Page:Greek Buildings Represented by Fragments in the British Museum (1908).djvu/161

 THE PARTHENON AND ITS SCULPTURES. I45 Some of the modelling, like the position of the ear, is still also indicated. She is Athena with her own people, and on her own rock ; so exquisitely fresh and bright, that only Ruskin could have described her in his " Queen of the Air," had he known her. " She is the queen of maidenhood, stainless as the air of heaven." Helmet and segis are put away, and she holds a spear only as a plaything. The whole figure is a seated version of the same ideal type as the Lemnian Athena. The head, neck, and the fall of the drapery over the slight, shapely shoulder, may be described as identical. In my Fig. 145, I have filled up an outline of the head taken from the frieze, with the details from the statue, and how narrow is the margin for doubt may be seen by comparing it with the photograph of what I suppose to be a modern Italian restoration, from the indications of the frieze alone, published from a terra-cotta by Dr Waldstein. Of the " Promachos " there is no large copy which can be identified with certainty, although there are dozens of figures on vases, and small bronzes which, doubtless, owe their inspira- tion to it. There is on a bronze cista from South Italy, in the British Museum, decorated with magnificent Greek incised drawings of what appears to be a grotesque portrayal of an assemblage of the gods on the Acropolis, a figure representing a great external statue of Athena, which, I think, may be inspired by the great external Athena of the Acropolis. It is clearly of Phidian type, with the same Attic helmet as the Athena of the west gable, and with head sharply turned over the right shoulder, as hers was.* Her leg is bent in an attitude of rest, and her shield rests on the ground — a detail which seems desirable constructively in a colossal statue. (Fig. 146.) The small bronze No. 1035 with glittering diamond eyes also pro- bably derives from one of the Athenas of Phidias. The Parthenon marbles form a great treasure which is well cared for, and well understood by a narrow circle of experts, but we miss much by there being so little active curiosity about sdmewhat similar subject, and apparently by the same artist.
 * I have just seen at Lyons another cista, also from Prffineste, with a