Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/220

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190 Gbeek Sculpture. of the British Museum, discovered with many other relics by Sir Charles Fellowes a few years ago. It is supposed to date from the sixth or seventh century B.C., and alike in arrangement aud execution it is purely Greek, repre- senting in an artistic form the myth of the carrying off of children by Harpies, who appear as winged female figures. The sculptures of the Temple of iEgina were discovered in the year 1811. They are at least a century later than those of Selinus or Xanthus, above mentioned. Amongst heaps of broken fragments seventeen nearly perfect statues were dug out, which belonged to the eastern and western pediments of the Temple of iEgina, dedicated to Athena. The original statues, which were carefully restored by Thorwaldsen, are now in the Glyptothek at Munich. Com- plete casts of them, properly arranged, are to be seen in the Phigaleian saloon of the British Museum. The meaning of the sculptures has been very differently inter- preted ; they are, however, evidently memorials of victories. They are of Parian marble, and are so carefully executed, that even the wrinkles of the nude portions are rendered. The limbs are delicately moulded, and full of energy ; the attitudes graceful and expressive ; but the heads are of the Eastern rather than the Greek type ; the oblique eyes and sharp chins reminding us of Assyrian bas-reliefs. In archaic sculpture the arrangement of the draperies and hair is eminently conventional and artificial; the pose of the figures is often stiff and constrained, and a foolish smile is not unfrequently to be found on the faces. As art made progress, its gradual emancipation from the trammels of conventionalism may be traced; and the best works executed towards the close of the period we have been reviewing, retain no more of the artificial in pose and the