Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller.

  • Karl Otfried Müller
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    125/664
    served the half of one with a battle scene, and pieces of the other with two gods enthroned and standing figures probably with thank-offerings to the gods for the victory, and this perhaps on the fa§ade. Among the statues of different size, for the most part very incomplete, which Sir C. Fellows has placed in the intercolumnia of the front and back pediments and on the acroteria, our admiration is most excited by the female figures which are represented hastening away, either inclined to the right or left, in highly animated movement, partly looking round, whereby the not less bold than inventive hand of the master has devel- oped so many beauties in lines of the body—to which the seemingly transparent drapery adheres—and the flying masses of drapery, that in consideration of them we may easily overlook what is amiss or incom- plete in the rapid execution. These peculiarities of treatment may be distinguished from antique hardness. On the plinths of these figures there is a fish, a larger fish, a lobster, a spiral shell, a bird which we must in this connexion take to be a sea-bird, not a dove; and besides those figures with their corresponding signs, we may also assume that there were similar animals attached to two similar figures which be- longed to the series, although they are wanting with the greater portion of the whole. Now, if these symbols evidently indicate Nereids, we can only conceive their flight to be occasioned by the disturbance of their realm from a sea-fight, such as that against Euagoras, or by a battle on shore, which compelled the enemy to rush helter-skelter to their ships, as for instance in Herod, v, 116; and only on this supposition could Nereids be introduced appropriately on a monument commemorating a victory. In that case they would also furnish a further proof that the capture of Xanthus by the first Harpagus is not represented in the friezes, but rather a later victory of the Persian authorities over a re- bellious outbreak. But the unmistakeable reference of these Nereids to a sea-fight seems also to lend a strong confirmation to the architectonic combination that they belonged to the same building as these friezes. This union of the tumult of battle on shore and (allusively) at sea, with the image of stormed cities, produces a good general effect. In this way was the Assyrian and Persian custom of representing battles (§. 245.* 248. R. 2) here imitated by an Ionian hand and in the purely Greek style. Besides this monument there have been also brought to London from Xanthus, two lions, the tomb named from the winged chariot with remark- able representations (Asia M. p. 228. Lycia p. 165), a frieze of chariot and horsemen (Lycia p. 173), a chase, probably from a tomb, as well as the procession of peasants paying their tribute in tame and wUd animals and other natural productions (Lycia p. 176),—aU of the best period of art. The following also seem to be very good, the fragments of a battle of Amazons and a festal procession. Ibid. p. 177, Bellerophon vanquish- ing the Chima?ra, p. 136, which is of colossal size and has also been taken from a tomb; and not a few of the reliefs from sepulchral monuments, which represent merely domestic scenes or war (p. 209 does not even seem to form an exception) contain very excellent and pecuUar compositions, p. 116 (comp. the title-plate, whore we must read ME202), 118. 135. 141. 166. 178. 197. 198. 200. 206. 207. 208.]