The position of Polykleitos in the history of Greek sculpture is peculiarly tantalizing. We seem to know a good deal about his work. We know his statue of a Doryphoros from the marble copy of it in Naples, and we know his Diadumenos from two marble copies in the British Museum. Yet with these and other sources of knowledge, it happens that when we desire to get closer to his real style and to define it there occurs a void. So to speak, a bridge is wanting at the end of an otherwise agreeable journey, and we welcome the best help that comes to hand. There is, I think, some such help to be obtained from the terra-cotta statuette recently acquired in Smyrna by Mr. W. R. Paton.

But first it may be of use to recall the reasons why the marble statues just mentioned must fail to convey a perfectly true notion of originals which we are justified in assuming were of bronze. In each of these statues the artist has been compelled by the nature of the material to introduce a massive support in the shape of a tree stem. That is at once a new element in the design, and, as a distinguished French sculptor has rightly observed, this new element called for a modification of the entire figure.