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The Chatsworth Head
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
Mrs. Strong in her publication of this head has described it fully and has discussed its place, as a work of art, in the history of Greek scuplture, and it is not my intention to discuss the head from those aspects. It is to be dated, as she has shown, to the second quarter of the fifth century, probably between 470 and 460. It probably represents an Apollo, and chronologically belongs to the group which includes the originals of the Cassel Apollo and the Terme Apollo, both marble copies of bronze originals. As to its stylistic kinship with these or other works, any discussion would be fruitless, for it would be impossible to arrive at any degree of probability in attempting to attribute either the Chatsworth head or the two Apollos mentioned to any one of the Greek artists of that age whose names are known, for we have little or no evidence for their style.
The head was acquired by the sixth Duke of Devonshire at Smyrna from H. P. Borrell in 1838, and, according to a note from the vendor, was reported to have been found at Salamis in Cyprus. It would be a natural presumption that a head in the market at Smyrna would have been more likely to come from one of the Greek sites of Western Asia Minor. On the other hand, the mere fact that an unlikely, rather than a likely, provenance was given to the head is in its favour, for there would presumably be no reason to give it an unlikely provenance unless it was correct. So the head may really have come from Salamis in Cyprus. Further excavation at that site may throw more light on the subject. In any case, in the later years of the decade 470-460 B.C. there was a renaissance of Greek influence, especially Attic, in Cyprus after the battle of the Eurymedon.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1938
References
1 Antike Denkmäler iv, pls. 21–23.
1a Kluge, and Lehmann-Hartleben, , Antiken Grossbronzen I, pp. 82 ffGoogle Scholar. See also Encycl. Brit. 14th ed., s.v. Founding.
2 JdI 1929, pp. 1 ff.Google Scholar
3 By cire perdue I mean the casting from a ‘pattern’ consisting of a thin layer of wax over a core of some fireproof material; see Kluge and Lehmann-Hartleben, op. cit. I, pp. 91 ff., Encycl. Brit. 14th ed., s.v. Sculpture Technique.
4 Contrast the neck with that illustrated by Kluge, , JdI 1929, p. 11, fig. 6, a wax castGoogle Scholar.
5 Compare the heads of the Cassel Apollo type, Bieber, Ant. Skulpt. u. Bronzen in Cassel, pls. VII, VIII; Richter, Sculpture and Sculptors, fig. 194.
6 See the μηνίσκος from the Menelaion at Sparta, BSA xv, p. 149, fig. 142Google Scholar.
7 Compare the archaic Zeus head from Olympia, Olympia IV, p. 1, no. 1, pl. iGoogle Scholar.
8 Compare Perdrizet, , Fouilles de Delphes, Mon. Figurés, Petits Bronzes, etc., p. 43, no. 87Google Scholar.
9 Furtwängler–Reichhold, iii, pl. 135.
10 Perhaps the lips were enamelled.
11 See Michaelis, , Ancient Marbles, p. 277Google Scholar.
12 Pp. 4 ff.
13 Olympia IV, no. 1, nos. 22–29, pls. i, iv, v.
14 de Ridder, , Cat. d. Bronzes tr. s. l'Acropole d'Athènes, p. 220 ff., nos. 617–681Google Scholar. Of these no. 617 (JHS 1892–1893, p. 243, fig. 16Google Scholar) is apparently the front hair of a σφυρήλατος bronze figure.
15 Perdrizet. op. cit., pp. 41 f., nos. 75–86.
16 Olympia IV, p. 15, no. 32, pl. vGoogle Scholar; Neugebauer, Minoischen u. archaisch griechischen Bronzen, no. 200, pl. 34.
17 JdI 1929, pp. 1 ff.Google Scholar
18 Wood, as Kluge points out (JdI 1929, loc. cit.), has always been the favourite material for ‘patterns’ to be cast by the sand-box process and many instances of statues cast from wooden ‘patterns’ could be quoted, for instance, the Tomb of Richard Beauchamp at Warwick (Dugdale, , Antiquities of Warwickshire, p. 321Google Scholar; Nichols, , Description of the Church of St. Mary, Warwick, p. 30)Google Scholar.