"Elgin marbles" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of Camperdown. I had a joyful meeting with my son and his wife, and we went to see many things that were new to me. One of our first expeditions was to the British Museum. I had already seen the Elgin marbles, and the antiquities collected at Babylon by Mr. Rich, when he was Consul at Bagdad, but now the Museum had been enriched by the marbles from Halicarnassus, and by the marvellous remains excavated by Mr. Layard ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... is true that there is something in it that breaks the outline of perfect and conventional beauty, something that dots with anger the blind eyes of the Apollo and lashes to a cavalry charge the horses of the Elgin Marbles. Christianity is savage, in the sense that it is primeval; there is in it a touch of the nigger hymn. I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... the purely visible side of these things, then, is not only to miss a refining pleasure, but to mistake altogether the medium in which the most intellectual of the creations of Greek art, the Aeginetan or the Elgin marbles, for instance, were actually produced; even these having, in their origin, depended for much of [191] their charm on the mere material in which they were executed; and the whole black and grey world of extant antique sculpture needing to be translated ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Greeks: why do we call the Elgin marbles inestimable? Simply because they are true to nature. And why are they so superior in that point to all modern works, with all our greater knowledge of anatomy? Why, sir, but because the Greeks, having no cant, had better ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... the beau ideal permitted to the human race had been attained by the Greeks, and that all art must conform as closely as possible to theirs. Unfortunately, the chief specimens of Greek art known at that time were those belonging to a decadent period—neither the Elgin marbles nor the Venus of Milo were accessible before 1816—so that the works from which they drew their inspiration were without character in themselves, or merely the feeble and attenuated copies of ancient Rome. In the pictures of this school, accordingly, we find only the monotonous perfection of ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... things necessary for the sacrifices. The procession formed the subject of the bas-reliefs which embellished the outside of the temple of the Parthenon. A considerable portion of these sculptures is now in the British Museum among those known as the "Elgin marbles." ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... facilities, he exchanged his professorship for the office of Danish envoy at the papal court in 1818, and took up his abode at Rome. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Sicily and the Ionian Isles to collect additional materials for his great work. In 1826 he went to London, chiefly with a view of studying the Elgin marbles and other remains of antiquity in the British Museum, and became acquainted with the principal archaeologists of England. From 1828-1832 he resided in Paris, to superintend the publication of his Travels, and then returned to Copenhagen on being appointed director of the museum ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... being decorated with a beautiful frieze, representing a naval and military triumphal procession, which our artist has copied and represented in distinct engravings. This frieze was designed by Mr. Henning, jun., son of Mr. Henning, so well known for his admirable models of the Elgin marbles. It possesses great classical merit, and the model was exhibited last season in the sculpture-room of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... The Elgin Marbles were then kept at Burlington House, and these were a great source of inspiration to the Landseer boys. It gave them a true taste of the Grecian, and knowing a little about Greece, they wanted to know more. Greece became the theme—they talked it at breakfast, dinner and supper. The father and mother ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... shortens the reins any length at one movement, with a very low, steady bearing. Two hands may be used (Fig. 5). I conceive this to be the Grecian mode of holding and handling the reins (see frontispiece and vignette, from the Elgin Marbles), except that the Greeks had one finger between the reins instead of two; and they held the reins, whether together or divided, between the thumb and the second finger. The first finger was thus detached, and used only for guiding, by which very distinct ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... back their necks while they cut their throats. "If the sacrifice was in honour of the celestial gods, the throat was bent upwards towards heaven; but if made to the heroes, or infernal deities, it was killed with its throat toward the ground."— "Elgin Marbles," vol ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... richest velvet or plush, that glitters like gold in the sunlight. The helmets, made of the same feathers, but worked on to a frame of perfect Grecian shape, similar to those seen in the oldest statuary or on the Elgin marbles, are even more artistic and elegant. Whence came the idea and design? Untutored savages could scarcely have evolved them out of their own heads. Some element of civilisation, and of highly artistic civilisation too, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... frieze or scroll of decorative designs unrolled ceaselessly before the British public, about a hen-pecked husband, which is indistinguishable to the eye from an actual self-repeating pattern like that of the Greek Key, but which is imported as if it were as precious and irreplaceable as the Elgin Marbles. Advertisement and syndication make mountains out of the most funny little mole-hills; but no doubt the mole-hills are picturesque enough in their own landscape. In any case there is nothing so national as humour; and many things, like many people, can be humorous enough when they ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... constructing for several years, are of rare architectural merit. The Royal Albert Hall is a vast amphitheatre of great magnificence devoted to exhibitions of industry, art, and music. It is of oval form, and its external frieze and cornice are modelled after the Elgin Marbles. Opposite it are the gardens of ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... among the Elgin Marbles, Phidias has carved a pile of heaped-up marble waves, and out of them rise the arms of Hyperion—the most beautiful arms in the world. Homesick for heaven, those weary arms try to free themselves of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various |
