The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-05-08
NEW DISCOVERIES AT ATHENS.

[Charles waldstein, in Pall Mall Gazettel
 The photographs which have at this early date been secured by the editor of the PaH Hull Gazette amply prove that in the present case the importance of the discoveries at Athens has not been exaggerated, and we must congratulate the Greek Archaeological Society, who have undertaken these excavations, and have been doing so much good work in other parts of Greece, as well as Prof. Kavvadias, the learned archeologist who has ssuperintended the excavations, upon the brilliant results of their efforts. The statues will not strike the public as be- ing beautiful, and it is not on this ground that their claim to our consider ation is based; but they will undoubtedly be considered of supreme interest when it is realized that they illustrate in the most complete manner momentous phase in the development of the great Attic art of nearly 2,400 years ago. To solve the numerous interesting prob lens which these works present will be a task to which the archTologist will have to bring much careful observation of the works themselves prof casts taken from them yet believe that even the short time which has been granted for the study of the photographs makes it possible to decide from them the actual position which these statues hold in the history of Greek art, and to appreciate to some degree the new light which they shed upon the early history of Attic sculpture.
 While digging to the southeast of the Erechtheum, probably within the sacred precinct of the Ancient Temple of Athene Polias, the excayators came upon six statues and number of fragments at a depth of from seven to ten feet be- low the soil. The most interesting of these statues represent female figures somewhat over life in size in good pre- servation, with the exception of the lower portions, the legs being generally broken away below the knee, clad in rich gar ments, with broad diadem, or Stephoue surmounting the hair Though the statues differ from one another, they probably all represent the same goddess, and may have been statues of Athene placed as votive offerings within the sacred precinct of the temple.
 From the inscriptions which have been found on the same spot, these statues would probably not be later than the year 446 B.C But an examination of the works themselves shows that they cannot be later than 460 BC; and we cannot go wrong in giving as the prob able limit of their creation the forty years from 5l0 to 40 BIG At first, it is i,Yht bo hot hnn these statues are, not archaic, but archa- istie, for we know that in the later pc riods of Greece and Rome archetypes were reproduced, or at least influenced q certain school of Greek or Roman sculptors by the quaint spirit of their early religious art just as in our days a group of painters have been inspired by the charm of pre- Ratfaelite art. And when we remember that the sacred statues of Greece proper in the archaic period were chiefly of wood, of gold and ivory, or of bronze, and that marble be- came common material for this pur- pose only in subsequent ages, this doubt as to the genuine archaic character of these statues might be strengthened. Yet closer examination entirely dis pels such a doubt. For, as we shall see, these statues, though of marble mani fest the persistency of the earlier tradi- tions of woodworking and metal-work ing in the treatment of the stone while at the same time they display the un- certainty on the part of the artist with regard to his methods of indicating tex ture, especially of hair and drapery, by means of the carving of the marble
 One definite instance will illustrate these characteristics, and will at the same time finally show that these works are not archastic. These later archastic statues will reproduce the convention ality in the modelling of the drapery, the hair, and the nude which character izes genuine archaic works, yet they will betray their later origin in that the sculptor has learned to make use of the greater freedom which the block of marble, unlimited in size, presents as compared with the limitations to which the early wood-carver is subjected with regard to the trunk of tree out of which he must carve his figure The later marble-worker can hew his figure with extended arms out of one block of marble and this the archaistic sculptor does Not so the early marble-worker, who is bound down by the still prevail ing traditions of the wood-carver. Now, in these newly discovered statues the right forearm is extended, but was not hewn out of the same block with the rest of the figure. It was carved out of separate piece of marble, and was at tached to the upper arm at the elbow by means of projection in the fore arm fitting into the socket, this cavity still existing in the figures just discov- cred, just as in the early wooden statues the arms were attached to the body. In the more detailed working of the hair and of the drapery, we notice the prev alence of the technical treatment pecu- liar to wood-carving and early metal work, while at the same time an attempt is made to discover the proper mode of indicating texture in a manner suiting