DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15680#0206
CHAPTER VI.
THE BRONZE STATUETTE.
[Plate XXXVII.]
Of objects in metal it was hardly to be expected that the yield at
Phylakopi would be large. In this class of material the most interesting
instance is the Statuette discovered in 1897 and published in B.S.A. iii., PI. III,
p. 26.1 In view of its importance, and of the fact that the illustration there
given is scarcely adequate, it has been thought well to reproduce it again on
a somewhat larger scale (its natural size) in this volume.
It was found between two stones in the east wall of room C 5 : 7, at about
half a metre from the surface ; as there was no evidence to show that this
position was not entirely fortuitous, we cannot rely on this circumstance as a
proof of'the primary purpose of the Statuette. Nordoes the figure itself
offer much assistance towards determining this point. Even the sex, as I have
already (loc. cit.) pointed out, is not altogether certain; although at first sight
the narrow curving sides and the beardless face suggest a female figure, the
general proportions, which are carefully modclled, are those of a man ; and in
the marble xoana, to which this is most closely allied, while the characteristic
modelling of the feminine figure is carefully rendered, the hair of the male
face is never indicated. We may therefore I think accept this Statuette as
rejpresenting a male figure. In our Statuette the hair of the head does not
appear to have been modelled ; perhaps it may have been indicated by fine
engraved lines which owing to the decay of the metal are now no longer
visible : in the Amorgos marble head figured in Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece,
p. 51, Fig. 26, the hair is very slightly, if at all, in relief, but is indicated by a
series of engraved lines radiating from the ccntre of the scalp. This method
might easily have grown up in the first stages of sculpture in marble, and its
oceurrence in our bronze would be an additional evidence that this latter is
the work of an artist accustomed to the marble technique: for obviously,
assuming that our figure must have been first modelled in clay, the attachment
of a raised surface indicating the hair should have presented no difficulty.
The gesture of the arms again, which now suggests the attitude of a boxer
1 It h.as sinco been figured from the same blocks, in W. Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece,
p. 55, Fig. 21).
THE BRONZE STATUETTE.
[Plate XXXVII.]
Of objects in metal it was hardly to be expected that the yield at
Phylakopi would be large. In this class of material the most interesting
instance is the Statuette discovered in 1897 and published in B.S.A. iii., PI. III,
p. 26.1 In view of its importance, and of the fact that the illustration there
given is scarcely adequate, it has been thought well to reproduce it again on
a somewhat larger scale (its natural size) in this volume.
It was found between two stones in the east wall of room C 5 : 7, at about
half a metre from the surface ; as there was no evidence to show that this
position was not entirely fortuitous, we cannot rely on this circumstance as a
proof of'the primary purpose of the Statuette. Nordoes the figure itself
offer much assistance towards determining this point. Even the sex, as I have
already (loc. cit.) pointed out, is not altogether certain; although at first sight
the narrow curving sides and the beardless face suggest a female figure, the
general proportions, which are carefully modclled, are those of a man ; and in
the marble xoana, to which this is most closely allied, while the characteristic
modelling of the feminine figure is carefully rendered, the hair of the male
face is never indicated. We may therefore I think accept this Statuette as
rejpresenting a male figure. In our Statuette the hair of the head does not
appear to have been modelled ; perhaps it may have been indicated by fine
engraved lines which owing to the decay of the metal are now no longer
visible : in the Amorgos marble head figured in Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece,
p. 51, Fig. 26, the hair is very slightly, if at all, in relief, but is indicated by a
series of engraved lines radiating from the ccntre of the scalp. This method
might easily have grown up in the first stages of sculpture in marble, and its
oceurrence in our bronze would be an additional evidence that this latter is
the work of an artist accustomed to the marble technique: for obviously,
assuming that our figure must have been first modelled in clay, the attachment
of a raised surface indicating the hair should have presented no difficulty.
The gesture of the arms again, which now suggests the attitude of a boxer
1 It h.as sinco been figured from the same blocks, in W. Ridgeway's Early Age of Greece,
p. 55, Fig. 21).