Bitoxzw.
The public, we suspect, has grown a little tired of the everlasting crusaders in every possible form of fierce encounter, and devouring lions fighting with boars, and even those delicately modelled stags or grey- hounds, pretty and elegant as they always are. The time certainly has come when we wanted something fresh and more lastingly beautiful, as the antique always is, to be familiar company with us in our rooms. The invention of M. Achille Collas by which a statue, or indeed any work of glyptic art, can be copied on a reduced scale, with mathematical exactness, has now been so well applied in the hands of M. F. Barbe- dienne, that we can possess the most accurate possible copies either in bronze or marble of most of the great exemplars of Greek art. Formerly if we wished small copies, we have been obliged to put up with those made by the eye, by rule of thumb as we say, requiring an amount of skill that involved a high price; but now we may obtain a far more beautiful work of art at a less cost. A very ample display of these statues and other objects of art may be seen at Messrs. Graham and Jackson's in Oxford Street. We noticed as remarkably like the originals, the Venus of Milo, the Dying Gladiator, and the Borghese or Fighting Gladiator ; there is also a very excellent copy of that most graceful draped statue "Ariadne," or Cleopatra as it is sometimes called, because of the snake that coils round the arm, which is probably only an orna- ment ; these are all in bronze. The noble productions of the Renais- sance are also extremely well seen, and these have a special interest and importance on account of their peculiar fitness for decoration. There is, perhaps we may say, the best copy of the celebrated chef d'ceuvre of John of Bologna, the Mercury, admirably adapted for ornament, as in- deed it was designed to be. There is also a magnificent arrangement of the grand figures by Michael Angelo from the tomb of the Medici, Lo- renzo and the Night and Morning, which mounted on a finely-carved ebony pediment, form a mounting for a timepiece worthy of the most ambitious virtuoso. The application of these reduced antiques to the decoration of articles of utility, is a very welcome and legitimate direc- tion of art; but M. Collas and his collaborateurs must be careful not to venture upon restoring. Anything restored generally means something completely spoiled, and this is specially true of the antique. For ex- ample, there is in this collection a restoration of the sublime fragment by Phidias called " The Fates," in which, of course, the heads and extre- mities are French, but not only so, the attitude of one figure has been entirely altered, a liberty we cannot tolerate ; moreover, the figure is quite deprived of the repose and grandeur of the original. Let this pro- cess be confined to its "reduction mathematique," and we shall rejoice in its utility. Some of the most choice works of Germain Pilon, such as the Graces, and Jean Goujon's Caryatides, have by this means been re- duced and applied in a variety of ways for ornamental and useful ob- jects. From modern sculpture we were struck with a very charmingly designed inkstand, showing the figure of Sappho by Pradien, having thrown aside her lyre, supported on each side by a sculptured vase. But we cordially advise a visit to this collection. Speaking of reduced copies of statues, we observe that a process of carving by machinery has
just been set in operation in London, under the auspices of a society called the British Sculpture Working Association, this is no doubt a similar process to that for some time in use for stone and wood, the tra- versing chisel being guided by a ball and socket joint.
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