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The so-called ‘Sardanapalus’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

Extract

The torso of this type published by Arndt in 1893 was found at Athens in the Theatre of Dionysos in 1865 and put into the magazine of the National Museum. In the register of the Acropolis Museum shortly after 1891 is entered the fragment of a bearded head, consisting of the front upper part to the lips, again found on the South Slope, which was placed in the Acropolis Museum magazine. To this in 1918 Dr. Keramopoullos joined the lower part of the beard, which had also been among the fragments there. At the end of 1920 I was fortunate enough to notice the connexion between the torso of the National Museum and the head of the Acropolis Museum. The touching surface leaves no doubt that they originally formed part of the same statue, and the combination (unrestored except for plaster in the irregular joins of head with beard and beard with body) appears to represent a straightforward copy of about the beginning of the first century B.C. (Pl. III.). That, though accurate in essentials, it was not highly finished, may be seen by examining the line where the hair leaves the side of the forehead, the ends of the curls on the chiton, and the summary, but confident, treatment of material both in chiton and himation: yet the work can at once be seen to be softer, fresher, and more valuable stylistically than the conventional herms of Naples, Palermo, and the Uffizi.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1921

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References

page 78 note 1 Arndt-Amelung, , Einzelaufnahmen, 714.Google Scholar

page 78 note 2 Pentelic marble. Total height 1·23 m. The upper part of the head was referred to by Sanborn in a paper read at Athens in or about 1912. The cruciform arrangement of marks on the forehead shows that the defacement here was at Christian hands: the injuries to the right eye are also clearly deliberate.

page 78 note 3 Guida, No. 273, p. 88. The herm-bust as well as the nose is restored.

page 78 note 4 Arndt-Amelung, op. cit., p. 557.

page 78 note 5 MacDowall, , J.H.S., xxiv. (1904), p. 255Google Scholar, note 1, d. I was not able to see this head in Florence; very probably its position has been altered during the recent rearrangement of the Museum.

page 79 note 1

page 82 note 1 Arch. Anz., 1915, p. 279 ff.

page 82 note 2 Arndt-Amelung, op. cit., 557.

page 83 note 1 Mr. Forsdyke kindly informs me that the British Museum copy agrees in the measurements of the head with the Vatican and Athens copies, and so should derive from the same original or a copy of the same original. We may recall the Persephone type of the late fifth or early fourth century, which undergoes a like modification in the drapery at the hands of sculptors of the Roman period. Compare the Eleusis relief cited by Amelung, , Basis, p. 53Google Scholar, with the same type used in a Roman portrait statue, Helbig, 1174 (Lateran). Less closely-dated copies of the same type modified in a similar way are too numerous to mention.

page 84 note 1 Also mentioned in the paper referred to in note 2, p. 78. Greyish island marble. Measurements agree with the Vatican statue except in this particular: lowest point right ear to highest point forehead:—Vatican ·198 m.; Corinth ·176 m. Do. left side:— Vatican ·203 m.; Corinth ·19 m.

page 84 note 2 A.J.A., vi. (1902), Pl. XVII.

page 85 note 1 This feature, though it seems, especially in the British Museum copy, to disturb the balance of the statue, was almost certainly present in the original. The Vatican statue has a projection in the chiton at ground-level which is of the same breadth as the remains of the British Museum left foot.

page 86 note 1 Peiraeus Museum. No. 374. Pentelic marble. Unrestored. Found September 1st, 1914, in the house of Antonios Kanellas, Valaneion St., Peiraeus, in a cistern, apparently on the site of ancient baths. Total height to present lowest point of beard ·32 m. Breadth of head (immediately below ears) ·15 m. approx. Breadth of face across eyes (outer corner of lids) ·11 m. Breadth of face (outer ends eyebrow-bones as far back as front of clustering locks) ·137 m. Lowest point of hair-band to lowest point of upper lip ·148 m. Mouth (at level of lowest point of upper lip to inside edges of moustache) ·045 m. Height of eye (max. excl. lids) ·037 m. Length of eye (excl. lids) ·014 m. Height of ear (max.) ·056 m. In the numerous adaptations of the type to herm form, the hair is almost invariably modified by the addition of shoulder-locks, and the arrangement at the back conventionalised.

page 86 note 2 Dickins, , Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum, i. p. 266, No. 699.Google Scholar

page 87 note 1 Macchioro, , Jahreshefte, xii. (1908), p. 189Google Scholar; Wolters, , Jahrbuch, iii. (1893), p. 177.Google Scholar

page 87 note 2 The evidence of the ear is neutral: missing in the Athens copy, in the Vatican statue, though, like the eye, it is executed without refinement, its main design corresponds to that employed by Praxiteles. We know only the lower part of a Kephisodotean ear.

page 87 note 3 E.g. Arndt-Amelung, op. cit., 1778 (Madrid).

page 87 note 4 I am indebted to Dr. Ernst Kjellberg both for drawing my attention to this head and for giving me a photograph of it. There is what I believe to be a replica (set on the body of an Apollo Sauroktonos and injured by drastic cleaning) at Ince-Blundell (Michaelis, , Anc. Marbles, p. 339, No. 12).Google Scholar