Gregory Curtis (22 page)

Furtwängler believed that his precise, systematic analysis of the form and style of these Roman statues, when compared with
descriptions of lost masterpieces in antique texts, could lead to identifying Roman statues as copies of specific lost masterpieces of specific Greek masters. More than that, the copies could then be used to discover the individual contributions from each master to the evolution of Greek art. German, a language always ready to invent a new word, calls this process
Meisterforschung—
master research. By
Meisterforschung
Furtwängler wanted to show that the Greek genius, which had always seemed monolithic and anonymous, could be completely recast as a historical sequence of identifiable works by certain specific individuals.

Many of the reconstructions and conclusions Furtwängler made have been discredited, and
Meisterforschung
is a method that is considered doubtful today. Yet
Masterpieces
lives on. It was reprinted in English translation as late as 1964, and its most spectacular reconstruction has often been attacked without being disproved. Furtwängler, in a display of his astonishing visual memory and ability for synthesis, recognized that a head in Bologna belonged to a statue in Dresden, and that the properly reconstructed statue was a copy of the
Lemnian Athena of
Phidias, a work previously known only by written descriptions. Ancient writers identified twenty-one works by Phidias, all now lost, including the giant statue of Athena in the
Parthenon. Furtwängler had, as if by magic, brought one back to life.

He begins the chapter entitled “The Venus of Milo” with a warning shot at Reinach: “The Venus of Milo is still a center of eager controversy, and only recently a distinguished archeologist pronounced the whole question to be an insoluble riddle. Before resigning myself to this conclusion, I should like to be sure that no means of solution has been left untried.”

Furtwängler believed that the hand with the apple, the fragments of a left arm, and the inscribed base that were found in the niche all belonged to the statue and that “Alexandros son of Menides citizen of Antioch” was the name of the true sculptor. As evidence that the base belonged, Furtwängler cites Debay’s drawing, which does in fact show the inscribed base fitting perfectly
to the base of the statue. And he reads between the lines of earlier accounts to make a telling point:

So now, Furtwängler concludes, “it is very easy to see why the piece was not fastened on, and why it disappeared.… Since the statue was to be presented to the king as a work of
Praxiteles … it would naturally be inconvenient to have to affix to it the name of an unknown sculptor.” Then Furtwängler fearlessly proceeds to the logical conclusion of what he has just said: “The disappearance of the inscription, in my opinion, is only a proof of its genuineness. It was an awkward witness, and had to be quietly got out of the way.” These are words that still raise temperatures in the hallways and back offices of the Louvre.

Furtwängler scoffs at Reinach’s notion that the niche that held the statue was in reality a limekiln. He had helped excavate many former kilns, he stated, and the statues had always been broken into small pieces before burning, so the litter of broken marble made the kilns unmistakable. “Not even the most ignorant person,” he said in his typically politic way, “could ever mistake such a limekiln for an architectural ‘niche.’ Reinach’s supposition has no foundation in fact.”

Furtwängler turns to Ravaisson, who in his last paper also wrote that the inscribed base was a later addition.

Furtwängler relegates this observation to a footnote, but it’s still a crushing blow. How
could
the male figure disappear and the hand with the apple that was supposedly resting on its shoulder still remain? This direct and obvious objection, which no one else had thought to make, completely destroys the reconstructions of Venus beside a warrior that both Quatremère and Ravaisson had proposed. To see her as part of such a group, where she gently turns the man’s attention from war to her, is appealing and in keeping with so many statues in a similar pose. Unfortunately, that reconstruction cannot be true.

Unfortunately for Furtwängler, the reconstruction he proposed cannot be true either. Since he had argued that both the hand with the apple and the inscribed base belonged with the statue, he had to use them in his reconstruction. And since Debay’s drawing shows a square hole in the top of the inscribed base, he had to use that, too. Furtwängler concludes that a rectangular column, tall enough to rise just above the goddess’s waist, fit over the hole. Her left elbow rested on top of the column while the hand holding the apple extends forward, palm up.

That makes a graceful composition. Similar images exist in Greek art and, quite provocatively, on coins from
Melos. But there is one devastating objection: Voutier’s drawings, published by Ravaisson the previous year, clearly show the beardless herm, not a column, standing inside the inscribed base. Furthermore, although there was no trace of a statue of Mars to support Quatremère’s and Ravaisson’s reconstructions, a fact Furtwängler
had gleefully noted, no trace of his proposed column was ever found either.

