25 Art of the Foundry among the Antieiits. 



time of Thucydicle?, Alcibiades, Herodotus, Pericles, So- 

 phocles, Euripides, Socrates, Hippocrates, and Plato. 



It" in the days of Cicero * a middlitig-sizcd bronze statue 

 was worth 120,000 sestertii, which is more than 12,000 

 francs in French money, what price shall we put upon this 

 unique piece of antiquity, which, among the whole of si- 

 milar works, with which the antient world was filled, alone 

 escaped universal destruction ? 



The horses of Cbio were cast in copper and gilded. We 

 Icnow that copper is belter adapted than bronze for receiving 

 gilding, and it seems they were originally intended to be 

 giltf. It is wrong, therefore, to reproach the Romans with 

 their decided taste for gilding, since the Greeks also gilded 

 their quadrigx. It is, however, certain that the fine bronzes 

 Vi'erc not gilt. Their colour was fine enough to make thi§ 

 ornament to be dispensed with, as \\c have seen. Lysippus 

 would have been vexed to have seen that by gilding his works, 

 the exquisite finishing, which formed hischief merit, was con- 

 cealed. We see in Pliny J how much Nero was blamed for 

 having caused this artist's statue of Alexander to be gilt, 

 and how much the connoisseuys regretted to see a Venus by 

 Alcamenus covered with gold. When we read in Pausanias § 

 that there was at Delphos a gilt statue of Phrvne, executed 

 by Praxiteles, and that the Athenians had dedicated at Del- 

 phos a gill Minerva on the occasion of a victory they had 

 gained, vve must be of opinion that this practice of gilding 

 proceeded from motives of emulation, and in order to ap- 

 proach, as much as possible, the magnificence of the other 



• In Vcrrem, orat. 4. c. 7. 



f Vitruvius, lib. iii. cap. 2, says that it was usual to ornament the fronts of 

 temples with statues of copper gilt in the Tuscan fashion, as we see in the 

 tcrr.pie cf Ceres and Hcrcaies near the Grand Circus ; this pr.ssion of the R.o- 

 rnaus for gilding was thersfore of Etruscan origin. According to Buonarotr, 

 Ossm-aiiovi s'ipra alcuni Mcdnglioni, p. 570, tlie pold employed by the an- 

 tJents in fire-gilding was, in the proportion of gold employed in modern gild- 

 ing, as 6 to 1 ; and for common glldingtheir gold leaves were as 22 to 1. AH 

 the antient gilding found below-ground has still its natural lustre, and we 

 might have been ;.ble to say the same of the gilding upon the horses of Chio, 

 if it had not been almost entirsly scrRpe4 OiT. 



I Lib. xxxiv, 



§ I.,ib. X. cap. IJ. 



Statues 



