Yes, and
still worse.
Seltman also already
had asserted that our admiration for marble sculptures, such as the Parthenon sculptures and the Olympia sculptures and the
Altar of
Zeus at
Pergamon, was misplaced, not much better than a holdover from Renaissance popes' admiration for the
Apollo Belvedere and other famous statuary
types which in
his dismissive terms are
mere copies. Copies they certainly are, but we must be glad to have them, since the great majority of bronze and mixed-precious-materials (including
chryselephantine)
statues are lost, and only recently has underwater retrieval increased the number of bronze
statues we have, to compare with the marble (and some bronze) copies.
Seltman's bias, which I used to call the Medici bias, because powerful, wealthy families tended to value more highly
work using precious mineral pigments and added gold leaf. Likewise, the powerful clerical prelates of the 13th and 14th centuries liked to order bejeweled gold reliquaries and pyxes for their cathedral and abbey churches: toreumata, caelatura.
Stone was for funerary use and for architectural adornment. They didn't know how to make life-size lost-wax bronze
statues anymore (the 15th century in Florence, in the generation of Ghiberti and Donatello, would bring it back).
Seltman's notions, though not untrue, have always annoyed artists and serious students, who value the vision, the coherence, the intellectual, the sensitive and disciplined qualities of the
work more than the cost of the raw materials.
Only to this extent is Seltman's assertion really valid: an artist
had to be really famous or really well connected to get the commissions to
work with the costly materials provided for wealthy clients'and instistutions' projects. And they may be merely common, vein-ridden marble, but it was seeing the Parthenon sculptures that made Antonio Canova say, if only he could begin again.
And we all know, it is the beauty of the die combined with a perfect strike and
good preservation that makes a great coin, irrespective of the kind of metal, the period, or the place that is exemplifies. Or
rarity: the Ides of March issue is only moderately nice.
Pat L.