Casson, Stanley: The technique of early Greek sculpture (Oxford, 1933)

86 THE EARLIEST HELLENIC STONE STATUES
mainland of Greece, where marble was plentiful, its rise to
popularity did not drive out of fashion the softer limestone
which had been in use generally in Greece. The Attic poros
sculptures described above post-date some fine marble
sculptures. Poros was even in use at a time when the pre-
vailing Ionic fashions from east Greece had converted Attic
artists not only to their own peculiar style of art but also to
their favourite material—Parian marble.1 There is, indeed,
every reason to think2 that the earliest known Attic sculptures
were cut in marble. Certainly there are no works in poros
from Attica which belong indisputably to the seventh
century, whereas there survives at least one splendid example
of marble sculpture which belongs perhaps to the end of the
seventh century, and certainly to a date hardly later than
600 B.c. This is the impressive head in island marble found
in the Dipylon cemetery (Figs. 34-5). It is of' a scale
slightly larger than nature and is derived from a kouros
figure.
The technical processes by which this head was made mark
a complete break with the processes by which the soft-stone
sculptures either of Crete or of Sparta or of Attica were made.
This Dipylon head is a masterpiece from more points of
view than one. It is a masterpiece of abstract art. It is a
masterpiece of sombre loveliness, pondered solely in the
mind of its maker. But it is also a masterpiece of laborious
and painstaking technique of a type new in Hellenic Greece.
For almost every detail of this head, except the hair, is
achieved by a slow and intricately thought out process of
abrasion.
The head is constructed from a rectangular block of
Pentelic marble. The frontal view is narrow and slim. The
cheeks and side view, on the other hand, are of surprising
broadness.
A glance at the outline of the jaw against the neck will show
1 Dickins, Acrop. Mas. Cat. No. 50 and p. 88.
2 Id., Introd., p. 16.