350 Essay upon the Art of the Foundry 



the testimony of Pliny *, who says that the art of founding 

 large statues at one cast was lost in his time. 



Among the artists celebrated in the days of Nero, Zeno- 

 dorus, a Greek by birth, merits particular attention. He 

 made a colossus of Mercury, in the city of the Auvergnates, 

 which surpassed in size all the colossi then known. This 

 work cost ten years labour, and about four millions of French 

 money. After having proved his abilities by this memora- 

 ble essay, he was called to Rome by Nero, where he made 

 a colossal figure of that emperor 110 feet high, which was 

 placed in the vestibule of his golden palace. Pliny says that 

 people were wont to admire, in the workshop of Zenodorus, 

 not only the model in clay regularly resembling the human 

 body, but also the very small detached pieces destined to be 

 put together, all of which, though in this unfinished state, 

 gave a rough idea of the size and character of the perform- 

 ance t« We may presume, from these expressions of Pliny, 

 that the above was not a statue cast at once, but composed 

 of several pieces of hammered metal. Nero would no doubl 

 have preferred having his image cast in bronze at one single 

 jet, however great the expense a similar work might re- 

 quire; but the art of founding was lost. In the days of 

 Pliny, who flourished under Vespasian, the Roman artists 

 were still very far from having attained any thing like the 

 perfection visible in the anticnt bronze works. 



Soon after the time of Pliny, however, Domitian procured 

 his statue to he founded by a Greek artist of the name of 

 Celon, who, from the magnitude of his enterprise at least, 

 deserves to be placed among those rare men of genius who 

 knew how to revive an art which was thought to have been 

 lost. Martial celebrated this statue in his epigrams, and 

 Statius :|: consecrated a whole eclogue to him. We learn 

 from this last poem that it was an equestrian statue melted, 



• Lib. xixiv. c. 2. 



f Mirabamur in officina, Ron solum ei argilla similitiidinem insignem, 

 verum ex parvis admodum surculis, quod primum operis in^tar fuit. Plin. 

 lib. xxxiv. c. 7- 



\ ■■■Celone peractnin 



Fluiit opus. Statius in Sylvis, lib. i. 



placed 



