Note on some Attic Stelai

Extract

I should like to call attention to an attitude in some of the Attic stelai which has attraced little, if any, notice, while its meaning, so far as I know, has met with no consideration.

The best example of the attitude is to be found in the beautiful Plate XXIV. of Mr. Percy Gardner's ‘Sculptured Tombs of Hellas’ (Conze, Pl. LXXVIII). Mr. Gardner describes the sitting figure as ‘a lady stretching out both hands towards a matron who stands before her,’ certainly an inadequate description of a peculiar attitude. Conze, in his great work ‘Die Attischen Grabreliefs,’ says that the standing figure with the left hand takes hold of the right arm of the sitter on the under side (unterfasst). But this seems to me to miss the point. It is not the right arm but the right wrist of the sitter that is laid hold of. The forefingers of the standing figure are extended along the forearm and the thumb is raised at the wrist, so that the sitter's right hand lies softly in a sort of couch. From an artistic point of view the attitude is a remarkable one, being unlike that of any of the other best known stelai.