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Fig. 20.—Figure, from the East Pediment of the Temple on Aegina. Glyptothek, Munich.

Since the discovery of these groups by an international party of Englishmen and Germans in 1811, and their restoration soon after their arrival in Munich by the sculptor Thorwaldsen, many new fragments have been discovered by Furtwaengler during his excavations of the temple site in 1901, and have been incorporated into the existing figures in the Glyptothek. His reconstruction, though not definitive, is more in accord with artistic probability than any that preceded.962 As we should expect from the athletic tradition of the Aeginetan school of sculpture just outlined, these sculptures represent finely trained nude athletes, whose modeling shows great observation of nature, especially in the treatment of muscles and veins. In fact it has been truly said that anatomical knowledge was never expressed again in Greek art so simply and naturally. The figures, without any excess of flesh, are slightly under life-size, short and stocky—shoulders square, but the waists slender and the legs long in proportion to the bodies—and withal are very compact and full of strength. The figures of the two pediments differ slightly, the eastern being more developed than the western. Brunn, long ago, arguing from the stele of Aristion, which then was the best example extant of archaic Attic art, showed how that art was characterized by grace and dignity of effect, while Aeginetan art was characterized by a finer study of nature. This generalization is no longer a matter of inference, but of knowledge.