CHRIST IN MARBLE

Taranaki Daily News, 3 January 1927, Page 15

CHRIST IN MARBLE

DISCOVERY AT JERASH. Miss Rachael Levy, writing to The Times from the Palestine Museum, Jerusalem, describes the head which was discovered in the cloisters of the ruined fifth century Christian basilica at Jerash, Transjordan, and is thought by Professor Garstang to be the earliest known representation of the bearded Christ. Miss Levy says: “As already announced, the Jerash Christ was disclosed on cleaning to be the work of two epochs. Since I have been privileged to study it on the spot I send you the following supplementary notes. The head is barely lifesize, is cut from a marble fine enough to take an enchanting play of surface on the cheeks and brow, and weathered to a rich gold. It has none of the. exaggerated polish of the period of decline, and the drill has been employed only on one or two curls of the beard. The comparatively rough and simple treatment of the hair suggests that this was once painted; the bent, neck, the setting of the eyes, the very sensitive lips (now a litle worn, either by Nature or art) point to a fourth century original of the Attic school, perhaps to one of the marble versions of the Askelpios, which Thrasymedes of Paros set up in gold and ivory at Epidauris. “Certainly the Jerash head has most in common with the Askelpios of Melos, now in the British Museum, and considered with strong probability to be a free fourtli century rendering of the type established by Thrasymedes in the early part of the century. It bears other resemblances in profile to a relief found in the sanctuary of Epidanrus itself, believed on the evidence of the local coinage and the description of Pausanius to represent the statue of Thrasymedes. A later hand, perhaps contemporary with the church in which the head was found (fourth to sixth centuries, . A.D.), scratched in the pupils and irises from which the colour had long since faded, touched the upper eyelids, and deeply incised the lilies at their corners and above the brows. It was probably this craftsman who scraped away the lock of his hair over the forehead to let in the light. His touch was clumsy, but he had enough sense of style to leave the essential qualities unchanged, and a I depth of religious emotion which has I rendered the combination impressive.”