INTERESTING DISCOVERY AT ROME.
A beautiful statue of Bacchus has recently been discovered in a hollow place beneath the staircase in the library at Hadrian’s Villa, Rome. It represents the god not as the coarse dissipated old man, but according to his later aspect, as a beautiful effeminate youth. It is singularly well preserved, the right hand only being missing. Its great beauty was at once recognised, and casts were immediately made, one of which is at Berlin, another at Strassburg, and a third in the new Cast Museum of Sculpture at Cambridge. The statue represents a youth standing with the weight of the body thrown on the right leg; the right hand is raised, and held, it is supposed, the two-handled wine-cup or kantharos of Bacchus. Over the right shoulder is thrown a nebris (fawn-skin), which falls back and front with studied symmetry. A question has arisen amongst the learned on these subjects as to whether this beautiful work of ancient art is itself an original, or a copy in marble from a bronze original. And then comes the still more important inquiry, what is its date? Professor Michaelis—a noted authority—states his opinion that ‘the statue is a work of the eclectic school, the post-Alexandrian manner which selected and combined, and advisedly imitated, the style of bygone manners, which sought to revive the manner of the best Attic and Argive work;’ and which the learned professor fancies he can discern by certain peculiar appearances and treatment, and a want of harmony in many minute details, which, however, could hardly occur to any ordinary spectator, who sees before him simply an exquisitely finished and beautiful work of antique art.