Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/115

THE PARTHENON AND ITS SCULPTURES. 99 Fig. 87. — Incense Burner : from the Frieze and from a Vase. pencil ; and then, at last, when he comes to the manes he has let fly hand and chisel with their full force ; and where a base workman (above all if he had modelled the thing in clay first) would have lost himself in laborious imitation, the Greek has struck the tresses out with angular incisions deep driven." It followed from the true method ^^^^^ of marble relief that the original sur- Ij y/fl^B^^H ^^^^ plane is made to take as much Fll vv (HC^^B as it will; this precious surface is J^^'^^^HII^B indeed carefully preserved throughout III U^H^^H as a fine water-colour painter will preserve the light in his work. The furthest plane or background is found anywhere in the thickness of the material where it is wanted, and does not occur at a constant depth. There are broad passages which are little more than incised on a flat surface. (Fig. 81.) The forms are, as it were, seen through a plane, they are not attached to a plane. The system was, as Dr Murray has well expressed it, to " broaden the nearest plane," but he seems to have regarded it as a choice of taste not as a law of fine craftsmanship. Marble relief tends properly to this type of section 1 , modelled relief to this other A. One is left from a level surface, the other is added on a level surface. Several years ago Dr Waldstein brought into prominence some fragments of small terra-cottas which had on them parts of some of the figures of the assembly of gods, and put forward the view, although cautiously, that they might have been parts of original models for the frieze. Furtwangler, amongst others, accepted them as at least of ancient work ; but they are now considered to be taken from a cast made for Choiseul Gouffier about 1787. It happens that the original slab which these terra- cottas represent has been much injured, and the early plaster Fig.