has been my object in writing this paper to give the results produced by independent examination of the originals. I have not therefore referred often to previously published accounts. Among these may be especially mentioned those of Dr.Waldstein, , in the Pall Mall Gazette, 13Google Scholar March, 1886, giving a criticism of the style and a theory as to its origin; of Mr.Miller, W., in the Amer. Journ. of Arch. 1886, p. 61Google Scholar; and of Reinach, M. S., in the Revue Arch. 1886, p. 77.Google Scholar In the first part of the Musées d'Athènes, M. Cavvadias has only given a brief account, beside those which he published in the Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. for 1886. Archaeologists will look with great interest for his fuller discussion and criticism in the second part of the same publication. I cannot here attempt to give a complete bibliography of the daily increasing literature to which these statues have given rise. If I have unconsciously repeated the views of others, an independent confirmation will be afforded; if I have differed from them, it may yet be possible to learn something from this difference.

page 163 note 1 For purposes of reference some notation is necessary: I have therefore lettered the statues of the great find consecutively, A, B, C, &c., beginning from the north-west corner of the room they occupy in the Acropolis Museum; so from A to M; N and O were found in 1883, and are reproduced in the Ἐφημϵρὶς Ἀρχ. of that year, Pl. 8. By P I denote the statue found March 10, 1887. G and M are the two non-Attic statues. B, A, C, and I are figured in the illustrations 1–4, and A and I on plates V. and II. of the publication Les Musées d'Athènes, Part I. In the same, Pl. III. and IV. are K, VI. is H, and VII. and VIII. are R. In Part II, IX. is G, X. is B, XIII. is L, and XIV. is M.

page 166 note 1 Studniczka, , Mitth. d. d. Inst. zu Athen, 1886, p. 185, sqq.Google Scholar

page 172 note 1 This Nike forms the subject of a very important article by Prof.Petersen, , just published in the Mitth. d. d. Inst., 1886, pp. 375Google Scholarsqq. The above paragraph was written before that article had appeared.

page 173 note 1 Especially as to surface, the tip of the nose is gone; otherwise the head is perfect. All below the waist is lost, so that it is impossible to say much as to the treatment of drapery.

page 175 note 1 The possibility that Aristocles was connected with Aristion, and so a Parian by origin, hardly affects the question. For his art was imported to Athens from Paros, as much as the marble in which he and other early Attic masters worked. And it was in Attic soil and in the Attic climate that it reached its perfection.

page 176 note 1 Imagg. 6.

page 176 note 2 So Overbeck, , Gesch. d. Gr. Pl. p. 217, the seventies and beginning of the eighties in Olympiads.Google Scholar

page 176 note 3 Op. cit. p. 219, inadequately reproduced.

page 178 note 1 Musées d'Athènes, pt. I.

page 178 note 2 This suggestion is so obvious that it has probably been already made in the case of the terra-cotta; but I do not remember having seen it anywhere.

page 182 note 1 E.g. the tinted cast of the Parthenon frieze at the Crystal Palace.

page 185 note 1 The similarity is not in style or expression, but only in such details as seem to depend mostly on the material and the technique.

page 186 note 1 Part of the face has stains of bronze. This might seem to indicate it was originally covered with σφυρήλατα bronze plates. But there are no signs of the attachment of them, such as we should in that case expect to find.

page 186 note 2 These two types are curiously enough illustrated by photography, which mechanically reproduces the realism of a primitive art.

page 186 note 3 Though the highest authorities have decided against the connexion of this figure with the Archermus pedestal, I venture to think the evidence for this identification is at least as strong as that for many others now accepted. Whether Archermus himself called the winged figure Nike is another question. As to the size of the base, which is thought too small for the statue, the following measurements seem conclusive. In a precisely similar small figure in the Acropolis the height is 3½ inches, the breadth from foot to foot 2½, the length of the part inserted in the pedestal is only 1¼, for both feet are left free in the air, as in flight. The figure is supported by the drapery only. The height of the Archermus figure was about 40 in., the length of the hole in the pedestal 13 in. (Since writing the above note, I see that Prof.Petersen, (Mitth. d. d. Inst. 1886, p. 386)Google Scholar has, on the same grounds, connected the Archermus basis with the winged figure from Delos: his thorough discussion may be held to settle the question finally.)

page 187 note 1 Assuming Dr. Waldstein's identification of the ‘Apollo on the Omphalus’ to be correct. If so it seems a Pasitelean copy.

page 188 note 1 M. Cavvadias at first suggested its connexion with Theodorus; but he has now given up that view, and associates it with Archermus, Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1886. But for this latter view also the evidence is by no means conclusive; there is no resemblance to the Nike which, as we have seen, probably is the work of Archermus.

page 189 note 1 The name ‘Apollo,’ usually applied to these statues, is so firmly established in usage that it is almost necessary to adopt it. But it is by no means free from doubt. See below.

page 191 note 1 Loewy, , Inschr. gr. Bildh. 27.Google Scholar

page 191 note 2 Reproduced in Musées d'Athènes, Plate xv.

page 191 note 3 It would be worth while to analyse this bronze, to discover the Aeginetan mixture which Myron preferred to all others.

page 192 note 1 M. Cavvadias suggests that this head may be the work of Theodorus of Samos, whose name is found on a basis on the Acropolis.

page 192 note 2 Reproduced in the Bulletin, 1886, Pl. vi. (without the head, which has now been added).

page 192 note 3 Observed by M. Holleaux, Bulletin, loc. cit., but his further inferences are different.

page 192 note 4 Athens, central museum, No. 7.

page 192 note 5 As urged by Holleaux, M., Bull. 1887: he thinks the coincidences may be accidental.Google Scholar