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A Marble Head perhaps from Sunium

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Percy Gardner
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Extract

The charming little head which is represented on Pl. VI. was bought six or more years ago at Lamia by the Rev. R. F. Acland-Hood from a Greek who professed to have dug it up himself in the neighbourhood of the temple of Athena at Sunium. Mr. Acland-Hood had intended to give it to the Museum at Zanzibar: but he kindly consented to make it over to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in exchange for other antiquities provided by Mr. Arthur Evans and myself.

The height of the head from the chin to the top is 4½ inches (cm. 11·5). At the back is a fracture which indicates that it was there joined on to the ground of a relief. I have tried to mount it in exactly the attitude and position in which, to judge from the fracture, it originally stood.

That the head belonged to a figure in high relief is clear from the fracture. But even apart from that, it would be certain. For the back of the head is very roughly worked, and is certainly not intended to be seen. The marble is according to Mr. J. L. Myres, a competent geologist, Parian. The preservation is excellent, only the tip of the nose being somewhat injured.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 15 , November 1895 , pp. 188 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1895

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References

1 The three-quarter-face on coins is specially common in the early part of the fourth centmy; cf. Types of Greek Coins, pl. v. 42, 43; pl. vi. 13, 22; pl. vii. 11, 24, 34, 35, etc.

2 The date of these is now, I think, undisputed. See Overbeck, , Geschichte der Plastik, ed. 4. ii. 61Google Scholar. I do not of course mean to assert that they are from Praxiteles' own hand.

3 Kavvadias, , Fouilles d'Epidaure i. Pl. viii. 9Google Scholar, cf. ix. 19.

4 Ibid. pl. viii. 5.

5 Br. Mus. Cat., Macedon, p. 88.

6 ‘I can conceive no reason,’ writes Mr. Acland-Hood, ‘why the man should have invented the account, as I let him understand that I valued the head rather for its own beauty than for association's sake.’

7 Athen. Mittheil. 1884, p. 345.

8 In matters such as this approximate measures, if taken without bias, appear to me preferable to precise measurements, which are often merely misleading, especially in the case of small objects.

9 Athen. Mittheil 1882, p. 397.

10 Athen. Mittheil. 1884, p. 336.

11 Athen. Mittheil. 1884, pl. xviii. 7.