SCULPTURE IN RELIEF 139
transition, for here, at least in the Cattle Raiders, if nowhere
else, there is still a tendency to step the edges of relief and
not to round them. The figures have not emerged into a
freer and more mobile world. In the curious scene of the
horsemen and Argo the great extension of relief is due to the
experimental cutting of two frontal horsemen, the heads of
the horses protruding prodigiously. Here the figures have
wholly left the tradition of flat relief. The artist in a sense
is working in the two modes, and so is essentially an artist of
transition. But it must be remembered that the transition
is one of feeling and outlook and not of development in time.
The Siphnian Treasury, at least certain portions of it,
must be definitely classed as high relief, and the Treasury
of Athens finally cuts clear away from all ‘flat’ tendencies.
Other reliefs, such as the Perseus and Kerkopes of Selinus,
the Corfiote pediment and, of course, the Olympian metopes,
so greatly exceed even the highest dimension in this list
that they automatically fall into the class of high relief.
Clearly the artist was here controlled by his technique.
The lower the relief the more he is compelled to use flat
chisel instead of punch; the higher the relief the more he
must carve with the full series of the sculptors’ tools, since
he is approaching nearer to sculpture in the round. A relief
as low as that of the Athletes Basis could not be achieved
with a point, however fine, since the depth accessible is less
than the depth given by the moderate stroke of a mallet on
the butt of a pointed punch. And it must be remembered
that the depth of the carvings on the three sides of this relief
is mostly below the figure given in the above list. The use
of a flat chisel seems to have been compulsory in this kind
of work, on purely technical grounds. On rare occasions the
sculptors’ love of the punch persisted even in low relief. Thus
the warrior’s hair on the Aristion relief is pointed with a
punch.
These conclusions are based on inferences from the exist-
ing facts, not on hypotheses as to the nature of relief. They