Roman Mosaics; Or, Studies in Rome and Its NeighbourhoodMacmillan, Hugh
Philosophy
Roman Mosaics; Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood
Macmillan, Hugh
Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
worshippers of Jupiter. Among the statues wrought of this marble may
be mentioned the famous group of the Laocoon found in the Baths of
Titus; the beautiful Venus de Medici, discovered in the Villa of
Hadrian, near Tivoli, and now in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; and
the well-known "Farnese Bull," sculptured out of a single block of
huge dimensions, unearthed out of the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla,
and now in the Museum of Naples. Massimo d'Azeglio, in his
_Recollections_, gives an interesting instance of the value set upon
this marble by modern Roman sculptors. Pacetti having purchased an
ancient Greek statue of the best period in Pentelic marble, greatly
mutilated, and wishing to repair it, could find nothing among the best
products of the Carrara quarries to match the marble in purity and
fineness of texture, and was therefore obliged to destroy another
Greek statue of inferior merit in order to get materials for the
restoration. From this combination he succeeded in producing the
sleeping figure known as the Barberini Faun, whose forcible abduction
by the Pontifical Government on the eve of its being sold to a German
prince, so preyed upon the mind of the cruelly-wronged sculptor, that
he took to his bed and died.
Very like Pentelic marble, but easily distinguishable, is the Marmor
Porinum, the Marmo Grechetto duro of the Italians. It is intermediate
in the quality of its grain between Parian and Pentelic marble, being
finer than the former and not so fine as the latter. The column in
front of the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, removed by Paul V. in
1614 from the Basilica of Constantine, is composed of this species; as
well as the celebrated Torso Belvedere of the Vatican, found near the
site of the Theatre of Pompey, to which Michael Angelo traced much of
his inspiration, and which, as we learn from a Greek Inscription at
the base, was the work of the Rhodian sculptor Apollonios, who carved
the group of the "Farnese Bull."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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