Sculpture in Sicilian Museums

Extract

On travelling through Sicily in the spring of last year, I studied as carefully as my time allowed the classical remains in the museums of Palermo, Girgenti, Catania and Syracuse, and in the lack of any general catalogue of those antiquities and of any accessible information concerning them, the following notices accompanied by a few sketches from photographs I was able to take may be of slight service. I only wish to speak of the more important objects that, as far as I know, have not yet been at all or sufficiently published. Valuable as these objects are, I have been greatly surprised at the paucity of literary reference to them. The coin-collections and the architecture of the island have been carefully studied and written on: but an Englishman might seek in vain for much enlightenment in the archaeological publications of Sicily itself concerning its other antiquities. The art-journal entitled La Sicilia artistica ed archeologica refers almost entirely to mediaeval and modern paintings; and has published nothing classical except the Venus of Syracuse with two or three other statues of the goddess. Possibly the Bulletino della commissione di Antiquità e belle arti di Sicilia may have contributed much to classical archaeology, but unfortunately nothing of this publication is to be found in England except an isolated number of the year 1864 in the British Museum Library.