Sunday, June 27, 2010
at
6:31 AM
|
THE SCULPTURE OF THE ACROPOLIS, ATHENSWhen the Persians, the victors at Thermopylae, were approaching Attica in 480 BC, the oracle of Delphi told the Athenians that “the wooden wall would be impregnable”. A few Athenians took this to mean that they must barricade the Acropolis with timber gates and beams. In fact the oracle meant the defensive wall formed by the Athenian ships (made of wood at this time). The Athenian triremes defeated the fleet of Xerxes at Salamis, thus bringing the Persian Wars to an end, but the Persians had already sacked and burnt the entire Acropolis, and its ruins were buried before it was rebuilt. The drums of columns from the old temple of Athena are visible on the north face of the Acropolis, and the sculpture was discovered in the excavations of 1882 to 1890. We cannot rule out the possibility that some pieces date from previous episodes of destruction: the tyrant Peisistratos had built some monuments, and it is possible that they were demolished at the time of the fall of the Peisistratids in 510. BC But on the whole, the destruction of the Acropolis by the Persians, although a disaster for the Athenians of the time, was doubly advantageous to us: while works of all periods co-exist on most sites, here we hive two successive complexes each of which is chronologically homogeneous. Not only do the fifth-century monuments built within a time-span of some fifty years still stand, but we also have the gallery of Archaic Attic sculpture, certainly extending over a good half-century, which was dug up at the end of the nineteenth century.
This Archaic sculpture divides conveniently into two main categories: statuary and pediments. Male statuary is not particularly abundant, as we might expect in the sanctuary of a goddess, but it does include pieces of the greatest importance: the “Moschophoros” or calf-bearer (a sacrificial image dedicated by one Rhombos), the “Rampin Horseman”, the head of the “Blond Boy”, and the “Kritian Boy”, whose place in the evolution of the kouros has been discussed above. Female statues are numerically predominant, with the famous series of korai, which are of different dimensions but are regularly shown with the forearm extended. The name of korai or “young girls” given to them does not help us to identify them. We can hardly suppose that they represent Athena, who is usually shown very differently, with helmet and aegis. Nor do they necessarily represent the women who offered them, since the dedicatory inscriptions of La Boudeuse — thus conventionally known today because she has lost the Archaic “smile”, worn by other korai (see above) — and of a statue signed by Antenor tell us that they were offered by men named Euthydikos and Nearchos respectively, so there is no definite proof that they are to be regarded as artificial substitutes for servants of the goddess.
Of the fragmentary limestone pediments, some are of dimensions suitable for a temple, like the “Bluebeard”, or the group from the Peisistratid temple of Athena showing the goddess flooring the giant Enceladus. Others are unusually wide, around twenty feet, and belonged to small buildings. They include the pediments known as “the Hydra” with Herakies fighting the Lemean Hydra; the “Red pediment”, so called from its colour, showing the same hero fighting Triton; “the Olive Tree”, whose subject is still a matter of controversy; and the “Apotheosis of Herakles”, in which the hero appears before Zeus in the presence of other gods.
Concentrated in a single place, but almost all made during a period covering the last two-thirds of the sixth century and the first twenty years of the fifth, the sculptures of the Acropolis are of great importance for both the evolution of sculptural style and its thematic history. The predominance of the legend of Herakles on the pediments is striking, and it has been suggested that the personal ideology of Peisistratos could explain this. They are also particularly interesting in providing us with information about polychrome sculpture; in fact their short life, soon ‘interrupted by the Persian onslaught and the subsequent burial of the ruins, meant that they were sheltered from the air and preserved their ciilours. Black and red remain very bright on the limestone of the pediments; the beard and hair of the “Bluebeard” are a fine black and his face is red, while the two colours alternate on the rings of his tails. Similarly, in the Olive Tree pediment, the figure on the right wears a black cloak over ared tunic, and the leaves ornamenting the slope are alternately red and black, etc. Similarly, in the marble statuary, the korai retain their multicoloured clothing, and a barbaric costume is painted on the “Scythian Horseman”, No. 6o6. The choice of colours, however, is always surprising to the modern viewer. The “Rampin Horseman” has red eyes and hair; this is neither exceptional nor an effect produced by the passage of time, since other Attic kouroi show the same colouring, for instance the statue of Kroisos , and most interesting of all, there is an echo of the practice almost two centuries later in a remark made by a character in Plato’s Republic. Referring to Archaic usage (certainly no longer current in his time) when the choice was basically between red and black, he considers that an artist would be rightly blamed “for not putting the most beautiful colours on the most beautiflul parts of the body, [for instance if] the eyes, most beautiful of all, were painted not in red but in black”.
Concentrated in a single place, but almost all made during a period covering the last two-thirds of the sixth century and the first twenty years of the fifth, the sculptures of the Acropolis are of great importance for both the evolution of sculptural style and its thematic history. The predominance of the legend of Herakles on the pediments is striking, and it has been suggested that the personal ideology of Peisistratos could explain this. They are also particularly interesting in providing us with information about polychrome sculpture; in fact their short life, soon ‘interrupted by the Persian onslaught and the subsequent burial of the ruins, meant that they were sheltered from the air and preserved their ciilours. Black and red remain very bright on the limestone of the pediments; the beard and hair of the “Bluebeard” are a fine black and his face is red, while the two colours alternate on the rings of his tails. Similarly, in the Olive Tree pediment, the figure on the right wears a black cloak over ared tunic, and the leaves ornamenting the slope are alternately red and black, etc. Similarly, in the marble statuary, the korai retain their multicoloured clothing, and a barbaric costume is painted on the “Scythian Horseman”, No. 6o6. The choice of colours, however, is always surprising to the modern viewer. The “Rampin Horseman” has red eyes and hair; this is neither exceptional nor an effect produced by the passage of time, since other Attic kouroi show the same colouring, for instance the statue of Kroisos , and most interesting of all, there is an echo of the practice almost two centuries later in a remark made by a character in Plato’s Republic. Referring to Archaic usage (certainly no longer current in his time) when the choice was basically between red and black, he considers that an artist would be rightly blamed “for not putting the most beautiful colours on the most beautiflul parts of the body, [for instance if] the eyes, most beautiful of all, were painted not in red but in black”.
Finally, we should note statuary epigraphs: there is a notable scarcity of dedications at this early period, and in fact they are confined to those on the Moschophorus and the two korai of Nearchos and Euthydikos. Above all, there are very few signatures: after the dedication by Euthydikos there is only the signature of Antenor, already celebrated in literary tradition as the creator of the first group of the Tyrannicides .
Posted by
jokjak
0 comments:
Post a Comment