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Updated: June 18, 2025
Morrel obeyed; the count arose, and unlocking a closet with a key suspended from his gold chain, took from it a little silver casket, beautifully carved and chased, the corners of which represented four bending figures, similar to the Caryatides, the forms of women, symbols of the angels aspiring to heaven.
It consisted of two caryatides standing out from the square shaft from which they were carved, their erect heads barely touching the ceiling. The figures were of heroic size and wore the repose and dignity of countenance characteristic of Egyptian statues.
Caryatides are sometimes introduced, as well as Egyptian attributes; the arms of the chairs being frequently decorated with sphinxes.
Even those dim and shapeless monsters of notions which I have not been able to describe, much less defend, stepped quietly into their places like colossal caryatides of the creed.
The name Caryatides, by the way, meets us first in the pages of Vitruvius, a Roman architect of the time of Augustus; a contemporary Athenian inscription, to which we are indebted for many details concerning the building, calls them simply "maidens." The arms hung straight at the sides, one of them grasping a corner of the small mantle.
In 1662, under Louis XIV, Molière and his troup, in a theatre installed in the Salle des Caryatides, gave the first "command" performance on record. The plays produced were, "Nicodeme" and "Le Docteur Amoureux." An "art note" of interest is that Sylvain Bailly, the first curator of the Musée du Louvre, was born within its precincts in 1736.
Six caryatides, or marble women, clad in flowing robes, support the portico of the Temple of Hercules, but the porticos and colonnades of the other structures are formed of massive Doric and Ionic pillars, whose flutings and capitals are still measurably perfect, notwithstanding the centuries that have gone over them and the sieges they have suffered.
On the edge of the low scroll-sculptured mantel, supported at each corner by caryatides, perched a large tame grey owl, with clipped wings folded, and wide, solemn, oracular eyes fastened on the countenance of its beloved master. With swift, noiseless steps Electra came to the red grate, and, after a moment, drew an ottoman close to the easy chair.
Did you see before my palace the flesh-colored caryatides, who keep guard before my door and seem to follow every passer-by with their eyes? They were slaves who disobeyed me, and whom with a single breath I transformed to stone. Do you wish to be fixed to these walls as statues, or changed into wild beasts to rend one another to-morrow in the amphitheatre?
The frieze of the lower part rested on rude stone caryatides; the upper part was formed of oak panels very curiously carved in the geometrical designs favoured by the taste prevalent in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, but different from any I had ever seen in the drawings of old houses, and I was not quite unlearned in such matters, for my poor father was a passionate antiquary in all that relates to mediaeval art.
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