双语+MP3|美国学生艺术史40 宝石小雕

 
另外一座雕像是公元前不久完成的。这座雕像实在太大，所以没用石膏摹制。它是一座巨大的太阳神青铜雕像，差不多有100英尺高。这座雕像摆放的位置很特别，太阳神的腿刚好跨坐在罗德斯岛海港的入口处。雕像名叫《罗德斯岛巨像》，它是世界七大奇迹之一。不过，由于某些原因，或是地震，太阳神巨像倒塌了，碎片被当成废品卖掉了。 
40 TINY TREASURES宝石小雕
 
“WHERE your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” 
I once read a description of a group of sculptured figures that had been made for a public building. The chief thing the newspaper said about the sculpture was that it weighed ten tons. It did not say whether the statues were beautiful or not— just that they weighed ten tons. It might have been ten tons of coal. But mere size doesn’t make a thing beautiful. The Greeks made some huge statues, but they were beautiful. They made, also, tiny sculptured figures so small that you have to look at them under a magnifying glass to see how really beautiful they are. 
Not long ago I saw in a museum a piece of such sculpture that couldn’t have weighed more than an ounce and was no larger than a domino. It was a piece of colored stone through which the light shone and it was carved with beautiful figures of Greek gods and goddesses in low relief. The figures had been cut into the stone with very fine but sharp tools. It had been made by some Greek sculptor whose name no one knows— before Christ was born. It was called a gem, which is the name we give to anything that is very precious though it may be tiny. 
In the British Museum in London is a whole room of such gems made before the time of Christ, by sculptors as great as those who made man size and colossal size figures. These gems were made for kings and wealthy people, for no others could afford them. Rich people long ago used to collect such gems as you might collect postage stamps, and museums—and some people who can afford it—do so to-day. 
Often these tiny bits of low relief sculpture were cut in a stone that had two or three layers of different colors so that the figures were in one color and the background in another. If one layer was black and the other white, the stone was called onyx. If the top layer was reddish and those below it white and black, it was called sardonyx. Such sculptured low reliefs were known as cameos and some were very beautiful. Nowadays, cameos are made of shells of two color layers and are called shell cameos. Some are cut from two or more layers of different colored stone cemented together or from artificial sardonyx. 
It used to be the fashion for ladies to wear shell cameos as breastpins and perhaps your grandmother may have had such a cameo pin with the head of some one cut in it. Some kinds of china have white cameo-like figures on a blue background. Some cameos were cut from glass of two colors. There is a famous vase in the British Museum called the Portland Vase. It is of blue glass and the figures on it in relief are white glass. Many years ago a crazy person, just to show off, knocked over the vase and it was smashed to bits. The bits were all picked up and put together again, and so well was it repaired that you can hardly tell that it was broken. 
There was another kind of gem made in great quantities, before Christ, in which the figures were hollowed out or sunken, instead of being raised. A gem of this sort was called a seal or intaglio, which means sunken. The seals were used to stamp a design in wax. Of course the stamped impression made from the sunken relief was raised in wax, and one could make as many stamped impressions with the seal as he liked. Each person who could afford it had such a seal with a special design all his own to stamp everything he wished to mark with his own hand. Every one would then know he alone had made the impression. 
The marks made by seals were largely used instead of signatures, back in the days when few people knew how to write—or even how to sign their names. Sometimes the seal was fitted in a finger ring which was worn by the owner so that no one else could use it. Such rings were called signet rings, which means “signing ring.” Sometimes the seal was not mounted in a ring, but was kept in a safe place so that no one but the owner could use it. 
 
No.40　SOME ROMAN CAMEOS（几枚罗马浮雕宝石） 
Have you ever collected old coins, old metal money of bronze or silver? Most boys have. Perhaps you would never think of such coins as a kind of sculpture, but that is what old coins are—pieces of low relief sculpture, and the Greeks used to make the most beautiful coins with heads or figures of famous people or gods on them in low relief. First they made a die which was a sunken relief, and then, with this die, coins were stamped out of metal—gold, silver or bronze. One difference between a coin and a gem is that a coin is made from a die and any number of coins all alike can be made from the one die, but there is only one of a gem. The coins of some countries to-day are really beautiful, but none quite so beautiful as those the old Greeks made. One reason for this is that our coins have to be made quite flat, in very low relief, so that they will stack in a pile, for this is necessary in our banks. But it was not necessary to stack the old Greek coins in piles and so they could be made, and were made, in higher relief. 
Coins were, of course, used to buy things with, but there were old coin-like sculptures called medals that generally were larger and were not used as money. The figures on medals were often in higher relief and made by pouring the metal into a mold instead of by stamping the metal with a die. Usually such medals were made for prizes in athletic games or honors in war or to celebrate some great event. anniversary, or celebration. Medals of this kind are made to-day, so your father may have one to show you.