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Message:: [QUOTE="Marsyas Mike, post: 6268526, member: 85693"]Great thread, with spectacular coins.  How about a whole bunch of 19th century coin-art prose?  "...the Mercury of Aenus is a very stupid-looking fellow, in a cap like a bowl, with a knob on the top of it." Last night I was leafing through a collection of critic John Ruskin's works and came across his lecture on a coin of Camarina.  This is a coin I do not have, but here is one from a Coin World article on Hercules portraits - I am assuming, but not sure, this is the one Ruskin is talking about:[ATTACH=full]1248129[/ATTACH] <a href="https://www.coinworld.com/news/precious-metals/portraits-of-heracles-on-ancient-coins-ancients-today.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.coinworld.com/news/precious-metals/portraits-of-heracles-on-ancient-coins-ancients-today.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.coinworld.com/news/precious-metals/portraits-of-heracles-on-ancient-coins-ancients-today.html</a> Here are Ruskin's remarks (link to the whole thing below) - please note I do not much agree with Ruskin, he is presented here for historical/comical possibilities only:  The Queen of the Air - "The Hercules of Camarina"ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS OF THE ART SCHOOL OF SOUTH LAMBERT, MARCH 15, 1869. 167. Fix that in your heads also, therefore, that Greek faces are not particularly beautiful. Of that much nonsense against which you are to keep your ears shut, that which is talked to you of the Greek ideal of beauty is the absolutest. There is not a single instance of a very beautiful head left by the highest school of Greek art. On coins, there is even no approximately beautiful one. The Juno of Argos is a virago; the Athena of Athens grotesque, the Athena of Corinth is insipid; and of Thurium, sensual. The Siren Ligeia, and fountain of Arethusa, on the coins of Terina and Syracuse, are prettier, but totally without expression, and chiefly set off by their well-curled hair. You might have expected something subtle in Mercuries; but the Mercury of Aenus is a very stupid-looking fellow, in a cap like a bowl, with a knob on the top of it. The Bacchus of Thasos is a drayman with his hair pomatum'd. The Jupiter of Syracurse is, however, calm and refined; and the Apollo of Clazomenae would have been impressive, if he had not come down to us, much flattened by friction. But on the whole, the merit of Greek coins does not primarily depend on beauty of features, nor even, in the period of highest art, that of the statues. You make take the Venus of Melos as a standard of beauty of the central Greek type. She has tranquil, regular, and lofty features; but could not hold her own for a moment against the beauty of a simple English girl... 170. But, secondly, Greek art is always exemplary in disposition of masses, which is a thing that in modern days students rarely look for, artists not enough, and the public never. But, whatever else Greek work may fail of, you may always be sure its masses are well placed, and their placing has been the object of the most subtle care. Look, for instance, at the inscription in front of this Hercules of the name of the town-- Camarina. You can't read it, even though you may know Greek, without some pains; for the sculptor knew well enough that it mattered very little whether you read it or not, for the Camarina Hercules could tell his own story; but what did above all things matter was, that no K or A or M should come in a wrong place with respect to the outline of the head, and divert the eye from it, or spoil any of its lines. So the whole inscription is thrown into a sweeping curve of gradually diminishing size, continuing from the lion's paws, round the neck, up to the forehead, and answering a decorative purpose as completely as the curls of the mane opposite. Of these, again, you cannot change or displace one without mischief; they are almost as even in reticulation as a piece of basket-work; but each has a different form and a due relation to the rest, and if you set to work to draw that mane rightly, you will find that, whatever time you give to it, you can't get the tresses quite into their places, and that every tress out of its place does an injury. If you want to test your powers of accurate drawing, you may make that lion's mane your pons asinorum, I have never yet met with a student who didn't make an ass in a lion's skin of himself when he tried it. 171. Granted, however, that these tresses may be finely placed, still they are not like a lion's mane. So we come back to the question,--if the face is to be like a man's face, why is not the lion's mane to be like a lion's mane? Well, because it can't be like a lion's mane without too much trouble,--and inconvenience after that, and poor success, after all. Too much trouble, in cutting the die into fine fringes and jags; inconvenience after that,--because, though you can easily stamp cheeks and foreheads smooth at a blow, you can't stamp projecting tresses fine at a blow, whatever pains you take with your die. So your Greek uses his common sense, wastes no time, uses no skill, and says to you, "Here is beautifully set tresses, which I have carefully designed and easily stamped. Enjoy them, and if you cannot understand that they mean lion's mane, heaven mend your wits." <a href="http://fullonlinebook.com/nonfictions/the-queen-of-the-air-the-hercules-of-camarina/kite.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://fullonlinebook.com/nonfictions/the-queen-of-the-air-the-hercules-of-camarina/kite.html" rel="nofollow">http://fullonlinebook.com/nonfictions/the-queen-of-the-air-the-hercules-of-camarina/kite.html</a> [/QUOTE]

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