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Perry, Walter Copland
Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture — London, 1882

DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14144#0305

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THE CHARIOT OF SELENE.

269

of the glorious limbs, covering, but never altogether hiding, the exqui-
site proportions of the beautiful and queenly forms. Here indeed
we may say with Welcker that in the highest Greek art ' the dress is
the echo of the form!

We should add that the aristocratic air of these figures was
further heightened by rich bracelets and other ornaments of metal,
the presence of which is surely indicated by the rivet-holes in which
they were fastened.

XI. Selene. A fragment of this Goddess driving the chariot of the
setting moon was found to the east of the temple in 1840, and its
right place in the pediment marked out by Beule and Lloyd.1 Like
her pendant Helios, in the left corner, she only projects with part of
her body above the surface of the waves, beneath which she is slowly
sinking. Her small slight figure is clad in a simple chiton girt by
two crossed bands over the breast, after the manner of charioteers,
and she leans slightly forward in the attitude suitable to driving. On
her back is a mutilated fragment of what was perhaps a chlamys,
which fell like a shawl over her arms.

XII. Horse's head (fig. 103, k).* Goethe remarks of this matchless
head that it is formed in the spirit of the sublimest poetry and reality
combined; and that the artist has pourtrayed ' the original horse'
(Urpferd), which he had either seen with his own eyes or conceived in
his mind. The head hangs partly over the edge of the geison, which
has been cut away to make room for it. In Carrey's time there was
still a defaced remnant of a second horse on the pediment. Very fine
is the contrast between the impetuous rush with which the horses of the
rising Sun burst wildly on to the scene, and the gentle gliding motion
of the chariot of the Moon as it slowly and quietly sinks beneath the
western wave.

We have already had occasion to dwell on the beauty and
originality of design which distinguish this noblest of pedimental
groups. The laws of the relief style in general and those which
naturally arise from the triangular form of the deros—the centraliza-

1 This figure is not found in Carrey's * Ruhl, PfcrdcbilJung <i, ant. Plastik,
drawings. P- 23-
 
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