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The Annual of the British School at Athens a Head Connected With The Annual of the British School at Athens http://journals.cambridge.org/ATH Additional services for The Annual of the British School at Athens: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here A Head Connected with Damophon Guy Dickins The Annual of the British School at Athens / Volume 11 / November 1905, pp 173 - 180 DOI: 10.1017/S0068245400002562, Published online: 18 October 2013 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0068245400002562 How to cite this article: Guy Dickins (1905). A Head Connected with Damophon. The Annual of the British School at Athens, 11, pp 173-180 doi:10.1017/S0068245400002562 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/ATH, IP address: 129.128.216.34 on 27 Apr 2015 A HEAD CONNECTED WITH DAMOPHON. (PLATE IV.) IN the Gallery of Busts in the Vatican there is a head (Cat. No. 293P, Helbig, Fiihrer durch Rom, i. p. 144, No. 242) described as the head of a Satyr. It is of rosso antico, and was found 1 in a street in Genzano near a spot where a Roman villa had stood. This head (No. 1 on Plate IV.) has a replica, also of rosso antico, in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek at Copen- hagen (No. 2 on the same Plate), for a description of which I am indebted to Herr Jacobsen. The height of the Roman head is 0*45 m., distance between the ears o-2i m., between the eyes 0*05 m., breadth of eyes C05 m., breadth of mouth 0*07 m. It is worked only in front, the back being chiselled roughly away, so that it has the appearance of a mask. Nothing is left of the neck. The ends of the hair are broken off, especially in the case of the side-locks, and the edges of the beard are smoothed by weathering. Restored :—nose and portions of lower lip. The eyes are hollow, and were filled with inserted material. The height of the Ny Carlsberg head is 0-59 m. Herr Jacobsen writes to me in regard to it: ' The hair is only properly executed in front. The top is quite rough, shewing broken ivy leaves. The head is cut off quite flat behind. It belongs to a Herm, and has probably been placed close against a wall in order that it should not be seen from behind.' The provenance of this head is unknown, but it was bought for Herr Jacobsen in an antiquity-shop in Rome. Traces of an ivy leaf are visible also in the Vatican head, to the side above the temples, and there is every reason to suppose that it also belonged to a Herm which stood against the wall. 1 Braun, Ruinen und Museen, p. 338, No. 79. 174 G. DICKINS Both Vatican and Copenhagen heads represent a satyric type, with hair rising sharply from the forehead, and falling in thick masses down the side of the face. The larger locks of the hair are sub-divided and treated with some minuteness, the general effect being one of free activity- without conventional symmetry. The beard is thick and rounded, and is. treated with less abandon, lying in regular rows of curls of very similar appear- ance, and presenting a flattish surface pierced by deep hollows where the locks are separated. The moustache describes a somewhat conventional curve, and is twisted symmetrically at the tips, so as to form a curl like those of the beard. Throughout, the inner lines of the larger locks are carefully shewn by parallel untwisted lines. The lower lip is left free of hair, and on the point of the chin there are finer wavy lines merging into the greater thickness of the beard. The ears are covered by the falling locks of hair_ The face is long, narrowing perceptibly towards the top, and displays a bony structure of the brows and cheekbones. This is further emphasized by the- grinning expression, which contracts the space between the eyes and the mouth. The nose of the Vatican head is restored, but from the Copenhagen replica we gather that it was short and wide at the nostrils. There are heavy masses of flesh over the corners of the eyebrows, and the lower half of the forehead is prominent, with a marked bow-shaped wrinkle separating; it from the upper half, and a subsidiary wrinkle just above the other. The- eyes are sunk deeply, with thin upper lids, and a sharp line for the lower lid, which is depressed in the middle. The outer corners of the eyes turn round sharply into the cheeks, producing a strong lateral wrinkle, and giving the whole eye a very rounded appearance. The Copenhagen head shews, a further bending over of the lower lids. There are deep hollows also- between the inner eye-corners and the nose. The lips are parted, shewing the upper line of teeth, but their edges are much damaged in the Vatican copy. It has been suggested that the Copenhagen head represents a Centaur rather than a Satyr, but the set grin of the Vatican head and the ivy crowns seem to suit a Satyric attribution better. The bestial character is more marked in the Vatican head, and from both, the pathetic expres- sion found in many fourth century representations of similar creatures is quite absent. The subject appeals directly to the spectator, and the work is essentially vigorous and simple. In attempting to determine the place in the history of sculpture of the HEAD CONNECTED WITH DAMOPHON. 