雙語+MP3|美國學(xué)生藝術(shù)史42 半身像和浮雕

 
燈是按模子制的，也許上百成千盞燈都出自同一塊模子。一些古老的模子如今從地底下挖掘出來了，被現(xiàn)代工業(yè)回爐加工成紀(jì)念品，或說古董，賣給游客。如是青銅制品，且年代的確久遠(yuǎn)的話，那么燈身上就會裹著一件綠衣，我們稱作“銅綠”。但如果只是人們用酸浸泡后的近代產(chǎn)物，那燈邊就會更鋒利，而且酸浸的銅綠和時間腐蝕形成的銅綠看起來會有所不同。如果是用粘土制成，那么新制的燈在切割處就顯得更加工整而鮮亮。所以，如果哪天我們想買一盞古燈（還發(fā)生過比這更奇怪的事呢），那么就要留意銅綠或粘土的鮮亮度哦。 
42 BUSTS AND RELIEFS半身像和浮雕
 
AS your mother or your father or your teacher ever told you not to say “bust”? “If he gets any fatter, he’ll bust!” is very poor English. I agree with your mother or your father or your teacher. What you should say is burst. 
But now I’m going to tell you how you can use the word “bust” so your mother and your father and your teacher will like to hear you use it. In bad English, “bust” means "burst." In good English, “bust” means a piece of sculpture showing the upper part of a person—sometimes just the head and neck and sometimes the head, neck, shoulders, and chest. A bust that is made to look like one particular person so that you can say when you see it, “Why that looks just like Mr. Brown,” or “just like Alice Jones,” or“just like Tommy Smith,” is called a portrait bust. 
The ancient Egyptians made some very good portrait busts, but the people who made them best were the ancient Romans. The old Roman busts are so lifelike that they look like real people you might see walking down the street to-day. The Greeks put Greek noses on most of their statues even though many Greeks didn’t have Greek noses. But the Romans liked to make their busts just like the real person. If a man had a crooked nose or a double chin, the sculptor made that man’s bust with a crooked nose or double chin. If the man had a worried look, the sculptor made the bust with the worried look. 
 
No.42-1　JULIUS CÆSAR（《尤利烏斯·愷撒》） 
Courtesy of Pratt Institute 
Each Roman family that could afford it had busts made of all the members of the family. These busts were handed down in the family so that an old family had a great many busts of its ancestors around the house. Whenever there was a death in the family, all the family portrait busts were carried down the street in the funeral procession. If you had watched one of those processions, you could have seen, perhaps, how much a grandson looked like the bust of his grandfather which he was carrying. 
Each Roman emperor had hundreds of busts made of himself to be sent to all the important cities in the Roman Empire. Here is a bust of Julius Cæsar. Does he look like any one you know? Now if you want to use the word bust, go ahead. 
Except for the busts, the Romans weren’t very good at making statues in the round. So when they conquered Greece they brought back to Rome all the famous Greek statues they could find. They brought back Greek sculptors, too, and made them carve statues in Rome. Many of the statues made in Rome were not original but were copies of famous Greek statues. It’s lucky for us the copies were made, because so many of the great Greek statues were lost that if we hadn’t been able to dig up Roman copies of them we shouldn’t know at all what they were like. You remember Myron’s Discus Thrower? The statue that Myron himself made disappeared and has never been found, but several Roman copies of it were made and so we know what it was like. 
 
No.42-2　RELIEF FROM THE ALTAR OF PEACE（《和平祭壇浮雕》） 
Although the Romans weren’t so good as the Greeks in making statues in the round, they did make some excellent bas reliefs. All boys like the reliefs showing the campaigns of the Emperor Trajan. They show the Roman soldiers marching, camping, fighting, taking a city, capturing prisoners, and carrying off the spoils of war. Trajan’s campaign was carved on a marble column and the sculptured band winds like a corkscrew round and round the column from the bottom to the top. The column is still standing in Rome and is called Trajan’s Column. 
Another famous relief is carved on the Altar of the Peace of Augustus which the Roman Senate ordered erected in 13 B.c. when the Emperor Augustus came back from putting down revolts in the western part of the Roman Empire. 
If any one should ask you what kind of sculpture the Romans did best, just tell them,“Reliefs and busts.”