Magazine

venture to

Iris in the Parthenon Frieze,” an account
was given of the successful excavations
carried on by the Greek government on
the Acropolis of Athens a few years ago.
It was there stated that, with the excep-
tion of two ancient works of art, all the
remains found at that time belonged to
the period preceding the destruction of
the ancient city of Athens by the Per-
sians under Xerxes, and thus all were
earlier in date than the year 480 B.C.
The two works of art which formed this
exception were found near the surface,
where they must have been buried at a
much later period, both of them dis-
tinctly later than the Persian invasion.
The one was the fragment of relief from
the Parthenon frieze representing the
head of Iris, published in that article;
the other is a bass-relief representing
Athene (or Minerva) leaning on her
lance before a pillar or slab, which is
reproduced in the frontispiece to this
number.

This marble slab is comparatively
small in dimensions. It is about one
foot nine inches high by one foot one
inch in width. The work is in excellent
preservation, and though of modest ap-
pearance, as far as the size and the mani-
fest elaborateness are concerned, it is one
of exceptional interest, and presents many
problems. M. Kavvadias, the Greek Di-
rector of Excavations, in the first notice in
the official gazette, or Deltion, pointed to
the expression of melancholy in the atti-
tude and expression of the figure; while
Mr. E. A. Gardner, in an early notice of
this work in the Journal of Hellenic
Studies, considers it "a very beautiful
work, of which the significance is, and is
likely to remain, an unsolved problem."
Copyright,

VOL. LXXXV.-No. 505.-1

lution can now be approached with no
ill-founded hope of satisfactory settle-
ment.

There are really three main questions
which present themselves to the archæol-
ogist studying this work. The first is,
To what period and what school may the
work be ascribed? The second is, What
type of Athene is here represented? And
the third is, What is the meaning and
significance of Athene in this peculiar
attitude and situation, and what purpose
did this slab serve?

I believe that all archæologists will be
agreed, when they consider not only the
place where the monument was found,
but also the numerous reliefs which have
been discovered, especially within recent
years, in Attica, that the work must be
ascribed to the Attic school.
We really
only meet with difficulty when we at-
tempt to assign an accurate date. For
it must be evident to even those who are
not specialists in the study of such monu-
ments that there is a certain dualism or
incongruity in the treatment of this fig-
ure. This incongruity is to be found in
the elements of freedom, skill in model-
ling and in composition, on the one
hand, as contrasted with a certain archaic
severity and awkwardness in composition
and execution on the other. The sever-
ity, conventionality, and awkwardness
point to the archaic period, which reach-
es, roughly speaking, from the earliest
antiquity of Greek art down to the year
460 B.C.; the freedom and grace in com-
position and execution point to the period
when Greek art was emancipated com-
pletely from its archaic trammels by Phid-
ias, after the year 460 B.C. Awkwardness
and conventionality are mainly to be
1892, by Harper and Brothers. All rights reserved.

So

found in this figure in the lower portion, from the waist downwards, freedom and grace in the upper part of the figure, above the waist. When we merely consider this lower portion, we must be struck, in the first place, with the discrepancy of its character as compared with the successful rendering of a definite sentiment in the pose and composition of the figure as a whole. With merely this lower portion of the figure to judge from, we should have expected a more conventional treatment in the upper portion: a head placed straight between the shoulders, and harder and severer lines in the folding of the drapery. Yet it cannot be denied that the artist has succeeded, by the gentle inclination of the head, by the attitude of leaning upon the spear, by the very lines suggested by the lofty helmet, in expressing a delicate and subdued sentiment which we are wont to associate only with later works of Greek art. also the artist has succeeded in this very low relief in conveying with freedom and without suggestion of constraint a delicate turn of the upper part of the body about the shoulders, so that the figure is not completely in full face as regards the torso, and presents a very subtle system of foreshortening.. But when he comes to the lower portion of the figure, about the hips, he cannot succeed in carrying on the suggestion of this delicate turn of the body, and the semblance of roundness is destroyed by the manifest appear ance of flatness. So too he succeeds with remarkable skill, considering this flat ness of relief, in suggesting the elaborate turn, from the shoulder downwards, of the arm which rests upon her hip; yet immediately below the waist, where the wrist and hand must continue to suggest the delicate turn of the whole arm, he appears to fail signally in a somewhat clumsy treatment of the wrist and of the hand. Finally, when we come to the modelling of the drapery, the discrepancy at once becomes patent between the varied flow of line so successfully indicating the texture of the garment and its delicate sensitiveness (if I may use such a word) in varying and accentuating the part of the body above the waist, and the unresponsive folds below the waist. These lower folds, again, in their regularity and parallel lines, point to the conventionalism which is universal in the works of the archaic period.

Ever since archæologists have realized that in the period of decline of Greek art, in the first century B.C., there was a kind of revival and conscious attempt at reproducing the spirit of the great by-gone age of Hellas-in short, a kind of renaissance many works which had formerly been ascribed to the archaic period were recognized as being the productions of this late revival of archaic art. The artists and copyists of this period, chiefly living in Rome or working for the Roman market, consciously strove to reproduce in spirit and in form the works belonging to the earlier periods, even attempting to reproduce the very imperfections and conventionalisms of this early art. This attempt and this spirit correspond in a great degree to a wave of artistic effort which in our century we have been witnessing in Germany and in England. In Germany these artists were called the "Nazarene School"; in England they are called PreRaphaelites. Both allow themselves to be inspired by the quaint spirit of Italian art before Raphael, and the manifestations of this severer tone in what might be called imperfections of technique. As regards works of Greek sculpture, the tendency has been to consider as archaistic, in contradistinction to archaic, all those works which, though in their general composition, in modelling of the nude and in treatment of drapery, corresponded to early archaic works, betrayed their origin in a later date by the involuntary intrusion of freedom and advanced technical skill in some portion of the work. Thus wherever one finds a certain dualism and discrepancy in any given work with regard to the points I have been describing, the tendency would be to consider such a work as belonging to this late socalled archaistic period. But there is one important point which must never be forgotten, namely, that in the so-called Period of Transition (from 500 to 460 B.C.), when art as a whole and the individual artists were in the act of freeing themselves from the archaic trammels, and of claiming their birthright to complete freedom of artistic rendering-that in this period, which immediately precedes the great efforts of Phidias, the same dualism occurs. It is here that the most patient and minute special study is required to distinguish the works of the late archaistic schools from those belonging to the early period of transition. Yet a com