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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
Dr. Bernabò-brea has kindly given me a new photograph of this monument. It shows the red paint at the outer corner of the gorgon's eye, which makes her eye look bigger and more sinister. It is not, however, a leer such as many early gorgons wear: the pupil is still in the middle of the eye. A lesion in this region of the eye may be due to strain. Our artist is depicting a gorgon under pressure. We must think away two round, dark shadows behind the top of the plaque: the real top is level with the upper end of the gorgon's ears. Dr. Bernabò-Brea was good enough to discuss the plaque with me, and he allowed me to study it outside its glass case. Here are a few observations:
1. What Should Not Be There—the bud-like mark above the nose.
The new photographs show that there is no evidence for it in the original. Payne omits it from his drawing and thereby makes the picture stronger and more archaic. No other full-length gorgon seems to have a ‘bud’. Many Corinthian gorgoneia have ‘buds’, the earliest is on the Timonidas vase in Middle Corinthian times. This difference in treatment may be due to the feeling that a gorgon was a living creature, while a gorgoneion was more like a space to be filled. The ‘bud’ has come to our gorgon from a gorgoneion found in Gela, probably of a later date and from a non-Corinthian colony. The same fate of unsponsored restoration overtook a gorgon on a gravestone in Athens, but, as far as my memory serves, the restoration has since been removed.
2 Necrocorinthia, p. 80, fig. 23 E.
3 Payne, op. cit., pl. 34, 5.
4 Orsi, op. cit., col. 618, fig. 210: Bernabò-Brea, , Annuario xxvii–xxix (1945–1951), p. 71Google Scholar, dated to the first half of the sixth century.
5 Noak, , Ath. Mitt. xxxii (1907), pls. xxi–xxiiGoogle Scholar.
6 op. cit., col. 614.
7 Mrs. Van Buren, Archaic Fictile Revetments in Sicily and Magna Graecia, notes the holes (p. 158) but is undismayed by them. I echo the regrets of T. J. Dunbabin, The Western Greeks, p. 268, n. 6. that she abandoned her first good thought (JHS xli (1921), p. 209Google Scholar) that the plaque was probably not ‘architectonic’. Her verdict of ‘lateral akroterion’ has misled many (op. cit., pl. xviii, 76).
8 Rodenwaldt, and others, Korkyra ii, pl. 3Google Scholar.
9 Payne, Protokorinthische Vasenmalerei, pl. II, 1.
10 Rodenwaldt, op. cit. ii, p. 20, Abb. 4.
11 Payne, op. cit., pl. 23, 4.
12 Korkyra ii, pl. 2.
13 op cit., p. 31.
14 Necrocorinthia, p. 252, quoting Orsi, , Mon. Ant. xxv (1918), col. 631, fig. 221Google Scholar.
15 Orsi, op. cit., fig. 221.
16 ibid., figs. 219, 220.
17 Korkyra ii, pl. 2.
18 Mem. Accad. Lincei, Serie VI, i (1925), pp. 313 ffGoogle Scholar. T. J. Dunbabin informs me that the meaning of these Latin words is still under dispute and that A. Andrén, in Architectural Terracottas from Etrusco-Italic Temples, uses them otherwise. Vitruvius' use of the words is outside the scope of this note.
19 Annali 1st. (1848), pl. L.
20 BSA xxxvi (1935), p. 154Google Scholar. See also AJA xxxviii (1934), pl. XX BGoogle Scholar.
21 Sizilische Dachterrakotten, p. 56. Darsow quotes Robertson, Greek and Roman Architecture, fig. 87, but Robertson tells us that all these models are third century. Still Darsow is followed by Rodenwaldt, , op. cit. i, p. 124Google Scholar, ii, p. 137.
22 In BSA xxxvi (1935–1936), pp. 149–50Google Scholar, for description and references. Sir John Beazley called my attention to spring-houses.
