Page images
PDF
EPUB

the Nereid monument in the British Museum, where we see

next the same walled On Roman reliefs, as

first an assault on a walled city, and city being surrendered to the captor. on the columns of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius, such repetitions are constant. But once we are satisfied that the conception of both pediments involves the idea of "interested spectators," the extent to which the same figures may appear in both pediments would depend on what degree of intimacy the sculptor wished to express between the angle groups of both pediments. In both the locality was the same, in our opinion. Of course, the sculptor was free to choose a different set of local representatives for each angle. But our suggestion is that he may equally have carried over an angle group from the first act of the drama to the second. In a word, we suggest that the so-called Fates are the three peculiarly Attic personifications of morning dew, Aglauros, Hersè, and Pandrosos, as many have believed them to be since Welcker's identification of them in 1845. They would thus be a companion group to the three Horae in the left wing, who had the power of rolling away the clouds and revealing the blue sky. These three sisters were known simply as the Parthenoi, and their position on the Parthenon near the waning moon at dawn would be appropriate. They would be there as strictly local semi-divine beings. When they reappear in the west pediment it is as the daughters of Cecrops, about whom legend had woven a local tale connected with a grotto on the side of the Acropolis, and the birth of the boy Erichthonios. Whether the sculptor had meant us to assume an interval of years between the birth of Athenè and her rivalry with Poseidon, no one can say. We

prefer to think that the one act followed immediately upon the other, but that would not necessarily exclude the reappearance of the Dew Maidens as the legendary daughters of Cecrops. In any case, we do not press our view beyond insisting on the strictly local character of the persons in all the angles, including the sun and moon, who, as we have said, were the sun and moon as known to the Athenians in their daily life.

Whether Fates or Dew Maidens, the three figures K, L, M have exercised a singular fascination from the moment of their becoming widely known. Perhaps we should rather say the two figures L, M. For undoubtedly it is the grouping of these two that excites the most pleasure, so simple and so obvious is the motive, so grand the bodily forms, and so beautiful the drapery. The motive we have already described-one woman putting her heels back and trying to raise hurriedly another who has been sleeping against her. It is one of those universal actions which need no explanation even to the simplest of mankind. The third figure K is a little detached as we see her now. But an examination of the backs of K and L shows that when the group was put up in position it had been found necessary to dig deep holes in the back of L and in the lowermost part of K, in order that the two figures might be brought nearer together and more closely knit. The left arm of K, now missing, had then been firmly planted on the back of the shoulder of L, whose right arm again crosses over on the thigh of K. Thus originally the whole triad had been closely bound together. The figure whose bodily attractions are most obvious is M. Such movement as we see in her body is

hardly voluntary on her part. She is simply an object of study and admiration. No wonder she has been sometimes called Aphroditè, nor that recently she has been compared with the "Aphroditè in the Gardens" at Athens, by Alcamenes, a work renowned for its elegance.1 She has

even been claimed as herself from the hand of that favourite

pupil of Pheidias. But whatever her charms, we must not forget that she is only a secondary figure in a great composition.

If we are right in describing the Theseus or Cephalos of the opposite angle as sunlit, we should expect to find the corresponding figure M sculptured as in twilight, and illumined by the waning moon; that is to say, without deep shadows in the folds of the drapery such as the sun casts, but with a predominance of edges of folds as if seen emerging in obscurity. Doubtless the mere attitude of the figure necessarily leads to an effect of this kind. Her! body is tilted over to the front in such a manner that the folds of the chiton on her right side hang down and fill up what otherwise would have been a deep mass of shadow. Her dress is drawn tightly round her legs, producing sharpedged folds, and the drapery covering the rock on which she lies falls in flat masses. It would seem as if the sculptor had chosen this attitude and pose with an instinct for the effect of a figure seen in the dull light of the sinking! moon. And in any case we must bear in mind that the fact of all three figures being closely draped, reasonable

1 Amelung in Roem. Mittheilungen, 1901, pl. 1, 2, p. 21, considers that a statue in the Doria Pamphili palace at Rome may be a copy of the Aphroditè

in the Gardens. See also Reisch, in the Jahresheften d. Oesterr. Inst., i. p. 77 fol.

[graphic][merged small][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][graphic]
« PreviousContinue »