Appreciation of sculpture; a handbook by Russell Sturgis (1904) (14781711055)

Identifier: appreciationofsc00stur (find matches)
Title: Appreciation of sculpture; a handbook by Russell Sturgis ...
Year: 1904 (1900s)
Authors: Sturgis, Russell
Subjects: Sculpture
Publisher: The Baker
Contributing Library: Whitney Museum of American Art, Frances Mulhall Achilles Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Metropolitan New York Library Council - METRO



Text Appearing Before Image:
son whom we represent to-day shrouded ina uniform coat of ugly fashion, bedizenedwith dangling crosses. The Roman glori-fied such a young dignitary by showinghim in an ideal perfection of bodily frametreated as the principal subject and drapedonly in part, with the also much idealizedgarment of the time allowed to fall looselyover the hips and the forearm. We areto take these statues as the highest mark ofhonor and favor which could be done toa celebrity of the time. It may be well to pursue this subject alittle further and to consider the statue,Plate XIII. This marble is in the Louvre,representing a Roman who has not yetreached his full stature, indeed, and whostill wears the bulla or hanging locket inwhich (or in its contents) there lay somesuperstition of good luck, but who hasassumed the toga. Now it is uncertainwhether this garment is the toga prsetexta(the toga with the purple border), or the fulltoga of manhood which was not assumed,as we are told by Pliny, until the time(58)
Text Appearing After Image:
Plate XIII.—PORTRAIT STATUE OF A ROMAN YOUTH. LOUVRE MUSEUM. The Roman Empire and Early Egypt when the bulla was abandoned and theyoung man was thought to have reachedthe age of discretion. Of course it is en-tirely unknown who is the person rep-resented. We are concerned only with thestrong evidence in the piece itself that it isa portrait, and that it is of an excellent timeof Greco-Roman art, that is to say, of thetime between the accession of Augustus andthe death of Nero, about 25 b. c. to 65 a. d.This statue has always been interesting tostudents of costume, because the extremelycomplicated and for us only half under-stood wearing of that voluminous garmentneeds every contemporary illustrationwhich we can bring to bear upon the sub-ject. It is, however, more than that, it isan interesting specimen of the way inwhich a portrait statue may become a beau-tiful and permanently valuable work ofart, in the days of graceful and unchang-ing costume. A sculptor of our own timewould be