Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/179

 FIGURES OF DIVINITIES. 157 the limbs and torso. The old hesitating Egypto- Phoenician style (Vol. I. Figs. 143, 144; Vol. II. Fig. 67) has completely disap- peared ; although the figure is modelled on a flat background it stands boldly out from it. The artist is not embarrassed by technical difficulties ; all he wants is the stamp of originality ; he has in full the commonplace dexterity which is the mark and defect of times' in which people know much and invent little. The figure is certainly not older than the Ptolemies, perhaps it is not so old. Must we conclude from all this that these two figures are unworthy daughters of the Cnidian Aphrodite ? Hardly was it set up in its destined place than the statue of Praxiteles had a prodigious success, which it owed both to the originality of its motives, and the beauty of its forms. This we know from the countless reproductions still extant ; it was copied sometimes in marble, sometimes in clay, and in every studio of Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy ; thus its portrait was carried to the farthest borders of civilization. Under such conditions is there anything to surprise us in the fact that Cyprus disguised the Greek goddess under an Egyptian coif, and that, later still, the gross and heavy hand of decaying Babylon should have been guilty of even more cruel disfigurement ? Such an hypothesis seems likely enough, but before we can make sure of the true relation, we must wait until new discoveries enable us to follow the type through all the changes forced upon it by the habits of schools still Oriental in many of their traditions. At present we may say that, among all the Asiatic figures mentioned, at one time or another, as having suggested to Praxiteles the idea and pose handed down to us by the Venus of the Capitol and the Venus de Medicis, there is not one to which an earlier date than the fourth century can be assigned ; in fact the archaeologist would perhaps be within his right in bringing them one and all down to a still later period. We should not like to declare in so many words that they are imitations of the Cnidian Aphrodite, but it has, we think, been shown that they could not have been its prototype. 1 To us it seems very unlikely that the pose of the Cnidian Venus will ever be found in a really ancient Asiatic figure. In 1 The credit of having been the first to expose an error which was beginning to win acceptance is due to M. Heuzey and his inquiries into the technique and probable age of the statuettes in question.