418 MR ANDREW COVENTRY’S NOTICE OF 
rest of a statue; such was the case with the Niobe and her children. Fre- 
quently, also, the original head was displaced for another to save expense.* 
* Pliny tells us, that in his time it was a common custom to change the heads of 
illustrious persons and fit on new ones; and Chrysostom reproaches the Rho- 
dians with their economy in dedicating the same statues to different persons, de- 
facing the original inscriptions.” But in the present instance it is more probable 
that the circumstance of the bust being in two pieces must have been owing to a 
fall, as the junction is clumsily executed, and advantage has not been taken of 
the drapery to conceal it. Still the drapery cannot be referred to any recent 
period. It is too simple, and has suffered too much from the action of the weather 
to be modern. I think the bust must have lain for ages with the face down, and 
the shoulders, which have chiefly suffered, exposed ; and, when it came into my 
possession, the folds of the drapery were full of what seemed garden mould. 
It is difficult to resist the impression that we have here a specimen of high 
Greek art. There is the wonderful repose which baffles modern skill, the fine 
short upper lip, the flat pupil of the eye, and the delicate line of junction of the 
lips admirably given. 
My belief, too, is that it is a portrait. It has an air of individuality about it ; 
and it has none of the emblems of mythology, such as the diadem or the ivy 
chaplet. Further, there is a dimple on the chin, which would appear to be de- 
cisive. For Winckelmann} informs us, that there exist only three fine statues of 
an ideal character (the Venus de Medici, a bronze Apollo, and a Bathyllus at Samos) 
with a dimpled chin, it not being a feature which the Greeks admired. I may 
mention that the ears are pierced, as was not unusual. The ears of the Venus 
de Medici are also pierced. 
Of whom, then, have we here the portrait? At first sight this would seem a 
hopeless inquiry ; and if the Greeks had been in the habit, as we are, of decorating 
their mansions with the images of their friends, it certainly would be hopeless 
now, among the ruins and remains of so many families, to trace the likeness of a 
bust. But it was not so in Greece. There sculpture had high and public aims. 
There were, as Heeren{ tells us, no private galleries and no private collections. 
Sometimes, indeed, an Athenian, out of piety or patriotism, commissioned a 
statue; but, in all cases, it was to adorn a temple or a portico, or some place of 
public resort: and we read§ of a person who had spent between £600 and £700 
in certain votive statues, whose heir was reproached with having let them lie in 
the sculptor’s hands unconsecrated. In this way it came that persons only of 
some public mark were honoured with statues; and we now have not so bound- 
less and discouraging a field as it might have been. 
* Burron’s Rome, 2. 307; Pury, 35. 2. + Winckiemann on Greek Art, p. 220. 
+ Herren’s Greece, pp. 284-9. § Miitter’s Ancient Art, p. 65. 
