DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.73713#0049
RAPHAEL MENGS. 45
pears to me also as Pliny has said, that the dif-
ference of the style os these two sculptors was
not very considerable, because even then it was
dissicult to distinguisn them.
You will permit me to make some ressections
upon the dissiculty which I find to believe that
we are in posfession os the mod excellent works os
antiquity. Every one knows thatRome was seve-
ral times despoiled ofthe best things to ornament
Constantinople, and thatinfhe times of Theodosi-
us and others,all the statuesin Rome were destroy-
ed;from whence one may argue, that those which
escaped so cruel a sentence, ought to be the
lead samous, or such as were in ignoble places
and neglected.
If the excellency of a work could persuade
one that it is of the molt famous matters, the
Gladiator of Borghese will be that of Agasias, but
this name is not to be found among any os the
eminent artists: the lame might be said of the
Torso os Belvidere. That name os Glicon given
to the Pharnesian Hercules, one ought to suspe&
of some falsification; because betides not having
any account of a great sculptor of that name,
one finds in the palace of Pitti another Hercules
refembling the asoresaid, with the name of Li-
sippus, which makes one believe this to be of the
same works to which the ancients gave fine
names, as Phedrus says in his Exordium of
Boole 5.
If the Pharnesian Hercules had been the true
work of Glicon, he who copied it to make that of
Pitti, would have engraved the same name to
pears to me also as Pliny has said, that the dif-
ference of the style os these two sculptors was
not very considerable, because even then it was
dissicult to distinguisn them.
You will permit me to make some ressections
upon the dissiculty which I find to believe that
we are in posfession os the mod excellent works os
antiquity. Every one knows thatRome was seve-
ral times despoiled ofthe best things to ornament
Constantinople, and thatinfhe times of Theodosi-
us and others,all the statuesin Rome were destroy-
ed;from whence one may argue, that those which
escaped so cruel a sentence, ought to be the
lead samous, or such as were in ignoble places
and neglected.
If the excellency of a work could persuade
one that it is of the molt famous matters, the
Gladiator of Borghese will be that of Agasias, but
this name is not to be found among any os the
eminent artists: the lame might be said of the
Torso os Belvidere. That name os Glicon given
to the Pharnesian Hercules, one ought to suspe&
of some falsification; because betides not having
any account of a great sculptor of that name,
one finds in the palace of Pitti another Hercules
refembling the asoresaid, with the name of Li-
sippus, which makes one believe this to be of the
same works to which the ancients gave fine
names, as Phedrus says in his Exordium of
Boole 5.
If the Pharnesian Hercules had been the true
work of Glicon, he who copied it to make that of
Pitti, would have engraved the same name to