A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

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SCULPTURES AND MARBLES

Many of the sculptures belonging to the National Gallery have been removed to the Hall of Sculpture at the Tate Gallery or to the National Portrait Gallery. Among those that remain in Trafalgar Square are:—

"The Dying Alexander" (in the Vestibule).—A Renaissance copy in Egyptian porphyry of the bust, in the Uffizi at Florence, known as "The Dying Alexander." The bust is now generally recognised as the work of a Pergamene sculptor, and is supposed to represent a youthful giant. The influence of the "Alexander type" is in any case noticeable in this fine work; a type embodying "the traces of human passion, the imperfection of human longing, the divine despair, which attach to the highest mortal natures because they are high and because they are mortal."—Presented by Mr. Henry Yates Thompson.

Bust of Mantegna.—A plaster cast from the bust of Mantegna in the Mantegna Chapel at Mantua: see the description quoted under 274.—Presented by Mr. Henry Vaughan.

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