PROBLEMS IN HISTORY OF GREEK SCULPTURE 611 



no conviction save to docile disciples. And if this is the case when we 

 are comparing two or more slightly varying copies, how much greater 

 is the danger when our search for duplicates proves unsuccessful and 

 we are left with but the single representative! Yet in spite of all 

 difficulties and perils the serious student cannot shirk the problem. 

 He must form his mental picture of the lost original as best he may, 

 and reveal it to others as clearly as possible. If he succeeds in winning 

 the approval of expert opinion, his view has attained to as much 

 certainty as the nature of the subject admits. 



Thus far we have been supposed to be dealing either with a single 

 copy or with two or more substantially identical copies. But the 

 case is by no means always so simple. Often we find, besides a num- 

 ber of copies essentially similar to one another, one or more variants, 

 or in other words pieces so far like the agreeing copies that they can- 

 not be wholly independent, yet so far unlike that they cannot in any 

 strict sense be identified with them. The most obvious explanation 

 of such a variant is that the sculptor who executed it was simply 

 modifying the same Greek original which is represented also by more 

 exact reproductions. In one ease he may have worked from memory 

 and his divergences from the original may not have been intentional. 

 In another case he may have had an exact copy before him and may 

 have deliberately adapted it to some purpose of his own. Xo one 

 doubts that this explanation, in one or other of its forms, is often 

 applicable. Every one makes free use of it. Yet a different explan- 

 ation is sometimes possible and is sometimes preferred. What I have 

 called a variant may itself be a faithful copy of a lost Greek original, 

 so that we are led back to two closely related Greek originals, pro- 

 duced by the same sculptor or by two different sculptors, one of whom 

 in some way influenced the other. For example, there is at Mantua a 

 coarsely executed marble figure of a Muse, holding in her right hand 

 a tragic mask. This statue, while it has no known duplicates, is closely 

 similar in pose and drapery to the caryatids of the Erechtheum. In 

 view of this similarity it was seriously proposed * a few years ago to 

 treat the Mantuan figure as a copy of a Greek work of about 400 B. c. 

 But really it seems most improbable that a Greek sculptor in the 

 nourishing period of artistic activity, in seeking to create a Muse. 

 should have imitated so closely figures used as architectural supports, 

 however admirable, or vice versa. And I am glad to say that the 

 author of the suggestion retracted il '-' not long after in favor of the 

 common-sense view that the Mantuan Muse is nothing but an adapt- 

 ation of one of the caryatid figures by a late and clumsy sculptor. 



A better example is afforded by the 1 Farnese Diadumenus in the 

 British Museum. Of this statue again then 1 are no duplicates: in 