175; original of which these two heads are copies, it is impossible to overlook their close resemblance with the male head from Lycosura, which is. identified with the Anytus of Damophon.1 There are some differences in the hair-treatment, notably in the hair over the forehead and the locks, of the beard, which it will be necessary to explain, but in the more essential facial features the similarity is striking. Thus we see the forehead narrowing in the same fashion towards the hair, and with similar lateral depressions, over the outer corners of the eyes; the same heavy roll of flesh over the eyebrows ; and a similar prominence of the lower part of the forehead, separated from the upper by the same bow-shaped wrinkle with a second smaller wrinkle above it. A still more remarkable resemblance is visible- in the peculiar rounded eye, a marked feature of the Damophon heads,2 curving inwards at the corners, with sharp, strongly curved lids, rolling over to form a sort of lip. Here, too, are the high cheek bones and wide flat nose of the Lycosura head, though the Satyric grin demands a shorter distance between eyes and mouth, and consequently a greater emphasis on the cheek swellings. The fashion of the moustache is similar in both cases,^ and the parted, pouting lips, though restoration and weathering have some- what obscured the latter feature in the Vatican head. The building of the cheeks is similar, with hollows at the inner, and wrinkles at the outer- eye-corners. In each case the under line of the moustache is marked by a deep groove running down deeply into the beard past the tip of the moustache ; and in each case the hair on the point of the chin, leaving the lower lip free, is worked in fine wavy lines carefully separated from the rest of the beard. It is in the hair that differences are visible. Thus in the Anytus head we have a row of small locks standing on the forehead, with larger locks behind standing up, and then falling over, while the beard is. arranged naturalistically in heavy masses, without symmetry, and forked at its lower extremity. The side-hair hangs in large rough locks. In the- Vatican head the side-hair must have been very similar, but the forehead- hair stands up in a larger sweep without small locks in front, while the beard lies in a round and regular mass without wildness or naturalism. In both heads the expression is direct and without subtlety, in the one case that of an untamed animal, in the other that of a simple rustic. The- 1 Cf. E. Gardner, Handbook, ii. p. 401. P. Cavvadias, Fouilles de Lvcosure, PI. III. A. M., Daniel \nJ.H.S. xxiv. (1904), p. 45. s Cf. A. M. Daniel mJ.H.S. xxiv. op. cit. 176 G. DICKINS greater dryness and formalism of the Vatican and Copenhagen heads must be ascribed in part to the copyist. Even so the similarity of workmanship, with its characteristic use of a fine wavy line sub-dividing the individual masses of the hair, is immediately evident, and as a subsidiary detail we may remember that the Lycosura heads also are worked only in front, leaving the back parts hollow and rough. The actual state of the surface of the Vatican head shews a close resemblance to the Anytus, in the absence of careful finish. Both works have something of the appearance of a sketch as compared with a completed drawing. There is another fact which seems to throw some light on the place of origin of this type. Both the replicas are of rosso antico, and this affords some prima facie evidence that the original was of rosso antico also. Such a material would be eminently suitable to the subject, for we know that images of Dionysus were frequently made of figwood painted red. For this the substitution of a red marble in later times would be natural. Rosso antico is only found in Laconia, in quarries along the sea-coast from Gythium to C.
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