Vase picture after Creuzer, Deutsche Schriften, 1846, I, II, p. 238.
Reproduced from the Erbach Collection.
at Corinth he places a dove on her right hand. The idea is that having received the apple as the prize of beauty she sends out the dove to her worshipers to announce her triumph and inform them that they may celebrate the victory.
Veit Valentin attempts to construct his restoration out of the data furnished by the marble itself and seems to come nearest to the truth. He assumes that the goddess, when in the act of undressing for a bath, finds herself surprised by an intruder. There is no fear or alarm in her attitude, but she raises her hand in protest with a self-poised assurance and grasps with her right hand the falling garment which she attempts to support by a hurried motion of her left knee. We regret that we have not seen either a picture or a statue of this restoration, but we are deeply impressed that this idea is most probably correct.
The latest restoration comes from Francisca Paloma Del Mar (Frank Paloma) who places a child on the left arm of the goddess, and this conception is defended in a special pamphlet by Alexander Del Mar.[6]
Mr. Del Mar brings out the idea that the reverence in which the great mother goddess was held among the pagans was not substantially different in piety from Christian Madonna worship, and this view is brought out in the painting by the artist
THE MOTHER OF THE GODS.
From a painting by Francisca P. Del Mar.