A dictionary of terms in art / edited and illustrated by F.W. Fairholt.

  • Frederick William Fairholt
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A dictionary of terms in art / edited and illustrated by F.W. Fairholt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    61/488 (page 51)
    that whatever may be the defects of their early existence, they will ultimately help to inform and instruct the public mind. ARUNDEL MARBLES. A collection of ancient sculptured marbles collected by Mr, Petty (an ancestor of the Lansdown family), in the early part of the seven- teenth century, in the course of travel in Greece and Asia Minor at the expense of, apd for, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, part of which was presented by his grand- son, Mr. Henry Howard (afterwards the Duke of Norfolk), to the University of Oxford in the year 1667, after they had been unfortunately neglected and defaced in the Great Rebellion, and many lost. The collection, when entire, consisted of 37 statues, 128 busts, and 250 inscribed marbles, and the invaluable cameos and in- taglios which now form the ‘‘ Marlborough Gems.” ‘I cannot,’ says Peacham, in his Compleat Gentleman, first printed in 1634, ‘but with much reverence men- tion the everyway Right Honourable Thomas Howard, Lord High Marshall of England, as great for his noble patronage of Arts and ancient learning as for his high birth and place; to whose liberal charges and magnificence this angle of the world oweth the first sight of Greek and Roman statues, with whose admired presence he began to honour the gardens and galleries of Arundel House about twenty years ago, and hath ever since continued to transplant old Greece into England.’’ The Arundel, together with the Pomfret, Marbles, are preserved at Oxford, and that which the University places at the head of its collec- tion is the Greek inscription known as the ** Parian Chronicle,” from its having been kept in the island of Paros. It is a chro- nological account of the principal events in Grecian, particularly Athenian, history, from the reign of Cecrops, B.c. 1450, to the archonship of Diognetus, B.c. 264. ARUNDEL SOCIETY. A soviety es- tablished in London in 1848 for the pur- pose of facilitating the study of Art by the ~ublication of rare historical] and prac- tical works, and of engravings from the more important examples of architecture, sculpture, painting, and ornamental de- sign. Among their works is a new trans- lation of Vasari’s Life of Fra Angelico, illustrated with outlines of his principal works, and a series of engravings from the same artist’s frescoes in the Chapel of Nicholas V. in the Vatican; the ‘‘ Pieta’’ from the fresco by Giotto, in the Chapel of Santa Maria dell’Arena, at Padua; and reduced casts in plaster and bronze of the ‘¢Theseus’” and ‘ Ilissus” in the Elgin col- lection, British Museum. The society have also employed an artist to copy Giotto’s frescoes in the Arena Chapel, at Padua, and have pointed out many other early frescoes and pictures they would desire to copy ang publish as evidences of the talent of the early painters, and materials toward the history of Art. A short designation being desirable for the society, the name of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, who has been called “the father of vertu in England,” and the ‘‘ Mecenas of all polite arts,’’ was selected for that purpose. ARYBALLOS. A vase for ointments or perfumes, used by the nations of anti- quity, who gave it that name from its resemblance to a purse. It is of glo- bular form, and was made of various sizes. ARYSTERES. Smaller vessels for taking the wine from the crater and dis- tributing it to the guests. See Cyaruus. ARZICA. There are two pigments known by this name to medizval writers on Art. According to Cennini, it was an artificial pigment of a yellow colour, much used at Florence for miniature painting. The Bolognese MS. of the same period shows that it was a yellow lake made from the herb guwalda, which is the Spanish and Provengal name for the reseda lutecia, which plant has been used as a yellow dye throughout Europe, from a very early