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

THE “VENUS” RESTORED—FRONT.
(TRACED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A LIVING MODEL.)

THE “VENUS” RESTORED—SIDE.
(TRACED FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF A LIVING MODEL.)

THE SO-CALLED VENUS OF MELOS—SIDE.

My theory, open to the grave objection that it is one in which hypothesis bears an undue proportion to proven fact (yet not so great as any of the group theories, and hardly more than any other theory, for all are constructed out of the same aerial substance), is that the Melian statue is the original Niké Apteros from the little temple on the Acropolis of Athens. If so, one can understand the whole of my theory of concealment, attribution, and type, because this statue above all others would come under the rancor of a victor and its flight would become an humiliation to Athens. It was like the standard of a defeated army, to be kept at all hazards from the enemy. Hurried away to Melos, it was safe from the invader, but no nearer point was secure. The restoration in my hypothesis becomes that of the Victory in some attitude connected with regarding, or recording, on the shield or a tablet the names of the Attic heroes, or battles, and my opinion is that she has just finished writing, but I am disposed to uncertainty on the exact phase of the action, only insisting on that of the Recorder. The minutiæ of description of many antique works of art which we owe to Pausanias and Pliny was plainly impossible with this. Neither ever saw it, but its memory existed in artistic tradition and has been repeated in the statues we have seen, probably only a few of those which once existed.

Von Ravensburg sums up the objections to the shield-bearing Victory and to the theory of Millingen as follows: The theory would indicate that she leaned back to balance the weight of the shield, but the objections urged are that if the shield were larger it would hide too much (yet in an earlier part of the book the statement is made that a part of the figure, and just that part covered by the shield, is comparatively unfinished, which has given rise to the theory of a group in which one side of the statue was hidden); if it were small, the weight would not be enough to account for the attitude. And, in the next breath, he urges that the grand heroic character is an objection to her struggling with a burden. But if a goddess, and of this robust type, the burden ought not to oppress her, however great, humanly speaking. But in point of fact there is no noteworthy degree of backward inclination. To test the question, I photographed a model in the attitude required to hold a shield on her left knee and write on it.

The result was very slightly different from that of the statue. A part of the backward action of the model was due to the necessity of a support to enable her to remain in the pose necessary to be photographed, but the action of writing is better expressed by the statue.

The action of the statue is that of a figure which stands nearly balanced and in repose, with the first movement in a forward action, like one who reaches out to give, take, or write, or any similar action or the moment after the action is complete. The particular moment we cannot determine without the possession of the fore-arms. Von Ravensburg goes on to say that he does not mean to affirm that the holding of a shield does not suit the action of the upper part of the body, but maintains that it does not explain it particularly well. But after the inane restoration given forth with his high approval, we may be permitted to doubt that his artistic taste has been as carefully developed as his archæological acumen. He quotes Overbeck as objecting to the shield resting on the left knee, that there are no traces on the left thigh which the shield must have left; but Wittig and Von Lützow have recognized these very marks, and they are distinctly visible even in the east, as far as would be expected if a bronze shield merely rested on the drapery, and the shield, if there was one, was in all probability of bronze, held well out from the body, and resting on the knee raised for that purpose, the foot being supported by a helmet lying on the ground. But, further, he says these considerations are quite superfluous, for the position of the left leg of the Melian statue contradicts the shield-supporting, and he quotes in support Valentin, that the left thigh would incline outward to secure a balance, and that the supporting of a heavy object on the thigh thrown in would violate the laws of equilibrium. That this is not true is shown by the “Victory of Brescia,” in which the action is precisely this, and the pose of the thigh is the same as that of the Melian statue. Moreover, I tried a model again in this view, and the result is given in the illustration.