Boreas and Oreithyia
Photographed by Francis Bedford (1816-1894)
Source: Newton, facing p.330
1865
Towards the end of his archeological tour, Mary's husband Charles Newton, now with only a small workforce, excavated the remnants of a hydria or pitcher in the earth among the graves in ancient Damos, in Greece. Mary Newton drew this relief from it, and the drawing was subsequently photographed by the then up-and-coming lithographer and photographer Francis Bedford (see Hannavy 134). [Commentary continues below.]
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Charles Newton recounts the gradual unearthing of these fragments with mounting excitement. At first his workmen found "a small circular ornament in bronze so finely wrought that I was at once led to hope for some work of art of a better quality than what I had been discovering." Then he asked his men to scrape rather than dig, and more came to the surface:
I very soon found three more of these bronze disks, the handle of a large bronze vase with rich floral ornaments, and lastly, at the very bottom of the grave, but not more than eight inches below the surface, a beautiful bronze group in high relief, representing Boreas carrying off Oreithyia.... Boreas is represented with buskins and large wings as a wind-god; Oreithyia seems to be looking back to the world from which she is snatched away.
Two other smaller bronze handles were found with these remains; and it was evident that the whole had belonged to a large hydria of the same metal, the body of which had decayed, all but the mouth, which on account of its greater solidity had not been decomposed.
The bronze group had been placed at the lower inertion of the principal handle. It is in embossed or repousse work, and had been anciently gilt. Wlien I found it, minute portions of gilding were still adhering to the hair of the female figure; and the earth of the grave, on being sifted, yielded many particles of gold leaf. The composition of this relief is exceedingly beautiful, the execution rather inferior to the design; and we miss in it the refinement and delicacy of modelling which distingiushes the bronzes of Siris in the British Museum beyond all other works of the same Idnd. However, bronzes in embossed work of a good period are so exceedingly rare that the group of Boreas and Oreithyia may fairly rank among the most precious objects of this class which have been discovered. [Newton 330-31]
Boreas in classical mythology is the north wind, who abducts the beautiful nymph Orithyia (variously spelt) after failing to win her by more conventional means (see Bullfinch 217). Newton surmises that "the subject of the bronze group was probably selected to commemorate allusively the untimely fate of the person in whose grave it was found" (331). Naturally, he asked his wife to sketch the group, and later had Francis Bedford (later to be appointed as royal photographer, and to accompany the then Prince of Wales on his tours, see Hannavy 134-36) to photograph the drawing for his book. The drawing is full of movement and very expressive, capturing the dynamic moment depicted in the relief, when the wind whips away the reluctant nymph.
Related Material
Bibliography
Bullfinch, Thomas. The Golden Age of Myth & Legend: The Classical Mythology of the Ancient World. Ware, Herts.: Wordsworth editions, 1993.
Hannavy, John, ed. Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, Vol. I: A—H. London: Routledge, 2008.
Newton, C. T. Travels and Discoveries in the Levant, Vol. I. London: Day & Son, 1865. Internet Archive. Contributed by the Sloan Foundation. Web. 10 January 2020.
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