The Archons of Athens in the Hellenistic Age

the help of the head in New York (see my Sculpture and Sculptors,2 figs. 533 and 534). The Grilneisen head has the misunderstood features usual in a forgery: the hair is continued above the vizor; the neck piece of the helmet is too short; the hair below the neck piece is not continued to the break (all these features can be noted in the side view of the head published in the Strzygowski Festschrift). In the New York head, on the other hand, there are no such misunderstandings. What the GrUineisen artist represented as hair is here correctly rendered as the upper portion of the ornamented "vizor" (now mostly broken away, except at the corners, with only the inside portion showing). The neck piece of the helmet is given the proper form; and the hair continues to the break. Stylistically also the two heads are poles apart. The firm modelling of the eyes, chin, and mouth in the New York head, and the delicate ridges of the hair (comparable to those on the Poitiers Athena [Picard, La Sculpture antique, II, p. 223, fig. 90]-also an archaistic work-form a striking contrast with the renderings in the GrUneisen piece. Moreover the physical condition of the New York head with its firmly adhering incrustation (on the front and left side) indicates antiquity. (In the meantime P. Jacobsthal has informed me that he withdraws his suspicion of our head, being now convinced of its genuineness. He is generously going to publish this change of opinion in a forthcoming article on the Elche head in the Athenische Mitteilungen). GISELA M. A. RICHTER THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM New York