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

THE ELEUSINIAN RELIEF.

301

CHAPTER XXVI.

OTHER WORKS FROM THE AGE OF P HEIDI AS.

Relief of the Eleusinian Deities

(ATHENS).
(Fig. 119.)

THIS large relief,1 the principal figures of which are more than six feet
high, was found at Eleusis in 1859. It represents the Eleusinian deities,
Dcmeter and Cora, with a boy between them, probably Triptolemos?
The Goddess on the left, who holds a long sceptre, is placing some-
thing in the hand of the youth, who looks up at her with reverential
attention. The other Goddess, who bears a torch, is crowning him with
a garland. What hoi}- function is here being performed it is impossible
to say. If it is a votive offering, it is probably dedicated in honour of
some youth, who had devoted himself to the service of the Eleusinian
deities, or had received some mark of their especial favour; for we
know that it was customary to clothe personal and individual occur-
rences in a mythical dress.

There is a very remarkable difference in the style in which the
two female figures are executed. The one on the right is moulded
with all the freedom of fully developed art, and both form and drapery
arc in the highest degree flowing, easy and graceful; while the archaic
stiffness and perpendicular lines of the other remind us strongly of
the Vesta Giustiniani.3 We can only suppose that they are copied
from well-known objects of worship in Athens, which the artist wished
to recall to the mind of the spectator. This intentional archaism, and

1 Vid. .1/0/1. ,/. Inst. Artk. plate 45. an Athenian herd-boy (Kim. Mus. p.70).

- Iacclios? J'luutos? BdtticberCalli fain * Vul. supra, p. 167.