The Antiquities of Orissa v1.c9.76.3

v1.c9.76.3

Giovannida Bologna had to reduce to shape the allegory of Mercury or rumour depending on human tongue, and he designed a lithe, agile, nude male figure with a cap and wings on his head, leaping out of “expanding rays ( but very material and like a bundle of sticks ) issuing from the puffed cheeks, or rather mouth, of a zephyr, whose head only is exhibited”.²⁶ Again, Benvenuto Cellini, in his no less celebrated than magnificent group of Perseus and Andromeda, represents Perseus descending from mid-air to liberate the captive fair, and save her from the attack of a dragon issuing from flames, but, as travelling in mid-air, however natural to birds, is not quite consonant to human nature, the figure looks more like a man kicked down headlong from the top of a house than a hero descending for a fight with a monster. This offence against nature could not, however, be avoided. The story needed it, and the artist did what he could to preserve its substance. Similarly, when the Hindu artist had to give shape to the allegory of the birth of Brahmā, he designed, not a woman as supposed by Dr. Lübke, but an infant reclining on a leafy couch to typify the perfection of innocence and purity, and made it suck its toes, as an emblem of supreme happiness, and it is questionable if there is any other object in nature which can symbolise those attributes to greater perfection than an infant so occupied.