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.

    208/664
    B. 296. These were certainly statues: on the other hand eight figures of cities in relief still existing at Rome and Naples (Visconti M. PioCl. iii. p. 61. M. Borbon. iii, 57. 58), are better assigned to the attic of the por- tico of Agrippa. On the great altar of Augustus at Lugdunum (known from coins) there were figures of 60 Gallic tribes. Strab. iv. p. 192.—The pedestal of the statue of Tiberius, which the urbes restitutae caused to be erected to Augustus, is still preserved at Puteoli with the figures of 14 cities of Asia Minor, which are executed in a very characteristic man- ner. See L. Th. Gronov, Thes. Ant. Gr. vii. p. 432. Belley, Mem. de I'Ac. des Inscr. xxiv. p. 128. Eckhel D. N. vi. p. 193. Comp. §. 405. 1 200. Equally important materials for the history of art are furnished by gems. Dioscorides, who engraved the head of Augustus with which the emperor himself sealed, was the 2 most distinguished worker of the time in intaglios. But still more important than the stones preserved under his name, is a series of cameos which represent the Julian and Claudian families at particular epochs, and besides the splendour of the material and dexterity in using it, are also in many other re- 3 spects deserving of admiration. In all the principal works of the kind the same system prevails of representing those princes as divine beings presiding over the world with benig- nant sway, as present manifestations of the most exalted deities. 4 The design is careful and full of expression, although thei-e is no longer to be found in them the spirit in handling and no- bleness of forms which distinguish the gems of the Ptoleniies (§. 161); on the contrary, there is here as well as in the reliefs of triumphal arches and many statues of the emperors, a pe- culiarly Roman form of body introduced, which is distin- guished considerably from the Grecian by a certain heaviness. 1. Seven gems of Dioscorides have been hitherto considered genuine, two with the head of Augustus, a so-called Maecenas, a Demosthenes, two Mercuries, and a palladium-theft (Stosch, Pierres Grav. pi. 25 sqq. Bracci, Mem. degli Incis. tb. 57. 68. Winckelm. W. vi. tf. 8. b.): but even as to these more accurate investigations are still to be looked for. Augustus Impr. gemm. iv, 93. [Onyx-cameo, Augustus in the green vault at Dresden.] Dioscorides' sons, Erophilus (Ed. Winck. vi, 2. s. 301), Eutyches (R. Rochette, Lettre k Mr. Schorn, p. 42). Contemporaries, Agathangelus (head of Sextus Pompeius 1), Saturninus, and Pergamus, a worker in gems, of Asia Minor, R. Rochette, p. 61.47. comp. p. 48. Solon, GuEeus, Aulus and Admon are also assigned to this period, ^lius, under Tiberius, Euodus, under Titus (Julia, daughter of Titus, on a beryl at Florence. Lippert. i, ii, 349). 2. Cameos. The three largest: a. That of Vienna, the Gemma Ar. gustea, of the most careful workmanship, 9X8 inches in size. Eckhel, Pierres Grav. pi. 1. [Clarac pi. 1053.] Kohler iiber zwei Gemmen der KK. Sammlung zu Wien. Tf. 2. [Comp. Morgensterns Denkschr. on Kohler, B. 16 sq.] Millin G. M. 179, 677. Mongez, pi. 19.* Arneth, Beitrage zur Gesch. von Ocsterrcich ii. s. 118. Representation of the Augustan family