Archaic Greek Sculpture
Tins magnificent book coinei'lvrilli the shadow 'ofdeath on it. Humfry Payne died this spring, a young man who had already achieved much and would certainly have achieved very much more. He had all the qualities that make a great archaeolo- gist and historian of art—unfailing eye and retentive memory, passionate delight in the individual object and strict intellec- tual discipline and integrity in his study of it.- Almost his last work was to correct the proofs of this book, and it comes from the press complete and faultless as he would have wished it. It is indeed a 'superb work. For a remarkably small price the reader gets numerous and excellent photographs of the unique marble statues excavated within living memory and preserved in the Acropolis Museum at Athens. The .plates are preceded by a short history of this phase of Attic art which
supersedes all previous accounts and in a short not .
only marks the main lines of development but manages to say spmething important about each monument and to make arrest- ing comparisons with other pieces of contemporary Greek sculpture outside Athens. The plates will appeal to all who care for sculpture, and the, scholar will neglect the text at his peril..
The pieces here discussed and photographed all belong to that vital period of Attic art which fell between about 570 B.C. and the destruction of Athens by Xerxes in 480. Indeed, it is- to the Persians.that we owe the survival of so many specimens of this sculpture. Buried in the debris of destroyed temples they were as unknown to Pericles and Phidias as they were to the Venetians and Lord Elgin, and safely hidden in the earth, they survived until the digger's, spade brought them to light: For most modern tastes they are the most satisfying examples of Greek sculpture. The firm, clear and powerful Male torsos, the gay, draped women, the straining or majestic figures of pedimentS. are morointirnate and more vital than the Parthenon metopes or most other works of the later fifth end fourth centuries. This book not only displays the objects Troth several angles and shows_ how truly three-dimensional they are, but by arranging them in their historical sequence shows how rapid and how great were the changes made by Attic artists in these years. The male figures pass from the simple contours of the Calf Carrier to the muscular movement
of the the " Korai " change their dress from a boric peplos to a full Ionian dress, and with the change comes a greater feeling for the rhythm of clothing and for physical qualities. The early Attic sculptors were free from literary ambitions. They set out to portray men and women whom they knew, and to this task they brought a 'steady vision of reality and a real delight in the human body. Their work is a counterpart of that great phase of Greek poetry which began with Sappho and. ended with Simonides. C. M. BOWRA.
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