Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/274

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580 B.C. at latest. But the type which it represents is much older. Daedalus, said the legend[1], first made statues to walk and see: his name symbolizes the first effort of the artist to represent the open eyes, and to give some measure of freedom to the limbs. The art called "prae-daedalian" had left the eyes closed and the limbs sheathed, mummy-wise, in a scabbard resembling the posts of the Hermae. The ancient wooden images—such as that of the Ephesian Artemis, swaddled in her tight, stiff robe—were of prae-daedalian character. Bupalus and Athenis of Chios are said to have sculptured marble about 540 B.C., the art having been then hereditary in their house for three generations. Delos had no school of sculpture. But Naxos had eminent sculptors from about 580 B.C., and the art must have prospered there during the period at which Naxos was the first island of the Aegean, i.e. from about 520 to 490 B.C. The Delian Artemis is apparently an imitation of a very ancient model in wood; and, being a ruder work than even the Artemis of Ephesus, may be regarded as representing the oldest type of Greek sculpture hitherto known.

Another figure represents a woman in a tunic, with wings on her shoulders and feet; the left foot scarcely touched earth; she seems flying. Prof. E. Curtius has shown that this half-kneeling pose is often used in early Greek art to express hasty motion—as in the case of the Gorgons chasing Perseus[2].This is probably a winged Artemis, per-

  1. Cp. Overbeck, Schriftquellen, pp. 11 f.
  2. E. Curtius, Die knieenden Figuren der algriech. Kunst (1869).