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This theory is admirably illustrated in the beautiful little head of a girl from Chios recently acquired by the Boston Museum ([Fig. 13]). The head shows us an extreme degree of morbidezza in the softening of all the sharper facial lines such as eyelids and lips. The face is seen almost through a slight haze, and it thus gets some of the impression conveyed by distance. Where the head is worked it is quite rough and formal in purely impressionist style, but most of the hair was to be added in stucco, as the sharp cuts on the upper part of the head demonstrate. The head has been attributed too enthusiastically to Praxiteles himself. It is good work, but it is not by the author of the Hermes. The too mechanical smile and the too formal cheeks show a less masterly touch. But it is a perfect embodiment of Alexandrian art about 300 B.C. and must be unhesitatingly attributed to its real origin. We see a general copy of the Praxitelean long face with eyes about the centre of the head, Praxitelean proportions, and Praxitelean head-type.
Another head of Alexandrian origin is the fine bearded head of the Capitol Museum ([Fig. 14]), which is really almost a mask with the whole of the top and sides of the head left for stucco additions. The rough blocking of the beard shows the artist’s impressionist leanings. The long face is purely Attic, though perhaps closer to Bryaxis or some later artist than to Praxiteles. The head is more or less akin to the Sarapis head and to the other much finer bearded head which stands in close relation to the Sarapis, the well-known Zeus of Otricoli ([Fig. 15]). In the Otricoli head we have a similar prominence of the cheek-bones, a similar narrowing of the forehead above the frontal sinus—Attic features but not Praxitelean. The Otricoli Zeus is also a marble work cut for stucco additions, some of which are still visible, and we should probably recognize in it another work of early Alexandrian origin. It is perhaps not too daring to see the prototype of these Attic-shaped non-Praxitelean Alexandrian bearded heads in the Sarapis of Bryaxis.[38] Bryaxis or some other late Attic artist seems to have affected the bearded male type of Alexandria much as Praxiteles influenced the feminine ideal. Nottingham Castle contains a bearded head from Nemi,[39] which belongs to the same class of work. Here again we have the hair added in stucco and a general resemblance to the Otricoli type.
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One of the new Greco-Alexandrian types was naturally the goddess Isis. A head in the Louvre ([Fig. 16]) gives us a version of this figure, which still, even in a poor Roman copy, shows us something of the languid elegance of the original. There is no traceable influence of Scopas in Alexandrian art. The Praxitelean and Attic tradition was transferred pure, and therefore the liveliness of movement and action in Pergamene art is quite absent from the art of Alexandria. Statues are mainly small, partly perhaps for economy, and partly from the lack of all desire for comparison with the gigantic masterpieces of ancient Egypt, and they are limited to simple standing or seated poses. An interesting statue of obvious Alexandrian origin is the priest of Isis in the Capitol ([Fig. 17]), which has been wrongly restored with a female head. This head is itself Alexandrian, as its hair demonstrates, but it has no connexion with the body, which is male, though draped in a light clinging tunic.[40] The tunic is interesting as giving us a good example of Alexandrian drapery. We may notice the very small closely set folds, and the extreme realistic care with which the loose parts of the drapery are distinguished from those tightly stretched. There is an element of artificiality no doubt in the way in which the folds radiate from the great jar carried against the chest and in their close symmetry of design, but as a whole the effect of texture is marvellously well secured. We have here a good example of the naturalism which now plays a large part in Alexandrian art.
Another statue which we must claim for Alexandrian art is the Capitoline Venus ([Fig. 18]), an extremely interesting statue not only as a first-rate original but from its relation to the Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles. The face and the hair show the usual qualities of Alexandrian impressionism; the fringed mantle thrown over the water-pot is the mantle of the Egyptian Isis, and the foreshortening of the foot of the amphora is just the pictorial touch we expect in Alexandrian art. But the most interesting light which this statue throws on Alexandrian art is its directness and want of subtlety in motive. The goddess of Cnidos is naked, but she is only half-conscious of her nakedness. Her eyes are fixed on eternity, and the actual bath is a mere accessory like the child of the Hermes. But the Capitoline goddess is not thinking of eternity at all. She is stepping into her bath, and is suddenly aware of a spectator’s gaze. She is the classical counterpart of Susannah in Renaissance art. All the vague beauty of the Attic statue is lost by the touch of Alexandrian realism, which amounts almost to vulgarity. As to the treatment of the body it is again real and not ideal. The back in particular shows a close study of the model without any of the selective idealism of classical art. Like the beautiful torso in Syracuse[41] it is a marvellous study from nature, not marked by any vestige of idealism.