23 Payne, , Perachora i, pp. 34 ff.Google Scholar, pls. 9, 119, 120.
24 Oikonomos, Eph. Arch. 1931, pp. 1 ff.
25 BSA xliii (1948), pl. 45, 600Google Scholar.
26 Süsserott, , Olympische Forschungen i, p. 91, Abb. 25Google Scholar.
27 Orsi, op. cit., col. 678: Bernabò-Brea, , Annuario xxvii–xxix (1949–1951), p. 67Google Scholar.
28 Ant. Denkm. ii, 6, 7. For the latest discussion, see Hahland, W., O.Jh. xl (1953), pp. 27 ffGoogle Scholar.
29 Gabrici, , Mon. Ant. xxxii (1927), pl. xxxiii, fig. 102Google Scholar.
30 Loewy, , Archaeologische-Epigraphische Mittheilungen xi, p. 155, pl. V.2Google Scholar.
31 Agrigento, figs. 133, 134.
32 Bovio, J. Marconi, Not. Scav., Ser. VI, vi (1930), p. 102, pl. IVGoogle Scholar.
33 Benton, , BSA xlviii (1953), pl. 64Google Scholar.
34 Tarente, p. 432, pl. XLI. Evans, A. J., JHS vii (1886), p. 33, pl. LXIIIGoogle Scholar. See also Jastrow, E., Opuscula Archaeologica ii, p. V.aGoogle Scholar. Wuilleumier's pl. XLI, 5 and 6 do not belong to the same object; they have different borders.
35 Ant. Denkm. iii, 7, 8.
36 A. von Salis, Theseus and Ariadne, p. 1, Abb. 1. The relief of the first generation derived from this relief, ibid., p. 9, Abb. 17, is as likely to be ancient as modern. See Nicholls, R. V., BSA xlvii (1952), pp. 213 ffGoogle Scholar.
37 op. cit., col. 391 ff., fig. 18.
38 ibid., col. 614.
39 Greek Altars, p. 129. See also Yalouris, N., ‘Athena als Herrin der Pferde,’ Museum Helveticum 7 (1950), 20Google Scholar.
40 Ath. Mitt. lx–lxi (1935–1936), p. 297, no. 31Google Scholar.
41 O. Benndorf, Metopen von Selinunt, pl. I.
42 E. Langlotz, Zeitbestimmung, p. 37.
43 How much of the archaism of the Selinous gorgon is due to the ‘Improver’? In the photographs the forehead curls look like the plastic curls of the earlier gorgons, and yet the cast is smooth.
44 Necrocorinthia, pp. 80 ff.
45 Payne, , BSA xxvii (1925–1926), pp. 125, 131Google Scholar.
46 Payne, Protokorinthische Vasenmalerei, pl. 22, I and 5.
47 Levi, D., Annuario xiii–xiv (1930–1931), pl. xiv, 4Google Scholar.
48 See Benton, , BSA xl (1939–1940), pp. 78, 82Google Scholar.
49 Payne, Necrocorinthia. Contrast his earliest gorgons, p. 80, with those on p. 82.
50 Olympische Forschungen ii, pp. 242, 235. Second quarter of the sixth century. No. xxiv, pl. 50. See Fouilles de Delphes v, p. 123, pl. 21.
51 Necrocorinthia, p. 225. Perachora i, p. 144.
52 Protokorintische Vasen, pl. 29.
53 Necrocorinthia, p. 225.
54 Gervasio, Bronzi Arcaici, pp. 109 ff.
55 op. cit., p. 231. Kunze assumes that this tomb contained grandfather's shield and a new bronze pot. It might have been a stripling with a new shield and a grandmother's pot.
56 ibid., pls. 36–39.
57 BSA xliv (1949), p. 168Google Scholar.
58 Necrocorinthia, pl. 32. 5, 6, 7.
59 ibid., pl. 31, 5.
60 Perachora i, pl. 42, 1: cf. Kunze, pl. 39, xiv. c.
61 Kunze, p. 70. For Pegasos' harness mentioned below cf. JHS lviii (1938), pl. 19Google Scholar; BSA xlviii (1953), no. 1023 p. 323, pl. 61Google Scholar: also Yalouris, op. cit., p. 39, Abb. 4.
62 Cf. the harness on a horse's head on the bottom of a Late Protocorinthian conical oenochoe in Ithaca. He, too, may be Pegasos.
63 Necrocorinthia, pl. 45.
64 Olympia iv. Die Bronzen, pl. lix.
65 Kunze, pl. 39, xiv d.
66 Johansen, Les Vases Sicyoniens, pl. xl. l. c.
67 Pind, .O xiii, 82Google Scholar.
