Some among them
are of much merit.
Then comes the gallery of the bronzes. In this department the late finds
have been very numerous and extremely interesting. Among the objects
which will immediately attract the visitor's eye as he enters the
principal room are a litter and a biga or chariot. In both cases of
course only fragments of the bronze remain, but they are sufficient to
have enabled skilled antiquaries to reconstruct the entire litter and
the entire chariot. The latter is very specially interesting. The plates
of embossed and chiseled bronze which encased the body of the chariot
are figured with admirably-worked subjects in basso-rilievo, many of
them relating to the "wondrous tale of Troy." This invaluable specimen
was the gift to the museum of that eminent and liberal archaeologist,
Signor A. Castellani, of whose matchless collection of Etruscan jewelry
I wrote in a former number of this Magazine. The remaining portions of
the bronze- and iron-work of the litter, with its arrangement of poles
for carrying it, somewhat after the fashion of a sedan-chair, though the
whole of the apparatus is much lighter, are more fragmentary, but yet
sufficient for the reconstruction of a specimen illustrative to the
classical reader of many a passage in the ancient writers. Under No. 10
the visitor will find the small statue of an hermaphrodite in bronze,
fashioned as the bearer of a lamp--a statue of very great delicacy and
beauty.
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