These are the most beautiful, my friend, so that we shall not need any other artists. Come now, out of them all I shall make a combination as best I can, and shall display to you a single portrait-statue that comprises whatever is most exquisite in each.
How can that be done?
Very well; by all means let him have a free hand and show us his powers, for I am eager to know what he really can do with the statues and how he can combine so many into one without making it discordant.
Well, he permits you to look upon the statue
even now, as it comes into being; and this is the
way he makes the blend. From the Cnidian he
takes only the head, as the body, which is unclothed,
will not meet his needs. He will allow the arrangement of the hair, the forehead, and the fair line of
the brows to remain as Praxiteles made them; and
in the eyes also, that gaze so liquid, and at the same
time so clear and winsome—that too shall be
retained as Praxiteles conceived it. But he will
take the round of the cheeks and all the fore part
of the face from Alcamenes and from Our Lady in
the Gardens; so too the hands, the graceful wrists,
and the supple, tapering fingers shall come from Our
Lady in the Gardens. But the contour of the entire
face, the delicate sides of it, and the shapely nose
will be supplied by the Lemnian Athena and by
Phidias, and the master will also furnish the meeting
of the lips, and the neck, taking these from his
Amazon. Sosandra and Calamis shall adorn her with