TERRACOTTAS
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LARGER IMAGE
PLATE VII
KRATER BELONGING TO HARROW SCHOOL
(a) KYLIX SIGNED BY TLESON, AND (b) PLATE SIGNED BY EPIKTETOS; IN THE COLLECTION OF THE MARQUESS OF NORTHAMPTON
The Alexandrine period is represented on Plate IV by Mr. Salting’s fine mask of a sea deity (No. 113) with inlaid eyes and marine emblems skilfully worked in, suggestive of the grotesque masks of Pompeian and cinquecento Italian art; and by Mr. Wyndham Cook’s puzzling seated statuette of an emaciated man (No. 50). This figure has usually been described as a pathological study, a votive offering to Asklepios from a sick person. The careful workmanship, however, and the fact that it is inscribed with the name of the personage represented seem to militate against this view; moreover the figure does not seem to represent actual suffering so much as austerity. The excessive emaciation, the pose, and the fixed abstracted expression appear to me to indicate rather ecstasy, the ἔκστασις of the mystic, the Pythagorean anchorite who, like the Brahmin, has learnt by mortification of the flesh to project his soul into the unseen. We know the interest that Alexander took in the Indian yogins, and that he had intended to bring one of them, Kalanos, back with him to Greece. It is not improbable that other Greeks may have taken up the idea: and it is significant that this bronze was found at Alexander’s own city of Pella and bears a Macedonian name. If this be so, it adds an extraordinary and unique interest to the little bronze. ¶ The group of terracotta statuettes on Plate VI are chosen as characteristic types of different forms of this charming art. The little doll (No. 24) made, perhaps, in imitation of a Persephone figure, but intended to have movable limbs, and the Caryatid figure (No. 26) belong to the fifth century; the latter is remarkable for its strongly Pheidian character of type and drapery, and is certainly of Attic work nearly contemporary with the Parthenon. The young Dionysos (No. 7) and the two girls (Nos. 3 and 10) are good instances of the peculiarly modern sentiment which pervaded the art as well as the literature of the Hellenistic age. These figures are the bric-à-brac of antiquity; the far-away ancestors of Dresden, and Saxe, and Watteau, with some of their coquetry and none of their artificiality. ¶ Before leaving the terracottas it is necessary to mention the large head of Zeus (No. 46) which has been added since the exhibition opened; Professor Furtwängler and Mrs. Strong consider this head to be ‘a Greek work of the great period of Pheidias.’ It is particularly unpleasant to me to find myself differing entirely from their view; after close and repeated examination I am bound to say that it seems to me to belong to a well-known class of terracottas which are now generally agreed to be of modern origin. ¶ Of the collection of vases there is only space here to include three typical specimens (Plate VII); these are the kylix signed by the artist Tleson (No. 16), with a charming drawing of two goats rearing up and butting one another above a floral ornament; a good example of the skill with which the Greek artist pressed into his service as pure decoration a common scene of daily life; the plate (No. 79), signed by Epiktetos, with its humorous ride-a-cock-horse subject, the precursor of the Parthenon horseman riding on his own fighting-cock; and the krater from Harrow School (No. 44), with its masterly composition of the hero Kaineus overwhelmed by the Centaurs. In its strong firm line, and spirited composition, which is yet kept in subordination to the decorative effect of the vase as a whole, this work stands out instinct with the combination of strength and self-control which are the leading characteristics of the best works of Hellenic art. ¶ I have already occupied so much space that the very important series of engraved gems and coins must remain almost unnoticed, and this is a pity because outside the great museums we are not likely ever to see such a series again assembled. The beautiful drawings of Greece by Cockerell, the wandering artist-scholar, one of the great builders of English artistic repute in the Levant, these too must be left with a bare mention. But this fact in itself speaks for the high standard attained by the exhibition, on which Mrs. Strong and the club are much to be congratulated.