OCR Text |
Show 90 ICONOGRAPlliO RESEARCllES having over, before Visconti, been imagined to represent Lycurgus; and that in no case could it be taken for anything else than a fancyportrait, not more to be trusted than tho statue of CoLUMDus, commonly called the "ninepin-player," before your Capitol, or the relief portrait of Daniel Boone in the Rotunda at Washington. IT. Your portrait of ALEXANDER TIIE GREA'r, likewise from PouFig. 2. . queville, 13 is by far more authentic than the pretended likeness of Lycurgus. Tho original marble bust, of which you give a copy, is now placed in the Louvre at Paris, as a memorial of Napoleon I.; who received it as a present from the Spanish Ambassador, the Chevalier d'Azara. The accomplished Chevalier caused a panegyrical dedicatory inscription to bo sculptured on the side of this bust, before presenting it to the modern Alexander. The Bourbons, unconsciously following the traditions of the Emperor Cara- "' calla, and of several Egyptian Pharaohs, or-dered the mention of their obnoxious predecessor to be obliterated on this monument; but traces of the destroyed inscription sufficiently record the resentment and had taste of those who had" ricn oubli6 ni rien appris." The bust was originally found ~ear Tivoli, the ancient Tibur, in the year 1779, bearing the inscription AAE!AN.APD~ ctliAinnoY MAKE A The form of the letters shows, according to Visconti t' that this e~cellcnt piece of sculpture could not have been contm~poraneous With tho conqueror of Persia; and that it probably bclonO'S to tho la~t epoch of the Roman Republic, or to the beginning of th~ Empire. ~till, as ~he features of the Macedonian king were in his life-time Im~ortahzed b;y sue~ cmine~t artists as Apelles, Pyrgotoles and Lys1ppus; and smce his portraits served as seals and emblems of coins soon . after hi~ dca~h, it may seem tolerably certain, that the marble bust m qu~stwn g1v~s .us really the likeness of the conqueror. yet ~here re~ams one drfficulty about it. The bust having been found m a m~tllated state, the broken nose was restored without consulting the coms of Lysimachus, one of the generals 'and successors of Alexander, who had the portrait of his lato master put on them. " Gt·~ce, pl. 85 :-'Jlype~, p. 104, fig. 6. 14 leoti. grecque, II. pngo 47. ON llUMAN RACES AND TllEIR ART. Thus tho restoration altered tho features a little, a somewhat longer nose being attached to tho bust, than the earlier effigies on coins, stat.ucs, and mosaics warrant. With the slight exception, therefore, that the tip of tho nose is too long and too pointed, tho porh·ait in tho "Typos" ought to satiHfy sound criticism. Still, Staatsrath Koehler, the renowned but presumptuous Russian archroologist, hypercritically rejects the Azara-bust, as of no usc to iconography ;15 but as he omits the reasons for his harsh sentence, ho must allow us to be so malicious, and to iDfer, from tho date of his essay, 16 written during tl1o Russo-Persian war, that be was disappointed at not bo~ng able to dis over a likeness between tho bust of tho great Macedo man and tho would-be inheritor of his schemes, the late Czar Nicholas: at tho same time that French archroologists maintain that ALEXANDER, AuausTUS, and RAMESSES, bear a striking likeness to Napoleon I. Bnt if tho Russian archroologist wont too far on tho side of hypercriticism, tho author of "Inscriptions of tho British Museum," and tho arran O'er of tho Egyptian Court in the Sydcnham Crystal Palace, orr considerably more on tho other side; having been taken in by one of tho most barefaced archreological impostures of modern times. In 1850 a 4to volume (360 pages text and LXI plates) was published at Didot's by Mons. J. Barrois, under the suspicious ~itlo of "Dactylologie ct Langage Primitif;" i~ w~ich pl. LIX gwes "tho portrait of Alexander taken during h1s hfe (repr6sente de son vivant) from a bas-relief painted in four colours by Apcllcs, (!), and found iu 1844 under tho sand of a subtcrraneous tomb at Cercasor6 on the Nile." Since this wondelful book was printed for private ci L'Culation, and did not get into the book-market, criticism remained silent; but the portrait having been introduced int~ the c.rystal Palace we must protest against tho clumsy forgery wh1ch ath·1butos an Eg;ptian bas-relief to Apclles tho Greek paint:r. Besides, though its style is Pharaonic, the eye is foreshortened m the ~roo~ ~ay; tho hgyptian cartouche is false; whilst the Greek mscl'lptw.n, wrongly spelt, 17 is neither Egyptian nor Greek, and the form of Its lettel's is partly archaic, partly Latin. I was shocked at tho v~ry first sio·ht of such a cast exhibited among copies of tho best remams of Eg;pt; and afterwards learned f~·om M:. G~iddon, that. it is ge~erally known in Paris, how the rehef (With Its compamon, which purports to represent liEPIIlESTION), had been manufactured ex- " AblwndlU?Ig iiber die geachnittetlell Steine, &c. St.. Petersburg, 1861, p. 10,-roferring to IJjij cssny in no'I'TIO~:n's Arclra:ologie und Kutl&l, Band 1, page 18. " The inscription runs as follows: ALEKfANDPf YIO~ AMOYN.f |