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Antefixes from Tarentum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

The four antefixes from Tarentum, shown in Plate XXXII., where they are reduced in size to about half the actual diameter, are only specimens selected from the not inconsiderable number of types found in recent excavations. All that I have seen are marked by great breadth and freedom of execution. Even those which seem to have been originally cast, in the rough, in the same mould have undergone such subsequent touching up and remodelling as makes them distinct works of art. Identical types sometimes occur in slightly varying sizes which implies successive moulds imitative of some established original. The faces when found are covered with a hard and rough lime-deposit, but the removal of this often reveals traces of colour laid as usual on a white priming. The Medusa, head in the plate appears to have been coloured to the life—cheeks pink, lips red, and not only the pupil, but even the iris of the eye painted. The colour of eyebrows and lashes is dark, that of the hair now a dirty brownish-yellow—like the tint of the common yellow lichen—probably modified by time or by the action of the acid used to remove the lime accretion. The modelling of the lips shows that fleshy and life-like firmness which is peculiar to the best time of Greek art. Under the chin of this, or a similar head I notice the marks of the moulder's finger, but instruments seem to have been used also. The lines of the hair, though fine in the plate, lose considerably by the absence of the part by the cheeks, where over each ear there rises a snake curved like a flattened S. The specimens which show these do not come up in features to the one figured. The colour on the snakes is blue-green. The small button above the centre of the brow is a curious feature.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1883

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References

page 119 note 1 A long series of smaller terra-cottas proves the luxurious care given by Tarentines to head gear.

page 120 note 1 Professor Gardner informs me that a nymph antefix has been found at Tarentum. With regard to this and to the head of Pan in our plate it is worth notice that the epigrams of Leonidas show large and special devotion to these powers and to Dionysus.