612 CLASSICAL ART 



sense it stands alone. Yet it can hardly be dissociated altogether 

 from those other Diadumenus figures which are believed on good 

 grounds to be copied from a work of Polyclitus. The similarity in 

 motive goes so far as to make probable some close interdependence. 

 How then are the facts to be interpreted? Two theories are possible, 

 as in the previous case : either the Farnese Diadumenus is the work of 

 a sculptor of Roman date, a work based upon the famous statue 

 of Polyclitus, but so far modified as to attest considerable originality 

 on the sculptor's part; or it is a copy of a Greek work of about 

 Polyclitus's time, perhaps an Attic work which Polyclitus saw and 

 whose motive he borrowed and adapted. The question, it will be 

 seen, like that of a Pasitelean archaizing school, is chiefly a question 

 of the amount and kind of originality which may be assumed for the 

 sculptors of the Roman imperial period. Certainly an age which 

 produced works of such merit as the reliefs of the Ara Pacis, of the 

 Arch of Titus, and of the Beneventine Arch of Trajan, was not 

 wholly deficient in artistic originality. But it must be admitted 

 that for the precise kind of originality which would be implied by 

 the creation of the Farnese Diadumenus out of Polyclitean and other 

 fifth-century suggestions our knowledge of the Roman period does 

 not afford irrefutable evidence. The question is one on which seri- 

 ous students must for the present agree to differ. 



The most ambitious historians of Greek sculpture are not content 

 with placing a lost original, divined from a copy or copies, in its 

 proper place and period. They would fain go farther and assign each 

 work, or at least each important work, to the individual master 

 who produced it, whether known to us by name or not. As slight 

 external helps in this task, they have the scanty literary notices 

 referred to at the outset of this address, but in the main they are 

 obliged to rely upon the qualities of the works themselves. Here 

 there is a temptation to apply the method pursued with so much 

 zeal and confidence by Morelli and his followers in the field of Italian 

 painting, the method which in discriminating artist from artist 

 makes large use of little-noticed details, such as conformation of 

 eye or ear. But the data presented to the student of Greek art are 

 hardly comparable to those presented to the student of the Italian 

 art of the Renaissance. In the latter field we have sufficiently well 

 authenticated original works upon which to base our knowledge 

 of the personal styles of the different masters, and from this sure 

 foundation we may proceed to recognize other creations of theirs. 

 But in the former field this sure foundation is almost everywhere 

 lacking. With the fewest exceptions we are limited to mere copies. 

 Now the broad features of a work of art, such as pose, proportions, 

 disposition of drapery, survive in the better sort of copies; but the 

 minutiae upon which we are tempted to rely in the effort to clistin- 



