DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9187#0307
GREEK SARCOPHAGI
line of sculpture in the engraving is on a very small scale
and in low relief; it represents scenes of hunting and the
bringing home of the booty.
The remaining three faces of the sarcophagus correspond
with that which we have described in subject and in style,
the other end closely so. On each side we find—besides the
lowest relief, which runs all round—above, a funeral procession,
in which a hearse is convoyed to the grave by a chariot and
led horses, and below, six more women in mourning attitudes
standing between pillars. The number of these female figures
is thus eighteen. It would puzzle many a modern artist to
solve the artistic problem thus set, to produce eighteen figures
of women, all young and of the same type, all standing in poses
both in themselves elegant but yet suggestive of grief, and
so different one from the other that there is no sameness or
repetition. But artistic problems of this sort had a special
attraction for Greek artists of the best period—for the artist
who planned the Parthenon frieze as well as for the artists of
the Mausoleum. And no solution could be found more perfect
than that offered us in the present case. The eighteen women
have been compared to a dirge of eighteen stanzas ; and though
to sustain the comparison the dirge would be somewhat mono-
tonous, that fact perhaps would not make it less impressive.
M. Reinach well observes that the whole form of this
monument is taken from that of a temple. The columns
support an entablature, above which rises a pediment.
Between the columns stand statues, as very often in Greek
temples and in monuments such as the Lycian heroon
(Fig. 74). No doubt, morphologically, the sarcophagus is
a miniature temple, as the temple itself is a beautified and
idealized house ; but in Greece every form of monument
soon acquires a decoration specially suited to it; thus the
form and decoration of this tomb are an able adaptation
rather than a survival.
line of sculpture in the engraving is on a very small scale
and in low relief; it represents scenes of hunting and the
bringing home of the booty.
The remaining three faces of the sarcophagus correspond
with that which we have described in subject and in style,
the other end closely so. On each side we find—besides the
lowest relief, which runs all round—above, a funeral procession,
in which a hearse is convoyed to the grave by a chariot and
led horses, and below, six more women in mourning attitudes
standing between pillars. The number of these female figures
is thus eighteen. It would puzzle many a modern artist to
solve the artistic problem thus set, to produce eighteen figures
of women, all young and of the same type, all standing in poses
both in themselves elegant but yet suggestive of grief, and
so different one from the other that there is no sameness or
repetition. But artistic problems of this sort had a special
attraction for Greek artists of the best period—for the artist
who planned the Parthenon frieze as well as for the artists of
the Mausoleum. And no solution could be found more perfect
than that offered us in the present case. The eighteen women
have been compared to a dirge of eighteen stanzas ; and though
to sustain the comparison the dirge would be somewhat mono-
tonous, that fact perhaps would not make it less impressive.
M. Reinach well observes that the whole form of this
monument is taken from that of a temple. The columns
support an entablature, above which rises a pediment.
Between the columns stand statues, as very often in Greek
temples and in monuments such as the Lycian heroon
(Fig. 74). No doubt, morphologically, the sarcophagus is
a miniature temple, as the temple itself is a beautified and
idealized house ; but in Greece every form of monument
soon acquires a decoration specially suited to it; thus the
form and decoration of this tomb are an able adaptation
rather than a survival.