A catalogue of sculpture in the Department of ... - Warburg Institute

294 CATALOGUE OF SCULPTURE.SEPULCHRAL RELIEFS.The Greek sepulchral reliefs are of several distincttypes, each type having an independent origin and history,though occasionally the different types are blendedone with another.The early Attic examples which are assigned to a periodbefore the Persian wars, have recently been collected byConze {Die Attischen Grahreliefs, Part 1), and we are thusenabled to trace the rise of the differentso far as the materials discovered allow.types in Attica,The earliest andsimplest form of monument is the plain stone (a-TrjXr]), setup on a mound (ru/t^os) to mark the place of the grave, andsuch a tomb is well known to Homer (iZ. xi., 371, etc.)Such a stone would naturally bear the name of thedeceased, together with the name of his father, or of thepersons who erected the monument. The earliest Atticexamples are also surmounted by a simple ornament,especially the palmette between volutes, partly in relief,and partly in colour. The treatment of the palmetteclosely resembles that of the antefixal ornament of theParthenon (No. 352).At an uncertain period in the fifthcentury the use of the acanthus-leaf ornament was introduced,and the decoration of the stelae became elaborateand beautiful. It has been thought that the acanthuswas developed by the Greeks of Ionia, before the middleof the fifth century, and only made its way slowlyin Athens (Furtwaengler, Coll. Sahouroff, i., p. 8), but itcannot be proved to have become common before it hadbeen made familiar by the architecture of the Erechtheion,towards the close of the fifth century. The earlyCorinthian capital of the single column of the Templeat Phigaleia appears to be copied from a stele withvolutes and an acanthus.