Furtwängler, cornered by his own argument, decided that Voutier’s drawing was “quite arbitrary,” because he had put the herm in the base where it didn’t belong at all for purposes of his sketch. Clearly, though, it’s Furtwängler who is being arbitrary. There’s no reason to believe that Voutier stuck a random herm into the inscribed base just to bedevil a German archeologist seventy years later.

In conclusion, Furtwängler returns to
Meisterforschung
to try to establish the antecedents for the Venus de Milo. He contends that a statue by
Skopas showing Venus admiring herself in a shield resting on her left knee was one inspiration. The second came from images of Tyche, the patron goddess of Melos, holding an apple. Although Furtwängler thought this combination was “not altogether happy,” he considered the artist to be “at least a man who could make a traditional type his own, and reproduce it with all the freshness of a new technique.”

This conclusion, as opposed to Furtwängler’s reconstruction, is quite convincing. To a modern reader it’s curious that Furtwängler—and how he would recoil in rage if he were to hear this—is most convincing when he is least scientific. He’s at his best when he looks closely at the art and describes it as a connoisseur. Here, for instance, he describes the changes the artist had to make because he had removed the shield from the composition by Skopas. It’s a long passage, but worth quoting because it reveals the exquisite sensibility beneath all Furtwängler’s bluster:

In this passage, where Furtwängler leaves his theories behind and becomes pure connoisseur, he has out-Frenched the French. None of them—not Quatremère, not Clarac, not even Ravaisson—ever wrote about the statue with such precision, intensity, and good sense. But he had made an implied boast at the start of his paper that he would succeed where the French had failed and settle all the mysteries of the Venus de Milo. For all Furtwängler’s imposing intellect and erudition, the mysteries remained.

W
HEN
Reinach reviewed
Masterpieces
, he did not accept Furtwängler’s dating or reconstruction. He simply asserted that Furtwängler was wrong. Over the next few years, though,
Reinach produced a series of papers scrutinizing the roles of Voutier, d’Urville, Marcellus, Brest, Rivière, and the rest. He also considered the proposed reconstructions of other scholars, and then proved their impossibility one by one. Then, in 1897, aided by a lucky discovery in a forgotten gallery in the Louvre, Reinach was able to create his own reconstruction and—sweet victory!—to prove at last that Furtwängler’s reconstruction was wrong.

Voutier’s drawings showed two herms and two inscribed bases. One was the herm with the youth’s head standing in the base inscribed with the name of a sculptor. The Louvre still possessed this herm, although the base, of course, had been lost. The second herm, a bearded man, was still in the Louvre as well, but its inscribed base had also disappeared; in fact, the base’s existence seems to have been entirely forgotten until Voutier’s sketches reappeared. He had copied the inscriptions on both bases clearly enough to be read. The disputed base clearly showed “…  andros son of Menides citizen of Antioch.” The second inscription, the one on the base supporting the bearded herm, read enigmatically, “
Theodoridas son of Agesistratos.”

Reinach initially took this to be the name of another sculptor, and published that conclusion in January 1897. Only a few days later a German scholar named Hiller von Gaertringen visited Reinach. Von Gaertringen’s current task was collecting inscriptions from the Aegean islands for the Academy in Berlin. When Reinach showed him the inscription in Voutier’s drawing, von Gaertringen was reminded of another inscription he had recently seen, and after a few minutes of research the two men found it. Charles Tissot, Reinach’s mentor from
Athens, had copied it in 1878 on
Melos. It read, “Theodoridas, son of Laistratos, to Poseidon.” The scholars immediately saw that “Agesistratos” in Voutier’s drawing was a mistake; he had incorrectly repeated two Greek letters. If the extra letters were removed, Voutier’s drawing would also say “Laistratos.” Both the inscription Tissot copied and the inscription on the base of the bearded herm referred to the same Theodoridas, son of Laistratos.

How Tissot came to copy the inscription made it even more interesting. He had seen it while trying to buy the newly discovered statue of Poseidon on Melos for France. Several other statues, originally grouped with the Poseidon, had been found at the same time. One of these was a robed man missing his head, set on a base with the inscription “Theodoridas, son of Laistratos, to Poseidon.” This statue must have been of Theodoridas himself. He must have been the one who built this elaborate shrine to the god of the sea. And he had also dedicated the bearded herm found with the Venus de Milo. Therefore—and Reinach found this so exciting he put it in italics in his paper—
“if the Venus is contemporary with this herm, she is thus also contemporary with Poseidon.”
He had reason to be excited. The lettering on the two inscriptions was carved in a form that dated to the fourth century
B.C.
, exactly the period into which French scholars had always longed to place the Venus de Milo.