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Notice of a Lapith-head in the Louvre, from the Metopes of the Parthenon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
Upon passing through the corridor which leads to the Salle des Bronzes in the Louvre Museum, my attention was attracted by a marble head (Plate XXIII.) placed on one of the higher shelves of the case running along the wall, which contains a number of marble fragments of all descriptions. The more I looked at this head, the more did it seem to manifest the peculiarities of style and workmanship as well as the peculiar dimensions (just under life-size) of the metopes of the Parthenon. It was at least evident that none of the remains of ancient art, not as yet identified with the metopes of the Parthenon, that had come to my notice, was so fully possessed of the characteristics marking these metopes. The experience resulting from a careful and scientific comparative study and observation of a great number of identified ancient monuments has shown that the works of the various periods, schools, and artists, are each possessed of marked individual characteristics, and differ very noticeably from one another in conception, style, and workmanship. These differences, however, only become noticeable and useful as guides to the classification and identification of works of ancient art when numerous works, or reproductions from them, are placed side by side, and are subjected to trained observation in all respects similar to the observation which has been so long and profitably in use in the natural sciences. Based upon this experience, the recognition of the characteristics of this head lead me to believe that it could not belong to a period posterior to the time of Pheidias or previous to the Persian wars. In fact, it appeared to me highly probable that the head really belonged to one of the metopes.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1882
References
page 230 note 1 See Michaelis', Der Parthenon, p. 124Google Scholar, seq.
page 230 note 2 It is most interesting to note that before the end of the fourth century there is no trace of a monument of a higher god or of a Greek with the indication of such passion as necessitates a contortion of features. With far greater freedom this is put into the faces of demons and monsters. It is in these heads that the Greek sculptors practised themselves in the expression of passionate emotion, and in the time n which the general feeling for the more dramatic forms of art was strongest the single representations of fauns and satyrs, river-gods, centaurs, giants, &c., are most frequent. We can almost trace, by means of extant monuments, how the definite artistic method of expressing violent emotion was transferred into the heads of human, heroic, and divine figures in later art from the forms which had previously and customarily been put into the heads of such demons. In the Centaur battles of the metopes of the Parthenon, nay, down to the recently discovered frieze from the altar at Pergamos representing the battle between the gods and the giants, the faces of the Greeks and the gods are free from the distortions of passion, while their adversaries manifest all the signs of pain and anger. So strong was the feeling for form with the Greeks, and so adverse were they to sacrificing harmonious lines in the representation of their own race and of their heroic and divine world.
page 232 note 1 There is a slight error in Michaelis, p. 141, where this fragment R is assigned to Metope VIII.
page 232 note 2 ‘Even in its present mutilated state, this is, perhaps, the finest of all the metopes in the Museum.’—A Guide to the Sculptures of the Parthenon, &c., p. 36.
page 233 note 1 Compare also Lawrence, Elgin Marbles, &c., Pl. XVII., and Michaelis, Pl. III., Met. VII.