On the track of Ulysses; Together with an excursion in quest of the so-called Venus of Melos / Two studies in archaeology, made during a cruise among the Greek islands

by William James Stillman

VICTORY OF BRESCIA—SIDE.

The various suggestions, more or less authoritative, made as to the restoration, and thence as to the determination of the attributes of the statue, are to be summed up briefly. The Count de Clarac, the then curator of the antiques of the Louvre, adopted the Venus with the apple hypothesis, but afterward abandoned it in favor of one put forward by Millingen, that it was a Victory. This is one of the theories of the restoration which has found the greatest number of adherents. Several restorations have been proposed, which make the statue part of a group, all which, though defended or proposed by many dilettanti, I reject, for what to me seem sufficient reasons, viz.: Firstly, we have in the statue no evidence whatever that it formed part of a group, and without some such the hypothesis is gratuitous; Secondly, we have—with one exception, which I shall presently note, and which gives no countenance to such a theory—no statue or parts of statues which agree with it in artistic quality, or even none which lend themselves to a group, if such were made up by various sculptors; Thirdly, that, at the epoch in which the statue was produced, any group which has been suggested would have been out of accordance with the aims of art, as practiced by the Greeks. The only evidence in favor of such a theory is that in some antique fragments or coins are indications of such a figure as the Melian in combination. But, as this statue must have been in its own time nearly as celebrated, relatively, as in ours, it must have given rise to many imitations and adaptations. It may have given rise to some which support the group theory, but to more which support an opposing theory.

VICTORY RAISING AN OFFERING (TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS, THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS).

Von Ravensburg goes over, in detail, all the group theories, and easily finds fatal objections to all. What most surprises me is that any one ever tried to put it into a group, so completely by itself does it stand in every sense of the word.

Millingen, in 1826, started his theory that it was a Victory holding a shield in both hands. I am quite convinced that many who have started other theories would have adopted this if they had not been anticipated in proposing it. The vanity of archæological research, and eagerness to propose something new is so dominant in most archæologists that they exercise more ingenuity to advance some new theory than would be requisite to show the validity of an old one. And the statue of Melos has been preëminent in fruitfulness of theories of all qualities and grades of improbability. Millingen, however, supported his theory by a similar statue known as the Capuan Venus, a reproduction, I believe, in Roman times, of the Melian statue, probably through some other intermediate copy or reproduction, as the sculptors of the Capuan statue could not have seen the Melian. The arms are a modern and abominable restoration. Here, again, I must, in passing, protest against the attribution to the Venus type of all nude or semi-nude statues. There is nothing in the Capuan which indicates that it was intended as a Venus. Millingen quotes Apollonius of Rhodes as describing a statue of Venus looking at herself in the shield of Mars, which she herself is holding, but this is no evidence of the type correspondence, and the gravamen of the matter lies precisely in the diversity of the type from the recognizable Venuses. But the Capuan is too far in type and treatment from the Melian to serve as definite argument. Such as it is, an item in the discussion, I will not exaggerate its importance, though I believe it to be a far-away recollection of the Melian statue.

“The Victory of Brescia” is another of the recollections, rather than reproductions, of the type of which I believe the Melian statue to be the original. It is in bronze, is later, and has the wings, but the type is unmistakable, and the action of the torso and head is sufficiently different from our statue to show that it was only an emulation, and not a plagiarism, that was intended.

The drapery differs in the arrangement, being of bronze and agreeing with some undisputed Victories at Athens, but the action of the left leg holding the shield is the same, and that of the arms corresponds very nearly, as far as the arms remain in the Melian work. As a whole, it reminds one more of the latter than does any other of the statues of its class.

The case is one in which archæological knowledge is of very little value, unless it be aided by thorough artistic study and a knowledge of the requirements of art proper. The archæologist, like other scientists, must have positive evidence to work on; and the testimony of pure taste, the intuitions of an artistic education, are of no use to him except as confirmatory. The intuition of the artist, whose taste has been educated by long study of the works he has to deal with, arrives at opinions by a kind of inspiration to which science often lacks all means of access. In the case of this statue, archæology has no evidence to weigh, and the ponderous erudition which Overbeck, Müller, Jahn, Welcker, and others have piled on the question has no foundation. We can determine with comparative certainty that the statue belongs to the epoch between Phidias and Praxiteles, because we have the work of the school of Phidias and sufficient comparative data for that of Praxiteles [and now, since the discovery of the Hermes at Olympia, positive data] to judge from; and we have a right to say that the Melian statue came between these, but beyond this nothing—no clew except what lies in the design and the unities attendant on it, of which per se the professed archæologist is no judge.