Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/130

 io8 HISTORY OF ART IN PHCENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. Athieno had been exceptionally fortunate in their history ; they had passed directly from the shelter of a covered temple to that of a protecting layer of hardened sand or dust, which adhered to their surface ; like the statue known as the " Priest with a Dove" (Fig. 73), they have thus been preserved to our day in their primitive freshness and with the chisel-marks still sharp upon them. 1 In other cases the Cypriot figures have their contours worn off and reduced. We may give as examples the curious series of heads, mostly found by M. de Vogue, which are now in the Louvre ; nearly all of them have the same look of wear and tear. Another characteristic feature of Cypriot sculpture is the ex- aggerated flatness of the figures from back to front. They look as if they had been cut from slabs of stone rather than from prismatic blocks (Fig. 74). Again, it is only in front that the workmanship is careful ; the back of the figure was not meant to be seen, it was to stand against a wall. The- way such statues were arranged is shown by the rows of pedestals against the four internal walls of the rectangular temple at Athieno (Vol. I. Figs. 204 and 207). Upon the wider pedestals marshalled in three lines in the centre of the building, the statues must have been set up in pairs, back to back. Cesnola tells us that on one of these pedestals two pairs of feet may still be seen and that their heels touch each other. 2 The statues we have figured must have been erected on the same principle. They were separate from the wall or from their companions, but they were not frankly detached, so that they afforded a kind of compromise between high relief and work in the round. But although it was their favourite material Cypriot sculptors did not confine themselves to stone ; they also made use of bronze, which they could obtain in any quantity they wished from the 1 This statue bears two Cypriot letters on its left shoulder. It is one of those as to the restoration of which there have been very bitter disputes. It has been proved in a general way, by a long and public discussion, in which everything that could be said on both sides was brought forward, that the violent attacks directed, through a series of years, at General di Cesnola and his collection, were quite unjust. We may here remark, however, that this particular figure was seen only two months after its discovery by G. Colonna Ceccaldi, who described and figured it in November, 1871, twenty months after it was found (Monuments antiques de Cypre, pp. 35, 39-40) ; it was then in the state in which it now is. 2 CESNOLA, Cyprus, pp. 149-150.