Wanderings in the Roman Campagna / by Rodolfo Lanciani.

  • Rodolfo Lanciani
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wanderings in the Roman Campagna / by Rodolfo Lanciani. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    387/430 (page 341)
    statues and bas-reliefs are but reproductions of lost Greek originals, the existence of which would otherwise have been known only from the descriptions of Pliny and Pausanias. Their discovery is always welcome, be¬ cause, no matter how defective the replica may be, we can gather from it some conception of the original type created by Phidias, Praxiteles, Scopas, Lysippus, Poly- cletus, and other such masters of the golden age. What The great ditch excavated by the Rutuli for the defence of Ardea on the land side should we know, for instance, about the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus were it not for the accidental finding of a marble copy in the year 1849 near the church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere ? The same considerations apply to the Hermes of Polycletus, a copy of which has just been discovered in the foundations of a private house near the Ponte Margherita; to the Amazon of the same master, a copy of which, found in the Villa Aldobrandini