Читать книгу The Mythology of Greece and Rome, With Special Reference to Its Use in Art онлайн

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ssss1. Polycletus, a native of Sicyon, was a sculptor, architect, and caster in bronze. He was a contemporary of Phidias, and, next to him, the most celebrated artist of antiquity.

Juno (properly Jovino) takes the same place as goddess of childbirth and patroness of marriage among the Romans as Hera did among the Greeks. In addition to this she was venerated, under the name of Juno Regina, as the tutelary deity of the city and empire of Rome. Her chief shrine was on the Capitol, where she had a separate chapel in the temple of Jupiter. The Matronalia, the chief festival of the goddess, was celebrated on the first day of March, when all the matrons of the city marched in procession to her temple on the Esquiline, and there offered her flowers and libations. The victims usually sacrificed to Juno were young heifers: her sacred birds were the goose and the crow, to which the peacock of the Greek Hera was afterwards added.

Fig. 7.—Head of Hera, perhaps after Polycletus. Naples.

The most celebrated of the art monuments that relate to Juno is the Juno Ludovisi, a colossal marble bust of remarkable beauty, which, thanks to casts and photographs, is tolerably well known. Her lofty and commanding countenance is the ideal of perfect womanly beauty, combining in a rare degree woman’s chief ornaments—dignity and grace.