CHILD WITH LANTERN
Terme Museum, Rome
It is not easy to illustrate this phase of Hellenistic sculpture. But there can be few finer examples than the large bronze statuette, “The Winged Cupid,” belonging to Mr. Pierpont Morgan, long lodged in the South Kensington Museum. It once decorated a Roman villa on the slopes of Vesuvius, and was excavated at Boscoreale, a village near Naples at the foot of the volcano. The bronze is much beautified by the wonderful bluish-green patina with which time has endowed it. The perfectly poised figure, springing forward with the burning torch of desire, stands for an entirely new note in Greek sculpture. Its frolicsome roguishness can be compared with nothing which the Hellenic mind expressed in sculptural form.
A further instance of the same tendency is furnished by the well-known “[Boy strangling a Goose],” by Boethus of Chalcedon. This delightful work, one of the few sculptural jokes, is an obvious parody upon one of the adventures of the hero Hercules. Lastly, we may point to the charming “[Child with Lantern],” recently taken from the Tiber, and now standing in the rose-decked cloisters of the Terme Museum.
These three unpretentious little works, all remarkable for their easy and graceful humour, happily complete our survey. Greek sculpture had learnt to smile. It ended with the coming of the Romans. When the Roman imperial rule finally extended over Asia Minor and Egypt, as well as over Hellas itself, Greek art began to lose its individuality, and a Græco-Roman style was evolved which was finally merged into the distinctive sculpture of Rome itself. In 146 b.c. Greece was conquered by Mummius and became a Roman province. In 133 b.c. Attalus III. willed Pergamus to Rome. In 64 b.c. Pompey put an end to the Seleucid rule in Syria. Some thirty years later, the sea fight at Actium ended the Ptolemaic rule in Egypt, and the last Hellenistic stronghold fell. An art impulse which had been predominant for five hundred years was at an end.
CHAPTER VII
THE PORTRAIT SCULPTURE OF ROME
(50 b.c. TO THE FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE IN 330 a.d.)