Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/175

 custom of the times, placed on her tomb a basket containing those viands most agreeable to her when alive, covering them with a tile, for better preservation. This basket was unintentionally placed over the root of an acanthus, the spring leaves and stems of which growing up, covered it in so elegant a manner as to attract the notice of Callimachus, who, struck with the idea and novelty of the figure, modelled from it the Corinthian capital, thus giving a remarkable proof of the intimate connection between Art, and Nature—the source of all true art—and producing that exquisitely graceful design which for twenty-four centuries has charmed the civilized world.

THE INVENTION OF SCULPTURE.

Pliny relates a pleasing and highly poetic anecdote of the invention of sculpture. Dibutades, the fair daughter of a celebrated potter of Sicyon, contrived a private meeting with her lover, on the eve of a long separation. After a repetition of vows of constancy, and a stay prolonged to a very late hour, the youth fell fast asleep. The fair nymph, whose imagination was on the alert, observing that her admirer's profile was strongly reflected on the wall by the light of a lamp, eagerly snatched up a piece of charcoal, and, inspired by love, traced the outline, that she might have the image of her lover before her during his absence. Her father, when he chanced to see the sketch,