Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/43

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IN THE LEVANT.
21

tresses; the arms hang down at the sides in the Egyptian manner. The shoulders are broad, the waist pinched in, as if by stays; the line of the upper arm more varied and flowing than is at first sight reconcilable with the general archaic character of the face.

Thus the whole statue seems to exhibit a struggle between two schools—the Canonical, which worked according to prescribed types, and the Natural, which trusted more to individual observation than to rules. This statue probably represents an Apollo. It much resembles in style one transported from Athens to Vienna by M. Prokesch von Osten.8

In the Theseium I also saw a colossal female head of which a cast may be seen in the 1st Elgin Room of the British Museum (No. 106*). This is in a very grand style, and one of the few extant colossal heads which can be referred with probability to the school of Phidias. It has been fitted on in the clumsiest manner to a torso which does not belong to it, and which mars its beauty by ill-matched proportions. It is uncertain where this head was found. I have heard it stated that it was brought from Ægina, when the Museum there was broken up.

In the Theseium is a very numerous and interesting collection of sepulchral stelæ and reliefs, which have been carefully described by Professor Gerhard, in a valuable report on the remains of art at Athens.9

These sepidchral monuments consist of three classes: stelæ, marble vases, and reliefs on slabs. Many specimens of the first kind may be seen in the Elgin collection in the British Museum. The usual