The Statue Of A Youth,
Supposed To Be Ganymede, Is Compared By The Connoisseurs To The
Celebrated Venus, And As Far As I Can Judge, Not Without Reason:
It is however, rather agreeable than striking, and will please a
connoisseur much more than a common spectator.
I know not whether
it is my regard to the faculty that inhances the value of the
noted Esculapius, who appears with a venerable beard of delicate
workmanship. He is larger than the life, cloathed in a
magnificent pallium, his left arm resting on a knotted staff,
round which the snake is twined according to Ovid.
Hunc modo serpentem baculum qui nexibus ambit
Perspice -
Behold the snake his mystic Rod intwine.
He has in his hand the fascia herbarum, and the crepidae on his
feet. There is a wild-boar represented lying on one side, which I
admire as a master-piece. The savageness of his appearance is
finely contrasted with the case and indolence of the attitude.
Were I to meet with a living boar lying with the same expression,
I should be tempted to stroke his bristles. Here is an elegant
bust of Antinous, the favourite of Adrian; and a beautiful head
of Alexander the Great, turned on one side, with an expression of
languishment and anxiety in his countenance. The virtuosi are not
agreed about the circumstance in which he is represented; whether
fainting with the loss of blood which he suffered in his
adventure at Oxydrace; or languishing with the fever contracted
by bathing in the Cydnus; or finally complaining to his father
Jove, that there were no other worlds for him to conquer.
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