previous next
[494] others a bust of Julius Caesar in green basalt, the finest bust in the gallery, and the most distinct and characteristic head of him I have ever seen; and the beautiful bronze boy, stretching his arms upward in worship, four feet four inches high, of which I have often seen casts, but never before saw the exquisite original. It was found in the Tiber, and given by Clement XI. to Prince Eugene, after which it went to Prince Lichtenstein, and out of his collection it was bought by Frederick II. for ten thousand rix dollars. It is decidedly the finest ancient work of art in Berlin, and would be a beautiful one anywhere.

In a note written a few days later, Mr. Ticknor says:—

It is a curious fact, that in the fine collection of vases kept in this same building we afterwards saw one bearing on its sides a representation of a sculptor at work on a figure, with his tools about him, and the figure was obviously the same with that of this worshipping boy. Is it possible that this vase came from the tomb of the very sculptor of this statue, and that thus, after the lapse of two or three thousand years, and at the distance of as many miles, this beautiful work, and the record of it, have been thus strangely brought together by the counter-currents of conquests and revolution, which have driven the seats of empire from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to the barbarous North, carrying in their train the arts and monuments of all?

. . . . The picture-gallery is arranged—it is not too much to saywith magnificence, as well as taste. . . . . It is a large gallery, comprising something in all the schools,—though not always of all the masters who ought to be there,—perfectly well arranged in historical order, so as to be easily studied and understood, in rich and beautiful halls, fresh and beautiful frames, admirably well managed and cared for; but, after all, for the number of pictures, not a great many good ones. . .

On our return home we found Mr. Wheaton, who arrived yesterday from Copenhagen. . . . . I was very glad to see a countryman, and to come under the protection of my own minister. I went out with him and made one or two calls, but found nobody at home excepting Professor Gans, one of the most popular lecturers in the University here, and the least liked by the government, who have restrained him somewhat in the exercise of his functions as a teacher. It seemed, however, as if it could hardly be necessary, even on their

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Copenhagen (Denmark) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Henry Wheaton (1)
Elisha Ticknor (1)
Gans (1)
Julius Caesar (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: