DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15097#0070
58
taur is active and animated, and the disposition of the tail is
made contributory by the artist to augment the expression of
excitement.
This Metope is the one mentioned before, page 28, as having
been in the collection of the Count de Choiseul Gouffier, and now
in the Royal Museum at Paris. The cast in the British Museum
was purchased in France, and was encumbered by modern resto-
rations, which, upon a general principle, as well as because they
greatly disfigured the Greek originals, have been entirely removed,
and the plaster has been stained to correspond as nearly as possible,
in tint and discoloration, with the original Metopes, among which
it is placed.
When Carrey's drawings were made, this Metope seems to have
been nearly perfect, with the exception of the female head. When
the subsequent mutilations, which appear in the Plate, were sus-
tained, it is difficult to ascertain. As in Stuart's work a female
head is represented which certainly did not exist; as the head
he has placed upon the Centaur's shoulders does not seem to
bear the character of Greek work, nor much to resemble that
represented by Carrey; and as the right hand of the female is
evidently not ancient, little reliance can be placed upon his plate
of this Metope, where he has so much and so inelegantly indulged
his taste for restoration, and which he has further disfigured by
reversing the position, and thereby falsifying the action.
It is probable then, that the losses of the Centaur's head, his right
arm and hand, with the hand and wrist of the female which it
grasped, his hind-leg, and her left foot and ancle, are all contempo-
rary with the siege in 1687, and attributable to the explosion, or
to the attempted plunder of the victors.
This Metope was the tenth on the south side of the Temple,
and is engraved very incorrectly in Stuart, Vol. IV. Chap. IV.
PI. xxxiv. Bronstedt, Liv. II. PL xlv.ii. No. 10.
taur is active and animated, and the disposition of the tail is
made contributory by the artist to augment the expression of
excitement.
This Metope is the one mentioned before, page 28, as having
been in the collection of the Count de Choiseul Gouffier, and now
in the Royal Museum at Paris. The cast in the British Museum
was purchased in France, and was encumbered by modern resto-
rations, which, upon a general principle, as well as because they
greatly disfigured the Greek originals, have been entirely removed,
and the plaster has been stained to correspond as nearly as possible,
in tint and discoloration, with the original Metopes, among which
it is placed.
When Carrey's drawings were made, this Metope seems to have
been nearly perfect, with the exception of the female head. When
the subsequent mutilations, which appear in the Plate, were sus-
tained, it is difficult to ascertain. As in Stuart's work a female
head is represented which certainly did not exist; as the head
he has placed upon the Centaur's shoulders does not seem to
bear the character of Greek work, nor much to resemble that
represented by Carrey; and as the right hand of the female is
evidently not ancient, little reliance can be placed upon his plate
of this Metope, where he has so much and so inelegantly indulged
his taste for restoration, and which he has further disfigured by
reversing the position, and thereby falsifying the action.
It is probable then, that the losses of the Centaur's head, his right
arm and hand, with the hand and wrist of the female which it
grasped, his hind-leg, and her left foot and ancle, are all contempo-
rary with the siege in 1687, and attributable to the explosion, or
to the attempted plunder of the victors.
This Metope was the tenth on the south side of the Temple,
and is engraved very incorrectly in Stuart, Vol. IV. Chap. IV.
PI. xxxiv. Bronstedt, Liv. II. PL xlv.ii. No. 10.