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.

    404/430 (page 358)
    wanted to place them one by one in a symmetrical line against a triangular background of evergreen, imitating the shape of a pediment. This process of separation from the socket originally shared by the whole group of boys and girls, is quite noticeable in the plinth of the youth (p. 351), where the right foot has been made to rest on a projecting bracket because a larger piece could not be cut away from the rock without damaging the nearest figure. A discovery of the same nature, but of higher value, was made in the spring of 1878 in Nero’s villa at Antium. Part of the cliff on the edge of which the palace stood having collapsed after a great gale, a statue was found lying in shallow water at the foot of its original niche and pedestal. An interesting legal case arose between Prince Pietro Aldobrandini, the owner of the cliff and niche and of the pedestal from which the statue had been wrenched by the fury of the storm, and the Italian government, the owner of the shallow inlet in which the statue was found lying. Judgment was given in favor of the prince, whose heirs have just given up the statue to the nation for the handsome consideration of six hundred thou¬ sand francs ($120,000), six times as much as the price at which it could have been purchased in 1878. It re¬ presents the draped figure of a maiden holding a plate in her left hand and looking intently at its contents. She has been named the Maiden of Mystery because archaeologists are as ignorant to-day of her origin, authorship, name, and place in the history of Greek art as they were thirty years ago, when she first emerged from the foam of the sea. I have just paid her another visit (June 15th) in com¬ pany with two leaders of the Italian and German classic schools. I have listened to their arguments and subtle